Lynn-Clara Tun

Principal Paul Paetzel developed the survey with Assistant Superintendent Nate Swenson.

Principal Paul Paetzel shared a survey for input on the 2025–26 Strategic Redesign with students, families, staff, alumni, and community members earlier this month. The redesign is in response to the school board’s establishment of five priorities to meet by 2030. The survey has four themes: Supportive Learning Environment, Future-Ready Teaching & Learning, Clear, Shared Focus and Decision Making, and Partnership and Voice.

Zephyrus: Why did you design the ThoughtExchange survey?

Paul Paetzel: By all traditional metrics, our high school does extremely well… But what we know is that we’re here to make sure students have every opportunity of success for their future. And so we have to stay a little ahead of the game in terms of what are the things that you need to be prepared for when you graduate from Edina High School.

Z.: What do you hope the survey reveals?

P.P.: We think that there’s opportunities there to make sure that every student has a very rich academic experience and sometimes that might mean something different in terms of a metric for some students, but what we want is every student to feel like they’ve been challenged and they’ve been supported in their academic goals. So there’s that piece, there’s also this piece that is really a precursor to achievement, is this sense of belonging and the sense of engagement.

Z.: Once the survey closes, how do you plan to evaluate the responses?

P.P.: When we draw all that information, we can look at it using statistics, and we can get quantitative data… So pull together a smaller [focus] group and then have a deeper conversation, and try to understand the why… And then we have another approach, which is very different. It’s called an empathy interview. What we’re hoping is for people that come in and tell us their story about Edina High School. And through that, when we do several of those, we begin to see some patterns.

This piece was originally published in Zephyrus’ print edition on Nov. 6, 2025