FIRST OF 15 SCHOOL MEETINGS IS TONIGHT

The first of 15 community meetings to help the Cape Girardeau Board of Education set a course for the next five years will be held tonight.

The meeting will be at Franklin Elementary School, 215 Louisiana, at 7 p.m. The topic is educational directions.

The meetings are being conducted by the Vision Planning Committee, a newly formed group charged with collecting information from the community and school district staff about the direction the school district should take.

Vision 2000, a communitywide planning group, is helping with the meetings. A similar strategy of community meetings led to passage by Cape Girardeau voters in August of a half-cent transportation sales tax. Vision 2000 helped with those meetings.

David Hahs, spokesman for the school's Vision Planning Committee, explained that all the community meetings will have a similar format. A moderator, who will be a member of the planning committee, will divide the group into groups of eight to 12 people. Each of the smaller groups will be asked to identify areas of school needs. After everyone has had a chance to put issues on the list, the groups will talk about the issues and then establish five priorities.

Each of the meetings should last about an hour.

"It's our hope that the attention will be focused on the issues and not personalities," Hahs said. "And we hope that people bring suggested solutions for problems as they see them."

In addition to collecting information from the community, the committee will hold similar meetings for teachers and support staff. The first staff meeting is also being held today.

The reason for compiling information about top issues and needs in the community is to help the Board of Education draft a 5-year strategic plan.

At the board's annual planning session, development of a long-range plan was one of two goals for the year. The other was development of a newsletter for taxpayers of the school district.