EPSB to survey students about race, sexual identity to help inclusion
Posted October 29, 2022 3:13 pm.
Sexual identity, religion, spirituality, race and ethnicity are the focus of a new survey at Edmonton Public Schools.
The school board will soon ask students how they identify to get a better understanding of who makes up the broad student population.
“We want every child to walk in through the door every day and feel welcomed and feel a sense of belonging,” said Nancy Petersen, the managing director of strategic division supports at EPSB.
“We need to have a better understanding of who students are.”
The survey will begin collecting information next month.
The board believes having this information will help them better understand the needs of their student population, and could lead to changes to improve their experience.
This is the first time the survey is being conducted, and officials aren’t sure how the information will play a role in shaping the future of education or policy.
“Not all students experience success at school,” said Kent Pharis, assistant superintendent at EPSB. “Not all students feel welcomed at school. Those are all things that are really important to all of us as we work with the students that we serve.”
The information collected from students will be filed under their name, but EPSB says none of the individual responses will be seen by educators or administration.
Data collection will be completed digitally sent to a secure storage server that can only be accessed by the team of processors.
From there, answers will be analyzed as one collective unit – students and schools won’t be reviewed individually.
Parents and students have the option to exclude the student from the data collection.
