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PGCPS survey shows mixed results on school safety; board requests focus groups and longitudinal data
Summary
A district climate-and-culture survey administered by Hanover Research drew nearly 60,000 responses (about 47,000 students). Results showed younger students generally report feeling welcome and safe while older students' sense of safety is lower; the board requested focus groups, longitudinal data and school-district aggregated dashboards.
Prince George’s County Public Schools presented condensed results from the October 2024 climate-and-culture survey at the March 27 board meeting and outlined next steps focused on student safety, bullying and communication.
Director Weatherington and Hanover Research reported nearly 60,000 stakeholders participated in the survey, with roughly 47,000 responses from students and 12,628 from the district’s youngest scholars (grades 4–5). Key findings cited in the presentation: approximately 66% of younger students reported feeling safe at school; older students’ ‘feel safe’ metric was around 43% (an increase from 41% last year); and about 55% of younger students agreed bullying is a problem at their school.
The administration said Hanover provided the recommendations and district staff worked across divisions to identify implementable strategies. Recommended actions include anti-bullying and bias-based training ("Welcoming Schools"), additional focus groups by grade band to clarify how students define bullying, investigations into barriers to mental-health services and improved facility maintenance.
Board members asked several follow-ups: whether recommendations originated with Hanover or internal staff (administration said the vendor produced the recommendations and staff identified implementation strategies); requests for longitudinal data and a downloadable dataset (administration said a longitudinal data download with footnotes would be provided); whether climate metrics are used in principal evaluation (administration said climate measures are part of principals’ evaluation packages when schools set goals tied to climate data); and whether the data can be aggregated by board district (administration said dashboards exist and additional aggregation could be provided).
Director Weatherington said the district would launch focus groups this school year and continue listening campaigns, and noted the administration will share a supplemental data set and footnotes to aid interpretation. Members emphasized the need to involve students directly in focus groups and to pair survey data with operational metrics (suspensions, in-school and out-of-school disciplinary rates) when evaluating school improvement.
Source: Prince George’s County Board of Education meeting transcript, March 27, 2025.
