Successful school district planning meeting

Last week, I spent two full days participating in strategic planning workshops for the La Conner School District. My role was as community member. The district did a great job gathering around 50 participants from a balanced variety of groups in our community: Teachers, Parents, Students, Staff, Swinomish, White, and Hispanic, wealthy, poor and middle class.

We dug into school data, acknowledged it and discussed our interpretations and perspectives. We attempted to understand our successes, shortcomings and areas for growth, always with the goals of building stronger schools for our kids, and...