Culture and Climate Study

Video Transcript

Video Transcript

Sure! Here's the transcript formatted to meet AAA web accessibility standards:

[Opening] Hello, District 225 students, staff, and families.

[Introduction] As we conclude the school year, I want to update you on the culture and climate initiative in which our district has been engaged since early 2022.

[Context] Over the past several years, worldwide organizations have begun coming to grips with climate and culture. For example, we have witnessed the great resignation, staff shortages, and more recently, mass layoffs in many industries. Unsurprisingly, in District 225, our climate and culture were impacted too.

[District Recognition] Our district is recognized as one of the very best school districts in the country. Yet, to continue that distinction, we must stop and continually take stock and work to improve.

[Initiative] As part of the Board of Education's goals and initiatives, our district embarked on a 10-month process aimed at understanding and advancing the environment in the Glenbrooks. As the superintendent, I am committed to fostering an environment that allows all of our students and staff to thrive, thereby setting the stage to strengthen us for years to come.

[Definition of School Climate and Culture] Some of you may be wondering what we mean by school climate and culture. For us, school climate and culture is the quality and character of school life based on our collective experiences. It reflects norms, values, relationships, and teaching and learning practices. Organizational climate and culture evolve over time as personnel move in and move out, as new students join us and graduate, as our system changes, as technology improves, and as societal norms change. So does an organizational climate and culture.

[District 225 Culture and Climate] The District 225 culture and climate is a blend of these factors experienced over 75 years with strengths and areas for growth.

[Survey and Teams] In September, many of our students, staff, and community members from all campuses completed an anonymous survey. Building representatives volunteered to serve on school climate leadership teams. Each team, totaling 48 members district-wide, spent more than 24 hours looking at the building-specific data and engaging in meaningful conversations before creating vision statements and recommendations for action.

[Sharing of Results] Since mid-May, these results have been shared with the Board of Education, the staff, and the community.

[Themes and Feedback] I want to take this opportunity to highlight several themes that have emerged throughout the process as the district undertook this self-examination.

First, students, staff, and families feel safe in our learning environments.
Additionally, many students feel a sense of belonging and pride in their school, and they report being connected to their peers and our staff.
At the same time, our staff members take pride in building relationships and feel supported through professional development resources, tools, and collaboration with their colleagues.

[Areas for Improvement] However, we also know that there is room for improvement. By listening to our stakeholders, we learn that:

Certain groups of our students and families do not feel as connected to our schools as we value.
Students and staff members report needing more social-emotional support.
They want us to find ways to celebrate the many varied accomplishments that are found in our district.
Additionally, having a voice in building and district initiatives and being given the chance to provide regular feedback is also important for our staff members.

[Moving Forward] Moving forward, it is important to our community that we remain a top-rated school district. That can only be accomplished through a commitment to take this climate and culture study and the results that have been shared with us seriously. Together, we will collaboratively build upon that foundation.

[Conclusion] I would like to thank everyone who participated and helped us over the past year. I look forward to seeing what the future holds for District 225. You can view the full presentation made to the Board of Education on May 22nd on the District 225 website. Thank you.

The Glenbrook High School District 225 School Climate page offers our community information compiled from students, staff, and families through surveys and focus groups, School Climate Leadership Team collaborative meetings and observational data collected by our consultants. The district is taking an honest look at where we are and developing a plan to move forward and make improvements where they are truly needed. As this important work continues, the district is committed to keeping our community informed and engaged.

Next Steps

Having analyzed the collected data and identified broad recommended areas for development, the school climate leadership teams will support their schools in action planning and implementation during the Summer and Fall of 2023. This process will necessarily include broader involvement from stakeholders in the school communities.

Defining School Climate

School climate refers to the quality of school life as it relates to norms and values, interpersonal relations and social interactions, and organizational processes and structures.
The school climate sets the tone for all the learning and teaching done in the school environment and predicts students’ ability to learn and develop healthily.
Like all people, all schools have a range of strengths and areas for development, as well as a distinctive vision for the kind of school community they aspire to be.

Measuring School Climate

The CSCI (Comprehensive School Climate Inventory) is a scientifically developed survey based on research and theory defining what contributes to positive climates for learning.
The CSCI measures the shared perceptions of the school community and reveals how the populations whose perceptions were measured (e.g., students, school personnel, and families) feel about the school environment.
The attached reports describe the 14 Dimensions of school climate that the survey tool measures.

Who is NSCC?

Process

The district administration and the Board of Education needed to choose a process that included opportunities for input at all levels. The district hired the National School Climate Center (NSCC) to assist with data collection and the School Climate Leadership Team (SCLT) meetings. NSCC used two surveys to gather feedback. Students, families and staff completed the Comprehensive School Climate Inventory (CSCI). The school climate sets the tone for all the learning and teaching done in the school environment and predicts students’ ability to learn and develop healthily. The Leadership Practices and Professional Relationships (LPPR) survey completed by staff members measures school climate, values, practices, resources, staff voice and confidence in building and district administration.

After completing the two surveys, interested staff members from all district buildings participated in focus groups to dive deeper into the survey data. Additionally, each school received a school climate observation walk-through, which collected data on structures, relationships, behaviors and engagements in the school communities. The most comprehensive part of the process was the work done by members of the SCLTs. The volunteer student, staff, and parents participated in team-building activities before reviewing the data and developing vision statements and recommendations that will be the foundation for future work.

Stages

School climate improvement is illustrated as a cyclical 5 stage model.The stages of this model are:

1 - Preparation

Schools convene a group of representative stakeholders who will work together to guide the school climate improvement process. During the formation of these School Climate Leadership Teams (SCLTs), participants go through a process of defining their community agreements, building relationships with one another and beginning the formation of a guiding vision for their school’s climate.

2 - Evaluation

SCLTs support the collection of data that measures and evaluates various aspects of the physical environment, rules and norms, teaching and learning practices, and nature of interpersonal relationships in schools via the perceptions of students, staff, and families. Once this data is collected, the SCLTs work together to analyze, contextualize and reflect upon the data that has been collected. During this process, teams identify patterns, strengths and areas for development that are reflected in the data.

3 - Action Planning

4 - Implementation

5 - Re-Evaluation

Timeline of Culture and Climate Study

February 2022: Board of Education and administration agreed that a Comprehensive School Climate Study would benefit the district
June 8, 2022: Project kick-off meeting with the administrative team and National School Climate Center (NSCC)
September 2022: School Climate Leadership Team (SCLT) members chosen
September 28 and 29: SCLT kickoff meetings
October 24-26: School Climate Observations at three campuses conducted by NSCC
October 2022: School Climate Leadership Team meetings
October 27-November 6: Surveys were available for completion
November 14-17: Focus Groups
October 2022 - May 2023: Monthly SCLT meetings
March 2023: Process presentation to Board of Education
May 2023: Presentations of Findings to Campuses
May 22, 2023: Presentation of Findings to Board of Education

Findings

During the 2022-2023 school year, members of the School Climate Leadership Teams (SCLT) reviewed the collected data to identify patterns, strengths, and areas for development. Using the data to compose school climate vision statements for each district stakeholder group, the teams presented the critical areas identified and outlined broad recommendations to guide the next steps.

The survey data that the teams reviewed is provided below.

The presentation provided by members of the School Climate Leadership Teams at the school board meeting on May 22, 2023, offers an in-depth summation of the process and results.

SCLTs' Presentation to the Board of Education

Comprehensive School Climate Inventory
Supplemental Data

Comprehensive School Climate Inventory

The reports generated from the study provides a comprehensive picture of how the surveyed members of the school district community marked the 14 dimensions of school climate with positive, negative or neutral ratings. The information is presented in a variety of ways to capture the most important aspects of the study that reveal a progression beginning with an overall summary and moving to more detailed results. It is important to view the progression to understand the full picture of the results.

Reports

Supplemental Data

To gather additional information about administration perceptions, staff members completed a supplementary Leadership Practices and Professional Relationships survey. School staff responded to questions about building and district administration, while district staff members answered questions specific to only district leadership.

In This Section