The Survey SAID...

The results are finally in and now that I’ve had time to go over them I feel safe in saying there was nothing earth shattering in it. But quite a few surprises. Uniform dress being the biggest one for me. 67% somewhat or strongly agree we should consider uniform dress. That doesn’t necessarily mean uniforms. But a strict common dress code such as khaki or navy dungarees (I love that word), a BELT, shorts and skirts to the knee cap, etc…
I know, dream on. But it would solve the over revealing, walk holding your pants up look. But people would actually have to enforce the rules and there is the problem. But I like the idea anyway.
First let’s talk about what items were on the high priority list. To make this list the item had to get 65% or more of the 2 highest priority votes. A simple majority wont make my high priority list!

Keeping the public informed 76.2%
Maintaining small class sizes 68.1%
Safety and security on school grounds 85.6%
Upkeep and maintenance of buildings 71.7%
Career/ vocational education services 76.2%
College entrance guidance 84.4%
Counseling and social services 69.5%
Drug awareness and prevention 72.6%
Academic extra curricular activities 66.6%
Life skills instruction 66.5%
Quality of school libraries 74%
Quality of school lunch programs 65%
Special ed services 70%
Tutoring 69.4%
Safety of neighborhood walkers 81.2%
Safety on the busses 81.3%
Safety at pick up/ drop off 81.2%
College prep courses 89.1%
Computer literacy and technology 88.6%
General life skill courses 69.4%
Language arts 69.6%
Math 92.1%
Science 88.2%
Social studies- history civics government 82.2%
Workplace preparation courses 73%

The “how are we doing” section related to the same items above aren’t as high but I’m working on a simple to read chart to sort that all out. Now lets cover what made the strongly/ somewhat agree list. Same criteria- 65% or over:

CF buildings are safe 79.4%
CF should implement all day kindergarten 66.1%
CF should consider elementary after school programming 70.8%
CF should maintain inside open enrollment 77.9%
CF should consider uniform dress 67%
The quality of CF schools affects property values 90.7%

I’ll do the next blog on the problem areas people perceive and the least preferred/ low priority items. For now let’s focus on what people overwhelmingly want and expect from us. Here’s a few final statistics that scored the highest vote in its respective category excluding the “don’t know”:

34.3% prefer K-5, MS 6-8, HS 9-12 configuration
46.6% have no school aged children in the house
22.9% are between the ages of 40 and 49
28.4% earn between $51,000 and $75,000 annually
57.8% have lived in CF more than 20 years
76.2% say the Falls News Press is their school info source
42.5% prefer a county sales tax as a school-funding source
49.1% say we do not need new school buildings
30.1% say there is a need for district wide reconfiguration
28.8% vote for nearly all school tax issues
79.7% use the Internet at home
57.7% think bussing to state minimum should be first cut made if needed
42.4% think the pay to play fees should remain the same

That’s a lot to digest! I think you’ll find the next results I post as surprising as some of these are.