Our first Telephone Town Hall

School Board members Diantha McKeel & Brian Wheeler prepare to start the Town Hall Meeting (click to enlarge)

Albemarle County Public Schools held its first ever Tele Town Hall meeting this evening.  Our goal was to reach 24,000 households in the community and get as many participants as possible engaged in a one-hour telephone town meeting about the school budget.  I served as the moderator and was joined by School Board member Diantha McKeel, Superintendent Pam Moran, Assistant Superintendent Bruce Benson, and Jackson Zimmerman, our Executive Director of Fiscal Services.  We got great behind the scenes support from Christy, Jennifer and Robert as they made sure the technology worked and callers got into line with their questions.

As you can see in the above photo, we had lots of water, papers, a speaker phone and a big screen that allowed us to see the progress of the town meeting.  I used the laptop computer to ask survey questions of the audience and to place listeners on the conference call to ask our team questions.

Were you on the call?  Did you think the telephone town hall was effective?  I'd be interested in your feedback.

We will get a final analysis of the number of people who were reached and participated, but the information in front of me as moderator said we had a peak of 750 people active on the call. If people were not home, they were left a voicemail message.  While we were competing with a Virginia-Virginia Tech basketball game and a number of important school events, that participation rate ensured we had a steady stream of questions from the audience.

Early in the call we asked the audience about who they were, and here were the answers:

• Parents of Albemarle County students = 42%
• Employees of Albemarle County = 8%
• Community members = 50%

I am pleased we had so many community members involved.  That was one of the key audiences the School Board wanted to reach.  I am not surprised by the low rate of employees on the call.  One factor of course is that many of our staff do not live in the County, often because they cannot afford to do so.  The list of phone numbers we could get was for registered voters in Albemarle, so that limited the audience in that way.

I cannot remember how many questions we had, but I am guessing 20-25. Several things really set this apart from our typical public hearings on the budget.  For one, a WHOLE LOT more people participated.  Second, there was a broad variety to the questions.  Third, it was a two-way communications format between school leaders and the community (at public hearings we don't immediately respond to the audience comments).  Fourth, we came to YOU, the community, which I know is a lot more convenient than trucking out to a public meeting.

The community didn't hold back and posed a number of smart and challenging questions to the panel.  The feedback and questions we received will help shape the School Board's focus in additional budget work sessions this month.

Preliminary data from the other survey questions I gave the audience were as follows:

Is the Telephone Town Hall an effective way for us to communicate with you?

• Yes - 94%
• No - 6%

Do you agree with the School Division's commitment to be competitive in our market for teacher salaries?

• Yes - 88%
• No - 12%

A podcast of the entire town hall meeting will be available on the school division's website later this week and I'll add a link here. 

Brian Wheeler

Comments

[Dante S.]

I think scheduling this during a Virginia home basketball game was a great to reduce the amount of non-parents, like myself, who would have like to participate. I think this school board for too long has mislead the people of Albemarle. Almost no growth in the last 5 years but still cost go up and you always claim the taxpayers need to give you more.

Two new independent surveys that say you to much money for what we the tax payers get. That Albemarle has too many middle managers and the central office is bloated. Why don't you get you money there.

I'm sure you spent taxpayer money to generate this PR dog and pony show. Show me you know how to do more than ask for more money. My tax dollars are important , you need to show me you respect that.

[bawheeler]

Dante - Thanks for the feedback. The UVA game was brought to my attention last week, about a month after we had scheduled this event. No conspiracy I promise.

With respect to growth, I think my posts on this blog have been the best source of information available on school enrollment. The truth is the truth and I don't know any School Board member trying to suggest something different is happening. We grew only 45 students this year over last, and we are projecting only 2 new students per school per year in the next 5 years.

The Luce report has a very problematic methodology that, at a minimum, doesn't even take into account the true funding received by certain localities that benefit from what is called Cost to Compete. It doesn't account for our transportation costs and geography as the 5th alrgest County in Virginia. MANY factors can cause per pupil cost factors to vary across different localities.

Anyway, let's look at what our community says. It strongly supports schools that are cost efficient and highly effective. That's why we made this a major goal in the strategic plan. To find out how we are doing, we hired outside experts to assess our division's efficiency. They spent 5 months preparing a comprehensive resource utilization study in late 2007.

We ARE, as you suggest, going to get some savings from the study's recommendations, that's why we did it. Central office and transportation are key areas the report targeted and Dr. Moran has already shared with the School Board and public plans for which areas we can start improving in this budget and future budgets.

The conference call tonight will cost at the most $6,300. Based on the comments on the call and currently in my inbox, it was a good use of our resources to reach people that might have otherwise been left out.

My thoughts as one School Board member.

Brian Wheeler

[Dante S.]

Mr Wheeler, the game was scheduled for over 5 months and any planner worth their salt checks the UVA calender before planning any large event. Moving the call can't have been that big a deal- sorry I'm just not buying it.

I was unaware you were an expert on the survey methodology. Will you be issuing a white paper to back up these claims? I think the survey had facts you don't like and therefore they must be flawed.

What about the study Ablemarle taxpayers footed the bill for, by VCU educational professionals? Was that flawed as well? It said clearly that you have too much fat in the central office and that some classes were too small and therefore very expensive to continue.

So you spent $6,300 for a telephone survey that was self selecting and therefore any conclusions are more flawed in their methodology than the Luce report. I'll wager I'll wake up tomorrow and read a glowing report in the Daily Progress from you about what a great success the tele-town hall was.
"the people have spoken...now give us more money or teachers will leave in droves!"

There are two separate recent studies that clearly point out that the Albemarle School system is NOT cost effective in central staff, transportation, or several other areas. This happened on YOUR watch. It is up to you, as a public official, to convince me ,the taxpayer, that you will do a better job. Nothing I have read or heard leads me to that conclusion.

you work for all the County- not just the parents who come to the meetings and demand more from taxpayers like. My house has lost 10's of thousands in assessed value. Can you get by with less money, I know I have to.

[bawheeler]

As I said, we have already started receiving recommendations as to how to proceed with steps for improving our effectiveness and efficiency from the VCU study. It was not a perfect study, but it gave us plenty to work with. So no I don't think it was flawed and we are taking positive actions in that area.

I'd suggest you spend some time reviewing the podcast of the town hall when that is available. There were plenty of questions you would find interesting. There is also lots of factual information about our budget, like the fact that Dr. Moran's funding request is only growing by 3.37% over last year. That's less than the CPI numbers released today.

State and federal revenues are pretty flat and don't cover the mandates. Overall revenues are only going up next year by 2.81%. But, because we have been effective managing our resources, this is not a crisis for the school division. We are focusing on the core priorities.

The newspaper articles you might look for are the ones describing the steps the School Board is taking in our budget process which is just getting under way. By all means, hold our feet to the fire on implementing recommendations in our efficiency study and do keep the feedback coming. Thanks!

Brian Wheeler

[Amy G.]

Brian,
I appreciated the opportunity the Board gave the community to participate in the tele-town hall meeting. The interaction between the caller's and the Board members was extremely refreshing. Several callers and commenters have raised the efficiency of the Board as a major concern and mention the Luce report as evidence. In order to truly compare Albemarle County with the other counties in the report, which counties in Virginia have the same or comparable geographical area and population. Those counties would have the same financial pressures as Albemarle, in terms of transportation costs and community values for maintaining small schools?