New Community Conversation To Discuss

‘Character Development’

By Eliza Hallabeck

Speaking of Newtown’s newest Community Conversation grant, announced in September, Newtown School District Health Coordinator Judy Blanchard said recently the past two Community Conversations had impacts on the community.

Ms Blanchard, who has worked closely with the Community Conversations since the grant-funded program was first brought to Newtown, said she was taken aback by some community response lately that the first two Community Conversations had had little impact on Newtown. Ms Blanchard said this is not the case.

The Community Conversations are underwritten by the William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund, and were first brought to Newtown in 2009, when roughly 100 community members gathered together over multiple meetings to discuss the topic of bullying.

A year later another group of roughly 100 community members discussed the topic of underage drinking. Communities awarded the William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund grant have a better likelihood the following year of being awarded the grant again for another topic.

The goal of the conversation is to bring together a diverse group of residents, regardless of their socioeconomic status, age, gender, faith, or racial ethnicity. After an initial meeting, to be schedule in January for this year’s conversation, the approximately 100 or more residents involved will be divided into equal groups who will report back to the whole group on their findings. Trained moderators and recorders help identify and track the common ground of each group’s discussion.

The school district’s Strategic Plan Committee on Character Development wrote the grant application this year, according to Ms Blanchard, and the Community Conversation will further the committee’s efforts.

“We are really in the initial planning stages,” said Ms Blanchard. The first meeting of the new Community Conversation still has yet to be scheduled.

The first conversation, on bullying and mean behaviors, resulted in steps created for how the discussion should continue and impact the local community. Each conversation results in next steps, and the conversation on bullying and mean behaviors had results in the school district, according to Ms Blanchard. It developed community values, developed intervention and a process of identifying students without supportive persons.

“All the parts that are integral to the school functioning is really trying to support those kids,” said Ms Blanchard, adding the Community Conversation results worked well with the new Response To Intervention practices.

In addition to those items, the school district now has a District Bullying Prevention Committee, Ms Blanchard said, and the committee plans to survey students on bullying and mean behaviors.

“And we will be using those results to help us develop interventions,” she said.

Educating the community, she said, is what the District Bullying Prevention Committee intends to do.

Results in the school district may not be seen from an outside perspective, Ms Blanchard said, but the bullying and mean behaviors conversation’s results are continuing in the school district. The first Community Conversation also had a banner contest open to residents.

“The purpose of the conversation is to engage the community to discuss topics that are of importance to the community in a way that voices that sometimes are not heard have an opportunity to be heard,” said Ms Blanchard.

The following year’s Community Conversation on Underage Drinking, Ms Blanchard said, was one of the factors that helped Newtown receive the federal Drug Free Communities grant, a $125,000 grant spread out over five years.

“One of the things that we could put into that application was that our community values this topic, and was willing to sit down and discuss it and formulate next steps,” said Ms Blanchard.

There is an emphasis on the topic of underage drinking across the board in Newtown, Ms Blanchard said, with Newtown Youth & Family Services conducting interviews funded through a state grant and the Newtown High School PTSA planning to hold its second Freshmen Forum on Underage Drinking later this school year.

The documentation from the Community Conversation on Underage Drinking went to the Newtown Prevention Council, according to Ms Blanchard who co-chairs the group, and the Newtown Prevention Council is using the information to create points of focus.

Ms Blanchard said anyone interested in working on the next Community Conversation on Character Development can contact her for more information by e-mail, blanchardj@newtown.k12.ct.us, or phone, 203-426-2798.