SPS Staff and Families:
I first want to take a moment to thank the families, students and staff who completed the survey. In total, we received over 11,000 responses. To that end, I also want to thank Stamford Cradle to Career for working with our district and building leadership to develop a plan to use this information to continue to improve our educational models and to support staff, students and families as we navigate education during an unprecedented health pandemic.
The goal of the survey is to review the responses shared and make actionable changes and provide support in our classrooms in-person and virtually, in our buildings, at the district level and in the community at large.
Highlights from the survey include:
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A need for continued support for elementary families during at-home learning days, since 49% indicated always having to support students, while 80% of our middle school and nearly 90% of our high school students never or only sometimes require support from an adult.
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A comfort level with the use of Google Classroom, as more than 80% of families feel comfortable using that platform.
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A need for ongoing focus on academic growth, as more than 50% of families (K12) indicated concern for their child’s academic growth this year.
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While 52% of our families believe the district has made it easier to find learning resources, we have much room for improvement and need to find additional ways to make resources easily available to all.
The staff survey notes common themes including:
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Most teachers report needing to work longer hours to prepare lessons
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Although teachers, as with families, are concerned about academic growth, most felt like progress was being made with the majority of students
It was wonderful to hear that our students feel connected to their teachers and staff both virtually and in-person, which is a true credit to our teachers, staff and families.
What is next?
Surveys are only as good as what we do with the information. Last week we met with building principals and department leaders to discuss the results. Each school now has access to their school’s individual data and will use this information to identify areas in need of improvement. Each Associate Superintendent will support the school leadership team in addressing those areas and providing necessary resources.
In addition, our Office of Family and Community Engagement (OFCE) is reviewing the survey data closely. Already, the OFCE advisory has been discussing ways to better equip our families, not only with resources on how to utilize existing SPS tools, such as the Parent Portal and Parent University, but also to identify additional avenues of support and linkages to community providers. For example, Stamford Public Education Foundation (SPEF) has recently launched the Here to Help initiative, which families can use to access support with technology, childcare and student services, among others. The district has already released a video to assist families in navigating the district website; two others and additional Parent Pop Up webinars on a variety of topics are planned for the coming weeks.
The goal is to continue to grow together as a district to meet the educational and social emotional needs of our students. System-generated reports for each of the three surveys can be found below. We stress caution when reviewing these results, as the data is raw and further analysis may show slightly different outcomes when looked at by subset, such as school or grade.
If you have any questions regarding the survey, please email [email protected] .
Sincerely,
Dr. Tamu Lucero
Superintendent of Schools