Problem Statement: A school board which has not agreed to an increase in recommended levy funding in 16 years. A community which regularly votes down the levy funding requests recommended by the board. A school system which is largely under funded, in many cases with text books which should have been replaced two cycles ago. An economy which is in the worst recession in 70 years.
How do you bring all these parties together in such a way that the board will approved an increased funding request from the voters, and the voters will see enough value in the request to actually approve it?
Introduction
In the fall of 2009 I was approached by a school district superintendent for assistance in putting together a strategic plan, with the goal of identifying key funding needs for an upcoming operations levy vote. That work culminated in a public school board meeting which I facilitated with extremely positive outcomes on what had historically been a very contentious issue. That work was so successful that I was asked to come back three years later to facilitate a refresh of that strategic plan, to equally successful results.
This post describes how I facilitated that board meeting to achieve those results.
Synopsis
This post describes techniques for large group facilitation. In order to ensure that everyone feels they have been heard, begin with small group discussions. There are several ways of doing this. Here I describe the use of manipulatives, things people can actually touch and feel using note cards on a tacky wall. Small group discussions are then elevated to large group report out, and the focus then moves to the decision makers, who need to consider the input from the large group, and make and report on those decisions during the event.
Background
The Mission Statement
Strategic planning is all about identifying key strategies to achieve an organization’s mission as evidenced by measurable goals. So I started with the district mission statement, which at the time was something to the effect of “Make Learning Fun.” At my first meeting with the school board, I questioned the value of this mission statement. I posed a question: Would you as a tax payer contemplating an increase in your taxes, check the “yes” box, to pay more money to make learning more fun?
The answer to that question was a unanimous “NO” from the school board. So I proposed we start by talking about what the real mission of the school district was, why the school district exists.
I drew a SIPOC diagram on the white board, and asked, “let’s start with who your customer is?” Curiously, that caused a fair amount of discussion from the board members. They didn’t agree on who their customer was. Was it the community members, they paid the bills by paying taxes? Was it the students, they received the services, but for the most part don’t get to define what those services are? Was it parents, their children are most impacted, and they have some voice in the services provided?
Answering this question is important because if you don’t know who your customers are, you will have a hard time defining what product or services you provide, which means you can’t really explain why you exist.
The answers to these questions took a few weeks for the board to solidify on. The customers, they finally agreed, were the district students, with parents as proxy representatives of those customers. The mission thus became to “Prepare students for the next phase of their lives.” They have since updated that mission statement, but this was the starting point for the strategic planning work at that time.
Gathering Input
Over the next three months I facilitated meetings with the board, with the leadership at all schools in the district, and meeting with parent groups and/or parent teacher organizations at each school. In those meetings, participants brainstormed ideas for how to best meet the mission statement. These were captured on sticky notes, and were organized into affinity diagrams, with each like clustering given a program name. Program names were commonly focused on things like “Improve Access to Technology,” or “Update Text Books,” or “Full Day Kindergarten District Wide.” This input from individual schools was subsequently combined into a district wide collection of desired programs needed to meet the mission statement, which were reviewed and validated at open community forums.
I then worked with the district accounting staff to develop a scope and cost for each of these programs. This became the draft funding proposal which would debated at the upcoming public school board meeting.
The School Board Meeting
Meeting Preparation
In December of 2009, a public school board meeting was scheduled, and arranged at a venue large enough to house what was expected to be a large group of parents, community members, teachers and administrators. The meeting was advertised through local media and school take-home notices sent with students. There would be two items on the agenda, the swearing in of three new board members, and a funding proposal for the upcoming operating levy vote the following February.
In preparation for the meeting, I printed 4×6 cards for each program in the funding proposal. I then hung a 12 foot by 4 foot piece of ripstop nylon, coated with spray-on repositionable photo mount glue on one side, what I refer to as a “blue wall,” on one wall of the meeting hall. The blue wall allows 4×6 note cards to be stuck on the wall, and easily repositioned. I divided the blue wall horizontally in half with some tape, then stuck all the funding cards on the blue wall below the tape line.
I also had the new district mission statement printed on a large banner, and hung that banner in a prominent location in the room.
Facilitating The Meeting
After the board meeting began, and the swearing in of new members was complete, the facilitation of the meeting was passed on to me. At this point I explained to everyone there, more than 120 people, that the goal was to identify the programs that absolutely need to be funded in order to achieve the mission statement. This would be done by moving the 4×6 cards for those programs so they were above the tape line on the board. Further, this was intended to be community discussion, occurring in small group discussions, which would be raised to the larger group. Some specific rules were set out:
- For part one of the exercise, everyone was invited to come up to the blue wall
- Anyone could move a program they believed needed funding above the tape line on the wall
- The tape line demarked what would be funded, items above the line would be funded, items below the line wouldn’t be funded
- If you moved a program card, you had to explain to those around you why you were moving the card
- Anyone could reposition your card back to below the line, but had to follow the same explanation rules
- If there was conflict whether a program should be funded, it would be placed so it straddled the horizontal tape boundary, and we would vote as a large group in the next step of the process
- School board members were invited to participate directly, thus directly engaging them in those small discussions
An example may be helpful: Let’s say I’m a parent and I believed that better access to technology was critical for the success of my child. I would go up to the blue wall, take the card for “improve educational technology” from below the horizontal tape line, and move it to above the horizontal tape line. The critical piece here was that I couldn’t just move it, I had to discuss why I was moving it with those around me. Since there could be multiple people at the blue wall at the same time, my goal would be to convince those around me that this was the correct thing to do.
It was also important to point out that after you left the wall, someone else could subsequently move the card back down below the tape line. Doing so was in invitation for a further discussion. If no resolution could be found, the card would straddle the tape line, and we would discuss, and vote on, it in the larger group.
This portion of the exercise went on for about 20 minutes, and after a bit of a slow start, we ended up with several waves of people at the board, moving program cards, sometimes in deep discussion. After 20 minutes, I brought focus back to the large group, and asked everyone to sit down. I then asked all those who had moved a card to take turns explaining their rationale for funding, or not funding that item. If a card was straddling the tape line, we’d do a show of hands vote for above or below the line.
While participants were explaining their reasoning, the district treasurer was tallying the funding needs for all of those programs above the line.
When everyone had explained their rationale, the focus went back to the school board, and we collectively asked if they would vote for a levy sufficient to fund all of those programs. Of course, the first iteration of this process resulted in a funding request of at least twice what the board was willing to approve. This resulted in a repeat of the process, community small group discussions at the blue wall, large group report outs, and then focus back to the school board.
We cycled through this process a total of three times, each time reducing the funding request total, and of course, the resulting programs which would be implemented. As we prepared to go into a fourth round, the school board members became animated in their discussion, asking questions of the staff, and importantly the community. In the end, some of the scope for programs would be funded, but at lower levels, enabling a larger cross section of programs to be in play, while maintaining a funding request the board could justify to the community in favor of a yes vote to the funding levy.
Redirecting Disruptions
When the conversation threatened to move elsewhere, I brought the focus back to our mission and our goals, defusing what may have otherwise broken out into heated argument. For example, the president of the teacher’s union expressed concern that none of the items open for discussion involved anything about teacher jobs. To diffuse this, I pointed to the mission statement I had posted, and asked if she agreed with it, that it was why the district exists. She acknowledged she did agree with it. To that I explained that, as she just acknowledged, the district doesn’t exist to create jobs. However, to achieve that mission requires high quality, talented teachers, which means the side effect of fulfilling the mission, is to create jobs. She seemed satisfied with this, or at least not dissatisfied enough to argue.
The Outcome
Prior funding proposal board meetings in this district had always been contentious, and had always gone into the wee hours of the next day, and even then, often ending inconclusively. We, by contrast, were largely done in five hours.
The outcome of that meeting was a funding proposal which was higher than any proposal in the prior 16 years. More importantly, because of the community involvement, there was a large base to help promote the levy measure at the next election. That levy vote ultimately passed.
Three years later I was asked to do a refresh of the strategic plan in preparation for a recommendation for a continuing operation levy on the ballot the following spring. When I met with the school board president in preparing for that work, I asked how I could be of assistance. His response was, “I need you to do whatever it was you did the last time.” When I asked what it was I did last time, he responded: “I don’t know exactly, but you made is so that I could not, NOT vote for a levy. With my constituency, I need you to do that again.”
That board meeting in December of 2012 followed essentially the same format, with an equally successful outcome, ultimately leading to a successful district levy vote.
Key Take-Aways
While the specific example here is focused on a school district, the process outlined here is generic enough to use in other situations where you have a diverse group of stakeholders with varying opinions who need to come to some agreement.
Key points contributing to the success:
- There was substantial preparation and prior community input
- The discussion was centered on a shared mission statement
- The discussion cycled through multiple parallel discussions:
- Discussions began as small group interactions, in this case, including the board members who were encouraged to participate in a lively interactive mode
- The small group discussions were merged into a large group report out
- The focus turned to the hierarchy of decision makers
- The discussion was focused on programs needs to meet the mission statement, not line-item by line-item argument
- When the conversation threatened to move elsewhere, this mission goals were used to bring restore focus, defusing what may have otherwise broken out into heated argument
This process would not have functioned well had there not been a concerted effort to collect community, school, and parent input before the process. In the particular case of the 2009 board meeting, there had been well over 500 suggestions made, which had been consolidated into about 100 program recommendations. The process went from brainstorming ideas, to giving form to those ideas, to finding commonality, to scoping such that reasonable cost estimates could be made.
Having a coherent statement for why the organization exists was critical. It formed the fundamental question of what do we need to do to achieve that mission. The what was broken down to high level strategies, which were then broken down into tactical initiatives, which were fulfilled by programs. The mission was also critical for keeping everyone on task. When a discussion, or expressed opinion threatened to take us off track, I could say something like, “this is good information, AND I’m wondering how it relates to fulfilling our mission?”
The cycling through small group discussion ensures that everyone has the opportunity to be heard. Reporting those discussions to the larger group ensures that those many small discussions have an opportunity to influence the larger group objective. Cycling through the decision making group creates accountability of the leadership to the community.
Discussions were not related to overly detailed discussions of budget items. Budget items by themselves loose context. By focusing on the context, how programs help achieve the mission, we avoided getting bogged down with unnecessary details. Those details would likely be important during implementation of specific programs, and the board reserved the right to adjust individual program budgets at future dates based on those details. However, for the purpose of making a recommendation to the voting community, the program budgets were adequate.
Finally, when the conversation was threatening to go adrift, we were able to course correct by refocusing on the mission statement and the goal statement for this particular meeting.
I make no claim that this technique is a panacea for all contentious meetings. I have experienced failed meetings, a strong disrupter, an outspoken community member for example, or an intransigent board member, someone who had no interest in interacting with community members, has resulted in failure. However, my successes exceed my failures in this regard. The individual techniques here are less important than the principles, which applied judiciously, engage all participants in meaningful dialog.