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Technology committee to launch districtwide surveys on device use, AI and workforce skills
Summary
The Beaufort County School Board Technology Committee approved sending four surveys to collect feedback from community members, parents, staff and students about 1-to-1 devices, AI in classrooms, equity of access and workforce-ready technology skills, with a target rollout after board sign-off.
Chair opened the October committee meeting and asked members to review a package of four proposed surveys aimed at gathering community, parent, staff and student views about the district’s 1-to-1 device program, AI in classrooms, equity and workforce skills. Chair said the surveys will prefer free-text responses over a numeric scale to surface reasons behind yes-or-no answers and suggested collecting optional demographic items such as age range, school and grade to stratify results.
Mr. Shohan, district technology staff, described how the surveys were tailored for each audience and why some questions repeat across forms. He said the district will likely use its new internal survey tool for community and staff distribution and SurveyMonkey for student responses; all tools are expected to produce exportable raw data for later analysis. "We can get a raw data dump at the end that you’d be able to drop into AI," Mr. Shohan said, noting the committee could de-identify responses before automated analysis.
Committee members recommended clarifying the term “1-to-1” (one device per student) in the preamble, adding a brief explanatory paragraph for respondents, and pairing yes/no questions with a short “why or why not” free-text prompt. Several members argued community value and workforce readiness questions should be more concrete — for example, offering response prompts about which technology skills (coding, productivity tools, digital communication, basic troubleshooting) respondents consider marketable for entry-level jobs.
On the student survey, Mr. Shohan recommended restricting direct student responses to grades 6–12 to reduce parent interference and suggested teachers administer the questionnaire during homeroom. "If we just email it, I don't think we'll get as much of a response as we're looking for," he said, recommending in-class distribution to improve participation.
The committee discussed optional demographic fields to help group results (age ranges, school/closest high school, grade level) and agreed to keep personally identifying fields optional. Chair said she wants the committee’s revised surveys in the board packet for next Tuesday and intends to ask the full board to authorize survey rollout; if approved, distribution will follow outreach to SICs (School Improvement Councils), the Chamber of Commerce and other community partners.
The committee set a schedule for revision and approval: Mr. Shohan will incorporate feedback and return updated drafts midweek to be included in the board packet; a prep meeting is scheduled for October 21 to finalize implementation details.
The committee did not take a formal vote on launching surveys during this meeting; Chair said she will present the revised surveys to the full board for approval at the next meeting.
