Principal Newsletter: Requesting Feedback on a New School Program

Feedback requests that produce useful data are designed differently from feedback requests that are sent for appearance. The newsletter that makes a genuine ask, explains why the input matters, and tells families what will happen with their response gets a different kind of engagement than the annual survey that disappears into a folder.

What the Program Is and What You Are Evaluating

Start by reminding families what the program is, when it launched, and what it was designed to accomplish. Families who have multiple children in multiple programs need this context before they can give useful feedback on a specific one. Name the question you are trying to answer: Is the program achieving its intended goals? Are there implementation problems that need to be corrected? Should the program be expanded, modified, or discontinued? Families who know what decision their feedback will inform are more likely to provide it thoughtfully.

Why Family Perspective Is Particularly Useful Here

Explain what families can see that school staff cannot. Families observe how students talk about the program at home, whether they are engaged or anxious, whether the program is affecting their time and energy in other subjects, and whether the skills or behaviors the program is supposed to build are showing up outside of school. That perspective is not available from any internal school data source. Making this argument explicitly tells families that you are not asking for their feedback as a formality, but because they have information you genuinely need.

What the Survey Asks

Describe the questions or name a few of them so families know what they are committing to before they open the survey. How long will it take? Are the questions multiple choice, open-ended, or both? Is it anonymous? Can a family submit feedback on behalf of more than one child if they have students at different grade levels or in different parts of the program? The more families know about the survey before they click, the more likely they are to complete it rather than abandoning it partway through.

How Feedback Will Be Used

Name the specific decision the feedback will inform. Will results be presented to the faculty? To the school improvement committee? To the district? Will families receive a summary of what the responses showed? Name the timeline: when the survey closes, when you will analyze results, and when you will share findings with the community. If prior feedback led to a specific program change, name that change here. Families who can see the connection between their past input and real decisions are motivated to provide input again.

For Families Who Want to Share More

Name a contact for families who want to discuss their feedback in more detail than a survey allows. A phone number, an email, or an invitation to a brief meeting. Some families have complex observations that do not fit into a survey format, and some have concerns that they would rather share privately. Making the additional contact option explicit ensures that families with the most substantive feedback have a channel to provide it.

The Deadline and What Happens Next

Give a specific deadline. Tell families what the minimum response threshold is for the results to be statistically reliable, if relevant, or simply say that every response helps. Name the date when you will share findings with the community and what format that sharing will take: a newsletter summary, a presentation at a family meeting, a posted report on the school website. Families who know what comes next trust the process more than those who feel like their feedback disappears into an administrative void.

Using Daystage for Feedback Campaigns

Daystage makes it easy to build a program feedback newsletter with a survey link, a program summary, and a clear explanation of how results will be used. Track which families opened the newsletter to know how many saw the request, and follow up with non-respondents before the survey deadline.