URBANA — Experience working with an independent and innovative faculty is considered the most important quality in a new director/principal of Uni High, according to a survey that more than 500 members of the Uni community took earlier this year.

On April 23, the Parent-Faculty Organization held its Spring General Meeting, “Directing Uni/Uni’s Director,” at the Siebel Center.

At the meeting, Director/Principal Steve Epperson interpreted the results of an online survey sent out to the Uni High community.

“The survey data is a very preliminary thing,” Epperson told the audience of about 90 people. “You get kind of a surface-type measure of how people feel.”

Epperson originally sent out the survey on March 25 to Uni High faculty, students, parents, and alumni. The aim was to get feedback regarding the future direction of Uni. The survey was available online until April 6, and the quantitative results were analyzed by Lizanne DeStefano and Holly Downs from the U of I College of Education.

In addition, there are 23 pages of narrative comments.

“We have to figure out some way to summarize all of the … narrative responses,” said Epperson. “When that’s done … I will share that with everybody in the Uni community.”

A total of 551 persons took the survey, with alumni and parents making up the majority (76.6 percent) of the respondents. Participants were asked to express their opinions on five major issues.

1. Mission of the School

Respondents were asked to choose five concepts that they believed should be included the school’s mission statement. The top three qualities that respondents selected were educational excellence (garnering 91.1 percent of the responses), innovative teaching (80.0 percent) and academically talented students (76.0 percent).

In addition, staff members placed a high emphasis on meeting the needs of diverse students (54.3 percent) while students (43.6 percent) and parents (44.6 percent) felt the strongest about having an inclusive athletic program, which includes the no-cut policy.

Survey takers were also asked to pick a name for the school that would most accurately reflect its mission statement. Overall, the title “University of Illinois Laboratory High School” received the most votes (32.3 percent). However, the different groups of participants had varying opinions. The highest percentage of parents (36.9 percent) wanted the school to be named “University High School,” while the highest percentage of students (40.4 percent) preferred “University Laboratory High School” to be the name.

2. Administration Characteristics

Respondents were asked to select five qualities that they think a new administrative leader should possess. Experience working with an independent and innovative faculty was considered the most important quality (71.0 percent of votes overall), followed by experience working with academically talented students (58.4 percent) and strong interpersonal skills (54.6 percent).

The responses were generally along the same lines, regardless of which group the respondents belonged to, although students (52.1 percent of them) saw strong communication skills as a major factor, and a significant portion of staff members (42.9 percent) said that a background in school finance was important.

In addition, participants were also asked to select titles for the school's assistant and lead administrators. The current title of “Director/Principal” was by far the most-favored title (50.5 percent), and the currently used title of “Assistant Principal” also garnered the most votes.

3. Facility Improvements

Survey takers were asked to identify renovation preferences and other facility needs. Improvements in building structures won the most votes (48.5 percent), followed by more smart rooms with an emphasis on technology (43.9 percent) and improved temperature control (43.7 percent).

Interestingly, parents, alumni, and faculty members all ranked these three issues as their top concerns. On the other hand, students chose painting and repairing the walls and ceilings (38.3 percent) over other structural needs (34.0 percent). Compared to the other three groups, the alumni felt least concerned about providing air conditioning in all classrooms and improving building security.

“[Improving building security] wasn’t rated quite as highly as I thought it might be, but I can tell you from an administrative standpoint we probably are still going to rate that a little bit higher than what people placed it here,” said Epperson. “In this day and age there are just some issues around the school that we think need to be addressed.”

In addition, respondents were asked to rank areas of improvement in the long-range facility plan. Most participants believed that the science labs (which garnered 50.8 percent of votes) and the fine arts performance area (50.3 percent) needed the greatest improvement, followed by regular classrooms (39.6 percent), faculty offices (39.0 percent), and computer labs (32.5 percent).

Staff members really stood out in wanting to improve the fine arts performance area (77.1 percent), the computer labs (65.7 percent), the athletic performance area (45.7 percent), and a conference room (34.3 percent).

Out of all the groups surveyed, students put an emphasis on parking and a better indoor track (which is not surprising considering they are the ones who have to run around an unstable-looking 100-meter track in PE).

4. Advisory Board

A total of 78.6 percent of all respondents felt that Uni High needs an advisory board that will be responsible for long-range funding plans (71.7 percent), long-range facility plans (61.0 percent), and faculty-salary improvement plans (58.8 percent). Ironically, compared to the other groups, the lowest percentage of faculty members (54.3 percent) chose “develop a plan to improve faculty salaries” as one of the long-range improvement needs.

The different groups who took the survey generally shared the same opinion. The only thing that stood out was the faculty members did not think that the advisory board should provide input on personnel issues such as staffing or provide input on student issues such as discipline.

5. Curricular Emphasis

Respondents were asked if the curriculum should include a greater emphasis on writing. At the meeting, Epperson clarified that emphasizing writing doesn’t necessarily mean more writing. Rather, it means quality writing in subjects other than English.

The majority of overall respondents (50.3 percent) favored a greater emphasis on writing. Faculty members made up the group with the largest percentage that favored a greater emphasis on writing (57.1 percent), while the majority of students (63.8 percent) did not favor the idea.

Looking Ahead

Now that the quantitative data have been analyzed, what’s the next step?

Uni is currently in the process of organizing a retreat that will take place this summer.

“We're going to try to get a group of students, parents, staff members, and alumni to sit down and look at all these various issues, talk about them in depth,” explained Epperson. “We’ve got a facilitator that’s going to be here and talk about these issues and try to … come up with some recommendations from that group.”

The retreat, which will be held during the second week of June, is all part of the larger process of getting Uni up to speed for next year's nationwide search for a permanent director/principal.

“In the fall, those recommendations will be shared with our groups again for one final shot with the idea that by the end of September we would pretty well have these things finalized,” Epperson said. “That would be perfect timing for the search firm as they start going out and publicizing the position [of director/principal].”