January 24, 2013: readings review & update

1/24/13

In attendance:  Shane Ogden, Jim Peacock, Jill Lowe, Joyce Smart, Gordon Geddes, Paul Wagoner, Curtis Jenson, Drew Nielson, Jayne Hamblin, Lisa Hopkins, Donna Starley

Excused:  Mary Morgan

Shane:  There have been a few changes since we met last.  The school board feels like we need to have a community involved meeting to discuss the possible schedule changes.  This will happen on February 6^th at 6pm here at LHS.  We need to reconvene our Action Team to discuss how the team would like to present this to the public.  The board also has another schedule that would leave start time later, that we can use as well with 55 minute class times.

The school board will meet and vote on this on February 11^th.  I feel that our school board will back us and support us, but there is always a chance that they may not.  I don’t want out work here to be in vain, we just might not be getting this implemented next year.  We will have 20 minutes to present which will be hard, because to discuss our process could take that long.  This will be a regular board meeting that is being advertised through the newspaper, I have also put it on Twitter and Facebook.  I also will get the Robo-caller out to parents.

Jayne:  What is the worry about earlier?  Is it just kid’s need the sleep?

Shane:  Many parents having a hard time getting kids to school as it is, but it will be even harder with 10 minutes earlier to start. 

Lisa:  I am wondering why our board wants a month later to look at this issue and do a meeting.  Why didn’t they ask for this in December?  Now we are another month behind.

Jim:  We just need to be prepared to answer questions on our process and schedule.  I would really like us to do a good job and articulate what’s been done up until now.  Not many of us want to have to continue if we feel that we aren’t being supported.  I know how you all feel.  We should just do a good job describing the process, so we just need to make sure all questions are answered.

Lisa:  It sounds to me like there are just some parents that would like to know what process we have gone through in coming to our conclusion.  Our school board seemed very supportive of an intervention time.  Many people don’t understand the components that went into it.

Shane:  Will we have people attend?  The more people we can educate about our schedule the better.  We have always been very transparent.

Jayne:  I am hearing from my students that are coming from their teachers, that they either are actively opposing the schedule or sending out wrong information.

Jim:  So we will meet next Thursday instead of this team.

Lisa:  Parents just listen to what kids and neighbors are saying, they don’t read the blog or Facebook.  A lot of parents want to hear from us.

Shane:  I think we will get out intervention, I believe we can make this intervention work, it might not look exactly like we need it to, but it could happen.

Discussion on reading:

Shane goes over questions that were asked:

Drew: I like this first one about the Adlai Stevenson model.  The expectation that all students were going to succeed and then walked through how that was going to happen, that we need to be effective teachers, and then there were supports in place that would help us achieve that.  There definitely has to be a mindset.  I wasn’t sure I liked the first paper I read, because it was unrealistic, I can’t be everything to everyone.  I like the mindset of finding ways to help our kids that are in front of us, not trying to figure out ways to get kids out of our classroom.

Shane:  I like the simplifying article on RTI.  It starts with the PLC’s.  I have read the whole book and I liked that one the best.  I like the functioning PLC idea.

Paul:  What should a teacher be doing as opposed to what the article is saying?

Drew: I didn’t like the RTI article because it talked about learning as a set of skills.  If you came to my class, it’s not just a set of skills.  I want to be able to teach in a robust way that isn’t always easily measured.  If you can solve a problem in Physics, does that mean you can do and understand Physics?  I want to have more time to help students understand.  How do I get differentiated instruction done for my 45 students?  In the Adlai paper, it talked about success coming from students as well, not just the teachers.  When I was at Adlai, the teachers had high expectations that their students met.  If we reduce everything to numbers on paper of what their grade is, then I think our kids lose out and we can miss a lot of.  I am not really sure if our students have a deep understanding of what I’m teaching.

Paul:  If we do the same thing with each class, when you have 5 10^th grade classes that need a quick method of assessment.  Is it my flaw for giving an assignment that isn’t helping my students?

Shane:  Do we have uniformity in our English department?  In math?  We have to have viable curriculum. 

Curtis:  It’s hard to feel like we aren’t measuring what we need to measure.  We can get some, but it’s not enough.  The burden of the teacher needs to be spread to the intervention team (attendance, etc.).

Paul:  Public Education is on display right now, and the whole nation things we are failing.  I here that it’s a teacher’s job to convey knowledge and develop a detailed safety net for each student.  We have to be masters of our craft, we are professionals and we should be able to master what we do. 

Drew:  We can’t collaborate once a month, it’s redundant.  You guys (administrators) should be able to do that work.  Like attendance.  Adlai’s departments meet once a week and work on curriculum.  We just don’t get the chance to meet like we should.

Shane:  So is it more than just the time? 

Joyce:  We are unproductive.  It’s too far and few.

Drew:  We never have been trained to work like that.

Shane:  I have a success story for you from my last school.  We sacrificed all Professional Development for one whole year that we wanted to be trained for one year and no one went to any conferences, or any training.  The next year we allocated half of our money to send the teachers that missed some of the training to a weeklong training and finally we had enough of us that knew what we were supposed to be doing and it started to work.  For one whole year that was all we talked about.

Curtis:  My group is focusing on professional development.  The feeling I get from my team is that we would all love to go to something like this.  Our teachers want this. 

Shane:  We went to split time between RST’s, and departmental meetings because no one could get anything done in their RST’s.

Curtis:  A common prep would also be nice to have times to meet as a departmental.

Lisa:  It’s also frustrating when students have a different teacher the next semester and a concept hasn’t been taught by the last teacher.

Curtis:  That’s why training is so important.  We need to know how to have these things happen.

Shane:  Is this an important enough item that we need to have this in place before we can have the intervention work?

Paul:  I don’t think any of us know.  We shouldn’t be afraid to fail and fall down.  I am happy to support whatever we decide.

Gordon:  We need to pick one thing and do it well.  We can’t do everything.

Drew:  If we have the intervention time, it gives me some context to want to work with my colleagues.  We can all work together on helping kids.

Paul:  I need to see instant progress.  Like with my new year’s resolution.  I see an intervention time not being really effective if we don’t know what we should be doing. 

Drew:  If I had an intervention hour, it would be helpful to me to have assessments to have an idea what students need more help, I don’t see PLC’s being much help to that. 

Paul:  If we want to be a Blue Ribbon School and we know what year 1 looks like and year 2 and so on.  We have to be honest with our scope and sequence, with our students and faculty. 

Lisa:  I have seen a real shift in student expectations and school pride in my younger kids from what it was with my older kids.  There is a real shift.  Its parents, teachers, and students.  The expectations are definitely lower.

Curtis: I feel that it’s important to be honest up front.  Letting teachers and students know that they are going to be frustrated with it the first year and its ok to wait until next year for more good things to happen.

Paul:  I feel that many of our teachers here at LHS are just waiting for it to fail.  I like the way Curtis termed it with feeling frustrated.

Curtis:  I think we need to have more problem solving skills, instead of just identifying the problem at hand.  That doesn’t help.  I see the intervention time as cultivating the need for PLC’s.

Shane:  I feel like the piece of being honest is a great product from this team.  Just being honest about what roadblock and frustrations we can see as happening.

Jim:  As people better understand RTI, a teacher can be part of a collective responsibility for kids.  The most important factor in education is a guaranteed, viable curriculum.  Kids learn at different rates.  We need to be prepared for those learners that learn slower or faster so that they can get the same curriculum.  If we could look at our numbers and population and see that it isn’t the same as it was 5 or 10 years ago then change our curriculum to meet those needs.

Shane:  This is a responsive school team.  We are a team and are responding to needs of students, parents, teachers and the school as a whole.  We are addressing the five areas that need to be addressed twice a week already.  I will address that.  But, what do you do in department meetings then?  Its’ back to that earlier question.

Drew:  why not ask our teachers to make common assessments ahead of time?  We have too many professional developments that should have happened before school time.

Joyce:  We need to have more frequent checkups and see where we are.

Lisa:  As we moved to semesters, we thought it would be easier scheduling when kids have different math or English teachers that aren’t really aligned.

Paul:  Broke into song….the music man.

Shane:  we have talked about all aspects of the responsive school teams.  We are hitting all of the elements of it. 

Jill:  We have discussed the transition piece as well.

Shane:  We have had good by products from this meeting, even though we didn’t get all of our questions answered.  We will meet Monday, but the original action team should be here.

January 14, 2013-Process, Norms, Criteria, Timeline

In Attendance:  Shane Ogden, Jill Lowe, Gordon Geddes, Lisa Hopkins, Joyce Smart, Toph Cottle, Jim Peacock, Paul Wagner, Jayne Hamblin, Drew Nielson, Donna Starley

Excused: Curtis Jenson

Shane:  We need to discuss the following items so that we remain transparent:

Process

Norms

Purpose: belief, desired outcomes, school wide systems, professional development, measurement means

Timeline

It’s hard when people are popping in and out because it feels like we don’t get as much done because we have to cover what they have missed.  However, people are always invited to attend.  The only norm we broke regularly is that we started and ended on time.  We want to establish norms to start out.  We want to talk about things that make or break a meeting. 

Norms: Start/end on time, side conversations, shared air time, not personal, open minded (see all sides), objective for each meeting/agenda, keeping to timeline

We will operate on consensus.  It’s the feeling or direction in the room that most people can sense, even if you don’t agree with it, the group will move forward.

As we talk about our beliefs, do we need to look at our current belief system is vs. what it should be?  Is there something out there that we need to overcome?  Where are we about a belief system and an intervention?

Paul:  I think that all students can learn…I have found myself not really able to believe that. I had students that didn’t care, and as soon as I decided that the student didn’t care, I stopped trying.  Students have the mechanism where they do just enough to get by, and being happy with a D-.  As teachers, we are all too often ready to just not let them learn.

Drew:  I think in some cases, we don’t have the resources to help that student.  All students can learn, I agree with Paul.  I can think of one student in particular that hardly comes and I wonder why they even are there; they aren’t going to do the work.

Lisa:  with so many kids in a class, there is only so much you can do.

Shane:  how do our parents feel?

Lisa:  In our music classes we have an expectation for those students.  That expectation isn’t present for all students.

Jayne:  It comes from attendance.  Those kids don’t come.

Lisa:  We have such huge classes; these kids fly under the radar and don’t raise red flags.  Our higher end learners have that expectation that we know they will perform.  I have a friend who wants to transfer from the county even though they like the FLEX hour.

Toph: 

Paul:  I agree with Toph.  I am looking at the website and our DRSL’s.  Is that our belief?  We don’t measure that.  How was our citizenship, lifelong learning? 

Toph:  What about a school constitution?

Lisa:  I think some of those critical things have gotten lost-expectations, visions, what we all believe.

Paul: I did some research for my MS degree.  I looked at Adelei Steveson and a survey all their students of why they were at school.  Once the students held the same belief of the faculty, behavioral issues plummeted. 

Drew:  I like the idea that they earn their educations, by being here every day and learning.  Everything those students do had a purpose (passing a quiz).  Kids that pass their math classes know their math.

Jim:  I am hearing that kids were identified right away, and failure isn’t an option.  The change in demographics has been so severe, that we haven’t been able to keep up with it.

Lisa:  The school system has changed

Jim: There has to be a way for those students that don’t get it, get the extra help and flagged daily if not weekly. 

Shane:  Jim Dufour is the chancellor at Adelei Stevenson.  He said that their program was 15-20 years in the making.  No one can just take the program and make it fit theirs.  What school of thought or you as a teacher?

Charles Darwin:  All students can learn based on their ability.  Aptitude is fixed and therefore we as teachers have little impact on that.

Pontius Pilot: All students can learn if they elect to put forth the necessary effort.

Chicago Cub fan:  We believe all kids can learn something.  They can experience this in a warm nurturing environment. 

Henry Higgins:  We believe all kids can learn and teachers never give up meeting the individual needs.

I have always thought in my head which school I am going into?  Wouldn’t that be great if we all had a Henry Higgins point of view?  It takes more than just the normal to get it done, it’s whatever it takes.  Is that crazy to have that belief?

Drew:  I don’t think we could have anything less.  All students at Adelei Stevenson bought into the program.

Lisa:  What about those parents that don’t value education?

Drew:  If this really worked, I don’t think I would be working more, I think I would be working less.

Shane:  If we could create a collective system to where everyone is a partner in the process.  What part of the system has changed?  We want to hear the perspectives from our Latino students on what they need to succeed and how we can help them.  We can’t have our young Latino girls come after school because they have other family commitments, or the kids going to sports, etc.  I am excited that we are at this point; it’s a lot of work.  Are we committed to being a Henry Higgins school?  If so, how do we get this culture to spread?  The culture of the school is going to be dictated by those who are telling the story.  It’s like hearing a story that is incorrect or telling a lie.  Soon, we hearing thing that are completely untrue.  So, it’s created a culture that really isn’t what it is.  We need to tell our story so that we can create the culture we want.  What does it mean? 

Paul:  I think most of us can identify with those schools of thought.  Very seldom am I the Henry Higgins guy.  I try to help them.  Pep talks here and there…there are some students that it would take me 80+ hours a week to help learn.  Some students I have to remind a student every day to take out his pen and paper.  I feel a lot of backlash..like why are we even trying.  Because we don’t have kids that want to learn.  I think our school culture is more of the Pontius Pilot school.  We will show up as teachers every day and do our job, if they want to learn, they can.

Jim:  What are the criteria we need to establish Tier 1? 

Paul:  Will our efforts be in vain if teachers don’t buy into it?  Do we force it down their throats? 

Jim:  Do we do Math, Science, English?

Drew:  We should do every class if we have a system that can do that.  Every class is expected at Lakeridge.  We will have teachers that don’t buy into everything, but we keep going and try to get all onboard. 

Gordon:  As we experience success, others will want to get involved.  It takes time to buy-in.

Joyce:  Of course we care about kids.  Because we do care, we will do these things you are asking us to do.  Tier 1 instruction is about all of that. 

Shane:  Toph what are your thoughts on the teachers you have had in the past?  Where do they fit (no names)?

Toph:  I am selfish and like the whole “take what you can get”.  I see lots of different things with teachers.  Mr. Semadeni will take you over to the computer to check your grade and let you know that you need to make up some assignments.  It would be nice to see teachers trying to make sure all students pass.

Shane:  In your mind, if it truly was all of us working towards this high expectation?  Is there any benefit if all kids are working towards this? 

Toph:  I don’t know of a class where everyone is trying.

Drew:  Those kids tend to all be serious about understanding what’s going on and dialed in.  Kids challenge each other.

Shane:  If that were the case and everyone was actively learning, you would have more time to not do the reteaching.

Drew:  That’s why we have teachers that are drained.  If we have a system that catches kids before they fail, we can save them before they lose.

Paul:  Tier 1 models are built around the 85%

Lisa:  it’s hard when our elementary kids aren’t up to par.

Jayne:  I don’t think it is like that anymore, students are required to pass certain tests.

Shane:  It goes back to why assignments are due?  If the student can master a skill, that’s what really matters.  I think we have some work to do on our belief.  If we can come up with the words for that, we can infiltrate that into our system and allow it to impact our system.

Paul:  Let’s just say that from now forward, we are a Henry Higgins school.

Jim:  I think if we proclaim it like we say and provide assistance for those teachers that need it, they will get on board or segregate themselves. 

Shane:  when Adelei Stevenson changed its beliefs, there was quite a bit of turnover, they told the faculty what the plans were, and many jumped ship.

Jim:  I appreciate our DRSL’s and the effort that goes into making our students hold to that.

Paul:  How do we know that we have reached those outcomes?

Jim:  the middle school evaluated for those DRSL’s every quarter.

Joyce:  Let’s include the DRSL’s in our beliefs.

Drew:  I don’t think we have a choice on our beliefs.

Shane:  All students can learn and will, and at a high level.  That’s our job

Paul:  We should make all college and career ready (no matter your SES, language, other issues).

Shane:  I think it’s great, we need to also look at our EXPLORE data, and have other criteria that we can use for celebrations.  We need to use common assessments, easy CBMs and get a good baseline, and as we start identifying kids that need weekly progress monitoring. 

Joyce:  Allow them a taste of success.

Paul:  Allowing students to see their grade immediately (immediate feedback).

Toph:  I took a test before the break and didn’t hear how I did until after.  It ruined my break.

Lisa:  It is hard for kids to know where they really are at if teachers don’t update.

Shane: I won’t be here Thursday, but, I will provide some good reading material for that day.  The next Thursday we will set up the criteria.

Drew:  What students do we want in this?  Then we can design.

 TIMELINE:

1/17-readings

1/24-criteria/reading review

1/28-criteria

1/31-pyramid

2/4

2/7

2/11

2/14

2/21

2/25

2/28-Final Product

Other items to think about: Logistics, automated system, staffing, PD, organization, student priority, safety net, attendance, intervention pyramid

January 10, 2013 - research report out

1/10/13

In Attendance: Jill Lowe, Shane Ogden, Jim Peacock, Jayne Hamblin, Thomas Guest, Joyce Smart, Gordon Geddes, Curtis Jenson, Paul Wagner, Toph Cottle, Donna Starley

Excused: Drew Nielson, Mary Morgan

Shane:  We were asked to go and research interventions that would be similar to what we would have and also look at attendance.

Paul:  I looked at a couple of affective attendance policies.  There aren’t any magical things, it’s basically giving incentives to students that come.  We have to enforce a policy.  Statistics show that it’s the enforcement that works.  The policy we have now worked when we enforced it. 

Shane:  Did you see any info on the consequence piece?

Paul:  Not really, there were a few athletic exceptions.  As I researched, we would hit a lot of roadblocks because of the precedence that we have set here.  The positive incentives in Montana they did included students with perfect attendance didn’t have to take a quarter exam.

Shane:  That’s where many lawsuits come from is schools tying in attendance to a students grade.

Paul:  I also saw that they rented out a theatre for a day, hunting competitions, so recognizing what’s important to their kids.  They also had parameters set for each tardy, or every action has its consequence that is reinforced every time.  The key seems to be clarity and reinforcement.  I also saw that Texas had student tracking cards-their ID cards were used to check in at each door.

I also saw a system that does your attendance for you.  This software is called Plasco, and it would flag attendance for you.

Curtis:  I looked at a school where parents had to excuse absences within the same day.  The system would also call all absent students’ parents at 10am that day if their student hadn’t shown up.  Absent students were also not allowed to participate in any extra-curricular activity that day.  I also looked at theory of attendance policies.  It talked about identifying chronic absences quickly, to help stomp it right away before it got out of control. 

Gordon:  Some important pieces of effective policies include: educating parents about school requirements, clear definitions, the monitoring, looking at underlying problems to absenteeism, and including police or child protective services.  Studentadvocacy.net

Shane:  I also looked at attendance.  I looked at Clark County.  They used a loss of credit system where so many absences and you lose credit.  They have an appeals process and make up mornings where students can come and make up time.  Arlington was another school where they were sued and now have no policy.  They allow the natural consequences of not showing up for school is usually failing a class.  They were there to teach and not run kids lives.  Washington Lee is another school that is in the same district that doesn’t have any cameras and the school is all-inclusive, kids can only get into school in the morning through the school resource officer.  Lakeridge does a wheel of fortune where the kids get so many punches and then they can spin the wheel and earn iTunes cards, etc. 

Jill:  All the attendance policies that I looked at

Shane:  We have been talking about our information systems.  Today we discussed our two different systems that we use here at LHS.  Pinnacle and SIS.  They don’t talk with each other.  Pinnacle is inaccurate.  Do we want to use only SIS?  It is much better than it was with the Internet interface and parents can use it.    Until we have $300,000, SIS might be the one to use until that happens.

Jayne:  I use Pinnacle at the elementary and I don’t like it.  It’s not accurate there either.

Curtis:  Another thought is using Canvas.  We have a canvas license and it has a grade book.

Shane:  I’m worried about having any two systems talk to each other.  Please go back and discuss with people, we aren’t making any decisions today.

Paul:  We also talked about having a flagging system for our intervention.  Clark told us last year that Pinnacle could do that, and I don’t know if SIS could do that or not.

Jim:  I looked at interventions.  They seem to tailor their system to what they think will work.  They list things like boot camp, special advisory period, etc.  I looked at Sky View’s ROCK hour (lunch and intervention).  The teachers are offering all sorts of different things.  Kids voluntarily choose what they would go to.  I don’t think they have any real hard data on how it’s affecting student outcome.  The problem is their population is pretty homogenous.  That is not the case here at LHS.   I talked with a man in Mexico and about their educational system.  High School in Mexico is done at 9^th grade.  It hit me that immigrants coming here from Mexico, that are on the lower end of the SES scale, those kids are going to work because in Mexico their high school is over at 9^th grade and their families need them to go work.  Students at MLMS are much more engaged than they are here.  But they are the younger students that in their culture are and should be still in school.  MCHS calls theirs the FLEX hour.  Students sign up for what they want if they have a 2.0.  They also have study hall for AP kids.  Each teacher is assigned a certain class or subject during that hour.  I have MC’s pyramid of interventions and each student has to go through the pyramid.  We are just trying to meet all of our student’s needs.  All students need help in one class or another.  We have talked about wanting a natural incentive, and how it will work during lunch and opening ala-carte during lunch at other spots around the school.  It seems to me that we will need a Para to help us manage this program.  MC has two Para’s that help with theirs.  We need to set some criteria for Language Arts, Math, and Science and then decide about enrichment opportunities. 

Joyce:  The afterschool Math instruction help that is being provided is very highly attended.  We are finding that so many students are attending, that we cannot help them all.  15 are about all we can get to.

Jim:  If we find a way to spread out our 10 Math teachers to help more kids.  We can get more kids helped.

Shane:  We are using the shotgun approach.  We are still missing the 15% that don’t have any skill.  What we are trying to achieve is going to help the kids that are willing to get the help and don’t have quite the skill gap that many of the kids have that aren’t coming to school.  They aren’t the ones we are going to get.  We need our first piece in place and the other will follow.

Joyce:  I feel that we can help the ones that are here and want help, and the other ones hopefully follow.

Paul:  On all things PLC there is a template to help us know where to start.  You can just walk through their website and has questions to help guide through the process.  It might be a good idea to have a template or a rubric like we used in our last group.  Going blind is kind of scary.  We don’t need to reinvent the wheel.  There have been many schools that have done this before.

Jim:  Do we want something like Sky View has?  If we want to have a Crimson and Gold hour, how do we make it mandatory?

Shane:  What if we C1 and G1 and every student is assigned and has a half hour lunch and students can earn their way out within two weeks when students have some grades or character ed things happening.

Joyce: The reward has to be high.

Shane:  We offered $100 to pass a test at Rawlins, but students would rather have 20 extra minutes of lunch because it goes all year long.

Toph:  I thing that most students would really work for an hour-long lunch.

Curtis:   We could also add some other incentives to go along with that.

Shane:  Is that a start?  My old students had a ticket that students would use to go see another teacher or go to lunch.  What about every Monday students have to go see a teacher?

Thomas:  The once a week would be good.  You are being checked on once a week, it’s like meeting with your counselor.

Gordon:  If we have 1500 students and have 70 teachers, each teacher could have 21 kids.

Joyce:  If we are trying to teach these kids to be responsible, let’s them have followed what they should be doing and keep track of.  That way they are taking care of themselves. 

Shane:  This will only be as good as the teacher who keeps their grades up.  I have a problem with teachers that don’t enter grades till the end of the term.

Jayne: it’s frustrating, as a parent that my student’s assignments can sit with their teacher before it gets graded and they have an F, when they have done the assignment it just doesn’t get graded for a month.

Paul:  I am leery of the logistics.  It seems that in my debate crew there is so much crap paperwork and hoop jumping that wastes time, it could be so complicated.  If it’s electronic, we are going to have to furnish that.  It could be a big shuffling issue. 

Shane:  You can’t tell a student to head down to another teacher’s class.

Paul:  We saw that at MC.  Most kids were just doing the dance of goofing around.  If we don’t get the software and database all lined up so all the teacher has to do it click a button, it won’t work.  The secretary at Lakeridge would compile a list of all the kids who had a flag or if they were green to go, each student would either get a green or red flag for where they needed to be.  We need a system to take the paperwork off the teachers.  If not, the students that need help will suffer.

Curtis:  Logistically grading is horrible in English.  I spend all my time grading and I feel like I’m always behind in my grading.  We need to change the way we grade, if we want to keep things updated.  I get here at 6:00 and I’m always behind with grading.

Jayne:  If Pinnacle could not show an F, that would help if it’s just because teachers haven’t put the grade in.

Toph:  Students can look at their grades and when my mom finalizes her grades, she has a bunch of students that come in and want to raise their grades.

Shane:  It seems that all things that we saw that was effective, there was always a homeroom or home base where the teacher prints everything out for student’s to see.

Curtis:  If you have ever seen a student-led-conference that would be ideal.  A student-led-parent teacher conference where kids track their progress and teachers need trained on it.

Paul:  Am I understanding that we don’t have the funds to bulk up our system?

Shane:  That’s correct, we don’t have the funds for that.  We are discussing just using SIS only.  We are talking about setting up intervention time; do we need to set up steps to this?  Three missing assignments and kids flagged.  Maybe tiers that could shed some light on this? 

Paul:  like some criteria?

Shane:  Is this the only thing we are going to do for our kids?  Do we need a pyramid?

Donna: Do we need three different pyramids? Attendance, Behavior, and Academic?

Jayne:  We will need someone to run those as well.

Paul:  Would it be out of reach to have someone build us a computer program?  It would just need to kick out reports of student with certain grades of lower.

Shane:  If it was a stand-alone system it might work, it just can’t work with another system. SIS isn’t open with their program.  If we want that, it’s just a barrier.

Jim:  Let’s look at our neighbors and what they are doing.

Donna:  Bob and Dave might come over.

Shane:  They feel that it might work better for us to come to them.

Jim:  that might need to happen before next Monday.

Paul:  I feel like there needs to be a safety net-grade wise.  MC and SV don’t have much set up.  I think we need to go to Lakeridge or Viewmont if we want to see one in action.