This is what they gave me. So I added this. Um so this is these are the numbers of staff who voted zero or one or two or three. Um, and you can see that for DGN families and DGS families. So you can get a sort of a larger picture of where we are. If our goal is to move our fives and sixes to sevens and eights among our staff, it's about 58 people that we're looking at trying to move up. Obviously, we would love to eliminate the zeros through fours um and to help them move up as well, but we're also equally as interested in making sure that the 102 people that are sitting in the sevens and eights, what is it that we can do with a singular focus that will help move them into nines and tens? You can see that there's also families who um are in zero through six range.
Um but there are larger numbers um that you'll see in um eights, nines, and tens with our families. Also, uh we asked what were the recommend recommended action from the staff. The process for the um consultants was to look at a comment and then take a step back. sort of that 30,000 view 30,000 foot view that Hank mentions and say okay what is the theme that comes out of this question. So you can see the number of responses um including blank responses will equal the number of participants and it also gives that percentage breakdown. Now for me I feel like when you look at data in large batches like that it's also good to mine it so that you can see is it really telling this true story. So this is the same data except broken down into number of mentions. The reason is is that if I have a comment that the question was asking one thing to improve your school.
Many of the responses said, "I know you asked for one thing, but here are three things." Um, and so in doing it this way, all three of them get counted rather than going into the larger theme of that connection. So in doing that breakdown, student accountability in one was mentioned it just over 140 times in all of the different comments. Student consequences just over 120 times, cell phone policy, and then attendance and commons management and oversight just over a hundred times. This becomes thematic because the staff it's all combined together, right? Student accountability to get to class consequences that are consistent that students feel that pressure to come to class not only for their learning but because it's expected. um if the student is in the comments, how are we getting them there and that while we have a cell phone policy that having a stricter one because that is a concern um for staff.
So um we broke it down to make sure that you knew where the amount of comments there were within the larger responses. Also, I thought it was important to see in general like what's the summary of what that means. And so, increased student accountability um comes up that is around behavior. It's about attendance. Um students having uh academic effort while they're there, respecting school rules. Um but then also the the second one about ensuring consistent enforcement of consequences. um skipping class, tardiness, all of those are still attendance related. Um but it starts to go into then that tripping into general misconduct. Um wandering and lingering in the commons. Those are quotes. I put quotes around them because that came up several times. Um and really helping uh helping students find a productive use of free time. And if we can't, how do we make sure that they are supervised during that free time?
Um comes up from staff as well. So um this is sort of a summary of the count breakdowns of the larger categories. I tried to keep the header the same so you can see the through line there. Um but uh that is the result of the district 99 survey. Hey everybody. I'm here to give a uh a quick update on our uh morale survey that we have with our partner firm EAB. Um for those of you who are new, two years ago we decided to partner with this research firm EAB uh because they have a framework that helps us to quickly identify and diagnose what's going on with morale uh for our staff and then get right to work on improving it. So one thing that they do for us is through their research is they broke this nebulous term of morale down into six different categories.
Uh and they tell us that uh the goal of the process is to go through the survey. Uh we did focus groups last year and identify one of these categories and get straight to work on trying to improve that with the goal being that every year we improve one of those and then uh hold the line on each of those and the following year we improve another one until we have all of them uh improved. So this is where uh we were um similar to the other surveys that you saw. It's a one through five scale. Five uh is ranked as very satisfied. One is ranked as very dissatisfied. uh we administered the survey in October 2023. So with this survey now we have longitudinal data with the same questions to uh measure our progress. So in October of 2023 we had 392 of our staff members take the survey.
Uh their average responses were put together in these uh six categories plus our last one around measurement and progress. Um and you can see where they ranked. So a majority of them were ranked at neutral right in the middle of the responses. our two categories around personal safety and belonging and time and resources. They were ranked positively at a four uh with five being the highest. So with that we went through a whole process with our district leadership team with our teachers and the focus groups uh and identified the category that we wanted to focus on this year to improve and that category was the ownership and input uh category. So, our goal was to move it from a three at a neutral uh up to a four or a five, a satisfied or a very uh very satisfied. So, of those six, we were targeting ownership and input across all uh of our staff.
Uh and this is where we're at. So, we administered it again in April of 2025. We had more staff participated in in this time, so 412. Uh unfortunately we didn't do enough uh to move that needle to make it up to the four. So we're still at a neutral there for our ownership and input. Um but an average number like that across uh everything doesn't really tell the full story. Um so what I did is I broke it up by our uh employee groups. So the category of ownership and input really comes down to four questions out of our 26 questions on the survey. Those questions you can see on the left side. uh the question of I have ownership and control over my professional practice and my work environment. Uh I I drag that across to our different employee groups. So some differences of what you can see year-over-year is that our DGA group on average went from a neutral up to a uh agree or satisfied.
Um and then our support staff group went from a four down to a three. So those sort of canceled each other out on that one. Uh my opinions are heard and valued by district leaders. Uh you can see our CMG group went from a three to a two on that. Um stayed neut uh stayed at the two for our DGA group. Our exempt group went from a three to a two. And then with our SSA group that stayed the same. Everything stayed the same for question number four, which is my opinions are heard and valued by school leaders. Uh and then our last question. In my current role, I get to do what I do best every day. The only change that we had was that our CMG group moved from a four up to a five. So that's the highest rating that we had on any of those.
Um so that that category that we targeted for improvement came down to these four questions. And you can see how we progressed uh on those four questions for that category. Uh I went through and uh similar to what Ryan was talking about uh the fours and fives uh positivity ratings. So of those four questions, I went through and uh showed us how the positivity changed uh for each of those. So on our first question, we had a 7.9% increase in the positivity on that response. On our second question, we went backwards a little bit. So we had a negative one uh% on our positivity for that question. For our third question, uh we had a 2% increase in the positivity. And then in our fourth question, we had a 5.8% increase in the positivity. So some moves within the questions uh that impact that category of ownership and input.
Um so again uh we didn't meet the goal uh but there are still some successes for us to to celebrate this uh school year. I put this in our last slide here. uh in your report I have every question and how the change in positivity uh happened uh between the two administrations. Um but these were the questions that we had the uh the top five with the highest positivity increase. So um you can see our very top one that's the one I want to point out to you a 10.3% increase in the positivity rating on there. Um, I want to point that one out because that's the one question that really gets at the heart of uh the staff and their relationships with each other. Um, and it's a testament to uh the work that they're doing. Uh, we have this positive psychology orange frog workshop that our teachers lead.
Um, and I just, you know, I was meeting with them today. They're doing a part two of their training in this room tomorrow. And I just showed them the data to see that they are having an impact on the relationships that staff have uh with each other. So, uh, overall that's the presentation. We did have some increases. Um, and then for our one goal for this year for ownership and input, unfortunately, we didn't we didn't make that goal. Thank you, Rob. All right. So, what do we do with all of this information that we just shared with you? You remember at the beginning I talked about uh triangulating our work for the next year and making sure that we are You just saw morale in the district is around ownership and input. So it's really taking all of this input and feedback that you just heard and putting it into action in what we do next year.
Uh so just to review, uh board and DT collectively identified improving attendance and those were those critical areas. You saw in Jill's feedback, climate and culture are overall positive across the district. uh and the staff have identified similar critical concerns as the leadership team across the district. So the good news is that the leaders and the staff are in lock step together as to what they believe needs to be improved across the district. So this is the proposed statement of work. This is what I'm going to ask every staff member in the district tomorrow to give me like a thumbs up. Yes, thumb sideways. Yeah, I agree. But I have some concerns or thumbs down. I don't think this is what we should be doing next year. And I will come back to you on May 19th with what the consensus is across the team and what the themes were in their feedback.
Uh but this is what I am proposing and I will be asking maybe with some modifications on this based on staff feedback uh on May 19th for the board to approve as our focus, our singular most important focus for next year. So you can read it up there. Primary focus will be improvement in the areas of attendance. Improvement will be driven by increased accountability and consistency and consequences paired with appropriate interventions and support. Please note that that was the board's top priority, interventions and supports. Through this work, we believe that student academic performance will increase along with staff morale and what you just heard. This will be demonstrated through these indicators and measures that we've been reporting out on. Um it it is somewhat unfortunate that one of our pillars in this around ownership and input feeds into the statement of work and isn't gathered after we share the statement of work with the staff.
I strongly believe that once the staff sees this, they will see that they had ownership and input into our work for next year. Timeline and next steps uh this consensus over the next week, I will request the board to approve uh either this statement of work or a revised statement of work based on staff feedback. And then this will guide all of our planning for next year. Uh we anticipate based on all of this feedback that attendance will be uh our primary focus as I have here in the statement of work. Rob mentioned EAB is uh our research and thought partner in morale but they are overall uh there as a resource to provide us information in all areas of improvement. We have a full administrative team uh meeting planned for the morning of the 20th with EAB to come in and present on. They've done a great amount of research on what makes a difference in attendance uh in improving attendance post pandemic.
We will hear from them the morning of May 20th. As we plan our work coming back on May 29th to start digging into our statement of work, we will plan on bringing you uh detailed work plans at our board meeting in June. in response to this questions on you've gotten a lot there, but the big 30,000 foot takeway is really this, right? All of that leads to this. Um, happy to address anything in here or meet with anybody outside of this. Uh, Ryan, Rob, Jill can answer any specific questions or we can follow up based on this as well.
So, the floor is yours board for any questions you may have. So I have a question on how do the indicators feed into the statement of work. Yeah. So just since we've now baselined most of them, right? So is there I'd say your through lines are that board and administration identified attendance and you see in Jill's presentation uh around climate that norms and rules and consequences all rise up in the climate area. You also see that there's low rankings there in the belief that we as an administrative team have a plan to address this. trying to demonstrate that to everybody. By the time they hit middle of June, they'll see what the plan is for next year. Right? You see in Ryan's feedback, the lowest indicators for uh staff were around the area of attendance. The mid indicators for students were around seeing value in having good attendance.
Um so that's a through line that pulls there. And if you look at what Rob presented, uh clearly uh district leadership and the faith in that is the lowest of all of those indicators, right? So uh this is our good faith effort to show that we have heard that feedback. We are addressing it. We have a plan. We have heard their concerns. And now our administrative team members as Ryan mentioned from department chairs to uh each of our uh teams on the indicators will be sitting down with Ryan to dig into that data around what was that specific feedback and what will move the detractors to passives the passives to promoters and what do we need to do to keep the promoters where they're at. We'll look at that by department. We'll look at that by indicator and that will shape our work, you know, from the district level all the way to each department.
So, um that's kind of how it all ties together and feathers together uh to both shape this work but then determine what the actionable things are as a result of that. How will you measure success um after focusing on attendance? I mean, is it is it merely um we have a higher attendance rate or are you will you also be measuring um through survey results that our staff feel as though we are now addressing and and and appropriately consequences and holding students accountable because all I've heard since the pandemic is that this is a nationwide problem and um sometimes attendance is out of our control. You know, parents just calling in students uh calling them out for reasons that may not be necessarily appropriate. Um is that out of our control? And and if if we don't see an improvement in attendance with our students, are we are we still are we going to be seeing this as a as as a failure?
and and I just I' I'd just like to hear from you as to um besides not just setting what our mission is for next year, what are our goals and and in and if we can set some goals, um I'd like to be able to come back a year from now and assess whether or not we reach those goals. Yeah. I the first overarching one is the one that's our indicator and measure that shows up both on our strategic plan indicators and in the school report card, which is chronic absenteeism. Right? That is that overarching key measure that we will be looking at between this year and next year. The team that is our attendance team over this next month will be indic will be after the meeting with EAB looking at the feedback from our staff. We'll be identifying some sub measures underneath that uh that we know are lead indicators of uh chronic absenteeism.