Survey: G-E-T staff enjoy work, but pay, student mental health a concern

A staff survey in the Gale-Ettrick-Trempealeau School District shows employees are happier overall in the district today than they were a year ago, but some areas — such as mental health of students and staff pay — remain concerns.

The survey was conducted through Wisconsin company School Perceptions LLC. This is the second straight year that G-E-T has conducted the survey, which took place in April with 151 staff members (63%) participating. 

About 43% of respondents were teachers.

The survey polled staff about academics, engagement, support, student experiences and staff experiences and asked them to rank how strongly they agreed with each statement. A score of five meant “strongly agree” while a one was “strongly disagree”.

All five categories yielded higher scores when compared to the 2022 survey.

“Our first year was a baseline, this year we were looking for improvement. And I think you’ll be happy to see that we did see improvement,” Superintendent Michele Butler said.

Technology was one high score for the district.

About 97% of staff feel they have healthy working relationships with their coworkers, and another high score came from a question on whether employees are happy to come to work.

“That one really hits home. That’s one we want to see a high score on and happy to see 91% and over four on that answer,” Butler said.

Staff in the district believe in the work they complete every day, as 99% of staff agreed that the district does a “good job” educating students.

A few areas stood out as areas for the district to improve upon, Butler said.

Staff pay in the district saw the lowest satisfaction rate of any question on the survey — only 52% of respondents feel the district’s pay is fair, while 45% feel there is a clear connection between compensation and job performance.

District pay is a concern, especially for paraprofessionals who filled out the survey, Butler said.

“Our paraprofessionals are not satisfied. There’s definitely that group that we need to do some work, and I don’t think that’s a surprise,” Butler said. “It’s one of the areas we’ve been talking about.”

Butler said the district needs to do more to recognize staff members for good work and solicit more input from staff.

Most staff (91%) felt neutral or better regarding whether they would recommend working for the district.

Survey: students need more support

A question asking staff whether the district’s student discipline practices are effective saw only 64% of staff agree, so the district will look to see how it can improve, Butler told the school board last Monday.

Mental health was another low score for the district, as only 64% of staff agreed that the social and emotional needs of all students are being met.

“This is one that I think we’re all concerned about when we talk about mental health of our students. I wasn’t surprised that this was one of our lower ones. This is one we have to look at, work on and make sure that that we’re doing the right work and that we’re meeting our students’ needs,” Butler said.

The mental health score was low but was still near the 80th percentile for similar-sized schools in Wisconsin.

“A lot of school districts our size, that’s a concern. If you were to look at national data right now, concern for students’ mental health needs, it’s very high right now. We’ve been bringing in more resources but we want to make sure that we’re not missing support for our kids,” Butler said.

Diversity among the student population also took the attention of staff, as 83% of staff feel the district supports students from diverse backgrounds.

Special needs students, all genders and students of varying economic backgrounds are supported, staff feel, but the district could have work to do supporting other demographics — an 82% agree rate for whether the district supports students of different cultural and racial backgrounds scored in the 35th and 32nd percentile when compared to similar districts.

The district is considering adding a survey of community members and parents in the future.

Butler told the Times that even the 2022 baseline scores were not super negative even though overall there were some low scores due to staff burnout and exhaustion after dealing with the fallout of the COVID pandemic. To see those numbers climb this year is encouraging, she said.

“Last year that last question of ‘Would you recommend people to work here?’, it still got a really positive result last year. It improved this year, but it was never a bad result. So they believe this is a great district, but man, it (2022) was a hard year and this year was just much more positive,” Butler said.

“We were doing things we haven’t done for three years, bringing back some of those special celebrations, doing more things with each other. And that just shows how important having celebrations, having staff social experiences are to overall work satisfaction. And we need to just keep doing it and keep looking for ways to keep that morale as high as we can.”