Report 2012-108

Local Educational Agencies That Submitted an Incomplete Survey or Failed to Respond

Despite our repeated efforts, 58 local educational agencies (LEA) submitted incomplete surveys, and 495 LEAs failed to respond to our survey. These 553 LEAs included 218 school districts, 317 charter schools, and 18 county offices of education.1 LEAs were given more than sufficient notice to complete the survey. On January 18, 2013, the state superintendent of public instruction (superintendent) sent a statewide memorandum strongly encouraging LEAs to participate in our forthcoming survey regarding school bullying. On February 19, we solicited participation in the survey directly by sending each LEA a detailed email. That communication explained the purpose of the audit, the Legislature's role in requesting it, and our authority to conduct it, as well as details for accessing the survey. Recipients were also given a specific deadline for completing the survey. We then sent two follow-up emails to unresponsive LEAs on April 3 and April 23, stating that participation was mandatory. Moreover, on April 3, the superintendent sent another email to LEAs, again explaining the audit and the importance of the survey. Our final email emphasized that the deadline for completing the survey was April 30 and that a list of LEAs that failed to participate in the survey or did not fully respond by that date would be published in our report. We allowed an approximate one-day grace period to submit responses. In total, LEAs were sent five separate notifications and given 10 weeks to respond to our survey.

School Districts

Charter Schools

County Offices of Education

1 The California Department of Education (Education) provided us the classification of LEAs by school districts, charter schools, and county offices of education based on its email distribution list. Other than some filtering of charter schools based on Education's instructions, we did not attempt to validate these classifications. However, based on an exact name match, we identified and removed duplicate entries of unresponsive LEAs.