The St. Charles Parish School Board is considering hiring the services of a New Orleans based pollster to conduct a series of school and community surveys that feedback from would be used in shaping the goals of the school system. Allen Rosenzweig, who coordinates and conducts feedback-driven management systems based out of New Orleans, presented his plan to a special committee meeting of the board June 4.
“Our philosophy is ‘bottom up’,” Rosenzweig said.
“Students assess teachers. Teachers assess principals. Principals and school leaders assess administration.
“And that’s done twice within the same school year so that when you get your October survey you can make plans in the next survey which is done in late March and address specific problems. You can use it on the fly.”
Rosenzweig has conducted the surveys since 1979 when working with political circles in New Orleans.
He started similar surveys within the hospital system after working on the Landrieu campaign and now hospitals are required to conduct the survey to be eligible for accreditation, Rosenzweig said.
School board president Sonny Savoie happened upon Rosenzweig’s efforts through a chance meeting with the pollster’s wife at a Barnes and Nobles bookstore. Rosenzweig got in touch with Savoie after that to discuss the possibility of conducting the surveys in the near future.
Board member John Smith explained why the survey would benefit the school system by
allowing more feedback from the community.
“The data gathered from the surveys would be used by the board for decision making purposes,’ Smith said. “It would give the board an idea of what parents think and see to be the problems in the districts, what our students see to be the problems and what our teachers see to be the problems.”
The initial community survey would cost $40,000 and each survey would be $25,000. The school board conducts surveys currently through the National Study of School Evaluation, but that simply isn’t enough to truly address the feelings of the community as a whole, Rosenzweig said.
“NSSE is conducted every three years; this is done every six to nine months. The community survey would be once a year,” Rosenzweig said. “This is a system that has worked well in health care, has worked well in other fields and foundations and neighborhood planning and education is just rife and it’s so easy to retrieve the data and give such usable reports.”
Rosenzweig suggested that before any surveys would be conducted that the school board should have a focus session to determine what questions would be most prevalent for their school system and the changes they would like to implement.
Savoie stands behind the idea of conducting additional surveys saying it will not only help make clarify what direction they and future school board members need to lead the school system in , but it’s a great public relations tool.
“It’s valuable what the public thinks of us and our school system,” Savoie said. “It’s just like a business we run here folks.”
The board meets again on July 2.
Be the first to comment