In the second semester of the 2025-26 school year, New Trier High School administered the Comprehensive School Climate Inventory (CSCI) survey. The CSCI is an annual school culture and climate survey which is given to students, parents, and staff at the Winnetka and Northfield campuses from Feb. 24 through March 17.  

The state of Illinois requires high schools to administer an annual climate survey to their school community. Illinois schools tend to use the 5Essentials Survey, but New Trier opts to use the CSCI survey instead. Since they opt not to use the default survey, the school has to fill out a waiver every year to ensure that they are still abiding by the state mandate. 

“What New Trier found was [that] they were looking for very specific things around safety, connection, and belonging,” Associate Principal for Student Services Christopher Mitchell said. “The CSCI better fits their needs.”

The survey questions fall within the five “CSCI Domains and Dimensions.” These different sections ask participants about safety, teaching and learning, interpersonal relationships, learning and efficacy, and institutional environment. More specific topics within these categories include physical school security, student-teacher and peer relationships, diversity, and online safety. Most questions use likert scale of strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, or strongly disagree to determine their feelings on how New Trier handles each topic.

“[The CSCI is broken] down into different domains, and within those domains there’s really specific sub components that we can [gather] information on,” Mitchell said. “What the data allows us to do is, year over year, have some direct comparison.” 

Mitchell explained that part of his role is to present the survey data during New Trier Board of Education meetings that typically take place every two years. This ensures that the CSCI survey presentations align with the timing of the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, which students take in their Kinetic Wellness classes.  

“We can break down demographic information and see how the information improved or areas that we need to pay attention to over time,” Mitchell said. 

One of these presentations took place in June 2025, citing “very positive responses in all 38 areas; trending upward” in the comparisons from the 2023 to 2025 data. The data also revealed that safety and sense of physical security had the strongest positive responses from the participants.

“We are very fortunate at New Trier,” Michell said. “Our climate data is overwhelmingly positive, and that’s what gives us the ability to dig into [the data] like we do.”

According to Equity Liaison Alex Zilka, the data from CSCI surveys is generally consistent over time.

“From year to year we see trends and patterns,” Zilka said. “[This] seems to indicate that students, for the most part, are taking it seriously and answering honestly.”

Mitchell explained that New Trier aims for a high completion rate amongst students, staff, and parents when sending out the annual survey. This year, they achieved their goal of 95% student completion.

“As someone who’s had an opportunity to look at the data and see student responses, it really is a valuable way for us to get a sense as to how students are doing,” Zilka said. “It [also] helps us to think about what we can do to improve.”

For Zilka, such improvements often involve working with New Trier’s staff and student belonging councils and communicating with affinity groups. One example that came out of this work is the Lunch and Learns held in the New Trier library at the Winnetka campus. These events are tied to New Trier’s monthly observances and promote belonging within the school.  

“I attended two this month,” Zilka said. “One of them was put on by some students in the Student Belonging Council for Women’s History Month, and the other was a collaboration between the library and ELS club focused on inclusion when it comes to students with disabilities.”

As a general matter, Michell explained that the surveys help him and his team to understand the demographics at New Trier and how participants feel about the school.

“[For] some of our students that might be in marginalized groups, I think they see that we’re responding and dinging into the [survey data],” Mitchell said. “I’m hopeful that is something that helps them feel like they not only belong here at school, but that they have a voice.”