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.