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Wrightstown school board reviews communication strategy, considers advisory committees
Summary
At a board workshop, members reviewed Chapter 3 (“Communication Is Key”) of a governance book, discussed using surveys and a public dashboard to share metrics, highlighted youth apprenticeship earnings, and proposed piloting advisory committees to increase transparency.
The Wrightstown Community School District Board of Education spent its workshop reviewing Chapter 3, “Communication Is Key,” of a governance book and discussing steps to improve how the district shares data and solicits feedback.
The board’s district administrator (Speaker 3) led the discussion on using a strategic communications framework that would include five categories: student achievement, learning environment, satisfaction, staff quality and finance. He recommended annual satisfaction and achievement surveys and a dashboard to make those metrics available to staff, parents and the public.
“Surveys are an excellent tool to gather data, especially surveys where you can glean longitudinal data to improve areas or discover areas of opportunity,” the district administrator said, noting that page 47 of the book contains example tables for such measurement. He highlighted the district’s youth apprenticeship program as a data point: “We have 46 students in youth apprenticeship…this year in 24–25, made approximately $330,000 of money they earn from businesses,” he said.
Board members discussed trade-offs between committee structures and the committee-of-the-whole approach. Speakers warned that smaller committees can save time but require high trust so that staff and other board members are not forced to replay detailed committee work at full meetings. Several members emphasized avoiding micromanagement.
Chair (Speaker 1) proposed piloting advisory committees focused on topics such as human resources, curriculum, finance and policy. He suggested a two-year commitment for community partners serving on advisory groups and proposed meeting twice yearly as a starting point to increase transparency and gather community feedback.
Members also discussed specific tactics to reduce staff anxiety, including public and private communication of confidence in staff and setting clear, attainable SMART goals so staff know district priorities. “If we had a district strategic plan, they would know exactly what our focus is,” the district administrator said.
The workshop concluded with agreement to continue exploring a strategic plan, survey tools and an outward-facing dashboard to share progress and benchmarks with the community.
The board paused the open workshop to take up a separate personnel and compensation discussion in closed session later in the meeting.
