W.H. starts budget 'conversations'

To host the West Hempstead school district’s first community budget discussion of the year, administrators transformed the West Hempstead Middle School cafeteria into a café last week — an usual setting in which to hold conversations about a school budget, but a comfortable one nonetheless.

“This was a new format that was designed to activate the attendees,” Deputy Superintendent Richard Cunningham told the Herald. “All good budgets start with a clear idea of what the budget needs to support. This started us in that direction.”

The friendly atmosphere allowed for “unpressurized conversation,” according to Superintendent John Hogan.

More than 50 people — parents, teachers, principals, community leaders and even a student or two — turned out for the event, which was a “new endeavor” for West Hempstead administrators, Hogan said. The purpose of the café — which encouraged participants to “play, experiment and improvise” — was to bring the community into the school budget conversation before administrators even begin drafting a spending plan, which they would typically present to the Board of Education and the public in February or March. It would be more efficient and advantageous to collect ideas, suggestions and recommendations and incorporate them into the budget than to wait for public response after a draft is presented, Hogan said.

“When we think about the budgetary challenges that are coming our way, when we think about what our mission is in terms of educating 2,200 boys and girls every day, it just seemed to make sense to us that the budget process with the community needed to start sooner,” Hogan had told the Herald last month.

That approach seemed to make sense to many others, including some who took part in the café on Nov. 29. “It gives the community the opportunity to be proactive in the discussion instead of reactive,” said Board of Education Trustee Cynthia Di Miceli, who attended but did not participate.

“I found [the] budget café to be a wonderful way to start the discussion of the upcoming budget,” said Karen Brohm, co-president of one of the district’s PTAs. “It was a great opportunity to see not only what the parents of school-aged children valued within the district, but also the faculty, administrators and other residents without children in the district.”

Every so often, attendees moved around the room, from table to table, to sit in new arrangements with different people and “hosts” — volunteers who were chosen to facilitate discussion. That allowed for a richer and more varied exchange of opinion, according to Cunningham. “The conversations were vibrant and sometimes very emotional, while being very respectful,” he said.

Despite differences of opinion on a number of issues, it was clear that there were “many common values,” Brohm said, adding that she was pleased to hear people say they “wanted to bring the school district back to being the hub of the community.”

Among some of those common values were support for the core education of reading, writing and math; smaller class sizes; more enrichment from extracurricular activities; and broader Advanced Placement offerings. Administrators are still reviewing the data collected that night, and will post a more comprehensive document on the district’s website, whufsd.com, in the coming weeks.

The challenge now, Hogan said, is to prioritize those values in “difficult budget times.” The second session of the community budget conversation, which will take place sometime in January, will focus in greater depth on the budgetary options and choices available to administrators.

Rony Kessler, a member of the Rotary Club of West Hempstead who participated in the café, suggested that to further productivity at the next session, the administrators should consider organizing seating by stakeholders — educators, parents, students and residents with no children in public schools — each of whom has a different agenda and point of view. Mixing and matching stakeholders could “develop ideas and suggestions outside the box,” Kessler said. “Often the four stakeholders … are at odds with each other. Working together makes all feel they have ownership over the decisions, even as these decisions become painful.”

He went on to compliment the administrators for their effort, saying, “Kudos to the West Hempstead School District for their innovative approach to the budget process.”

Di Miceli said she is optimistic about the potential outcome of the district’s new approach. “I have always felt that a working partnership and a collaborative effort can improve schools, strengthen families and the surrounding neighborhood,” she said. “I’m looking forward to the second community budget discussion in the new year.”