At Tuesday’s Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education meeting, school board members approved a community engagement plan for the superintendent search process. CMS has partnered with the UNC Charlotte’s Urban Institute to collect information from the public on desired qualities for the next leader of CMS. In addition, Carolina PR has been hired to develop communication strategies for the engagement phase of the search process.
The multi-phase plan will begin with online surveys for CMS employees, parents, students and community members. The school board and the Institute will work closely to design the survey questionnaire. The community online survey will include a question asking respondents if they work in CMS or have a child enrolled in the district.
Information about the survey will be distributed at schools and community sites, including public libraries. Staff will also use social media and community organizations to inform parents and community members about the survey and encourage participation. Survey participants and responses will remain confidential.
After the community engagement phase is complete, the Institute will summarize survey results into one report that will be presented to the Board.
The anticipated budget for the survey project is $10,000. The costs associated with the communication strategies is $10,000. Links to the survey will be posted on the CMS and Urban Institute’s web sites.
The $20,000 investment to gather community input is in addition to $56,500 CMS has agreed to pay Illinois-based Proact Search for coordinating the search for a replacement for Peter Gorman, who stepped down from the superintendent position in July to take a job in the education division of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp operation.
The survey is currently being prepared and the two-week response period is scheduled to begin Oct. 24. Survey results will be analyzed and a summarized report will be presented to the school board in late 2011 or early 2012.
The superintendent search is expected to be completed by mid-March 2012.
