Building A Better District vehemently disagrees that this "96% support" is an accurate representation of the community.  We believe other less expensive options exist for our district. The community must:

• vote NO to the referendum and
• demand our Board of Education direct the district to hire an expert demography firm to conduct and Enrollment Forecast and Facilities Analysis and present those findings to the community. 

From those results, the community should work together to arrive at the best solution for our district's future.

Focus Groups are a very specific type of meeting that typically run with very stringent guidelines to make sure the hosts remain neutral.  The purpose of Focus Groups is to provide neutral information on challenges to a community and ask them to problem solve for those challenges and send back their recommendations to the Focus Group hosts, in this case, the district.  Information should be presented without commentary that would sway the participants in one direction or another.

In November 2022, the district held meetings with the community to present the four options it developed to what it represented was "significant expected growth".  The district presented the information in a high-level overview format without sharing the process of how these four options were developed and with whom.  Many months of work and conversation should have been conducted in an aggressive two-way communication in the form of public charrettes or a similar framework to work through the district's numbers, challenges, the community's wishlist and more before arriving at these "considerations".

Because the district failed to present an independent Enrollment Forecast and Facilities Analysis to the community, we cannot know what these considerations are based on.  Not enough supporting information was provided to the very few participants of the Focus Group sessions to truly make an informed opinion.

Failing to Follow Focus Group Best Practices

The district took feedback from the first Focus Group and made changes to the information presented to the second group and the virtual group.  This means the 164 participants did not receive the same presentation and information.  Focus Group "small breakout" sessions also were visited by Superintendent Stirn and then-Deputy Assistant Superintendent Mongan who spoke on the considerations and some included sitting Board Members as participants who provided feedback to their groups that may have included information only known to the Board they may have influenced perceptions and opinions. 

All of these things are prohibited in well-run Focus Groups.  These were not true "focus groups", but rather Town Hall meetings where the district shared their solutions, strongly positioning "A" as the obvious "best" choice.  We contend other less expensive solutions exist for our community.

Building A Better District has run these scenarios through data models based upon the limited information shared by the district with the community.  We believe there are several other considerations that should have been presented in a more clear format with recent examples from other districts provided as context.