By TOMMY REZAC
St. Joseph Post
The St. Joseph School Districts' Board of Education approved the creation of a community engagement program at their August 23rd meeting.
Part of that program was selecting what the district is calling a "Facilitating Team."
Superintendent Doug Van Zyl says the team's main purpose will be to engage with the community and get a more clear sense of what they expect from their school district.
"Really what they're looking at is being able to engage with the community," Van Zyl said on KFEQ's The Hotline, "and have conversations about what this community want in certain areas and certain topics. What do you want it to look like academically?"
The team will have help from a community engagement consultant, providing examples of best practices from other school districts and providing materials for review and refinement.
The district collected 238 names submitted by the community between late August and September 22. District families and supporters were asked to submit names of up to 20 people who they thought could be accurate and effective representatives of the school district and community as a whole.
That list was narrowed down to 22 people. The 22 chosen to be on the Facilitating Team have been invited to an orientation meeting, which is set for Thursday at 6:30 p.m. at the Troester Media Center. The meeting is expected to last less than two hours, and is free and open to the public.
Van Zyl says diversity, and overall community inclusion, was key in selecting the right people for the Facilitating Team.
"I think you have to give people the opportunity to show them that you're doing things with them instead of feeling like it's being done to them," Van Zyl said. "I feel like that's what's come out of the last several processes. People feel like things were being done to them."
This community engagement program comes just a handful of months after nearly 65 percent of St. Joseph voters said 'no' to the proposed $107 million bond issue, which would have funded the acquisition of a new high school at the American Family Insurance Regional Headquarters. It would have also converted Benton and Lafayette into middle schools.
The community engagement program is being funded by the St. Joseph Chamber of Commerce and Mosaic Life Care.
Patt Lilly, President of the Chamber, says the business community in St. Joseph, as well as those at Mosaic, felt compelled to put funding behind this program to support quality of education for children within the district, adding it's also important to change the conversation about the future of the district.
"We need to change the narrative from, 'How many schools are we going to close?'" he said. "Or, 'how big is the new high school going to be?' to, 'What things do we need to do in our community and public school system to improve the quality of education?'"
The first meeting with the Facilitating Team, Van Zyl says, will be wide ranging, with topics like curriculum, facilities, staff retention and other things being the center focus.
"There's going to be conversations about academics," he said. "There's going to be conversations about support and resources for mental health. There'll probably be some conversations about facilities, teacher salaries and how you attract and attain quality people."
The Facilitating Team will be tasked with talking and listening to members of the community, and figuring out what they want from their school district. Once they've gathered enough initial information, the team will present a rough draft of their needs or proposals to the school board.
After that, the board will give the team additional information on costs, timelines and how plans can be executed. The facilitation team will then go back into the community to double check with people and see if their initial ideas and proposals are truly what they want.
Once the Facilitation Team has finalized and organized that information, and has finished talking with the community on how they want to proceed, the team will present final ideas and proposals to the board, who ultimately have the final say in decisions.
The timeline for this process can be lengthy - between 16-18 months. While that feels like a long time before any major changes are made, Van Zyl reiterates that the main motivation behind forming this Facilitation Team, and Community Engagement Program, is community inclusiveness, thoroughness and transparency.
"All of that type of information will be shared so people will at least have an idea of, 'Here's already what the district is doing and where they're at,'" Van Zyl said. "If we want to get from point A to point B, what are we going to have to do to get there?"
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