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What Staff Survey Data Told One Superintendent, and What She Did About It

  • Writer: The Hilight Team
    The Hilight Team
  • Jun 16
  • 3 min read

Based on Dr. Kelley Gallt's full interview with the Institute for Education Innovation


Every spring, districts across the country celebrate Teacher Appreciation Week. The banners go up, the gift cards get distributed, and for a few days, teachers feel genuinely seen. And then Monday of the following week arrives, and it is back to business as usual.


Any honest K-12 leader will tell you that one week does not build a culture. It marks a moment on a calendar, and most teachers feel that gap whether they say so or not.


Dr. Kelley Gallt, Superintendent of Lake Zurich Community Unit School District 95 just outside Chicago, did not rely on intuition when she set out to address staff culture in her district. She went to the survey data, and her staff had a clear message for her.


"Our data from some of our surveys about our staff giving information back to us: our teacher-to-teacher trust needed to improve. We needed to have better opportunities to celebrate the people within us so that they could feel a greater sense of value." — Dr. Kelley Gallt, Superintendent, Lake Zurich CUSD 95

Dr. Gallt came into this work with a deep belief that the daily act of teaching is worth celebrating. She shared in her interview with the Institute for Education Innovation that she reminds her staff every year that each day they get to decide what legacy they want to leave behind, and that part of that is celebrating each other's legacies together. But holding that belief and having a system to actually act on it across nine schools and over 5,700 students are two different things.


The survey data pushed her to find something concrete. She found it where many of the best tools in K-12 leadership tend to travel: through a peer community, in a room full of other district leaders.


"We discovered a tool I believe at IEI, believe it or not, and the tool is called Hilight." — Dr. Kelley Gallt, Superintendent, Lake Zurich CUSD 95

That moment happened at a District Leaders Connect convening in Chicago hosted by IEI. Dr. Gallt brought Hilight back to Lake Zurich CUSD 95, and what she deployed was something different from a typical staff recognition program. Most recognition in schools flows in one direction: administrators acknowledge teachers, principals call out staff in newsletters. The appreciation is genuine, but it is always top-down. What the survey data was pointing toward was something lateral. Staff needed to feel valued by each other.


"This tool is only for staff and it allows staff to acknowledge and recognize not just the big things but the little things that are happening." — Dr. Kelley Gallt, Superintendent, Lake Zurich CUSD 95

For K-12 district leaders focused on teacher and staff retention (from the Superintendent's office to HR), that peer-to-peer distinction carries real weight. Teachers leave when they feel unseen, and top-down recognition alone does not close that gap. The quiet breakthroughs with a struggling student, the small acts of collaboration that pass by without anyone naming them, these are the moments that add up over a career. A staff recognition platform built around peer acknowledgment creates the conditions for those moments to be seen year-round, across every school and every role.


When Lake Zurich went back to measure whether any of this was working, the data answered.

"When we went to give our Great Place to Work survey again, we are finding that our scores are improving. Our staff feel better. They are valued." — Dr. Kelley Gallt, Superintendent, Lake Zurich CUSD 95

On the state survey, staff-to-staff trust scores had grown as well. For a district that had identified those exact gaps in their original survey data, seeing those numbers move is the kind of outcome that justifies the investment.


Dr. Gallt's conversation with IEI covers much more than Hilight. She walks through the Empower 95 strategic planning process, her district's approach to transparency and stakeholder voice, and how Lake Zurich CUSD 95 earned multiple National Blue Ribbon School designations, including one specifically for closing achievement gaps. Staff culture, communication, and recognition run through all of it.



Hilight is a district-wide staff recognition platform for K-12 schools. We help districts build year-round peer recognition culture so that the work great teachers do every day gets seen, celebrated, and sustained. Learn more at hilightedu.com.

 
 
 

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