Research St Paul Public Schools and see what data is available

[stpaultim]

(NOTE: We could try this with any local school district to start with. I'm just suggesting Saint Paul, because it's the district I know best. If anyone else would prefer to start with another district, that works.)

Let's research and/or gather the following data:

1) Do the Saint Paul Public Schools have an official policy on scheduling outside events in school buildings and does that policy have effect on all schools, or do individual schools have specific rules/regulations?

IF THE PUBLIC CAN RESERVE SCHOOL ROOMS:

2) Is there a database of all schools with basic information? 3) If there are specific rules or procedures that differ from school to school, is there any single source where we can get the policies/procedures for all schools.

[stpaultim]

I started a discussion on E-Democracy.Org to start getting some input on this:

http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/stpaul-issues/messages/topic/pXEEvuJ9pNq6HhGWHsieS

Was pointed to this resource:

http://businessoffice.spps.org/permits

It seems like the rules and conditions are relatively strict and will prohibit most groups for using schools for their meetings (I guess I'm not surprised). Which makes we wonder if we should list schools - OR how we should list schools?

I'm thinking that we should add a category for venues that require special permission or permits and put schools under that. Maybe they don't show up by default in listings, but users have the option of including them?

[boskybay]

Hmm.

Who are the primary potential users? Are they:

• event organizers for small nonprofit groups (e.g., nonprofit organizations, Meetup groups, activist committees, and so on)
• people looking for pop-up co-working space for small, low-budget working groups of whatever sort?

It is possible that event organizers might sometimes organize events large enough to require something like a school building, with multiple breakout rooms, a cafeteria, a gym, and/or an auditorium.

So, yeah, either a special category for venues that require special permission or permits; or possibly when you get to that size of a venue, they're all going to require something extra to reserve (a contract, deposits, a timeline of payments, insurance requirements, membership--e.g., YWCA?, student status--community colleges?; whatever). So maybe the size categories for room capacity will divide these out, naturally, anyway.

Re: natural breakpoints for the dropdown For example, we could set the default for "6-10 people", but offer 2-5 (fewer than two, and it's not a meeting, right?), 11-20, 21-35, 36-50, 51-99, and 100+ ...or however the natural breakpoints occur, when we look at the accommodations that are available out there.

Another attribute: lead time for reserving This could be an estimate, but could save people trouble if they could screen for it. Some will need to be reserved months in advance. Others you cannot reserve further out than a certain amount of time.

Kathy

Kathy Ahlers (763) 789-7143

On Mon, Mar 14, 2016 at 1:00 PM, stpaultim notifications@github.com wrote:

I started a discussion on E-Democracy.Org to start getting some input on this:

http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/stpaul-issues/messages/topic/pXEEvuJ9pNq6HhGWHsieS

Was pointed to this resource:

http://businessoffice.spps.org/permits

It seems like the rules and conditions are relatively strict and will prohibit most groups for using schools for their meetings (I guess I'm not surprised). Which makes we wonder if we should list schools - OR how we should list schools?

I'm thinking that we should add a category for venues that require special permission or permits and put schools under that. Maybe they don't show up by default in listings, but users have the option of including them?

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/stpaultim/twin-cities-meeting-space/issues/8#issuecomment-196443776 .

[stpaultim]

I've been thinking about this. One of the positive outcomes of this project, could be a useable database of all metro area schools, libraries, and rec centers. NOT every school, library, or rec center will have a meeting room - and we can tag locations that do NOT have a meeting room, to exclude them from any displays.

But, having them all in the database, could make the entire project more interesting to other organizations and agencies - and give them an incentive to participate.

[stpaultim]

I think that we've agreed to go ahead and try adding all "public" schools in the Twin Cities Metro area, even if they don't all have meeting rooms. We'll figure out how to flag those that we know have meetings spaces and filter out locations without meeting spaces.