District releases 2025 staff and parent survey results; staff morale edges up, parents report schools feel safe

Hernando County School District staff presented results from the 2025 annual engagement surveys for employees and parents during Tuesday's workshop.

Santi Sanders, director of research and accountability, and Aaron Ehrman, director of communications, summarized key findings. Sanders said staff responses showed a small positive trend: overall positive agreement increased 1.38 percentage points from 2024 to 2025 and 7.31 points since 2022. She noted two new safety questions added this year — whether drills prepare staff and whether the campus feels overall safe — each returned roughly 95 percent positive agreement.

The staff survey also recorded high marks for supervisor visibility, celebration of success and willingness to recommend the district as an employer. The lowest‑scoring staff area was among non‑instructional/confidential employees; the single lowest substantive question was whether workload is reasonable, which scored about 71.5 percent positive agreement.

Ehrman reviewed the parent results. The parent survey recorded 2,222 respondents; respondents reported 90 percent positive agreement that their child's school is safe and 92 percent saying school routines and processes run safely and smoothly. Parents indicated ParentSquare as a preferred channel for school information (86 percent) followed by text messaging. Ehrman said the district will share survey results with principals so they can form school‑level action plans and will explore ways to increase response rates in future cycles.

District staff said they will analyze qualitative answers, distribute results to school principals for local action plans, and review survey administration to improve participation in future rounds. The presentations closed with a request from trustees to compare parent response rates and outreach strategies with other districts that achieve higher participation.