Survey: Safety, staff support and pay top priorities in Deming Public Schools
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Summary
District presenters told the board that staff and community budget surveys ranked school safety, support for special-needs students and staff compensation as the top priorities; staff participation in the survey was low and district leaders pledged more targeted outreach and follow-up data collection.
Deming Public Schools staff presented results from two budget surveys on Thursday evening, saying both staff and community respondents placed school safety, support for special-needs students and staff compensation at the top of priorities for next year’s budget.
"School safety and security is first," presenter Adcock told the board as he reviewed the survey summaries. He said the district received 61 responses from staff and 237 from the community and used an automated summary of the spreadsheets to identify recurring themes.
Adcock said respondents flagged concerns about campus security (including discussions of SROs, security guards and metal detectors), student behavior and the need for more support for special education. He also highlighted classroom resource shortfalls and aging student laptops purchased during the pandemic.
"If the legislation does not provide funding for us, if we were to increase salaries ... we're jeopardizing in the future," Adcock said, describing constraints on raising pay absent additional state funding.
Board members urged caution in reading the results because of low staff participation—61 responses out of roughly 900 employees—and discussed ways to improve future sampling and the utility of the data. One board member asked whether incentives or alternate survey designs could boost participation; staff said gift cards are prohibited by policy and that vendors and the district’s Panorama tool could be used to gather more robust, anonymized data and national comparison norms.
District staff said they will increase outreach for future surveys, including sending direct links to parents, social media blasts and repeated email notices. Staff also proposed adding a question about respondents’ school affiliation next year to help the district understand where responses originate.
Board members and staff noted several unclear free-text responses in the community survey—one repeatedly referenced "magnets"—and said they would investigate the context before drawing conclusions. Several members also pressed staff on communication platforms after hearing that Infinite Campus provides one-way messaging while apps such as ClassDojo and Band support two-way communication and built-in translation.
Adcock said the district will explore options for a centralized districtwide communication tool and set funds in the upcoming budget to support improved parent-staff communication.
The discussion concluded with the board agreeing that the survey results are useful context for budget planning but that staff should pursue stronger, more representative response rates and further analysis before the board makes budget commitments.
