#SchoolPR Insights Blog

Your goals are prepped and ready to go for the new school year. The question is, do they align with what leadership needs, or do they align with what the community needs? Before setting a goal in motion, always check to see if it aligns with your community’s needs and expectations.

Let the community help guide your goals

Leaders set goals for the school. While they get the final say, school leaders are far from the only people deciding on those goals. Everyone in the school community—students, staff, educators, families, local partners—deserves to give their two cents on what the school’s priorities should be and why. For that reason, engaging your community is a key step in the goal-setting process.

Community members should be invited to help set goals because they are the ones who will benefit from bringing them to fruition. Think of it this way: reforming your school’s science curriculum isn’t meant to benefit the principal, school board or superintendent. This goal seeks to benefit the students and their teachers. Therefore, it only makes sense to get the students’ and teachers’ input on your curriculum reform plan.

Every goal begins with understanding who will benefit from it. Then, reach out to those community groups for their feedback.

Strategies for engaging the community

The only way to know your community’s needs and expectations is to ask! Oftentimes, community members want to share their thoughts with school leadership, but they don’t know how to get the conversation going. Part of your role as a leader is to build bridges with the community and create avenues that make it easier to receive their feedback.

The following methods can be effective at gathering feedback from your community:

• Paperless surveys: Online surveys are more convenient than printed ones, which can encourage more people who fill them out.
• Focus groups: Community members take a lot of time out of their day to participate in focus groups. Incentivize your audience by offering free refreshments or entering participants into a raffle prize.
• Coffee chats: A casual setting makes community members more comfortable to approach school leadership and voice their opinions.
• Board agendas: In the days that lead up to a board meeting, publicize the meeting agenda on your social media platforms. That way, community members can attend the meetings that interest them.

Feedback opens the door to community needs

The community should get a say in every goal. Every goal exists to serve the people’s needs, and nobody understands those needs better than the people themselves. When a new goal is pitched, ask yourself, “What would the community say about this?” Then, seek the answer!