District seeks input with online surveys

• District 518

District 518

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• Adminstrator/Director/Coordinator Evaluation form
• Parent/Community Survey on School Relations and Safety
• Spanish: Parent Survey on School Relations and Safety

Parents, teachers to evaluate those in leadership positions

WORTHINGTON — Community surveys are online for the first time this spring, a measure administrators in District 518 hope will provide guidance in improving both individual performance and district-community relations.

“It’s just part of working on continuous improvement for the school district, and individually it’s for those that serve primary leadership roles,” explained Superintendent John Landgaard. “They’ll be used to help develop individual growth plans.”

One survey allows parents, teachers and other community members to evaluate 16 individuals in the district, principals and assistant principals among them, on the basis of communication, effectiveness, leadership and performance on general responsibilities.

The district has encouraged those who take the survey to evaluate staff with whom they’ve had “past working relationships or experience” during the 2009-2010 academic year.

The survey will be available online until April 23 and will also be distributed via the district’s Shoutpoint Campus Messenger system. Landgaard said the survey is self-explanatory and should take fewer than 15 minutes to complete, though actual duration will depend on the number of staff survey takers chose to evaluate.

“We want people to actually provide quality input. … We want the level-headed approach,” he emphasized.

While the district completed a paper-based survey of its employees three years ago, Landgaard said this is the first time community members have been surveyed on a wider scale.

A second survey, also available on the district’s Web site until late April, addresses school relations and safety. The two topics are among seven correlates of the Effective Schools movement, which contends all students can learn and be motivated to do so if they attend class in a safe and orderly environment and in a district with positive home-school relations.

“We felt those (two correlates) pertained most to what people would want to give us feedback on,” explained Tammy Timko, the district’s coordinator of teaching and learning, adding surveys on the other correlates may be forthcoming and are already under way for district staff.

The data gathered from the survey will be analyzed and used to pinpoint necessary adjustments.

“That information will be put out to different committees within the school system to look at and make decisions with,” Timko said. In addition to being available to the school board’s six subcommittees, the data should be made public by fall.

That survey is also available in Spanish, and Timko said input from the Hispanic community is encouraged and needed to make the results more comprehensive and valid.

The survey evaluating individual performance is available on the district’s home page at www.isd518.net (click on Administrator- Director-Coordinator- Evaluation Survey) or at www.surveymonkey.com/s/ PBKV773. The school relations and safety survey may be accessed by clicking on the “Parents” link on the district’s Web site. Both surveys are open to the public.

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