Case Study: Selah School District achieves authentic community engagement to inform school start-time decisions with ThoughtExchange

The challenge of changing school start times

Selah School District, in Washington, is committed to innovation in education and had planned to move high school start times later after American Academy of Pediatrics research showed benefits for senior students. Confident the evidence would carry the community, the Board scheduled a September 2015 change but met unexpected pushback as stakeholders raised concerns about impacts on family time, work schedules and whether later starts really served student success.

Rather than push the change through, the District ran a Thoughtexchange in spring 2015—739 participants contributed 1,666 thoughts and cast 25,060 stars—revealing a nearly even split of strong opinions and many practical concerns. The Board paused implementation, used the authentic engagement findings to inform next steps, and strengthened community trust; the process uncovered solvable problems and laid a more durable foundation for future innovation.

Selah School District