MACON, Ga. — Editors note: The video attached to this story is Bibb Superintendent Dan Simms discussing back-to-school for the district.
Parents in Central Georgia are – by and large – happy with the quality of their children’s education but say safety and bullying are still major concerns. Those are some of the results of the 13WMAZ Back-to-School Survey.
We asked our audience nine questions to get a better sense of the educational landscape in Central Georgia.
Over the back-to-school period, we received 306 responses from parents in school districts like Jones County, Peach County, Laurens County and more.
However, most responses came from two districts: Bibb and Houston Counties, which represented nearly 54.5% of all responses.
Here’s a look at how parents feel about education here in Central Georgia:
Quality of students' education:
The survey asked: “How confident are you that your child is getting a quality education?” The question was asked on a scale of 1 through 10, with 10 being extremely confident.
On average, parents ranked their student’s education a 7.43. In fact, 32% of parents ranked their child’s education a 10-out-of-10! We have a district-by-district breakdown later in this story.
However, there was a wide disparity between districts.
Among districts that received over 10 responses, Bibb County ranked lowest of all Central Georgia school districts on parents' perception of their students' education.
School safety:
The survey asked: “How confident are you that your child’s school is safe?” This question was asked on a scale of 1 to 5.
However, the data offers two different pictures of parents' perceptions of safety.
The average rating for school safety is 3.82 out of 5 showing that parents are, overall, confident that their child is safe at school.
However, the survey also asked about parents' “biggest concerns” ahead of the school year.
The top issue was safety and security with 154 responses. With 306 responses to the survey, that means just over half of the parents ranked safety and security as one of the biggest concerns. The next biggest concern was student preparedness for the next grade with 153 responses.
Because of that, there are two different pictures – telling two different stories about how parents feel about student safety at schools.
Financial pressures of back-to-school:
Back-to-school means parents have to head to the store to buy books, writing tools, bags, binders and so much more.
And with the impact of inflation, we wanted to know: “Do you feel you have the financial resources to set your child up for academic success?”
Now, 58% of parents reported being financially prepared for the school year.
However, 35% of parents reported being somewhere in the middle – not fully prepared, not unprepared. That suggests many parents do feel the pinch when back-to-school comes around.
Only 7% of parents reported feeling unprepared financially.
Mental health services:
Mental health among young people has been a major concern in recent years. As to how well schools are handling mental health, parents were split.
37% ranked mental health services as good, 37% of parents ranked them as fair and 26% of parents said they were poor.
Do your kids enjoy going to school?
We also asked a pretty simple question: “Does your child enjoy going to school?”
Over half of parents – 55%! – say their kids enjoy heading back to school.
Next, 30% of parents say their child is somewhere in the middle, and only 15% of parents say their children don’t enjoy going to school at all.
How have schools handled COVID catch up?
The COVID-19 pandemic was four years ago, and when students were learning from home, a major concern was students falling behind.
We wanted to hear from parents about how well schools handled COVID-19 catch up. We asked: How well has your school/school district handled catching students back up?
On a scale of 1-10, parents gave an average rating of 6.89.
While 10% said their school has done a bad job catching students up, 21% of parents gave their district a 10 out of 10. Overall, parents feel districts are doing OK at addressing pandemic-era learning loss.
How we broke down school districts:
In our breakdown of the data, we separated school districts into two categories. Districts with over 10 responses and one for districts with under 10 responses.
In data analysis and statistics, surveys with more responses are considered more reliable and less likely to be skewed by a few passionate respondents.
So the larger number of responses is likely tied to a more accurate picture of the public’s views.
We're working on individual breakdowns for a couple of school districts. Those will come out soon.
Here's a look at how parents in each district ranked the quality of their student's education.
For school districts with over 10 responses:
- Jones County: 8.73 (16)
- Houston County: 8.37 (87)
- Private school: 8.25 (11)
- Peach County: 7.15 (13)
- Laurens County: 7 (13)
- Baldwin County: 6.67 (14)
- Bibb County: 5.1 (78)
For school districts with under 10 responses:
- Bleckley County: 9.6 (5 responses)
- Macon County: 9.25 (5 responses)
- Charter School: 9 (3 responses)
- Dublin City Schools: 9 (3 responses)
- Home school: 9 (2 responses)
- Washington County: 8:75 (5 responses)
- Monroe County: 8.5 (4 responses)
- Pulaski County: 8 (4 responses)
- Wilcox County: 8 (1 response)
- Taylor County: 7.6 (6 responses)
- Twiggs County: 7.5 (5 responses)
- Wilkinson County: 4.5 (8 responses)
- Crawford County: 4.3 (3 responses)
- Dodge County: 4 (8 responses)
- Putnam County: 4 (2 responses)