Mahomet-Seymour School Board to host listening tour, hires Educational Leadership Solutions for Strategic Plan

By Dani Tietz

The Mahomet-Seymour School Board will go on a summer listening tour beginning May 22.

The suggestion came from Board President Sunny McMurry after a May 4 discussion where the board members listened to a plan to develop a district strategic plan by Richard Voltz from Educational Leadership Solutions (ELS). On May 15 the board of education approved a minimum $8,900 contract (with an additional not-to-exceed $1,000 for administrative costs) for ELS to help develop the strategic plan that is expected to take Mahomet-Seymour five years down the road. 

Board members identify some key components of the listening tour: to provide a space for community members to talk, to communicate with constituents, and to relay the district’s “story.”

The listening tour and the strategic planning team are two separate ventures, although part of the mission of the summer sessions is to identify community members who could be part of the Core Stakeholder Team (CST) that Voltz will lead beginning in September. The CST will address an upcoming 2024 facilities referendum, which is expected to be part of a board vote in Nov. 2023.

Dates for the listening sessions, which could include a minimum of five board members per date, are as follows:

• Monday, May 22, 2023               6:00-8:00 PM@ Lincoln Trail Elementary
• Monday, June 12, 2023               4:00-6:00 PM@ Mahomet Public Library
• Tuesday, June 27, 2023               6:00-8:00 PM@ Cornbelt FPD
• Saturday, July 22, 2023               9:00-11:00 AM-Virtual Session
• Wednesday, July 26, 2023          7:00-9:00 PM@ Seymour Community Building

Board members McMurry and Max McComb felt the district held sessions for community members to voice their opinions about facilities during the Bulldog Blueprint meetings leading up to the first referendum in June 2022. Some community members, though, felt the meetings were geared towards convincing voters of a pre-planned outcome. 

The Mahomet-Seymour School District’s Architect of Record, BLDD, led those meetings. Taxpayers contributed $20,000 to the cost of the sessions. BLDD and their partner, Creative Entourage, would have been paid an additional $20,000 had the first referendum passed. 

Through a survey that Creative Entourage created, the district asked residents why the first referendum failed with a count of 3,511 (no) to 1,714 (yes). The results revealed a wide range of reasons, including but not limited to cost, long-term viability, transparency, and other district-wide issues like curriculum. 

The board keyed in on the $97 million cost as the reason the first referendum failed before asking taxpayers for $59 million to build a junior high in the second referendum. 

After the Nov. 2022 referendum failed with a vote of 4,090 (no) to 2,887 (yes), some board members wanted to engage the community in listening sessions in order to try to address a number of issues people were bringing to the board of education and to gather ideas about addressing facility solutions in hopes of getting a referendum passed in April 2023. Those motions were left without board support, until a new board was seated in May 2023.

Just days after that new board was seated, a special meeting was called for a discussion on Voltz’s services in the upcoming months. The board hired Voltz to assist with a superintendent search, which resulted in Lee’s hiring in July 2022. That contract included a year of training for Lee with Educational Leadership Solutions. Through the meetings Voltz and Lee have every other week, Voltz suggested the Mahomet-Seymour School District consider using ELS for strategic planning.

Much of the conversation around the services ELS could provide centered around delivering a plan that the community would buy into in order to pass a referendum.

Voltz suggested that the CST include two board members, administrators, staff members, parents, students, and community members, typically numbering about 20-35 total members. He suggested that 51-percent of the team consist of community members.

Voltz suggested only two board members be present at the CST meetings so that the group would not have to abide by the rules of the Open Meetings Act with meeting notices and open discussion.

The goal is to get unanimous approval on a referendum from the Mahomet-Seymour School Board; to have overwhelming support from the staff at Mahomet-Seymour; to have active support from groups associated with the district, such as the Booster Club or the PTO; to have active support from parents, especially moms; to have support from local civic organizations, and to have a group that will track voters throughout the election cycle to make sure everyone who supports the referendum votes.

Voltz said the district should focus on those who will vote yes for a referendum, rather than those who will vote no. 

“The way you make sure those people vote is you have poll watchers,” Voltz said. “Keep track of who’s voting. And then callers, starting around 3pm to call those who have said they would vote for the referendum and have not yet voted, to get them out and vote.”

McComb said that the district had employed these tactics previously, but with universal voting sites throughout Champaign County and early voting, it was harder to track those votes. Mahomet-Seymour community members who were registered to vote received messages from numbers they did not know in the days and hours before the voting deadline.

As to how the district employed those tactics previously is unknown, but Voltz said even with expanded voting opportunities, these approaches to campaigns are still effective. He said one referendum he worked on passed by six votes. 

“I bet they were glad they were calling people,” Voltz said.

Voltz said he watched some of the Bulldog Blueprint process as the superintendent search progressed in the spring of 2022. He approved of the way the district handled the community sessions, but believes the lack of unanimous board support set the district back in getting those measures passed. 

“I just think when that doesn’t happen, you just put the question in people’s minds, thinking well, these are the people at the school board table, and they’re not even for it. So, you know, why should I be for it?” Voltz said. 

The board hopes that with the listening tour and the CST they will have a successful referendum to put on the ballot in the spring or fall of 2024. 

Like the listening tour, the strategic planning sessions are not supposed to be just about another referendum. Much of the board discussion focused on another referendum, but ELS’s statement in the May 15 board packet said, “The CST will review the district’s current Mission, Vision, Beliefs, and Goals to determine to what extent each of these are still valid, in use, in practice and/or serving a purpose within the district. Having worked through that process, the CST will engage in either revising or recreating those vital elements of a district’s fabric.”

The strategic planning months might also include a constituent survey. Voltz hopes to get 800-1500 people to respond. 

On May 4 Voltz said the CST would not address issues like bullying, unless the CST brought the problem up as a pervasive issue throughout the district. 

As to how the CST will be established is still to be determined. Lee said after the May 4 discussion, several community members reached out with interest. The district may put forth application forms, and Voltz encouraged board members to encourage people to apply.

“For the community members and the parents, I think application is really good. But I also think, for lack of a better word, you should be targeting people to apply.”

Because BLDD has a partnership with Creative Entourage, Lee said that the group might also work together on future referendums. That would be separate from the services ELS provides.