great letter! thanks!

Well said & nice report on the meeting. Totally agree the format could have been better. Cutting the Q&A short was perhaps recommended by the consultant the District hired to aid them in the planning process. I wonder if the Strategic Planning Committee members agreed on the format of the meeting or if it was dictated by the District & consultant?

Rachel Zinn answering questions from a parent on how we measure success from the new Math &Thinking Strategies programs was funny too. Instead of referring the question to one of the about 15 teachers present, she continued on & on quoting teachers. I would have preferred hearing the answer directly from the source because the source was there! But again, that did not fit in the consultant's plan of action for the night.

The first question at these meetings (and on the online survey) is "when you think about the schools in our district, what are the things that make you proud"? Quite a few answered: "the support of the Lafayette community to our schools/teachers, district, LPIE" When only about 15 parents showed up last night, you wonder why that support doesn't include attending these and other important district meetings (by the way, good reference you made to the discontinued accelerated math classes at Stanley... I know of a few more). They are long, they are boring, but they are important if you want to have your voice heard!

This is the community's time for dialogue. Hopefully, more Q&A and change of meeting format.

I think it is important for LAFSD to communicate about and to commit to a real willingness to listen to parent and community feedback. The more convinced parents are that their input and participation will shape the course of the schools, the more likely they are to invest time in the process. While it is fair and appropriate to expect parents and community to get involved regardless of whether they are told their voice counts, setting forth a clearer message about how these meetings will (or better yet already have) driven decision-making in the schools might go a long way to boosting involvement. And greater involvement seems all around to be a good goal, I completely agree with you there! We have so many thoughtful and smart people in Lafayette, deeply interested in their kids' education and development, and getting more of that energy and intellect directed at our schools is a great oppty. However, those same great minds must be convinced that their input will be influential. There's a regrettable clue about this in shortened Q&A sessions, I think, and that may be a good place to start.

Thanks for your post. --Lanny Baker

There is no reason, given the technology, that public meetings can't be structure so any interested person can get an email/SMS/text alert, say, 30 minutes prior to taking up a given agenda item with the idea that if that agenda item is not *actually* taken up within 30 minutes from the scheduled time -- 60 minutes after the alert goes out -- that the item has to be tabled until the next meeting. I might be very interested in item 3, but have no interest in sitting through items 4 and 5. As it stands now, I can always leave after item 3, but I have to get there and snooze my way through items 1 and 2 so I don't miss out.

There is no reason to force interested citizens to blow an entire evening if they only want to participate in discussions about a single item.

Thank you for the meeting recap. Very interesting. Our school's site meeting is coming up and I am going to attend! The ""teambuilding / idea generating" exercise" which takes up a large portion of a community meeting seems to be a very popular format, currently. At the recent Girl Scout meeting ostensibly to discuss options for the Twin Canyons Camp in Lafayette, there was NO Q&A at all, which disappointed many of the attendees. Just presentation followed by the Brainstorming session. While I appreciate the need for efficient communication and the value of idea generating exercises, I am not sure the quality of the ideas generated merit the large amount of time the exercise consumes. I am not a big fan of this current trend in Community Meetings. Shorter power point and Best Practices presentation (refer audience to the URL where they can view it later!), longer Q&A would make the community feel like their concerns were being heard.

I wholeheartedly agree with Lanny Baker's position that if parents do not believe their input will be heard, they won't invest in and be invested in the process.

High five, Alex, for bringing attention to this matter. (And high five, Patch.)

Sadly, the current crop of parents is getting what they deserve from our Education system/leadership: New programs for surrogate parenting (think "values"), counseling and hand-holding, but a collapse of academic rigor and excellence.

The MIA trend in citizen/parent involvement is widespread, going far beyond the halls of our Public Schools. The Gen-Y's are now becoming parents. When it comes to that "distraction," sound bytes just don't cut it.

Our education leaders are far more trained in population manipulation (what do you think edu-speak was invented and honed for, anyway?) than in delivering a quality education with a cost structure that makes sense. Cali spends, even today in an economic maelstrom, around 55% of its entire state budget on education. For what? We rank near the bottom. Better in Lamorinda, sure, but even those results are packaged and sugar coated for a gullible absentee parent body that is quick to grab a checkbook, but checked out, where it really counts.

""teambuilding / idea generating" exercise" is a code for manipulation. They are not interested in hearing from you all. They want to control you. And at that, they are going to the head of the class.

26 years of being a parent of four, all through Lafayette's schools, and all that time keenly observing process and parent involvement trends. Did you not read Alex Flagg's piece above (to which you blather on about?). A dozen sheeple showed at a key policy meeting, and were led by the nose with truncated Q&A and steered into controlled farcical indoctrination groups. I've seen this so very many times, only now, few bother to show up. Fewer still know where the educational or budgetary bones are buried. PTA's are arms of the teacher's union.

... and all your breezy posts are all backed by peer reviewed controlled studies. Yeah.

Gents - (gingerly stepping in between two potential combatants) lets dull the barbs and stay on topic, please. Thanks (running for the safety of the corner).

Ed.

I think most parents realize the school district does not listen to them anyway so why waste time at a meeting. Unfortunately budget cuts make the decisions and dictate the strategic plan. What surprises me is how many Lamorinda families now have their kids in private school. I have lived in the area for over 40 years and this was not the case in the past. Recently my husband asked a neighbor boy who goes to private school if he went to a private school in the state he used to live in and his response was "no, the public schools there were good"....