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Principal reports bump in survey participation and improved student belonging at Hunterdon Central
Summary
The Hunterdon Central principal told the board that the district’s climate and culture survey drew higher participation this year and showed improvements on many measures, including students’ sense of belonging and perceptions that teachers encourage them to do their best.
Hunterdon Central Regional High School’s principal, Ed Brandt, reported to the board that the district’s climate and culture survey saw substantially higher participation this year and showed improvements on many measures of student experience.
Brandt said the district collected responses from 1,285 students, up from 673 the prior year, 202 staff members (up from 138) and 224 families (up from 134). He told the board 32 of 40 Likert-scale prompts improved compared with the prior year and flagged several gains including students reporting that teachers “encourage you to do your best” (87.7% favorable) and that classroom assignments help learning (84.8% favorable). The measure of overall belonging rose to 81.7% from about 72% four years earlier.
Student representatives Bronwyn and Aaron described monthly “student lunches,” small-group meetings created to give students a more comfortable setting to share feedback. Aaron and Bronwyn said discussions produced concrete proposals the administration plans to pilot, including a mentorship pairing that would match ninth graders with upperclassmen, improved sign-ups for clubs at the eighth-grade open house to ease freshmen transitions, and repeat outreach to increase student awareness of counseling resources.
Brandt said open-ended survey responses were analyzed and condensed, in part using district experimentation with AI summarization, and that results informed working groups composed of parents, staff and administration. He said the school improvement panel compiled a priority matrix that separates immediate actions, summer work and longer-term projects.
Examples of planned or piloted responses include: creating a counseling “cheat sheet” so families know counselor roles and acronyms; offering more timely targeted surveys after major initiatives to get faster feedback; piloting mentorship pairings; and streamlining club sign-ups for incoming freshmen. Brandt said the administration will use the compiled recommendations over the summer to develop next steps.
Board members thanked the students and principal for the work and encouraged continued outreach to increase family response rates. The administration said it will publish survey results and next steps as part of ongoing district communications.
