Anyone wanting to give the Auburn Enlarged City School District some feedback may have an easier way to do it in the future.
The district board of education's Policy Committee is in the process of establishing a new policy that will give people further clarity about how to lodge complaints or offer comments while making the district more efficient in addressing concerns.
According to board member and committee chair Ginny Kent, the district currently offers complaint forms in the principal's offices in every school building as well as the superintendent's office. Once those forms are completed, district procedure directs complainants to the person closest to the unit about which they are commenting. If it's an athletic team, she said, the contact person would be the coach. In the classroom, it's the teacher.
If the complainant is not satisfied, the issue goes up the chain of command to the athletic director or building principal, and so on upward.
“It's pretty standard and it works pretty well,” Kent said. “But what it doesn't do is give a specific direction to lodging a complaint. So we don't have a way to say, 'We have this many complaints and they are logged in and resolved by such and such date.' We don't have data that tells us how we're doing in that area. We may have very few complaints, but we'd like to be able to say, 'We're doing very well. It's right here.'”
The idea is to create a centralized location, hopefully on the Internet, where people can lodge complaints or contribute feedback. That way, Kent said, people know that their complaints will be reviewed and the district and board can be more efficient in responding and collecting data.
In addition, it will also legitimize the process by requiring people to identify themselves and those they are commenting about, Kent said.
The committee will meet at 4 p.m. next Friday at the Harriet Tubman Administration Building, 78 Thornton Ave., Auburn, to work on the language. Kent intends to have a draft ready for the following full board meeting, slated for 7 p.m. June 9 in the Auburn High School Library.
Staff writer Alyssa Sunkin can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 239 or alyssa.sunkin@lee.net
According to board member and committee chair Ginny Kent, the district currently offers complaint forms in the principal's offices in every school building as well as the superintendent's office. Once those forms are completed, district procedure directs complainants to the person closest to the unit about which they are commenting. If it's an athletic team, she said, the contact person would be the coach. In the classroom, it's the teacher.
If the complainant is not satisfied, the issue goes up the chain of command to the athletic director or building principal, and so on upward.
“It's pretty standard and it works pretty well,” Kent said. “But what it doesn't do is give a specific direction to lodging a complaint. So we don't have a way to say, 'We have this many complaints and they are logged in and resolved by such and such date.' We don't have data that tells us how we're doing in that area. We may have very few complaints, but we'd like to be able to say, 'We're doing very well. It's right here.'”
The idea is to create a centralized location, hopefully on the Internet, where people can lodge complaints or contribute feedback. That way, Kent said, people know that their complaints will be reviewed and the district and board can be more efficient in responding and collecting data.
In addition, it will also legitimize the process by requiring people to identify themselves and those they are commenting about, Kent said.
The committee will meet at 4 p.m. next Friday at the Harriet Tubman Administration Building, 78 Thornton Ave., Auburn, to work on the language. Kent intends to have a draft ready for the following full board meeting, slated for 7 p.m. June 9 in the Auburn High School Library.
Staff writer Alyssa Sunkin can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 239 or alyssa.sunkin@lee.net
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