Survey of Parents Helps Saline Area Schools Prepare for Fall Scenarios

When Saline Area Schools offer online learning to students this fall, whether it’s weekly or daily, for 10 percent of the population or everyone, instruction won’t look like it did in the spring when the COVID-19 emergency forced the state to quickly cancel in-class instruction. Online education will be more robust, rigorous and engaging. Students will be tested and graded.

Still, the district believes it will take away lessons from successes and failures of the hastily organized remote classrooms, so that’s why the district leadership and K12 Insight partnered to survey parents. During Tuesday’s Saline Board of Education meeting, Superintendent Scot Graden reviewed the survey’s results with the board.

“The results of this survey will help us moving forward but are based on a model that is not replicated even if we are in a remote learning scenario in the fall,” Graden told the board.

The survey addressed three topics, district and school communication, family experiences with distance learning, and community resources. More than 2,600 parents participated in the survey.

The survey found:

• 93 percent of respondents rated communication from the district as excellent or good.

• 38 percent of respondents said their child works well independently and 33 percent said their child was comfortable asking a teacher for help when they didn’t understand something.

• 67 percent of participants said they were satisfied or very satisfied with the distance learning experience.

• The numbers were better at the elementary school level than high school level. 71 percent of parents of elementary students said their child’s assignments were interesting, while only 48 percent of their high school counterparts said the same

• Parents seemed in agreement that teachers were prepared and communicated well with students about assignments and expectations. There was less agreement that content was delivered well, and that students were engaged and felt like part of the community. 

• 80 percent of high school parents felt their child was able to complete coursework with minimal distraction. That number was 74 percent for middle schoolers and 54 percent for elementary schoolers.

• Parents of middle school students reported a higher level of daily participation from their child (73 percent) than parents of high schoolers (66 percent) and elementary schoolers (65 percent).

• Parents of high school (87 percent) and middle school students (77 percent) were more likely to agree that their child completed class assignments without much assistance. That number was 49 percent for parents of elementary school students.

• Only 35 percent of parents agreed their child feels like part of a community during online learning.

• 81 percent of parents said they are satisfied with community resources provided by the district on its website.

Graden said the district is going to have to improve its performance to help children learn independently should it find itself in a remote learning environment.

“We do need to figure out ways to better engage students. It’s a challenge for staff and a challenge for families,” Graden said.

Graden said the district will demand more of teachers and students if they return to remote learning.

“Expectations of engagement were somewhat determined by (Gov. Whitmer’s) executive order. It did not call for a great deal of engagement,” Graden said. “There’s a disconnect between what would be a true online robust learning environment and what we were providing in the spring understanding we were managing the situation in a crisis.”

On the issue of undistracted work, Graden said it will be another challenge.

“Ultimately, it’s going to be one of the things where we are really going to need to look at support if we’re in a virtual learning environment for families of elementary school students,” Graden said. “Without the presence of the school environment the ability to stay focused is a challenge.”

The district needs to improve at making students feel like part of a community in a virtual learning environment, Graden said. He said more synchronous learning  - students and staff online at the same time as a group - will be needed to build community.

“We have built strategies around that. We didn’t necessarily employ them in the same in the spring as we would moving forward,” Graden said.

Graden said the district’s distance learning committee, which involves 50 staff members, is using the survey results to develop plans that are still in flux as the district awaits guidance from the state.

“The feeling is daily instruction, daily interaction, attendance, grades, assignments and assessments would be a component of it,” Graden said. “Because of the robust nature of online learning, that would allow us to transfer in and out of it (if necessary). The challenge is the amount of stress that will put on our families and teachers.”

Trustee Dennis Valenti suggested it might be valuable to provide training for parents as virtual learning seems to be a hybrid of traditional school and homeschooling.

“A lot of parents are just not prepared and don’t know what to do,” Valenti said. “That may be a key component of online education. I don’t know if there are tutorials for parents. That might be something we need to look at.”

Graden agreed and said the district will need to develop resources for families. One example might be best practices for designing a home environment that’s conducive to learning.

And that idea presents another challenge for the district - the exacerbation of inequities in the community. Graden said some families will have the ability have a parent present during the day to support online learning. Others will not. Some families may have networks and systems to share resources, perhaps at a subdivision level. Others may not.

“Unfortunately being in a heavy, digital learning environment, unfortunately, I fear, will exacerbate existing inequities within our community in terms of capacity within each of our homes,” Graden said. “What are the ways we can mitigate that? Are there ways we can do some blended versions that may help that?”

Board President Heidi Pfannes asked if there was a way for the district to identify those challenges and support those families.

Trustee Michael McVey commended Graden for noting the difference between the remote learning conducted in March and quality online instruction.

Graden said survey participation was strong.

“More than 2,600 parents participated. I think that’s strong participation relative to trying to gather wholesale feedback about what we’ve done,” Graden said.

Graden said the surveys showed the families appreciated the district’s communication strategy in a “fast-moving environment.”

“Parent participation in surveys really does help inform what we’re able to do as a community,” Graden said.

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