When Dr. Vannasdall discovered ThoughtExchange, he saw the solution to his problem.

He partnered with ThoughtExchange to reach out to his community with an online exchange that let people confidentially share, in their own words, what the district was doing well and where it could improve. People could see thoughts shared by others and rate them by assigning stars—at any time convenient for them.

“ThoughtExchange saved us a tremendous amount of time because we were able to reach everyone in the same process. Normally it would take months to get input from all of our stakeholder groups. To be able to run one process, and get that amount of feedback from parents, community members, the business community and students is very important to us,” Dr. Vannasdall says.

Arcadia’s exchange also yielded the highest number of staff responses that the District had ever received. Dr. Vannasdall believes that was because ThoughtExchange offered an alternative to “the one-way, very-directional surveys,” that had been used in the past.

“People invested time in answering our surveys, but they weren’t ever really sure if their input was being heard or what was being done with it. ThoughtExchange solved that. Everyone can actually see that their responses were acknowledged and understand how others felt about them. That really resonated with people.”

The LCAP also mandated Arcadia with holding a number of in-person meetings with various community groups. Dr. Vannasdall and his team used their ThoughtExchange results to make those meetings more productive.

“Having the data as a starting point really started the conversation at a deeper level. Normally, it would have taken three meetings to get to that point. It didn’t take away from the in-person process, it only enhanced it, and saved time and resources,” he explains.

“We started from a place where we already agreed on what the problems were and had a wealth of information to draw from when it came to discussing solutions. It was pretty life changing for us.”

By leveraging ThoughtExchange’s ability to surface district-wide and site-specific priorities, Arcadia’s leadership team was able to be more granular and responsive in their approach to the LCAP.

“You begin to see this alignment where all the arrows are pointing in the same direction,” Dr. Vannasdall says. “The district themes helped us tremendously as a leadership team, and each principal was able to break down their site results, and sit down with their leadership team, to make some really solid decisions on how to spend their site money based on their site LCAP.”

Along with more effective resource allocation and decision-making, Dr. Vannasdall notes that ThoughtExchange has helped him be transparent with his community and involve more people by letting them know they’ve been heard.

“People really felt valued and validated, and liked the ThoughtExchange format. We are continuing to use it annually for our LCAP, and the community is growing with us in that,” he says. “We are continuing now to see not only more people participating, but people investing more in what they are sharing with us.”