This year, on Town Meeting Day, voters in Chittenden South found another survey next to Bill Doyles' - one developed by the CVU school board. The CVU board constructed this instrument to help us understand the sentiments of the voters on a variety of issues that will likely confront the school in the near future.

The brief survey included questions concerning district consolidation, express buses, school choice, and ways to reduce costs (such as raising class size, expanding online courses, and curtailing electives such as foreign languages and the arts).

More than 600 people completed the survey on CVU issues and concerns. Survey respondents were also asked to indicate whether they have family members attending CVU, or did in the past. This enabled the board to see if voters with closer connections to CVU had different opinions than others.

Some of the results were especially interesting. The complete results are available at http://learn.cvuhs.org/file.php/1/TownMeetingSurveyResults.pdf. Here are a few of the more intriguing highlights.

Consolidation

Sixty percent of all respondents are in favor of consolidating the five districts into one. Among respondents who currently have CVU students in the family, however, about an equal percent of voters were in favor of consolidation as opposed to it.

Expansion of the express bus

A slim majority of 54 percent of all respondents were in favor of this. Among those voters with current family members at CVU however, more than 70 percent favored expanding the express bus option.

Arts and foreign language

Much more consensus was found in the questions asking about the importance of arts and foreign language offerings. Voters in both groups (both with CVU students and without) overwhelmingly thought these were important elements in the high school curriculum. Eighty-seven percent of the more than 600 respondents felt that world languages were important to offer and 77 percent felt strongly that it was important to offer courses in the arts.

Online courses

On a question asking about the importance of online courses, both the "all respondents" group, and the group with current students tended to not place much importance on this option. In both groups, about 54 percent indicated that online offering were not important, compared to 33 percent indicating this was important. However, after reading many of the comments associated with this question people may have misinterpreted the question, thinking the board intended to replace in-class lessons with online courses, rather than offer additional options online.

The CVU board understands that these results are not particularly "scientific" or statistically solid. However, the findings do provide a way to take the pulse of our community on an assortment of topics that we predict will surface within the next few years. As with any set of data, these results allow the board another view (although very limited) to consider when discussing matters as they arise and for long range planning. We are always looking for ways to engage the community in conversation. A survey of this nature is just another piece of the puzzle.

We want to thank voters for their valued input, and urge you to look for another similar survey about CVU at the next Town Meeting.

Note: CVU's Survey Data