CENTRAL JERSEY: Superintendent sets WW-P district budget forum

By Allison Musante, Staff Writer
   The West Windsor and Plainsboro communities are invited to participate in the first-ever public forum to discuss the 2011-2012 school district budget with Superintendent Victoria Kniewel at 7 p.m. on Thursday in the Playhouse at High School South.
   Parents, students, staff, residents and elected officials are asked to attend to help answer the question, “What’s important in WW-P?” and to understand the district’s long-term vision and priorities relating to the budget.
   ”The goal of these meetings is to gather information about how the public feels about specific changes and to build an understanding of how a budget is prepared,” Superintendent Kniewel said in a statement.
   Princeton University graduate student Dan Myers, who has been working with Superintendent Kniewel on a process to improve community engagement, will facilitate the event. He said attendees will be broken down into small groups and discuss a given list of changes the district is thinking of making related to the 2011-2012 budget.They will have time to discuss the changes with one another and give feedback to the superintendent.
   ”The standard model of community engagement is that the district gives a presentation and members of the public are given three minutes each to respond,” Mr. Myers said. “There’s no dialogue or talking with fellow citizens. Instead of the standard, this forum will allow people to talk to each other and make their voices heard in the district.”
   Gerri Hutner, district spokeswoman, said no superintendent has ever held a public forum of this nature before.
   ”To her credit, Dr. Kniewel is very interested in community engagement and keeping everyone involved,” she said. “Depending where you sit, everyone has a different perspective — the students, the employees, parents, even residents who don’t have a child in the district — she works hard to listen and understand these groups, and this forum will bring them all together.”
   Mr. Myers, a PhD candidate in the politics department, said he began working with Superintendent Kniewel last March, after he conducted a public survey following the annual budget meeting. He has been helping the administration organize the forum as part of his research on deliberative community engagement for his dissertation. Following the forum, he will summarize his findings and give them to the administration for consideration
   ”I’ll be looking at the decisions that people made and summarizing it for the administration to use in their budget process,” he said. “This is happening at a crucial time when these budget decisions are being made, and the public can have a big impact.”
   The Board of Education will hold its first discussion on the budget at its 7:30 p.m. meeting on Tuesday at the Community Middle School in Plainsboro.