By Emma Hierholzer ’15

This past October, Sherwood’s students and staff were asked to take a Gallup poll concerning their overall wellbeing and how they felt they were being treated. In conjunction with MCPS, Gallup designed questions that they felt would best yield answers that demonstrated people’s attitudes on topics within the overarching theme of satisfaction. While students scored an average of 4.30 out of 5, staff scored significantly lower with an average of 3.48 out of 5, for the second to last lowest score among 25 high schools.

This low score in employee engagement and fulfillment (as compared to an MCPS employee overall mean of 3.93/5) has been an important issue this past year for both Sherwood teachers and administration alike, as they have been discussing what can be done to help staff feel more acknowledged. “I would agree that there is a problem,” said Katie Jaffe, a social studies teacher who is one of the school’s two Elected Faculty Representatives. “I feel as though a lot of different factors went into why the scores were so low. I don’t exactly know the root cause, but there have been many new changes this year.”

Principal Bill Gregory met with staff to discuss the Gallup results. “The fact that our students still scored so high with teacher’s Gallup results on the lower end is a true testament to how wonderful and committed our staff truly is,” remarked Gregory at the meeting.

Specific questions taken from the Gallup poll that scored significantly low were brought up by Gregory and discussed, including possible solutions to them. Those questions were, “In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work,” and “In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress.”

“Administration is doing everything they can to start to address this problem,” said Gregory. “While I don’t know the exact solution now, we are working hard to get to the bottom of this and evaluate all of the valuable input that staff gave at the meeting we had to discuss the low Gallup scores.”

At a rolling staff meeting, Gregory presented possible reasons for low employee satisfaction, including the installment of Advisory, the continuation of a Student Learning Objectives (SLO) program, and changes to the administration team at the start of the school year. “While all of these new additions certainly added stressors to the work place, they are not the sole issue here,” commented Jaffe.

A number of staff said that there is inadequate communication between staff and the administration. “While we’ve experienced many alterations this year, there is also a noted problem with administration and staff relationships,” said Christine McKeldin, the resource teacher for the social studies department.

It is debated among staff as to what the relationships need to improve on but the main concerns include better recognition for jobs well-done and, “an increased level of communication between teachers and administration,” according to Shelley Jackson, the resource teacher for the English department. “Sometimes I think teachers feel like they aren’t heard by higher-up administration and as a result, feel left out,” said Jackson. “Communication is key in any community.”

The school will continue to examine the Gallup results during the summer’s Instructional Leadership Week as they plan for the upcoming school year. McKeldin would like to see MCPS Central Office involved in the process of how Sherwood can respond to the Gallup results. “If MCPS created this survey to measure employee’s engagement and satisfaction, then why don’t they come into the school and work with us,” she asked. “I think everyone would be more willing to talk and openly share their feelings that way.”