In response to community questions about a Douglas County School District survey gathering feedback on its equity policy, officials say they feel confident that the results will be a reliable indication of thoughts and concerns. 

As part of its efforts to create an implementation plan for the equity policy, the district released an online survey on Feb. 6 to staff, students, parents and the community, asking multiple-choice questions about hopes and concerns for the policy.

The district contracted Hanover Research, an independent Virginia based research firm, paying them $75,000 to conduct the official survey.

The survey can be taken more than once and from anywhere, which resulted in some people questioning whether the results could be influenced by responses outside the school district, or allow response to be submitted multiple times.

During the Feb. 7 Board of Education work session, Superintendent Erin Kane said the ability for the survey to be taken multiple times was intentional and that Hanover’s data cleansing process would be able to identify multiple responses coming from a single computer.

“We want to make sure that people who are in multiple roles, such as a staff member and a parent, are able to take the survey from both lenses and to make sure it’s available to our community outside of who is on our email list,” Kane said.

In a statement sent to Colorado Community Media, the district elaborated that Hanover uses metadata to ensure the responses come from within the district and don’t come from bots, as well as to spot any “suspicious number of retakes.”

School board members Mike Peterson and David Ray told Colorado Community Media they trust Hanover’s research methodology to provide reliable data, as well as to explain the limitations of the responses.

“I expect the results to be delivered by (Hanover) with all kinds of qualifications about the data, so we can understand it because we’re just looking to be responsive to the Douglas County community,” Peterson said.

Neither Peterson nor Ray said they are concerned about the potential for outside influence on the survey results.

Ray said his criticism of the survey is that it used multiple choice questions and suggested answers, which he felt could skew responses, and would have preferred open-ended questions. 

At the Feb. 7 meeting, Kane said Learning Services Officer Matt Reynolds and other staff worked with Hanover to develop the survey questions.

Despite his qualm, Ray said he thinks the responses will be an important tool to shape communication and offer clarification on the equity policy.

“I really view it as perception data strictly, so to me, what that does is inform us and district leadership what communication needs to be made about educational equity,” he said. “If the data is used to change policy, that I would object to.”

As for how the survey results will be incorporated into the implementation plan, Peterson said that is what Kane has been tasked to do.

“The survey is one specific input to the board that we’ll consider, but we also have to hear from the superintendent,” he said. “The superintendent might say ‘I think the policy is great, keep it as is,’ or she could say ‘It’s really unclear and I don’t know how to implement it,’ or anything in between.”

Kane is expected to present the results of the survey, along with her implementation plan for the equity policy, at the end of March. The district did not respond to additional questions from Colorado Community Media.

The equity survey is open to members of the Douglas County School District community through Feb. 17.