John Jay students report strong emotional well-being in district survey

CROSS RIVER, N.Y. - “How’s it going?” they asked John Jay High School students, and most said it was going just fine, thank you.

In a survey covering grades 9 through 12, with questions meant to measure how students see themselves, an overwhelming majority provided what the survey called “optimal” or “near-optimal” responses.

The survey, conducted last spring by the Katonah-Lewisboro School District, sought to provide “meaningful and actionable insight into student well-being,” Frank Gizzo, the district’s director of guidance, said.

Speaking at the school board’s May 7 meeting, he said responses to the survey were voluntary but not anonymous. Still, he told the board, about three-quarters of the student body—all told, 659 ninth through 12th graders—provided answers to a series of questions meant to measure how they view  their social and emotional well-being.

“Student well-being impacts almost every aspect of the school experience: relationships, academic performance, extracurricular involvement, attendance, overall engagement,” Gizzo said.

He credited Dr. Jessica Kingsbury, the district’s director of assessment, research and technology, and Maureen Jones the chief information officer and systems manager, calling them “the wizards” who mounted the survey on its technological platform

Called the CARES Survey (for Comprehensive Assessment of Resilience and Emotional Strengths), it asked students about any social emotional distress they may have experienced, their life satisfaction, sense of belonging and personal strengths.

Responses were multiple choice, Gizzo said, so those taking part could finish the survey in about five minutes.

Each category of inquiry allowed students to agree/disagree with statements about themselves.

Under Social Emotional Distress, for example, assertions such as “I felt sad and down [over the past 30 days],” had four possible responses, ranging from “Not At All True” to “Very Much True.”

Similarly, each of the five Life Satisfaction statements—among them, “I would describe my satisfaction with MYSELF as . . .”—could be answered with one of six possibilities, from “Very Dissatisfied” to “Very Satisfied.”

The Belonging category provided opportunity to “Strongly Disagree,” “Strongly Agree” or select one of four choices that fell between those two, including neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

Measuring a dozen potential Strengths—“I can do most things if I try,” was one—had a choice of four answers, ranging from “Not At All True” to “Very Much True.”

“These responses . . . help us understand how a student perceives their ability to manage the stresses and navigate challenges,” Gizzo said.

Responses of those taking the survey were positive. Eighty-two percent gave optimal or near-optimal answers (28 and 54 percent, respectively). Another 13 percent of responses were “approaching optimal.”

Unlike anonymous surveys, which “can provide general themes” while “making it rather difficult to drill down to the individual students, to identify the possible roots,” Gizzo noted, the CARES survey clearly identified each respondent.

“All the students understood going into this that it wasn’t anonymous,” he said. “They knew very well that [school administrators and others would have access to] the information that they were going to provide. . . . It’s a credit to our students, who are on that frontier of self-disclosure.”