I was pleased with the number of parents and community members who opted to join Gateway’s focus groups, the second step in the “Gateway 2025” visioning process held on Tuesday, February 2. The fact that over 70 people came out to voice their thoughts and desires about the next ten years at Gateway portrays the strength of our communities’ commitment to our local school district. The very positive comments from folks—not only about the great schools we have but also how they could be made even more accommodating to students, parents, and the community in the future—is evidence that we truly have a shared commitment to providing an exemplary education at Gateway.
I was pleased that we had a mix of community members, students, parents, staff, school committee members and town officials take part. Over 290 items were raised for consideration during the hour and a half of discussions and input. These covered many broad categories and included items related to buildings and grounds (6 percent), communication issues (19.7 percent), course offerings and student skills development (23.8 percent), technology (6.2 percent), staffing (12.8 percent), funding issues (2.8 percent) and even some discussion around the benefits of our small schools (2 percent).
The evening began with a dinner for attendees and their families (and we had 39 children attend) that was graciously funded by the Gateway Education Foundation. This was followed by two focus group sessions, each concluding with a short report out of their three most important items. In the first session, people were divided by a school (or the district); people discussed a specific topic in their second session. Everyone attending was therefore able to provide input on a common set of questions as well as select a specific topic or question that they had an interest in.
As I moved from group to group to hear many similar themes being shared, I found it informative to hear that so much of what our staff is doing is well received by parents, and to understand the importance placed upon education by them. We can roughly group all of the responses into 12 categories; however the top three items essentially fell into 5 categories – communications, parent/community involvement, student skills, staffing, and technology. Of these, most responses from all groups were centered on parent/community involvement, communications, and 21st Century/whole child skills. The most frequently noted response, and one that showed up in both communications and parent/community involvement, was the high regard the participants had for the district and a need to market our positive aspects both within our communities and with potential families and students. The second most frequently noted items involved connecting with local businesses, town government, and our parents and community members in order to provide more real-life, problem-based, and career-based opportunities to students at all levels.
Over the next few weeks, we will review and analyze the information gleaned from these focus groups and see how it relates to the results of the district ‘2025’ survey. We will then share what we’ve learned with everyone, determine if we need additional information, and begin developing plans to make these visions part of our future planning.
I’d like to again thank all of those who participated in either the 2025 survey or the 2025 focus group; the information will certainly prove useful moving forward as it did when we completed a similar process in 2005.
