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Citizens for a Strong Community
P.O. Box 198
Hamilton, MA 01936
Email:  schoolstudy@hwcsc.org
Website:  www.hwcsc.org 

April 2, 2004 

Dear School District Administrators,

I'm delighted to be able to tell you on behalf of Citizens for a Strong Community that the on-line data entry system for the School District Comparison Study will be ready for input on Monday 4/5/04.

If you have already collected the data for your school district and have been twiddling your thumbs, we apologize for keeping you waiting.  (Creating the data base entry forms proved much more complicated than we expected, and as we are all volunteers on this project, resolving those complications on our "off hours" stretched the task out several weeks beyond our initial intended deadline.)   We know a number of volunteers are still encouraging school administrators in their districts to complete the questionnaires, and if you are in that boat, perhaps the delay is more relief than hindrance! 

We invite and encourage you to log on to http://www.designcheck.com/school_survey to enter the data you have collected as soon as it is convenient for you to do so.  Information about procedures will appear when you open each form.

Even if school officials in your district have told you it will be weeks before they can complete the four school sections of the survey, there is nevertheless something very worthwhile you can accomplish now. The municipal section of the questionnaire is quite short, and can be completed by a town clerk or other town official.   If you have not already gotten this section filled in, please make it your mission this week to do so and submit the data on-line!  Comparative data about the school financing issues explored in this section will undoubtedly be valuable information for every town as officials and voters consider budget proposals.   Let's make the municipal section priority one! -- We may circulate spreadsheets relating to the municipal section earlier than the others, if the volunteers in the more than two-dozen participating districts can provide this information soon. 

If you have one or two of the school sections (elementary, middle school, high school, or district-wide) but not all four, please enter the answers for those you have in hand as soon as you are able, too.  

More than 40 CSC volunteers have worked on this study so far, and as we move into the analysis stage, we are very excited to have volunteers on-board with considerable database experience.   We are now setting up a searchable database that will generate reports quickly and easily: it can be exported into Excel spreadsheets for further manipulation.  All participating districts will have access to this extensive database, and to all reports that CSC generates.  Although it has taken a long time, the wait will be worth it!

Finally, the partnership of volunteers in all the participating districts is central to the success of this ambitious project.  We appreciate your time and your effort.  We know this takes lots of both!   Thank you, thank you, thank you.

With best wishes,

Tom Rogers
Project Coordinator
 

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