A dear friend asked me if the Kansas City Public School bond issue was going to fail as the KCKPS initiative did recently. He had watched the school board meeting the evening before and witnessed a somewhat heated exchange among board members and key KCPS staff.
New Grading System Rollout
The heated exchange appears to have been about a new grading policy scheduled to go into effect this fall. Over a year, surveys had been shared on several occasions but only 250 responses were received from a district with 14,000 students.
District officials felt they had checked the community engagement box and wanted to proceed with the new grading system and the conversation got interesting.
The Blueprint 2030 Fiasco
The staff, like they had in the past, explained the research, science and data supporting their decision. However, similar to Blueprint 2030, the community had not been engaged.
Is the district going to repeat the hard lessons of the 2022 public rollout of the Blueprint 2030 plan for school closings? The public uproar was palpable and almost unanimous in their rejection of what was a well-thought-out plan. While not a perfect plan, the school district had taken a great amount of care in their analysis.
The problem was, no amount of explaining mattered because the process was not in public view. So, when the plan rolled out, no matter how much sense it made, the people’s trust had been betrayed once again.
Similarly, while a new grading system made sense to those in the room, the community would likely reject a change that had not been effectively communicated or explained in plain terms.
What About the Bond Issue?
It appears several board members are concerned a similar pattern of engagement might negatively impact voting on the bond issue. If this pattern of engagement for the bond question is followed, it may not be asked at all for fear of controversy or worse; rejection once again.
The bond initiative has had five steering committee meetings to date. These meetings have dismally low attendance, compared to the number of parents and community members that initially raised their hand to be included.
Despite these warning signs, a team of paid professional contractors continues to present data and analysis for reflection and feedback from the attendees. This is not a committee. It is another attempt to check a box to say we tried.
What some board members are saying is although they support the bond itself, they will not support a plan that has not appropriately and adequately involved the people of the district.
Is there still time to turn this around? There most certainly is, but the clock is ticking. Public meetings must be posted to the public calendar, which is not always the case. Recordings must be posted on time consistently.
Make no mistake, the expertise of the district staff is phenomenal. However, no number of collective degrees can mitigate a culture of ineffective communication.