Wake County Schools will launch anonymous high-school safety survey Dec. 1, officials say

Wake County Schools will begin administering an anonymous student safety and security survey to high school students Dec. 1, district staff told the Safety & Security Committee on Nov. 5.

"Students need to feel safe before they can learn," Dr. Ray of the district's Data Accountability and Research team said, describing a two-phase development process that included a literature review and student pretests. She said the instrument will be available in English and Spanish and will be delivered online through students' Wake ID portal; all questions are optional except for the item identifying which school a student attends.

Mr. Scott, senior director of security, said the survey is intended to provide baseline data to support updates to school safety plans. "This is part of our continuous improvement — getting that baseline data that we need to do that," he said. Staff plan a 12-day administration window beginning Dec. 1 and will share an overview of aggregated results in open session while providing school-level findings to administrators in closed session.

Committee members pressed staff on what response level will make school-by-school results meaningful. One member suggested a 25% response-rate benchmark; Dr. Ray said the district typically does not report high-school results from schools with under 25% participation.

Officials described steps to boost participation without compromising data integrity. Members proposed incentives and QR-code access; Chair Harry cautioned against contests that could "taint the responses," saying past competitions have led to fake accounts or inflated responses. He recommended relying on authenticated accounts, such as Wake ID or WCPSS Gmail, to ensure one response per student.

Dr. Ray said she will monitor participation by school and contact principals where response rates lag, and staff will supply principals and teachers with talking points and family letters in both English and Spanish. The district emphasized it will consider practical incentives but also implement "guardrails" to ensure each response corresponds to a unique student.

Details the committee recorded: the survey is anonymous, administered online via the Wake ID student portal, available in English and Spanish, uses an optional question format except for school identification, will begin Dec. 1 in a 12-day window, and the district's reporting practice excludes high schools with participation under 25%.

Next steps: staff will begin deployment preparations and monitor early response rates; school-level follow-up and closed-session review of detailed results were scheduled following the administration.