Moderator’s Outline for Stanford Fishbowl 9/29/04
September 20, 2004 Draft
JQ: Well, it’s a real honor to meet all of you. I have read about your work, and also visited one of the SUN schools a couple of years ago. But I haven’t met most of you, so why don’t you each take a moment to introduce yourselves—to me and to our “listening audience”? Why don’t you tell us your name and title, and add a sentence or two about your role in the SUN schools?
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JQ: Just to make sure we are all listening from the same perspective, it might help to hear a brief overview of the SUN initiative—what it is, how many schools are currently involved, who the major partners are. Peggy, why don’t you lead off on this one?
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JQ: So that’s where you are now. Let’s back up a little, and talk about the kinds of partnerships that existed pre-SUN—that is, before you got started in 1998. XX, can you tell us about that—how things looked back then, from your perspective? (Does anyone else want to add anything?)
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JQ: That’s really helpful. So what changed? What factors led to your decision to launch a major community school initiative? I mean, many schools and communities are happy to leave things in a kind of co-location mode. But I sense that you were looking for something different. So what precipitated the decision to take this more integrated approach? Let me ask XX to lead us off on this question. (Before we move on, does anyone else want to add anything?)
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JQ: Let’s talk specifically about the way you share leadership in the SUN initiative. My sense, first of all, is that leadership is shared at multiple levels—across political jurisdictions; between the central administration and the individual sites; and within individual sites. Is that correct?
If so, let’s talk about how it works at each of these levels:
· Across political jurisdictions
· Between the central administration of SUN and the individual sites
· Within individual sites (e.g., principal and site manager)
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JQ: What are the kinds of mechanisms or strategies that enable your shared leadership to really work? For example, do you have written agreements and, if so, at what level? What other kinds of mechanisms or strategies have you found to be most helpful?
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JQ: Tell us about results you’ve seen. We read about some of them in the Casey report—including increases in family involvement and positive effects on academic achievement at both elementary and middle schools. Can you provide more detail on the results to date—both what you saw in the early evaluations and what the more recent results have been?
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JQ: Let’s talk about funding. I read that you started the SUN initiative in a time of a major fiscal crunch, which was one motivation for making the best use of existing service dollars. And since then, you have been successful in generating new dollars through three additional revenue streams. So let’s talk about this big and important issue, starting with your strategy of aligning existing resources around some common goals and a shared vision.
Great. Now, let’s talk about how you added resources. I saw in your timeline that you started using 21st Century CLC dollars as soon as they became available, and that this money has enabled you to add some new sites as well.
Tell us about the other new revenue streams—particularly the ones that required ballot initiatives.
National Technical Assistance Center for Community Schools
The Children’s Aid Society
www.childrensaidsociety.org