Community Outreach

Constituent Group Meetings – Round 1

Staring in October and continuing through January 3, staff of the Solutions Group conducted approximately 20 constituent group meetings – informal conversations to brief stakeholders on the work Solutions Group members are doing and to solicit suggestions and thoughts about issues that need to be addressed and solutions that ought to be considered. These meetings began with a brief overview of the Solutions Group’s organization and mission, but the real purpose was to listen to what others had to say about how Ohio can better meet the early learning needs of young children.

The two documents below summarize the thoughts and ideas of the nearly 400 people who participated in these meetings. Not all of the comments are consistent, which reflects the diversity of opinions on a number of early learning issues.

Summary of Constituent Group Meetings
January 9, 2006

Top Ten Things We Heard During Our
Constituent Group Meetings
January 20, 2006

Constituent Group Meetings – Round 2

A second round of "listening" exercises was launched on April 17 with a series of constituent group meetings in six communities that have already established early learning collaboratives. In partnership with Build Ohio, we conducted sessions in the following counties: Athens, Cuyahoga, Franklin, Hamilton, Lucas and Stark. In mid-April, we distributed an issue of OnLine News that contained "13 Big Ideas" generated by the system design work groups. We also posted these big ideas on our Web site and encouraged people to tell us what they thought about them.

Approximately 400 people participated in the six facilitated conversations and we received written comments – from both initiatives – from approximately 160 individuals. The document below summarizes what we heard through these "listening" sessions and activities.

Tell Us What You Think!
May 23, 2006

Communications Plan

Communications and Outreach Strategy