6 | april 2018
theVoice
A FEW WORDS FROM RPS 205 SUPERINTENDENT
Opening the doors to employee feedback
A focus on transparency, high-quality professional development Being in touch with our students, our families, our employees and our community is essential to the Rockford Public Schools becoming the first choice for all families. Last month, 51 parents at six elementary schools — Ellis, Swan Hillman, Lathrop, Rolling Green, Nelson and Spring Creek — participated in focus groups. They met for 90 minutes and answered questions such as: What do you think about your child’s academic instruction or learning in this school? How can that instruction be improved? What do you think about the support your child receives in this school? How can that student support be improved? A research and communications company, K12 Insight, ran the focus groups to ensure confidentiality and demonstrate the district’s dedication to getting honest feedback. We are grateful to two of our community partners — Discovery Center Museum and the Rockford Park District — for helping us provide child care at the schools so parents could participate. Results of the focus groups will be shared with school principals this month. They will review the data and form action plans. Next year, K12 will help us send a survey on school quality to students and parents across the district. It’s all part of our commitment to continuous improvement.
The Surveys Say … Surveys are a great tool to drive continuous improvement as well. The district is proud of the results from last year’s Rockford Chamber of Commerce Public Education Survey. Nearly three in four respondents believed RPS 205 is headed in the right direction. We still have work to do, but are building on those positive results and following our Strategic Plan. We are encouraged by what we hear from our staff, too. This fall, we surveyed our employees on the critical topic of engagement. In asking for their opinions, we acknowledged we hadn’t always been intentional with survey data. We asked for their feedback a lot, but we were lax in sharing the results and responding with steps for improvement. We are diligent about communication and follow-through this time around. It’s a bright spot alone that 57 percent of our staff and 82 percent of our teachers responded to the survey. Not only that: A total of 77 percent of employees who responded were engaged
Dr. Ehren Jarrett Superintendent RPS 205
or highly engaged with their work, according to the survey administrator K12 Insight. We discovered in the survey, though, that we have plenty of work to do to leverage high engagement. District leaders chose to focus on these areas: understanding employees’ professional needs, making sure leaders’ actions are consistent with their words and encouraging employees to share ideas to improve performance.
‘Let’s Talk!’ Employee Engagement To that end, I am visiting each school building and highlighting a specific problem of professional practice. So far this school year, I have visited three early childhood centers, six elementary schools and one middle school. A topic that comes up frequently in these discussions is high-quality professional development. We want to make sure the millions of dollars we spend every year on continuing education aligns with school improvement and our Strategic Plan. Responsiveness and transparency are among the highest values at RPS 205. In January we created a place on our interactive customer service platform Let’s Talk! so employees can address concerns about engagement. In this space a year ago I shared data on Let’s Talk!, which allows the public as well as staff to submit questions, suggestions, concerns and compliments to the district 24/7 from their mobile phone or computer. It’s our fourth school year with Let’s Talk! and we are proud of the results. We have received 6,812 dialogues and our average time to close is 2.3 days (the goal is 48 hours). While the time to close is about the same as a year ago, there’s been a 44 percent increase in number of dialogues during that time period. We’re an organization that believes in continuous improvement, and our door will continue to be open — to our community, to our students and families, and to our staff. Dr. Ehren Jarrett is superintendent of Rockford Public Schools. The views expressed are those of Dr. Jarrett’s and do not necessarily represent those of the Rockford Chamber of Commerce.