How Connect Now Worked

In early 2008, The Education Foundation formed an independent, nonpartisan steering committee representative of the entire county to oversee an initiative called Connect Now. Using a proven process guided by Collaborative Communications in Washington, D.C., the Steering Committee and Education Foundation staff organized living-room conversations – using carefully chosen and trained volunteer conversation leaders and local hosts – with small groups of citizens all over the county. Several of the conservations were in Spanish or Haitian Creole.

The participants were asked – many of them for the first time—about their hopes and expectations for our community and our schools. Additional conversations were held with teachers, school administrators and students. Hundreds participated in a total of 54 conversations over seven months, from August 2008 – February 2009, ensuring that the wide range of perspectives in our community were included.  In March 2009, forty-six demographically and geographically diverse “representatives” from most of those conversations formed a Congress to write this Connect Now Statement in working sessions based on the sifted and sorted notes documenting thousands of observations made by conversation participants.