The St. Joseph School District began another round of community engagement meetings this week. 

According to School Superintendent Dr. Robert Newhart, they’re building off of last fall’s meetings to rebrand the community engagement effort. 

“The new branding is ‘One Vision. Many Voices. Our Future.’ As we’re trying to lay this out, we want this to be ongoing to where we don’t have to recreate the wheel and we can work to come together to set forth one path,” Newhart said. “Ultimately decisions have to be made but we want to listen, we want to gain input. That’s what all these community engagement meetings are designed to be is to gain that input, determine priorities and needs and then ultimately deciding on how to fund that.” 

Newhart said one item the board is working on is getting a November revenue issue on the ballot. He said the public and especially parents are encouraged to get involved with any of the more than 20 meetings which will include two Town Hall meetings and school finance sessions.

“It’s the parents and the kids that really have to take this ownership in the district’s future,” Newhart said. “Just in the last six years, there’s a brand new set of kids that have come up from kindergarten through grade five in the district. That’s roughly 5,000-6,000 kids and families that is always ongoing and a new group is coming in next year as kindergartners. So we’ve got to sit back and listen and take some notes at these meetings and let the parents and the public provide input on what they believe the needs and the priorities are that will help meet these student’s future goals.”

The second of the open house style informational meetings takes place beginning at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at Benton High School. 

For a full list of all the upcoming meetings, click here.