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Natalie Sanford

“Your thoughts and ideas will help set the course for the next five years,” Superintendent Rob Metz told the group gathered Feb. 24 at the World Cafe in the high school gym.

According to Metz, the district’s last five year plan recently ended. Over the next five years, the district hopes to grasp what the community wishes to focus on so they called the cafe to gather the community’s opinion.

“Anybody in the community can give ideas to the district as areas to focus on during the next five years,” Metz said. “This is just the beginning process.”

The opinions gathered from the three different cafe’s held throughout the day of Feb. 24 were gathered and will be looked over by the Strategic Planning Core Team, who will determine the plan of the district over the next five years.

According to Metz, the Strategic Core Planning Team will be made up of 30 citizens who can apply to become a part of the team. Metz said half the team will be students and teachers while the other half will be community members.

At the cafe itself, the community members who attended sat at a small table with up to four people and discussed four questions the district wished to ask them.

Some of these questions were: What do you value most about our schools? How can the St. Louis Park community help us make sure all students succeed?

The leaders of the cafe encouraged the attendees to sit with people they didn’t know in order to gain insight from the different viewpoints of the group.

Senior Erik Grinde was one of the few students who attended the cafe.

“I heard about it the day of and thought it would be interesting,” Grinde said. “There weren’t many students there and the perspectives of the students were needed because it affects them.”

Grinde said he thought the cafe and the Strategic Planning Core Team were good ideas and it was his idea at the cafe for the school to focus on making sure the kids learn the material, even if it doesn’t follow the curriculum.

Teacher Pat Hartman said he thought it was a great idea to gather the input from the community as a whole from the discussions.

“Hearing the opinions of people who are not in the school and having them hear my opinions during the discussions was great,” Hartman said. “I think it’s a great idea to have community involvement and not just teacher involvement.”

Hartman said the cafe he attended did not have many teachers although he said he hoped some teachers would join the Strategic Planning Core Team.

All of the opinions from the World Cafe will be shared with the Strategic Planning Core Team to focus on the issues the community feels to be most important over the next five years.

During one of the cafes, Metz emphasized the importance the community had in the process of the next five year plan.

“We have to set the right course for the next five years,” Metz said.