The numbers

Heya.

We had a staff meeting yesterday, and the principal went over some numbers from a survey that was taken last spring. It asked things like "Do you feel safe at school?" (Well, technically it said "I feel safe at school," then offered choices that ranged from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree." But you get the gist.)

Other questions were more academic, like "I am being prepared for college," "I feel comfortable talking to my counselor about my classes," "I know what I will be tested on," "I know how grades are calculated," "I know which standards I am learning each day." You get the idea.

But a lot of the items were sort of more personal, like "There is an adult on campus I can trust," and "There is at least one adult on campus who knows my first name."

In all areas, we smoked the competition. I mean, our scores were compared to those from the four other big high schools, and our scores in pretty much every category were anywhere from 3 percent to twenty percent higher than the other schools! I mean, wow, right? Makes you think we're some special hoity-toity school, right? Wrong. Our school has one of the worst reputations in town. It was so good to see that, reputation aside, the kids that actually attend the school feel welcome, valued, safe, and as though they are learning.

But then something hit me. The item that read "There is at least one adult on campus who knows my first name." Well, we smoked the competition again in this category, at 86 percent! Whoo, 86 percent!! But... well... who are the 14 percent that thinks there is not a single adult on campus who knows their name? How sad is that? Enough to have made me tear up twice, actually. I mean, I realize that there are some jokesters who are going to write "strongly disagree" on every single question just as a prank or because they hate school or are having a bad day or whatever. But fourteen percent? I mean, in a school of almost 2,000 kids, that's over 200 kids out there, lost and lonely, thinking that there's not a single teacher, hall monitor, counselor, vice principal or aide who could greet them with "Morning, Jimmy, how're you?" How sad.