BEST,+LEAST,+Suggestion

(from Staff Perception Survey, Fall 2012)

What do you like **BEST** about our agency?
 * The willingness of staff to work together to create a positive and productive atmosphere for our schools.
 * Great services! It feels great to be a part of an organization that offers meaningful contributions to educational institutions.
 * Flexibility, direction, communication
 * Being allowed to expand knowledge by attending workshops and trainings. Then having the opportunity to utilize this information in multiple settings due to serving multiple districts.
 * I like the freedom of usually being approved to attend workshops that further enhance my learning.
 * The agency feels like a family.
 * Open to new ideas, always pursuing the latest technology
 * The positive, respectful attitude of the individuals and their motivation to work together to improve student success.
 * The friendly environment and a willingness to help each other. We are encouraged to attend workshops and order materials that we need.
 * Everyone works well together to support the schools, students and agency.
 * I like the fact that we are different than a lot of ESU's. We have more of a personal relationship with our schools and offer a lot of services to our schools than other ESU's out there. I think it is because we have limited number of school, staff and students that we are working with, so that enables us to be able to be more 1 on 1 with our schools.
 * Strives to meet the needs of each school without restrictions
 * Our small size (5 school districts) allows us to be very flexible in meeting school district needs, sometimes on a very short time frame. We know each other and we work well together.
 * Technology, administration and colleagues
 * I believe our agency is on a very professional level. It stays current with the technology changes and offers a variety of professional growth to educators in the 4 county area.
 * It is a good working environment. People respect each other and listen to questions, etc.
 * "There is a professional level of autonomy that allows independence in practice."
 * Staff are strongly encouraged to attend professional development trainings to continually improve performance.
 * an administrator that doesn't micro-manage
 * Opportunities are available for improvement, if an individual takes advantage of them.

What do you like **LEAST** about our agency?
 * Jeff McQuistan
 * Not being able to consult and brainstorm with all individuals within the ESU due to distance and scheduling. It would be nice to collaborate with ESU staff in all buildings to discuss and brainstorm.
 * I don't like that we are spread so far apart that we don't get enough chances to bounce ideas off of each other.
 * Our location in the state.
 * The miles that it covers ( which is unavoidable) but does lead to certain difficulties with employees getting together to share.
 * Distance between schools and staff.
 * The miles that we travel to our schools.
 * Difficulty in offering a variety of training due to location restrictions
 * Because of our size, we don't always have access to specialists in certain areas.
 * I really have no complaints with our agency.
 * "Sometimes the distances traveled for meetings, etc. are time consuming."
 * Communication could be better between departments.
 * "Having to sometimes make decisions based on politics rather than what might be best for the learner. (However this would occur in any and all educational agencies)"
 * To many scattered approaches to services. Need to combine our efforts to be more productive together.

What is one suggestion that you would like to offer to improve our agency?
 * Better communication between all departments. There feels like a large separation and distinction between different departments and functions and not much cross communication or involvement. It's hard to feel like a fully functioning staff when you only see or hear from individuals 1 day of the year.
 * More communication.
 * More frequent teacher evaluations.
 * Cant think of any.
 * More self promotion to schools regarding all activities and services provided by the unit
 * All staff members need to be evaluated from the viewpoint of agency improvement and what we need to do in order to better meet the changing needs of our schools.
 * I believe the agency is always one step ahead of the population. I have nothing to suggest for improvement.
 * One suggestion is that the different groups would get together face to face once or twice a year to collaborate and share workshops. Perhaps share information on new testing materials.
 * Keep doing what we are doing
 * We need a formal evaluation practice so that all employees work towards improvement.