LASD Teachers Weigh in on District's Climate and Culture, an Introduction

[XLFD]

Thanks to whoever spent a lot on postage to send the Ludington Torch the results of a rather well-responded-to survey that staff associated with the Ludington Area School District (LASD) conducted late in the last school year.  As one who regularly attends board meetings, I typically write only about what I observe there and my perceptions of same.  Only those parents who double as teachers know about what's happening in the trenches of our schools, and for obvious reasons, they cannot generally speak frankly about their own experiences and problems with administrators and other issues.  

Nineteen questions were asked to a diverse cross section of 94 members of unionized LASD staff.  The first question indicates that slightly over half worked at the Ludington Elementary School (serving K-5), slightly over a quarter worked at the middle school, and one-fifth were in the high school.  In other words, very representative of different grade levels.  

The Introduction + Q1 is addressed to the board and superintendent.  The Ludington Education Association (LEA) is the sender, expressing some frustration at the district not participating in an anonymous survey of staff regarding the current school learning culture and climate, after agreeing to do so, and then expressing the desire for a less comprehensive survey than the LEA wanted.

The union decided it would hold it own survey and would use fairly worded questions, most borrowed from past climate and culture surveys and had an 85% participation rate and results before March 21st.  They noticed trends among the numbers and comments (each question offered commenting for justification if desired), just like you may, when you read the results.  

The LEA put its trust in the leadership to do what is right for the district, but until I saw this in my mailbox, I was not aware of any such survey over the last six months, so the administration apparently isn't addressing the issues, at least in a public forum.  Nor have they taken any actions to address such topics over that period, which included three summer regular meetings, where such issues can be addressed without a lot of additional distractions.

This 93-page document should be required reading for those selecting school board trustees in the LASD this fall as five people (including two incumbents) are running for two open seats.  The Ludington Torch will explore this survey in three installments over the next few weeks so as not to overwhelm those who would use this information to guide their vote or otherwise address school culture and climate issues.

The first regular question was perhaps the most comprehensive of the bunch as to what it asked for, an assessment of the climate and culture at LASD.  For those not in the education field, the climate of a school is the overall attitude of the people within. It is defined by the atmosphere felt when walking through the doors and interacting with the members. The climate is the energy behind the culture of a school. The culture, on the other hand, is more about the ideologies and beliefs that make the school an effective learning institution. 

One can almost read into what the climate is from the ratings.  Dissatisfaction was found in over 72% of responses while satisfaction was less than 12%, a sixfold difference, with less than one sixth not having an opinion either way.  Fully 58 of the surveyed added commentary to their choice, some of these are very troubling if you believe when you read them in Q2 that they may apply to your child's school, teacher, and/or classroom, and how the supervisor and the board comes up short in your teacher's eyes.  For example, let's take a snapshot of some of the dominant themes in the comments:

#3:  "... a lack of trust at many levels.  Superintendent to staff, Board to staff it just feels as nothing is transparent."

#5:  "There is a sense of adversarial attitude in the district, that administration is not on the same team as staff."

#7:  "The climate between administrators and teachers is not good."

#8:  "I do not feel valued."

#9:  "[Superintendent Jason Kennedy] worked hard to make all employees feel valued and heard... trust is gone..."

#15:  "We are not treated as professionals; we are micromanaged (by administrators].  There is no shared decisions.  Communication is infrequent."

#18:  "Teachers and support staff cannot share idea, solutions to problems, or voice their concerns with administration without being subjected to anger and defensiveness."

#23:  "We used to feel respected, supported, and appreciated... by administration-- that is just not the case anymore... we have had so many [staff members]leave our district, is that not a HUGE problem?  This used to be a desired district to work in."

#25:  ""LASD talks a real good game out in public, but... administration does not put their words in action."

#29:  "Same problems continue to repeat.  This is defeating to morale."

This covers the first half of the responses, the latter half has plenty more observations that are representative of the staff having issues with administrators (including comment #56, who writes an essay with a lot of reasons why the current superintendent needs to go, or at least exhibit traits of Superintendent Kennedy).  Even those who were satisfied often admitted that there were issues.

One can come to an early conclusion from these responses to the first questions that staff has put forth a lot of different issues of contention with district administration.  There is not one incident or grievance that dominates the responses, likely meaning that dissatisfaction is not just due to an isolated treatment of staff or the superintendent driving a hard collective bargaining stance.  

One could rationalize, like Dr. Corlett did, that such anonymous surveys of union members always attract "negative individuals".  This statement, if made, indicates that there may indeed be a problem with the culture and climate even if we should ignore the comments and overall rating.

When one looks at Question 3, confirmation of that seems to occur when none of the 94 respondents gives the district the highest score when asked whether they are satisfied with the communication between staff and district administrators:

 

it is not as condemning in another way since the over 60% dissatisfied only exceed the dissatisfied' teacher's less than 15% showing by a factor of four.  These answers are more consistent but seemingly heartfelt for the district's communication skills and lack of transparency, summed up tersely in response 40:  "What communication?" and developed slightly more in #16:  "No transparency within the district.  When information is shared it is vague and often misleading."

As I asked all the five candidates present at the last board meeting, start talking about more than jingles and slogans telling us nothing about how they would address the issues brought earnestly forth by the rank-and-file staff or tell us they're immaterial and just grievances by negative teacher union members.  Let us know how you feel about changes to Title IX that would allow boys to compete in girls' sports and disrobe in their locker rooms and showers.  The public deserves more than just another elite bobblehead on the school board.

[Willy]

Thanks for relaying this information. I wonder if you would have learned of this survey had it not been sent to you. I to thank the sender for revealing the information. I'm sure there was no return address on the package. First of all I'm a little tired of all the buzz words used to describe conditions regarding internal and external goings on in our institutions, such as "climate" and "culture". Please,let's call it for what it really is. A poll of how disgruntled employees really are. There would have been no need for this survey if there was not a lot of pissed of employees. Another thing I would like to see is a survey of how the taxpayers really think about where our education system is heading, especially regarding the woke agenda being jammed down our throats. For instance a family member of mine who lives in another city in Michigan tells me of how a local elementary school turned a 300 ft. long chain link fence into a 300 ft. rainbow. That rainbow also hangs as a flag inside the schools entrance. These rainbows do not represent a box of Lucky Charms cereal.

Another thing I would like to know about is my concern for the reason that this survey  was initiated. Even tho I am in favor of this survey I'm curious about the politics behind it. Are the dissatisfied employees that way because they are Left leaning and want a more rigorous implementation of the wokeness agenda or are they right leaning and want it stopped. Either way, I think this is an important step to bring this situation to the attention of the public. Something we may have never known if not for X and his journalistic efforts.

[XLFD]

When I got this looked through it and got the gist of the full survey, I perceived that the motivation for the person to send this to me was similar to the frustration mentioned early in the year in the introductory page by the LEA and found throughout the survey's answers.  They submitted this whole survey to the board and administrators and probably got no feedback.  The anonymous sender apparently wanted this out in the public's eyes before the November elections, where five quality candidates are running for two seats.

I would have likely not paid much attention to it if I didn't take some time to read the comments and look at the bar graphs which indicate not everything is as peaches and cream as portrayed at board meetings between administrators, board, and staff.  The discontent is widespread and not just over a couple of disagreements or incidents that came up and weren't resolved.