ALBEMARLE — The Stanly County School District called on area parents to help achieve “100% participation” in responding to its “intent-to-return” form, and it came fairly close with a 93% response rate. This form is vital to the district so it can plan how to run each school, determine where to assign teachers and send buses, and know how many students are planning on using fully remote learning versus the hybrid plan that includes face-to-face instruction.
Dr. Amy Blake-Lewis, assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction for the district, announced the results at the Board of Education’s Aug. 4 meeting.
“We closed that survey on Friday at 5, and we had a total of 7,656 responses. Our current enrollment number in the district is 8,210. So that translates into a 93% response rate, which I think is phenomenal that our principals at the schools were able to beat the bushes and contact parents and stress to them the importance of responding to this intent-to-return form.”
Blake-Lewis said with that high of a response rate, the school district feels its data is very accurate and can be used to make well-informed decisions about where to allocate its resources. One finding the board spent some time discussing was that the majority of students would participate in the face-to–face instruction.
“We ended up with the breakdown of parents requesting face-to-face instruction at 72% and those requesting full remote instruction was 28%,” Blake-Lewis said. “As far as the highest percentage requesting remote instruction, it is East Albemarle at 41% that requested remote instruction. The lowest request for remote instruction came from Oakboro at 18%.”
Blake-Lewis had some further breakdowns on how schools responded, with Badin Elementary the only school with 100% responding and East Albemarle having the lowest response rate at 77%.
“So again, I feel very confident in these numbers that have helped us in planning, developing our teacher allotments, looking at the number of teachers needed for face-to-face versus remote. And, of course, all of that information has gone out to principals.”
She said district officials already met with middle school principals at their schools to discuss the numbers and also brought the elementary principals to the district office by region. They went over their teacher allotments with them and helped them designate remote versus face-to-face teachers.
“So that has all been done and those principals now have that information to share with teachers,” Blake-Lewis said.
Blake-Lewis, when was asked when the schools were expected to give that information to teachers, said the principals were told they could share it with the teachers immediately. With teachers eager to learn their assignments, Blake-Lewis said she assumes virtually all principals have passed the information along.
“I can’t imagine that there’s a principal that hasn’t pushed that out,” she said. “I know myself, as a former principal, I would be pushing that out.”