Survey says ...

More information may be necessary before the Luverne School Board decides whether or not the district will continue starting school two weeks before Labor Day.
At the Thursday, Aug. 28, School Board meeting, Superintendent Craig Oftedahl voiced his concern about the online survey results intended to bring feedback to the board.
“Personally, I am not very comfortable with the survey because I wasn’t here for it,” he said. “The duplicates and just pencil and paper (tally of results) is not the best,” he said.
Luverne is in its sixth year as a member of the Flexible Learning Year (FLY) Consortium. The 2015-16 school year marks the end of the second three-year plan. The board has until early 2016 to make a formal decision.
There are 22 schools in southwest Minnesota participating in the state’s FLY program, which allows schools to deviate from the regular school calendar and start classes before Labor Day.
The local FLY schedule gives students an extra 10 days of instruction before completing the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs).
According to the agreement with the state, a community survey is necessary for reapplication for another three years.
 
Community survey one step for FLY reapplication
In April, one of the district’s committees developed a 28-question survey for teachers, students, parents and community members to complete online. Eight out of the 22 FLY schools used the same survey.
A link to the survey for Luverne was placed on the district’s website, and the public was directed to complete it.
The committee used the free, cloud-based survey questionnaire software through Survey Monkey to develop and launch the local survey.
However, problems with the survey began early when it did not load onto the district website properly. After the reload, early survey takers were asked to take the survey again.
 
Board member questioned survey prior to relaunch
At its April 9 board meeting, a day prior to the survey’s relaunch, board member Reva Sehr, who was elected to the board in January, questioned the use of a rating scale to gauge agreement or disagreement on various questions, some of which were redundant.
“I do feel this is a biased survey,” Sehr said.
She noted eight questions skewed readers to vote for continuing with the FLY schedule, and only three questions were slanted toward a post-Labor Day start.
“I am on the fence on which way to go for the calendar year,” she said. “I can see both sides.”
Sehr said she developed a shortened version of the committee’s survey that answers the root question: Would you like to continue with the FLY learning calendar or the traditional learning calendar.
The board, however, decided to go forward with the original, lengthier version.
“The survey is ready to go,” said board member Colleen Deutsch.
The committee developed the survey questions with input/direction from the board. Along with the questions, the committee thought it was important to include possible impacts to their opinions.
The survey garnered 800 online responses.
 
Problems continue after survey’s relaunch
As results from the survey were being tallied, committee members and administrators discovered several surveys contained similar or exact answers, possibility submitted by the same person.
At their June 25 meeting, board members requested the duplicate surveys (about 160) be tallied separately.
However, attempts to have the computer tally the results wasn’t working and Oftedahl, who began with the district on July 1, recently counted the results by hand after the surveys were printed to paper.
“I just tried to do my best,” he said.
Oftedahl determined 36 surveys that could have been completed by the same person. Those surveys were removed from the final tabulation.
Of the 764 surveys, Oftedahl focused on three of the 28 survey questions. (See results graphic.)
Board members indicated they might need more input from the public before they make a formal decision to stay or abandon the FLY schedule.
“There is an opportunity at parent-teacher conferences to do something to conduct the survey again,” Oftedahl said.
Results from the previous survey would be thrown out, he added.
Consensus from board members was to keep the survey simple — a yes or no vote — if they decide to redo the survey.
Board members agreed to make a decision in November at the completion of conferences.
 
Eight schools have decided to drop FLY participation
Of the 22 schools in southwest Minnesota using the FLY calendar, eight school boards have decided to walk away from the collaborative program.
Besides an early school start, FLY members participated in joint professional development days with the focus on increasing student MCA scores. Schools pooled their dollars to arrange for world-class professional development speakers and activities.
After five years, however, no significant score increases have developed in schools that begin classes before Labor Day compared with those who don’t.
Oftedahl said eight school boards have indicated their districts will no longer participate in the FLY consortium. These schools are Hills-Beaver Creek, Edgerton, Worthington, Round-Lake Brewster, Comfrey, Jackson County Central, Mountain Lake and Marshall.
School boards voting to continue FLY participation are Windom, Westbrook-Walnut Grove, Redwood Area, Springfield and Sleepy Eye.
Luverne joins Adrian, Hendricks, Ivanhoe, Lakeview, Lynd, Minneota and Russell-Tyler-Ruthton as districts that have not made a decision.
“We are still a part of the group,” Oftedahl said. “If the board decides at some point to go out, we’re out. If the school district decides we want to stay in, we’ll stay in.”