Committee seeks more ambitious outreach goals and agrees to set a baseline from last year

The Community Outreach and Policy Committee on Monday discussed raising the districts outreach targets to make them more aspirational and agreed to establish a baseline from last years calendar before adopting growth targets.

Committee Chair opened the discussion on the comprehensive communications plan and asked for suggested improvements. A committee member proposed increasing partner-event goals, saying, "I think that we just look at increasing it by, you know, maybe 4 events each," and urged aspirational targets rather than restating activities the district already meets. The member also proposed a monthly "coffee and conversations" event to satisfy part of the partnership goal.

The committee settled on moving the community-based partnerships goal to 12 events per year and discussed increasing business-based partnership events by four (from the existing 12 to 16). Chair noted that a cadence of roughly one event every three weeks during the school year would be required and that the document presented to the full board will be live for future adjustment.

Members debated whether metrics should count events or attendance. One committee member recommended using last years scheduled events as a baseline and then measuring increases year over year (for example, a 5% annual increase). Chair cautioned that attendance is harder to count reliably and suggested counting total exposures (including livestream and social media views) as well as in-person attendance.

The committee agreed to return to the full board with highlighted baseline findings and requested permission to adopt percentage or numeric increases in succeeding years. Chair said staff will go back and tally reserved events from the prior calendar year and present that baseline at the regular board meeting.

The committee moved on to policy items after reaching these decisions; no formal motion or vote was recorded on the outreach targets during the meeting.