DANVILLE -- Despite little participation from area schools in a survey for a local community college, Danville school officials say their district is strongly supporting the nonprofit group's effort to bring more educational opportunities closer to home.

Superintendent Susan Bickford said she doesn't know why Danville students chose not to take the online survey, but the administration and school board are in favor of establishing a local two-year degree college program. Bickford added the district has even talked about offering space at some of its schools to host courses.

"We were given a choice to either do an electronic survey or issue a paper survey in school," Bickford said. "We chose to post the link on our Web site and encouraged students to take it. We thought that was the easiest way to get students involved. We don't force students to take surveys, and we don't want to get in that kind of a routine.

"We did everything that was requested of us. It's not like we were just blowing it off."

Bickford said the school board approved the 17-question survey in April to be offered to high school sophomores, juniors and seniors. Once the survey was announced, Bickford said the rest was out of the district's hands.

"We announced it through various ways," Bickford said. "We try do electronic surveys, because we know students are more likely to go online.

"We don't know who took it or not."

The Susquehanna Valley Community Education Project, which is trying to establish a community college for the four-county area, revealed the survey results Tuesday during a steering committee meeting at the Central Susquehanna Intermediate Unit (CSIU) in Montandon.

Among the highlights was a report that a majority of parents were in favor of a community college, and all of the high school students who participated said they planned to pursue post secondary education. A little more than half of them said they were in favor of a local community college.

The downfall, according to survey officials, was that only two (Milton and Shikellamy) of the 16 school districts asked to participate did so.

"When you realize 16 school districts were approached and only two reported results, that tells me it's not the fault of the schools," Bickford said. "We do feel bad. If they want us to do something more, we're very happy to do it again. We just need some direction from them. We can certainly do it in the fall (when school resumes)."

Angela Motto, a Susquehanna University official who helped coordinated the survey process, said the group plans to make another effort to attract more high school students in the fall.

"There may have been a lack of communication and some miscommunication," Motto said of the group's initial approach to work just the area superintendents. "(We) made a presentation on the survey to all superintendents at a (CSIU) board meeting and asked them to distribute the survey. There were various e-mails sent, and some (superintendents) said they needed to take it to their school board. Then, we never heard anything back from them."

Bickford suggests the group take a more active role by presenting their initiative directly to the students. She said there is an open invitation for them to visit Danville in the fall.

Allan Schappert, Danville's school board president, said the directors are in favor of the community college and agreed better communication next time around will reap more success for the survey.