photo by: John Young

Kyle Hayden

In more than 100 anonymous survey responses from teachers in the Lawrence school district, it becomes clear that some teachers don’t feel that the district’s administration values their input.

“In large part, the current challenges our district faces focus on a lack of transparency and communication between the administration and the teaching staff,” one teacher wrote. “Changes, new approaches, new programs and philosophies are chosen without input of those of us who work with students and parents every day.”

The voluntary “stakeholder input” survey was done as part of the district’s superintendent search and gathered more than 100 pages of anonymous feedback from district administrators, teachers, staff, students and parents. The survey asked about four topics: the community’s strengths, the district’s strengths, issues facing the new superintendent and what characteristics the new superintendent should have.

More than a third of the teachers’ responses — 52 out of 145 — regarding what issues face the new superintendent expressed that communication between the district’s administration and its teachers is poor. Many of those comments relate that shortcoming to a lack of teacher involvement in recent district undertakings, such as blended learning, digital textbooks and the discipline model, Ci3T.

“Even though the district asks for staff input, the feeling is that decisions are made at the top and staff input is not really valued,” another teacher wrote. “There are too many new initiatives that are overwhelming and implemented without proper staff development or the time to make them work properly.”

The district’s superintendent search concluded last month with the hiring of Kyle Hayden. Hayden is currently an assistant superintendent in the district, and will assume his new role beginning in July. Hayden said that both he and members of the school board read through the survey report and found the negative teacher comments concerning.

“We need to have an understanding of what that’s about,” Hayden said. “Is that an isolated perspective or is that something that’s fairly pervasive that we need to understand more and figure out what adjustments need to be made?”

In response to the issue, Hayden said he plans to meet with teachers and students at all 21 of the district’s schools by the end of the school year. Following those meetings, he is also using a Google form to collect anonymous feedback that will be sorted and later presented to the board. Hayden said it’s one thing to make a comment in a stakeholder survey, but he said he would like to better quantify the feedback.

“Is that one building, is it one person, is it multiple buildings that have the same type of issues that are resonating?” he said. “And that’s what I mean by trying to quantify it. Because you don’t want to be reactionary necessarily to one thing, but you do need to pay attention if something is consistently being said because that wouldn’t be good leadership if you were hearing that then dismissing it.”

School board President Vanessa Sanburn agreed. Sanburn said that even though the stakeholder survey was voluntary and therefore not necessarily an even sampling of feedback, the concerns were still important to address.

“Since there were definitely some themes that existed in that stakeholder input report, it’s a really important thing for our district to look into those concerns and get a handle on how large of a problem it is,” she said.

Since Hayden was hired as the incoming superintendent in March, he has visited seven schools and met with the student councils at both high schools. Hayden said he thought the meetings alone were a good first step.

“Just the fact that I’m there and asking them what they think, it seems to mean a lot to people,” he said.

In the meetings he’s had so far, Hayden said that though in general the feedback has been positive, teachers have voiced concerns about the role they’ve had in the district’s rollout of blended learning, new technology and Ci3T.

“In the past they felt like they may have been involved (in those undertakings), but the decision seemed to steer in a different direction than anticipated,” he said. “And so those are the type of things that I think we need to understand.”

Several comments on the stakeholder survey expressed that teachers who gave negative feedback regarding district undertakings felt that administrators ignored it.

“Top down management is resented and should not be a direction the district continues to move in,” one teacher wrote. “Teachers should be allowed input in programs/initiatives, and that input should be taken seriously.”

Sanburn said that getting teacher input and working to build consensus throughout any process results in better “buy-in” from teachers on district initiatives and thus better results. At the same time, she noted that getting everyone to agree isn’t likely.

“I think teachers obviously know best what their students need and so having their input is very valuable,” Sanburn said. “But I think it’s also important to recognize that sometimes you can’t build a full, complete consensus.”

Hayden is also planning a joint meeting of teachers, staff and parents, which will be held at the district offices on May 11. Once the feedback from the meetings and the new survey is compiled, Hayden said he will present it to the school board in July. He said feedback will be used to inform the board goals, which are set yearly.

“Multiple perspectives are always valuable and it takes all kinds of people, I think, to make quality decisions happen,” Hayden said. “If we’re working in isolation of each other, then that’s not going to be the most productive way to work.”