The Harwood Unified Union School District (HUUSD) Board recently received survey results from the Harwood Union Education Association (HUEA) regarding school district redesign.
Rebecca Allen, HUEA representative, presented the HUUSD Board with survey results at the board’s September 25 meeting. The HUUSD Board has been engaged in a lengthy project of redesigning the school district which may include closing Valley elementary schools and placing all district middle school students at Crossett Brook.
“Recently, a number of HUEA members have approached the executive board with concerns about the proposed HUUSD redesign efforts. They feel like teachers are in an uncomfortable position when it comes to expressing their opinion about the redesign process and have asked for a HUEA meeting where teachers can ask questions and express their concerns freely,” Allen and another HUEA representative, Greg Shepler, wrote in an email to the HUUSD Board.
“The executive board will be working with the HUEA Redesign Subcommittee to plan such a meeting and we look forward to sharing the thoughts and concerns of our membership with you as you consider possible redesign options in the future. In the meantime, we would like to share our initial findings from an internal survey we conducted in June. The data clearly shows a significant number of our members feel uninformed about the process and that many of our members have concerns they would like to be addressed before moving forward,” the September 24 email noted.
There are 199 faculty members of the HUEA and 62 support staff members. Of those members, 57 responded to the June survey. The survey asked three questions. The first asked “How much do you know about the proposed HUUSD redesign?” and yielded 48.2 percent of respondents said they know a little bit about it, 10.7 percent said they know a lot about it, 35.7 percent said they know quite a bit about it and 5.4 percent said they didn’t know anything about redesign.
The second question asked, “How do you feel about the HUUSD redesign process?” It did not include an option of answering “other.” The majority of respondents, 42.9 percent, said they do not have confidence in the current district and/or board leadership to effectively facilitate the redesign efforts while 34.3 percent said they feel like the process has gone relatively well and should proceed as planned. Twenty percent of respondents said they have serious concerns about the process that should be addressed before moving forward and the remaining 2.8 percent of respondents said they felt the process had been excellent and that it’s been transparent, objective and inclusive.
The final question, which included an “other” option, asked, “How do you feel about the HUUSD redesign process?” The largest response was from 35.7 percent of respondents who said that they have serious concerns about the process that should be addressed before moving forward. The next largest percentage, 26.8 percent, came from folks who said they do not have confidence in the current district and/or board leadership to effectively facilitate the redesign effort. Another 21.4 percent said that they feel the process has gone relatively well and should proceed as planned.
