March 7, 2013: Team updates

Here's a summary of what we did during the:

INTERVENTION TEAM:

• Discussed our role and authority as a team.
• Discussed a more functional way to distribute information to departments and gather feedback.
• Decided on long term objective.
• Discussed short term objective.
• Generated ideas for intervention time.
• Created 3 questions that dept. reps can take back for discussion during department meeting to help steer our discussion.
• How would you use 30 minutes of daily intervention time?
• How will you know if our intervention system is successful next year?
• Who do you envision participating in your intervention time?  9th graders, students with F's/D's/C's in class, students with missing assignments, any student that wants to participate, etc?
• We created the following long term objective and would like to get feedback from other group members and faculty.
• OBJECTIVE: Over the next 5 years we will create an intervention system that will improve the achievement of Logan High School.  Achievement will be measured by marked improvement in the following academic and cultural data:
• CRT scores
• ACT scores
• AP participation and scores
• Attendance
• Extra Curricular Participation
• (Any more ideas?)
• We discussed a short term objective that will help us determine whether or not our first year of implementation will be successful:
• All students with a D or lower in any given class will be with that class's teacher during intervention time.
• We decided to discuss this objective in further detail on Monday.

We would like departments to see our long term objective and the three questions listed above to give feedback.  We propose that dept. reps bring these two items to their departments for discussion next Wednesday.  We also plan on discussing the implementation of a 9th and/or 10th grade transition class.

 

LOGISTICS TEAM:

Transportation:  Shane reports that we have pretty much settled most of the issues with CCSD bussing services, but we have not opened a dialogue with CVTD as of yet.  Someone mentioned that they thought they heard the superintendent say that he had been in communication with CVTD during a board meeting discussion, but it sounds like this is something that still needs attention.  I will follow up with this, since many of our early morning seminary students (and others) might want to be using CVTD to get to school.  It was agreed that we want to have as much information in hand as possible before we approach CVTD about possibly altering schedules.

 

Calender / Cycling:  There is still a concern about inequities created by holidays, assemblies and other days off which may reduce instruction time for some courses more than others.  Jennifer and Donna are going to sit down and go through the approved master calender for next year and try to find out exactly how much the variable schedule will affect instruction time.  We accept that there may be things that come up which will prevent us from achieving a perfect balance, but if we can eliminate as much as possible in advance, so much the better.  Shane says that we do not need to include freshman and sophomore intervention time when registering students for next year.  Also, because we will  still (technically) be on a seven period semester, there should be no other delay in registering students based solely on the adopted rotating schedule for next year.

 

Cafeteria:  The main stumbling block is seating.  We are anticipating that we will continue to serve many more students than other schools (like SVHS) who have an extended lunch intervention, due to the number of students who are on free/reduced lunch here.  There will be an additional main line next year, so we should be able to dispense lunches roughly twice as fast, but we need somewhere for the students to sit and eat their lunches (without violating fire codes).  We can currently seat about 450 students, which is approximately half of the lunches we serve.  If we open up the teachers lounge adjacent to the cafeteria (and possibly one other area on that floor), then we might be able to seat everyone.  Students can (and do) eat outside, weather permitting, but our climate is not conducive to doing this more than a few months out of the year.  The district has identified this as a top priority for future construction.  We will be gathering data for a couple of "last resort" scenarios, including enclosing the patio and serving lunches in the lobby.  There are problems associated with both of these, but we want to have as much data as possible, in case what we have in place proves to be insufficient in some way.

 

BATC / South Campus:  Larry is going to tackle the three specific questions which need to be addressed regarding South Campus, foremost among these scheduling the few teachers which work there and also on the Main Campus.  BATC will work with us to accommodate our shared students in the A.M. classes.  The students in the afternoon classes are more problematic, but these constitute less than one percent of our student body.  We will be counseling these students individually, but one suggested alternative would be to have these students attend morning classes at South Campus and then BATC in the afternoon.  We will try to have specific recommendations in place by the next meeting.

 

Special Ed Students:  There is still some concern that the spec ed students (especially Tashina's students), as well as other students, might have problems remembering where to go each day with the rotating schedule.  Some specific suggestions were to replace the tone / bell with a specific message in a friendly voice, saying something like "You are now released to go to X period" or provide laminated weekly schedules for each student, so that they have something that they can carry around and refer to until they have the schedule memorized.  Mary and I will work with the other special ed teachers to find ways to utilize IEPs, aides and peer tutors to help make the transition as painless as possible.  On a humorous note (I think): Paul suggested after the meeting that we play thematically chosen music during the passing periods to help remind students where they are headed (songs containing or referring to the numbers one through seven).  I would like to be on the committee that gets to select those songs :-).

 

In short, there is still a lot of anxiety out there, and there are a few open questions, but we are making progress, and we are all still committed to finding ways to help our students and close our growing achievement gap.

COMMUNICATION TEAM:

Needed from the Action Team

• Each of the three groups needs to identify objectives and timelines

To Be Posted on the Blog

• Timelines
• Objectives
• Meeting Schedule
• Meeting Minutes
• Current Problems
• Solution Box
• Intervention Research
• • Process
  • Overview/Home Page/About Us
  
  To Be Posted on the School Website
  
• Link to Blog

Email to Faculty

• Link to Blog
• Weekly Progress Updates 
•  
• Email to Parents
• Link to Blog
• Monthly Progress Updates

Other Means of Communication

• Weekly/Monthly Newsletter
• Public Forum Meetings
• Faculty Meeting Updates
• Reinstate Leadership Team? (Department Heads, RST Leaders, Administration, Counselors)

March 4, 2013: Report back on Field Trip

In Attendance:  Jill Lowe, Robin Williams, Shane Ogden, Paul Guyman, Donna Starley, Larry Comadena, Jason Soffe, Jayne Hamblin, Paul Wagner, student, Jen Hyde, Gordon Geddes, Mike Mudrow, Lisa Hopkins, Joyce Smart

Shane:  Let’s report back on our trip last week.

Paul:  I was impressed with the culture at Granger.  It sounded like a war zone.  I could tell some of the kids there were from rough neighborhoods.  There was a little stubbornness and some persistence.

Jason:  What was the stubbornness and persistence?

Paul:  Some of the stakeholders involved had to remind others why they wanted to intervene.  Explain and defend why they want to help students.  It sometimes feels like we need to keep patiently explaining why we would like to help kids.

Gordon:  It looked easy to get things to where they were at, however I feel that it’s important that we keep this process in prospective and not try to implement everything we can right up front.  This is going to be process.  The schools we went to look at had a hard fight to get the schedule adopted by the school board and then had to keep tweaking things to make it better.

Lisa:  Neither school had freshman.  They also talked about their citizenship grades.

Larry:  What about demographics?

Robin: They have 1650 students and 30%white.  Only 17% Free and reduced.

Lisa:  Viewmont actually lost lunch time when they went to the intervention. 

Robin:  Granger eliminated everything that could give them extra credit.  Now they eliminated summer school and used the money to help pay for the shield program.  They pushed kids to pass their classes now.  They actually took electives away from the kids that were failing their classes.  Then those kids didn’t want to transfer out of the shield class. The shield class was a class where the kids were identified as failing.

The administration decided for the whole staff to be trained on the Boys Town model so they were gaining skills.  Student’s discipline was very different because students were asking to be suspended.  They had a say in what their discipline was.

They also gave us their pyramid of interventions. 

Lisa: There were also

Paul:  We have such grandiose ideas for our new system.  We aren’t going to be able to implement everything we want to right now.

Lisa:  We can start simple and add to the complexity if we need.

Paul:  We can keep our bar at reasonable heights, let’s not lower it.  We also need to implement a citizenship policy with some bite.

Shane:  Discussion of his last school and that kids lost points for the dances.

Joyce:  I would have a hard time supporting our intervention time if it was just a study hall.

Robin.  The kids need a more basic skill taught. 

Granger High School was talking more about big reward and giving it back to the students.  Not punitive.

Lisa:  I am must amazed that we don’t have more kids in class.  They just hang out in the halls. 

Shane:  Lisa has introduced up to Dr. Scott from USU and has agreed to help us with some positive culture changes

I pulled a couple of different group of kids and I was amazed their abilities the upper classmen though it was a great idea.

Paul:  Our group is just trying to remember?  Tracking the kids and possibly just a doing a few classes that were mandatory for lower classmen.

Jill: The communications team is looking at other options to communicate to our stakeholders right now.  Curtis has not been in our meetings.

Jen Hyde:  I think we need to let Elementary school and let them know they are going to be coming to school earlier.

Robin:  I think most parents at the elementary are going to be relieved.  Many are working parents.  I heard something yesterday about your double prep periods.  We are moving to an intervention and enrichment period.  Please just to let you know that if you try to defend publicly the double prep, you will lose that fight.  Not to step on someone’s toes.

Jayne:  Our teachers need to just be protective of what we are really trying to do.  If one teacher takes an hour lunch or whatever, someone will find out and blow it up.

Robin:  It isn’t a double prep.  Tell your story of what you doing during the 2^nd hour off.  It’s PLCS’s.

Jim:  its common testing.  It’s collaboration.

Larry:  How can we compare test scores when we are teaching kids are very different levels?

Shane:  It’s not a comparison of teachers; the focus is on instructions and students.

Jen:  My team had some lunchroom worries.  It’s kind of overwhelming.  We have much to work through.  Size of the cafeteria, BATC students, and others.

Shane:  We saw a student today who wants to do the pharmacy program at BATC and what her schedule would look like.  BATC programs aren’t exploratory courses.  The courses at BATC have programs that are ready for students to enter the work world.  The county kids can get into a few exploratory classes at their home school where our kids don’t get to do that; they must go right to BATC.

Larry: Staffing?

Robin:  I think we want you to remember North Campus and South Campus in these discussions with staffing.

February 25, 2013: Group Break outs

2/25/13

In Attendance:  Jim Peacock, Jill Lowe, Angela Martinez, Gordon Geddes, Jen Hyde, Paul Wagner, Larry Comadena, Lisa Hopkins, Jason Soffe, Jayne Hamblin, Donna Starley, LIA students, Paul Guyman, Joyce Smart, Kristie Cooley

Excused:  Shane Ogden

Jim:  Intro to our meeting, what the board has approved of our group to work on.  If we look at the questions that need to be answered, these are things that we can do.  We need a leader for three groups:  Logistics, Intervention, and Communication.  I have asked Mike Mudrow to head up logistics.  That will include the bussing, lunch, etc.  Paul will you lead the intervention group?  Curtis can lead communications.  To clarify things, we aren’t meeting about the schedule.  We are meeting to solve the problems on the email that I have presented. 

Angela Martinez: Does that mean we can’t talk about the schedule?

Jim:  The schedule has been approved and we are now trying to figure out what we need this to look like.

Stepped away from the room……

Jim:  Freshman won’t have the full lunch time.  And the intervention time is going to be for all students.

Angela:  You guys here at LHS aren’t transparent.  If you cannot give up a prep period for intervention that is one of the biggest problems here.  My daughter sits on the floor in two of her classes, that to me is a huge problem.  I’m not here to cause problems, I was just directed here.

Jim:  We are wasting lots of our time right now with many students going out to BATC that are having to wait for their teachers. 

Jen: I just want to address the prep question.  We are seeing more students.  We have 40 more minutes…

Jim: Our time in class has just been distributed differently as well.  I need everyone to pick a group to be in and let’s break out and get some work done.

February 21, 2013: Welcome-layout of work to do

2/21/13

In Attendance:  Shane Ogden, Jim Peacock, Jill Lowe, Joyce Smart, Mike Mudrow, Gordon Geddes, Jayne Hamblin, Lisa Hopkins, Paul Wagner, Kristie Cooley, Donna Starley Student (Diana)

Shane:  We don’t have the representation that we need, but we need to move forward.  However, we still have much work to do.  This process was started months ago.  Our purpose is not to go back and discuss the schedule, it’s been approved by the board.  Our goal here is not to bring up 800+ problems and reasons why it won’t work, but to find the solutions we need to make this work.

Next week we have the opportunity to go on a field trip to look at schools on Tuesday the 26^th.  Viewmont and Granger High Schools.  So, please invite our team and others to come.  We will provide a substitute and lunch.  We have also thought about MC and SV having representatives come to present their interventions.  Please let Mrs. Lowe know if you are going to come.

We want to be done by April 15^th and get this submitted to the board by May 1^st.  We have three main areas: Intervention Specifics, Scheduling Logistics, and Stakeholder communication.  I received an email that USDA put forth recommendations for next year and that basically gets rid of our vending machines unless we sell fruit and veggies only in it.  Between now and April 15^th, we have planned on having two open meetings for the public.  We need to get those dates set.  Maybe the 2^nd week of April or the 10^th and 15^th.

Jim and I had the opportunity to visit with Father Fransico who is a Catholic pastor.  He has a Latino congregation and also a Caucasian student.  There is a former LHS student who went to USU and is excited to be a parted of this.   Father Fransico and Sister Marilyn are excited to be a part of this.  I also got to have lunch with a few business owners who might be able to contribute to our work.  They are excited to get a clear picture of what is going on here at LHS.  We are starting to make some good connections.  Please look at the groups and see where you would like to work.  The intervention group is going to be bigger than the others probably naturally.  There doesn’t need to be equal representation.  We also would like the group to nominate a leader of the group that can speak for them each meeting time to catch everyone up when get together.  If there is an “aha” moment and one group needs more time to present back what they have come up with, they are welcome to take more time.  I see most of the time needed to be about 3 or 4 minutes each meeting time.

Jim:  I see the intervention team being bigger than the other teams. 

Mike:  Is the logistics team looking at Attendance?

Jim:  They should.  Attendance should be tied to this team as well.  We will have the chance to see what other high schools are doing and working. 

Student:  Will we pick different days to meet as a group?

Jim:  No, we will continue to meet on the assigned days.  We will all come together to begin with, and then get to work.  My biggest concern is that if we have an intervention that is tied to lunch, students are going to want to have the hour lunch.  How are we going to make this work?  We decided to make this incentive giving not punitive.  If our freshman come into LHS and set their expectations high, with assigning them a class.

Jayne:  I think we are going to still have the same problem that we always have had-how do we get them to go?

Jim:  I hear what you are saying and I can tell you we need to look at SIS systems that can hold the student accountable.

Jayne:  We are not going to be able to get the kids there.  We need to have the schedule set for them that they know and will want to go.  I am not saying that it’s not a good idea, it’s just going to be hard.

Joyce:  Why can’t we give them credit?  Like a skills class or an advisory class.

Student:  Middle school doesn’t get near as much homework as we do now at LHS.

Andrew:  We have kids now that are in the hallways that don’t have anywhere to go.

Jim:  We don’t have anyone that has shown them where to go, or how to behave.

Student:  A lot of students that don’t come or don’t want to come are not connected to any teacher or adult.  They need to feel wanted.

Andrew:  I have 30 kids that I can’t be stopping everything for one student that doesn’t ever come.  I have a certain amount of time to cover my curriculum.

Mike:  I have the same problem, but if we can slow down for them and allow them to find some success in learning, I can see what our students are saying. 

Jayne:  Our number 1 issue is getting the kids that are the D’s and F’s to the intervention.  They aren’t at school to begin with. 

Student: I fell behind because my teachers couldn’t meet before school, I had practice after and during the day was the only time I could meet.  More kids can use that time.

Jayne:  We are going to get the higher end kids that are going to want to go, we might get some at the lower end, but what about all the kids that don’t come?

Mike:  Let’s get our kids to make some good choices and allowing our kids to get a taste of success.

Jayne:  We are going to hear about two preps, and our PLC time on Wednesday mornings.

Shane:  We did run the numbers, and if we reduced the preps to one and class sizes will go down by only 3 students.

Jayne: Parents also don’t like the late start on Wednesday.

Student:  My parents love the late start.  We can all have a little more time together.

Jayne:  My one big concern is that after sitting through all the meetings.  My biggest concern is getting the teachers to do it.  I hear comments from our meetings and other places is that we have 2 preps, and half of the teachers aren’t doing anything anyway.

Mike: Most teachers are doing their jobs, and the ones that don’t ruin it for the rest of us.  That’s not ok to be 6 weeks into the semester and there are no grades in.

Lisa: having the grades updated and available to students and parents is a huge part of this conversation.  It was a big problem last year.  We can’t help our kids if we know where they are at.

Andrew:  what should I anticipate during intervention?  Will there be 1 kid or 30 kids there?

Mike:  You will have the say as the teacher with grades for who needs to be there.

Jayne:  We talked about all teachers in each department being on the same page with what they are teaching.

Shane: This has to do with PLC’s.  It goes along with a shared vision and common assessments.  They are doing well with working together to make that happen.

Jim:  I can see departments working together to make decisions on what their department intervention would look like of Math 1 or Biology.

Andrew:  I can teach an extra after school class with USTAR.  They can remediate them or add to their skills.  I have something prepared for them to do when they come in.  I imagine intervention being the same sort of thing.  They come in on their own, it’s regular, and they receive extra credit.  Let’s have every kid put down a deposit…

Jim:  Our kids need to learn how to work.  That’s what we are missing.

Joyce:  What I see is that we have Freshman and sophomore that have to do this.  For math we would have our math department, some can do enrichment and the others can work with the rest of the students that aren’t ninth and tenth graders.  We do also have other teachers in other departments that could help out.

Shane:  We also have other kids in Math 1 that can’t read a number line.  A very basic skill, kids that are going to need a lot of foundation work, is the next level of the Tier.  If we can provide that, it’s great, but this is Tier 1 level only.  Research tells us that we need to teach 90 minutes a day to remediate two years.  This intervention is certainly not a cure all for our students, it’s a building block.

Mike:  One Tier 2 intervention could include peer tutors.  My students love to work with each other and are more comfortable to work with each other.

Shane:  I love Palmer High School’s intervention.  They include their peer tutors and training time for them to be in assisting students.  It took a lot of growing pains and training to get it to where it is now.

Jill: I spoke with a teacher at SV who absolutely loves their intervention time and can’t imagine the time without it anymore.

Shane:  As a parent, I absolutely am excited to have my 9^th grader who must attend the class, not as an option.  I can see USU students coming to tutor during the lunch hour.

We have fantastic teachers and students here that are working hard and trying hard to do their extra work or overcome the big class sizes.  I know it’s not an ideal world, but coming from Wyoming where class sizes cannot be over 25, our kids are out performing them.

To come full circle, we all need to bring 2 more people with us.  Bring everyone, so that each department has one person on each group.

My lunch date today was with my old college friends, they brought up a good point when they told me that they had never seen me as excited as I was (except when I was going to marry my wife) and I was talking about our students and all of the good things happening.  We have fabulous teachers and students.  The school culture is the most important part of the students life.  We need to tell the story, don’t allow someone else tell this story.  Thanks so much for coming.

Action Team preparation for presentation

Action Team Re-convened

1/31/13

In Attendance:   Mike Mudrow, Jim Peacock, Jayne Hamblin, Jill Lowe, Student, Drew Nielson, Brad Nelson, Gordon Geddes, Curtis Jenson, Paul Wagner, Jason Soffe, Shane Ogden, Toph Cottle

Shane:  Discussion on what’s happening now, what our call is for next week.  Jill has been working with BATC on getting it coordinated with our new schedule and students will probably only be going in the mornings only.  Jim has been working with the bussing issue and we do have some issues with other schools, so we decided to just shorten our classes and keep the original start and end times.  We now will have to present next Wednesday to the public our presentation.  Can everyone commit to this next Wednesday at 6pm?  What are the key elements we want to present?  Everyone can be there but Jason. 

Minute taker stepped out of the room….

Paul:  Can we make this schedule improve the academic success of our students?  I want to keep fighting for our 60 minute classes.  I would rather have an intervention time than 60 minute classes.

Curtis:  I really can see where the middle school is coming from, but we aren’t going to get this right the first time, we need to be realistic.  I’m hopeful that we can get something done in the next few years.

Brad:  I’m not so optimistic that a year from now they are going to work with us.  We have seen this before, we all have.  I don’t see that they are willing to work with us now or then.

Paul:  If the middle school would extend their school day as well, ours would work.

Curtis: We need to revisit and make more changes, it’s a must.

Jim:  after the board approves the schedule, we need to continue our hard work and get this movement going.

Shane:  I have had conversations with people about some of their interventions that are going on and great things they are doing.  But I won’t go and tell Mike how to run his middle school.  The element of a continuous intervention from elementary on up and alignment, I just don’t see it coming in from the outside.  Some of the responses coming from the middle school were offensive to me and I don’t want to turn around and say similar things back. 

Paul:  I would like to propose we make every effort possible that we preserve the original schedule as we had decided.

Drew:  We average 44 minutes a day with.

Minute taker stepped out of the room….

Shane:  I am hearing that we want to make our Plan A work, or head back to the drawing board.

Jason:  I’m already on Plan C; I don’t want class time cut.

Brad:  My personal feelings are that we need to start over if our original plan doesn’t work out.

Jim:  I called Mike and we are going to meet with him tomorrow at 11:30.  Paul, can you come with me?

Paul: I can come..

Curtis:  If we don’t get our way, then what?

Brad:  I say we meet on Monday and battle it out.

Donna:   I think we need to show the gap data that we have to explain what the need for an intervention is real.  That’s important for our public to see.

Shane:  I don’t want to throw any department under the bus, with the data that we have, because that information didn’t change at the semester.

Jayne:  I want to know the info, but not muddy the waters.  I would rather have my student getting their help during school, rather than before or after school.

Shane:  Maybe we can have Scott put together a video for us a-a life of a failing student?