Forum from 7-9 p.m. at the high school
PETERBOROUGH — Your ConVal School Board and Administration are moving forward in the planning for the first ConVal Community Forum. We are excited about providing you this opportunity for a constructive, open, informative and meaningful dialogue.
Each section explains a specific aspect of the forum and will give you a full understanding of what will be happening and how to participate.
Background
Communication is the key component of our commitment to be fully transparent with our community in matters critical to them and to have a dialog where we can share our information and engage in a question-and-answer session. School board meetings, being business meetings, provide limited opportunities for dialogue. Our answer to this need is a Community Forum.
What is our Community Forum and how is it organized?
It is the opportunity for the public, the School Board and the administration to engage in a dialogue on topics that have been chosen by the community to be important to them. The forum will be held in the Lucy Hurlin Theater at the ConVal High School. We will have both in-theater and live stream audiences. A survey that will be sent to the ConVal community will provide, amongst other questions, the opportunity for each respondent to select from suggested topics and add another if not included. More on the Survey later in this note.
The forum will be two hours in length. There will be a moderator that will be responsible for controlling the flow of information and ensuring good organization to make this a positive experience for all. Dialogue will only take place between the in-theater audience and the school board and administration. The live-stream audience will be view only.
The first hour will be focused on presenting each selected topic and allowing for a question and answer dialogue for each.
The second hour will give the in-theater audience the opportunity to ask questions on any topic of their choosing.
The school board and administration will respond to these questions and note whether they relate to issues already discussed by the school board, or if the board member responding is providing their own personal opinion.
The survey
The most important part of our Community Forum.
The survey is designed to solicit information from each respondent household for information about the ConVal town they live in, what level of school their children attend (if they do), their email address for communications, whether or not they would like us to provide childcare.
Most importantly there is a section on the survey for the respondent to select three topics that they find are most important for discussion at the Community Forum. We have provided seven topics that the school board believes reflect the most important areas for discussion. We have also left open a topic area to enter, if you wish, another topic that you feel is important to you and the ConVal community. Please select a total of three (three) topics including your topic, if you entered one. We will select from the responses to the survey the top four most requested topics for inclusion in the forum.
The survey, to be counted, must be completed and submitted no later than Monday, Sept. 20.
The link to the survey is provided at the end of this note.
COVID protocols
The Lucy Hurlin Theater is located in the ConVal high school on ConVal property. As such we will follow the protocols required by the Green Phase we are currently in as relates to physical distancing in the Theater, mandatory mask use requirements and the screening process and question upon entry.
There is also one further COVID imposed restriction. To maintain proper physical distancing there will be allowed no more than 100 ConVal community folks to be in-theater. If, based on surveys received, we find that there are more than 100 folks noting that they will be in-theater, we will have to select the first 100 returned surveys as those being the ones that will be able to attend in-theater. Based on the email address you provided to us in the survey we will contact those selected and those not selected to be in-theater.
If others, that were not a part of the 100 first come first serve selected do arrive at the theater we will provide access to the Cafe for their viewing of the forum thru a live stream feed. This live stream feed will not allow for direct participation in the forum.
As responsible members of the ConVal community we support these protocols.
Links
- To complete the survey please click on this link, fill out the survey and submit no later than end of day Monday, September 20th. Click here to access the survey
- To attend the Community Forum via Live-Streaming please use this link at the time of the forum. Click here to watch the live stream of the Community Forum
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