Online surveys are going out to Bayfield middle and high school students, staff, parents, and community members for feedback on class schedules and curriculum.
BHS Principal Leon Hanhardt and school counselor Amy Maglinas presented the draft survey to the school board on Oct. 28. It's been reviewed by teachers and the School Accountability Committee, Hanhardt said. "We feel we're getting close to being ready to send it out," he said.
It will go out on Survey Monkey to everyone except staff, who will get it on paper.
"I think this meets a lot of the goals in the Strategic Plan," Hanhardt said. "We really tried hard to find out what courses you (students) want and how those tie in with your career plan."
The goal is to make sure the class schedule and curriculum are student-driven rather than teacher-driven, he said.
"We took all the current programs at the high school and asked what could be added. You will see foreign language, such as Asian languages, performing and visual arts, family and consumer science, STEM (science, technology, engineering, math). We went back to the career cluster model" such as energy, public safety, agriculture.
The survey also asks how long classes should be and when the school day should start and end. "We think it's important to give these options for people to look at," Hanhardt said. "And how long should the lunch period be?"
He continued, "We're hoping to roll this out first to students, one or two days at the high school through Chromebook, first at the high school and then the mid school."
Google Chromebooks are like small laptops that operate with applications, like tablets do, instead of software on a hard drive, with information stored in the "cloud." Students will take standardized assessment tests on them this year.
After the students are surveyed, it will go out by e-mail to parents and community members, Hanhardt said. "It's very important that students and parents have their own perspectives given separately," he said.
As for school staff, he said, "Surveys are scary. People worry certain results could threaten their jobs. People could use multiple computers to skew the results. So it will be on paper for staff."
He also hopes to get survey responses from recent BHS graduates, but he thinks the most valuable data will come from current students.
"We hope to have the data back by Thanksgiving at the latest," he said. "We hope to start by the end of this (Halloween) week or the beginning of next week." They will sort through the responses in December.
Results will drive the master schedule and the building schedule, he said, adding that the results could say don't change anything.
None of the board members had any objections to moving forward with the survey.
