On the bright side, more people participated in this year’s McAllen ISD employee opinion survey. On the not so bright side, many of their opinions weren’t as favorable as they were last year.
Although a few survey categories saw positive gains, those gains paled in comparison to the bad news.
Many categories dropped a percentage point or two negatively. Others dropped significantly, as much as 10, or almost 20%.
There was a less-positive trend in virtually every category the survey considered.
That’s not to say that employees are necessarily lighting torches and brandishing pitchforks: in most categories, despite decreases, the responses still skewed overwhelmingly positive.
There’s also, as Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources Todd Miller said, a post-pandemic correction at play.
“Per TASB, all topics in this survey — as you’ll see shortly — saw an average decrease from three to 15 percentage points,” he said while explaining the findings to the board in May. “Per TASB, however, among many cases this demonstrates a return to employee opinions to those seen in 2020 or earlier.”
That logic didn’t apply to the survey’s most jarring founding: a marked decrease in faith in district leadership.
Of the respondents, just 62% said they believe the district’s board and superintendent value employees. That number was 19% higher last year; it was 10% higher in 2018.
There was also a smaller percentage of respondents who said they trusted the district’s leadership team to act in the best interest of students than there was in any of the preceding four years, and a smaller percentage who said they believe district leaders are honest and trustworthy.
It was awkward news to receive by a board flanked by trophies and an oversized check from H-E-B recognizing the Best Large District in Texas for 2022. McAllen ISD’s board is more used to receiving recognitions or handing them out than receiving such direct criticism.
That incongruity resulted in a good deal of furrowed brows and chin scratching among trustees, and Sylvia Tanguma with the Joint Professional Consultation Committee — who presented the findings to the board — joked that she “got the nice job of doing this by default.”
Trustees asked questions about the way the survey was conducted; Danny Vela suggested having a statistician examine the findings for potentially more accurate findings.
There’s an awful lot of numbers in the findings, and there’s an awful lot of ways to interpret them.
One interpretation is district leadership making decisions that simply didn’t prove popular with employees.
Assistant Superintendent Miller called those decisions ”big picture items,” and said they may be driving findings.
He listed some of those big picture items from this school year, namely stipend pay, COVID sick days, and district investment in Quinta Mazatlán and IMAS.
All of those topics proved to be hot ticket items at board meetings since September.
Taken as a whole, there were rumblings of discontent over the district investing significantly in partnerships with Quinta and IMAS and later dithering over extra leave and stipend pay when the coronavirus taxed school districts at the beginning of the spring semester.
Going by that interpretation, those decisions appear to have been a misstep as far as employee morale is concerned.
Trustee Conrado Alvarado acknowledged as much and outlined concerns he’d heard.
“We were a little slow on COVID days…the Quinta deal, just being fully transparent, right, that’s out there, I’ve heard that from teachers too. That we spent money there that should have gone to teachers…” he said. Alvarado has since said he has “buyers remorse” over supporting that project.
A trustee asked Tanguma what other sources of discontent leadership should be aware of.
The answer? Salary.
Only 42% of respondents to the survey said their pay was fair for the work they do. That number was 52% last year and 41% in 2018.
More employees also said their leave time is inadequate compared to the past four years. Only 65% said it was adequate this year. In 2021 87% said it was adequate, and in 2018 83% said it was adequate.
The most ominous finding of the compensation portion of the survey is likely how competitive McAllen ISD employees view their salary as compared with other districts in the area.
Only 34% said they felt their pay was competitive, down from 44% last year and 36% in 2018.
It’s worth noting that districts are presently in something of a bidding war for personnel.
Earlier this year substitutes raked in kingly sums. School nurses have also proven to be personnel worth rewarding well.
Districts, including McAllen, are eying salary increases with one eye on their neighbor. Salary increases have been the central topic of discussion in a litany of McAllen ISD board workshops, and the board is expected to vote on a budget Monday.
Speaking after the board discussed the survey results, Board President Tony Forina said he too viewed a decrease in trust in district leadership and a desire for more pay as the main takeaways.
“To me, that’s the way that we feel, and we’ve got to take that into consideration and see how we can win them back into being on the same page with us,” he said. “I don’t think we’re that far off the page, but there’s just got to be a way that we can get them back into harmony here.”
Forina said he hopes that an open dialogue can, at least in part, restore some of that faith in leadership.
“We have to change that and see what we can change to have a more favorable year,” he said. “I think more open dialogue and communication would be a way we could start on restoring it,” he said. “Do I want to see people moved out of their positions? No, because I think we have a great team in place already, we just need to communicate better with everybody, from the top down.
