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EZ Parent Survey Guides Summer Camp Decision
District Snapshot
Crete Monee School District located 30 miles south of Chicago with an enrollment just over %,00 students, was looking at establishing a summer enrichment program and recognized that the decision had significant implications on their staffing, transportation and finances. Setting costs and logistics aside, there was the added element of gaging overall parental interest in enrolling students in a 'by choice' summer school camp program at various locations throughout the district.
Heidi Gonzalez community liaison for Crete-Monee School District wanted to evaluate overall parent interest and get a better understanding of which classes to offer students. She deployed SchoolReach's EZ Parent Survey to obtain the answers.
Contact Strategy
The district set a May 1st deadline for determining whether there was enough interest to host the summer camps.
In early April, Gonzalez worked with SchoolReach to develop and record a succinct five-question survey. The EZ Survey system guided Gonzalez through creating her greeting, questions/responses, and closing message. Each EZ Survey can accommodate up to nine questions and nine different responses per question.
The three-minute survey was delivered to all parents via SchoolReacn. Parents heard, in Gonzalez' voice, a quick introduction about the survey and a brief overview of the summer enrichment program offerings. Parents were then asked the following 5 questions, which all had touchtone responses:
1. How did you hear about the program?
2. Does your family have plans to send your child/children to the summer enrichment program?
3. If you don't plan to send your students, why not?
4. Which of the four camps are you interested in sending your child to?
5. Can the district's camp coordinator contact you directly to enroll your student in the camp of their choice?
"I waited to understand what parents knew about our program," said Gonzalez. "We had posted information on our district website and had sent a brochure home with students. Now was our opportunity to gather important feedback in which to substantiate our summer plans as well as encourage participation."
Successful Results
"The response was overwhelming," said Gonzalez. "We had over 1,700 respondents which constituted more than a 30 percent response rate. What we have learned is that when SchoolReach calls, out parents answer." Gonzalez and her staff also learned that there was not enough interest in certain camp and other camps enjoyed a surge in sign-ups.
Crete-Monee already has plans for future surveys."Our next survey will be asking our families how they would feel about adding intramural sports to our program. After that there is an important referendum that we want our parent community to be informed about," said Gonzalez.