Most parents happy with Mat-Su schools

MAT-SU -- As of last month, most Mat-Su families were apparently satisfied with local schools and teachers, but fewer were confident in district leadership or the information it was giving to the public.

At the end of November, Anchorage-based Ivan Moore Research conducted a random telephone poll of more than 250 families of Mat-Su students. The school district commissioned the survey at a cost of about $3,000 and received the final report earlier this month.

District officials say they want to use the poll results as a benchmark to begin monitoring public perception of Mat-Su schools.

"It's a way for us to get our finger on the pulse of the community," said Kim Floyd, public information specialist with the district.

The vast majority -- about 76 percent -- of families questioned said they felt either very positive or somewhat positive about the Mat-Su school district. About 5 percent said they had neutral feelings, while less than 20 percent reported somewhat or very negative feelings.

About 89 percent of those polled said they had a lot or moderate confidence in their children's teachers, and about the same number said they were confident in their children's schools.

At the same time, 62 percent said they had a lot or some confidence in school district leadership while 26 percent said they had not much or none and about 12 percent were unsure.

Among the more common reasons listed for a lack of confidence in the district were too much politics in the district, a general inadequacy, ineffectiveness in administration, teachers who do not respond to students and inefficient busing routes.

One of the district's weaker areas was communication, according to the survey. When asked if the school district does a good job of getting information to families, about 75 percent agreed either strongly or mildly, while about 25 percent were neutral or disagreed.

When asked, in a separate question, to rank their confidence in district communication to the pubic, about 60 percent had a lot or moderate confidence, while 37 percent had not much or none.

What remains unknown is how recent controversy in the district might have affected these sentiments. In the past weeks since the survey was conducted, the school district has announced it is more than $3 million in the red, has closed new enrollments at its correspondence school and has laid off 48 classified employees.

But none of this had happened at the end of November when the telephone poll was conducted.

Ivan Moore Research interviewed 267 people in the course of its survey, and the survey's margin of error is plus or minus 6 percent at 95 percent confidence, meaning it is 95 percent sure the results differ from the entire population by no more than 6 percent in either direction.

The survey also includes the age and gender of the people surveyed, how many children they have in school, marital status and general area of residence, such as Palmer or Wasilla. The survey results were not, however, broken down into individual schools.