Leadership magazine Sept/Oct 2014 V 44 No 1 | Page 29

Opening wide: Community input

Accordion in: Educational experts

It takes a well-developed plan and timeline to ensure that input is coming from all
parts of the community, especially those not
traditionally involved. We began our LCAP
process in November, brainstorming how
we could inform and engage. It is easy to
ask for input, but it is another matter to
clearly communicate the often-jumbled educational jargon and to gather clearly stated
input from diverse community members.
We established the first input window to
last through February to ensure enough
time to gather as much input as possible.

You might refer to the next stage as the
working stage, and it began in March. Even
though we continued to gather input, it was
time to take the hundreds of ideas and to or-

sented to community members and school
board members in an effort to refine and
finalize district and LCAP goals. This gave
the community an opportunity to give further input. The meeting was well attended by

It is easy to ask for input, but it is another matter to clearly
communicate the often jumbled educational jargon and to
gather clearly stated input from diverse community members.

Traditional voices
We took advantage of the advisory systems we had in place and began with all established district committees and forums.
These included the District Parent and
Teacher Association Council, District Advisory Council, the District English Learners
Advisory Committee and the local bargaining units. Other established groups included
a district-level Hispanic Advisory, a Community Forum, and the Visalia Education
Foundation Board.
School principals were trained in an engagement protocol and each principal conducted sessions with their School Site Councils, English Learner Advisory Committees,
and school staff. During these meetings, we
asked one question in relation to each of the
eight state priorities. “How can the district
better serve our students in the area of … ?”

Non-traditional voices: A greater challenge
Opening the accordion to draw in ideas
from non-traditional voices was a greater
challenge. This is an area that we will continue to develop and expand as we move
into the second year of LCAP. We took our
engagement process to community centers,
city neighborhood advisory committees,
migrant farm worker groups, communitybased organizations, and after-school providers.
During this phase, we gathered hundreds of suggestions and ideas about how
the district could better serve our students.
We were nearly overwhelmed with poster
charts, sticky notes, email summaries and
survey data.

ganize them so we could develop a workable
plan. We established an LCAP work team
for this task. The team was made up of our
educational experts – district curriculum
and program leaders and key representatives
from the teacher and classified associations.
How to organize? The first job of the team
was to review LCAP guidelines and establish data points to measure district progress.
This evolved into a comprehensive district
data review of everything from academic
progress to school climate indicators such as
attendance, suspension and expulsion rates.
Input was sorted into themes, district data
was reviewed, and initial district goals were
drafted. At this point, it was time to take the
work back out for public review, comment
and input. A school board LCAP study session was scheduled to review the progress of
the work team.
The work team’s draft goals were pre-

many parents who had participated in early
LCAP sessions.

Moving ahead with plan development
The public study session allowed staff to
refine the LCAP draft goals and move ahead
with plan development. The team explored
the barriers to reach the district’s goals and
reviewed gaps between district achievement
data and the newly refined district goals.
The team reviewed the suggestions from
the community and looked for patterns that
addressed the identified barriers. The major
themes that emerged were ideas to:
• Increase student, parent and community
engagement.
• Improve school climate to decrease our
incidents of suspensions and expulsions.
• Link academics to student career interest.
• Better serve all students; low achieving
as well as high achieving.

September/October 2014

29