School district calls parents

MAT-SU -- Parents who have always wanted to give the Mat-Su Borough School District a piece of their minds but don't have time to attend school board meetings might have the chance to voice their opinions without leaving home this month.

The school district has hired Anchorage-based Ivan Moore Research to conduct a telephone poll of parents in November. Initially, the focus of the questions was going to be school uniforms, but the surveys have since been expanded to include general questions about the community's confidence in the school district as well.

"We are hoping everyone will willingly participate because this is important information for our district to have," said district information specialist Kim Floyd. "It will give us a good chance to create a benchmark so we can start tracking our community's perceptions … It's a way for us to get our finger on the pulse of the community."

The idea of the survey grew out of school board member Linda Menard's interest in school uniforms, something she has advocated for throughout her tenure on the board. The district has asked schools to volunteer for a pilot school uniform program, but no one has stepped forward yet.

"So there is this question out there of whether there is any interest or not," Floyd said. "The most credible way to find out is to do a survey."

Floyd emphasized that the district does not want to lead parents to believe there is going to be a mandate for school uniforms but instead wants to open the discussion by asking if any families are interested.

With parents on the line, willing to answer questions, school district officials decided it would be a good opportunity to find out how they feel about other issues as well.

Floyd said the Mat-Su Agency Partnership recently provided a report in which, among other issues, people identified a need to regain confidence in the Mat-Su Borough School District through stability in leadership, effective communication and participation in community planning efforts.

"We're building on this needs assessment by surveying the confidence in district leadership, in local schools, in school safety," Floyd said. She said the district is continuing to develop the specific questions to be used in the survey.

This is the first survey of this kind the district has conducted, and Floyd said it might prove to be a helpful tool that could be used on an annual basis.

In the past, the district has attempted to get parental feedback through surveys sent to all families via the schools. These surveys are self-selective, however, with only those parents who have the time and interest responding. In other cases, parents say they never see the surveys, either because the child forgot to bring it home or the school did not send them.

With these take-home surveys, Floyd said the district is lucky to get a 10-percent response and it is not statistically sound information.

The telephone poll, on the other hand, is designed to provide a more accurate sampling. Floyd said it is also a unique chance for parents to express their views while remaining anonymous and not having to speak at a public school board meeting.

Not all parents should expect a phone call next month, however. The poll is a random sampling of more than 375 parents of the roughly 14,000 students in the district. The survey is expected to cost the district between $3,000 and $4,000, with the results expected sometime in December.