Gentlemen:

At your recent Board meeting, you received a report from your Human Resources Department. The undated report was entitled “2015-2016 New Employee End of the Year Survey Results” and included ” Employee 2015-2016 Survey Results Comparison”. (The District continues to have problems properly titling and/or dating documents, particularly reports.)

When I first saw this report, I was pleased and complimented HR Director Dr. Ramon Dawkins. It appears that my compliment was premature. That is what I learned when I read the “2015-2016 New Employee End of the Year Survey Results” and its companion comparison with “Mid Year 2015-2016 New Employee Survey Results” and “Beginning of Year 2015-2016 New Employee Survey Results”. That caused me to reassess my compliment.

I have never seen the “Beginning of Year 2015-2016 New Employee Survey Results”. I have read the “Mid Year 2015-2016 New Employee Survey Results” which was released two months ago and persuaded some of you that that in fact was an end of year report.

If you read the “Mid Year 2015-2016 New Employee Survey Results”, you will see that there were between 105 and 112 responses to each of the various questions. However, if you read the “2015-2016 New Employee End of the Year Survey Results”, the number of responses per question declined dramatically to between 45 and 48 per question! In other words, more than twice as many responded to the questions in the “Mid Year Survey” as responded to the “End of Year Survey”! What became of the missing 50-60 respondents to each question?

The discrepancy in the number of responses between the two reports is a problem in and of itself. Where it becomes critical is in the “Results Comparison”. The number of results was converted in the comparison to percentages as if the number of responses was comparable or the same in both reports, which is clearly not the case. Consequently, the “New Employee 2015-2016 Survey Results Comparison” is misleading and totally useless. It should be discarded and destroyed lest it further confuses anyone now or in the future.

Because of the egregious discrepancy in the number of responses to the two survey reports, it appears that the “2015-2016 New Employee End of Year Survey Results” should be completely redone to incorporate the missing 50-60 new employees included in the “Mid Year 2015-2016 New Employee Survey Results”. Who knows what the results may be?

Larry Murray