A former school board chair is expected to present the results of a survey conducted to gather feedback on why the school district’s bond did not pass.

The presentation is expected at the board’s next regular meeting on Thursday, March 24.

Laura Wishik, who served two terms on the Vashon Island School District (VISD) board, but was not re-elected this year, drafted and conducted an informal survey to help the board decide how to go about bringing the bond back for a second attempt. She said that her objective was to “provide useful information to the school district for use in planning the next bond.”

She said she particularly wanted the district to know why people voted “no,” rather than “speculating about the reasons.”

The school district is prohibited from gathering such input and did not ask for the survey.

Wishik received 180 responses to the online questionnaire — 126 of which were islanders who voted “no” on the bond. Of those 126 who voted against the bond, 55 opposed artificial turf; 39 believed the new gym was needed, but it cost too much and 38 did not believe the new gym was needed. The rest of the responses were spread between thinking the school would not need new facilities if it did not have off-island students and not wanting to pay for other people’s kids because respondents didn’t have children in the schools.

Her survey also found that 74 of the 126 respondents who voted “no” agreed with the statement, “I did not trust the process used by the school district in deciding what was in the bond.” Other respondents questioned the district’s handling of maintenance and importance of athletic facilities.

Wishik is careful to note that the survey was not random and is not representative of the community.

“It is one piece of information for consideration,” Wishik said.

She continued to say that the “distrust part” of the survey is hard to deal with, but she thinks the district needs to focus on getting feedback from a diverse and targeted citizen advisory committee.

VISD Superintendent Michael Soltman acknowledged that communication is something the district needs to work on.

“It’s a challenge for us to figure out how this island wants to communicate,” he said.

The board will be bringing the bond back to the polls late this year or early next year.

“I think the survey results will be a good basis for all of those discussions,” Soltman said.