By Maysen Marolda
Staff Writer
The School Site and Wellness Council members discussed during its Jan. 12 meeting the revision of questions to the spring survey, a survey given out each year to analyze the overall well being of the students.
The School Site and Wellness Council is a group of teachers, parents, staff and students that work with Costa Principal Dr. Ben Dale to deliver healthy programs and consistent messaging on managing stress to Costa’s student, staff and parent populations.
The council also surveys parents and students in a coordinated effort to develop, review and evaluate Costa’s goals and homework policies. Based on the responses received, the survey has allowed the administration to target several issues to improve, including student workload, stress levels, homework and technology use, Dale said.
“The meeting was successful in addressing the survey and discussing changes that should be made to improve it,” School Site Council student representative senior Cole Keefer said.
At the meeting, attendees viewed the first drafts of the student and parent surveys that will be distributed in May. According to Dale, the council originally instituted the survey because the Healthy Kids Survey, a standardized survey on drug and alcohol use, did not address pertinent topics that the administration wants to be informed of, such as student stress.
Ever since the survey was made, the council has administered the survey in April during class time and last year, it was composed of 36 questions. The council revises the survey questions annually to ensure that the questions are updated.
At the meeting, attendees proposed adding questions about the implementation of the Wednesday office hours, the new schedule, the new Mustang Mall, weighted GPAs and the security measures that were taken following the threats to campus safety throughout December. Another topic included were campus renovations that students and parents would like to see in the future.
Dale encouraged the attendees to go home and make revisions to the draft so that at the next meeting they can start to revise the questions. One revision a majority of the attendees proposed was incorporating more questions concerning the Costa Visual and Performing Arts program.
“When looking at the questions, I noticed that VAPA was not an option [as an answer] for several of the questions, when VAPA is certainly accomplishing the same things as other academic subjects,” director of choirs Michael Hayden said.
The administration obtains the feedback from the surveys in May, and from there it goes into the Western Association of Schools and Colleges report to display the changing responses each year.
“The survey is informative to us as a group and to me as a principal,” Dale said. “So, we change the questions each year to gain new feedback.”
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