December 3rd meeting summary

Cumberland Town Wide Learning Community Steering Team
Meeting Summary
December 3, 2009

Donna Morelle, Paul Ouellette, Lisa Beaulieu, Ryan Pearson, Carol Bissanti and Rosemary Reilly-Chammat

We welcomed Paul L. Ouellette, Vice President of Community Development and Workforce Training, Northern Rhode Island Chamber of Commerce, as a member of the steering team and partner in this effort.

The holidays arrived a bit early, with Donna bestowing a gift of reading to all of us. Each of us received a The World Café book, The World Café Resource Guide, The Art of Powerful Questions, World Café laminated reference card and a copy of the dissertation that started it all. Thanks to Donna for ordering the books and taking advantage of a great package deal. If you could not make the meeting, contact Donna to pick up your books.

We reached agreement on the following three questions:

1. What would it look like if Cumberland were renown as a "learning community" for all residents? (shared vision)

2. How can we collaborate to make learning a core component of our town's culture? (defining the action)

3. If our success was completely guaranteed and Cumberland became a model for townwide learning, what bold steps might we take? (creating forward movement)

We still have time to refine the questions if necessary. If you have any other ideas about these questions, please let me know. We may also choose questions to ask at the beginning and end of the world café to solicit additional input.

We reviewed the list. Members of the strategic planning team, including Karen and Rosemary, were added to the list. We decided to have the school principals on the list serve as participants instead of facilitators. When we meet again, we will determine other potential facilitators based on the number of respondents. Donna and Paul will meet with Mayor McKee soon to discuss the event and invite him to give greetings.

We decided to limit the participants to local stakeholders only, so we removed Commissioner Deborah Gist from this list. The group agreed that we would like to communicate our efforts to Ms. Gist and other State officials at some other point in time.

Lisa shared the invitations and response cards. They look great. Cindy Chabot and Donna worked on the mailing list. Most of the invitations were mailed by Friday December 4th.

Carol, Donna, and Lisa will visit the Blackstone River Theatre to help inform specific arrangements for that day. Carol is working on a materials list.

The group will meet again on Wednesday December 16th from 6:30-8:00 pm. We will review the RSVP list to date and plan our work based on the number of responses. We may need people to make phone calls ect. We also need to determine our parting messages to the group on January 9th. How will we communicate with them following the meeting? What are the opportunities for involvement? ect..

Respectfully Submitted:

Rosemary Reilly-Chammat