Consultants outline plan for districtwide post-bond community survey

Strategies 360, a public‑opinion research firm, on Tuesday told the Mercer Island School District Board of Directors it has completed phase one of its post‑bond analysis and will conduct a representative resident survey in September to inform future communications and possible funding measures. David Kornarens, senior vice president, market research, and Rachel Nakanishi, vice president of education, described the firm—s methodology and limits imposed by campaign finance rules.

The consultants said the work has two phases. Kornarens said phase one was a demographic analysis of voting and participation patterns over a decade, and that it found no large change in who participates in elections: "the actual residents who chose to participate in the 10 years of elections that we looked at did not change drastically." Nakanishi told the board, "School districts, per the PDC are prohibited from targeting just voters in research. So all…