Safe and Supportive Schools (SaSS) Commission
Minutes from Working Group 1 (Framework/Tool Refinement & Information Gathering for Recommendations) William James College, 1 Wells Avenue, Room 214, Newton: 4–5:30pm) ~ March 4, 2016
Participating Commission Members: Sara Burd, Melissa Pearrow
Others: Laurie Burnett, Cathy Cummins, Kaytie Dowcette, Anne Eisner, Lisa Harney, Margot Tracy
Agenda:
1. Review the results of the tool user survey
2. Talk about the follow up interview protocol
3. Decide on proposed interview questions
--4. Review framework list of lenses
5. Decide on proposed plan for gathering feedback on framework
6. Draft protocol on how to interview
1) Reviewed the results of the survey:
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Small number of respondents
Building administrators were involved in most as well as school nurses.
Mostly helped with the school-wide needs
Selecting priorities
Not very helpful with action planning
Not many people came back to the action planning
Not using other self-assessments
Aligning initiatives moderately helpful
4 out of 5 said the tool was difficult
100% said it’s too long
Confusing display
They want something simple, outlined and brief
Discussion surrounding the best way to move forward with phone call interviews. Or resending the
email link to gather a larger sample.
Perhaps we could even share the link with Cathy (and other commission members) to share the link with
our contacts?
To ask Rachelle: can we add an additional question into the survey about completing the tool online or
offline?
Plan A- share the link widely. Plan B- call a random, stratified sample to interview by phone using the
survey questions. Either way, we share what we got on the 15th.
2) Review of the interview slides with Cathy. We want to share these slides with everyone who will be
reaching out to either tool users or lens contributors.
3) The group decided that since the goal of the workgroup was to ultimately refine the framework and
tool it would be preferred that the majority of the time be spent on incorporating the feedback to make
edits. As a result, the group decided to widen the scope of tool users interviews (ask more people) and
use the survey as the primary feedback to work from; there would be no need for a follow-up interview.
4 & 5) Discussion regarding how to approach to feedback solicitation from the various lens experts.
Theory and practice questions- what are the drivers/ concepts? The list of lenses is very large- we want
to approach the list in a measured fashion, taking a few on at a time.
We want to broaden the scope of the framework beyond behavioral health to include all the silos and
requirements that schools have to report on. How can we help them do this in a meaningful manner?
Priorities from the commission (urgencies, the law) and thoughts on how to solicit feedback.—we will
ask this at the March 15th meeting and use our group time to work on the interview questions. We plan
to continue to work closely with Group 1 to align initiatives.
6) Will we be able to use the qualitative software to capture the information? We think so, but we
need to discuss this more at the March 15th meeting.
To do:
Sara to send notes out. Also to send items for the March1 5th agenda to Susan and Rachelle.
Ask Rachelle to assist with a larger distribution of the survey using commission members? Ask working
group members to assist with survey follow up once a plan is decided.
Melissa to bring any results to the March 15th meeting.