A school district needed to address the fact that some schools were very old and needed very expensive renovation, and that there were new neighbourhoods in the city that needed new schools.  The budget was limited and not everything could be done.

I had trained people in participatory methods, and they tried to create a plan with some community consultation.  When the senior staff had a plan in place, they decided to go to all the communities and get feedback on the plan.  They asked me to design a process for them to use with all the communities, which consisted of sharing the plan and then doing a focused conversation on it.  They then asked me to facilitate several of the more challenging sessions.

One high school to be closed was an arts focused school, that drew students from all over the city.  It had passionate parent and community supporters, about a hundred of which showed up for the feedback session, seated in the theatre in tiered seats facing the stage. There was a lot of confusion and anger, led by one particularly vocal person.

 The plan was that the director would present the plan to the large group, answer questions of clarity, and then there would be smaller breakout groups that did a focused conversation on the presentation, each facilitated by a trained staff member.  But the group refused to go to the breakout groups. 

So we changed the process to address the issue.  I called for flipcharts, and put up all the questions of the conversation on separate flipchart pages, leaving room for answers under the questions.  

First the presentation was made.   Then I asked for questions of clarification, which came in attack questions such as “Why the hell are you closing our school?!!!”.  Thankfully, the director stayed cool, and I rephrased the questions as questions of clarification, such as “What was the thinking behind the plan of closing our school?  And “What values were you holding to make this decision?”  The director answered these questions.

Then we went through the rest of the focused conversation in order, capturing the answers on the flipcharts. Reflective level questions were something like “What upsets you the most about this plan?” And What are you OK with?” At the interpretive level the questions were something like “What might be the impacts of this plan on our community? (positive or negative)” and What might be the impacts of this plan on the whole city? (positive or negative)”.  At about this stage, I realized that the most vocal and angry person had not said anything for a while, so I asked her directly if she had anything to add.  She said she had nothing more — it had all been said.  The decisional question was something like “What recommendations do we have that will strengthen the positive impacts for this community and the city, and address the negative impacts?”  A few creative suggestions came forth and were recorded.

The feedback was valuable and the group felt heard.  The documentation went directly to the school administration.