BASD survey seeks input from residents on priorities

By Jennifer Eisenbart

Editor

The Burlington Area School District will actively listen to its citizens over the next few months.

A survey that will help officials get a better handle on what needs to be addressed within the district was posted to the BASD website on Monday.

The survey is available by clicking here.

The members of the Stakeholder-Driven Strategic Planning group approved the survey at the Jan. 28 meeting.

The district sent out a press release Monday morning via email. The survey will be available until Friday, Feb. 13.

“The Burlington Area School District is undertaking a Stakeholder-Driven Strategic Planning process and is asking Burlington Area School District residents to complete a short survey to help us get input from the community,” wrote BASD Superintendent Peter Smet. “By using the attached link citizens can take a short survey that will help determine the feelings of district residents.  Thanks for your help in completing the survey and please share the link with any other district residents so we can get as many responses as possible.”

The survey stresses that only district residents take the survey, so as to only get input from those who will be affected by the changes.

Smet said Tuesday evening that the nature of the process developed by the Wisconsin Association of School Boards group the district has hired stresses the survey.

“It’s important for the process to get input from all the stakeholders,” said Smet.

A number of questions on the survey are open-ended, such as question No. 2, which asks residents, “What are the greatest challenges or issues this school district has to address over the next five years in order to provide a quality education for all students? (Choose only five of your highest priorities form the list.)”

Possible answers included “Providing consistent student programs and services with a declining enrollment,” to “Keeping up-to-date with technology hardware, software, applications, and support” to “Hiring and retaining quality educators in an increasingly competitive market” to “Responding to state and national economic conditions that affect the levels of financial support the district receives.”

There are a total of seven questions, most asking for a respondent’s top five priorities and open-ended feedback.

The survey results will be brought back to the planning group, which is trying to decide how to handle a number of aging facilities within the district.

As officials explained at last week’s meeting, most of the schools in the district are between 48 and 60 years old, and the original building in Nettie Karcher Middle School is 92 years old. The administration building – formerly Lincoln School – is 159 years old. The youngest building in the district is the new high school, constructed in 2000.

Buildings and Grounds Director Gary Olsen outlined the numerous problems with the existing facilities, which included failing steam heating at Karcher, fire sprinkler protection in all buildings and ongoing maintenance like paving and roofing needs.