Cape schools ask community to rate performance level

On the brink of making more than $1 million in budget cuts, Cape Girardeau School District officials are turning to the community for direction on the future of public education.

Thursday evening, the district will hold the first of what school board president Sharon Mueller hopes will become a semiannual event known as a stakeholders meeting.

Participants in the meeting, which will include parents, teachers, students and other community members, will be asked to rate the effectiveness of certain aspects of the district.

Among other things, the meeting is designed to answer questions about communication, curriculum and student issues. Specific questions they hope to answer include:

How can we increase community involvement?

Are we meeting the need for upper level courses?

Can technology be used to enhance curricular and textbook needs?

Around 40 people, chosen from the suggestions of principals and other school officials, were invited to the meeting, although it is open to anyone who wishes to attend.

According to Mueller, the idea for a stakeholders meeting came about last fall when members of the school board attended a conference and were asked what their patrons would name as the four most important issues in their district.

"We realized we couldn't really answer that question," Mueller said. "For the most part, district communication has been just us distributing information to the community. This gives us a way to receive information back from the community."

A Missouri School Boards Association representative will be present to run the meeting. School board members observe but do not participate in the process.

Keeping the number of participants small for each meeting is important, Mueller said, because the MSBA representative plans to speak to each person about his or her views on an issue.

The first stakeholders meeting comes less than three weeks before the school board is scheduled to vote on superintendent Mark Bowles' recommendation to cut $1.3 million from next year's budget.

Although the stakeholders meeting is not intended to be budget-oriented, Bowles said it's a good opportunity for the board to hear what community members have to say in general about the district, which could help in the budget-cutting process.

The data collected from the meeting will also be used when the school board sets the 2004-05 board goals this spring.

"It's going to help narrow our focus," Bowles said.

cclark@semissourian.com

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