View Resource: Community Priorities from BRAZAB Fall 2013
This summary document describes the Baton Rouge Achievement Zone Advisory Board (BRAZAB) community engagement process. The process included focus groups and community visioning meetings with stakeholders in the community to identify transformation/restart priorities for leadership, student achievement, school culture, and parent engagement. These priorities were used as a guide for community stakeholders to give feedback during charter school operator introduction meetings.
Outcomes and Lessons Learned: This document is associated with the efforts of RSD Superintendent Dobard and Deputy Superintendent Peterson who lead an intensive process of community engagement to recruit and cultivate a diverse set of community stakeholders and provide the resulting group with an opportunity to inform and influence the process of chartering direct-operated RSD schools in Baton Rouge.
Documenting the intensive process of engagement and capacity building with a diverse set of stakeholders, this summary revealed that most people in Baton Rouge share an aligned, cohesive vision for their schools. Focusing the community on questions about what they want for their children and their communities rather than divisive questions about who runs the schools and whether they should be charter schools was helpful in facilitating rich, productive conversations. This effort was successful in unifying many diverse voices around an inclusive vision of what makes a good school and supported the RSD in the subsequent process of launching turnaround and fresh start charter schools.
Related Resource: Baton Rouge Achievement Zone Community Engagement Process Summary Report Fall 2013