[This transcript was generated automatically from audio using AI and hasn't been reviewed by a person -- it can contain mistakes, including plausible-sounding sentences that were never actually said. Treat it as a starting point, not a verbatim record.]

[0:02] Good evening. My name is Darren Severs, and I'm a project manager with school perceptions. We are the third party research firm that conducted the community survey for ISD 728 to measure support for a potential enrollment solution that the school board and district administration are considering. I shared our community survey findings on Tuesday night at the school board special session, and at the end of that session, we talked about the idea of creating a recording that could be shared through email,
[0:31] to staff, parents, and post on the website.
[0:35] So that is the purpose of this recording today
[0:37] is to get back to as many people as possible
[0:39] with the findings that were researched
[0:42] by our third party firm.
[0:46] So here is the PowerPoint that I shared
[0:48] with the School Board and District Administration
[0:51] on Tuesday night.
[0:57] This is the Contample Contents
[0:59] that will walk you through what to expect
[1:00] from this recording.
[1:02] We're going to give a brief background of our company
[1:04] what our role and mission is as a company and then we're going to get right into our survey
[1:09] respondents and our results and analysis. So the school perceptions has been
[1:15] existence since 2002 and our mission is to help educational leaders like your
[1:19] school board and district administration gather, organize and use data to make
[1:24] strategic decisions. We've conducted over 3.3 million staff, parent, student and
[1:30] community surveys for school improvement.
[1:32] A staff and parents watching this video
[1:34] will be familiar with us because we're in our second year
[1:37] of sending surveys to staff and parents and students.
[1:40] And we have helped more than 1400 school districts
[1:43] in all 50 states in five foreign countries
[1:46] with strategic planning and referendum planning
[1:50] like the bond referendum being considered
[1:52] by your school district.
[1:54] So let's talk about our survey and our findings.
[1:57] The survey had a deadline of April 27th of 2026, and we had a great response.
[2:05] 4,860 respondents took the survey.
[2:08] 1,036 of them via the paper survey where they completed the survey and mailed it back
[2:14] to our office in suburban Milwaukee.
[2:17] The rest of the survey respondents took it via QR code or web link and it loaded into
[2:22] our server anonymously immediately.
[2:25] With that many surveys processed, your community had a very, very strong 15.24% response rate.
[2:34] We processed a couple more surveys in the last two days.
[2:37] And while we have a deadline, we never really truly have a deadline.
[2:41] We process every survey that comes our way, even if it's well past the survey deadline,
[2:45] just because someone forgot or maybe there's a delay in mailing,
[2:49] because we want to hear from everyone we can on behalf of your school board and administration.
[2:54] Now, within a survey that is large of a community as yours, we do calculate a margin for
[3:01] air for every project we do, but your margin of air is much lower than most surveys we conduct,
[3:07] because you're larger than normal school district.
[3:09] At the end, I'm going to present a projection of voter support for the options being considered
[3:15] within the survey.
[3:16] That margin of error plays a very big role in what we recommend and advise as your third
[3:22] party research firm.
[3:25] We need to have a statistical margin of error plus or minus 1.44 percent.
[3:32] To give you some context, I just did a presentation yesterday for another school district of Minnesota
[3:36] that was smaller, they had a 4.66 percent margin of error, so it really varies based on the
[3:42] size of the district that we are serving with our survey services.
[3:47] So within our highly anonymous process, as those of you that took the survey know, we use
[3:52] a one-time usage code for every survey that we provide.
[3:57] That means the survey can only be taken once, and then once it is completed, it goes into
[4:02] a locked out mode where it can't be taken again.
[4:06] However, within the survey we do ask some identifying factors to study and disaggregate
[4:12] the data. One of them is what is your age. Now, you have a rather young community compared to some
[4:18] of the districts we serve. The largest respondent group was the 35 to 44-year-olds, and that tells us
[4:24] that that tends to be the prime parenting years, and that parents are paying very close
[4:31] attention to these survey questions because they are probably well aware of the enrollment crunch
[4:38] that the buildings are experiencing.
[4:41] Another disaggregating factor within the survey is we ask if the survey taker is a resident
[4:47] of the school district. 92% of the survey respondents said that they are residents
[4:53] of the school district. Now the natural question that we often get is within that 7% that
[4:58] said no or not sure who are those people. Well the not sure is tend to be someone that
[5:04] they're right on the border of the district. They're not sure if they're in the district
[5:07] or not, maybe they're a young family who don't have kids in school yet, so it just hasn't
[5:12] been on their minds and something that they've worried about just yet. The 7% that said
[5:16] no, typically are three types of people. It can be the staff. We send the survey to every staff
[5:23] member because these are these are questions that impact their working conditions, but not every
[5:28] staff member resides within the school district and they're not necessarily voters. So we will take
[5:34] them out when we give a projection of findings. Also, your district has a number of families
[5:40] that open a role into the district rather than attending their home district. Those folks,
[5:45] their value, their opinion matters to the board of the administration for sure, but because
[5:50] they can't vote, we don't roll them into our projection of support within our findings.
[5:56] And then thirdly, some of your properties in the district are owned by people that don't
[6:01] reside in the district. They may have gotten a survey, but since they can't vote,
[6:07] we will not count the results in our projection of findings that would project and predict
[6:13] voter support at the end. So going forward, when we give a voter projection of support,
[6:19] it'll be based on the 92 percent of you that said that you reside in the district and our voters.
[6:26] Within the survey, we also ask what municipality you live in. We do this on every
[6:31] survey we give because we want to be able to study and drill down for your school board
[6:36] and leadership team on how the support broke out by municipality. We also want to give
[6:41] voice to all the smaller townships, cities, and communities within a district, not just the
[6:47] district in total.
[6:50] Another question we ask within the survey is, are you an employee of the school
[6:54] district and do you have children attending the district? This slide is going to take a little bit
[6:59] extra explaining. So 16% of survey takers identify themselves as employees. We like that number.
[7:07] We're pleased to see that level of engagement by the employees. That being said, when we study
[7:13] your census data and the norms across all the projects we have done, less than 1% of eligible
[7:21] voters are staff members that reside in the district. So there's an over-representation of staff.
[7:28] We'll need to correct that and wait it more appropriately and accurately when we give a projection of voter support.
[7:35] The same has to be done for the parent data.
[7:39] 53% of the surveys that we receive back were from parents.
[7:43] That being said, we studied your
[7:45] 2024 census data and
[7:48] 30% of eligible voters are parenting age and so we'll need to correct that in order to give the district a more reliable and accurate
[7:56] measure of voter support.
[8:01] Another question on the survey is, do you participate in the district's
[8:04] community education program? 36% of survey respondents said that they do, so this is good data for
[8:11] your community education department.
[8:15] Also, we asked the question, how would you like to receive
[8:19] information from us? The light blue bar represents the parents, again, 30% of the eligible voters.
[8:27] The purple bar represents non-parents, non-staff.
[8:32] They represent 70% of eligible voters.
[8:36] Those two groups are very impactful in every survey we've ever conducted,
[8:41] but also every vote ever held by a school district.
[8:45] 30% of ISD 728's voters are parents, 70% non-parents non-staff,
[8:51] so they have to be communicated within very different manners.
[8:55] The light blue bar, the parents, they're saying, hey, send me an email.
[8:59] I can read the 7-8 happenings when that is sent out or the website or I'll get an online
[9:05] newsletter from my child's school or look at social media.
[9:09] Non-parents, non-staff districts typically don't have emails for those people.
[9:14] And so of us, they're very much counting on the 7-8 happenings and to a lesser extent,
[9:20] the STAR news, the website, newsletters, emails, and social media. So those groups have to be
[9:27] communicated within different, very different manners. But what this is telling the district's
[9:33] communication department is it's going to take a number of modalities to get the survey results
[9:38] back to you so that you understand what you learned for the survey and what the next steps are going
[9:44] to be. But we don't ask this question just specifically about a bond referendum. It's
[9:50] good feedback for your schools just so that they know that on this day and at this time
[9:55] what your communication preferences are on a day-to-day basis. So this was very helpful
[9:59] and very interesting to your board and leadership team on Tuesday night. So let's talk about
[10:04] the survey itself. Within the survey we showed the current enrollment challenges and projected
[10:11] future enrollment challenges that are being experienced by the district. And a chart was used to show
[10:19] anything in red shows where things are over capacity. So it's a good news, bad news thing for ISD7
[10:26] to 8th. You're a very attractive district, drawing lots of families. 80% of districts across the
[10:32] nation have decline enrollment, but you're a thriving district that a lot of families want to move into
[10:38] your area in a 10-year school. So it's quite a compliment, but it also does create capacity challenges.
[10:46] So to address those capacity challenges, your district has been on a multi-year mission
[10:52] to try to come up with a solution. And this is a timeline of meetings that were held by a task force
[10:58] to look at different ways that the capacity challenges could be addressed.
[11:05] When districts experience this, and again, 20% of districts that we work with have rising enrollments, and that's not just in Minnesota and Wisconsin, but in other states that we serve all throughout the country, there are the options tend to be the same.
[11:19] You can redraw attendance boundaries, you can expand existing sites like Rogers, where the growth is particularly prevalent.
[11:28] You could add on to Roger's high school, make it a much bigger high school, or a third
[11:34] option would have been to have a new high school at Siegel.
[11:38] That being said, the task force determined that the best option was to ask you how you felt
[11:47] about a new high school solution in at Siegel to address the capacity challenges.
[11:53] And we asked that as our first significant question within the survey.
[11:59] Very simply, would you support ISD-728 building a new high school in Otsego?
[12:05] Now again, we broke out the data by three different groups, the less than 1% of voters that are staff,
[12:11] the 30% of voters that are parents and the 70% of voters that are non-parents, non-staff.
[12:17] In each case, there was support in each subgroup.
[12:21] There was support for the concept of a new high school.
[12:25] And you see the numbers in the yes category?
[12:27] Then we show you the numbers in the no category.
[12:30] And then the distribution of those that are not sure.
[12:34] Our company average for not sure is 11 to 12%.
[12:39] So staff and parents quite clear on how they feel about a new high school.
[12:43] Non-parents, non-staff, a bit inflated.
[12:46] they're probably waiting to see what that solution looks like and how much it'll
[12:51] cost and that's what follows in the survey. So what are the first major
[12:57] questions the wise in the road that the survey creates is talking about high
[13:03] school size. The group studied two different high school solutions that have
[13:09] different capacities that were presented by their architectural partner. One
[13:14] solution is a 1300 student building that would likely meet the capacity challenges for the
[13:20] next five to ten years, but would run the risk of running out of space not long after that.
[13:27] Or the other solution being considered would be build a 1900 student capacity building
[13:32] that would be very similar in size to Rogers High School that is currently maxed out.
[13:38] And that would be a much longer term solution. So that was the next question the survey.
[13:44] Which approach would you recommend the district to pursue to expand high school capacity?
[13:50] And our data, once again, showed support for the new high school, but much more support
[13:57] for the 1900 student solution by quite a landslide, quite honestly.
[14:03] You see the support numbers for 1900 compared to the 1300 student solution and the not sure.
[14:09] And again, not sure for the staff, very similar to our company average, a bit inflated for the parents and dramatically inflated for the non-parents non-staff because we still haven't articulated the cost of the plan.
[14:26] And that will be coming very shortly in my report.
[14:30] Within the survey, we also talked about other things that needed to be done to address the capacity needs and the needs of students.
[14:37] Within the capacity challenges was not just a solution for high school students, but also the E through eighth grade solution.
[14:45] And a school would be built to address that student capacity challenge at the elementary and middle school level as well.
[14:51] Along with a school to serve students that have special needs.
[14:55] right now, special needs students' services are scattered through all of them.
[15:00] Community of sites. And this solution would build one building that is devoted to meeting all the needs of the district's significant special needs students that can't be met in a traditional environment. Another aspect of the project is improving the career and technical education spaces. Back when I was a younger boy in school, we called it shop. Things have evolved significantly. And now high schools throughout the nation
[15:29] On almost every project we do are looking to renovate and improve their technical education
[15:36] spaces to make them modern, and to get kids excited about the great opportunities in
[15:43] the workforce for skilled tradesmen, manufacturing, and technical areas, a significant shortage
[15:50] of students going into those fields, and districts are deciding that the only way to address
[15:55] shortages for their communities is by addressing both spaces in the high school while the kids are still learning and taking classes so that they can fill those jobs in their region after they graduate from high school.
[16:09] I've seen this for firsthand my job before working for school perceptions was a school superintendent and suburban Milwaukee in our district actually use school perceptions to do a survey.
[16:19] And we renovated our Career and Technical Ed area, and it was a dramatic solution to
[16:26] our communities needs to get more kids into the skilled trades and manufacturing setting
[16:32] to fill those jobs that are so desperately needy strong workforce.
[16:38] So this is part of the solution, and all of the high schools would get modern Career and Technical
[16:43] education areas so it wouldn't be just at Seago getting a new tech at area. All the high schools
[16:49] would get updated spaces so they have a very equitable experience no matter what high school.
[16:54] The students attend. Finally, there are some safety enhancements that are needed at Rogers
[17:01] Middle School and Zimmerman Middle and High School. These are different times in our schools and
[17:06] not all schools were built at a time when safety was a priority. Clearly, we always wanted kids to
[17:12] be safe but how we make the school safe with a secure entrance at the front of the school
[17:17] with with a buzz in entrance system in cameras is not something that every school has at their
[17:23] at their disposal at this time so the district is wanting to improve the schools that have safety
[17:29] shortcomings at this time as part of this total proposal to update the schools and address these
[17:37] other areas such as career and tech ed, special education and enrollment. So with that, then we got
[17:44] to the part of the survey where we articulate the cost of all those solutions and the tax impact
[17:50] and we presented it in really two succinct options. One would be all those program enhancements
[17:59] and the 1900 student capacity high school or option two which is all of those
[18:07] enhancements and a 1300 student high school. The chart in front of you on the
[18:14] PowerPoint shows what the annual tax impact would be and the monthly tax
[18:20] impact on the various levels of property value that are present in your school
[18:25] district. We want to have a transparent presentation here of what this would cost you regardless of what
[18:32] your home value is so that you can see your home's value range on this chart and understand what you
[18:39] would be voting yes or no to within this survey. So the next slide shows you where the support landed.
[18:46] On the survey, we gave respondents the opportunity to say I would support option one. I would support
[18:53] option 2, I would support either option, I would support neither option or I'm not sure.
[19:01] So this is how the data landed when we compiled the 4860 surveys.
[19:07] You see the support for option 1, only the support for option 2, only those that checked
[19:15] either, those that checked neither and those that checked not sure, which now you can see.
[19:21] Now that we've been very clear about the cost of all the projects and what the tax implications
[19:26] would be, the not sure settled right down to our company average, which tells us as
[19:31] a company that the question being asked was quite clear.
[19:35] There wasn't much confusion about what was being done and why.
[19:39] So within this chart, we need to do a combination of the data.
[19:43] We need to combine the only option ones with the Ithers and the only option twos in the Ithers
[19:48] to create two distinct buckets of which option has more support.
[19:53] And we've done that on the next slide.
[19:55] This next slide shows you that option one had more support than option two.
[20:01] When we combine the either's with the only option ones and the either's with the only option two's.
[20:08] Broken out by staff, parents, non-parents, non-staff.
[20:14] So as you can see, option one had more support, so now our next task is to take that data and go
[20:24] through that waiting formula that I talked about earlier in the presentation and account for the
[20:29] margin of error that I talked about earlier in the presentation. And so the next slide is our
[20:34] projection of voter support if the question were to be asked right now shortly after the survey
[20:43] closed. Option one, the 1900 student solution had 47.5% of survey respondents say they would vote
[20:52] yes. The remaining respondents that were not sure or that said neither are counted as not supportive.
[21:01] This is a conservative estimate because we only want to say with certainty that those that said yes would vote yes
[21:08] And they said yes at a 47.5% rate
[21:12] Now this is where that margin of error comes in remember I said margin of error is quite low for a district your size
[21:19] But it is 1.44 percent and even with 1.44 percent
[21:25] being a plus or minus on the 47.5, it doesn't quite reach the 50% plus one
[21:32] vote that a bond referendum is required to pass. Option two, when we weighted
[21:37] those supportive numbers, landed at a 36.1% support level of yeses, all the
[21:44] rest, not sure, and no. And so that fell quite short of the 50% plus one vote
[21:50] that would take two paths. And again, this waiting exercise was done using 2024 census data,
[21:59] the most current research available to us in studying your community. As we wrapped up the survey,
[22:06] we did ask for satisfaction ratings for from staff, parents, non-parents, non-staff. We use a
[22:12] rating scale of 1 to 4, 4 being great, 3 good, fair, 2 and poor, 1, a median score on
[22:21] this type of rating scale that we use is a 2.5.
[22:25] So for easy skimming, as we talk about how you feel about the district's performance
[22:30] in delivering a high quality education, keeping the public informed, managing funds appropriately
[22:35] and building pride in the community, these are the results that we compiled for our report
[22:40] today.
[22:41] And you can see that when it comes to staff, all four questions were above a 2.5.
[22:47] With parents, three of the four questions were above that 2.5 median score, with managing
[22:52] funds appropriately slightly below the 2.5.
[22:56] And then the non-parents, non-staff, of two of the four scores were above the 2.5, to slightly
[23:02] or quite a bit below the 2.5 middle and average bench park for this rating scale, with managing
[23:09] funds being the lowest rated score across all three subgroups. So when we
[23:15] combined all three groups into a summary score you see here the first column is
[23:21] percent of survey takers that gave the district a three or a four and the second
[23:26] column is the average score with all respondents averaged together and that
[23:31] gives a much clearer picture of how the district is seen. These are very
[23:34] favorable scores in the three areas delivering high-quality education, keeping the public informed
[23:40] and building pride in the community, and the managing funds appropriately score is a bit
[23:45] lower than districts like to see, but this is not abnormal because oftentimes after survey like
[23:52] this where we're talking about tax increases and facility needs, taxes in financial management
[23:59] around people's minds and attends the score a lower as a result.
[24:05] The closing question on our survey is our net promoter question and that is on a scale of zero
[24:12] to ten. How likely would you be to recommend the district to a friend or family member? On that zero
[24:17] to ten rating scale the district score came in at an average of a 6.48. Now what you'll notice is
[24:25] that 25% of survey takers didn't really have an opinion about how the district would
[24:32] sit in terms of recommending enrollment to a friend or family member and this is likely
[24:37] because they just don't have kids in the system, don't work for the system so they're not sure.
[24:43] But overall this is a favorable rating when you look at the distribution of people above a 2.5
[24:49] as compared to the distribution of people below, excuse me, above a five neutral rating versus below the five rating on these zero to 10 rating scale.
[25:01] And finally, we always close up our research with a what did we learn page.
[25:09] This is our efforts to kind of summarize all the data that I just walked you through and give the board some some direction.
[25:17] The ultimate decision is theirs, I know they're going to talk about this in greater depth
[25:21] on Tuesday night, May 26th, and try to come back to the community in a timely manner
[25:28] with their next steps of what they plan to do, but these are our takeaways after doing
[25:32] our independent research for the school board.
[25:35] We learned that a majority of staff and parents support building a new high school and out
[25:40] legal, and a plurality of non-parents non-staff also support the idea of a new high school.
[25:47] All three subgroups prefer the 1900 student capacity solution over the 1300 student solution
[25:57] by a fairly wide margin.
[26:00] And then finally, when it came to supporting the project with funding and a tax increase,
[26:07] There is not support, there is not majority weighted support for funding either option.
[26:14] However, option one has significantly more support than option two.
[26:21] Option one was the 1900 student solution, along with all the other accompanying priority projects.
[26:28] That landed again at 47.5%.
[26:30] So again, even though it's the more expensive option, it seemed to be the solution that resonated with more voters and taxpayers because it received 47.5% as opposed to the 36.1% solution that was more of a short term solution.
[26:48] And finally, we want to clarify and make the point that the 47.5% and 36.1% support for the two options is based on respondents who said they would vote in support of the project or vote yes.
[27:05] all other respondents were not sure 11% or not supportive 42% and so taking
[27:16] that into account your school board will be unpacking this data one more time
[27:21] next Tuesday night and talking through what their next steps will be so I want to
[27:27] thank you for watching this recording of this very important survey on behalf of
[27:31] ISD 728. Please tell your friends and family members that this video is available and
[27:37] will be posted on the website. We would love to have as many people watch this as possible
[27:43] so that we can get as much of the survey findings back out to your community. That was
[27:47] priority one of your school boarded administration is to take the findings and communicate them
[27:53] back to the community that participated at such a high level.
[27:56] So thank you for watching.