Fairview School District 72 Additional Survey Analysis October 2, 2019 Prepared by School PerceptionsBackground: Schoo! Perceptions is an independent educational research firm that conducted a staff, student and parent survey for the Fairview School District 72 in 2018. The District has asked us to evaluate those results to see if /and to what degree bullying appears to be an issue in the school district. The following analysis is based on the quantitative data as well as comments provided through each survey, Student Survey Students in the Fairview District were able to answer the question: “I feel safe at school.” The composite data for all schools in the district shows that 248 students (91.6% of respondents) responded always/usually to the question. While there are two Fairview students that report Never feeling safe at School, the District scored in the 99 percentile when compared to other similary sized schools for this question sat 2 Students in the Fairview District were also asked to answer a direct question: “I am satisfied with our schoo!'s efforts to prevent bullying.” The composite data forall schools in the district shows that 248 students (76.5% of respondents) responded always/usually to the question. Although some Fairview students are not satisfied with the school efforts to prevent bullying, we have found this to be the case with every school we have worked with. Overall, Fairview scored very high, in the 99 percentile, when compared to other similarly sized schools for this question. Disageregating the responses to this question by grade level shows that there is some slight variance to the answers. Those students responding always/usually to the question are 4" Grade ~ 75%, 5 Grade ~ 80%, 6th Grade — 70%, 7" Grade 75.5% and 8” Grade - 89%. Although 6” grade scored the lowest, there does not appear to be a specific grade level were bullying is a more significant concern. Please note: Students were not given the opportunity to provide written comments on their survey.Parent Survey While parents were not given the opportunity to directly respond to a question about bullying, there are questions that helped quantify parental perceptions of school culture. Of the 202 parents who responded to the question regarding whether or not the district provides a “safe, caring and respectful learning environment,” 95.5% gave the district a great or good rating, Additionally, the parents gave the District a positive rating for creating a culture that encourages students to have high self-esteem and a mutual respect for others, with 88.5% of respondents providing 2 great or good rating. Deepens thas ph stencam ans mat epi for ters(200 When searching for the word bullying/bully in the parent’s comments, it appeared six times in various parts of the survey, a low occurrence for a search word. For comparison, please note the following words and their appearance in the comments: math (21), homework (28), lunch (25), safe (11), sports (22) and diversity (13). total of 244 comments were provided by parents; comments regarding bullying represent 2.5% of responses. Further analysis shows that two of the six comments reference bullying as more of a universal issue that schools deal with; one referenced hearing about bullying in general and the remaining three directly addressed firsthand bullying experiences/lack of acceptable disciplinary response: ‘© With the easy access ofthe internet/social media | think it would be beneficial to have @ curriculum that is based on anti bullying, and what to do ifthey see someone being bullied, bullying isan epidemic, that needs to be handled as such * do not know what bully prevention is happening/being taught. + My kids do talk often of mean kids and mean behaviors of peers ‘+ Lam very happy for this survey and the chance to express my thoughts and feelings. hope my comments are strongly considered. bullying is an on-going issue, Repeat offenders need stronger consequences. Als, | fel it would be beneficial for parent-teacher conferences tobe earlier inthe fall, early October. It always seems to be a time where | feel a need to‘communicate with the teachers of my children regarding more social-emotional than academic issues and it would be nice for that to happen earlier. | think it would benefit teachers as well to see parents of children sooner who are struggling academically or socially. ‘+ To offer counseling and help for bullying. Especially for the bullies and their families in the form of doing charity work. For example, volunteer at a local hospital or charity. Also, detention should be replaced with meditation! © I struggled between good and fair for on respectful and caring learning environment due to bullying issues that my own children have dealt with, and that | know of that have happened to others. Faculty response hasn't necessarily remedied or handled the situations accordingly. | know that my own children hesitate to report issues (especially at recess), because they feel that the supervisors dismiss them. | understand that there are some issues that kids need to resolve themselves, but | also feel that lunch supervisors should have some sort of training and Buidelines to handle the common problems that arise. In addition to supervisors, | feel that all staff should have training and students should know the consequences for things like language, pushing, verbal and physical harassment. ‘When the comments were cross-analyzed against the disaggregated scores students gave their school ‘on bullying, no comments were provided by self-identified parents of sixth-grade students, the grade that gave the district the lowest score on efforts to prevent bullying,Staff Survey Seventy-eight staff members completed the 2018 Fairview staff survey. The survey included questions about the district’s ability to meet the social and emotional needs of students as well as perceptions on how well student discipline is handled. In general, staff members gave Fairview rankings that scored the district in the $4 percentile or higher ‘when compared to similar schools in regards to these issues. ‘Sule spins hare aconsant mane by ltt a=) sey ae — poets |) sare _ — on coe 0) sus a weap sponse 367 194 [29 Fen (oml sees silence eet and253 comps \ TT meee i sane) 20 a sony are ooo seis verageesponse 439 52087 (04 Percents chen pons. lcs ee an compara nee While these questions do not directly address bullying, they do indicate that the district appears to provide above average support and consistent disciplinary measures when issues do occur. Staff was also given the opportunity to provide free-response comments. Typically, this is an area of a staff survey where staff members will raise concerns that are not addressed by specific survey questions. The terms bulying/buly did not appear in any comment provided by staff members. Adeltional searches ‘on related topics (discipline, expectations, emotional, etc.) did pull up some concerns about overall behavior, with three comments addressing a perceived need for more social-emotional support and one comment specifically noting: “There is a definite divide between middle school and primary discipline. It is dificult to discipline middle schoo! students for hallvay behavior. Hallway behavior isan area of future improvement,Conclusion Based on the survey data as well as an analysis of the comments, it does not appear that Fairview District 72 has a concerning bullying problem of any magnitude However, as this is a universal issue that all school districts face, steps could be taken to address any perceived pockets of bullying behavior as well as to review disciplinary procedures that could be improved or enhanced in regards to this particular behavioral problem,