Overview

Thank you to the 1,040 people that responded to the NL-S Community Survey. As a board, we are taking a deep look at these results, and I wanted to share a few takeaways. There is relatively little appetite for increasing funding through a levy at this time. Analysis of the comments (which we should have next week) and future conversations with the community will help us to better reflect the desires of our community to balance the desire to provide high-quality education with the costs required to do that. There are also some clear patterns separating the views of staff, parents, and non-parent residents. It appears that those that are not directly connected to the school are the most unhappy with it, and the least likely to support increasing funding for the school. It is also clear that most respondents oppose most of the proposed budget cuts, though nearly everyone supports at least a few of the cuts. If another round of cuts are necessary, most individuals would like the board to consider cuts, but they are likely to be unhappy with at least one of the cuts that are considered. This survey will be incredibly valuable as we balance competing funding interests going forward.

Data notes

For each question, I have split the responses into four groups. Individuals were placed in the first group that they qualified for (so a non-resident parent is listed as non-resident but a non-resident staff is listed as staff).

This survey substantially over-represents staff members and parents, and both groups have a different perspective on the school from the rest of the residents. It is important, therefore, to evaluate those responses separately. If we want to know how the community as a whole feels about a question, we would have to weight the various groups based on the fraction of the community that they represent (instead of the fraction of the respondents that they represent).

Note that you can right-click each image and click “open in new tab” to view a larger version.

Simple Questions

We can start by looking at the base results from the survey. Here, we are just looking at the broad patterns. Later, the “cross-tabs” dig a little deeper into these results.

What do people want cut?

Respondents were asked if the district should consider each of 11 potential budget adjustments. For each, they were able to answer “Yes,” “No Opinion,” or “No.” For completeness, I included respondents that did not respond to a particular question as “No opinion.”

Here is a table showing the full questions that were asked, along with the shortened versions that I will show on the plots throughout.

Abbrev Question
Inc. Class Size Class Size: Typical class sizes range from 20 to 26 students. Occasionally, some classes are larger or smaller depending on enrollment.

Should the District increase class sizes to reduce costs?

Dec. Security School Security: The District currently budgets for a School Resource Officer as well as updates to the security systems on an annual basis.

Should the District decrease the school security budget to reduce costs?

Cut AP Advanced Placement (AP)/College to School Courses: Another option to save money is to reduce elective course offerings and the ability for students to earn college credits while in high school.

Should the District decrease high school AP/College to School offerings to reduce costs?

Cut CTE Career and Technical Education Courses: The District currently offers a wide range of courses to prepare students for the skilled trades (manufacturing, construction etc.).

Should the District decrease technical education course offerings to reduce costs?

Inc. Fees Athletic/Activity Fees: The District is raising athletic and activity fees for middle and high school students next year by approximately $20.

Should the District consider implementing even higher fees for student participation?

Cut Activities Athletic/Activity Offerings: Another option to save money is to eliminate athletic programs or consolidate with neighboring districts.

Should the District eliminate or consolidate athletic/activity offerings to reduce costs?

Cut Support Support Staff: Social workers, administrative assistants, paraprofessionals, maintenance, housekeeping and custodians all play a critical role in helping our school function efficiently and allow us to best meet the needs of students.

Should the District reduce support staff to reduce costs?

Reduce Transportation Transportation: The District could reduce/eliminate bus routes, increasing ride time for some riders to more than one hour each way to save money.

Should the District reduce/eliminate bussing services to reduce costs?

Dec. PD Staff Development: Teacher training ensures staff remain current on content and best teaching practices.

Should the District reduce the staff development budget to reduce costs?

Freeze Salaries Maintaining Staff: New London-Spicer would like to remain competitive to retain our quality staff.

Should wage increases be reduced or frozen to save money?

Dec. Tech. Technology: Our technology plan’s goal is to increase student access to technology to enhance student learning. The Plan calls for maintaining the server infrastructure and wireless access as well as replacing computers that have exceeded their useful life.

Should student and staff access to technology be reduced to save money?

Here are the results:

The only item that has broad support is the increase in athletic and activity fees. The board has approved increases for next year, but it appears that there is general support for this option going forward as well. There is also some support for reducing our transportation spending and for reducing spending on professional development. Neither has high support, but both are similarly acceptable to all groups and at a moderate level. No group is even remotely interested in cutting Career and Technical Education offerings.

For every other proposed cut, there is a clear pattern: staff are most opposed to cuts and non-parent residents are the most supportive of them with parents falling in between. This make intuitive sense: those that are most directly connected to the education system at the school are the most protective of it. The pattern is most clear in consideration of class sizes, with nearly every staff member opposed to increasing class sizes while 38% of non-parent residents say we should consider it.

What do people think of us overall?

Respondents were asked:

Overall, how satisfied are you with the New London-Spicer School District?

As above, I included the non-responses in the “No opinion” category for completeness. Throughout this report, this question will be referred to as “Overall Satisfaction.”

As with funding priorities, those most closely affiliated with the school rate their satisfaction highest. It will be interesting to evaluate the comments to see why 13 residents (3.2%) that are not directly affiliated with the school are very unsatisfied with the district. Still, well over 50% of respondents in each category are satisfied (or very satisfied) with the district overall

What do people think of us specifically?

Respondents were also asked to rate how well the district is doing in 10 areas. As above, here is the map of abbreviated and full questions:

Abbrev Question
Diverse Environ Creating an environment that fosters diversity and acceptance of all students
Collab Creating opportunities for collaboration between school staff, parents and the community.
High quality Education Delivering a high-quality educational experience
Tech Integrating technology into classroom learning
Communication Keeping the public informed
Facilities Maintaining District facilities
Curriculum Providing a challenging and relevant curriculum
Safety Providing a safe, supportive and respectful environment
Comm. Input Providing opportunities for community input
Staff Retaining high-quality and motivated staff

The results:

The same pattern emerges again, with the clear increase in rating as individuals are closer to the education system at the school.

We can clean this up a little by combining across the groups. The patterns should be representative, but the calculated percentages are not representative of the community as a whole (because parents and staff are over-represented).

It appears that the ratings are relatively consistent across categories. Facilities ranks a bit higher (perhaps due to the recent additions) and education quality is rated a bit higher than others.

What funding do people support?

In addition, the survey asked what level of levy respondents would support. Here, I left out those who answered “Not sure” or left the question blank as there is no clear, intermediate value to assign them to. Those that said they “would only support a smaller levy” are listed here as supporting a $0.25 million levy, just to make the plots easy to read. These conventions are used throughout.

Our typical pattern holds. Staff support the largest levy (with over 50% supporting at least a $1.5 million levy), followed by parents (with over 50% supporting at least a $1 million levy), and then by residents (50% were willing to support at least a levy smaller than any proposed on this survey).

A modest weighting probably puts overall support over 50% for a levy somewhere between $750k and $1 million, though there is a substantial portion of the non-parent residents that would not consider supporting any levy at all (36% of all non-parent resident respondents and 43% of the ones that specified a level of support).

How do these measures interact?

The answers to most questions are correlated with each other. Here, we can see those relationships expressed as the correlation coefficient (rho) using a non-parametric method (Spearman’s) that simply looks at the rank order of the answers. The orders are from worse for the school (low rating, supporting a cut, supporting a smaller levy) to better (higher rating, opposing a cut, supporting a larger levy).

The ratings are most clearly related to each other (more on that below), but it is also clear that the various funding adjustments/cuts are viewed similarly by users – there are no cases where support for one cut indicates that a respondent is more likely to be opposed to a different cut (e.g., opposing cutting CTE courses does not mean that respondents are more likely to support cutting AP courses). There is also a clear relationship between tax tolerance (the level of levy support expressed) with both ratings and funding priorities.

The simplest conclusion above is that satisfaction is general. That is, satisfaction with the district overall substantially explains all of the other ratings given. We can see this by looking at the rating distribution for each category broken down by overall satisfaction:

Those that are very unsatisfied with the district overall see very few bright spots, while those that are very satisfied overall seem to think that the district is doing quite well in each sub-area.

This is not just driven by the non-parent residents responding differently from the other groups either. If we limit the analysis to just non-parent residents, we see the same pattern – perhaps more starkly.

It is also clear that overall satisfaction is related to support for various cuts, as we can see here:

The patterns are clear, though they remain paradoxical to me. Perhaps I am viewing things fundamentally differently from these individuals, but it seems like each of these cuts would make the school worse – which would decrease satisfaction further. I hope that the comments will help us tease out what these respondents find dissatisfying about the district and explain this apparent paradox.

Again, we can show that the pattern persists when looking at just the non-parent residents

We can highlight this seeming paradox most clearly by looking explicitly at the rating for how the district is doing in providing a high-quality education against whether or not we should consider cutting class sizes. Here, I am plotting the results only for non-parent residents.

I also want to point out that people that oppose funding want more cuts. This shows that they are willing to cut some spending in order to avoid the need to increase funding using a levy.

At least half of those that said they would not support any levy support each of the cuts that were included on the survey. Every other group opposed at least some of the cuts.

As before, this pattern is still present when analyzing only non-parent residents.

Unsurprisingly, this also translates to the number of cuts supported by each respondent.

There are some individuals that oppose all of the proposed cuts but still do not support any levy and some individuals who would support the maximum proposed levy but still believe we should consider several cuts. Only 15% said no to all of the cuts and less than 2% said yes to all of the cuts. So, if another round of cuts comes, nearly everyone will want the board to cut something but will also be opposed to at least some of the particular things that are cut.

Limited to non-parent residents:

Satisfied people also support more funding, on the whole.

This again raises the question of what respondents are dissatisfied with, though most appear confident that improved funding will not address their concerns. Hopefully the comments on the survey, and the further conversations they prompt, will help us better understand their concerns and how to address them (and better communicate the things that we are doing).

Limited to non-parent residents:

I also want to mention a clear impact of age:

Some of this has to do with the over-representation of staff and parents (who also skew younger), but the pattern is not completely broken when analyzing non-parent residents:

There is an increase again after 65, though that may reflect grandparents who would likely have similar views as parents (and may be similarly over-represented).

Conclusions

This survey has provided the district with a substantial amount of information. There is still a lot to understand from these results, but it is wonderful to hear from so many in our community. There are a lot of positives here, but there are also clearly some areas that can be improved. Thank you again to everyone that completed the survey, and I look forward to hearing more feedback as we continue to move forward.