A virtual meeting Saturday will be the second in a series of ongoing community conversations aimed at generating ideas for potential use of kitchen and cafeteria space within the Manhattan High East Campus.
The facilitated conversations are being led by the Kansas State University Institute for Civic Discourse and Democracy (ICDD). An in-person discussion was held Tuesday, the first in the series of four discussions, with close to 30 residents participating. Institute Director Dr. Tim Shaffer says Saturday’s conversation will be similar, but in a virtual format, ahead of more in-depth conversations planned for February.
“Saturday will be basically a mirror, a replica here of what we did on Tuesday. The discussions in February, we’re going to synthesize the input, the feedback and use it as a deep dive to see what would this actually look like,” he said.
A presentation of results from the conversations to the USD 383 school board is expected from ICDD in March. Shaffer says ideally they’d like to get feedback from a good cross section of citizens, young and old.
“If you’re a parent with a child in the district, if you’re an alum or whatever it might be, or maybe someone in the community, this is multi-generational, there are no parameters,” he said.
Some discussions for possible use have centered around a possible community kitchen space that could be utilized by nonprofit agency Common Table.
Saturday’s discussion will be held from 10 a.m. to noon via Zoom. To register, visit k-state.edu/icdd.
The community conversations are being made possible thanks to a Pathways to a Healthy Kansas Implementation Grant from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas.
