The Board of Education spent some time at its meeting on Thursday, Dec. 4, discussing a recent community conversation held to elicit thoughts on parent engagement and the upcoming budget.
The new iteration of the BOE, in which member Mark Shaner has taken the seat previously held by Heather Priest, engaged in a somewhat more dynamic roundtable discussion than it generally does. Members and some administrators weighed in primarily on ideas for fostering higher levels of parent engagement based at least in part on break-out sessions held at the Nov. 20 community conversation.
Ironically and unfortunately, all agreed that turnout was poor, with Shaner indicating that it felt like there were more school personnel in attendance than parents.
“I did my best to count who were staff and faculty and board members, versus who were not,” Shaner said, noting it still held interest.
Superintendent Kevin Smith agreed.
“We were clearly overrepresented,” Smith said. “I would never argue it was a representative sample of our community.”
Connecting with Parent: “We need to get more creative.”
Discussion there centered on several broad questions, including whether parents felt like they were connected as true partners to their child’s education, and what parents feel a successful partnership looks like with the school. Broad questions about school resources in relation to the budget were also asked, including queries on what programs, support services and staff issues took precedence.
The BOE presented a summary of answers to six questions that were consolidated through an AI program, though Smith made a point of noting that the summaries were largely representational of what people had written in their responses.
“There were a lot of common themes,” he said, including a desire expressed for more hands-on and “authentic kinds of experiences.”
“The other set of questions hopefully really challenged people (about) how we could continue to strengthen parent engagement,” Smith said.
While BOE Vice Chair Nicola Davies jokingly suggested approaching parents with questions and ideas while they were waiting on the pick-up line at Miller-Driscoll School since they would be a captive audience, a general idea emerged during discussion about involving parents when they were invested in being at the school for a separate reason.
“We need to get more creative with how to draw the community out to interact with us,” BOE member Patrick Pearson said. “It would be great to find a venue where parents are already going to be showing up,” such as a parent-teacher conference or a sporting event.
“I think we can get creative with how to solicit that type of feedback,” he said, noting like others that the same 18 or 20 parents always show up for these informational events.
According to outreach from the Wilton Public Schools, the Nov. 20 event was held to gather diverse perspectives from families and the broader Wilton community to inform strategic planning for the upcoming school year.
“This is your chance to share what’s important to you and help shape the future of our schools,” school officials stated.
BOE member Pamela Ely said that since parent attendance is generally very low at curriculum nights, it might generate attention if students were also asked to attend.
“I just thought, Why aren’t we doing more of that, because they will come if the kid is engaged, right. They’ll come if there is something the kid is doing,” she said. “They’ll show up for that.”
She also said that, since the curriculum directly impacts the students, it could be valuable to bring them into the discussion, particularly at Wilton High School.
Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum Chuck Smith said he felt the most important element of engagement was directly between the teachers and parents. He said that the BOE could engage more, perhaps, by taking part in open school nights, but meanwhile he liked the idea of having students more involved with parent-teacher interactions.
“I would like to see kids lead their own conferences,” he said. “I think that would be much more meaningful.”
Shaner said that, in its quest to foster better engagement from parents, it was also important for the administration and BOE to clarify exactly what the goal was, particularly in relation to the different schools and age groups.
“Right now they don’t quite seem synchronized,” Shaner said, noting that while engagement is encouraged with parents of younger students, as they get to Middlebrook School and WHS, parent involvement sometimes feels like it’s discouraged in order to foster independence in students.
Smith agreed.
“We also send conflicting message about independence and what that means,” he said,
BOE Chair Ruth DeLuca said it might also be worthwhile to engage the PTAs, potentially creating some kind of open house. She noted, however, that the message could simply be that parents are just happy with the way things are going in the district and don’t feel a need to give input.
“In the meantime, every parent or caregiver out there … all our email addresses are on the website … You should feel that you can send us your ideas or your thoughts on anything that we’re talking about … especially as we move to budget season,” DeLuca said.
Wilton’s municipal communications to its residents is lacking.
There does not appear to be a well maintained schedule or explanation of events. While it is every citizens responsibility to be aware of their community, it would be advantageous to have a portal of community events ( educational, municipal, business and social) and weekly email notifications.