Staff Survey Reveals Dixon Unified School District Falls Short of its Goals

A recent survey taken by staff reveals that the district is not reaching its goal of “restoring staff and public confidence in the District through communication with all stakeholders.”

DUSD Assistant Superintendent Brian Dolan and Tech Coordinator Kat BeeBee administered the survey to staff members from all facets within the district – from teachers to administrators and everyone in between. One hundred ninety five people took to the survey, out of 309 survey invites that were sent, making for a 63 percent participation rate. Last week, Dolan revealed the results to the DUSD School Board during its May 19 meeting.

“I think with the number of participants we have more reliable data here,” Dolan told the board.

Last year, a similar survey was given out to staff and received a 35 percent participation rate. This recent survey was done electronically through Surveymonkey.com and was given anonymously.

The survey asked respondents to rate the DUSD Governing Board, Superintendent Roger Halberg, district-level administration and site administrators on four areas including communication, knowledge, vision and overall leadership.

According to Dolan, the goal was to achieve 50 percent satisfication rate for the board, superintendent, and district and site administrators.

Each of the respondents were given the rating options of "excellent, good, satisfactory, poor, unacceptable and no answer," to describe the aforementioned areas. The respondents were also given the opportunity to write general comments at the end of the survey.

The survey revealed that only 13.4 percent of the respondents rate the board’s overall leadership as excellent or good, 29.4 percent rate it satisfactory and 43.4 percent say it’s poor or unacceptable. Similarly, 27.2 percent of the respondents said that Halberg’s overall leadership is excellent or good, 25 percent responded satisfactory and 42.6 percent rate his leadership as poor or unacceptable.

When it comes to the district-level administration’s overall leadership, 39.7 percent of those surveyed said it was excellent or good, 35.6 percent said it was satisfactory and 21.3 percent rated it poorly. Site administration rated the highest by far in overall leadership with 56.7 percent of the respondents rating it excellent, 18.1 percent satisfactory and 23.9 percent rating it poorly.

Dolan told the board that the close relationship between the survey takers and district and site administration, may have accounted for the results.

Dolan averaged out the survey answers  – including all of the areas of overall leadership, communication, knowledge and vision.

Dolan rated the scores on a scale of one to five (1=excellent, 2=good, 3=satisfactory, 4=poor, 5=unacceptable).

This table depicts those scores:

After Dolan's presentation, some of the board members reacted to the results.

"I think we as a board also need to take some steps," Board President John Gabby said.

Board Member Irina Okhremtchouk noted that the Governing Board and Halberg scored similar numbers on the survey. 

"This is something for all of us to think about," she said.

Dolan told the board that each site administrator received comments made by the survey takers, but that the Governing Board had not. He promised to deliver those comments to the board, making sure that they remained anonymous.

The board is expected to have follow-up conversations; Superintendent Halberg is also expected to have some follow-up conversations with site administrators to figure out how they can achieve their goals.

Full results of the survey will be posted on the District's web site.