NATCHEZ — The Natchez-Adams School District Board President told the Adams County Board of Supervisors Monday that 95 percent of employees surveyed “seem pretty happy.”

NASD Board President Tim Blalock told the supervisors the district recently completed an in-house survey of employee morale, and of the approximately 600 employees sent the survey, approximately half responded.

Based on the survey, between 5 and 8 percent of employees, “seem pretty disgruntled, which leaves about 95 to 92 percent of employees who seem pretty happy,” Blalock said.

Of those surveyed, approximately 87 percent said they were “super motivated” to see the school district succeed, while only 1 percent said they were “not at all” motivated, he said.

The information was collected with a Web survey created by NASD Public Relations Specialist Steven Richardson and distributed by email, Blalock said.

It had open-ended questions that included how employees thought the district could be improved or if they have issues that should be addressed, and the administration has received “10 pages” worth of those suggestions through the survey, he said.

The supervisors expressed some reservations about the validity of the survey because all employees didn’t take it.

“It’s not really a valid survey to me when half the people weren’t motivated enough to take it,” Supervisor Mike Lazarus said. “If I am a happy employee, I will take it, but if I am not, I am not motivated to take it.

“Your number might be 50 percent of your employees are disgruntled.”

Blalock said that the sample of those who completed the survey was “statistically significant,” and could be considered reliable.

If anything had been 100 percent, he would have considered it suspect himself, Blalock said.

“You have those who don’t take it who don’t feel it is fair or anonymous enough — a whole spectrum of reasons, but you have enough take it so it is not skewed one way or the other,” he said.

Blalock also discussed other reports the school district has generated recently. While the district won’t officially receive its test scores back from the state education department until January, the district’s own benchmark tests show general improvement, he said.