In an era of fast-paced developments and short attention spans, school boards are trying to find new ways to connect with families, get the word out about the issues they’re tackling, and build trust among the community.
Standing in the way are dozens of competing concerns—from financial pressure to academic achievement to student behavior.
Even so, savvy school boards that invest in developing comprehensive strategic plans and show genuine empathy and concern for constituents are making headway in building bridges with families.
This project is part of a special report called Big Ideas in which school district leaders, Education Week reporters, and the EdWeek Research Center ask hard questions about K-12 education’s biggest challenges and offer insights based on their extensive expertise and coverage.
This summer, the EdWeek Research Center surveyed 494 school board members nationwide to get a sense of the biggest sources of tension in their communities, the barriers to building bridges between schools and families, and the steps they’re taking to close those gaps.
In open-ended responses to the survey, board members often said that despite what they feel are good-faith efforts to build relationships between the board and community members, misinformation and rumors about district work spread faster than attempts to stymie them. Sometimes, the tension comes from events happening elsewhere.
“It gets frustrating having to correct misinformation so often, both about the latest national ‘outrage’ and about what’s actually happening in the district,” one respondent wrote.
At the same time, many board members said they’ve found success when they have crafted clear strategic plans to which they can tie their messaging and initiatives. Board members who said they engage in continuous strategic planning were more likely to also say conflict among board members and with the superintendent was low.
More than three-quarters of board members who reported doing routine strategic planning said conflict with community members has decreased or stayed the same in the past year.
“Over the past five years, we’ve worked hard to bring our community together through guided public forums, shared visioning, and the development of a districtwide strategic plan grounded in common, core beliefs. These efforts have helped us build relationships and articulate what we want for our learners,” one respondent wrote. “This work is helping us build capacity and belonging, but we recognize that healing division is an ongoing process that requires patience, consistency, and continued engagement.”
Another winning strategy: conveying empathy to community members who raise concerns or offer feedback.
“One strategy we developed was to create a safe space for honest conversations, focus on humanizing one another and showing empathy through dialogue, and actively listening to one another,” a respondent wrote.
Among the topics most cited as the source of major conflicts in a community were fiscal planning, staffing, academic achievement, employees’ salaries and benefits, and special education, and school facilities. Each source was selected by more than 20% of the surveyed board members.
Districts with enrollments of more than 10,000 students were far more likely to say the opening and closing of schools was a major source of conflict (39%) than respondents in districts with fewer than 1,000 students (17%). That could underscore the difficulties larger districts may face when trying to communicate and engage with their communities. Put another way, in smaller districts, rural boards might have an easier time working through school closure decisions possibly because communities are more tightly knit and tend to be less diverse.
Respondents in larger districts also more commonly cited partisan political divisiveness and racial divides as barriers to bringing people together.
Still, some ideas for upping engagement and building trust emerged.
Among the school board members who took the EdWeek Research Center survey, most said their board has sponsored or attended community forums, such as town hall meetings, more than twice, and 77% said they had participated in at least one such event. Town hall events can be useful in bringing community members together and soliciting feedback about a particular topic, and survey participants frequently signaled in open-ended responses that they want to do even more.
Asked what steps their board could take to help better bridge community divides, many respondents said: survey parents about their concerns and district feedback, provide better translation services so the district feels more accessible, and proactively hold meetings within the community, rather than just in their board rooms.
For some respondents, establishing improved relationships could be as simple as being more willing to engage in difficult conversations.
“Even when it is on topics that are potentially contentious, I find it really important to listen to various perspectives and be available so that people feel like they are being heard, and also so that I can help to make sure people are getting good information and not just rumors,” one board member wrote.
Data analysis for this article was provided by the EdWeek Research Center. Learn more about the center’s work.
