How not to write a survey
Why the TVUSD Superintendent Survey for the Community is worse than useless
Today we’re taking a look at the Superintendent Survey TVUSD recently sent to the community for input. (Note: The link no longer works because the survey has been completed.) You may have seen it already; it was in the August 25, 2023 Community Connection newsletter the district sends out and is being advertised on social media.
A little background
School Board trustees Komrosky, Wiersma, and Gonzalez fired our previous Superintendent, Dr. Jodi McClay (without cause and requiring a $362,000 buyout of her contract), at their meeting on June 13, 2023.
At their next meeting on June 27, the three trustees hired a search firm, Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates (HYA), to find a new Superintendent. No proposals were requested from other search firms, and HYA did not present any information to the Board about their qualifications or search process prior to the vote. Board President Komrosky did not allow the Board to discuss the process for hiring. (Normally, the Board would first discuss the hiring process they want to follow, then request proposals from multiple search firms, and finally choose one of them.)
The survey
The survey is available online. Its introduction states, “The Board of Education invites all members of our community to engage in this process, as your insights and perspectives are crucial in helping us select a leader who reflects our shared values and aspirations.”
The survey asks you to:
Identify your role: parent, student, teacher, and so on
Rate the “overall quality of education in the District”
Indicate your agreement or disagreement with 19 statements about the State of the District, for example: “The District is heading in the right direction,” “Facilities are well maintained,” “The District is fiscally responsible.”
Select 4 skills you think a new Superintendent needs, from a list of 12
That’s it.
The survey contains no open-ended questions—questions where you type your answers in your own words into a blank field—so you can’t clarify your answers or mention anything else you think might be important in a new Superintendent.
What’s wrong with the survey?
The bulk of this survey (20 responses out of 24) asks your opinion about the current “State of the District,” not about your concerns for the future or the qualities and skills you want in a new Superintendent.
Since Komrosky, Wiersma, and Gonzalez were elected to the Board, they have changed policies, delayed approving curriculum, and invited lawsuits. So how do you answer the 20 questions about the state of the district? If you think the district up until last December showed a clear vision for the future, was heading in the right direction, and was fiscally responsible, do you agree with those statements? Or, since you’ve watched the Board muddy the vision, head in the wrong direction, and spend money on the wrong things in the last nine months, do you disagree? Either way, the search firm won’t know what your answer means.
Only one question asks about the qualities of a new Superintendent, and you’re allowed to choose only four qualities (out of 12 given). Again, the search firm will have very little information to work with.
The absence of any open-ended question is particularly bad, giving you no way to explain your responses or add helpful observations.
How should the survey be written?
As it happens, the Palm Springs Unified School District is also looking for a new Superintendent, and their survey (which was available online only until September 1) was much better.
The Palm Springs Superintendent search survey asked five open-ended questions, where you can write in anything you want:
What is important for our next Superintendent to know about our community?
What do you see as the strengths of the District?
What do you see as the major challenges which will confront our new Superintendent?
Please add any other qualities and characteristics which you think are important for our next Superintendent to possess.
Then it asked:
What professional experience a new Superintendent should have to meet the district's needs
What professional leadership characteristics the Superintendent should have
What personal characteristics the Superintendent should have
Each of these questions listed 7-9 characteristics and asked that you rank them (1-7 or 1-9) based on how important you think they are.
The Temecula survey is a lazy survey. It’s easy to add up the answers, but they give almost no information. While it’s much harder to analyze open-ended questions, those are the answers that give insight.
How do you feel?
The TVUSD survey feels useless. If you want to express your opinions in your own words or have specific issues you want to mention, you can’t.
It may make you angry, too. The leader of our district is truly important, but this survey gives you no opportunity to give real feedback on what our Superintendent should be like.
If the Board majority really wanted our “insights and perspectives,” they would show it in a genuine survey. This one is a waste of time. They’re not listening; they don’t want to listen.