Summary: Fall 2024 District Communications Survey

Nearly 850 people completed the district communications survey administered earlier this month. The responses reinforce many of Lakota’s practices and strategies for keeping parents, staff and the community informed, but also introduce new ideas and priorities for fine tuning district communications moving forward. 

The survey was designed to emphasize solely district communications, as opposed to school- and even classroom-level communication. The annual survey helps the District’s communications team benchmark progress and new opportunities to continuously improve its work. 

“We are committed to providing timely and transparent communication that keeps our community informed about important district decisions and also celebrates the daily wins of our students and staff,” said Betsy Fuller, Lakota’s executive director of school and community relations. “We appreciate the thoughtful responses from so many people in our community who took the time to complete the survey.”

Overall, the approval rate of district communications remained steady compared to last year, with 93 percent of participants rating the quality average to excellent. Furthermore, 85 percent of respondents reported that they feel “somewhat” or “very informed” about Lakota. 

Top Takeaways 

• ParentSquare was rated the most effective channel for receiving updates, followed closely by the district e-newsletter, website and social media. Lakota will continue to diversify the channels it uses for sharing news, prioritizing the top three for sharing the most critical opportunities and updates.
   
• The top three types of district information most desired by respondents remained event reminders, academics and school safety. Lakota remains committed to giving parents and the community an inside look at the school experience, keeping the focus of most communications on academic programming. Safety updates are also a priority. While many of the details about our safety plans cannot be made public to safeguard the efficiency or safety of the plan, we will always share what we can proactively around matters of student safety and well-being. 
   
• About a third of respondents know about Lakota’s social media channels, but don’t follow them regularly. Followers on social media are more likely to organically see district updates in their news feeds without relying on “friends” to share it with them. To maximize the reach of Lakota’s social media channels, the communications team has an opportunity to promote the benefit of following district accounts.
   
• The monthly district e-newsletter, “A Look Around Lakota,” received an approval rate of 97% with only three percent of respondents saying they were “dissatisfied” or “very dissatisfied.” This, paired with a climbing open rate, reinforces the effectiveness of recent changes to this publication that include less copy, more video content and an emphasis on stories that support Lakota’s strategic plan.  
   
• Videos are a desirable format for sharing content (top three being events and activities, academics and student spotlights). However, it was made clear that videos are not always ideal for sharing critical, “need to know” information. The overwhelming preference for these types of communications is still the written form. 

Open-Ended Feedback

The most prominent theme among the open-ended responses was the wide variety of communications platforms still being used by the District. We understand that this concern stems from an abundance of platforms that Lakota teachers may be using for their school-to-home communications. Lakota’s shift to ParentSquare for mass communications is a big step toward remedying this issue. Furthermore, a pilot with just four Lakota schools has teachers adopting ParentSquare for their home-to-school communications as well. This expanded functionality will continue to roll out to all Lakota schools during the second semester of the current school year.

The frequency of communications, especially with the introduction of ParentSquare, seemed to be another popular point of concern. ParentSquare allows parents and staff to actually customize the frequency at which they are receiving district and school updates (instant vs. digest), as well as via phone, text and/or email. All these preferences can be managed by logging into your ParentSquare account via OneLogin. The communications team will continue to promote this helpful feature of ParentSquare. 

Also mentioned was certain information that is more difficult to locate on Lakota’s website. The communications team regularly analyzes analytics like page views and search terms to identify and fix navigation pitfalls, but please direct any specific concerns to the communications section of Lakota Listens. 

View a dashboard of the results of the fall 2024 district communications survey.