A survey was sent to parents of students in the Montezuma-Cortez school district on Thursday to help understand the wants and needs of parents who have children enrolled in local schools.

The survey was created by members of the county’s district accountability committee, which is made up of 11 members.

Co-chairs Laura DeWitt and Monica Plewe spoke with the Journal about the survey and what the committee hopes to accomplish.

DeWitt has a child attending Kemper Elementary, while Plewe has had multiple children go through the local school system and has been involved in PTA and school and district accountability committees for more than two decades. Her youngest child attends Cortez Middle School.

In order to create the survey, DeWitt and Plewe met with members of the community to come up with a first draft. After a workable first draft was created, it was presented to DAC.

“DAC members worked hard to get through differences and come up with a consensus on the final product,“ DeWitt said.

DeWitt and Plewe hope parents’ participation in the survey will help guide the committee as it tries to address issues within district schools.

District accountability committees are made up of parents, school employees and members of the community who want to help improve the state of local schools.

The committees pay attention to data coming out about schools, give feedback to district administrators and more.

“We’ve focused mainly on creating bylaws to give structure to how we do our work, and responding to the Board of Education’s request for the DAC to give input on the family engagement policy,” DeWitt said.

“Sometimes the schools need the information from the parents to do their jobs better. And then the parents need the information from the schools to help their kids do better. And I think it needs to feel more like a collaboration and less like a conflict,” she added.

DeWitt noted that she hopes parents will take the survey without feeling like there are politics behind the survey or the decisions of the committee.

“This is not about politics,” she said. “It’s about figuring out how to do better for the kids.”

DeWitt, who is an eye doctor, said she became involved in the committee after becoming concerned about the academics and low test scores in the school that her child attends.

She became excited when she learned about district and school accountability committees and wanted to be involved to help make a difference.

The committee wants to get more parents involved in the district and in their children’s education, discussing how to make local education better for everyone.

“We really want to talk to families about things like, what are the barriers to attendance? How can we come up with solutions to do things better?” DeWitt said.

The committee is small right now, only four parent members, and DeWitt said they felt like they couldn’t properly advise district administrators on issues without more input from other parents, which led to the decision to create the survey.

“We were like the four of us cannot really advise the district on how they should engage with families,” DeWitt said. “We’re just too limited.”

In total, the committee has 11 members. Four parents, two teachers, two administrators, a Native American representative and 2 business owners are currently part of the committee.

“Our meetings have been well attended by other community members and parents (who are not official members), and everyone has contributed to our work. The board has directed us to add 2 more slots for community members, and we are asking the board (in our by-laws) to allow us to expand official membership to any parent who is able to meet attendance requirements, and a representative from each school's accountability committee (SAC) should they choose to send one,“ DeWitt said.

Plewe added that they believe the committee will allow parents to feel like their voices are being heard, when in the past high turnover has made parents feel like they have to start over with their progress when new administration is hired.

The committee has submitted their bylaws to the school board for approval, but have not heard from the board on the status of the committee’s bylaws. Plewe noted that once those are approved, they will be able to gain momentum.

“I think the biggest kicker is that there's a new feeling about the accountability committee being exclusive. They’ve never been exclusive, but it’s been very limited,” Plewe said. “How can you ask people to be accountable for something when you’re not even hearing more parents voices? Once the bylaws are passed, they're going to allow anybody that attends multiple times to have a say in a vote. So if they’ll approve those, we can add more and more voices. We’re trying to push that into the schools so that their school accountability committee is where change happens.”

Because some parents have expressed their concerns or suspicions about the survey to the committee, DeWitt said they made the survey anonymous and the questions simple to save time for participants.

Some survey questions ask whether parents think their child’s school is preparing them for the next grade level or next school, if parents feel their child is safe, whether parents are notified right away if an incident occurs, which tools work the best for communicating with parents, what the district is doing well and what the district isn’t doing well.

“So hopefully from now on we’ll be able to advise the school district on updating their policy and give them real things they can do. The idea is to have families and schools working together to have better outcomes for the kids,” DeWitt said.

“I'm so excited,” Plewe added. “It feels like we're making some progress for families to get back into schools to help their kids.”

The committee believes growing and strengthening parental involvement in the district is key to improving local schools, so they are hoping for more parents to become involved, starting with the survey.

On Thursday, May 4, the committee is holding a dinner for parents and the community to discuss the results of the survey, something Plewe said the committee is looking forward to.

“Historically, that has not happened,” Plewe said.” We fill out a lot of surveys, and we never hear back. We're hoping to change that. We want people to come out and see what people said (on the survey).”

Additionally, once the committee receives a thumbs-up from the district, the information gathered from the survey will be provided to all in the community who wish to know what the results were.

At the dinner, they are also hoping to host Darcy Hutchins, director of Family Partnerships at Colorado Department of Education, who can go through the “nuts and bolts” of how to get the accountability committee up and running most efficiently as well as how parents can make a difference in their children’s school.

The meeting on May 4 will also include food and activities for kids in attendance.

“This is for anyone in the community who wants to come in and talk about and learn how to engage in school, and Darcy will do something about basic educating and getting information out there about how school accountability committees work. As well as how people can get involved,” DeWitt said.

“I don’t have any illusions that this is going to solve everything right away, but hopefully this is a good first step to get people talking about it,” she continued.