Manchester Proud Civic Group Moves Forward with Plan for City’s Schools
When Manchester Proud first developed a strategic plan to improve the city’s schools nearly three years ago, organizers were optimistic it would be welcomed by administrators and city residents and then put into action. At a community meeting this past winter, that hope was overwhelmingly confirmed. On Feb. 20, the city’s school board voted 12-1 to accept, “with gratitude,” Manchester Proud’s recommendations, a road map designed to guide educators for the next decade. “I truly believe it was a milestone night for the city of Manchester and our schools,” says Manchester Proud Coordinator Barry Brensinger. “We had a nearly
packed house at Memorial High School and received the overwhelming support of the board, and I believe that’s attributable to two things: One is that from the outset, Manchester Proud was determined to make this a community initiative, a community movement, and we had extraordinary community engagement and involvement in the process.” The group, a community-based, collaborative movement was initially formed in late 2017. Part of the initial motivation to create Manchester Proud came from a need to keep the city’s recent momentum moving forward. Thriving cultural, recreation, nonprofit, health care and entertainment sectors had grown, and the idea was to keep
the city’s schools on pace. The group worked to create a vision and to develop a five-year plan for the district based on community input. “If you added all the 400 meetings up with the polls and interviews and listening sessions and community forums, we had 10,000 people participate in the process that led up to the evening of Feb. 20,” Brensinger says. “We had extraordinary community engagement coupled with the great work of our community planning group.” Thriving cultural, recreation, nonprofit, health care and entertainment sectors had grown, but the business sector had begun to feel some resistance when it came to hiring — potential candidates
54 MANCHESTER MAGAZINE www.manchester-chamber.org
