After several revisions based upon input from a variety of individuals (and my thanks to the students, parents, staff members, and school committee members who provided feedback) the Gateway 2025 Public Survey is ready to be shared with everyone. As you may recall, the survey is a vital part of our visioning process and will give the school committee, staff, and communities information to begin formulating and implementing a 10-year plan to meet student and community needs.
This comprehensive survey covers many different aspects of the Gateway Regional School District and, based upon our ‘Beta’ survey takers, should take approximately 20 to 30 minutes to complete. The survey is open for anyone who wishes to participate and can be found on the district’s website, on the Superintendent’s Blog, will be included in ‘Breaking News’, emailed to district contacts, distributed through social media, be shared through press releases, and may be accessed at http://goo.gl/forms/kyt6IznRdp. We certainly encourage students, staff, parents and community members to complete the survey so that we have a wide range of individuals representing the district as a whole. The survey will remain open until October 15.
After the survey is closed, the collected data will be compiled and the results will be made available to everyone. More importantly, the survey data will provide a starting place to begin discussions during open planning meetings in order to continue the process of developing Gateway’s future. The hope is that this process, much as the 2015 process initiated in 2005, will provide the basis for making positive changes to the district to better meet student and community needs. As indicated in the survey, no individual responses will be identified and no individual will be linked to their results. In fact, the way the survey is set up, it’s impossible to identify the individuals taking the survey beyond what the survey requests in generic demographic questions, which simply allows the data to be broken down in broad demographic categories (i.e., parents/non-parents, students/graduates, respondents living in district vs. out of district).
Our hope is to have the survey data report completed by the end of October for use in planning meetings that will be held in November so that we can have a draft plan ready for review in January. The reality is that this planning process is looking at the potential for long-term change that will most likely be brought about through small changes over time (at least, if the last visioning process at Gateway is indicative of the future). As reported to the school committee, these small changes may not seem very important or monumental when first instituted, but, like steering changes to a supertanker, they lead to significant changes over time.
I again urge people to take the survey and, as the process moves through various stages, to remain involved. It’s not often that so many have an opportunity to be in the initial stages of planning where the district will be 10 years from now!
