Center Grove Schools wants to know: What is it doing well, and what could be better?
School officials are sending surveys to students, parents and employees in September to ask them about safety, learning, interpersonal relationships, social media and institutional environment, according to the National School Climate Center, the organization that created the Comprehensive School Climate Inventory survey that Center Grove schools will use.
The specific survey questions are not being released.
Center Grove administrators were inspired to use the survey after a trip to a school district Littleton, Colo. last year. During the visit, those administrators studied the mental health and safety features of the schools in order to look for ways to improve at Center Grove. Students and parents in Littleton had taken the survey, and administrators were able to work on any areas, such as helping students struggling with their mental health, that needed to be addressed, said Bill Long, assistant superintendent of operations at Center Grove schools.
“In Littleton we talked to principals and teachers and decided to do a survey. For the corporation, in my experience, this is the first time we’ve surveyed all three sets of people,” Long said, referring to how the survey includes parents, students and teachers. “I think we will find out some really good things about the school and find out things that will make us a little better.”
The survey is the latest step in the Center Grove’s quest to improve based on feedback from parents, students and staff. In October, Safe Havens International conducted a safety audit of the district’s eight schools, looking at security practices and procedures and their effectiveness. Center Grove also asked parents for feedback, as 1,236 people participated in a survey about their top priorities for the district, offering 934 ideas, according to school officials.
That survey revealed parents were concerned about the mental well-being of Center Grove students and wanted a more secure school with faster communication between administrators and first responders in case of an emergency. In November, the school district will ask White River township residents to raise their property taxes by 11.5 cents for every $100 of assessed value. If voters pass the referendum, it will raise $24.8 million for Center Grove schools over the course of eight years starting in 2020, and the money will go towards improving mental health services and funding technology needed to improve school safety, such as a live video monitoring system.
Responses to the survey will help guide Center Grove administrators on what specific services they should focus on when spending that money, but the district will look at ways to fund those improvements even if the referendum doesn’t pass, Long said.
“We would use these results as a corporation regardless of that,” Long said. “We think the climate of the schools is that important that we’ll use this information.”
If school officials distribute the survey in mid-September, administrators will be able to go through the results and report to the principals by the start of the spring semester, Long said.
“We felt like this was a good time for us as we’re continuously looking at ways to make school safety better; not just physical but emotional safety,” Long said. “It fits well with the plans for school improvement and mental health.”
