Heidi: Hi, this is Heidi Burgess. I'm with Beyond Intractability. I have two guests with me today. One is Jay Rothman, who's been a colleague and friend for many, many years. Jay is President of the ARIA group, which he created years ago. It's a creative conflict engagement firm, which does analysis and intervention in deep-rooted, usually identity-based conflicts.

One of the things that I hope that we have time to talk about today is that I think that he is a field leader in what we call the “scale-up problem”, which is the problem of taking conflict resolution strategies, which are usually done around a table with a few people, and scaling them up to community-wide conflicts, even national or international conflicts, which is, I think, one of the biggest problems in our field and Jay has been a leader in addressing that.

Also with me today is Daniela Cohen, who is an associate with the ARIA Group. She is originally from South Africa. She did a lot of work in South Africa with refugees and immigrants, and DEI, and she's also working with DEI issues with youth and adults in Canada, which is where she's located.

So, Daniela and Jay, welcome.

Jay: Thank you, Heidi.

Heidi: Can you start by telling us about the situation in Ohio that you recently intervened in that we're primarily talking about today? Tell us what was going on.

Jay: So, we're in Yellow Springs, Ohio. This is the home of Antioch College. And has a long history of being a place of inclusion and progressive politics. Also, it's been a place in which educational innovation is at its foundation, with Antioch being here for 150 years. A commitment to education is very core to the identity of this town. Also, there's a big history of inclusion, civil rights activism, and so forth.

But over the last 6 years, Yellow Springs has become deeply divided over a school-levy issue.

It's failed its levy the last two times for the first time ever in its history. Before now, Yellow Springs has always supported whatever the school district has asked it to support. But for the last 6 years, it's failed twice. And the town has become increasingly polarized around contending values.

So, the values were what we actually did an analysis around. We were brought in by the local community foundation to try to do, first of all, an analytical process of understanding what was going on that was dividing the town and the school board for so long.

And then we followed that up with a three-month intervention. The analysis was built significantly on the work that Heidi, you and Guy have been doing around developing a systems analysis for conflict, your massively parallel peacebuilding process. We used the matrix, which helped us describe what were the overlying issues and the underlying issues and then it helps you do an analysis of what's going on in the environment.

So, I used that as I did a month-long analysis, basically going to school board members, to community members, to community leaders, and saying, “why is the town so polarized? What's going on that's led us to be so antagonistic to each other around these issues and unsuccessful about reaching agreement about how to go forward?”

So, we spent a month doing that analysis and then the foundation asked me to continue to do an intervention with the school board and the community to try to build some collaborative momentum out of what had been a very stuck process.

That’s when I brought Daniela into to work with me. She came from Vancouver to Yellow Springs for three months and we took on this project of first working with the school board directly, doing coaching, being sounding boards for individual members, working with the school board staff, the board of education staff, the superintendent, the treasurer, basically trying to help get a larger perspective on what was going on, depersonalize, depolarize, and help people get a view of what's going on and what could move things forward.

This then led to lots of different interventions that we can talk about in more detail, including a World Café including some mediations, including a board retreat, and then finally a community-wide survey where we asked people to talk about which option for the future of the schools they would prefer and why they'd prefer that. And we also asked them about their larger visions for Yellow Springs as a community and its future.

And then to go right to the finale, which was only two weeks ago, the school board, which had been tremendously divided, in fact, it had been voted in, in a sense, to support the divisions in town, reached a five-to-zero consensus on a plan to go forward. And that's where our intervention wound up. And we feel very pleased and very hopeful about that.

Heidi: That's great! Daniela, do you want to add anything before I start quizzing you two about what Jay said?

Daniela: No, I think that's a great summary overall capturing it before we get into any of the specifics.

Heidi: All right. Let's go back to your beginning. Jay, what were the values that you saw primarily clashing after you did your initial value analysis?

Jay: That was very interesting. Because this was an issue around money, right? Are we going to raise $50 million? In this teeny town of 3500 people, are we going to raise $50 million or $25 million or $0 to rebuild our schools, because they are in very bad shape, objectively. So on the one hand, we had this whole economic dynamic, which was rebuild the schools versus affordability.

There's already a sense that Yellow Springs is unaffordable to be the inclusive place that it desires to be, that it aspires to be, that it has been. So now we have a quality-of-education issue, as embodied by facilities that are up to the task, which they are not. Versus an affordable town that is a very strong priority for this community’s identity. Then we also had the issue of environmental sustainability. People were saying, we should only remodel these schools because if we're going to rebuild them, not only is it going to be way more expensive, we're also going to have to fill the landfill with old buildings that we could have remodeled. We should be reusing and recycling, not building new buildings. So we had a very large movement that was saying, “we're against what might economically be the wisest, because it's maybe in the long term going to be smartest to rebuild, but ecologically, it's not smartest.”

And then we had another group that was concerned about green space. Because they were talking about moving the schools. We have two campuses in town, and they were talking about moving one campus to where the other campus is. And then that would leave a large space in the middle of town that folks were afraid was going to then be developed. So, there was a green space group that lobbied extremely strongly, not to change the footprint of our school system.

So, we had these four contending values, and people were getting very personalized about it. There was a very vitriolic Facebook page. Things really got to the level of identity-based conflict, which is the focus of my career. And here it is, in my backyard. 

Heidi: Did the conflict line up with traditional identities that we see in the United States, Republican Democrat? Or was it all Democratic? It sounds like it's mostly progressive Democrats in Yellow Springs?

Jay: Yeah, yeah. The Yellow Springs votes democratic and beyond, pretty much universally. There are probably 5 or maybe 8% of folks who might be voting Republicans. So it's a rather radically progressive town. And Yellow Springs, one of the sad jokes that I sometimes use when I'm working with progressives, is pointing out something that conservatives do. that we don't do very well, is they stand in a circle, and they shoot out. We stand in a circle, and we shoot in. So, we take each other out.

We agree on so much. When school boards are fighting over critical race theory, that's the farthest thing from what could be happening here. We'd say bring it on! Everybody would, in this town. So, we are fighting about these identities and ideals which are within a container where we mostly agree with each other. So maybe this is about minor differences, but they became very strong here.

Heidi: Does it help, do you think, that the folks mostly agreed with each other? It strikes me that it's possible that that would make it easier to come to consensus because people must have an image that before this whole issue, six years ago, they were all on the same side.

Jay; Well, Daniela, maybe you'll comment on this, but there's this notion of the narcissism of minor differences. I think that matters a lot. We expect of each other that we agree with each other. And so, like you do with family members, right? And then when you disagree with each other, it's very disappointing. And it hurts even more than when the person you expect to disagree with you disagrees with you. I mean, of course, we all believe in the environment. How could you possibly want to tear down these buildings? Of course, we need the best quality of space for our kids to learn. And move into the future. How could you not support whatever our kids need? Of course, we have to protect our green space. Yellow Springs knows that. We love the beauty of our town. How could we not support that? So, then it becomes very personal, right? Because we expect our neighbors to agree on a basic set of common commitments and values.

Daniela: I guess what I would add is that something that we saw very strongly was that everybody really cares about this issue in the town. This is deeply personal and deeply important. So, everybody is invested in this and invested in the process and the outcome. But people are looking at it from very different angles.

There was an event that was held by the village mediation project, a World Café event. And they did a very interesting exercise in that where they had the four values in kind of rectangle. And they asked people to put a dot where they  stood, where they felt the most strongly in terms of what they wanted, and they spoke about that. And then they listened to other people speak and then tried to take the perspective of somebody else, of why their value was really important to them. And after that, they had a chance to move their dot, if they'd moved at all.

And people moved! I remember being at a table and having this very interesting conversation where somebody said, “for me, because I don't have kids, the issue that was really strong in my focus was the affordability, and that's what I was thinking about, because that's what's most applicable to me. I wasn't really thinking about the other perspectives, because they don't directly apply to me. Only when I heard somebody else speaking about that, then my perspective broadened, and I went, "okay, hang on a second. There's other things going on here as well. And I now understand more why you might care so deeply about that perspective.”

So, I think it just kind of showed, like Jay is saying, all of these issues are important, but when people are very focused on their own perspective and they care so passionately about that, and it's in conflict with another perspective, it seems to be viewed as an either-or situation. We can either have that, or we can have this. Then it becomes more and more challenging for people to understand why others are so passionate about the values that they are passionate about.

Heidi: Am I correct in assuming that this World Café did that with people in small groups?

Daniela: Uh, huh, yeah.

Heidi: So, did people move their dots further towards the center?

Daniela: So, it was interesting. In some of the groups they did. Some had more movement than others. But there was definitely movement, which I thought was quite interesting. Just in that one exercise of bringing people together. And then I think one thing we would probably want to say is that, there was a group of people that came to that event, but it didn't include everybody in the town. And that's kind of where our survey came in later on—we wanted to try to get input from a wider perspective than people who were able to attend that event or who are interested in attending that event.

Heidi: That's something I should have asked earlier. How did you get people for that event? Did you just advertise it and anybody who wanted to come would come? Or did you invite people specifically?

Jay: We partnered with a village mediation program on this and basically supported them and their networks as they did outreach. As much as possible, and whenever possible, we tried to stay behind the scenes. So, they were the public-facing body that called together this World Café. And we helped them formulate and frame some of the ways to present it. But it was really theirs.

And one of the things that Daniela just spoke about, in terms of the movement of the dots. I'd say that might be a good metaphor for our whole intervention. Things were really stuck, right?

People's positions were stuck, people's feelings were stuck. There was a sense of stuckness in the town over these over 6 years. And so, our main idea, throughout the whole thing, was get things moving. Keep things moving. And as much as possible, let's get them moving forward in a constructive way. But even if there's some antagonism that surfaces, even if there's some things that go bad, let's just keep going. Don't let them get stuck. Keep the conversations going, keep the public involved and get more and more of the public involved. Not only to gather their ideas, but mostly to have them have a sense that their voice matters. Because a lot of people were getting to a sense of “a plague on all of your houses! You guys can't agree. So, we'd rather not spend all of this money on this, anyway. And if you can't agree, then, okay, we're just going to back off. We're not going to read the paper anymore. We're not going to listen to these conversations anymore. We're going to vote against it.”

So, I think we helped to get rid of that excuse. Because things are not stuck, right? Now the board is moving together. People are still uncertain. Whether it's going to pass or not, we don't know, because that's not until November. And there are still plenty of hurdles. But there is now this sense of forward momentum.

I used a systems analysis throughout the whole time. And the simple idea of the vicious cycles, in this case, of disagreement of antagonism, no violence, but verbal violence and aggression, in that sense, versus the constructive or virtuous cycle of cooperation. And that's what we really continued to focus on. and I think was embodied by the consensus at the end, that came out of an integrative solution. One in which all of these values, to some extent, were met in the agreement they came up with. It was breathtaking, how they did it. It was a little surprising. We didn't know it was going to happen until the moment that it happened.

Heidi: Explain that more. Tell us what the agreement was that they came up with.

Jay: So, what they had was ten different options. And their poor architect. He was working with them for 6 years. And option one failed, and option two failed. And then he came up with ten more options! And they tried to boil them down. They boiled them down to 8, and then they boiled them down to 6, and then finally they boiled them down to four options.

The options ranged in price from 35 million to 55 million. All of which were outrageously expensive. Had they agreed to a levy 6 years before, it would have been half as expensive, even for the most expensive option! So, time was not in their favor. And they knew that. The more they waited, the more expensive this project was going to become. And there were some threats if they didn't fulfill this project, that the school district would start failing. I’m not sure whether that would happen, but there was some of that fear. So, there's a lot of pressure on them to do something.

Heidi: What does the “district failing” mean?

Jay: It means that the state takes it over and consolidates it with a neighbor.

Heidi: Oh. That wouldn't be wanted!

Jay: And the neighbors are usually of a different political stripe than Yellow Springs. And we would still have to pay. We might not just have much voice on the school board anymore. So, this was existentially threatening for those who really thought long term about a possible next failure. So, the stakes were high, a lot of folks were very worked up about it. very frustrated by it. And they got down to four options.

Jay: The options included full remodeling, no rebuilding; to full rebuilding and no remodeling. Keeping two campuses, joining them into one campus. Adding a new pre-k school as you did some readjusting of space. And what they ended up doing was a hybrid model. And the hybrid model was they were going to rebuild the high school and middle school. And they were then going to deeply remodel the elementary school and add a pre-k to it.

They're also going to change grades. So, the middle school was going to start at fourth grade. So that people’s kids who used to be in the elementary school, would now go up to the to the new school. The price tag was significant, but it was subsidized by a lot of money from the state for new buildings that remodeled buildings would not qualify for. So, there were all sorts of log rolling that went on. There was all sorts of integrative bargaining that actually went on.

Unfortunately, people kept using the word “compromise,” and I tried to steer them away from that, saying, “I don't think you've compromised on the deepest concerns that you actually have. I think you've all got them fulfilled. Not a 100%, but in ways that are very significant.” So the environmentalists, the green space folks, the quality building folks, the economic affordability folks, all got at least some of what they wanted. That last one, that's a little bit different. But in the package that was put together, everybody's deepest concerns were at least minimally met. And I call that an integrative solution.

Heidi: Yeah. So, what happens now?

Jay: So, let me talk about that fourth one because the fourth one is still a work in progress. When people were asked why they didn't support the last levy, a number of folks said, “I may or may not be able to afford it, but I'm concerned my neighbors will not be able to afford it.” And that was a lovely sentiment of concern for a diverse community.

So, one of the ideas that came up, actually, during the World Café was a fund called “Leave No Resident Behind.” That would be a way worked out with the credit union and the community foundation that people who felt that this passing of a levy, especially the expensive levy… this was not the most expensive one that was passed, but it was pretty high up there, that it might lead them to having to leave the town.

So, the idea was to come up with a fund that could subsidize them and that is underway. It's still complicated. It's not positive if or how it will work. But there's a lot of people seeing if it can work. And I think, even that effort is meaningful, because the affordability issue is super challenging. So how can the town rally together to support people for whom it will be even more challenging than for others?

So, at this point, we finished our job with this survey. And the survey was, we got 700 people, which is about a fifth of our town, and we were pleased.

Heidi: Did you send it to everybody?

Jay: We sent it to everybody. Everybody got a postcard in the mail. We put advertisements in the newspaper. We posted them around town. We used social media. We invited community leaders to actually help us draft and redraft the survey. It was a long slog, well in a sense, it wasn’t long, it was fast, but it was demanding. We did it in about three or four weeks, I think. And we turned around the data analysis in three days.

Heidi: Wow.

Jay: Heidi, if you got a chance to look at the survey, it's online anybody can see it by going to the Yellow Springs Community Foundation website.

We had two sets of qualitative responses, which is actually one of my areas of expertise --qualitative research, action research, around people's goals and values. And so we asked them, first of all, to tell us why they chose the one of the four options that they selected. They could rank order the four that were remaining for the board to choose down to one. And we asked them to tell us which they preferred, and then rank order them, and then why.

And that was, for some people, a couple of paragraph response. 700 times a couple of paragraphs is a lot of data. And we asked them what we called a “bonus question,” which corresponds to one of my main interests besides identity conflict—future vision. How do we go from the way that we're stuck in the past into how we can cooperate in the future? So, we asked them as a bonus question about their vision for the future of Yellow Springs. And we got equally amount of very rich, interesting, heartening input.

And I told people, you should read this, because if you're disappointed in Yellow Springs, this will raise your esteem for it once again. Because people's thoughts and ideals for a beautiful future were really meaningful. And grounded.

So, we ran both of these through ChatGPT. And we asked all sorts of questions like “can you give us a summary of the three main points or the 5 main points in three pages? And bring out the passion.” And it did!

Heidi: Wow!

Jay:  So, we were able to boil down hundreds of pages of data within three days. And present it back as very consumable. And folks were very pleased. Folks said to us, “we feel like our voice was heard. It was wonderful for us to have an outlet, because we've been feeling kind of silenced.” And we got lots of grief before the research went out… lots, oh boy! That's a whole book!

But once it came out, and this was just on Friday, before the board was to make its decision on Monday. So, there's no causal assessment here saying the survey results, or our work of three months, is what led the board to this consensus. But I think there's certainly a sense that we contributed to a constructive atmosphere that supported this collaborative outcome.

And so, too, with the survey. It created a sense of constructive voice, of moving away from the diatribe to the dialog. Moving away from the polarization, to the collaboration. And I'm very pleased and proud of what all of us did. And it really was -- if we were behind the scenes, in front of the picture were dozens and dozens of people, who were working pretty nonstop to try to change the dynamics, and help build a constructive momentum.

Daniela:  I just wanted to add one really interesting thing about the survey was it gave solid data. So even in the board meeting that followed, a couple of people referred to the survey results. So, it just kind of gave this concrete, tangible, factual data that people could refer to, rather than, “he said, she said, they said” kind of what was going on. So, I think that was an important function as well, that there was some solid data from a large proportion of the community that could be referred to.

And another thing I wanted to add that I think was really interesting, is there was a question in there about if your preferred option for the facilities wasn't on the ballot, would you still vote? And 43% of people said, yes, they would. So that was also really important information, because it showed, even if I can't get exactly what I want, I still want this to go forward. I still want to participate. I still want to create a better future for my town in terms of the school facilities. And so, when people saw that, I think like Jay was saying, that kind of adds to the feeling like “okay, I'm willing to work with you. We're willing to work together. We all want what's best for the town.”

And I think we saw that when we got to the five-to-zero vote with the school board, they kind of came to, “okay, it's not going to be this, and it's not going to be this, but let's try to make it work. Let's find something that can work that we can all get behind” and they did.

Jay: One thing that is also interesting, Heidi, before they voted, is there was community input. And I think there were about ten people who spoke. And at least three or four of them said, “Just make a decision board. Just agree on something.” And I think that was a useful admonition.

Heidi: So, you said this at the beginning, and I'm trying to remember, I know that the previous two bond issues failed, but if there was a bond issue, that implies to me that the school board must have come to an agreement about what that bond issue was going to be for. So, was the school board divided before this?

Jay: So this is I think this is one of the really interesting backstories here, which is that the last one failed, and maybe it failed because there was a very large group of people who were advocating for the affordable option. The most affordable option was remodeling only. And they were doing it both for economic reasons and for environmental reasons. And two of them, representing this large voice, were elected to the board.

So, the board was divided by two to three throughout almost its whole 16 months before this period. So, they were really divided, two, against these three, and this population they were representing, was really divided too. And bringing them to 5, in which they found their way to 5 to zero, was about converging.

I was going to say, “concession and convergence,” but I don't think that's the right language. That suggests a more negotiation language that everybody's going to give up something. This was finding a way that everybody could really have what they most deeply cared about agreed upon.

Now, again, we're still in trouble when it comes to affordability. Because it's just crazy the way we fund our schools, right? But that's what we do. And we have a population that is very diverse economically. And this is going to be a stress on everybody.

So, it's not a cakewalk to say that this is going to pass. We do, however, have that sense of consensus on a board that was divided. And that makes such a big difference when they were divided on these very substantive issues. So now the folks who came saying, “look, this is the best we can do. And we accept it as good enough. And we want you to get behind it too.”

So, the folks who are representing the environmental voice and the affordability voice, I believe, will be leaders in saying “community, we have to rally behind this.” And the sense of being a divided board, that the community could dismiss, like I said before, a plague on all your houses, they can't do that. They've shown that, despite their differences and through their differences, they're working together. So that's a model of leadership that I think the community will respond to. I'm hopeful. I'm very hopeful.

Heidi:  I'm really interested in your use of chat GPT. Two questions about that. Assuming that you personally read through all of the responses to the survey, given that, did you find the Chat CPT summary credible?

Jay:  Very credible. Now, I edited it. I didn't use it as it gave it back to me. And Daniela then edited it my edits and we felt very comfortable with it in the end. But I was amazed by it. And I was baffled how I was going to share this data in three days.

The reason there was such a rush is the survey had been delayed because of some pushback we got that was very unpleasant and we had to slow down. So instead of having a week to do the analysis, we had three days. I think we were supposed to have ten days. So how I was going to give back this data to people in three days?

One of the principles of action research is you gather data from people to give it back to them. Not only to gather your evidence or prove your points or whatever you're trying to do with it. But you give people back their data, so they feel like their voice matters. And they feel like they've been heard. And I felt that Chat GPT did that.

We had 500 responses, I think, for your preferences. And I randomly took a hundred responses, and I then instructed Chat GPT. I think I gave it 6 or 7 instructions until I finally got the one that I wanted. And I learned. I have a son who knows it very well. And he said, you have to be very specific. Ask it exactly what you want. And tell it what you're looking for. So, I kept refining my questions. So, there is a little gray matter that went into working with that system. And then the editing afterwards. But yeah, so Heidi, the easy answer, quick answer to your question is, I found it very credible.

And I felt fine telling people that. I said so. I didn't even say a caveat. I said, “you should know that Chat GPT was used to come up with this analysis.” And I felt fine with it being in the data analysis that we presented under our names.

Heidi: What question did you end up with?

Jay: I wish I remembered. It was something not particularly sophisticated, but please take the data and rank order the 5 key preferences, values that are underlying the preferences, I don't remember. Daniela, do you remember?

Daniela:  Yeah, I think because we were looking for a summary of each of the comments related to each option. So, then we would take the first hundred responses for, for example, option X, so then we asked Chat GTP to summarize responses to option X according to various foci, for example, working in school groups, or pre-k, for example and summarizing this in 900 words.

Jay: 'm realizing now I can find it, because it has a record of the responses and the questions. So, Heidi, I can find it and send it to you later.

Heidi: Okay, great. And then with the link to the survey for folks who might be interested in looking at it. And I have to admit, I didn't have time to look at the survey.

Jay: I wanted to give people back a summary of their data.

Heidi: Did you give them the raw data too?

Jay: They had access to the raw data if they wanted it. They had to go into the appendix to access this. So yes, they did.

Heidi: Okay. So, what I'm hearing is that you didn't ask Chat GPT to try to develop a consensus position out of this.

Jay: Oh, no, no. no, no. Not a bit.  We asked it to summarize the key points of why people had the preferences that they had. Give it to us within three pages. And bullet pointed into 5 or 6 main themes. Something like that. It was enormously useful. I was not embarrassed to use it at first. You talked to the head of the Community Foundation, and she said, “sounds like a great use of it. Let's try it.” So yeah, we had no pushback in the end. I was interested that nobody came back and said, “what kind of research is that?”

Heidi: Yeah, right. So, you said earlier that you did a whole bunch of interventions and one of them was the World Café. And one of them was this survey. Remind me what the other ones were.

Jay: We did a retreat. And again, I don't want us to take credit for the World Café, the Village Mediation gets the credit for that. We helped them frame it. We helped them find some of the reasons for it. But it was really their doing. We did a retreat for the board.

We did a lot of sound boarding with individual board members and staff members. We were just listening to them. They were under lots of pressure. So, we took off some of the pressure sometimes. We supported people. We did some dialogues between different people. To support a little bit more perspective taking, like Daniela was saying, happened in the community. We wrote some things in the newspaper.

We interviewed lots of different groups and in that way, had people feeling, accurately, like they were being heard. What else did we do, Daniela? It's interesting. I said to Daniela, “when we finished, I wish we'd kept a log, because I can't remember what we were doing with 16 hours a day anymore, now that it's over. But we worked nonstop. It was really tough! A joke that I was saying to people when I was getting exhausted, which was a little bit of a bitter joke, was “I'd rather be back in Jerusalem sometimes.” It was very tough.

Heidi:  Haha--Where things are simple.

Jay: Haha, yeah, where things are simple!

Daniela: I think it was just kind of that general idea. Like Jay’s saying, of creating a space where people felt like they could be heard. And then creating spaces for people to be able to hear each other as well. So those different levels of then, enabled the conversation to move forward because people were able to step back from their kind of entrenched positions and hear others. And then converse from that place. So, I think that was important.

And we did see dynamic shifting as people started to hear each other, and also as people started to feel like, “oh, this person is willing to listen to me. There's some possibility to work together. We do want the same thing, even though we might be going about it in different ways, we might have different values that are pushing us towards one option, but we actually do want the same thing. So, let's get on that same page to work together towards that, even if we don't necessarily agree.

Jay: I think one thing, also, that we did when the first survey effort that we made failed, because of so much pushback, we slowed down a little bit and we reached out to a dozen heads of community organizations in town. And we said, “here's our draft survey, can you help us?” Can you refine it so that your group, your constituents, see themselves in here? We wanted to make sure we had all four different value sets as represented by these leaders, so that the folks in those community groups would be excited about answering the survey, would feel that it's fair minded. We wanted them to feel that the four options that we presented were presented in simple, but fact-based ways. So that really increased the quality of our survey and the participation.

Another thing that we did, Heidi, is we tried to have some playfulness and fun. Because everything was so heavy and so hard. So we invited all those community leaders, after we got the survey out, for a marshmallow bonfire. And actually, in some ways, it sounds silly, but we tried to do that. How can we lighten the load a little bit? How can we remember we're part of a community we want to be part of and that we actually like each other? I wish we'd done more of that.

Heidi: I'm really surprised that you got pushback on a survey. What were people pushing back against?

Jay: : You really want to know the details?

Heidi: Just in general. It's surprising to me.

Jay: Well, there was a social media group that was really going after almost everything and everyone that wasn't them. And they got ahold of an earlier version of our survey. And they blew it out of the water. Saying it had been revised and it was biased. Saying that it was inaccurate. And in fact, we had changed it already. The things that they objected to were no longer in the draft, in the version that we were going to put out. But they saw an early version and blew it up. And we had to start over. I can give you more details, but that's probably enough.

Daniela: I just wanted to add to that, because I think it speaks to just how much time and effort went into constructing something that could be seen as valuable to everybody involved. And I think the underlying purpose of our effort was to be able to do that, to step back and to go, “okay, how can we present something in language that isn't biased?” That is only presenting the facts. That everybody will be able to take in and respond to.

Whereas, each group was very passionate about their own position, so that wouldn't be possible for them to do that. So, it was a very concerted effort at every stage. Even right before sending it out, we read it again. Asking ourselves whether it was as unbiased as it can be? Were we treating everything equally?  Have we given equal consideration to every option? Are they similar length? We did a very, very detailed analysis of what is the language that's going out. How is it being presented? Just a lot of caring consideration with that. So, I think it just speaks to the complexity of something that could appear to be very simple. You're sending out a survey. But actually, everything that went into that survey was so, so, carefully considered. And I think that made what we got back far more valuable.

Jay:  I don't use the word “unbiased,” but I do think it was multi-partial. That we had everybody's values at heart and expressed that. And this is a good example of where problems and context became opportunities. Once we had to stop the first survey, which was being constructed with the advice of really high-level survey experts. They needed to withdraw and we had to start again ourselves. I’ve done a lot of surveys. But this had a lot of complexity to it. But, because it was messed up by the folks who were resisting what we thought was a constructive contribution to building a different environment, we then got to make it even better.

We hadn't had the dozen community leaders helping us construct it the first time around. We hadn't had them helping us reach out to get people to fill it out. So, this was a good example of where resistance actually led to a creative way forward.

Heidi: And probably a stronger result.

Jay: Much stronger, I think.

Daniela:  And I think it just kind of emphasized the purpose that we wanted, which was really to get as much input as possible.  And have the community feel like they were participating. They were being heard. And that the board could take their input and really use it to make a decision and take the widest input that we could get for them. Which hadn't been collected in that way until then. So, I think that was important.

There is one thing I just wanted to add because I think this is important for people who don't have the context. We are talking about the time pressure involved in terms of the board making the decision, being able to put it on the ballot. I think there's also that piece around the students and the teachers in the schools right now and the schools and the condition that they're in. We're not talking about it being nice to have to have upgrades.

We heard in one board meeting, when there were a lot of teachers giving input, that students were dealing with things like very extreme temperatures, super hot one day and freezing cold the other day, bats coming into the classrooms, a teacher talking about safety concerns because classrooms were being used as labs, and then not having time to clean before the next class. So students were sitting on seats that had just been used for experiments.

I think this is important to emphasize because it emphasizes the urgency of the situation. And that people are dealing with these conditions every day. And the longer this gets put off, the more urgent things become. It's not an environment where education can thrive. So, I just wanted to mention that because I think that's really important just to kind of understand the actual urgency of this issue.

Jay: So, I want to just counterbalance that a little bit. Daniela and I had some conversations about this, and she has become very passionate about these issues, which objectively are problematic. But subjectively, people have different interpretations about the situation. So, the folks who say, “yeah, it could be better. And we could do that through remodeling,” wouldn't be moved by Daniela, or even the teachers’ advocacy that the conditions are not okay. They'd say, “okay, but that doesn't suggest that we have to have gold standard.”

Yes, Daniela and I got passionate about things. I'm from Yellow Springs. I care about this place deeply. I want to stay here forever. It's dangerous to do this kind of intervention in my own backyard. And so yes, we have our own biases, our own preferences, our own passions, and we got very much engaged in this story, and we had to be aware that even with our own preferences and biases, there are different perspectives in the town that we have to keep our detachment from.

And mostly we did that by staying out of the public eye. Until the survey, no one really knew we were doing anything. And even since the survey, that's the only thing people think that we did. I think it's actually the least part of what we did. It's the most empirical part of what we did, You can see it in the results, which are tangible. But the least noticeable, I think, was the most important.

And that was about helping to build a different kind of a dynamic in which different views and different attitudes are all seen as internally valid and meaningful and that any kind of attributional analysis about those evil others has no place in this village. 

Daniela: I just wanted to add about what I said about the schools, I don't think it's a matter of coming up with the idea that option one or option two or option three or option four is better, but more the idea of that it's really essential that something happens.

And I think that's what we saw in the survey, as well from the School Board meetings that people did come to. We realized we need to get to some action. Whatever that action is, we need to make a decision and we need to move something forward. The reason why I mentioned the condition of the schools is because as we take more and more time, things are only getting worse and worse. And, as Jay mentioned, from the levy failing 6 years ago, things are also getting more and more expensive.

So, we can't actually afford, by any means, to delay this decision, to continue to put this off. And that's what I think was critical about mentioning that there is urgency on many different levels to move things forward.

Heidi:  So, what happens now?

Jay: So, the board has to have one more consensus agreement in July, they have to make one more agreement about the bond issue. And it has to be at least a four to one. So one board member can defect if they want to, but if two defect, it does not get put on the ballot in November. I don't think that's going to happen. I think that they are – but, I don't really know.

Actually, I'm not following it very closely anymore. I'm actually trying to detach myself now. A person was just complaining to me about the agreement the other day, and I and I listened politely and thanked them and left. I want to go back to being a resident. So, I don't really know.

But in July, the board is going to decide whether to put it on the ballot. I believe that they will. Then there will be a campaign. I assume it's already starting. There will be a campaign to try to convince friends and neighbors to support the levy.  And I think there will be a lot of work done on trying to come up with ways that this fund can be meaningful and useful for people, the Leave No Resident Behind Fund. I hope.

And I'm sure there will still be disagreement. But my prediction and in November, we'll be able to tell how foolhardy this prediction is, is that it will pass with flying colors in the fall.

Heidi: Well, I will for sure come back to you and find out! So, I want to honor your time and I'm saying we only have about 5 minutes left. What lessons would you draw from this that you think other conflict transformers, resolvers, engagement folks could use in other communities that maybe don't have school issues, but are deeply divided on other issues? What are the lessons that came out of this that are more widely applicable?

Jay: Wonderful question. I wish I thought a lot about this before you asked it, because it deserves a very careful response.

But let me try and maybe come back to it and, Daniela, I’m eager to hear your response too. So, the first one, I'd say, is it's a systems problem. It has to be addressed at a systems level. And that partly means intrapersonal, people's feelings and their hopes and their hurts on an individual level; relational, people's relationships with each other are really core; groups, the different stakeholder groups, and the different interest groups, and the different identity groups. And then structurally, in terms of how our organizations are run and led. All of these factors have to be considered.

And that's where your framework was really helpful for me. And that's where having a month of research before I began the intervention was so important. Because I had all sorts of ideas when I was interviewing people, and I said, uncharacteristically, “I have nothing to suggest. I'm not going to let myself suggest anything. I'm only going to sit back and try to get an analysis.”

So being able to be a relatively pure researcher for a month was really helpful. And I wasn't sure that I was going to ask to go forward afterwards. This was not a bait-and-switch. I didn’t think “I'm going to research and then I'm going to get you to fund me to do a project.” I didn't really want to do this project. I was nervous about doing a project at home. But as I did it, and as I understood what was going on, and as I felt like I was quite equipped for it, I also realized I needed help. And so we went to Daniela for that help.

The notion of a systems analysis that came from your framework, as well as the work that I've done, and the systems intervention where we would really keep working at every level simultaneously, the intrapersonal, the interpersonal, the group, the structural, the organizational, and try to compose something that would address the constraints and the resistances and build the momentum to have movement in a forward direction.

I also think keeping out of keeping out of the public eye was a useful thing. Not only because this is my home, but also because it enabled us to assure people that our conversations were going to be private, that they weren't going to be in the media, that they weren't going to be publicized. But these were quiet explorations to try to rebuild a kind of a civil society that had somewhat been lost.

Also, I think my frame of identity-based conflict was useful. It looked like this was an issue of resources and, surely, in many ways it was. But underlying the resource issue of how much a levy would be and what kind of building we'd build, were people’s sense of hopes and hurts. And their own respective sense of identities and values. And that we prioritized all of those.

So, I think those are some pretty essential core issues.

And then finally, the survey, which was an opportunity for people to have voice, and for us to consolidate that voice as a constructive input to help the board move forward. So, the research and practice really supported each other.

Heidi: Great! Daniela, do you want to add anything?

Daniela: I would agree with everything Jay said. I think the systems approach, it was critical. Working at all those levels at the same time. And I think, just kind of reiterating what I'd said before, about along the way, creating different kinds of forums for people to express what was important to them, what really matters to them, as well as to be able to hear each other. And doing that in different ways throughout the process. Whether it's one on one with the person themselves, whether it's two people together, whether it's smaller groups, bigger groups, all of those things, I think, are critical.

And then like Jay was saying, getting to the values, right? Making the values explicit. What is it that people really care about here? I think that makes it easier for people to see each other's perspective and to understand what's at stake. So, I think that's an important piece. And then I think, also, that idea of the World Café. It was a great opportunity for people who were there. But then we were left going, “well, who's not here?”

And I think just for communities that are doing this kind of process, to think about whose voice isn't being heard, who is not at the table, and how do we bring those people into this process? I think that's a really important piece. And I think that's what we tried to do with the survey. And I think that made a really big difference. And the other piece, I think, is just persistence. The idea that people can be so polarized and so divided and through the systemic approach and in an ongoing way over a sustained period of time, people can come together and find that integrative solution, that it is possible. I think that's a really important piece as well.

Heidi: Well, this is really been great, and I have a much better understanding now of what the situation is and what you guys did. And I'm very hopeful to hear how this develops over time. I'd like to invite both of you to think more about that last question about lessons for other people, as Jay said that he wanted more time. I'd love to do a second conversation at some point.

And I'm thinking in the back of my head, Jay, all along about how this seems similar, and different, to what you did years ago in Cincinnati with the police situation. I would be interested in hearing some of your musings about that. And I'm sure there's other things that you've done between those two that would be interesting to talk about. So if you're willing to do a second chapter of this, we'd certainly be interested.

Jay: I'd like that very much. And Heidi, I want to say again, thank you to you and Guy, because truly your framework was what enabled me to come in with a researcher's lens. That framed, I think, this whole project. So thank you for your work.

Heidi: Well, thank you very much. I'm glad that you found it useful. And thanks for taking the time to do this.  And I'll get back to you about doing a second round and then we definitely want to talk after the election in November and find out what happened!

Jay: : That's great. Wonderful. This is great.

Heidi: Thank you very much to both of you.

Daniela: Thank you so much. So nice to meet you too.