Enlisting Key Community Members
Overview
In this step, the district transformation team maps their community ecosystem and identifies an initial set of community members (think teachers’ union, principal leadership, community organizers, elected officials, and school board members) whose support is essential to secure before publicly committing to the design journey. Next, they create a plan to engage these community members and begin outreach.
Goal
Secure critical support needed for high school transformation leading up to the public announcement
Owner(s)
District transformation team
Contributor(s)
District leadership
Why Community Engagement Matters
Community is at the heart of high school transformation. Engaging the community is at the heart of the design journey.
Enlisting key community members is an essential step in a district’s design journey. It involves tapping into the wealth of resources within the community to build buy-in and secure the endorsement and dedication of these individuals and groups toward high school transformation. Moreover, community engagement cultivates a shared sense of ownership—an essential factor in driving meaningful, scalable, and sustainable transformation.
As districts and schools embark on the design journey, one fundamental question to consider is, “What can we accomplish together to ensure the success of our design journey?” Understanding the nature and extent of community involvement is a key factor in a successful transformation. In practice, this engagement might take various forms. It could range from forging partnerships with non-profit organizations that can provide after-school programs for students to cultivating relationships with civic leaders who can provide letters of support on policy issues.
Expanding the Definition of Engagement
There are critical differences between the traditional community engagement that your teams may be used to leading and the type of engagement that can be crucial to the success of your high school transformation work.
From
Traditional Engagement
To
Transformative Engagement
From a narrow focus on the "school community" (e.g., students, families, educators, and community leaders).
To an expanded focus that includes members of the broader community outside the immediate school environment, such as local businesses and civic and religious leaders.
From engagement work that is often transactional and outcome oriented (e.g., getting parents to complete the FAFSA form).
To engagement work focused on fostering understanding, building relationships, developing support, and activating the community to become more involved.
In the next phase, the district transformation team explores this new approach to community engagement more deeply, examining different frameworks teams can use to determine target audiences and different approaches to catalyze the necessary contributions from each group. They also introduce different methodologies for how to “push” and “pull” audiences through distinct messaging approaches.
The intention in this step is to set the groundwork for community engagement by starting to understand the broader community and identify the community members who will need to be brought onboard most urgently.