PROJECT BUILD · METHODS
How we listened
What was collected, how it was read, and the things these findings cannot tell you. This page exists so the themes can be questioned rather than taken on trust.
Analysis v1.0 · November 3, 2026 export
WHAT WAS COLLECTED
An open invitation, answered voluntarily
Project BUILD invited anyone connected to the district to describe, anonymously, a time they felt part of something special. The window ran August 12 – October 31, 2026. No names, schools or contact details were attached to a story, and nothing a person wrote was linked to anything else about them.
The analysis reads 292 records from the November 3, 2026 export. 5 of them arrived after the announced close and are included; saying so is the honest alternative to implying every record landed inside the window.
HOW IT WAS READ
Every record, read in full
Each record was read in full and assigned every theme it genuinely contained, rather than a single best-fit label. Inclusion and exclusion were defined before coding, boundary cases were reviewed again, and the result was tested by removing groups of records to see whether any theme depended on them.
All eight themes survived those tests, including when leader records, late records and a cluster of records submitted on the same day were each set aside in turn. That is a sign the themes are not an artefact of one group or one day. It is not evidence that they are representative.
THE NUMBERS, WITH THEIR DENOMINATOR
Counts per theme
Of 292 records reviewed, 290 were coded. 2 were set aside: one unintelligible entry and one exact duplicate of another record. Of those 290, 283 carried at least one of the eight themes and 7 carried none.
| Theme | Records | Share of coded records containing this theme (of 290) |
|---|---|---|
| Recognition and dignity | 91 | 31.4% |
| Welcome and care | 141 | 48.6% |
| Voice and trust | 41 | 14.1% |
| Shared purpose | 131 | 45.2% |
| Growth and possibility | 110 | 37.9% |
| Shared experiences | 77 | 26.6% |
| Dependable support | 38 | 13.1% |
| Continuity through change | 47 | 16.2% |
These shares must never be added together. A record can carry several themes at once, so the eight shares total far more than 100%. That is a property of multi-label coding, not a mistake — and it means no theme can be called a majority or a minority view.
WHAT THIS CANNOT TELL YOU
The limits, stated plainly
- This is not a representative survey. People chose to take part, so those who responded are not a sample of the district.
- It is heavily weighted toward staff: 236 of 292 records (81%) indicated a staff role. Student and family voices are a small share.
- The question asked for a positive memory. What is absent from this collection is not evidence that it did not happen — only that it was not asked about.
- Counts show how many accounts a theme appeared in, not how often something happens across the district.
- One AI analyst performed the synthesis. There has been no independent human double-coding, no inter-rater reliability study, no participant validation and no claim of saturation.
- No stakeholder panel has validated these themes. If that work happens, it will be documented here.
- None of this evaluates a school, a program, a plan or a tax measure.
PRIVACY
Why you will not find individual stories here
No individual contribution is published anywhere on this site, in any form — not as a quotation, not reworded, not as a composite, and not as a searchable record. There is no way to look up a single submission.
The published figures also stay broad on purpose. Breaking them down by school, or crossing a role with a theme, narrows the group behind each number until a person becomes recognisable to colleagues. Anonymity is what made these experiences possible to write down, and it holds after the fact as well as during.