More than 99,000 “stars” have been assigned during Central Kitsap School District’s “Thoughtexchange” community feedback program.

Thoughtexchange is an online process the district is using to collect public input to help guide the school board’s long-range planning.

Using the process, people submitted their thoughts via a district web page and then later voted on their own ideas or voted for ideas submitted by other people by allocating seven stars to the submissions they liked best.

District spokesman David Beil said thousands of people have taken part in Thoughtexchange — that’s much higher participation than the district gets with other methods.

“As you know, if we hold public meetings we typically get about 30 people who engage. If we have online surveys on a typical topic we’ll see 300-400 people engage with us that way.”

But by the end of October, Beil said 2,500 people had engaged with the district for phase one of the process, sharing 8,900 thoughts and opinions.

Beil said in phase two — where participants assign their seven stars to the thoughts they like best — about 3,800 people have assigned around 99,000 stars. Each participant can assign seven stars on several different pages.

The second phase is over for now so the public cannot add more thoughts. The website is at http://centralkitsap.thoughtexchange.com/invitation.

In the third and final phase, the district will share what it has learned from the program.