Strengthening & Sustaining Public Engagement: Workshop for Vermont Superintendents & School Board Members

Productive public engagement has many benefits, from helping communities resolve key policy questions to building the family and community networks that are vital for student success. But productive engagement is difficult to pull off, because different people have different ideas about what engagement means, because leaders sometimes fall back on tired, conventional formats for public meetings, and because communities lack good systems to support engagement. This session will help superintendents and school board members to:

§  Delve into why engagement matters,

§  Describe the latest innovations in engagement tools and strategies,

§  Address the ways in which Acts 46 and 77 present new opportunities and new challenges for improving engagement,

§  Introduce a new hands-on guide for long-term engagement planning in Vermont, and

§  Help participants think through how they might upgrade their local “civic infrastructure.”

The workshop presenter/facilitator is Matt Leighninger, from Public Agenda The workshop is offered at no charge to participants.  It is part of “Strengthening and Sustaining Public Engagement in Vermont,” a partnership between Public Agenda, the Vermont Council on Rural Development, and the Vermont Institute for Government, supported by the Vermont Community Foundation.

The workshop will take place from 1pm-5pm on March 31^st in the ASAC Classroom 106 at Lyndon State College located at 1001 College Road, Lyndonville, Vermont 05851.

Please RSVP by emailing Nicole Cabral at ncabral@publicagenda.org