School Facility Task Force Community Survey results
For a year the Springfield School District Facility Task Force, made up of school board members, staff, parents and community members, have been meeting and developing a plan to address facility needs.
The Task Force’s goal is to finalize a plan that will meet the needs of students and community, both today and in the years to come.
A community survey was conducted in October and November of 2019, by School Perceptions LLC, an independent firm with expertise in conducting community surveys, to collect the feedback.
On Wednesday Nov. 20. Sue Peterson from School Perceptions gave the results of the survey to the Facility Task Force.
Over 600 district residents responded. This is a participation rate of 45%, which is the highest response rate that Peterson has seen in her twenty year history. Normal response rate is 18-20%. The high response rate means that the community is highly engaged with the school. The 45% response rate included 89 staff members, 243 parents and 315 non-staff/ non parents.
The School District also rated high in overall satisfaction with 85% of survey respondents reported they were either satisfied or very satisfied with the District.
Respondents gave high ratings to the District in:
Delivering a high-quality educational experience.
Providing a safe learning environment
Maintaining school facilities.
In addition, the survey results also show that the majority of respondents, 55% support the District pursuing a bond for school facility needs.
There is greater support from staff and parents to move ahead with a bond, while 41% of general citizens support the idea and 33% are not in favor, with 26% undecided.
The survey asked respondents to provide their feedback on seven facility projects the District identified. Based on the data, the following five projects have support:
Updating building HVAC
Improving school safety and security
Expanding the cafeteria and building new music classrooms
Expanding and updating Career and Technical Education (CTE) classrooms and labs
Adding gym space
The survey gathers data to determine the community’s tax tolerance. This helps to determine the size of the bond the community would likely support. Based on the data, a $16 million bond, or something slightly lower, would have success.
If additional funds are needed, a recommendation would be to add a second question as well as work to educate the community on the significant need to support the proposed projects. The District may have to reduce the scope of some of the projects that have support to fit within the supported tax tolerance.
The Springfield School District Facility Task Force continues to meet to discuss options.
The executive summary of the Community Survey will be available on the District website at www.
springfield.mntm.org.