Haines School looks to combine teacher and student goals to improve the school’s climate.
Principal Rene Martin gave a recap at Tuesday’s school board meeting of a teacher work session last month meant to tackle the results of the 2016 Alaska School Climate and Connectedness Survey.
Fifty-one Haines Middle School students and nine staff members took the survey last year, along with 63 students and 15 staff members at the high school.
The most notable results revealed differences between staff and student perceptions of school safety, school leadership and involvement, delinquent behaviors and other categories.
Based on the survey’s results, teachers chose five areas to work on as the year progresses: student involvement, respectful climate, risk behaviors, parent involvement and peer climate.
Martin discussed the influence of marijuana and other drugs as it relates to the risk behaviors category. She said most staff know the students who are chronic users or may be most affected by other sorts of drug use. She said the school needs to come up with a solution to combat this.
“This is the by-product of legalizing marijuana,” Martin said.
Martin said when students took the survey last school year, there were a lot of staff changes at the administrative level. Students may have felt the effects of that change trickle through the system, which could have impacted the school’s climate and survey results.
“I think students are ready for some consistency,” Martin said.
The teachers set goals of what they wanted to think, hear, be, see and feel with regard to the schools’ climate and connectedness between teachers and students.
Martin said the next step is to consult with students and identify their goals, merge those with staff goals, and then figure out tactics to accomplish those objectives.