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District highlights ‘belonging’ work at high schools after survey revision raises response rate
Summary
Educators told the board that by reducing survey length and tailoring questions, participation in a district belonging survey rose 34.7% (from 1,657 to 2,232). The presentation outlined classroom practices, furniture pilots, mentoring and math and AP work to boost student connection and achievement.
Joe Green presented high-school highlights focused on building a sense of belonging across the district’s 6–12 schools, describing pedagogy changes, pilot programs and survey work the district says will inform next steps. "We are really working to create a synergy and a coherence across the district," Green said as he introduced the belonging focus and the rationale behind it.
Green told the board the district shortened its survey and targeted questions about belonging, which produced a measurable increase in participation: "we cut the survey size in half and we tailor it specifically to belonging, and that got us a 34.7% increase in student responses," he said, with responses rising from 1,657 to 2,232 this year. The presentation listed actions tied to belonging: weekly homeroom, mentoring programs (Link Crew, NHS), interactive classroom furniture pilots funded through the bond, touchscreen boards, and a math pilot in Algebra 1/Geometry/Algebra 2.
Board members probed where belonging overlaps with social-emotional learning and raised concerns about whether 'affirming' language could be misinterpreted as requiring agreement on contested issues. Member Picard said she worried students might feel pressure to "affirm everything." Green and district staff replied that the work intends to create productive discourse and understanding, not forced agreement: "That is not at all what it's about," Green responded, adding that the research supports situation-crafting and structured opportunities to discuss differing viewpoints.
Trustee Boss and others asked for sources connecting belonging to academic outcomes; Green cited John Hattie and Stanford researcher Jeffrey Cohen and offered to provide links to the studies. Students asked for explanations and simpler displays for families (benchmarks, combined rows for shared campuses, and hover definitions for technical terms like MAP), and the district agreed to consider those changes for the public dashboard.
Next steps: staff will continue professional development for teachers (including demonstrations from vendor research teams and peer-to-peer PD), implement classroom pilots, and use the increased survey participation to inform targeted interventions. The board requested the top-three barriers to belonging be provided as a follow-up item and asked for source links to the studies discussed.
The presentation concluded with the district emphasizing that most of the recommended belonging practices require pedagogical shifts and low direct cost rather than new curricula or major expenditures.
