My Experience of the All School Community Meeting | by Latane Hill
I attended the All-School Community Meeting on Friday night, September 25th and left feeling quite enthusiastic about the experience. Having been a parent at Shining Mountain for 16 years, I have attended quite a number of Community Meetings. Over the years I have seen the format change, the mood shift, and watched the crowd size wax and wane. I have always been grateful to have these forums available to me as a parent as an opportunity to gain insight into the vision and goals of the Board and Administration. They are a place to get a pulse on the concerns and joys of the Shining Mountain community from year to year.
The experience of this Community Meeting on Friday struck me powerfully. It was evident from the very start that this would not be the same old “sit back and hear what we have to say” sort of night. The program began, and continued with all in attendance in a circle and on their feet! We were clearly called to action and asked to engage and expected to participate in the future of our school. What a change! What a challenge!
After a few warm-up social ice-breakers led by Craig Rubens, our school director, Jane Zeender and Board Chair, Will Paradise informed us that the board was engaged in developing a five year plan for the school and that we would be participating in an ongoing Future Search to generate ideas for that five year plan. They directed us to individually choose from a variety of areas of action that we were each particularly interested in having to do with promoting and supporting our community. These included areas of finance, community building, parent education, marketing and retention.
The ensuing break-out sessions were guided by the directive of “give us action items, give us practical undertakings and how-to’s”. In other words, we were being asked, not to simply say what we felt was wrong with the school, or that some thing needed to be changed, but how would we go about making those changes and actually addressing our concerns?
The resulting ideas that were shared among groups really proved to be fruitful. Community members had ideas and concrete plans. It was clear that there was actual action to be taken, work to be done. Again, strikingly, I was impressed by how eager and capable our Board members and Administrators are. These folks want to roll up their sleeves and take their jobs and responsibilities to the next level. AND, they are also calling on all of us to help in the implementation. Parent support is critical for any private school to succeed, and Shining Mountain certainly relies on that.
I am very excited to see how our current Board of Trustees and Administration will dive into the work that they are defining for themselves this year and beyond. Their Future Search is grounded in real work, real, achievable change and action, and their enthusiasm is apparent. I feel terrific confidence in their abilities to lead SMWS into the future. They will not be sitting on the sidelines and they hope that the rest of the community will not be either!
