Giving input on the happenings at the Columbus Municipal School District just got a little bit easier for community stakeholders.
Parents, faculty and staff, taxpayers and students will be able to give the district insight to help with strategic planning, parental and community engagement and more through an online platform called InnovateK12. The CMSD board of trustees unanimously approved purchasing the software as part of the consent agenda on Monday night.
The program is an online platform that allows people to share thoughts, suggestions and concerns with the district. Stakeholders can see the posts and give on-topic feedback.
The InnovateK12 website has an example of a community member expressing their wishes for a music and dance program for students with disabilities. The post has comments of other community stakeholders commenting with suggestions on how to move forward as well as their support for a program like that.
Superintendent Cherie Labat learned about the software at a technology summit in San Diego and thought it would benefit the district.
“The most important aspect (of InnovateK12) is having the ability to leverage the voice and collect the wisdom of various stakeholders in Columbus,” Labat said. “InnovateK12 will help the district and city more constructively collaborate with our stakeholders, which are parents, families, future staff and community partners. We’re only as good as our ideas, innovation and collective intelligence, and that InnovateK12 will allow us to harvest that collective wisdom by helping us cultivate real, collaborative instruction.”
InnovateK12, which includes the software, consultative services and technology support, is costing the district $5,000 for a year-long contract spanning from July 1, 2022, to June 30, 2023. Per the annual subscription agreement, the consultative services include “develop(ing) and confirm(ing) objectives and goals, identify intelligence gaps/needs/goals, craft challenge questions, define challenge participants (stakeholder group(s), and define the timeline for your Initiative. This results in a phased, year-long plan in which initiatives provide data and insights that yield more informed, iterative initiatives.”
The platform will be available first for students and staff as an application on their school laptops, according to CMSD public information officer Mary Pollitz. The technology department is working on getting it widely available for the general public to access on the CMSD website, and the district is working with InnovateK12 on the logistics of how the public can interact with the platform. It will be available for the beginning of the 2022-23 school year.
According to the InnovateK12 agreement, six to eight CMSD employees will have real-time access to a data dashboard and compiled data reports.
Labat said the various school administrators will be the first on the platform, and she looks forward to the information this will allow the district to see. Some of the first data CMSD aims to collect before school starts is the community’s feedback on COVID-19. Labat said the first discussion will be about wearing masks when school begins again in August.
“Our board and our administrators are very excited,” Labat said. “Our administrators will be the first members on the platform, and they’ll be discussing the topic of masks. It will open to all of our stakeholders to kind of get feedback. One thing I like about InnovateK12 is that they take the most used words, organize it and structure it. They do analytics, they graph (the data). They give the information so that we can be informed and make informed decisions.”
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