Payson Roundup

All right. We’re trying to be big about this.

We’re trying to be happy for Payson schools.

But, gee whiz: A 96 percent satisfaction rate?

Wow. We’d get dizzy and pass out if 96 percent of our letter writers sang our praises. We’d go swaggering around wearing a “Satisfaction Guaranteed” button. Heck, we’d ask for a raise.

But it’s almost routine for Payson Unified School District to have 96 percent of the parents with kids in school pronounce themselves “satisfied” with the quality of education their kids receive. That includes about 98 percent of the parents with kids in elementary school, 89 percent of middle school parents and about 85 percent of the parents at the high school.

The most recent survey demonstrated that the people with the most information about how schools are actually doing give them uniformly high marks.

Of course, satisfaction levels always decline at the high school level, which may reflect reduced parental involvement. Fortunately, satisfaction ratings went up 2.5 percent this year at the high school.

The annual survey revealed some concerns with communication between the district and parents, which we hope the administration will address. However, even on that potential problem area, 83 percent of parents district-wide and 73 percent of the high school parents professed themselves satisfied.

We hope that the critics of our schools will take note of the numbers. Who pays closer attention and has more information than parents? The rankings from those consumers of education rebuts the criticism of schools often offered by people who never step foot on a school campus.

Unfortunately, those opinions can dominate at the polls — as we discovered during the recent defeat of the school budget override election.

We do hope the district will take board member Richard Meyer’s suggestion and next year use a survey that gives parents more than a “satisfied” or “not satisfied” choice. Perhaps the district could institute a five- or 10-point scale, to get a more detail on parental concerns.

Of course, maybe we’re just nitpicking because we’re jealous. After all: 96 percent.

Why, if we got such a rating, we’d figure the bid was rigged and investigate ourselves. We’d rewrite the lyrics to “Can’t Get No Satisfaction,” we’d play the lottery, we’d all wear “highly satisfied” baseball caps — heck, we’d throw ourselves a party and go fishing.

But so far as we know, all those champion teachers just showed up to work this morning at the regular time.

They must take satisfaction in their work.

Counting feathered joy

Not long ago, 18 unreasonable Rim Country residents roused themselves in the pre-dawn dark, bundled themselves up, stuffed their binoculars in their fanny packs and ventured out into the 23-degree chill — prepared to spend most of the day stomping about in the cold.

What could lure seemingly rational people into such a trudge?

Nothing less than the glad twitters of winter.

To be specific, 18 Rim Country residents this year participated in The Audubon Society’s Dec. 20 Christmas Bird Count — an annual rite of winter conducted all across the country that has provided a mass of vital information on the state of our environment.

This year, the local participants spotted 87 different species — a new record. They counted more than 3,900 individual birds — a rise from last year, but still well off the high count from two winters ago.

The year-to-year variations remain mysterious in any one site. But the long-running annual count provided early warning of a population crash involving migratory songbirds, moving back and forth from the tropics to North America. Moreover, the mass of data from thousands of sites enables scientists to study things like the impact of drought and climate change.

So the Payson birders report that siskins, bluebirds and finches showed up in increased numbers — but the chickadees and meadowlarks have vanished.

Perhaps we don’t yet know the full message in that change — although we suddenly miss the chickadee chirp and the liquid warble of the meadowlark.

But we do know one thing.

We love those 18 hardy souls who cared enough for these feathered flits of joy to get out of bed in the freezing dark and cover 130 miles of ground on their careful count.

And the thought of those endearing folks with their dog-eared bird books and their glad cries for the lone thrush gives us nearly as much joy as the hawks sharp-shinned and red-tailed, the bushtits and titmice, the towhees and teals, the geese and the grebes — and most certainly those crazy buffleheads.