AMS Survey Shows Overwhelming Support for Original Name

Results are in from a survey launched by the Alvarado Middle School School Site Council last week to get the community’s sentiments on the controversial name change.

The name change will be voted on by the New Haven Board of Education Tuesday night.

Despite the survey being taken down after being online for only 27 hours, the survey received more than 200 responses, an overwhelming number of which was against changing the school’s name.

According to the survey’s website, Understanding the AMS Name Change, there were 201 respondents with 97 percent in favor of the school’s name remaining Alvarado Middle School. Only 3 percent favored the Itliong-Veracruz Middle School name provided to the school district by the Facility Names Committee.

Of those respondents, 50 percent identified as AMS parents, 19 percent identified as Union City residents and 8 percent identified as AMS students. Six percent were faculty and 7 percent were alumni.

See the full survey results at https://sites.google.com/site/amsname/key-findings.

The School Site Council acknowledged that the survey’s sample size is “not reliably representative of the community.”

“Further analysis is required to speak to exact numbers as to how strongly people felt about the issue,” the school site council wrote on the website.

However, school site council members felt the survey was necessary due to the lack in public discourse before the school board agreed to change the middle school’s name at a Jan. 15 meeting.

“If the district had done their own survey, we feel the data could have been more reliable and representative of the community,” said Lance Nishihira, a member of the school site council.

The council notes on the website:

In accordance with the New Haven School District's Board Policy F7310, which states in part, "The renaming of existing schools or major facilities shall occur by the Board of Education only under extraordinary circumstances and after thorough study," The Alvarado Middle School School Site Council (AMS SSC) at its own time, effort and expense have designed, fielded and analyzed a brief survey.

The AMS SSC requested that the district take on the task of conducting the study to ensure a sound methodology and impartial data. The district responded that it could only use district resources for such an endeavor at the direction of the board. The next board meeting (4/16/2013) will be too late, as it is on the agenda to vote on a name.

The AMS SSC has taken matters into its own hands and has provided the leadership required to gather the voice of the community.

The survey was launched last Monday. 

The middle school’s administration sent out a robocall to the school community notifying them of the survey. However, the voice message stated the wrong url for the survey. It still managed to receive more than 200 responses despite the error, which Nishihira doesn’t believe was intentional.

The survey was supposed to be conducted through April 12 but was pulled after school administrators sent another robocall last Tuesday asking community members to disregard the survey.

The school site council felt the data was still useful and have made it available to the public.

The results have also been communicated to members of the school board via email, according to Nishihira.

See the full results here.