Issue link: https://newsleader.uberflip.com/i/88739
'TELEPHONE TOWN HALL' More than 4,000 Sarasota County parents participated in a Telephone Town Hall last week with rep- resentatives of the Sarasota County Schools. iStock photo REACHING 4,368 HOUSEHOLDS, A SCHOOL BOARD PHONE POLL SHOWED 78 PERCENT OF PEOPLE SATISFIED WITH THEIR CHILDREN'S EDUCATION By Scott Proffitt Staff Writer So you are feeling pretty smug because you have learned how to conference call on your smartphone? Think you could handle a con- ference call with 4,368 people? That is exactly what happened last week, when Caroline Zucker, Lori White and Scott Lempe — the Sarasota County School Board chairwoman, the su- perintendent and the school district's chief operating officer, re- spectively — decided to call a few people: 28,347 people, to be exact. That is the number of households in Sarasota County with children in the district's schools. community. I've been working on this for about a year. It was a great way to reach the Sarasota County School Board Caroline Zucker Chairwoman Of those 28,347, more than 4,000 accepted the offer to participate. For district officials, that level of response was a clear indication that while attendance at School Board meet- ings might be light, parents do care very much about their chil- dren's experiences in school.