At the Oct. 1 meeting at Fossil Ridge High School regarding the pre-decision of naming a new superintendent in Poudre School District (PSD), the end of the forum came to an end before the conversation was ready to.
The forum, sponsored by the Board of Education in PSD and facilitated by the Center for Public Deliberation, a center that helps organizations run unbiased third party discussions on controversial issues, brought together members of the community to discuss issues and ideas influenced by a recent survey given to the public to get feedback about what they want from the next superintendent.
The Center for Public Deliberation a Colorado State University organization headed by University Prof. Martin Carcasson and including undergraduate and graduate students helped to facilitate the forum and was conducted by undergraduate student Raleigh Jackson. Jackson’s role in this open discussion was to ask questions to participating members and to convey the survey results to members of the community who attended.
This forum was only one of three forums held in the past week. The one held at FRHS was the most highly attended, with 19 members of the community attending. Of the 19 attendees, 10 participated in the discussion while nine others observed the participants. The participants varied in age and occupation and included a teacher from Putnam Elementary School, a former teacher who now works for the National Education Association, a 90-year-old man, and parents of students in the district.
Integrity was an aspect that every member of the discussion said was a top priority for the next superintendent to have. While on the topic of integrity, they all agreed that the person chosen for this position needs to be able to listen to other ideas and make an appropriate decision based on what is said. All of the participants also agreed the person who is chosen for the job needs to work on making sure that communication is more consistent throughout the entire district. “It seems that the [school] district exaggerates the good, betray the negatives in the best possible light and ignore the bad,” said Mike, a participant in the discussion as well as a parent of multiple students in the district.
Another topic that was discussed heavily was differentiating in the schools in PSD.“Differentiating” is referring to the different learning styles in which students are more successful in. They talked about how teachers need to be trained in teaching different students in different ways, that every student learns in different ways and that no one curriculum works for every student. This system is currently being implemented at Putnam Elementary School in north Fort Collins. Leslie, a participant of the discussion and a teacher at Putnam, described at the forum how Putnam has improved their test scores and has gone from low performance to high performance in the past five years, due to differentiation.
In order to receive the biggest increase in making PSD both more efficient and a better environment for the students and teachers, the members of the forum believe that PSD needs an outsider to come in and take a fresh new approach to the system. “We need a visionary and revolutionary, someone who is an experienced educator and who begins to ask questions,” said David, another active member in the discussion. Based on the survey given by PSD, over 300 of the about 1,000 participants believed that the next superintendent needs a knowledge of PSD culture, while 500 said it was preferred and 200 said it was not important. Based on the forum, all of the participants believed that knowledge of PSD is not important and actually believed that they should not have very much knowledge about PSD.
As the hunt for the next superintendent continues, the Board of Education will be holding open interviews and discussion where members of the community can come and be involved or listen. For more information pertaining to PSD upcoming events about the next superintendent decision please visit psdschools.org.
