31 Percent Of Middletown Students Excited To Attend School: Survey

MIDDLETOWN, CT — When presenting the Culture and Climate survey to the board, Paul Griswold said teachers reported feeling stressed, exhausted and overwhelmed.

“However, staff also shared that they are largely excited to go to work and quite overwhelmingly feel that their work matters and has meaning,” Griswold said, Middletown Public Schools Director of Assessment, Professional Development and Instruction. “Those were two question types that had over 96 percent favorability.”

The Culture and Climate survey is taken annually by staff, families and students and collects data from their experience in different areas of the district and school life.

“This allows us to get qualitative information to support our school’s improvement plans which one of the areas is culture and climate,” Dr. Alberto Vazquez Matos said, Superintendent of Schools.

Griswold presented the survey findings to the Middletown Board of Education on June 13.

This year there were 929 families, 376 employees and 1,796 students who took the survey.

Starting with the family responses, Griswold said the most favorable category from the family survey was the barriers to engagement category.

“84 percent of our respondents shared that communicating across cultures does not present a significant barrier to engaging with the school,” he said.

In the “School Fit” category, there was a 51 percent unfavorable rating to the school’s approach to discipline, Griswold told the Middletown School Board.

“Although it’s not in the category of school fit, it's worth noting that a significant percentage of families worry about violence in schools at least some of the time, if not frequently, if not almost always,” he said. “This is an area of national concern, school violence, but certainly one we feel local as well.”

For employees, the most favorable category was teaching efficacy, explained Griswold.

“Over 82 percent of our teachers had a favorable efficacy of their self-efficacy for the content they are teaching,” he said.

In the same category, about 81 percent of the teachers had a favorable rating to the question, “If a parent were upset about something in your class, how confident are you that you could have a productive conversation with this parent?”

The most favorable category for students was school belonging.

“Within this category, our third and fourth graders feel supported by the adults of their school,” Griswold said. “This breaks down favorably for both our high-needs and non-high-needs students.”

According to the survey, only 31 percent of the students were excited about attending classes.

“This does break down differently between our elementary and secondary students,” Griswold said.

The survey showed elementary students had a more favorable rating of excitement about going to classes than the secondary students at Middletown Public Schools.

“I don’t think that’s unique to Middletown but certainly something we want to find ways to excite our second students about school,” Griswold said.

Griswold said the complete survey will be available to the public sometime in July on the Middletown Public School website.