Our Progress Report recounts our first 13 months
It is fair to say that Manchester Proud’s work over the course of these 13 months has been an extraordinary mix of challenging, deeply meaningful, exhausting, and awesome fun — much as we all would hope it would be.
Manchester Proud Progress Report May ’18-Jun ’19
This progress report shows how we’ve delivered on our promise to make Manchester Proud a community effort. Dozens of community leaders have devoted nearly 10,000 hours of work to understanding what the Manchester community wants in its future schools and thinking about how to get there. For example:
- One group is exploring how the city, school district, and local non-profits could coordinate their resources to help students and families.
- Another group of local financial leaders is studying the local and state funding of schools for creative opportunities.
- Our new Community Planning Group, which now includes Superintendent Dr. John Goldhardt, is thinking about new ideas that respond to what we heard during our community engagement sessions and learned from researching the Manchester School District. We intentionally made this group representative of the city by including parents, students, educators, and school and community leaders.
- Our fundraising group has exceeded its goal with $790,015 collected in donations as of this report. Manchester Proud is funded only by private donations.
- A new committee has formed to bring diverse communities into the conversation.
The report also explains how a series of unanticipated events – including an unresolved state budget and the departure of the former superintendent – have contributed to our need to shift our timeline. We will present our plan to the Board of School Committee no later than the first quarter of 2020 rather than the fall of 2019.
Please join us and become a Champion for Manchester schools. Email us at outreach@manchesterproud.org to learn more and stay up to date on our work.