ISD 318 commissioned unTapped, LLC to facilitate a community engagement process that would inform the strategic planning process. The community engagement work began in September 2021 and concluded in April 2022. The main objectives of the engagement process were:

1. to ensure students, faculty and the broader communities served by the district were intentionally
2. engaged in providing input for the strategic planning process;
3. to better understand community expectations about the educational experiences of students;
4. to better appreciate the actual experiences of area students, both past and present;
5. to learn ways the district could provide the most meaningful educational experiences while improving relationships with families and communities it serves.

A variety of techniques were employed in the community engagement process, including focus groups, ideation sessions, one-on-one interviews and online surveys. Stakeholder groups included ISD 318 faculty and administrators; students in 8th-12th grades; graduates of Grand Rapids and Bigfork schools from the past ten years; Black, Indigenous and People of Color community members; leaders and managers from for-profit, non-profit and public sector organizations; parents of children
in the ISD 318 schools; and people living in the school district’s service area without any current connections or involvement with the schools. Participants were promised that their responses would be presented anonymously and aggregated with other feedback.

This ISD 318 Community Engagement Report is a compendium of the input from the various stakeholder groups. The feedback has been summarized by stakeholder groups and contextualized by themes that emerged across those groups.