Over 500 current and future Leander High School Lions participated in the online conversation on Student Experience, rallying around ideas concerning school and classroom size, individual plans for every student, and high-quality teachers.
LHS and its feeder schools had the opportunity after the Feb. 10 community meeting until Feb. 24 to share open-ended feedback on ThoughtExchange.
“Make sure the academic needs of every student are being met…nobody slips through the cracks and everyone is challenged,” wrote one of the top-rated thoughts from LHS. “Education is the main purpose of school.”
Review the entire report, including all of the submissions here. We will release the final report in June, which will also include submissions from the entire district.
“We want to thank our Lions and future Lion families for providing feedback in our community meetings and on Thoughtexchange,” Superintendent Bruce Gearing, Ed.D. said. “We are here to listen as we continue this conversation because we know the voices of our students, teachers, staff, families, and partners can only make us better.”
After the submission window closed, we worked with Thoughtexchange data experts to categorize or theme all of the submissions. In looking at the themes, we can review the data based on total submissions and how respondents rated those thoughts.
While these themes may be adjusted as we hear from other communities for comparison purposes, you can review the methodology in the following table:
| Rating | Thoughts | Themes | Description (ideas and concepts included in the theme) |
| 1 | 11 | Classroom or School Size | Focusing on class size or student-teacher ratios. |
| 2 | 2 | Individualized Learning | Offering diverse learning opportunities and instruction that account for individual student needs and capacities. |
| 3 | 6 | Post-Graduation Prep | Preparing students for post-graduate life, including college prep, trade schools, and social and soft skills for a changing world. |
| 4 | 9 | Teachers | Ensuring we support high-quality teachers and staff for student learning through resources, professional development, and leadership. |
| 5 | 5 | Grades or Class Rank | Relating to homework, testing, and teaching to a test. |
| 6 | 4 | Safety | Relating to the safety and security of the school facilities. |
| 7 | 1 | Social or Emotional Learning | Supporting students through social-emotional skills, relationships, with a ‘whole child’ approach, and/or through an inclusive and bully-free learning environment. |
| 8 | 14 | Clubs, Sports, or Activities | Offering more variety of clubs and other ways to help students be engaged. |
| 9 | 12 | Communication | Prioritizing regular updates and communication from staff to parents. |
| 10 | 3 | New or Improved Programs | Improving current course offerings or new programs to introduce, including a more robust foreign language program, critical thinking courses, and financial literacy. |
| 11 | 13 | Resources | Investing in resources and facilities, including technology and textbooks. |
| 12 | 7 | Planning or Policy | Relating to issues of feeder schools, zoning, bussing and other district-level planning. |
| 13 | 8 | Miscellaneous | Included general thoughts about providing quality education. |
| 14 | 10 | Schedule or Calendar | Including a variety of topics related to scheduling and the school calendar. |
We released LHS as our second feeder pattern report, with Vista Ridge High School being our first. Ultimately, we will have a report in June that considers all feeder patterns as a whole district, as well as data collected in our Equity and Diversity meetings, our Employee Engagement Survey, and our School Climate Surveys.
