Planning for Community Engagement

Developing strong community engagement in your district is a team effort. Whether or not you have already developed a district community engagement team, now is the perfect time to do some critical thinking and planning for that team to move the work forward. If you are in a medium- to the larger-sized district, you will likely plan for your own district community engagement team. If you are from a smaller district, you may consider partnering with your staff, your ESD, and/or other CBOs and partners to create your team.

Intentional Communication

When planning community engagement activities and intiatives, consider what conditions makes you feel heard. Community members who have felt ignored in the past may expect to be ignored moving forward. To reverse and correct prior conditions, thoughtful and strategic steps must be taken to improve listening and communication conditions as well as subsequent responsive actions.


Who in your life makes you feel heard? What about them makes you feel understood? What about this person makes you feel safe to speak so freely? What about your interactions with them create conditions for listening and deep comunication? Is there a space in your life where you don't feel heard? What about that person or environment creates distance or friction between the particpants? What are the conditions that interfere with authentic and productive communication? The conditions of school spaces and district culture must be strategically designed to meet the needs of community members. When students, families, and community members feel listened to, trust is built. Trust enables authentic engagment. Conditons of intentional listening create rich environments for engagement and collaboration. As we expolore the levels of engagement throughout these modules, note which conditions are present or lacking in your district spaces now and how that produces the quality of engagement and interactions you currently experience.

Planning for Your Community Engagement Team Activity

Let’s take some time to revisit the District Community Engagement Planning Template. This time you will focus on completing the section on planning for your team, on planning for your team, page 4 of the template. Completing this will help identify what has already been planned and what other planning might need to still happen to support your district’s community engagement work. When you are finished, come back for some closing activities.

Moving Toward More Robust Community Engagement

Deepening and sustaining more robust community engagement beyond the minimum statutory requirements is necessary. Moving from a minimum requirement to a robust community engagement framework and way of doing business is a growth process that takes time, effort, intentionality, and commitment to learning and accountability. Seeding a more robust community engagement plan creates the possibility for lasting change and resilience for all students, families, teachers, and staff.

As you choose to approach community engagement in deeper ways, you are inviting change to happen: focal groups will feel less like an audience for your decisions and more involved as key partners; structures of accountability and feedback will bring a sense of transparency and authenticity to planning; and core assumptions that you hold about how your district should operate may be transformed. Investing in robust community engagement may also shift the minds and hearts of all staff and community members, even those who hold dominant identities. This work is meant to bring about greater health across the whole community and education system - shifting dominant patterns and beliefs so all communities and families are in healthy relationship with each other (pg 98-99).

Your Module 1 work is almost completed. Let's move on to Section 1.5 for a Wrap Up!

Arrow to next section Go to the Next Section: 1.5