[Music] Welcome to our school district podcast, AOOY Minnetonka. I'm your host, Superintendent of Schools, David Law. Community input plays a critical role in shaping the direction of our schools and district-wide initiatives. across all of our stakeholders. We actively seek to inform, provide opportunities for feedback, and build connections through a variety of means. These efforts give people many ways to share their experiences, thoughts, and input about the district and to have questions and concerns answered. Continuing to build trust with students, parents, prospective families, teachers, staff, alumni, and the broader community remains an action item. the schoolboard goal of excellence in leadership and organizational support. Joining me today are two people who have been central to providing the opportunities for our community to be engaged. They are executive director of communications Dr. Jackie Getty and school board director Sally Brown who's making her first appearance on our podcast. Thank you both for being here. Let's start with some background information. Sally, this is your first term on the board. Can you give the community a little bit of your background and why you chose to be on the board? Yes, thank you. I'm really glad to be here today. So, I am a lifelong member of this community. My parents actually own their first home right by the high school and my husband and I have raised our children in the district. Five of them are alumni and one is a current student at the high school. As a board member, I have the opportunity to represent the board on several committees. One of them is the special education advisory council. Another is the community action for student education committee which advocates with state legislators for full school funding. I'm also a member of the association of metropolitan school districts and there I'm elected to the legislative committee. Jackie, give a little background on the executive director of communications. Sure. Uh well, we work really closely together, so this will be a recap for you, but we work quite a bit for Sally as well for the community. Uh we work quite a bit with engaging the various communities, constituencies in our communities and making sure that people are informed about all of the opportunities, all of the resources and also that we have an opportunity to hear their voices so that we know how people are feeling about what's happening in the school district about the things that we might be considering and about what's ahead. We listen to students, we listen to parents, we talk to our staff and teachers throughout the year. So some of what we do um is about the kind of engagement that goes through surveys. Some of it is about informing. So what are the things that are happening today? What are the opportunities out there? And so it might be an event that we put on or a listening session um or a an activity where people can get involved and join a committee. Um we are also as the community as the communications team members of various committees. So I'm a liazison to the Tonka Pride committee. Um, I work closely with the booster store at times with the foundation. Um, and then to just really support you and the school board in all of our communication efforts throughout the district, whether it's to put out publications or to do videos or, um, to do things like this podcast. So, really, it's about harnessing those voices and making sure that we know how the community is feeling about what's happening in the district so that that can better inform the opportunities that we have and the goals that the school board sets. Sally, you came on the board in this this excellence in leadership and organizational support specifically about increasing community connection to the board that was a priority. Can you give a little background on that from your perspective? Why why is that so important to this board? Now, it's important to this board because if we just stay in the boardroom and receive all of our information through polished presentations and you know scheduled guest for example or even from community comments or citizen input where people have prepared what they're going to say for us, we will only get so much information. We recognize as a board that it's very important for us to be out and about in the community and gathering information in as many forms and from as many people as we can in order to get a full picture of what's working and where opportunities are. I this is an area that I don't think school boards will ever arrive because we're constantly evolving in how we share information and gather input. Are there some ways that the board has connected with the community in the last during your time um that you think are novel or different than the public might not be aware of? Some of my favorite things that I felt have been very impactful have been having listening sessions be that with parents with students particularly at the high school. We've done that and we've got some upcoming listening sessions with middle schoolers and we've even gone out into the community to where some of our senior members of the community gather to get their perspective. That's an audience that's highly engaged and informed and has a lot to offer us. Dr. Yeti, you've been here for over five years. Eight. Eight. Um, how has engagement changed from your role during that time? I think it's been really exciting to see all the ways that we can involve. This podcast is an example of something that we um added to the mix. Uh videos have always been a strong component of our programming and it's been fun to find ways to really incorporate videos to really bring those stories to life in a number of events and in a number of ways that we share out with the community. We've asked a lot more questions of the community. So, we've had a lot more surveys. We we do the annual parent survey and we've done that for um probably many years before I got here, but we've also added surveys about board goals. We've added surveys most recently about student cell phone use. We want to hear what people feel about things so that we not only are taking the research that we would get, you know, from our own lens into this or from what we're hearing from other districts, but also to hear how this is impacting families, how is this impacting teachers? What do students think about this? because these are the folks, all those constituents that are going to be impacted by any decision that the school board makes. And so really to find ways to continuously connect and really to listen. I think that that's been something that we've really tried to enhance is our listening on the communications team and to really find ways to help our leaders, our principles, you the school board to do that as well. So, it's been exciting to see the I think the advancements of community engagement versus just communications where so much of it is being feeding someone content and now it's more of a two-way exchange. So, we do a variety of surveys throughout the year. We have 11,250 students give or take. Um, they all have a pair of adults or at least guardians that are working with them. When we send out surveys, what's a typical number of responses for those eight or nine thousand families? It definitely changes year to year. Um, I would say that consistently we had about 2500 of the 13,000 email addresses that are the primary email address listed for that student who would respond to the annual parent survey. But um I will talk about our most recent survey which we're still um as of taping of this podcast in process of collecting feedback on and we sent it out a few days ago to parents and we've had 2,000 responses and that's to the same group of 13,000 some emails. So I think when it's a topic and you know it's a short survey and people are super passionate about it. We could we could hear back from a from a really large group and that's great to see. And so we're always looking at ways that we can make um our our opportunities to provide input and feedback easier and uh faster or um that works better for families. So Sally, can you think of input that we've received that you found informational or persuasive that maybe steered a decision of the board? I am thinking about when we have reached out to student groups, to parents or guardians and to our teachers and staff and then comparing and contrasting the responses that we got from them. Where we see a lot of alignment that is very very impactful, right? Then we we know the direction that we need to head with that. Um where we see some contrast that's just a clue for us to dig in a little deeper and find other ways to get input to clarify that. And that has been very useful to the board. Yeah. Sadly, no amount of feedback is ever unanimous for the board. There are always people on both sides of any issue. So, um, between the two of you, we've talked a little bit about parent engagement. We talked about parent listening sessions and parent surveys. Are there any other ways that we involve parents that you think we would benefit from telling our community about? I think there are lots of ways for parents to get involved. So have really active PTO and PTA groups and then we work closely with those groups as well. We have the Tonka Pride spiritware uh committee that gets together. They have a a big group that's really excited about that. We have the booster store committee at the at the high school that sells spiritware here at the high school. Uh we also reach out to a lot of families when we're doing our feature storytelling, which is a big component of what the communications team does, whether it's in written content, social media content, video content, and so we're connecting with parents, um to talk to their students and to talk to them about the experiences their families are having in the district. Um and we also are talking to a lot of teachers and staff when we do those as well. So, it's a fun way to wrap all of those voices together. And whether it's for the annual report or for a video that we're sending out or for an email that we're sending out communitywide or for a traditional news story that we do with the media when we're highlighting a program or a student's achievement. It's it's fun to really harness those opportunities, but we're always connecting with parents to talk about their lens into that and their role within that. Sally, you referenced in your introduction that you serve on some committees and those committees also are open to parents and community members. There's a handful of board committees. Um do you what are do you remember some of the ones that are open to parents to be participating in? Well certainly the community action for student education our case advocacy committee has been in growing popularity in the past few years. We are over 90 active members of that committee. And not only do we have opportunities to come together in person, uh we have opportunities to work together to email our legislators or call our legislators or even to take a field trip to this to the state capital for a day at the capital uh where we had over 20 members join us this year. So the um you're on the special ed advisory committee. They just met recently. I popped in to say hello. We have calendar committee. Calendar committee. Mental health advisory committee. That's another one that I serve on. um and that we have a lot of parents on and teaching and learning also has a board committee and the community finance advisory committee and I think community ed has one as well and the community advisory committee both of all of those are going to be communicated about here in the next month as we have openings for the upcoming school year. Yep. And those are ways for community members or parents to get involved. There also are a number of events that community education puts on and they're always looking for volunteers. So, we've got uh in particular Tour to Tonka, the big community bike ride that's coming up and we need hundreds of volunteers whether they're out at the stops or whether they join me at the registration table. Um it's always or whether they're biking. I know that you've done that in the past with your family. And so, no matter how someone gets involved, that's that's really such a neat way to come together and to meet other families uh and to really celebrate being part of this community. Uh Sally, I'm going to come back to you because this has been a year where we've really ramped up student connections. We've done a few things to increase student involvement. What are some of the things that are new this year? Very exciting for the board this year is that in pairs we have been aligned to different cohorts or classes, graduating classes of students. I happen to be aligned with the class of 27 along with Chris Fatali. And in our cohorts then we meet twice a year. We've just had our spring meeting with our cohorts and the students are asked a variety of questions on different topics and it was very interesting from from the first meeting um of a cohort of about 30 students. We had most of those kids came back for the second round and opened up immediately to talk to us. So that has been a wonderful way to get a real feel for what's going on with students right here in the school. We also did something called a student forum. Jackie, do you want to talk a little bit about that? that was really fun to put together and that was I think a board vision and then something that we worked on uh with the high school leadership to have uh tables of students um from all aspects of our like all years all activities that they're involved with or athletics or academic areas that they're interested in to sit with board members and then to talk about again key topics and so talking about I think experiential learning was one of the topics that they talked about bullying prevention um there are just a couple of key things and then to really hear all these different perspectives about what what are their thoughts on that? How what's a class where they've been the most uh engaged with experiential learning and and what was it about that that really engaged them? And then being able to bring the answers back to something that really helps us to inform the way that we're delivering education and the opportunities we're providing and also that gives the school board some feedback as they're considering policy, as they're considering goals and where we need to focus as a district. students have also been very present present in the uh presentations to the board. Um each school has an opportunity to present to the board and there are other opportunities and we've had student voice virtually every time in person or on recorded and this is all age groups and that is always very impactful for the board. Uh we also are hearing from students via email. uh they come to board meetings to give community comment or citizen input and even reach out to us to meet up for coffee so that they can share their perspective on specific topics. Maybe you want to talk a little bit about the um the students that put together presentations as they're thinking about student voice on the board because I know you're very involved as a public policy mentor and these were Vantage public policy. That's right. I I have for three years been a mentor for Vantage public policy students. And this year the board uh suggested that the Vantage public policy group do uh research on how different school boards have student schoolboard members. And uh five teams competed and actually we were part of the panel of judges. The top team presented at the November work study or or study session and uh proposed a model for including students on the school board not as voting members but as people as a way to give the voice to all students on important topics of student interest. And the board has talked about that a few times this spring and at the meeting that will likely happen the first meeting of May. The board will approve a pilot for next year that involves staff input about uh student leaders who' be good in this role. Students electing those people and then these students meeting and preparing for board meetings next year. It'll I it'll be an innovative minified way to do student voice stuff. I'm excited for it. And what was funny is we talked in our student listening sessions. I'm not sure if it was in your group. We mentioned this bottle's coming and right away a student's hand shot up and said, "I'm really interested in that. How do I get to be that person?" which was great because I think students are curious about what happens at board meetings. We also started with principal Ericson's help. He is sharing board agendas the week of schoolboard meetings on his Instagram, which is pretty well followed because he's constantly talking about things of high interest in celebrating students. So, um, as we look forward, we've talked about how we connect with students, we've talked about how we connect with parents. Are there ways we connect with the community that we haven't covered? Yeah, alumni is a big group for us. And so our team in communications works really closely with the alumni association which is a a small but mighty group of folks that are very passionate about the school district. And over the last year now last year they had their uh all school all class reunion. It was the first time in like four or five years because uh the pandemic kind of put a wrinkle in their their average cadence to that. So um but they were able to engage a whole bunch of new people. So they have a really big group that is really passionate about um ways to engage their different classes back with the school district. They meet monthly and then we support them in a magazine which is going digital this year which is very exciting because then we feel like we can add videos that help to tell the story and like continuously uh pull people back into the website where there are so many opportunities and events to get involved. So we're super excited about that. But we also do an annual brunch in the fall that we collaborate with the alumni association on where the association selects two distinguished award winners who are alumni, a a distinguished service award winner, um a skipper hall of famer and some other groups. Um and then we honor those folks at a at a brunch. Um and we do wonderful videos about them with their nominators. And then we fill the room. It's usually in the commons and there's about 200 people that show up and it's such a neat event. Um, so the the alumni have been a great group to work on. They're super passionate. Recently they started something they hope is going to be a new thing for them, which is a writer's workshop. So they brought in an alum who um is an author and he presented on getting started as a writer and you know what are ways to do that and he brought a bunch of his different books and they were just a neat collection of books and then sat and just spoke to people. We had about 25 people show up and then the alumni association was there to to talk more about staying engaged. So they'd like to make that more of a series. So I think there's some real opportunities, but our team really works closely with them and that's a fun new way to get people engaged and involved. Well, as we're wrapping up, is there any part of engagement that we didn't cover that you think would be important for our community to know? I think we're always excited to hear what the community is thinking. So if there are things that we aren't doing right now, I would love to hear about them. And anyone can um email communications@minitaschools.org or and we're happy to to take those ideas and to bring them back to you and and talk through them and see if that's something we want to pursue. And I would add that if you see a schoolboard member out and about in the community, don't hesitate to come and introduce yourself and share your thoughts or wishes with us. Um I'm always open to having coffee as are my colleagues. I know um that's something we frequently do and we will put ourselves out in the community and make connections as well because we really value that. Yeah. Our schools are for our community and should serve our community. So, it's great to have those connections. I want to thank you both for being here and taking some time to talk about community engagement. It's such an important board goal and something that we take a lot of pride in. And I want to thank you for joining us for this episode of Ohi Minnetonka, learning how Minnetonka schools engages the community. We'll see you around. [Music]