November 26 Meeting: Schedule Discussion cont.

11/26/12

In attendance: Shane Ogden, Jill Lowe, Jim Peacock, Mike Mudrow, Drew Neilson, Gordon Geddes,  Mary Morgan, Toph Cottle, Paul Wagner,  Brad Nelson, Lacy Fonnesbeck

Excused: Jason Soffe

Jill: Review of minutes

Shane: Objectives for today’s meeting: 1) Through consensus determine recommendation for schedule 2) Establish parameters for Wednesdays’ meeting.

There have been comments on the blog, please check those comments if you would like to see different ideas and data.  It looked as though some supporters of the trimester started it out, then supporters of the block schedule added some comments.  I visited with the Sky View principal and shared with me some of his thoughts that I would like to share as well.  Toph also got some feedback from our student body that I would love to hear.

I let Donna know that I really don’t care what schedule we pick, we can make anything work, we then discussed staffing and graduation requirements.  I am still undecided now, but Dave Swenson has shared with me that the county is thinking about moving to a six period tri, instead of a 5.  Their community now is worried about their students having enough options and teachers want to see their kids every day.  Their students are have only a couple of options like band and seminary-that’s it.  These are the reasons they are looking at moving to a six period schedule.  It will give them 3 additional credits per year or 9 additional over three years.  They are looking at doing what we are now doing, just at a tri instead of semesters like we do.  They love their ROCK hour, and Mt. Crest loves their FLEX.  There are both positives and negatives for any system.  I have the same concern as a parent about options.  We discussed with Marshal the concerns we have with the AB schedule.  It creates some staffing issues that we might not be able to maintain with where we are currently.  I still believe that we can make anything work. 

Mike:  In my dealings with Zane, he indicated that we could do a block schedule if teachers taught 7 out of 8 classes.  You would get 90 minute prep every other day.

Shane:  My work with this schedule is that you get the prep every day, that’s my recommendation.  My district also offered to buy out one of my preps, which was nice, I also became more productive. 

Brad:  We would need specialized training for our faculty on how to utilize those 90 minutes.  Some can’t use the 50 minutes we have now.

Shane:  I have discussed with Marshal and Robin about our professional development and we could make that work this spring and summer if needed.  Brad brought up a good point.  It’s hard for me to push for more class time when we have so many kids in the lobby after each class.  I did visit with a couple of teachers who are regularly letting students out of class early.  It’s hard for me to fight for more time when parents come in and see kids out of class hanging out in the hallway.  Our system has also allowed for kids to not ever go to class.  How much more of that is going to happen if we move to 90 minutes?  It goes back to that PD point.

Toph:  I have poor planning on this… I lost the information I had.  I did have one junior and one freshman class.  The average score for freshman 4.7 that wants more time for lunch vs. juniors who were about at a 3.  Both classes were a 3 on overwhelming classes.  Juniors were 4.2 would like longer classes and less electives.  Freshman were opposite of the juniors.  Friends always replied with trimester.  If they didn’t like AB block, it was because it would be long class times.  If students missed days, they could be a week behind in some classes.  The students did like the modified block better.  Students I spoke with were worried about missing school.  I feel that students are biased for the trimester.  Students agree that their needs to be some flagging done to make students know where they need to be or they would take advantage of that.

Mary:  I spoke with my transition students about the extended lunch.  The students that are hear trying are totally for the extended lunch.  Many are just here to socialize. 

Lacy:  The students I spoke with want more options.  They want to be able to have elective options.  Larry Williams gave me some info on Castle View High School with an AB schedule.  There were some classes that met every day for 45 minutes all year long.  I liked how they modified the yearlong classes to meet every day. (handout)

Mike:  When we talked last week we mentioned some stats on Michigan schools.  They mentioned a few things in their explanations that sounded familiar to what we saw a few years ago…they also had principals quoting.  Many talked about moving back to semester schedules, which is what we talked about.  The Art department and language departments are paranoid that we are going to take their schedules away and will mess up their courses.  I am extremely concerned about the instructional gaps in our non AP courses.  No one at this table has addressed this.  I realize that our semester schedule has problems, but not like a tri.  Standardized testing is worrisome.  If we are testing in April and May, we have students that are done with their courses the first trimester.  

Shane:  we would have 1.5 free credits if we went with strictly state requirements.

Donna: the county earns more credits and options available in their freshman centers.   They can fit in more electives.

Shane:  Dave expressed their worry about not able to expand with any new ideas or classes.  They are also pushing concurrent, not AP.  They can’t fit any more AP courses into their schedule.  They would have to have them ABC tris cannot afford to do that.

Brad:  Jason said he could fit some of his classes.

Jim:  AP tests are in May.  When would you hold your courses? 

Shane:  We would lose staff on the tri in the CTE department.  They are funded differently and their money comes from CTE funds.  We wouldn’t have the general funding to pay them to continue to teach those classes, even though we are understaffed.

Mike:  The prep situation will necessitate teachers as well.

Brad:  It sounds like we are looking at the top 30%.

Mary:  The students that drop out feel that there is nothing for them here.  Our students love the flexibility and options.

Shane:  In Rti, students in the top part of the pyramid will drop out if they have to give up all their electives and to participate in their intervention.

Mike:  We shouldn’t have to pick a remediation or not.

Drew:  We should meet the state requirements that will leave us with some electives.

Brad:  We need to get creative.  We can use our online options for students to get more credits.  We should look at what we all do that meet the upper end kid’s needs, and still make it more flexible.  A simple schedule is part of what we wanted our original schedule to look like.  The tri is the most flexible for students.  I can see that math scores suffer on the semester.  Flexibility is key.

Mike:  I can’t find a school anywhere that can meet our math and science scores.           

Drew:  Are there some staffing concerns that would help us here?  Something that we can’t make happen?

Shane:  A block schedule can often need more staff.

Donna:  Couldn’t we come up with a daily intervention with what we are in right now?  We promised a bunch of things that we never did. 

Drew:  How can a daily intervention work?

Brad:  We would have to take prep away.

Donna:  we can come up with a way to stay flexible and represent our parents who are concerned with choices.

Jim:  How can we cut any class time now?  We can’t make them any shorter.

Paul:  What if we did 7 periods like we have now.  We could front load the classes that would meet every day, and the other four could rotate.  The first three classes are every day, and the remaining meets every other.  We are taking from passing time, not class time.  Scheduling would be tricky.  It’s a compromise between the tri and the block.  Prep hours would be the same as we are now.  We need to be able to justify why we would need that.  Collaboration time should be scheduled every other day. 

Brad:  One model won’t fit.

Paul:  simplicity seems to be the best option.  The easiest thing would be to cram in 30 minutes into our current schedule.  We could also add school day time.

Brad:  maybe the funding would help us make the semester work, if we were staffed.

Drew:  are we extending contract time? 

Shane:  We are under by 20 minutes right now.  Technically it’s 7:10-3:05.

Mary:  Could we start later?

Lacy:  seven classes are too many for our students.  That’s the point is to make it more manageable.

Shane:  Brown bag seminary isn’t the preferred method as I have asked around.  They aren’t getting the material covered they need to.  We have some lunchroom concerns with our ladies needing 30 minutes to prep for the 2^nd lunch.  We give them like 10 minutes on the Veterans day assembly to serve and we didn’t get all students served. 

Mike:  If we opened the lunchtime to one hour, more students will go off campus. 

Toph:  The hot dog stand in the lobby was a great idea.  We need to bring that back.

Shane:  where are we at?

Paul:  presents the following:  the semester with a few changes…school would start at 7:30-2:40.  In class teaching time is the same amount.  We could even rotate the class times so we didn’t have departments fighting for the time.  Something like this would make intervention time easier to plug in.  It would be a planning issue, but something we could work out.  It could lessen the work load for kids somewhat. 

Toph:  adding to the school day is not good for our students…or teachers.

Mary:  I know we have discussed electives and changing our requirements to fit the state requirements. 

Drew:  The student’s choice is a huge driving factor for these changes.  We can’t speak out of both sides of our mouth.  We need to work with counselors on these.

Shane:  Wyoming is giving out a Half Way scholarship of $4000 to students with a 2.5 GPA.  When they did that, most districts changed their requirements to meet that.  Kids didn’t have choices and started to drop out when they lost their choices.  It was hard as a German teacher, but I realized that some kids don’t need those language classes.  I don’t think every kid should have to take those classes.  We need to individually help each kid set their own path.

Toph:  I like the multiple diploma idea where kids are headed down their own track.

Mike:  in the 1980’s we had different tracks students could go down and earn different diplomas.

Shane:  We can be flexible with even quarter credit classes.  We can open up lots of different options with that.

Drew:  I feel that the trimester has lots of opposition.  The AB also has money worries.

Shane:  what Paul presented was a modified AB schedule with one less class.  We could simplify that even more.

Mike:  We could set up different testing days. 

Lacy:  It would be hard to plan those crazy longer and shorter days.  I would rather have a 50 minute day.

Brad:  I like the 60-70 minute day.  I can’t get much done with the short time.

Drew:  Do we need to just modify this?  We aren’t ready to make the big change.  I am a creature of habit and it’s hard to make big changes.  We all have our own worries, are we not willing to make a big change?  Is this where we truly are?  Students being able to choose a huge selection of classes?

Mike:  We have more sterling scholars from here than most schools in the state.  It can’t be just the SES status that is doing it.  We are doing good things here.  We need to adopt something that doesn’t mess up what we have.

Drew:  We have 9 sterling scholars.  We also have 25% of kids failing.  The data shows that.  Despite how well my AP students are doing.  Is a remediation period enough? 

Lacy:  We don’t get too many opportunities to change.

Shane:  When we met with the Superintendent, we did see this being a 3-5 year process.  He was open and encouraging of that.  Maybe we need to look at the interdisciplinary model where a paradigm shift is needed.  Without the change, I’m afraid of what it’s going to do to our staff.  We need to talk about what is best for kids.  When teachers are miserable, that’s not good for kids.  There will be change no matter what we do and it will have to be embraced. 

Donna: are we creating an intervention or a new schedule?

Drew:  I think if we have an intervention in place, we then need to figure out how to make the intervention work.

Lacy:  Why did we throw AB under and gone with Paul’s schedule?  The parent liked the idea of having another day to catch up.  The intervention period.

Mike:  I could get behind a modified AB.

Brad:  the trimesters are a downfall of choices.

Shane:  the research I have done shows that AB needs more staffing.  We would need to look at numbers to see if we could make it work.  Nothing is a barrier, just an obstacle. 

Brad:  Let’s look at two and make them work, really look at them.

Shane:  A longer period with proper utilization of their class time is what really works. 

Brad:  It’s not the schedule, just the teaching to the test.  The Michigan school has an ACT preparation program.

Jim:  How do we get ready for Wednesday? 

Brad:  Present it in groups of 10.

Donna:  One person needs to get up and explain the data.

Drew:  That would be unproductive to have a big group meeting.  We could break up into departments with other reps heading the conversations.  Show the roadblocks we are facing.

Paul:  We need to have a fair representation of all the pros and cons.  We all process them differently.

Mike:  many departmental discussions can go negative.

Brad:  What’s our purpose?  Are we looking for feedback?

Shane:  In our graduation requirements, what if a student could schedule themselves into a study hall or an off period?

Jim:  Is the schedule we are on better for students or is this modified schedule Paul set up better for kids?

Paul:  As long as we have two preps.  It’s scary to think we would have to do that.

Mike:  Can we trial this for two years?  Get the data we need to allow us information on what we are doing is working or not.  Just plugging in one thing at a time, rather than throwing everything in the blender.

Shane:  Parents don’t want to play around with their schedules.  They have four years to complete.

Jim:  My daughter needs more help in math.  I want something done now.  She doesn’t get the time she needs.

Drew:  This modified schedule has had more support than anything else for a reason. 

Shane:  I don’t like this schedule, trimester, or AB.  I like having 5 classes a day and having them roll.  I need to worry about what is affecting the students.  I like the options of 7 and rolling them.  If every class was 70 minutes and we had 5 classes a day seeing every teacher 4 days a week.  You can still have your interventions built in and AP’s are too.

Drew:  Let’s create a day for the student and present that on Wednesday. 

Shane:  We have BATC kids to think about too, about 100 of those.  What about a freshman/sophomore schedule and a junior and senior schedule?

Brad:  It’s a good idea to help catch those kids who are falling short.

Shane:  Can we meet again tomorrow before everyone takes off?  Can we reschedule our Wednesday staff meeting?

Donna: Let them know that we are muddled in this and it is taking more time than we planned.  Our faculty is very split.

Brad:  We don’t have a product to show them yet.

Shane:  We want to go in unified and with a direction.  Let’s meet at 7:00 on Wednesday morning.