A Message from the Superintendent:
I hope this email finds everyone doing well as we weather this cold and snowy January.
All districts face challenges getting quality and complete information about how community members, staff, students, and families/caregivers feel about their experiences in school or related to school in order to respond more effectively to people's concerns.
Surveying stakeholder groups can help address these concerns by giving us accurate information about how everyone feels about the Maynard Public Schools in terms of academic quality, school climate, and the social and emotional needs of all.
To obtain reliable, valid, and high-quality survey results on the important topic of how students are feeling in school around a variety of academic, social, and emotional areas, the Maynard Public Schools has partnered with the Education Commonwealth Project (ECP) to administer grades 4-12 student surveys on Friday, January 30 - Friday, February 6, 2026. Maynard Public Schools in partnership with ECP will administer grades K-3 student surveys in March of 2026. ECP is currently located at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and was formerly housed at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell when we began our partnership five years ago.
This is the fifth year our teachers and students are being surveyed with the support of ECP, and we are now building data over time to help us see trends and inform district decision-making. Last year, over 90% of teachers completed ECP surveys designed for faculty, and over 90% of students completed surveys designed for them. We are anticipating similar results this year.
These surveys have been extensively field tested in districts across the state for more than 8 years thanks to a grant from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, are available in multiple languages, and different versions of the survey have been developed, depending on grade level, for students in grades PreK-12. More than 10% of all public school students in Massachusetts are now taking the ECP surveys, which help districts across the state assess areas of strength in programming and areas in need of additional support.
The research creating the surveys has also gone through the Institutional Review Board process at the University of Massachusetts, which ensures the materials are safe and appropriate for student use and guarantees participant anonymity.
ECP oversees the survey process. The surveys are administered through links generated by ECP, and responses are encrypted and sent directly back to ECP at Umass/Amherst, ensuring anonymity for the students and staff.
Student LASIDs (student identification numbers) are required on each survey, not to reveal the student's identity but to gather demographic information to generate meaningful data analysis of student subgroups. For example, do female students feel the same way as male students on a particular question? Do students learning English respond in a particular way to a given question differently from native or fluent English speakers?
ECP compiles student responses to help us look at such questions and sends aggregated data stripped of all identifying information for individual students back to the Maynard Public Schools. Should any aggregated group contain 10 or fewer students, that result is not reported separately to prevent students from being identified even inferentially.
Part of the work the ECP team has done for Maynard is creating a data dashboard based on the survey results. This dashboard allows us to examine student responses from a wide array of demographic perspectives, enhancing data analysis.
Since all of the work the ECP team has done is state grant funded, there is no cost to the Maynard Public Schools for any of this work.
The District has also partnered with ECP to develop a parent/caregiver survey for use. We will be using the parent survey for the fourth time this spring, with surveys going to parents and guardians in March of 2026.
This message includes a link for the handout and script that teachers will use before the start of the online survey for your reference - https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1byOij9MQ2SxPJxyX9kfw45jN1TlfwsbQ?usp=sharing
Finally, any parent or guardian who does not wish to have their child take the survey may opt-out. Contact your students' schools and let them know you do not want them to take the survey.
Sincerely,
Brian Haas
Superintendent
Maynard Public Schools
