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Survey: Osseo residents rate district highly; trust and support for funding are strong
Summary
A recent districtwide survey of residents and parents found high favorability toward the Osseo Public School District, strong trust in its leadership and broad willingness to support a funding request when respondents agreed the district is fiscally responsible, listens to families and 'does what's right' for students.
A survey presented to the Osseo Public School District board on April 7 found high overall favorability for the district and especially strong support among parents.
Peter Leatherman of Morris Leatherman Company told the board the firm interviewed a representative sample of residents and a separate parent sample: "We spoke with 500 or 400 randomly selected residents across the district," he said, explaining interviews ran Jan. 7–23 with an average interview time of about 14 minutes and a nonresponse rate of 6.5 percent. Leatherman said the district’s overall favorability was about 85 percent and 93 percent among parents.
Leatherman flagged three measures that predict voter support for funding: perceived financial stewardship of taxpayer dollars, whether residents trust the district to "do what's right for children," and whether people feel heard. "If a person agrees with all three of these questions, they will support a funding request at an 85% level," he said. Board members discussed how the findings relate to any future referendum or operating levy planning.
The presentation also broke out community concerns. Class size, budget cuts and discipline were among the issues residents named as most serious; parents placed particularly high weight on teacher quality and program variety. Leatherman cautioned that the samples are point-in-time measures but said the parent subgroup tended to rate the district even more favorably than the general community sample.
Board members asked for additional cross-tabs and disaggregated data to understand whether perceptions differ by demographic groups. Leatherman said the firm can run cross tabs provided there are sufficiently large cell sizes to produce reliable statistical comparisons.
