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Dear Minneapolis Public Schools
Jul. 27th, 2007 12:37 pmThe school district is doing a survey of parents this summer -- there was news coverage, plus I got an automated recorded call telling me how important it was that I filled it out, and then the survey finally arrived the week after this automated call said it would, which sad to say, reflects my relationship with the school district pretty well right there.
The survey was surprisingly well written. I've written surveys, so I know how difficult it is to write a good one. (If you've never written one -- collecting comments is easy, but collecting data that you can analyze statistically and make sense of in the aggregate is much harder than it looks.) I was mildly amused by the question where I needed to assess how important it was to me that the staff be able to communicate with me in my native language. (Ed's deadpan response: "that'd be 'extremely important.'") Other than that, though -- well-written survey.
And yet, it ignored (or barely touched on) some of the biggest frustrations out there regarding the school district. There were no questions whatsoever about transportation. Molly was dropped off at entirely the wrong intersection once last year by an idiot substitute driver who ignored the older children who told him that he was in the wrong spot -- and some of her friends were dropped off in the wrong spot repeatedly. All of these kids were kindergarteners and first graders who were being met at the stop by a parent or caregiver -- but the grownup is waiting at the correct corner and the kid is dropped off at the wrong corner, WTF are you supposed to do? (A cell phone in the backpack is the simplest solution, except that those are explicitly against the rules.)
They also didn't deal with the "promised communications that don't arrive as scheduled" issue, which has come up a lot. Unless by "dealing with it" we mean "demonstrated it."
Right now, FYI, I can't do our school supplies shopping because I don't have a supply list. The supply lists are put together by the individual teachers, so I can't really take care of this until I know who Molly's teacher will be. They used to send out letters in mid-August to tell you who the teacher would be, but they've decided to stop doing that because they want to be able to move kids around at the last minute to racially balance the classrooms. Now we're not going to find out teachers until the ice cream social before school starts. Except I don't know when that is, either. My vague recollection from last year is that it was RIGHT before school started, like possibly the week before. But the school's website doesn't say -- in fact, it doesn't have any current information, only info from last year. I called the school's number and got a message saying that right now they're in summer session and they do not want any questions regarding fall until Monday, August 13th.
I don't think it's entirely unreasonable that this situation makes me hyperventilate.
The survey was surprisingly well written. I've written surveys, so I know how difficult it is to write a good one. (If you've never written one -- collecting comments is easy, but collecting data that you can analyze statistically and make sense of in the aggregate is much harder than it looks.) I was mildly amused by the question where I needed to assess how important it was to me that the staff be able to communicate with me in my native language. (Ed's deadpan response: "that'd be 'extremely important.'") Other than that, though -- well-written survey.
And yet, it ignored (or barely touched on) some of the biggest frustrations out there regarding the school district. There were no questions whatsoever about transportation. Molly was dropped off at entirely the wrong intersection once last year by an idiot substitute driver who ignored the older children who told him that he was in the wrong spot -- and some of her friends were dropped off in the wrong spot repeatedly. All of these kids were kindergarteners and first graders who were being met at the stop by a parent or caregiver -- but the grownup is waiting at the correct corner and the kid is dropped off at the wrong corner, WTF are you supposed to do? (A cell phone in the backpack is the simplest solution, except that those are explicitly against the rules.)
They also didn't deal with the "promised communications that don't arrive as scheduled" issue, which has come up a lot. Unless by "dealing with it" we mean "demonstrated it."
Right now, FYI, I can't do our school supplies shopping because I don't have a supply list. The supply lists are put together by the individual teachers, so I can't really take care of this until I know who Molly's teacher will be. They used to send out letters in mid-August to tell you who the teacher would be, but they've decided to stop doing that because they want to be able to move kids around at the last minute to racially balance the classrooms. Now we're not going to find out teachers until the ice cream social before school starts. Except I don't know when that is, either. My vague recollection from last year is that it was RIGHT before school started, like possibly the week before. But the school's website doesn't say -- in fact, it doesn't have any current information, only info from last year. I called the school's number and got a message saying that right now they're in summer session and they do not want any questions regarding fall until Monday, August 13th.
I don't think it's entirely unreasonable that this situation makes me hyperventilate.
