Parent survey reveals few concerns

TEN SLEEP – Surveys taken during parent-teacher conferences showed parents were generally pleased with what the district is doing.

During the Ten Sleep School Board December meeting Monday evening, Ten Sleep School Principal Levi Collins shared with the results of the surveys taken during the conferences on Oct. 25.

“During our parent teacher conference we handed out a multiple question survey to our parents and the reason that we gave out this survey was because we wanted to find out how parents felt the school was serving their children and any ways we could improve in the eyes of the community,” Collins said.

When asked on the survey if the staff at the school invites parents to school events, offers opportunities to participate in school events and makes the parents aware of important information and news about the school the overwhelming response was either every time or often.

The survey asked parents how often the teachers at Ten Sleep School let them know what their child is working on in class, contacted the parents to discuss their child’s academic achievement, provide suggestions for how to support their child on school related items and listen to parents suggestions about how to best support their child. The answers showed that the school needed to improve a little on communication. Collins stated that while the lines of communication are open, there is still room for improvement and that will be addressed.

Most parents agreed or strongly agreed with the following statements:

— Teachers respect me.

— Teachers do their best to help my child learn.

— Teachers have my child’s best interest in mind.

— I am comfortable sharing my concerns with teachers at the school.

The survey showed that most Ten Sleep parents feel like a partner with the teachers in their child’s education, have little trouble contacting teachers, that their voice is valued at the school, that they are an important part of improving the school and that they feel welcome when they enter the school.

When the survey asked questions regarding bullying the parents answers proved that bullying is an area where the school needs improvement. The answers showed that there is a problem with bullying but it is not a huge problem. “Because this was one of the few areas where we didn’t have overwhelmingly positive results we sat down, we have what is called a crisis team here at the school, we even have a third party consultant that we are working with in our crisis team named Kurt Steinke and his job is to help us refine our procedures, help us make a more safe school overall and have a lot more effective practices in how we drill for any possible emergency that might come up and also he helps us with school safety with regards to bullying. Kurt has been giving presentations to the kids in the school about anti-bullying. One of the efforts we are trying to do is to increase student awareness about bullying, what bullying is, how to stop it, how to make kids feel more safe and how to make people get more involved,” Collins said. “We also challenge parents as well to go home and have conversations with their kids about it. Go home have conversations, talk about it, what can we do to address it, what we can do to solve it and so on and so forth,” he added.

Parents were asked if they agreed that Ten Sleep School prepares their child for college with the majority of stating that they agreed or strongly agreed that the school prepares students for college.

When asked what the schools biggest strengths were, the parents gave a variety of answers. Many commented on the small class sizes, the big and little program, the staff and the sense of community.

When asked what improvements were needed, parents listed bullying and school crossing or crossing guards.

Collins explained to the board that a majority of the parents of Ten Sleep students took the survey, with 46 parents responding.

The final question on the survey asked parents: Overall, how satisfied are you with the education your child is receiving at this school? 43.5 percent said very satisfied, 43.5 percent said satisfied and 13 percent were neutral.