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District 99 presentations show improved staff morale but continued concerns on phones and attendance
Summary
Administrators told the board the district’s student and staff surveys show gains on staff ownership and input, with 79% of staff saying they feel positive about the school-year start; both surveys flagged cell phones and attendance as recurring priorities requiring continued focus.
District 99 administrators on Nov. 17 presented annual survey findings that they said informed near-term priorities for instruction, attendance and staff support.
Ryan Doherty, director of student experiences, summarized student-survey results and changes made since 2022, saying the district altered scheduling and resource offerings in response and flagged phones and attendance as issues that emerged in March 2023. Doherty described the process for using a consultant to process the full data set and then drilling down locally to ask more specific questions for the next survey.
Kelly Zernar, director of staff experiences, presented results of a fall morale snapshot of 359 respondents. She said 79% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that they feel positive about the start of the school year, and 57% agreed their voice had been reflected in recent changes. On target metrics, she reported ownership and input moved from a 3 to a 4 on the district’s 1–5 scale and noted that free-response themes most often referenced the cell-phone policy (about 53% of responses) and attendance/accountability (about 46%). Zernar said she used AI tools to help extract common themes but reviewed the aggregated results herself.
Board members asked about participation breakdowns by employee group; Zernar said certified staff made up 78% of respondents while support staff and other groups were lower and that staff participation data could be broken down further for the board. Members also asked about how staff were invited to participate; Zernar said the survey was administered via Google Form with multiple reminders and that responses were accepted over an extended window.
What’s next: Administration said it will use the survey findings to inform targeted professional learning, interventions for attendance and adjustments to the cell-phone policy, and will re-administer surveys in the spring to measure progress.
