Ironwood schools seeks community feedback

By RICHARD JENKINS

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Ironwood — Those attending Festival Ironwood Saturday may have seen volunteers manning a booth on behalf of Ironwood Area Schools, including superintendent Travis Powell who was there to meet residents and gather feedback on the district.

“It was wonderful, I got to meet a lot of folks from the community — a lot of parents, a lot of … alumni — and I heard a lot of great things about Ironwood Area Schools,” Powell said, Saturday. “It was very affirming; knowing there is a lot of strength, (there were) many positive comments about our educational staff. Things that I either knew, or suspected were going well for the school, were affirmed by the members of the community.”

For those who didn’t get a chance to meet with Powell, the district has also provided a survey on its website and Facebook page seeking general feedback on the district.

“It’s very simple, it’s asking ‘what are we doing well?’ ‘If there’s something we could do better, what would it be?’ ‘Do you have any suggestions for things we could do better?’ And then an opportunity for folks to — if they would like to hear from me or meet with me — there’s an opportunity for them to give me their contact information,” Powell said.

He said the goal of both the effort at the festival and online survey was to not only make himself more visible in the community as the new superintendent, but also provide people an avenue to offer their thoughts on the district.

“Part of the point of me being here was to meet folks and find out if there were any suggestions they have for things we might do to make the school better, and I got some feedback in that area as well,” Powell said at Festival Ironwood.

So far, Powell said the feedback has been “overwhelmingly positive.”

“Of course (there were) suggestions for things to be better; but it was always preceded by, ‘There’s really great things happening,’ ‘You’ve got great staff,’ things like that,” Powell said.

The survey can be found docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScbSR4gMnd3HhCs90vYNuy59YlwPwD6oZ3qgOPni6z9tdY-Ow/viewform, as well as ironwood.k12.mi.us and the district’s Facebook page.