How teachers view Glen Ellyn Dist. 41

Most Glen Ellyn Elementary District 41 employees feel engaged and take pride in their work, according to newly released results from an anonymous survey.

But they felt less strongly about the recognition they receive and the relationships they have with district administrators, the responses show.

District administrators released the results - providing a picture of how teachers perceive their workplace - to the school board Monday night, two months after they completed the survey.

Board member Kurt Buchholz has said the data should have been made public when administrators first got the results, but Superintendent Paul Gordon defended the timeline.

"From my perspective, our staff needs to hear about this prior to the community," he said. "This was an internal assessment of culture and climate within our district."

Principals and assistant principals in the district's five schools were given a "template and a model" to help staff members interpret the results last month, Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources Laurie Campbell said. Since that time, they have been developing plans in each school to bolster certain areas and sustain others.

Those ideas are still in the draft phase and should be wrapped up in the next few weeks, Gordon said.

Overall, Gordon said he was "very pleased" with the results of the first survey of its kind during his tenure but sees room for improvement.

Of the 407 employees who received the survey via email in mid-October, roughly 84 percent participated - a "phenomenal" response for a baseline year, said Nicole Degner of HUMANeX, a district-hired firm that polls educators and businesses.

"There was a thirst to have this conversation," board member Patrick Escalante said.

Teachers and administrators were asked to rate their role, supervisors, team and the district by ranking 88 statements on a 1 to 5 scale, from strongly disagree to strongly agree.

In between, a score of 3 would signal that "we met expectations, but maybe we weren't consistent in our daily activities," Denger said.

The statements that got the lowest scores - averaging within the neutral range - were:

• 18.2 percent of survey responders strongly agreed they had received meaningful recognition in the past 10 days

• 17.9 strongly agreed they were provided personal coaching from their supervisor/administrator.

• 21.4 percent strongly agreed that in the past three months their supervisor/administrator had discussed their success and progress with them.

On the flip side, the statements that got the highest marks were:

• 71.6 percent strongly agreed they are fully engaged in their work.

• 65.4 percent strongly agreed they feel pride in their work.

• 64.5 percent strongly agreed they are committed to the success of the district.

"I'm glad we've done this, but I think we need as a district to seriously be looking at these results," board member Stephanie Clark said.

"My big concern is that our things that we can be celebrating are very specific to the teachers. They take pride in their work. They have a friend at work. And the areas where they're dissatisfied is what we're doing as an administration and as a district," Clark said.

Board members Drew Ellis requested data that shows how the district compares to top-performing schools in the state and nationally. Deerfield School District 109 is one such example, Denger said.

In the fifth year of doing the survey after implementing a plan to improve results in that district, 87.5 of its employees were considered actively engaged and highly satisfied. That means there's a low risk of turnover in teachers who are "ambassadors of the district" and buy-in to its vision, Denger said.

"It's the person who can't wait to get to work," she said.

In District 41, 65.69 percent of those who completed the survey fit into that category.

"We can spin this however we want to, but the fact of the matter is we're not at 87 percent, and I hope that we move into that direction," said Buchholz, who also asked for an "apple-to-apple" comparison with other districts and complained that there wasn't room for comments in the survey for teachers to clarify their responses.

Two more surveys are in the works.

The second will ask teachers, parents and students in fourth through eighth grades to evaluate the district's programs in late January and will include a comment section.

The third will poll district residents, likely in late April or early May.