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Janesville School District parents give schools high marks

JANESVILLE — Parents are becoming more and more satisfied with the Janesville School District.

That, at least, is a conclusion that could be drawn from preliminary results of a survey of parents last month.

In the third such survey since May 2008, parents gave the district their highest approval rating ever, a 4.47 on a 5-point scale.

The survey is not scientific. It was not based on a random, representative sample of parents. Rather, the parents surveyed are those who volunteered to take the survey during parent-teacher conferences.

Still, more parents than ever took the survey—1,903 of them, to be exact. The survey had 1,608 respondents in May 2008 and 1,050 in May 2009.

Every school except Craig High School showed improvement in their overall score from the last survey.

Craig’s latest score was a 3.73, the same as in May 2009. One factor may be that only 110 parents answered the survey at Craig, the lowest response over the three surveys.

Even fewer parents—54—answered the survey at Parker High School. Parker’s score improved to 4.18.

The scores are averages of answers to questions on aspects of the schools’ performance.

Monroe Elementary School parents completed the most surveys, 223. Lincoln Elementary had the lowest number of responses, 27.

The highest score was at Adams Elementary, 4.73.

Superintendent Karen Schulte said principals will be evaluated, in part, on how well their schools perform on this survey. The idea is to make schools more responsive to parents.

Responses to individual survey questions are not yet available. Schulte will present the survey to the school board when it meets Monday night.

The board is meeting Monday instead of the usual Tuesday because board members want to attend the annual Forward Janesville dinner Tuesday.

The surveys are used to evaluate the administration as part of the accountability system the district is employing, known informally as the Studer process, after its inventor, Quint Studer.

The district is considering finally giving the Studer process a formal name. One suggestion is Journey to Excellence.

The process includes setting of goals and then holding administrators accountable for meeting those goals.

Increasing parental satisfaction is one of the goals that the school board set for this year.

On the agenda

The Janesville School Board meets at 6 p.m. Monday at the Educational Services Center, 527 S. Franklin St., Janesville. The agenda includes:

-- Presentation and possible action on plans to pay off a $17 million unfunded liability to the Wisconsin Retirement System.

-- Discussion of a preliminary staffing plan for the 2010-11 school year.

-- Discussion of options for expanding Chinese instruction into the middle schools.

-- Closed-session discussion “to update the board regarding the status of contract negotiations and consider possible approval of items presented with regard to the Janesville Education Association for the 2009-11 contract.” Negotiators are scheduled to meet Wednesday night.

The board also is scheduled to meet in closed session at 5:45 p.m. Monday to hear an update on the civil case against former district employee Brandon Keirns. The district is seeking to recover money that it claims it lost as a result of Keirns’ actions on the job. School board counsel David Moore said there is no pending settlement in the case.