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DSST: Aurora Science & Tech Middle School

Family Engagement & Safety and Security Surveys: What We Heard

04/19/23, 3:16 PM

Dear DSST Families,

The Trimester 2 Family Survey results are in, and we are excited by your continued participation and willingness to help us give your student(s) the highest-quality education and experience. We received 2,889 responses to the Family Survey, meaning you gave us over 337 hours of your collective time to share meaningful feedback and thoughts.

Some highlights from the survey:

As a network, we saw improvement in every question on our survey from Tri 1!
We are creating a student-focused environment with "School cares about my student's well-being," "School creates an environment that helps students learn," and "School motivates my student to work hard," all rated positively by more than 80% of our families.
We have built positive relationships with families and our communication with families is going well. "I feel welcomed at school,” "School works to create a positive relationship between school and home," "I feel well informed by whole school information," and "I am satisfied with the communication between school and home" were all rated positively by more than 80% of you.

One of the topics frequently mentioned in the survey was the safety and security of our schools. We assure you, we have taken an in-depth look at school safety measures and are committed to keeping your child(ren) safe while giving them the best possible education. Thank you to all those who also responded to the short security and safety survey included in the email from Bill Kurtz on Tuesday, April 11. You can read that message here.

A few high-level items to share from that email:

Armed Officers: We continue to see different opinions on whether we should or should not have armed security officers in our schools. However, as of now, our viewpoint remains the same: “DSST will not have full-time armed officers in our schools unless there is an immediate security threat identified at a specific campus.” We have not found any further evidence or research to change our viewpoint, however, we will continue to monitor any changes in DPS and/or APS’s Safety and Security programs and policies that may warrant any changes or reevaluation.
Increased Mental Health Resources: We are extremely proud of the investment we have made in our Mental Health Team at DSST. Over the past three years, we have drastically increased support for our students and staff. We also added two full-time mental health employees at every school and two grant-funded staff members who will be providing services across our network of schools. Our ratio of mental health providers to students at DSST is in line with national standards, and we believe we are better positioned than many, if not all, of our counterparts across school districts. Our promise is to continue finding funding opportunities for this important work and prioritize the mental health resources available to meet the growing needs of our students and staff.

Finally, we appreciate feedback in areas where there is still room for growth. A few common themes we found:

There is an opportunity to provide more course options in areas including STEM and art, which were two of the lowest-rated questions on the survey.
There is an opportunity to grow our schools’ roles in their communities through partnerships with community organizations and community events, which was rated positively by only 69% of respondents.

We are excited to share the DSST Strategic Plan 2028, which addresses much of the feedback we heard in the survey. Through this plan, we are reaffirming our commitment to STEM and college readiness. We are also committed to building thriving communities across our network. Reach out to your campus’s Community Engagement Manager if you have ideas on how we can better embed ourselves in our communities.

Hearing this feedback from you helps us improve and adapt to make sure we are giving our students the highest-quality education and a fulfilling school environment where they feel safe, known and valued.

Thank you again for your support and willingness to help make DSST the best place for all students.

In partnership,

Danielle Felder
Chief External Affairs Officer