Assistant Superintendent of Schools Anne Uberti introduced the Board of Education to the results of the district-wide Safe School Climate Survey September 19.

Each member was provided with a copy of the results collected from a survey administered last spring to Newtown families, faculty, staff, and students in grades 3 through 12.

To provide a background to the surveys, Uberti explained the state legislature passed a statute in 2012 that broadened the definition of bullying. The statute also mandated schools make safe school climate plans and conduct a climate assessment biannually.

Uberti noted Newtown conducts the survey annually, adding this was important because Newtown contains two-year schools.

With an annual survey, parents of children at Reed Intermediate School and Newtown Middle School would have an opportunity to voice feedback, according to Uberti. She added an annual survey also allows the administration to analyze and track events over time more effectively.

After trying two surveys with outside entities since the mandate with varied experiences, Uberti explained the School Climate Committee made their own survey “in-house” and was piloted last spring looking at experiences with surveys in prior years.

Uberti said the new survey had issues with timing, which impacted participation, but overall the committee believes “the results we did see reveal an improvement that we felt was actionable.”

Completed surveys were distributed to their corresponding school where they were analyzed by the entire faculty. Uberti explained teachers and other certified staff will incorporate aspects of goals derived from the results of the survey into their own goals for the year.

“Surveys shouldn’t replace face-to face-conversations, but they often do for many people,” said Uberti. “A lot of times, people who feel very strongly about something will open up in a survey about something that they never discuss with an administrator.”

Uberti said while survey comments can be painful, “they absolutely do matter,” and that the administrative and climate team wants to hear what everyone has to say.

Uberti said responses for multiple choice questions are much higher, and more likely representative of the group feelings than short-answers. She explained that on the data distributed to board members for review, green data indicates positive reports about the climate, while red is negative.

‘Very Positive’ Overall

The assistant superintendent expressed she thinks overall, survey results are “very positive.”

“Are there areas we need to work on? Absolutely. There are some rough takeaways,” said Uberti. “I have spoken with all of the principals about what they’re considering adding to their school success plans for this year to address some of those concerns, but overall I think most of our staff, our parents, and our students are very happy in our schools.”

Board Member Todd Higgins inquired about the broad takeaways of the data. Uberti explained that since the data is divided by building, it would be difficult to give a broad takeaway based on the data as presented in the report provided to the board members.

She referenced an “overwhelming agreement among parents that communication was happening at a very, very high level” at one school, then specified certain types of staff who did not express “that same type of positivity” on the subject.

Board Member Don Ramsey asked if people seemed happier this year than last year, and Uberti said she “can’t make that comparison” because it took “so long” to create the survey that participation rates “were not great” with some students not participating at all, such as students at the middle school and some high school students in finals.

Ramsey asked if principals will “form clusters of similar responses” based on the negative and positive responses to “ascertain what is valid and what isn’t valid.”

Uberti, who said she “personally read” through every building’s surveys, explained it is not required “to be that technical” to determine this. She gave an example that one respondent wrote they would replace the principal as the one thing they would change about a particular school — and they were the only one to do so.

She added if more people had written the same answer, she would have been “more upset at that one comment.”

“Because I read all of the surveys, I do have a sense of what I would like to see the principals working on,” she said.

“I would be really happy to see that the sense of belonging section seems to be bright green all over the place,” said Shannon Tomai in her comment, referencing the color-coding system of the data and continuing, “but it’s hard to reconcile that with the safety section which is really, really red, showing bullying is a massive concern.”

Uberti said students reported it was “easy to get help from an adult,” and also reported they were not aware about how to report bullying — results Uberti said was “very confusing” to the committee.

Uberti said a couple of years ago, it was noticed that “really mean behaviors started” when students returned from winter break. She explained that upon realizing this pattern, it was determined that after winter break, students may need a “double-dose” of an anti-bullying presentation.

Tomai said the red bullying sections may indicate students noticing bullying happening to peers, but not necessarily the respondents themselves.

“It’s hard to know without reading all of the individual responses themselves,” said Tomai.

Uberti said the question about violence is not color-coded properly, and that the colors are reversed. She also said there was another infographic with this reversal.

Chair Deborra Zukowski encouraged board members to contact Uberti or Superintendent of Schools Chris Melillo with questions about the data.

The Safe School Climate Survey details distributed to board members can be accessed on the town website, in the minutes of the September 19 Board of Education meeting.

Reporter Noelle Veillette can be reached at noelle@thebee.com.