A Deliberative Model for Engaging the Community.

Use of Community Forums Can Undercut Special-Interest Politics

The challenges seemed only to be growing in the Susquenita School District. Traditionally a rural setting, the 2,500 student school district in central Pennsylvania was fast acquiring a suburban look and feel.

But the influx of more highly educated white-collar families was not particularly welcomed by the farmers and other laborers who had populated the region for generations. The two groups had different educational and career expectations for their children and divergent styles of raising their offspring.

These tensions were exacerbated by the rise of a taxpayers group in the district, whose members seemed bent on questioning every school expenditure. School board meetings were not yet openly antagonistic, but if some neighboring districts were any indication, they soon would be. Community residents quarreled over little points of support for one program or another, but the differences also seemed to run deep and people could not disagree civilly.

The school budget was being torn apart, people felt devalued and school programs were criticized. Residents couldn't even talk with each other to figure out what was best for students or for the community.

School board meetings, even with time set aside for public comment, clearly were not improving communication. Citizens often left frustrated that they could not talk about their concerns in more depth.

Two Shortcomings 

The superintendent at the time, Steven Messner, began looking for a way for parents and non-parents, newcomers and old-timers, to work through important community issues. He recognized that most opportunities for discussion about schools and school-related issues were one-directional. Typically, school and district administrators meet with groups of people in settings where the administrator first talks and then listens to those attending.

The common scenario goes something like this: Someone comments, asks a question, criticizes or praises. The board member, administrator, or teacher responds. Then it is the next person's turn.

While these settings have their purpose, they typically have two weaknesses.

First, these groups typically are homogeneous. This lack of diversity poses no problem if what is needed is for the administrator to hear what the group wants and then to respond. But this is a problem if the issues are of broad concern. It is a problem if what is needed is to develop common ground about what solutions the community will support.

Second, this approach can be a problem if significant splits exist within the community. For while the superintendent may hear the concerns of each group, none of the groups has an opportunity to consider the concerns of other competing groups.

Current models of community engagement play into the hands of special-interest groups, reinforcing each group's belief that their interests are separate from the interests of others. The public good gets buried under the weight of special interests.

The Public's Interest

Existing models of community engagement relegate the role of the public to insignificant activities. We cannot afford for citizens to be passive public listeners and private critics or supporters of what we do. The current communications models replace citizen responsibility with administrator responsibility. That represents a no-win position for any school administrator.

In addition, under the current model, the public does not get to do its work. That work is to define what is in the public interest, identifying basic purposes and community directions. Only the public can build common ground on which to base public policy. Only the public can transform private individuals with their narrow private interests into public citizens with public interests. And only the public can support consistent government over the long term.

It is no coincidence that school boards are less stable these days. One special interest gets elected to the board, only to be replaced at the next election with another interest. Without consistent government, school administrators and their efforts at school improvement are constantly in jeopardy.

A New Tact

A new approach to community engagement focuses on creating alternative forms of community forums to encourage public deliberation. Such forums have several characteristics:

* The issue to be discussed must be structured or framed to encourage deliberation.

For people to become interested in an issue, they must see how it connects to their concerns, to what they consider important, and to their everyday experiences.

While we typically see problems described from an expert, legal, or partisan perspective, we cannot know how we as citizens understand these problems until we listen to others. Naming problems in terms of what is most valuable to people is naming them in public terms.

A public name for a problem has to reflect all the concerns different people bring to it. A name that reflects most people's concerns gives widespread legitimacy to an issue and creates public ownership.

It would be a mistake to simply state a single position and expect people to deliberate on that position. A single position sets up a for-and-against oppositional dynamic.

Discussion material should contain at least three, but preferably not more than four, choices. All choices should be considered. Make sure the positive side of all options is considered.

At the first in a series of community forums in West York, Pa. (see related story, page 16), on the question, "What do we want our children to get out of school?" three choices were offered: (1) every student should learn the same basic skills that will help him or her to get a job; (2) every student should learn how to develop her or his own individual strengths and talents to the utmost; or (3) every student should learn how to get along in our diverse society.

* Participants deliberate, they don't debate

When we deliberate we weigh carefully the views of others. We discuss choices about the issue, looking at benefits, costs, and consequences of each. We try to understand the impact of different positions on people's lives. As people work through conflicts, they understand where they disagree and where they agree. Those areas of agreement form the basis for common action. The areas of disagreement provide an agenda for future conversation.

At the West York, Pa., forum, agreement emerged on the central question. Participants agreed all students should learn "the basics" as a foundation. However, people disagreed mightily over what to include in the basics. Some defined the basics as reading, writing, and arithmetic. One citizen described them as "core skills needed to get a job." Those holding this view argued that individual talents and strengths ought to be addressed by parents and families.

Others had a more expansive view. For them, the basics included critical thinking and technological and social skills. Many of these people believed schools should build on students' individual talents, offering a broad program that included the arts, literature, and music.

The forum clarified areas of agreement (as a basis for common action) and areas of disagreement (as areas for future work).

* The forum needs a neutral moderator.

The moderator's job is to ensure that the forum is deliberative, not argumentative. In guiding the deliberation, the moderator keeps people focused on the choices. The moderator helps people work to understand their motivations in liking/disliking different parts of each choice and to recognize that other people have reasons for their opinions.

The importance of a moderator who focuses deliberation on the choices is most apparent when people come to the forums with individual agendas. At one forum, tided "Contested Values: Tug-of-War in the School Yard," several citizens attempted to read prepared statements and excerpts from national newsletters. The moderator was able to minimize the disruption by referring to previously set ground rules, asking the citizens to speak in their own words and then to relate their concerns to the choices under consideration.

By the end of the forum, these citizens were engaged fully in the deliberation and had come to understand why others might reasonably disagree with them.

Improved Civility

The value of this form of communication is that it provides the community with a model for civil discourse. Messner, who left the Susquenita superintendency in 1995, and Al Glennon, superintendent in the West York School District, noted a marked increase in civility in the aftermath of this process.

They believe the forums reduced community tensions. The forums provided a time, place, and structure to work through important issues in their districts. While the forums did not end with specific action plans, people did leave with an increased sense of direction and purpose.

Forums seldom end in total agreement or disagreement. Forums frequently end in a discovery of a shared purpose or recognition of how interests are interconnected.

Forums do change people's opinions of others' opinions. Those changes in perception create new possibilities for acting together, generating the political will to move ahead.

While board members attended forums, they did not participate in them. As observers, they took community deliberations into account in subsequent school board discussions.

The deliberative forums undercut some of the special-interest politics that plague school boards and communities. By asking people to discuss both the pros and cons of choices, everyone came to see both the strengths and weaknesses of each position. And by focusing on points of common ground, it was more difficult for special interests to ignore what they shared with others whom they thought had differing interests.

This model of deliberative community forums is based on the work of the National Issues Forums Institute, sponsored by the Kettering Foundation.

The process differs enough from traditional models of community engagement that cynics in a school district may wonder whether a hidden agenda exists. Indeed, an agenda does exist behind the structure of a forum. That agenda is to frame the problem in public terms so everyone in the community can see that their position will get a fair hearing. The agenda is simply to keep the public responsible for doing the public's work.

The more we can involve community members in working through the tough challenges facing them, the more support they will give to efforts to solve those challenges.

Superintendent's Role

Superintendents and other school system leaders probably should not moderate forums in their own communities, but they do play an important role. The superintendent can take leadership in setting deliberation as a model for community engagement. By advocating for deliberative forums, the superintendent encourages greater understanding and civility, values at the heart of public education.

School system leaders are in unique positions to identify issues for community deliberation. They should look beyond education-related issues to topics that are related to schools but not school-based. Possibilities include adolescent violence, family relationships, or economic pressures. By focusing on community-based topics first, the community gains practice in deliberation before it grapples with school-related issues.

A positive implication of this strategy is that it establishes the school district as a place for community work on important community issues. In this way, schools regain their centrality in the community.

Ideally, the district should serve as a co-convener by working with other community agencies to make the forums a community activity, not simply a school activity. This broadens ownership and may increase participation. And the more diverse the participation, the greater variety of viewpoints presented in the forums. This variety leads to richer deliberation. It also can lead to a richer common ground emerging from the deliberations.

The superintendent plays a crucial role in finding and enlisting community agencies and businesses to co-sponsor the forums. For example, in the Springfield Township, Pa., School District, Superintendent William J. Leary Jr. convened a group that included teachers, the high school principal, clergy, and representatives from the local hospital to discuss community health issues. Together they agreed to create a series of deliberative community forums that will start later this year. They hope to generate a communitywide conversation about these issues. They are not sure exactly what will emerge from the conversations, but they feel sure the conversations themselves will support a healthier community.

A Familiar Setting

School system leaders, already facing immense pressures, may be apprehensive about assuming an additional community role. Superintendents may be concerned that only critics will come to such forums, that this will only give critics more occasions to voice their complaints. This possibility has not been our experience. In fact, quite the opposite has occurred. Districts that have begun to sponsor deliberative forums have discovered that the quality of public discussion improves.

Holding deliberative forums about non-school issues before the district is in crisis provides a recognized setting for discussing important subjects. Then when such issues involve schools, a mechanism is in place for people to use to defuse the problem. It also places the schools in a most valuable position--at the center of the community. School districts again can be viewed as a solver of problems and as a builder of civic and social capital.

Jon Kinghorn, director of the National Issues Forum Institute at the Kettering Foundation, contributed to this article.

Where to Learn More

Engaging parents and community members in serious deliberation of hard policy choices is what the National Issues Forums tries to accomplish.

More than 6,000 civic and educational organizations have used this process; which was developed by the Charles F. Kettering Foundation.

Introductory packets about National Issues Forums are available by contracting the Kettering Foundation at 200 Ohio 45459-2799, or by calling 800-600-4060. Jon Kinghorn, a former school principal, directs the National Issues Forum Institute.

A Superintendent's View: Public Forums as a Launching Point

ALBERT J. GLENNON

The time was right for community conversations in our school district.

I came to this conclusion after watching a majority of the school board turn over in one election and the growing presence of individuals who were attempting to influence our board members with personal agendas.

But recognizing the importance of public participation and acting to make it happen are two different things. What appealed to me was the idea of a series of public forums to engage the community actively in discussing such critical issues as financial support of public education, juvenile crime, and outcome-based education.

Activist Board

Before the turnover in the board's composition two years. ago, the superintendent acted as the chief executive for a corporate body that met monthly as a committee of the whole. This board expected the superintendent to follow policy and keep members informed through periodic contacts. Special meetings were called to discuss an emerging need or to apprise the board of policy concerns. The assistant superintendent chaired quarterly educational forums to keep the board informed about curriculum and instruction.

Since the change in board membership, the board and I have accepted a shared decision-making process as a way to respond to taxpayer influence and contrasting views of parents about the role of the schools. It is worth noting that 70 percent of the district's residents do not have children in school, and this group comprised the majority of a taxpayers association that was demanding a higher quality of education at a lower cost to the public. This challenge arose even though our district levies the second lowest property tax in the county and had eliminated per-capita taxes for residents.

As a result, the board sought a more active role in governing the organization. I wanted to maintain my presence as the educational leader while sharing administrative responsibility for the nearly 3,000 students in our predominantly suburban school district.

Public Input

The board president and I responded to the expectations of three new board members, the concerned taxpayers, and the parents by inviting them to a series of conversations. We decided to use the National Issues Forum model for community engagement, a process developed by the Kettering Foundation.

We asked Harris Sokoloff, executive director of the Center for School Study Councils, to help us. His experience with the Kettering model enabled the school district to develop a series of public forums to provide meaningful opportunities to discuss fundamental community issues. In turn, we hoped our school district would receive community-based support for school programs and budgets.

To plan the forums, the school board president appointed an education focus group consisting of a board member, student, teacher, administrator, and facilitator. The group planned five public forums over a year, co-sponsored by the district and community-based partners. The local council of the Boy Scouts of America; the Victim Assistance Center, The York Daily Record, United Defense LP, and Martin Memorial Library provided co-facilitators and promoted the sessions.

The local newspaper served as partner of the opening forum that focused on the question, "What do we want our children to get out of school?" The publisher of The York Daily Record showed particular enthusiasm for the project. The newspaper ran a series of introductory articles and columns to help inform the public of the agenda.

The paper avoided an activist role to ensure that sponsorship resulted in a nonpartisan presence. The publisher believed the success of the forum would hinge on the editorial staff being as nonpartisan as possible when it came to defining the issues and as expansive as possible when involving the public.

The newspaper coverage contributed to the attendance of approximately 100 people at the first forum. During deliberations, community members coalesced around a demand for a strong core curriculum that stressed basic skills. The event also allowed us to clarify misconceptions about outcome-based education.

The second forum, hosted by the community library, focused on "What does our community value?" By holding the forum at the library we reached a countywide audience. The local access TV station created an interactive telecommunications link for viewers at home. The remaining forums, held in local schools, dealt with adolescent violence, values, and school finance.

Strategic Benefits

What we gained from the forums became a part of the district's strategic planning process. The management team learned the importance of active listening in the communications process. Our public consists of bright individuals who sincerely want to improve public education and to become part of an effective school system through volunteerism and strategic planning.

Forum participants, while recognizing that differences exist among what people expect, came away feeling that core agreement exists over what school district residents want for themselves and their children. The discussions led directly to revisions in the program for gifted students and the alternative education program for students at risk of failure.

The forums also led to several new partnerships with local businesses. A major corporation offered to underwrite a Saturday school program for 11th-grade students in which company executives taught students about business functions in a manufacturing plant.

The forums were one more way for the school district to have the public voice be heard. Since different people want different types of involvement, it provided another opportunity for public participation. The early sessions provided the board with extensive community input and helped deal with critics in a proactive manner.

Resolved Comfortably

The board and I have used information gleaned from the community voice for strategic planning purposes, and we now are using successful boardsmanship practices. We have a planning meeting each month where we focus on timely educational issues.

In addition, the creation of three standing committees on budget and finance, personnel, and community relations has satisfied the board's need to provide direction and assistance to the administration. A strategic planning team has suggested renaming the community relations committee as the PRIDE team. The acronym stands for Positive Relations in the School District.

Working relationships are on the upswing. The past president of the taxpayers association now serves as the school board president. We no longer are confronted by an organized group of angry taxpayers. Their members sense the board and superintendent are forging a communitywide relationship in the best interests of students.

The community has demonstrated its support for investing in, public education. The board, through a decisive majority, has adopted the last two annual budgets, both requiring modest spending increases. No formal complaints were received while the budgets were on 30-day public display. The board recently established a five-year capital reserve fund that over time will exceed $1 million to support technology purchases and building plans.

These are new signs that our school district has benefited from the significant input of community members to the decision-making process.