| Widening the Circle of Education Strategies |
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by Donna M. Michaels, Ed.D., Superintendent of Schools/CEO, Brandon School Division
I would like to thank Dr. Louis Visentin, President, for the invitation to contribute to the Brandon University's unique journal, "Ecclectica." This contribution focuses on widening the circle of public education strategies and relationships traditionally referred to as public relations. Until approximately 1988 when the provincial funding of public education began to reduce substantially, school systems were content to characterize their external relationships as public relations. The public, too, were content to receive the messages of "all is well" and continue to support their public schools. Problems that arose, whether they be with class size, pupil-teacher ratio, curriculum implementation were addressed generally with more money for various new initiatives. However, this reality changed substantially for public schools and systems when and as provincial funding diminished across Canada. By 1993 in several jurisdictions the public relations messages had shifted quite dramatically in their emphasis and focus. Instead of the "all is well" message statements such as "we can no longer offer fine arts, elementary counselling, resources teacher services" began to be heard and read in many Canadian communities. Predictably as school boards communicated with their constituents about necessary staff and service cuts to balance the annual operating budgets teachers, support staff and administrators began to experience considerable dis-ease about their ability to deliver the same programs and services with less money. "We can't do the same with less" became a much repeated message in several jurisdictions.
As the calm, predictable good news public relations messages shifted drastically in content, tone and temper parents grew uneasy about the school systems' capacities to address their children's needs. This was especially evident in jurisdictions where school boards were forced to reduce services to students with special needs. For some students inclusion in a regular classroom began to mean physical placement without the required support. Thus, by the mid 1990's, the public knew that not "all is well" and their confidence began to wane in the efficacy of public education. This was fertile ground for the rise of charter schools, private schools and home-schooling. Essentially the financial starvation of the public education system produced, in large measure, growing disbelief on the part of many that all students were being well served in public schools. This eroding confidence was exacerbated further by the strenuous political discontent of teachers' unions, school boards, support staff unions and parent groups. Collective bargaining between boards and unions grew in its intransigence with "work to rule", strikes and lock-outs becoming all too prevalent across Canada.
Compounding this tension, in several areas, was the internal and external cry for change in the way public education delivered its services. At the same time that school boards were reducing programs and services, collective agreement costs were increasing together with the diversity of student needs increasing considerably. Accountability measures and expectations were increasing as well. By the later 1990's school boards were challenged severely in how "to do more with less" and satisfy a public generally discontent and skeptical about the worth and strength of public education. Legislation changes, too, added to the chaotic environment. The advent of parent councils, now recognized in several provincial school acts, the introduction of public ombudsman legislation and the freedom of information, protection of privacy legislation and considerable change in provincial curricular requirements rendered the overall environment of public education, so long so stable, a veritable hotbed of conflict, discontent and required change. It might be said that chaos was the new stability of public education by 1998. However, in its scientific sense, chaos is not disorder or utter confusion. Ralph Stacy in "Managing the Unknowable" explains chaos in its scientific sense as taking "the form of conflict, as when an organization experiences the clash of counter cultures, the tensions of political activity, the contention and dialogue through which managers handle ambiguous strategic issues" (p. 68). This new paradoxical stability of chaos provided and required in ample measure new and differently valuable ways of school system public relations. In several jurisdictions, separately and yet connected, public relations was changing to relationships with the public.
By the turn of the 20th century it became increasingly clear that dealing strategically with the fiscal, social, environmental and legislative changes of the late 80's and 90's required new ways of thinking, working and examining results. Instead of "circling the wagons" some school jurisdictions "widened the circle". A new fabric of public relationships is being woven, as we live and work in 2002. Going are the complacent public relations messages of "public education is all wise and secure"; being replaced by a call for relationships support "if public education is to work for all, we need your support and involvement". We are learning right now that if we (the public education staff and trustees) do not widen our circle of relationships with our publics, no amount of denial will stem the dynamic changes taking place in our context. Some are realizing that continued public relations isolation from our environment means decidedly that public education will explode from external pressures and implode simultaneously from cultural resistance to these pressures. Innovation is more and more appearing to be our more logical and creative response to contextual change.
Such innovation enables school systems to invite and include the publics -- parents, seniors, business, industry, service agencies and care agencies -- into the circle of changing realities and new possibilities in public education today and tomorrow. Such invitation and inclusion must be of authentic intention in developing a stronger, better-informed, more responsible and accountable public education system for all of our children. For such a circle to be virtuous as opposed to vicious these inclusionary relationships must be focused always on the holistic education of all children, responsive to their individual and collective needs, realities, potentials and possibilities. Our circle could become vicious quickly if we used these new relationships for the sole gain of adults rather than children. In forging these new relationships John Goodlad offers these perspectives in chapter nine of "The Public Purpose of Education and Schooling": "We must take care of one another. A central issue (in public education) is whether the process of self-transcendence involves primarily or even exclusively an extension of the individual moral arts or whether new learnings characterize acquisition of the moral arts of community ties and of the common good ...; unless our young people are educated in a context today of virtually passionate caring about the ecosystem - social, political and natural - that sustains them, the heritage they leave their children will be meager ...; there must be agreement on a public purpose for education and schooling that sustains both civility and civitas" (pp 158-9).
New learnings to acquire the moral arts of community ties and of the common good require ongoing human conversation about the public purpose of education and schooling. Public relations programs miss the essentiality of this human conversation in schools and school systems. Such programs presume that their messages are the only ones that capture and shape the reality of public education. The discord and chaos of our new realities are providing new opportunities to embrace and have the human conversations with our publics; conversations so fundamentally integral to "both civility and civitas".
One of these new opportunities is the approach some school districts and divisions are taking in the development, implementation and evaluation of their future plans. This approach widens the circle of public involvement and fosters democratic public learning. It is referred to as the Search Conference.
Some are learning that like the public relations programs in school systems their equally traditional way of planning has proven ineffectual in mobilizing staff, parents, students and the general public to take and share responsibility for their collective futures. Simultaneously we are learning that successful planning in turbulent environments now requires collective learning about where we want to go, where we are now and how we are going to get there. The resulting strategic goals, implemented, will enable us to achieve our desired state. The search conference approach offers such a collaborative, potentially - successful approach. It is based on the principles of collective and participatory learning resulting in action-based strategies. Participants commit themselves to implementing and evaluating the results for ongoing development.
This approach to planning is anchored in the democracy of human conversation and connects with our aspirations for responsive, healthy and effective social interactions. The Search Conference methodology has evolved over the past forty years since the original Search Conference in 1960 - the Barford Conference in which Fred Emery and Eric Trist used the search approach. Fred and Merrelyn Emery have been teaching the approach since 1993 in the United States. They originally developed the theory and methodology of the Search Conference at the Australian National University in Canberra.
In January, 2002 the Brandon School Division utilized this approach to the development of its three year strategic plan (2002-05). With the expert leadership and facilitation of Dr. Don de Guerre of Concordia University we came together in an exciting and productive search conference. One hundred and six constituents representing students, parents, teachers, support staff, business, community came together for two days in the search processes. Our product was ten strategic goals which form the basis of our Division's strategic plan. Actions, intended results, measures and responsibilities were developed later with the completed plan being approved by the Board of Trustees in June, 2002. As was intended, this process and our product has extended understanding and ownership for the successful implementation of our strategic plan. Our circle was widened considerably to include many more people in the human conversation regarding the ongoing development of the Brandon School Division.
A synchronicity of time, circumstance and aspiration came together in our first Search Conference. We are planning another such Search in January 2003 with representatives of trustees, staff, parents, students, city and business to develop an extended working relationship. We believe we can build a future together that embraces both education and business in our city of Brandon. This Search is one of the actions coming out of our strategic goal on forging stronger partnerships and alliances with business.
The Search Conference provides all school jurisdictions with an opportunity to widen the circle of public relationships. "Participation in a Search Conference offers individuals an opportunity to rediscover their shared ideals for a common good. We hear communal voices regarding shared concerns and affirmations of ideal statements based on shared images of a desirable future ...; We hear a community language, inspired by future possibilities not problems. ...;(It) is a practice that integrates rights and responsibilities of "I" and "we". It establishes a responsive community" (Emery & Pursue 1996).
With education being a powerful process of human transformation our changing contextual circumstances, both positive and negative, provide us with endless, rich possibilities to develop a stronger public education service. A service that is based on a social covenant that commits to the education of all children in and for democracy. To turn such possibilities into real actions public education systems must widen the circle moving from public relations to public involvement in tangible and effective ways. The democracy of public education needs to be lived not just described.
Bibliography
Emery M. & Pursue R.E. "The Search Conference - A Powerful Method for Planning Organizational Change and Community Action". San Franciso: Jossey Bass, 1996.
Goodlad, John & McMannon, T.J. "The Public Purpose of Education and Schooling". San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 1997.
Michaels, D.M. "The Feasability and Effectiveness of Strategic Planning in Turbulent Times". Doctoral thesis, 1996.
Stacy, Ralph D. "Managing the Unknowable". San Franciso: Jossey Bass, 1992.