Communications Council for the Windham Southeast School District
NOTICE OF MEETING
The Communications Council of the WSESD will meet Thursday, February 4, 2021
at 1:00 p.m. via Zoom:
Join Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/94540834070?pwd=QWpHeUJSZjVudmd4TWNyaFJpZ1dqdz09
Meeting ID: 945 4083 4070
Passcode: vN3zSv
AGENDA
I. Call to Order
II. Recognition of Visitors
III. Minutes Approval – January 20 and January 29, 2021
IV. Dissolution Vote
• Community Outreach and Information Planning
• Timeline
V. Budget Vote Timeline and Planning
VI. Adjournment
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Communications Council for the Windham Southeast School District
Minutes – Friday, January 29, 2021 1:00pm
I. Call to Order – Michelle called the meeting to order 1:05pm.
II. Minutes Approval – January 20, 2021
III. Recognition of Visitors: Deb Kardane, David Schoales, Tim Maciel, Ruby McAdoo
IV. Dissolution Vote – Community Outreach and Information Planning
The goal of this council regarding the dissolution ballot question is to make sure our community understands what the dissolution vote is and how it will impact them.
This work should take into considerations of each community, financial impact of dissolution.
Deb Kardane advocated for the council to really consider who is the audience. Narrow the scope to be geared toward what do they absolutely need to know. Consider not centering subjective opinions of every stakeholder and focus on facts from authoritative sources.
David Schoales clarified that a dissolution would need to be at the approval of all district towns.
As far as costs, we can’t compare that by town because we don’t get separate weighted student numbers for each town anymore.
Tim Maciel suggested that voters will want to know what academic programs were affected by the merger.
Robin – we can still inform voters of what impact there might be economically even if we don’t have hard numbers
Michelle discussed looking into what is the impact of dissolution on our educators, students, and that families will want to know how this will affect their children and be interested in the opinions of their teachers and principals. Taxpayers will want to know what a dissolution will cost.
The board discussed that although this council or board may not be the right entity to host a forum about dissolution, that might be something leadership councils could explore for their own schools.
The board is legally prohibited from expressing subjective opinion regarding ballot votes. What objective facts can we present?
– Information about equity achievements
– What’s going to happen to debts and capital funds
– What won’t change: SU-wide positions and programs
– What will change:
• District-wide positions and programs
• Ability to share teachers especially important during COVID-related remote learning
• general predictions about what possible financial impacts might be
What will the be the effect on people having a voice at the district level
• How will this impact our COVID response
Other questions to address include:
What is the legislative power to not comply with or undo a vote to dissolve?
What happens after this vote? Timeline and deadline for districts and budgets to be reformed.
V. Schedule Upcoming CC Meeting – a when2meet poll was sent to all attendees of the meeting.
VI. Adjournment – the meeting was adjourned at (???)
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Communications Council for the Windham Southeast School District
The Communications Council of the WSESD met Wednesday, January 20, 2021 at 12:00 Noon
I. Call to Order – meeting was called to order at 12:20. Michelle, Robin and Jaime in attendance
II. Minutes Approval – December 16, 2020 – Robin moved, all in favor
III. Recognition of Visitors David Schoales, Deb Kardane, Kerry Amidon, Barb Nowakowski, Ruby McAdoo
IV. Working With Central Office
Michelle asked Barb to define how her and her staff’s role intersects with communications work. Barb shared that she has worked with Jaime for a media distribution list. The SU has a new information specialist, Becca Shephard, who would be good at assisting the C.C. and Barb will be the intermediary so she can delegate & explain the work. The survey was distributed in Andy’s Friday letter, and Barb will direct the school staffs to include it in their communications. Barb said they will be happy to create the mailing lists once we have collected all the survey data and we discussed getting people to join or unsubscribe at the beginning of each school year.
Jaime recapped the process for press releases around election information – the council will create press releases, the board will have 24 hours to approve them, and then Barb will send them to school mailing lists and Jaime will send to media distribution list.
Jaime asked Barb to make sure the budget info sessions are on the postcard. Robin asked if Gary Parzych can add a link to the agenda/zoom for the budget info session directly to the home page.
Barb said she is fine to distribute FB updates to school staff members for sharing on their pages.
V. Progress on Board/Committee Email Subscription
Since Friday 70 people have signed up for the mailing list. We will work on getting the message out on FB and in school communications as detailed above.
VI. Integrating WSESU and Vernon
We all agreed we would like to communicate to people about the WSESU meetings – will ask Barb to send those agendas to Robin. Kerry shared that WSESU will begin meeting monthly on 2nd Wednesdays and focus on specific areas at each meeting.
VII. Website Improvement
Central office is excited to do a complete redesign of the website. Kerry has come up with a lot of resources to draw inspiration from. We could ask Gary to make minor tweaks in the short term. Kerry wants to make sure there is a clear distinction between SU and SD and that there is easy access to meeting information. Jaime sent some other school district websites that we might want to look at for ideas.
VIII. Superintendent Family Communication Accessibility
IX. Communicate Reach – Possible Ballot Question on Dissolving the School District
Ruby spoke about the need for information to the voters of the district about the question regarding dissolving the merger. What are the financial implications? What are the school boards like in local vs. merged model? Scenarios – what would happen with for instance IEPs or remote learning in merged vs dissolved. What would be the impact on the diversity work? Could this be made into a one page mailer? What about a forum? David spoke about a forum for people to share their experiences – principals, staff, community. Ruby asked if there could be something that was more directly addressing voter questions about whether dissolving the merged district was the right choice. Anne Beekman said that many of the questions may not have definitive answers. Ruby stated that if people had been surveyed about their experiences then that info could have been shared out to the community without the bias of the school board members’ own views. Asked for something to be shared out even if it has broad strokes instead of specific numbers.
Michelle suggested calling a special meeting of the communications council next week to discuss just this topic – education/answering questions around this ballot vote. Can we invite people with expertise in these question areas to help us develop this? Who should we invite?
Kristina Naylor offered assistance with looking at budget numbers. Kerry said a forum sounded like a helpful idea. What would be the impact of the dissolution? Michelle would like to ask teachers to come.
X. Communication Council Scheduled Meeting Needs
Michelle will send a doodle poll to make a new meeting time.
XI. Adjournment – 2:18
