As the largest school board in Western Canada and second largest employer in Calgary, the Calgary Board of Education (CBE) has a large and diverse stakeholder community with more than 14,000 employees and 125,000 students. Additionally, as a publicly-funded organization, all Calgarians and Albertans have an interest in the decisions the CBE makes.
In 2016, the CBE launched the Dialogue Framework, the CBE’s approach to community engagement. Since its introduction, the Dialogue Framework has been the foundation for a number of engagements including transportation, math, impacted schools, Science and Mandarin program expansions, high schools and a number school-specific engagements.
The framework includes a commitment to enhance the consistency of community engagement across the CBE, including all schools and service units that support student learning and ongoing operations. The work to support consistency across the system has included leadership development sessions related to community and employee engagement, creating engagement toolkits and other resources. It has also included partnering with Civil Space in 2019 to implement a system-wide online engagement experience—a platform that provides an intuitive authoring experience for a high volume of editors, and supports diverse voices, needs, and functions.