In 2019, the Houston Independent School District committed to expanding its wraparound services program to encompass all campuses across the district by the 2021-22 school year. To support these efforts, HISD created a student and family needs survey, which asked students, parents and teachers to identify key non-academic challenges they face across five domains: health, mental health, basic needs, home learning environment and enrichment activities.
To support the expansion, the Kinder Institute's Houston Education Research Consortium assisted HISD's Student Support Services department in analyzing the 2019 survey results.
Given the strain that the pandemic has placed on families in HISD, the district prioritized re-administering the needs survey in 2021-22. In collaboration with Student Support Services, HERC redesigned the needs assessment to cover a more comprehensive set of needs. The student survey was administered in December 2021, and the parent/teacher survey was administered in March 2022.
In addition to answering questions about the out-of-school challenges they were facing, the revised survey also asked respondents to identify the barriers that were preventing them from accessing relevant services.
Key findings from the surveys include:
- The highest need areas for students were enrichment activities, physical health and mental health support.
- The most common barriers for students were time, language, knowledge and cost.
- General trends were similar among older and younger students.
- Historically underserved groups of students reported the most need.
Recommendations and briefs summarizing student, parent and campus survey findings are available.
