Between February 14 and 20, students in Grades 3 through high school in FCPS will take a perceptual survey about how they feel about FCPS schools. The survey is important to provide data that will lead to improvements in everyone’s school experience.

Natalie Gay is the Coordinator for Data Analysis and Research for the county. She organizes the survey and collects the data to help monitor student goals for the subsequent year.

The school can also look at the data and improve communication for staff and community. She collects and analyzes the data that is shared with the individual school leadership and central office.  The goal is to ensure that each school and feeder from Brunswick to Linganore is providing the best education possible.  

System leaders, school administrations and school leader teams look at this data. The data is analyzed and reported at aggregate levels. Leaders compare Linganore to all of the other schools as well as examine trends in to data from previous years, and then they give a report to the state and the district.

The survey took an average of 10-15 minutes. Questions included, “Do you feel safe during school?” and “Are you are interested in your classes?”  There were questions  about climate, curriculum instruction, engagement, communication leadership, professional development, safety, health and wellness.

“The survey took me 30 minutes. I think the survey is helpful because FCPS can improve our goals for next year since they can’t watch every school all the time,” said Jordan Moser, a member of class of 2021.

Students are important because the staff responses and the parent responses can be different since adults see things differently and they aren’t in the classroom. 

“A famous psychologist said ‘perception is reality,’ so if you perceive something as a certain way then that is your reality, and if it’s getting in the way of your education it’s up to us to fix that,” said Mrs. Nancy Boyenton, Assistant Principal in charge of the survey distribution at LHS.

The third block honors and merit classes classes were chosen randomly to take the survey. Central Office needed approximately 400 responses. PE classes didn’t do it because they didn’t have computers.

“Linganore typically does well in their perceptual surveys,” Boyenton said.

Another state mandated survey will be distributed in March. Staff and students will be the only ones taking it.