The St. James Board of Education heard from its superintendent on Oct. 21 that while data is still coming in from the Culture and Climate Survey, parents are using the school app.

The school district’s Climate and Culture Parent Survey was open from Oct. 1 until Oct. 15. The two-week survey asked the parents of St. James students to give feedback on topics ranging from demographic info and opinions on classroom environment and student learning to their thoughts on the effectiveness of school-to-parent communication.

St. James R-1 School District Superintendent Tim Webster said that he was presenting the board with initial findings from the recently closed survey, but that a more comprehensive set of data would be presented at next month’s meeting.

“We just closed the survey at the end of last week, so we wanted to get the information out in front of you guys,” Webster told the board. “We have not had the opportunity to sit down and say ‘all right, this is where the data is at.’”

Local educational agencies like St. James R-1 School District are required under the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s Missouri School Improvement Plan to conduct surveys every two years of students, staff and parents to obtain information and feedback from stakeholders. Results from the biannual surveys are used by both the school district and DESE to measure school performance and potential problem areas.

According to Webster, the number of responses for the survey was lower than the school’s last round of surveys two years ago. Around 200 parents completed the last survey, with 130 parents completing this year’s survey.

“Seems low, but it really was a pretty good turnout. 130 honestly does seem okay though. It’s tough to get people to come to things, and it’s tough to get people to fill stuff out,” Webster said.

When asked in the survey where they get their information from the school, 76 percent of parents, the majority, said they receive school information through the Rooms app, a two-way communication app that St. James R-1 School District uses to communicate with parents and guardians. An estimated 68 percent of parents also said they receive school-related information from social media.

Webster said that, since it was implemented last year, the school district has tried to be intentional about using the Rooms app as a place to aggregate school-related information and communication.

In the last survey, “people said they preferred text messages” as a primary form of communication, said Webster. “It’s hard to expect our staff to send people text messages, so we needed to do something to try and change that. So we really made a conscious effort to try and keep our district app relevant.”

The results, Webster said, have really made a difference. Adding the Rooms app as a secure, text-based method of communication with parents has allowed the school district to create a communication portal where parents can also find information about other events and opportunities going on at the school.

“If (the Rooms app) is where they know we’re going to communicate with them, then they might look at the app and accidentally see something else that’s going on. So that was a little bit of a strategy we had,” Webster said.

When asked if they believe educator teams work on creating positive classroom environments for learning, 41.5 percent of parents agreed, and 34.6 percent of parents strongly agreed.

Parents’ responses when asked if their child’s learning is a high priority at the school were also mostly positive. 36.2 percent of parents agreed and 37.7 percent of parents strongly agreed.

In the survey, parents also ranked school safety positively, with 32.3 percent of parents agreeing that the school provides a safe environment for their child to learn, and 42.3 percent strongly agreeing. A majority of parents also said they believe that the school positively impacts their child’s academic growth and learning.

Webster said that he was pleased with the positive feedback from the survey.

“I think those were pretty powerful results from the people that did take it. We’ve got a lot of people that think this is a positive environment for their kids,” Webster said. “Their learning is a high priority, which is what we would hope everybody would say.”

The survey also revealed areas of potential weakness for the school district to address.

In the survey, parents expressed a desire to see more positive communication from the school district about their child.

When asked if they regularly receive feedback from school staff on how well their child is learning, 18.5 percent of parents strongly disagreed, 13.8 percent disagreed, and 33.8 percent neither agreed or disagreed.

Parents were also asked if they receive positive phone calls or messages about their child from school. 17.7 percent of parents strongly disagreed or disagreed. A quarter of all responses neither agreed nor disagreed. 16.9 percent and 22.3 percent of parents agreed and strongly agreed respectively.

The survey results indicate that parents feel strongly positive about the school environment, but are more mixed on the quality of communication about their child’s learning–a gap that Webster said the school district will work to address.

“One of the biggest gaps we saw that we know we’re going to try and address is positive information about the kids. That’s one of the lower areas we got,” Webster said, adding that while negative student behavior is addressed regularly, positive student behavior can often go unrecognized.

Webster said that his office would put together a plan to improve positive communication about students, which would likely be presented to the board during the November meeting.

Board of Education Vice President Wes Gahr agreed that doing more to communicate positive student outcomes with parents would be a benefit.

“Everybody loves a pat on the back,” Gahr said. “I think we’re in a day and time where everybody expresses the bad. If we were just saying ‘hey, your kid did great’ every once in a while, it would probably go a really long way.”

he St. James Board of Education heard from its superintendent on Oct. 21 that while data is still coming in from the Culture and Climate Survey, parents are using the school app.

The school district’s Climate and Culture Parent Survey was open from Oct. 1 until Oct. 15. The two-week survey asked the parents of St. James students to give feedback on topics ranging from demographic info and opinions on classroom environment and student learning to their thoughts on the effectiveness of school-to-parent communication.

St. James R-1 School District Superintendent Tim Webster said that he was presenting the board with initial findings from the recently closed survey, but that a more comprehensive set of data would be presented at next month’s meeting.

“We just closed the survey at the end of last week, so we wanted to get the information out in front of you guys,” Webster told the board. “We have not had the opportunity to sit down and say ‘all right, this is where the data is at.’”

Local educational agencies like St. James R-1 School District are required under the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s Missouri School Improvement Plan to conduct surveys every two years of students, staff and parents to obtain information and feedback from stakeholders. Results from the biannual surveys are used by both the school district and DESE to measure school performance and potential problem areas.

According to Webster, the number of responses for the survey was lower than the school’s last round of surveys two years ago. Around 200 parents completed the last survey, with 130 parents completing this year’s survey.

“Seems low, but it really was a pretty good turnout. 130 honestly does seem okay though. It’s tough to get people to come to things, and it’s tough to get people to fill stuff out,” Webster said.

When asked in the survey where they get their information from the school, 76 percent of parents, the majority, said they receive school information through the Rooms app, a two-way communication app that St. James R-1 School District uses to communicate with parents and guardians. An estimated 68 percent of parents also said they receive school-related information from social media.

Webster said that, since it was implemented last year, the school district has tried to be intentional about using the Rooms app as a place to aggregate school-related information and communication.

In the last survey, “people said they preferred text messages” as a primary form of communication, said Webster. “It’s hard to expect our staff to send people text messages, so we needed to do something to try and change that. So we really made a conscious effort to try and keep our district app relevant.”

The results, Webster said, have really made a difference. Adding the Rooms app as a secure, text-based method of communication with parents has allowed the school district to create a communication portal where parents can also find information about other events and opportunities going on at the school.

“If (the Rooms app) is where they know we’re going to communicate with them, then they might look at the app and accidentally see something else that’s going on. So that was a little bit of a strategy we had,” Webster said.

When asked if they believe educator teams work on creating positive classroom environments for learning, 41.5 percent of parents agreed, and 34.6 percent of parents strongly agreed.

Parents’ responses when asked if their child’s learning is a high priority at the school were also mostly positive. 36.2 percent of parents agreed and 37.7 percent of parents strongly agreed.

In the survey, parents also ranked school safety positively, with 32.3 percent of parents agreeing that the school provides a safe environment for their child to learn, and 42.3 percent strongly agreeing. A majority of parents also said they believe that the school positively impacts their child’s academic growth and learning.

Webster said that he was pleased with the positive feedback from the survey.

“I think those were pretty powerful results from the people that did take it. We’ve got a lot of people that think this is a positive environment for their kids,” Webster said. “Their learning is a high priority, which is what we would hope everybody would say.”

The survey also revealed areas of potential weakness for the school district to address.

In the survey, parents expressed a desire to see more positive communication from the school district about their child.

When asked if they regularly receive feedback from school staff on how well their child is learning, 18.5 percent of parents strongly disagreed, 13.8 percent disagreed, and 33.8 percent neither agreed or disagreed.

Parents were also asked if they receive positive phone calls or messages about their child from school. 17.7 percent of parents strongly disagreed or disagreed. A quarter of all responses neither agreed nor disagreed. 16.9 percent and 22.3 percent of parents agreed and strongly agreed respectively.

The survey results indicate that parents feel strongly positive about the school environment, but are more mixed on the quality of communication about their child’s learning–a gap that Webster said  the school district will work to address.

“One of the biggest gaps we saw that we know we’re going to try and address is positive information about the kids. That’s one of the lower areas we got,” Webster said, adding that while negative student behavior is addressed regularly, positive student behavior can often go unrecognized.

Webster said that his office would put together a plan to improve positive communication about students, which would likely be presented to the board during the November meeting.

Board of Education Vice President Wes Gahr agreed that doing more to communicate positive student outcomes with parents would be a benefit.

“Everybody loves a pat on the back,” Gahr said. “I think we’re in a day and time where everybody expresses the bad. If we were just saying ‘hey, your kid did great’ every once in a while, it would probably go a really long way.”