An appreciation for tradition best describes the essence of the Lindbergh School District as perceived by employees and residents, a consultant told the school board last week.

DeSieghardt Strategic Communications of Stillwell, Kan., was hired in May by the board to assist the school district in developing a strategic plan for communications and community engagement.

The firm, owned by Ken DeSieghardt, was hired by the district last year to conduct a telephone survey that eventually led to the voter-approved Proposition R — a $32 million no-tax-increase bond issue that voters approved in November.

At the July 17 Board of Education meeting, DeSieghardt discussed the research phase of the process, which involved identifying how the district is perceived.

“… Current studies suggest that we’re all exposed to 3,000 messages a day — whether they’re advertising, whether they’re messages in newspaper stories, whether they’re logos, whether they’re things we see as we drive the street,” he said. “So the ones that penetrate, the ones that we hear, are the ones that mean something to us. And that was our charge, was to find out what is it that means something valuable to the audiences that are important to the Lindbergh School District …”

During a recent two-day period, administrators, board members, teachers, principals, classified staff, parents, senior citizens and community leaders were asked a series of questions about the district.

Participants initially were asked: When you hear Lindbergh School District, what comes to mind? DeSieghardt reported that the “obvious answers” were such things as great teachers and leadership, visionary board, quality education, a great place to go to school or to have your kids go to school and a valuable and valued member of the community.

“That’s what you would hope for,” he said. “But we kept digging and we found out that when we think of Lindbergh, people think of: ‘Well, this is hometown. This is my home town.’ We heard story after story after story of people saying: ‘I moved away. I came back. My child graduated, moved away, went to school, went to college, came back. This is home.’

“It’s conservative and, if you will, the non-political side of the word conservative, traditional. Someone regaled us with stories of this is a community where they go out on Saturday morning and they scrub their steps because they’re expecting people to come visit and they want to make sure the place looks good.

“We have good kids. We have good kids. Not to say anybody else has bad kids, but our kids are good. We’re proud, but we’re not boastful. It’s not a pride we talk about. It’s just we’ve got a good thing and we know it, and we’d like to share it with others. And it’s a safer environment, but it’s certainly not immune. There’s no illusion that we are immune to the challenges that come with education today.

“Additionally, there was very clearly a high expectation of staff and of students. People expect this district to turn out high-performing kids and they expect staff members to kind of carry on a history that says: ‘We’ve turned out good kids and we’ve always had good staff members.’ So there’s a high expectation for performance. The outcomes are defined by what happens in the schools, not the facilities themselves.

“It doesn’t mean that the community is seeking out or is satisfied with anything that they might consider substandard, but they focus very much on what happens in the schools. Their pride comes from the output of the schools, not the facilities themselves.”

Furthermore, Lindbergh is “a place where people have always made the difference and an important — nearly cherished — part of the community. Now nearly cherished meaning: ‘I’m careful with my resources. So you need to demonstrate to me anytime you come to me and ask me to support additional taxes, new projects, I want to know the value. I want to know the value to the community. I want to know the value to the schools.”

Another question was: How does Lindbergh compare to neighboring districts?

He said, “… People said: ‘We really don’t think about neighboring school districts. We’re focused on our own. The only time we notice other school districts is when they’re having problems. We’re really truly focused on the good thing we have here.”’

Based on the answers to those questions and a couple of other queries, “consistent elements” of the Lindbergh essence are:

• A history of providing an excellent educational product.

• A staff that traditionally delivers above expectations.

• A desirable place to reside.

• A community asset worth protecting.

• Underappreciated by those “outside” — which doesn’t bother those “inside.”

“So connecting all those ideas together is really an appreciation for the concept of tradition — the idea that we have a history of doing things the right way, of turning out quality kids, of making good decisions when it comes to resources, of hiring good staff and we would like to see that tradition be advanced,” he said. “We think that we have an appreciation for what’s gone on in the past and we’d like to see that continue in relation to 21st century learning …”

The consultant’s presentation also included a number of suggestions to uphold and advance the Lindbergh tradition.

“Consider the next few pages, if you will, sort of like a five-course meal. If you’re putting together a five-course meal, you would have an appetizer, you’d have a salad, you’d have a main course, you’d have a vegetable course and you’d have a dessert course. The ideas in here are ideas for those potential courses,” DeSieghardt said. “I think the courses are critical. I think the ideas are intended to be thought starters for you. You have a great team in the communications department.

“There’s a great team sitting around this table here. These are ideas that you can use a jump start. If you were to take all these ideas and implement them, I’d be very disappointed because there is no way I would know the district as well as you do …”

In response to a question from President Mark Rudoff about the next steps, DeSieghardt said, “Next steps I would suggest would be to gather a team that would include your communications staff and likely some members of the board to make it your own.”

Assistant Superintendent for Finance Pat Lanane told the board he received an e-mail from Director of Community Relations Mary Meyer, who was unable to attend the meeting.

“… She basically has said what she intends to do is now that this report has been received is to now begin to formulate the nuts and bolts of a strategic plan,” he said. “That now we take these concepts and now we get very specific: This is what’s going to happen to carry the concepts you saw here out into a reality. So I think she will be preparing that kind of a plan over the next six to eight weeks and then be bringing that back for board review … Now the theoretical has to become very practical.”