Public schools are a source of unity, and TASK centers student, parent, teacher, & community concerns. TASK’s primary purpose is to flip the current narrative in Shorewood, so it focuses on student-centered interests through constructive, collaborative, and respectful discourse. We will invoke change by: disseminating data-supported information, engaging our community in conversations, and raising
awareness about the issues in our schools. The change we are working towards includes:
--Increased responsiveness from the School Board to the concerns of students, parents, and teachers; politicking is not student-centered.
--Increased School Board and District curiosity, distribution, and usage of data to inform decision-making and strategic planning; use of data to establish goals, create conversations, explore options, define measures, and set concrete and incremental timelines for improvement.
--Increased School Board and District transparency and communication of known-issues to students, parents, and teachers in order to create a sense of openness and community support rather than a sense of containment of “negative” information or marketing of “positive” results.
--Decreased vitriol in our community conversations, especially on social media. These are our ground rules and community agreements:
--We accept the responsibility and reality that we are role models; our kids need us to actively model respectful discourse and interaction while advocating respectfully and consistently.
--We are student-centered; all of us in the community need to come together to support our kids and their educational development and experience; there are no sides in this, so we reject divisiveness in all its forms.
--We value and promote diversity, equity, and inclusion; comments that are in opposition to this value will be rejected and actively opposed by this community.
--We actively support our teachers; this is a strength and value of our community that we promote.
--We are positive in our approach; we are respectful, direct, and persistent; we do not attack, demean, or belittle.
--We use data as a call to action, and we always cite our source.
--When we disseminate concerns, we are data-informed and evidence-based; we do not incite; we communicate logically and ethically–the emotional appeal is embedded in the content of what we distribute.
--When we gather in our community and with our neighbors, we speak from our hearts. We share our lived experiences as a means of support and illustration. When we use the experience of others, it is only with their permission, which has been previously granted.
--We are not political. Individually, we support candidates; collectively, we support issues. If a community member chooses to run for office, we thank them; we also remove political candidates from our moderators and discussion groups and ask that candidates not claim alignment to this group of their own accord.
