broadly and deeply: Despite strong efforts
and well-intentioned individuals leading
this work, most districts struggled to engage
a wide range of individuals and groups in
the process in ways we believe are “mean-
ingful.” But what is meaningful, exactly? A
few of us developed a framework to help us
think about this question (see Figure 1). The
framework builds on a long history of demo-
cratic theory and literature on public admin-
istration (Marsh and Hall, 2017) and consid-
ers the who, what and how of engagement.
Who is involved?
First, the framework asks: Who is in-
volved? The “who” of community involve-
ment falls within a range, stretching from
broad to narrow. Broad engagement in-
volves the vast majority of the community,
whereas a narrow process includes some, but
not all, stakeholders affected by the LCFF
decisions. For example, narrowly engaged
districts might have a committee that lacks
diversity and excludes members of under-
represented communities. In the middle of
the two extremes is a representative engage-
ment process that may utilize a districtwide
committee that includes representatives of
internal and external stakeholders, includ-
ing teachers and parents, and traditionally
under-represented groups.
DEEP
Deliberative
2
BROAD
Hybrid
Participatory
Empower
Collaborate
Representative
1
Select
3
Consult
Inform
NARROW
Non-representative
Involve
4
Interest-Based
SHALLOW
Figure 1: Models of Stakeholder Engagement (Marsh & Hall, 2017)
potential stakeholder groups. In many cases
we heard about “usual players” and the “well-
heeled” parents attending meetings. We
heard about struggles to attract participa-
tion at meetings or on advisory committees,
particularly from non-English-speaking and
traditionally disenfranchised parents who
are a primary target of the LCFF policy.
Some districts invested signif icantly
in engaging students, often with creative
means, such as using surveys tied to QR
codes on posters in schools, while others
did little in this area. School board mem-
bers played a minimal role in the majority
A district might appoint an LCAP advi-
sory committee with representatives of all
major stakeholder groups and survey the
entire community, making it a hybrid of
representative and broad participation. If
this district makes strong efforts to reach
all stakeholders with a survey, and obtains a
high response rate, it might be situated far-
ther to the left of the continuum in Figure 1.
If a district simply appoints an LCFF com-
mittee but fails to include representatives
of entire groups, such as teachers, it would
move farther to the right into the select
range of the continuum.
In our research, we have found examples
of all types of engagement, ranging from
broad to narrow. Yet we also came to realize
how difficult it is to achieve broad and even
representative forms of engagement. Very
few districts attained broad engagement
and many of the efforts to involve a repre-
sentative group failed to truly represent all
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