San Francisco Starts Building a Coalition to Engage the Community

Three organizations in San Francisco--the San Francisco Education Fund, Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth, and Small Schools for Equity--and representatives from 12 other community-based groups met on December 5th to deal with what Kelley Abraham of the SFEF termed a “racial achievement gap” in the city.

“We’re the top performing urban district in California,” she said, “However African-American students are doing the worst in the state.” Abraham added that Latino and Pacific Islanders are also struggling in a district that’s losing students and closing schools.

They decided to make community-based organizations their starting point because of the influential role they play in the district. There are about 1200 of them, and they provide everything from teachers and health care to counseling and tutoring. Abraham wasn’t sure going in how many groups feel the urgency of the problem, but after the session led by an outside facilitator, she felt satisfied with the results.

“We wanted people to be respectful to one another and to generate enough interest for people to return. As it stands, people are on board and ready to explore the building of a coalition in the city. We have a handful of participants interested in creating a steering committee.”

The three partners will meet with that committee right away, Abraham said, and hand over the organization of other meetings and forums to them. She said it isn’t clear right now how or when to fold in other stakeholders, such as the teachers’ unions and district officials.

Minneapolis Looks to Parents First

Achieve! Minneapolis, a local education fund that sets up career and college centers for the district, has held a total of eight focus groups with area parents to get their take on the issue. Rose McGee, Parent Connections Manager for the organization, sought out parents whose children have been most affected by the problem.

“What we decided to do is go to where the parents are, because they don’t come to the schools. My first focus group was held in a library in a major African-American community. The second was held at a McDonald’s restaurant in North Minneapolis.”

McGee adapted the questions for the conversations from the questionnaire page of Kettering’s achievement gap discussion guide, Too Many Children Left Behind. The discussions have helped her understand where people are on the issue and communicate with parents about Achieve! Minneapolis’s own agenda: helping prepare students for secondary education.

“These parents are not aware of this initiative,” she said. “They don’t know what the achievement gap is…In my Latino group, the word ‘achievement’ is not very familiar in their culture. We had to break it down in Spanish.”

The community discussion may broaden in January on Martin Luther King Day when Achieve! Minneapolis holds its first forum on the achievement gap. Parents from the focus groups will be invited, but the group’s executive director, Catherine Jordan, said she wasn’t sure who else to include at the table for fear that parents would feel threatened by school and community leaders. She’s also not sure how much local information to present on the achievement gap.

“Where I’ve struggled is how to frame this in a way that’s informative, truthful and motivates, but doesn’t shame or degrade,” Jordan said. “So, that’s what we’re going to work on is how to articulate these issues in a way that people can hear them.”

Corpus Christi Involves School Leaders

Corpus Christi, Texas has a high Hispanic population, and the lowest area of achievement for them has been in math. Instead of starting on the problem at the grassroots, Janice Sykora went straight to the top in organizing her achievement gap project. She’s the executive director of the only local education fund in her area, Citizens for Educational Excellence, Inc. After becoming involved with the Kettering effort, Sykora invited six district superintendents within the city to breakfast and pitched the idea of a forum.

“They’re our stakeholders, we keep them informed. It fits in naturally with what we’re already working on.”

The superintendents had a lot of questions, Sykora said, including the number of people this will require and the overall goals. She told them her hope was that people would become more aware of the issues and get more involved in their districts, even to the point of joining a committee or running for office.

Several meetings later, the superintendents appear to be on board, and the forum plan has blossomed, thanks to a $10,000 grant from a local foundation. Sykora now plans to hold six forums—one in each district—beginning in the spring.

She’ll be coordinating the entire effort and says her biggest challenge in getting started is “having the time to get it all done, being one person.”

Ways to Broaden the Conversation

Patty Dineen, a public engagement consultant with extensive forum experience, recommends that project organizers get beyond specific stakeholders as soon as possible.

“I like an open invitation to people who are interested, in addition to traditional stakeholders,” she said. “I’d look for citizen activists or citizens interested in the issue or the process…Why not start with citizens and bring stakeholders and officials onboard instead of the other way around?”

Thinking creatively about whose voices need to be heard is a beneficial strategy, Dineen feels. That might mean talking to people in beauty shops or cafes and inviting them to your forum.

“Diversity of background and opinion is what you need,” she added. “Sometimes forums are diversified in what people look like. You can end up with diverse ethnic and racial groups, but they’re all like-minded.

“In the case of this issue, people from senior centers, people of age diversity, students themselves, maybe law enforcement people, the cafeteria ladies, athletic coaches (would be good).”

It’s not too late for San Francisco, Minneapolis and Corpus Christi to incorporate some of these ideas, Dineen said, but if they continue with specific stakeholders, they should also find ways to level the playing field so the first groups in don’t assume greater status. One idea: on registration sheets for subsequent meetings or forums don’t include space for a person’s position, association or other credentials.

Getting to action is still a way down the road for these and other communities, but Dineen suggested all will have better forums and outcomes if moderators are trained to push for specifics.

“People have a great discussion, but if (they) say we really ought to do this, raise expectations and have accountability, people are all excited about that, but nobody ever pushes them to say exactly how. How do we get specific about the expectations?”

Coming soon: Moderator strategies and training