Thirty students, faculty and administrators from the local community met at the Eanes school district administration building Tuesday morning to move forward with plans for dialogues to help lead the district in the years ahead.
“As a district, we are creating methods of innovative education to match what our students will face outside of the classroom,” district Superintendent Nola Wellman said earlier this month. “We are in a very exciting time in education, as new and creative methods for learning and teaching are being introduced each day.”
Four community dialogue sessions have been set for April 3, 10, 17 and 24 at 6:30 p.m. in the district at locations to be announced. The goal of the meetings is to gather information as to what local community members consider to be priorities in educating children in the future. John Havenstrite, one of the parents who developed the idea of district community dialogues, hopes to have up to 400 people in attendance at each meeting.
“If you want to try to define community values, you have to have the community show up,” he said recently.
Members of the steering committee broke into groups Tuesday to develop specific plans in three areas. A logistics subgroup was charged with handling venues, registration, food and childcare.
A communications subgroup was tasked with creating marketing materials and identifying media and public relations outlets for getting the word out.
“We want to come up with a tagline that encourages people to come to the meetings,” parent Mike McDonald said.
The final outreach subgroup worked to identify interest groups, design distribution methods and appoint moderators.
“We want to identify [groups] of people and make sure we haven’t missed anyone and possibly draw in some political people,” said Julia Webber, another of the original dialogues organizers.
The steering committee plans to use email, telephone calls, posters, banners, ambassadors and media sources to get the message out, Webber said.
Havenstrite was pleased with the progress the committee made during the hour-and-a-half long meeting Tuesday.
“We now have tasks and timelines; it will be much easier to move forward,” he said. “The diversity of the group is really paying off. I think it is going to make for a much more robust dialogue in the end.”
The steering committee is still looking for a few additional members to represent segments of the community. The next meeting is set for Tuesday at 7:30 a.m. in the Eanes administration building located at 601 Camp Craft Road. The meeting is open to the public.
The next meeting of the Eanes school board is set for Feb. 29, with a closed session at 6:30 p.m. and an open session beginning at 7:30 p.m. in the administration building.

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