Consultant Sarah Griffiths leads a meeting at Gridley Middle School. The event brought together parents, teachers and other community members to talk about education.

Dean Knuth / Arizona Daily Star

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Parents, teachers and others at an East Side forum chose more money for schools, more community involvement and school safety as their top priorities for making Pima County public schools better.

About 50 people attended the forum, called the 2020 Vision Ward 2 Community Meeting, Saturday morning at Gridley Middle School, 350 S. Harrison Road.

"I think this has been great in pulling people together to understand what the common issues are and to inform them of issues they weren't really aware of," said Kathleen Scheppe, Gridley's principal.

During the more than three-hour meeting, parents, teachers and other concerned community members worked alongside school and government administrators in small groups.

Local education-advocacy group Voices for Education organized the meeting as part of the 2020 Vision Project. It launched the program in September with the goal of making sure every child in Pima County will be ready for school, work and life by the year 2020.

The group is collecting community input to gauge the current situation and create an action plan toward achieving that goal.

One way organizers are collecting information is through town hall meetings, such as the one held at Gridley, and through youth focus groups, said Robin Hiller, Voices for Education's executive director.

Organizers also plan to survey Pima County seventh- and eighth-graders, she said.

This weekend's town hall participants broke out into discussion groups on a wide range of topics. Some groups tackled broad topics such as how to pay for public schools and how to define success in education. Other groups addressed specific concerns, such as providing more activities for youth outside of school hours.

"The biggest value in this process is that it energizes people through their sharing of information," said Tucson Unified School District Superintendent Roger Pfeuffer, one of the attendees.

One table solely discussed the broad topic of TUSD. That table's leader — Lori Oien, 49 — said the district was a huge concern for her, especially its budget crunch.

TUSD's Governing Board is considering closing four elementary schools as one way to save money — a controversial move. That issue prompted East Side resident Joan Cummins, 77, to attend the community meeting.

One of the schools possibly facing closure — Wrightstown Elementary, 8950 E. Wrightstown Road — is in her neighborhood.

Cummins, who was a public school educator for 22 years, said she wants issues to be clarified — issues such as what's causing schools to turn out children who are not as well-educated as people would like or what the nation needs, she said.

"I think you need to clarify an issue before you can work on it and then possibly create actions that will help us get back in the right direction," she said.

Other attendees — such as Catalina Foothills resident Lisa Millerd, 49 — came to gather ideas.

"My hope is to take the information I learned from this and share it with our area," Millerd said. She is the president of the Family Faculty Organization at Ventana Vista Elementary School, 6085 N. Kolb Road, in the Catalina Foothills School District.