Chapel Hill-Carrboro board retreat focuses on boosting two-way community engagement

At a retreat facilitated by Manju Rajendran, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education spent multiple sessions reviewing a recent board self-assessment and developing concrete next steps to strengthen community engagement.

The retreat’s principal aim was “to strengthen the Board of Education’s practice of public communication and community engagement,” Rajendran said, describing a process that would use written evaluation results as a starting point and then identify prioritized, actionable steps.

Why it matters: Board members said current outreach reaches some groups well but misses others, particularly families who do not show up at meetings or whose primary language is not English. Members urged more in-person, informal outreach—"walk-and-talk" visits to neighborhoods, school visits, family summits—and better use of interpreters and translated materials to reach historically underrepresented households.

Board members raised three consistent priorities during the discussion: expand meaningful two-way engagement (not just one-way announcements), ensure language access and culturally appropriate formats, and use data to test whether expensive programs deliver expected academic returns. "We have to pick a couple things and do them differently," George, the board chair, said, urging the board to pilot specific outreach tactics and hold themselves accountable to results.

Privacy and how public comment is handled also came up. George explained why the board paused an earlier practice of making written public comment immediately visible online after two incidents where students were identified; a board member clarified that written comment to the board remains available through email and the district 'issues' webpage but emphasized legal and practical limits on releasing material that could expose students. "Written comment is still available," one board member said, noting the process requires care to avoid legal and privacy risks.

Superintendent’s role and district capacity: Superintendent Dr. Hamlet briefed the board on the district’s current practices and constraints, saying the district employs about "1,900 employees" and outlining a three-tier decision protocol the administration uses to scale community input. He cited Policy 2020 as the framework for major decisions that require public hearings and suggested practical tactics the district has used in the past—community walk-and-talks, listening circles, and targeted outreach to specific language groups—as models to revive or adapt.

Language access: Board members and staff listed commonly covered languages—Spanish, Mandarin, Burmese, Korean, Arabic and, in some cases, Swahili—and described two approaches: written translations for broad announcements and interpreters for in-person meetings. Staff and the superintendent cautioned that providing interpreters for every meeting requires planning and resources and called for more proactive identification of needs so interpreters can be scheduled.

Concrete next steps proposed: Facilitator Rajendran recommended scoring proposed actions along two axes—expected effectiveness and resource/cost—to prioritize pilots. Ideas the board discussed included reviving listening circles targeted to underrepresented communities, piloting school-level focus groups with childcare and meals provided to remove participation barriers, creating a shared calendar of community events so board members can coordinate attendance, expanding language-justice practices, and commissioning presentations on program outcomes to support ROI-style evaluation of high-cost initiatives.

What was not decided: The retreat produced no formal votes or policy changes. Members agreed on piloting and prioritizing, not on a single fixed plan; several asked that next steps be translated into specific agenda items to ensure follow-through.

A takeaway from the retreat was procedural as much as substantive: board members expressed a desire to "show up" more in community spaces in informal ways so residents feel heard, and to pair that outreach with clearer, data-driven evaluations so the board can better align resources to student outcomes.

The board closed with brief reflections and asked the superintendent and staff to return with options for implementing pilot outreach activities and for building a prioritization process the board can review in a future meeting. The meeting was then adjourned.