Tigard-Tualatin board reviews community input and narrows focus for strategic plan

The Tigard-Tualatin School District board met in a work session to review community engagement conducted as part of its strategic planning process and to outline next steps toward a final plan.

Director Jordan Mills, who led the presentation, said staff had conducted 17 small-group listening sessions and "we also put out a survey and got about 250 responses," then convened families and staff to analyze themes and turn them into draft values. Mills said staff redacted school and teacher names from verbatim feedback and removed particularly upsetting comments from the packet distributed to the board.

The board was presented with eight preliminary values distilled from the outreach: safety; transparency (particularly around spending); rigor; community and connection; student engagement; enrichment; accountability; and inclusivity. Staff urged the board to treat the list as a comprehensive reflection of themes, not a final set of cornerstones, and proposed follow-up work this summer and fall to winnow priorities and develop measurable strategies.

Why it matters: the districts approach ties future actions and accountability measures to community-identified values. Board members said they want the plan to be ambitious but manageable and to include measures that let them monitor progress if priorities are adopted.

Key concerns surfaced in the discussion. Several members raised behavior as a recurring community concern; staff noted data that may show behavioral incidents trending down but acknowledged strong emotions in the feedback. A board member asked about services for special education students and whether the district is "following ADA" in all cases; staff said there may be pockets needing attention and pointed to communication gaps that should be addressed.

Board members and staff also discussed specific themes that recurred in the comments: complaints about heavy device use in classrooms and interest in play-based and hands-on learning for younger students, while noting engagement looks different for secondary grades. Staff said a screen-time work group exists and will be part of follow-up discussions.

On process, the board debated how involved directors should be in designing the plan. Some members favored a smaller board committee to do deeper design work and return recommendations; one member warned that "one board member has way too much control over the process" if individual directors lead community sessions, and preferred staff-led facilitation with board oversight. Staff recommended clarifying expectations for any board members who participate in facilitation and suggested discussing roles at an upcoming retreat, possibly with guidance from OSBA.

Timeline and next steps: staff outlined summer leadership meetings and open site-based engagement, targeted outreach to underrepresented groups, drafting of the plan (including accountability measures) in November-December, and a goal to have the plan completed by February. Board members asked staff to ensure fall engagement reflects district demographics so missing voices are included and to avoid starting with a skewed sample that could raise civil-rights concerns.

The work session concluded with staff and board agreeing to use upcoming work sessions and a possible smaller committee to refine values, define measurable goals and assign monitoring responsibilities. The board recessed the session at 12:46 p.m.

Direct quotes in this article are taken from the work session transcript and are attributed to speakers identified in the meeting record.