Scott Leopold has informed me that the survey results for the Future Facilities are out there for all of you to view:
Also, the results of the Fallon focus groups will be presented along with the background report at tomorrow’s Steering Team meeting. I am told the meeting is open for the public as observers; if you would be so kind as to let Stephanie Stuart (217-531-0252, stuartst@champaignschools.org) know you are coming, she will make sure there are enough chairs set out for all of us. And yes, I plan to go and blog about it.
Steering Committee Meeting #3: Monday, December 17th 6:00pm @ Dr. Howard Elementary
Please look over the data so far and let any of us (me, Stephanie, Scott) know your thoughts. Of course, I am just a tad biased and hope you post your thoughts here. *grin*
PS – I am quite aware that there are those of you who are not so happy with the money we are spending on this Public Engagement firm. As I have stated previously, I very much welcome different opinions and in fact, I openly invite those who disagree. My own excitement stems mostly from the fact that some real data has been released and we now get a chance to look it over through our own lens.
Citizen4: A citizen's blog about Champaign Unit 4 
16 December 2012 at 9:33 pm
“The purpose of this executive summary is to share some genereral [sic] observations regarding the results of the questionnaires as they relate to the future facilities process.”
Summary of “Results Report” (not Cliff notes – just an overview):
– 103 pages
– an amazing 1327 total responses, 1181 of which were online!
– the summaries provided on pages 1-3, and further aggregated on 4-15 strike me as “weird”. I’ll talk more about it below
– appendix starts on page 24, gives all the “write-in” responses for the open-ended questions; contains 14 totally blank pages, plus 3 with a one sentence question; reading the scanned-in copies of people’s real handwriting is going to be fun.
The reported findings from the “group discussions” strike me as “weird” for a couple reasons. DeJong specifically said “[t]he intent of these discussions was to reach consensus on as many of the topics as possible”, and I know at our table we hardly reached consensus on a number of items, so it looks like our input was not counted as a group. Also, keep in mind that DeJong put up big sheets of paper to tally group responses at the end of the conference; this is a good way to broadcast out what the groups thought. I wish the “no consensus” responses were recorded in the reports findings. Personally, I prefer to look at the individual responses because that tells a much richer story. In fact, I am going to go out on a limb and I bet that if one carefully analyzed the individual responses, it would not be hard to spot a few cases where the results differed significantly from the group responses.
But perhaps the most jarring thing is that these questions give the impression that this is what the people want. For example, the 2nd bullet on page 1 reads:
“Class sizes should remain low in the elementary schools, and can be larger in middle and high schools.”
Should? Can be? How many people answering these questions actually know what is best? I sure as heck don’t, and I have been to a ton of meetings. 🙂 There are plenty of other examples on this track, due to the way the questions were asked. I am of the opinion that perhaps the most valuable information lies in the open-ended questions. Unfortunately, those are much harder to mine (let alone read in some cases) (note to self – work on better penmanship). But this is what we pay a PE firm for, right?
I am still amazed that 1181 filled out the online questionnaire. Wow!
Here is another big thing to keep in mind – from page 3:
Here is what bothers me. Is this the only major push to find out what people want? Meaning, in practice is this (the Results Report) going to be the Voice of the people? I have a couple of red flags going off in my head if this is the case, and I need to chew on it some more to put a finger on it. My gut is screaming out to throw away the entire canned section of the questionnaire and only go with the open-ended section. I am trying to decide how reasonable that is.
EDIT: I just remembered Fallon is going to be making 500 phone calls. So there will be more input. To a degree.
16 December 2012 at 10:49 pm
It is so easy to scan anything written on large newspaper sheets on a drum scanner. Best way to preserve the integrity of what is said and written at any session rather than collapse down to a summary, which by the very nature of a summary has an inherent bias.
16 December 2012 at 10:51 pm
Start reading at page 32. Tell me what you think.
16 December 2012 at 10:55 pm
Is there a way we can access all open-ended answers? What they include in this report in the Appendix is incomplete, right?
16 December 2012 at 10:57 pm
@karen: It was my impression that what they included was everything. But it’s hard to tell. I’ll ask.
17 December 2012 at 6:21 am
@Karen, here is what Scott says:
“Thanks for the catch, Not sure what happened, It looks like the PDF export didnt grab all of the images. The report has been updated to include all of the open ended comments. (Fixing the blank pages problem)
The only comments that were not included in the report are those first open ended questions that were intended to get the groups talking during the first meeting.
Later this morning I will add them to the appendix, and I think that Appendix will become a seperate document from first 25 pages.”
17 December 2012 at 8:43 am
Thanks for point us in the direction beginning with p. 32 showing the scanned hand written comments. The online comments look to be alphabetized so it is hard to discern the relationship between comments and questions being answered.
18 December 2012 at 4:17 pm
Name
Affiliation
Known to be present on=
12/17
Robert Porter
Architect
Mike Krichhoff
Champaign County EDC
Alvin Griggs
Champaign Park District
Anna Simon
Champaign PTA Council
x
Bruce Knight
City of Champaign
x
Rob Kowalski
City of Champaign, Planning Department
x
Jamie Clausen
Community Member
Susan Zola
CUSD #4 Assistant Sup. For Achievement and C & I
Kristine Chalifoux
CUSD #4 Board of Education
x
Sue Grey
CUSD #4 Board of Education
Greg Johnson
CUSD #4 Centennial HS
x
Greg Stock
CUSD #4 Centennial HS
x
Samantha Harvey
CUSD #4 Centennial HS
Joe Williams
CUSD #4 Champaign Central High School
x
Cathy Mannen
CUSD #4 Champaign Federation of Teachers
x
Stephanie Stuart
CUSD #4 Community Relations CUSD #4
x
Marc Changnon
CUSD #4 District Coordinator for Career Programs Unit #4
x
Ellen Elrick
CUSD #4 Dr. Howard Elementary
Jill Trentz
CUSD #4 Dr. Howard Elementary
Justin Uppinghouse
CUSD #4 Edison Middle School
x
Arlene Vespa
CUSD #4 Service Center
x
John Ayers Jr.
CUSD #4 Service Center
x
Bill Taylor
CUSD #4 South Side Elementary Principal
x
Judy Wiegand
CUSD #4 Superintendent
x
Sam Banks
Don Moyer Boys & Girls Club
Jennifer Simmons
Dr. Howard Elementary PTA & Carrie Busey PTA
x
Karen Ray
Edison Middle School
Victor Martinez
Former UI Employee (retired)
Charles O. Nash Sr.
New Hope Church/Minister Alliance Champaign
Joan Dykstra
Savoy Village Bd. Trustee
x
Other attendees
John Curry
CUSD #4
x
Maria Alanis
CUSD #4
x
Elizabeth deGruy
CUSD #4
x
Lynn Stuckey
Community Member
x
Charles Schultz
Community Member
x
Scott Leopold
DeJong-Richter
x
CUSD #4
15
Total
28
(some not marked above because we didn’t know them)
18 December 2012 at 4:18 pm
wow, what a horribad HTML table…..