On November 19th, the School Perceptions survey results were revealed during Hastings’ regular school board
meeting. Daren Sievers, School Perceptions project manager, presented the survey results. The survey was optional for staff, parents, and students. ISD 200 administrators encouraged all three groups to participate in the survey. Daren Sievers shared with KDWA what it means to obtain the raw data from the School Perceptions Survey.
Sievers says, “I think it does two things. I think the reason you got through this exercise is you’re doing two things; you’re always trying to get better. Education is a field, a profession, about continuous improvement. The kids are never smart enough; we’re trying to get them smarter every day. Within the spirit of that continuous improvement, the school board team, the superintendent, and the district leadership team are trying to get better every year. And so that they asked us to come in and gauge satisfaction amongst staff, students, and parents on how they’re doing right now. And within that you want to know what your strengths are and what’s going well, but what are areas that are not meeting Hastings standards that we really want to target for improvement.”
Now that the results are in, what are the next steps?
Sievers looks ahead, “The school board now—what we’ll do is drill down and look for more targeted reactions to the data. We’re going to try to understand with more depth why some of those scores are so strong so we can protect and maintain those areas of strength. As I know from this board, because they are very passionate about getting better, they will probably spend the majority of their time on the scores that are unacceptable in their eyes. To look for an understanding of why they (the results) are what they are.”
On December 3rd, there will be an administration workshop to comb further into the School Perceptions survey results.
(Full Sievers’ interview)
KDWA reached out to ISD 200 Superintendent Dr. Wehrkamp Herman.
Clear communication seemed to be a top-valued result in the School Perception survey. KDWA asked if clear communication is a core value for ISD 200. Dr. Wehrkamp Herman said this.
“Absolutely. We want to make sure that people have the information that they need to make good decisions to help and be able to support us and for us to support them. So that communication has to go back and forth, right? A two-way street. I think this survey is one way of getting that input but then also helping us to know, because it does ask specifically about communication, it helps us to know if we are getting our message out there to everyone. Are we missing families? Are we communicating the information they are looking for? Are we missing some things? So we just take that feedback as an opportunity to see where we can improve.”
(Full Superintendent Dr. Wehrkamp Herman interview)