Glen Ellyn District 41 debates when to do survey

What's missing behind decision-making in Glen Ellyn Elementary District 41 is anonymous feedback from teachers, two frequent dissenters on the school board say.

Superintendent Paul Gordon meets with educators in their schools, but board members Stephanie Clark and Kurt Buchholz say they worry teachers won't speak their minds because of concerns about job security and fears that critics will be labeled as resistant to change.

"Who's going to tell their boss, 'I think the decisions we made stink?'" Buchholz asked. "They're never going to do it."

Gordon, however, said he has had "frank conversations" with the district's employees on it successes and challenges when he and Assistant Superintendent Karen Carlson meet with them two to three times a year.

Nevertheless, the district has plans for two anonymous surveys in the works.

This fall, for the first time in Gordon's tenure, the district will poll its staff on what he calls the district's "culture and climate."

A second survey, run by School Perceptions, will ask teachers, parents and students in fourth through eighth grades to rate the district's programs on an online form in English or Spanish.

The timing of the second one has stirred debate among school board members, who have asked Clark and Buchholz to put together a plan by their Sept. 14 meeting to look at how and who the district surveys in the years ahead.

School Perceptions was scheduled to conduct the survey in October, 18 months after the firm did the last one. That time frame was chosen to let new curriculum and other initiatives take root in the classroom, Gordon said.

"It allows the programs to be implemented within the schools, so people have a good understanding of what the program is and how it impacts students' learning," he said. Though board President Erica Nelson said she would welcome adding some questions to the 2014 version, "the whole idea was to have longitudinal data" that allows the district to see trends over time.

"My understanding and my desire is to create a base of data, a baseline of data, and the way to do that is to have continuity of survey," Nelson said.

But Clark and Buchholz say the survey should be done again in the early spring, the same time as the previous one. That way, "the teachers have had almost all the school year to see how things are going," Clark said.

They also say taxpayers, teachers and parents should grade the district annually, rather than every 18 months.

"If you're using it just as an overall pulse of the community, then I could see doing it every 18 months," Clark said. "But if it's being used as a tool for evaluation, I don't see how it's effective if it's not done at the same time."

Clark and Buchholz want the survey expanded to evaluate, by grade level, an initiative that has teachers specializing in certain disciplines, instead of teaching multiple subjects during the school day. The two allies were seated in May and have raised questions about whether the district is revamping its instruction too quickly.

"Instead of stepping back and saying let's slow down, we just keep piling more and more on," Clark said at a board meeting last week.

The district paid School Perceptions $8,900 to do the last survey. It should cost much less this time to replicate, district spokeswoman Erika Krehbiel said.

The results were presented in April 2014 and showed 1,016 respondents were parents; 311 were staff members and 1,819 were students.

Forty percent of staff said the district should maintain the current practice of teachers specializing in subjects; 28 percent said it's too early to tell; 9 percent voted to return to the old way; and 23 percent answered, "I'm not sure."

The district also surveyed teachers on multi-age classrooms, where fourth- and fifth-graders are grouped together by learning needs.

Just 19 percent voted to extend that approach to second and third grades for literacy/social studies in the following year; 14 percent supported the current practice without expanding to the younger grades; 24 percent said "it's too early to tell"; 14 percent favored returning to traditional classrooms grouped by grade level, not age; and 29 percent said, "I'm not sure."