Durango School District 9-R board members agreed Thursday to relaunch a survey seeking input from students, parents and staff members about their feelings on lifting COVID-19 mask mandates.
The new survey will be sent out as early as possible Friday, and it will close at 5 p.m. Monday, the board said.
In launching the new survey, the school district is tossing data collected from its first survey after “compelling evidence” surfaced that a survey link had been shared with the greater community, thereby skewing results.
“I would very much like accurate data,” said school board Treasurer Rick Petersen.
The district abruptly ended its survey Tuesday after learning of the effort to skew results.
The district noticed significantly more responses from parents than expected.
“We do know that the link for the survey was being shared beyond parents,” said Superintendent Karen Cheser.
It was brought to the district’s attention that parents were posting how to share the survey with the wider public.
At Thursday’s special meeting, which was held virtually, the bulk of the discussion centered on whether board members wanted to keep data that was collected from students and staff members, because their results did not appear to be skewed.
“I’m pretty comfortable looking at the staff data and the student data, since potentially those were not corrupted the way the parents’ survey was,” said school board President Kristin Smith.
A number of students and staff members didn’t have a chance to respond to the survey because it was shut down early, some board members noted. It made sense, therefore, to relaunch the survey so students and staff members could have another chance to weigh in, they said.
“While it is an inconvenience to ask all the folks who filled it out already to do it again, I think we’re also respecting folks who didn’t get an opportunity to do it,” Petersen said.
The board plans to discuss and possibly vote on amending the mask policy at its regularly scheduled meeting Tuesday night. To maintain that timeline, the district opted for a short response period for the new survey.
Cheser said there has been concern about survey data in the past, and the district will be making it so that only intended recipients can answer.
“I do know that we’ve found a way to make sure that every student, parent or staff member gets a unique code to take our surveys that can only be used once,” she said.
Cheser said the district has about 9,000 parents or guardians, 4,500 students and 800 staff members.
The survey results had a standard number of responses from students and faculty, but significantly more responses than usual from parents.
Smith declined to say whether the larger-than-expected parent response was for or against continuing a mask mandate.
“There were several factors and information given that showed us that the data was potentially being skewed,” she said. “It wasn’t what the data said; it was that potentially there were people who were trying to take the survey more than once or have people from outside the area take the survey.”
Smith said the survey included questions such as: What if mask mandates were removed immediately and what if 9-R keeps mask mandates until after spring break?
According to Colorado Chalkbeat, most Colorado school districts have ended mask mandates.
Denver, Jefferson, Larimer and Pueblo counties have all lifted their school mask requirements in the last two weeks, though Denver’s change won’t go into effect until Feb. 28.
Yet, federal guidance continues to call for masks in schools, and states such as Illinois and California are keeping them for now.
Chalkbeat reported that just 31% of Colorado children ages 5 to 11 are fully vaccinated, which is higher than the national average but well below the rest of the population. Sixty-one percent of children ages 12 to 15 are fully vaccinated in Colorado.
In response to the cancellation of the survey, about 20 parents held a protest Thursday morning near Escalante Middle School south of downtown Durango.
Protesters carried signs that read: “Mask mandates are child abuse,” “My kid, my choice” and “9R violates the constitution.”
At the protest, concerned parent Alicia Drover said she supports choice when it comes to masking and other medical mandates.
“I’m OK with people wearing masks if they feel it makes them safe, but no more mandates on our children,” she said. “We’ve supported our district leaders, our teachers, all staff, even our children while they mandated masks.”
njohnson@durangoherald.com
