Dear APS Staff,

Happy New Year and welcome back from the holiday break! I hope you had an enjoyable and restful holiday with your families and friends.

This next Monday we will once again be asking you to fill out a voluntary climate survey. We did the last one in late spring since it was the first time, but from now on we will be doing it around this time of year. I invite every staff member to complete the 2008 confidential, online climate survey, which will be open from Monday, Jan. 14 to Friday, Jan. 25. The views of every staff member are important, and I am hoping for 100 percent participation! The survey should only take about 10-15 minutes to complete. I trust that we have proven the value of your inputs from the last survey and you are seeing results. We will continue to get better with the process and the actions that occur after we have the results. This time the climate survey will be made public by school/organization on our Web site for all to see. Last year we only posted the summative district data since it was the first time we tried this extensive of a survey.

I believe you will find that the survey is a valuable use of your time, as information from this survey will help the APS Leadership Team and the Board of Education as we work to ensure that every district work site has a productive and positive environment to support student achievement.

Goal 2 in the Environment section of VISTA 2010 is to support a high-performance learning culture based on trust, compassion and mutual respect. In line with our theme this year of “Trust and Teamwork”, one way to reach this goal is to assess the APS climate and determine our strengths and areas where we can improve.

The outcome of the survey will be shared with all employees by late February after we have received your responses and tabulated the results. As a follow-up to each yearly survey, I can assure you that we will enhance the areas we are doing well on and work areas for improvement in our school/organization improvement plans.

By the way, you can see the 2007 district climate survey results at http://www.aps.k12.co.us/assessment/surveys.htm.

We developed the 2007 survey in partnership with the AEA and with the assistance of APS staff representing various departments and schools throughout the district. Because of the unique qualities of classified and licensed positions, we developed two versions of the climate survey-one for classified and the other for licensed personnel. Some questions appear on both versions, but there are specific questions on each survey that better reflect and capture the different types of work of classified and licensed staff members. Please fill in the survey that applies to you.

The climate survey will be sent to you by e-mail from Lisa Escarcega starting next Monday. Again, this survey is voluntary and completely anonymous-you have my word on this. Please take the time to fill it out so we have accurate information on what we can celebrate and what we need to work on in the district. Thank you ahead of time for your inputs.

Regards,

John L. Barry, Superintendent
Aurora Public Schools
15701 E. First Ave., Suite 206
Aurora, CO 80011
303-365-7800

“There are risks and costs to a program of action, but they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.”

John F. Kennedy