Earlier this month ISD 200 School Board members discussed bridging the “disconnect” between the board, parents and district staff, said Director Elaine Mikel-Mulder at the Nov. 5 school board work session.
Last week that disconnect was noticeable as the initial results of the 2025 School Perception Survey came back. The largest area of decline for both staff and parents regarding perception is the school board itself.
For a third year, School Perceptions Project Manager Daren Sievers presented the results of the now-annual survey that posed questions to district staff, parents, and students ranging from the amount of homework assigned to how safe they feel inside schools.
The survey allows comparison to previous data from within the district, as well as the ability to compare ISD 200’s results to those of other similar schools surveyed by School Perceptions. These two varying scales can provide a complex view into how ISD 200 is both doing year-over-year in addition to a percentage of how it ranks compared to other schools.
The survey provided statements to which respondents scored 1-5 with five being strongly agree, and one being strongly disagree. Respondents aren’t allowed to answer a neutral three in order to push them onto one side or the other on statements.
“Sometimes Minnesota nice hurts us,” said Sievers about this structure.
Overall, Sievers calls this year’s results a “mixed bag,” with both areas of concern and areas worth celebrating.
The key area of concern was the parents’ and district staff’s opinion of the school board. To the statement, “The school board is doing what it takes to make our district successful,” district staff responses fell to 2.15, down from 2.99, a drop of 28.1%. Similarly, parents’ responses fell 6.2% to 3.17 from 3.38 to the same statement.
A change of 3% is considered significant growth or decay, according to Sievers.
Those scores rank ISD 200 in the second and sixth percentiles for staff and parent response to this question respectively. They represent the areas of largest loss in any category for both parents and district staff.
While Sievers was clear that further digging into the results was necessary to uncover insights into this decline, such broad declines “generally come back to something that happened in a district because it’s district-level wide.”
This decline in school board perception was paired with declines to similar questions regarding district administration (which fell 18.6% for staff and 0.8% for parents) and the direction of the district overall (which fell 25.9% for staff and 5% for parents).
Declines in perception of district administration, the school board, and the district overall are often intertwined so that if one were to fall, the others often follow.
“It’s no surprise they are lumped together,” said Sievers.

District staff responses
District staff in particular voiced their displeasure broadly to all five categories of statements dropping by at least 3.6%.
“All five areas regressed from last year,” said Sievers.
For district staff, 328 responded, which is a response rate of 49%. Of those respondents, half were in either the middle or high school, and 44% were classroom teachers.
Up and down the survey, staff opinions soured on issues from district pay practices to student discipline to if the district is headed in the right direction.
To the question “On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend the District as a place of employment?” Hastings’ overall score dropped by nearly a full point down to 6.09 from 7.04, a drop of 13.4% from last year.
In fact, there were only two statements Sievers discussed to which staff scores improved. They were the statements, “Our staff does a good job of educating our students,” which improved by 0.4% and, “I have the materials and supplies I need to do my job well,” which improved by 2.4%.
Despite district staff scores dropping, there were still areas worth celebrating within their data, said Sievers.
For example, Sievers highlighted the staff’s response to “Our staff does a good job of educating our students,” which places ISD 200 in the 86th percentile of schools surveyed by School Perceptions.
“That cannot be taken for granted,” said Sievers.
Even other responses that backslid still showcased a good learning environment across the district, like staff’s score of 4.02 to the statement, “Our school has a process to ensure every student has a connection with at least one adult in the school.”
Overall, staff agree with that statement and ISD 200 ranks in the 69th percentile for the statement.

Parent responses
Five-hundred-and-eighty-three parents responded to the survey for a response rate of 14%. Exactly 90% of parent respondents had a student in the middle or high school, with a near-perfect split across grade levels for students.
The results from parents broadly remained the same, with overall changes to categories showing only 0.5 to -1.6% change.
“Really nice and stable,” said Sievers about the parent survey results.
In fact, beyond the decline in opinion about the school board and overall direction of the district, no parent responses broke the 3% threshold for noteworthy change.
Bright spots within the parent responses include responses to the statement, “School staff treat my child with dignity and respect,” which parents scores improved by 0.9% to 4.30 from 4.26.
Parents overall agreed that students are treated with respect, with ISD 200 ranking in the 73rd percentile on this statement.
Another area Siever’s mentioned was responses to the statements, “My child feels safe at school,” “I feel welcome in my child's school,” and “School facilities are clean and well-kept.”
Parent responses to these statements all rank highly within the district but fall to lower percentile scores when compared across districts. Sievers cautioned school board members to not lose sleep over that inter-district comparison if broadly parents agree with the statements, saying they are “lower compared to others but still in a good place.”
Nearly three-quarters of parents, 72%, believed their student was getting the right amount of homework.

Student responses
Student responses, on the other hand, grew slightly across the board and continue to rank highly when compared to other districts.
The schools set time aside for students to take the survey which resulted in 2,131 student respondents which translates into a 78% participation rate.
Student responses, like the parents, were largely stable with no changes to statements larger than 3.7%.
Hastings students scored their district highly across a number of categories including to the statements, “I can be myself at school,” (where ISD 200 ranks in the 81st percentile), “If I have a big problem, there is an adult at school I can talk to about it,” (where ISD 200 ranks in the 87th percentile), and “I know my teachers care about me,” (where ISD 200 ranks in the 84th percentile).
These results paint a glowing picture of students’ level of comfort in schools and relationships with teachers.
The largest area of decline was to the statement, “I like to learn new things,” which only dropped by 0.7% to a score of 4.19 meaning that despite the decline, most students still agree with the statement.
Students even stamped their approval on homework, with 65% of students grades 9-12 saying that they definitely or sort of agreed to the statement, “The homework and projects I'm assigned help me learn and are more than just busywork.” That score places ISD 200 in the 86th percentile for that question.

Superintendent advice
Both parents and staff were able to rank what advice they thought was most important for the new superintendent Dr. Kristine Wehrkamp Herman. This advice largely overlapped.
For staff, 66% responded that the top advice was to “be accessible and approachable,” with the advice “Engage staff to build consensus and ensure they feel heard,” “Be willing to listen to various opinions, take a position, and own a final decision,” and “Be transparent about decision-making,” following close behind.
Parents agreed with the staff on transparency, accessibility and decision-making, but added one different top piece of advice: “Focus on student achievement.”

District communication
Several school board members expressed frustration with the low response rates from district staff and parents.
Staff responses to several statements regarding sharing input dropped dramatically from last year including on the statements, “The District seeks input from a broad group of staff members,” (which fell 14.9% to a score of 2.86 meaning staff overall disagree with the statement), and “I feel comfortable sharing input and concerns with my supervisor/administrator,” (which fell 6.2%).
Board members referenced the irony of staff saying the district doesn’t seek input on a staff survey that less than half of district staff participated in.
“One of things that was ironic to me is that one of the things that went down significantly is that we don’t solicit feedback from people, but this is your chance to get feedback and we got less than half of our staff completing it,” said Board Chair Carrie Tate.
ISD 200’s 49% staff response rate is more than 10 points lower than School Perceptions’ company-wide staff response rate of 60%.
For the parents, anything above 500 respondents and a 10% response rate is considered good data, according to Sievers.
While the data remained largely stable from the previous year, Tate speculated that many who were happy with the district didn’t feel the need to take the survey, which might explain some of the soured results.
“Multiple times I heard, no I didn’t do it because I’m happy with how it’s going, so why would I take the time to do this. However, when I see results like this, I wonder what percentage of that is the reason people didn’t take it,” said Tate.
“I don’t know if the happy parents stayed away but that’s possible,” said Sievers.
This “mixed bag” of results come directly on the heels of last year’s survey results which showcased growth in nearly every area the survey asked about. At that time, Sievers called the 2024 School Perception survey results among “the best I’ve ever given,” at the Nov. 20, 2024 school board meeting.
The board will be reviewing the 2025 survey results in more depth at the Dec. 3 school board work session at 6 p.m. in the Hastings Middle School Media Center.
To view the preliminary results of the survey in full, visit www.hastings.k12.mn.us/page/school-board and click on “meeting agenda & minutes.”