Listening First: From Student and Community Voice to Meaningful Action

A Unified Boards Alliance (UBA) prerecorded webinar with guest Chris McNutt of The Human Restoration Project. Schools collect more data than ever, yet numbers alone cannot fully explain how students and community members experience learning or why certain patterns emerge. This webinar explores why meaningful listening matters and what an authentic process looks like, from holding empathy-centered conversations to identifying key themes. It examines how qualitative "thick data" complements traditional measures by adding context, stories, values and perspectives often missing from dashboards and surveys. Participants are introduced to Polaris Education, a human-first platform designed to help schools understand conversations at scale and create a timely feedback loop between communities and decision-makers.