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)