The Country School is an independent, coeducational, Pre-K through 8 school founded in 1934.

News

Communication

By: Neil Mufson
Two weeks ago I wrote about the general results of our November parent survey.  I said that, instead of issuing a long report, I had decided to write shorter pieces focusing on various aspects of the results.  I noted that about 85% of our parents completed the survey and that 92.3% of parents “are either ‘very satisfied’ or ‘satisfied’ with their children’s Country School experience in all areas. While individualsnoted areas they felt were in need of improvement, there were no consistent areas of deficiency or dissatisfaction identified.”  In fact, on a scale of 0-10 with 10 being high, the average response was 9.1 to the question “How likely would you be to recommend The Country School?”

This week I want to focus on the section of the survey that had to do with communication, an area of school life to which faculty and staff devote enormous attention.  We believe that through effective, proactive, and timely communication between home and school, a student’s overall development is furthered.  By fostering regular and comfortable two way communication that occurs before situations or concerns are allowed to fester, students know that home and school are at least talking, if not on the same page.  When children know this, they are more likely to be positive, engaged, achieving members of the classroom and responsive to teacher or parent concerns when they arise.  

Overall, parents seemed extremely satisfied with the school’s efforts to communicate with home.  The following table summarizes the findings:

Communications% Reporting They Are Satisfied or Very Satisfied % Reporting They Are Dissatisfied or Very Dissatisfied
Overall communications94.2%0%
Student evaluations87.2%0.8%
Communications with your child’s teacher91.7%0%
Communications with your child’s division head85.9%1.7%
Communications with the Headmaster95%0%
Communications with other school personnel94.9%0.8%
Weekly newsletter100%0%
Website96.7%0%
School’s email communications98.4%0.8%
School’s use of social media91.2%0%

While responses to the question “In what ways can the school improve its communications?” generally fell in the category of “They are doing a great job,” all individual suggestions will be considered.  Here are some of them:

  •   “Proactively provide more curriculum information.”
  •   “I think the school is doing great, but as a new parent, the communication of events is a bit spotty.”
  •   “Expand social media use.  Change/refresh website.”
  •   “I like the idea of teachers calling and introducing themselves during the beginning of the school year, however I would like to have a call more often to touch bases.”
  •   “I think it would be helpful to pair a current family with all new Kindergarten families.”
Other comments centered on more consistent, explicit online posting of homework; greater specificity regarding each day’s classroom activities; and more all school parent conferences.

There is always room for improvement when it comes to human communications, and these comments certainly provide us with future directions to explore.  It is reassuring to know, though, that the overwhelming majority of parents feel we are performing well in this most human of tasks, dedicated towards furthering the progress and development of our children.  As always, feel free to contact me with questions or comments.

The next time I write, I will focus on how parents view their children’s preparation in various academic areas and how they view the co-curricular programs (like community service, character education, athletics, drama, etc.) we have in place.
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