It's not too late to give the Blaine County School District and its board of trustees a piece of your mind about how well they're communicating with the public.
As part of a communications audit, a series of focus group discussions were held last week by the company hired to perform the audit, but the school district is still accepting comments online at www.blaineschools.org.
"We want to know what we're doing right and what we can do better," said district media relations representative Kate Heinecke, who proposed the idea of an audit last summer to the school board.
The audit is costing the district about $14,000. It is being performed by the National School Public Relations Association, which will issue a report sometime this summer that will analyze school district communications with the public and likely make recommendations for improvement.
The association held 11 focus group sessions last week. Six were for members of the public and five involved district teachers, administrators and school board members.
Communications with the public has been a somewhat controversial issue recently.
"The election brought that issue to our attention," said Board Chair Julie Dahlgren. "It's not a new issue, but we thought by hiring an outside consultant that they would show us ways to improve."
Dahlgren was referring to last year's school board election when newcomers Paul Bates and Steve Guthrie defeated two incumbents. Both Bates and Guthrie made improved communications with the public a major issue of their campaigns.
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Bates acknowledged Thursday that the idea of the audit was in the works prior to the election.
"This was not my idea, but it was something easy for me to embrace," said Bates, who earlier this year convinced the school board to authorize a six-month pilot program for showing school board meetings live via the Internet.
Bates said the audit will hopefully give the school board and the district "an idea of how we can improve, an idea on what our strengths are and what our weaknesses are."
"We'll just see where the board goes from there," he said.
Dahlgren said she views improved communications as a way to "really showcase our district."
"How can we just get the message out that we are a good school district?" she asked. "Some of the negatives come around from people who don't know about what's going on. They wouldn't be negative if they were better informed."
Terry Smith: tsmith@mtexpress.com
Paul Bates
Julie Dahlgren
