I really don't mean that there has been a communication breakdown. I mean that I want to take some time to break down the question of communication.
Nine times out of ten when people use the word communication they don't mean anything very specific by it. It is often serves as generic expression is dissatisfaction. So we hear, "There should have been more communication!" "Why didn't we hear about it before now?!" "I was blind-sided!" (which, unless one actually has a blind side, is unlikely). "The District should communicate more!" What are these phrases really getting at? It's often hard to say.
How do Corbett's communication efforts measure up?
1. Corbett School District has a web site. Because we are a school and not a bank, our web-site is largely the result of student efforts under the guidance of a very able teacher. The web site allows patrons access to District Policy online, board agendas and minutes, staff blogs, information regarding athletics, general contact information, lunch menus, online lunch accounts, links to community groups, the calendar.
2. Corbett School District has a newsletter. It is published by the District Office staff.
3. Corbett has a Key Communicator network that every patron can sign up for.
4. Corbett has open houses, parent teacher conferences, and written progress reports.
5. Corbett's administrators have had open door policies for a decade that I know of.
6. Corbett's Board meetings are open to the public, and to date I would judge that fully half of 120 or so meetings that I have attended have had 2 or less audience members.
7. In spite of having no local paper, Corbett receives significant coverage in the local, statewide and national press.
8. Corbett has two emergency networks that are employed to notify families within 15 minutes of any emergency.
Corbett produces as much or more communication than other districts with which I am familiar. I have lived in three Oregon school districts, and none communicated more than Corbett. (My only contact with the district in which I currently reside has been the occasional football player knocking on my door raising money for the team.) More important is the fact that none do nearly as good a job educating children as Corbett does. And so long as there are limits to our per pupil funding, I will argue that the District's efforts at general communication must always take a back seat to the fostering of student achievement.
Although I believe that we currently communicate far more (and more clearly) than does the average school district in Oregon. This doesn't alter the fact we could certainly do more. We could have a communications officer, or perhaps even a communications office. We would have to pay for it, and that would mean doing without something that we currently pay for. After a decade of budget cuts, I cringe to think what would go next.
Speaking of cuts, the District could communicate more if we hadn't eliminated two full-time administrators, a counselor, a full-time business office position and two full-time secretaries over the past decade. Communication would be easier if our Special Education Director and our Elementary Vice Principals didn't teach all day (that really gets in the way) and if Mr. Trani didn't do the jobs of two or three people. We really could communicate more. But would it improve student achievement? And since it would not (sorry, rhetorical question), should we shift resources away from what we are doing in order to increase the volume of general communication? (oops, I did it again!)
The most impactful communication in the entire education enterprise, outside the classroom itself, is the communication between parents and their students. President Obama did a fair job of articulating the ideal theme of much of that conversation. In addition to instilling in students the urgent need to attend school, work hard, show respect and focus on their work, parents can help by getting children in the habit of reviewing with them, hour by hour, subject by subject if need be, what they learned or thought about or wondered in school that day. Students who anticipate this daily requirement learn a couple of important things. First, they learn that what they do in school is so important that parents are willing to invest time in hearing about it every day. Second, they begin to anticipate this daily requirement and they start keeping track of their day, thinking about what they will report and how to summarize the day's work. This is a great exercise for a young mind.
Communication is important. It is more important the more it directly impacts student achievement. It is less important the further it is removed from that priority.
I think that most calls for 'more communication' come from a desire to be in the loop and to participate more in the decision making process. That is perfectly understandable, and it is our goal to offer those opportunities when the situation warrants and when time and resources allow. But when an urgent issue arises in Corbett today, we don't have the luxury of assigning one group of staff members to get to work on a solution while others crank up the communication machine. That second part of the staff doesn't exist. It was eliminated six budget cuts ago. So we do our best. And we communicate as we can. And we keep our thoughts fixed on a single question: How are the children doing?
