Local News in Brief : Santa Ana : School to Survey Parents About Education Issues

The Santa Ana Unified School District will poll 2,700 households in the city within 2 weeks to find out how parents stand on topics related to the education of their children, school officials said Wednesday.

Vergil Hettick the district’s director of research and evaluation, said letters informing residents of the survey will be mailed within a week to 3,500 randomly selected households.

Later, more than 100 paid, trained bilingual assistants will telephone 2,700 households and record answers to 38 questions on issues ranging from the quality of education--and ways to improve it--to campus safety and cleanliness.

The survey is one of six that will soon be distributed at a total cost of $20,000. Each of the surveys asks different questions, based on the respondents targeted--administrators, students, teachers, parents, district staff and members of the business community.

Hettick said that 80% of those polled will be Latinos because “the proportion of the people we’re polling is directly related to the percentage of that ethnic group in the school community, he said.”

Richard Serpe, director of the Social Science Research Center at Cal State Fullerton, designed the questions and will analyze the answers under a consulting contract with the school district, Hettick said.

Survey results will be presented to the school board at its April 11 meeting.