Ocean Guardian Parent Survey

VERY EXCITING NEWS!: NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries is embarking on a new initiative
to explore the economic value of the Ocean Guardian School program. To this end, the Office of
National Marine Sanctuaries has created a voluntary survey for the parents/guardians of your Ocean
Guardian students.
YOUR INVOLVEMENT: We are reaching out to all current Ocean Guardian Lead Teachers to coordinate
the dissemination of this survey to the parents of the Ocean Guardian School students in this year’s
participating schools. You will be provided with the specific emails and/or hard-copy surveys to
distribute to your select group of parents. For those schools with more than 100 participating students,
you will receive clear instructions on how to randomly select 100 students whose parents will receive
the survey. We understand with the school year coming to a close you are extremely busy and we would
like to offer you a small stipend, of $100, as a token of our appreciation for your valuable time and
energy in helping us to collect this important data.
STEP 1: For more information about the survey and your involvement in this initiative, we are asking
every Lead Teacher to participate in a webinar either on April 26 or April 29 from 4 – 5 pm PT. Please let
me know if you are unable to attend either one of these two webinars, and we will schedule another call
with you at your convenience.
Please register for either webinar on the following links:

Seaberry and I are very grateful to you for your critical support with this special undertaking. Needless to
say, we are very excited that the Ocean Guardian School program is the focus of this federal initiative,
and we look forward to learning more about how we can create an even stronger Ocean Guardian
School program.
As always, please let me know if you have any questions.
Many thanks,
Naomi

Directions to Teachers
Thank you for your assistance. To accurately select a random sample follow the directions below.
1. Identify the list of students who are involved in Ocean Guardian. (Do not presort this list).
2. Take the total number of students and divide by 100. For example, if you have 900 students in
your program, divide by 100 and you will get ‘9’.
a. If you get an odd number, round up to the nearest whole number. So if your number is
1.2, please use the number 2 to count off the list.
3. Count every 9th student on your list and create a new list with every 9th student. Do this until
you have 100 names. It may be possible that you must start at the top of the list again and
count through again.
4. Once the new list has been populated with 100 names, start at the top of the list and assign
each student the number, 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5, consecutively. Starting at 1 again each time the
number 5 is assigned to a student. When this step is completely, 20 students should be
assigned to each number.
5. The number 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 you assigned the student is the version of the survey they will receive.
(There are 5 versions of the survey and this is only relevant to the second and third mailings you
will be sending them --- both of these letters will contain a link to the survey. It is very
important that each student be sent home with the version of the survey they were randomly
assigned).

Dear Parent,
As we near the end of the school year, I would like to inform you about an exciting study in which our
school has been asked to participate. As you may know, this year NAME OF SCHOOL participated in the
Ocean Guardian School program. This means the school received funding from NOAA’s Office of the
National Marine Sanctuaries to support our ocean stewardship activities.
The Ocean Guardian School program awards grants to K-12 public, private and charter schools to carry
out hands-on projects that help protect the health of our watersheds and ocean. For more information
about this program, please go to: http://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/education/ocean_guardian/.
During the year, your child may have received extra lessons related to environmental conservation and
stewardship and/or participated in class projects such as recycling, removing invasive species, removing
marine debris or planting native vegetation. Studies have shown that hands-on, experiential learning
techniques have been shown to increase interest in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM),
help reinforce an ethic of responsible citizenship and promote academic achievement.
In the next week or so, I will be sending home another letter with your student asking you to go
online and complete a short survey about you and your child’s experience (no matter how great or
small) with the Ocean Guardian School program.
Although your participation and completion of the survey is completely voluntary, please know that
your input is extremely valuable to the research team. Your information will help to improve your child’s
Ocean Guardian experience and make similar experiences available to students across the county
If you have any questions, please contact Sylvia Hitz at sylvia.hitz@noaa.gov or Danielle Schwarzmann
Danielle.schwarzmann@noaa.gov .
Thank you in advance for your cooperation.

Sincerely,

Teacher’s Name

Dear Parent,
Last week I sent a letter home with your child letting you know that we would be sending home another
note with a link to a short, online survey about you and your child’s experiences (no matter how great or
small) with the Ocean Guardian School program.
Please go to this link to complete the survey:
XXXX Link
XXXX Password
As you may recall, this year our school received funding from NOAA’s Ocean Guardian School program
to support our ocean stewardship activities. The Ocean Guardian School program awards grants to K-12
public, private and charter schools to carry out hands-on projects that help protect the health of our
watersheds and ocean. For more detailed information about the program, please go to:
http://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/education/ocean_guardian/.
As I previously mentioned, although this survey is completely voluntary, your input is extremely valuable
to the research team. Your information will help to improve your child’s Ocean Guardian experience and
make similar experiences available to students across the county
If you have any questions, please contact Sylvia Hitz at sylvia.hitz@noaa.gov or Danielle Schwarzmann
Danielle.schwarzmann@noaa.gov.
Thank you in advance for your cooperation.
Sincerely,

Teacher’s Name

Dear Parent,

Last week I sent a letter home with a link to a short, online survey about you and your child’s experience
(no matter how great or small) with the Ocean Guardian School program. If you have already completed
the survey, thank you for your time and effort and please disregard this letter. If you have not yet had a
chance to complete this survey, please go to this link to complete the survey:
XXXX Link
XXXX Password
As mentioned previously, this survey is completely voluntary. However, your information will help to
improve your child’s Ocean Guardian experience at school and make similar experiences available to
students across the country. If you would like to receive a paper copy of the survey to complete, please
return this letter requesting a paper copy of the survey.
If you have any questions, please contact Sylvia Hitz at sylvia.hitz@noaa.gov or Danielle Schwarzmann
Danielle.schwarzmann@noaa.gov.
Thank you very much for your cooperation.

Sincerely,

Teachers Name

Dear Parent,

We wanted to thank you for the time and effort you took to complete the survey about you and your
child’s experience with the Ocean Guardian Program. Your responses will help us to improve the Ocean
Guardian Program and its impact on your child.

Sincerely,