More than 300 patrons responded to Mustang School District officials' call for information in the first week, filling out a 10-question survey on the Internet.
MSD Superintendent Bonnie Lightfoot said officials will continue taking responses through June and added she is anxious to see the results. Teachers sent home on May 19 a request for parents to take the survey on Survey Monkey — which is linked to the district's website at www.mustang ps.org. Paper copies of the survey are available at the administration building.
Communications Officer Mary Leaver said Survey Monkey has a program that helps analyze the results, and it also shows a city where the response originated from. It will allow multiple responses from the same location, she said, so both parents can respond or patrons can use computer access at a local library to fill out the survey.
“We are not limiting it to parents and students,” she said. “We want to hear from a large variety of people.”
Mustang educators are seeking this information as the district faces a crossroads. In April, Lightfoot told school board members a long-range planning committee recommended the district seek a bond issue of approximately $70 million within the next year.
This bond issue is expected to go to voters next spring and could include funds to construct an elementary school and a fifth-sixth grade center and remodel Mustang Mid-High into a fifth- and sixth- grade center, as well as repairing or rebuilding gymnasiums at Mustang High School, Mustang Valley Elementary and Mustang Elementary. Other needs include a centrally located bus barn and enrollment building as well as additional buses and technology.
In the first section of the online survey, patrons are told Mustang School District is expected to reach 10,000 youth by 2016, and Mustang Trails Elementary will grow to more than 800 students this fall.
uThen they are asked to identify themselves as a parent, patron or other. They are asked how many of their children attend Mustang schools, or if they have had children in the past who attended in the district.
uThe respondent is asked if they live inside Mustang city limits.
uOfficials ask if the respondent would support creating fifth- and sixth-grade centers. If the proposal is adopted, students would attend a prekindergarten, then an elementary school containing kindergarten through fourth grade.
Then children would attend a fifth- and sixth- grade center, a middle school with seventh- and eighth-graders and then high school.
Lightfoot has said the change would help alleviate classroom crowding at both the elementary and middle school levels, while giving sixth-graders a safer transition from the elementary to the secondary level.
uRespondents are then asked if they would vote in support of a bond issue, and if they answer no, why they would oppose it.
uRespondents are asked for any other comments and suggestions.
Lightfoot said the results will be brought to the long-range planning committee in July, and members will bring them to the school board later that month.