School District Seeks To Improve Communications

ADMINISTRATORS LOOK AT ALL AVENUES

FARMINGTON — Last spring the Farmington School District began reviewing the district’s mission and vision statements to formulate a strategic plan with the assistance of John Brown University’s Soderquist Center.

Assistant high school principal Clayton Williams presented a summary of the Soderquist Report during the Oct. 25 Farmington school board meeting. Williams said communication is always a challenge, explaining three different areas of focus included: communication going out from the district, communication coming into the school district, and communication regarding student transitions from building to building.

Superintendent Bryan Law emphasized the process was to “not only make sure we have communication going out, but also to have good communication coming in.”

Williams pointed out the electronic billboard stationed in front of the high school on Main Street is one means of communicating with the public.

“Looking at the marquee out here, it’s for all schools,” Williams said. “Each school has a Facebook page, their own website, twitter, and Remind 101 - where parents can actually sign up for that.”

The district also communicates through each school using phone calls, emails and text messages. A survey was conducted asking the public how they get information from the schools. Williams said 64 percent of those who responded said through phone calls and text messages, but in some way the public is using all these different methods. Williams said most of the feedback was positive. Among suggestions from the survey were to update the district calendar on the website.

“Some things contradict,” Williams said. “It’s always a catch-22. Not everybody has text messages, not everybody has cell phones, not everybody has internet.”

“I don’t think we are ever going to have a 100 percent satisfaction rate, but it is something to shoot for,” Williams said. “We still always want to be available for our parents to be able to communicate.”

An area of concern is declining parental participation in parent-

teacher conference s . According to Williams, 207 parents were on campus for conferences in 2014. That number has dropped to 174 this fall. Williams said the district is trying to reach out to the community and is asking the staff to document contacts made with a parent so the numbers can be tracked.

“We want to make sure we are reaching out to our community,” Williams said. “It’s mainly keeping our community and our parents involved.”

Williams said the district also wants to focus on receiving information from the community. “We encourage more involvement, even when our students graduate. Our students are worth it.”

Williams said, as a result of the process outlined in the Soderquist Report, “We found out that we don’t know everything that’s going on at every building.” The district wants to stay in the loop as students move from building to building. Student surveys asked participants to rate the transition experience from building to building on a 0-to-5 scale.

“As we’re moving forward with communications, we didn’t solve all of the problems in five months,” Williams said. “But it’s definitely given us something to work on.”