Site Council Meeting Minutes
2007-08

Meeting Minutes Archive
Downloadable PDF files:

Sept 11, 2007
Aug 21, 2007

DRAFT 9/11/07  Site council minutes

Attending:  Denise Gonzalez-Walker, Janet Kimball, Jenny Stewart, Anne VanLoen, Dean LaRue, Maria Gutierrez, Kellie LaRue, Tamara Leonard, Kim Lambert, Caroline Byrne, John Miner, Jo Vos, Crystal Okada, Rick Lemberg, Nora Scully, Robin Hing, Betsy Jones, Nova Herzog, Lisa Calvert, Nicole Swedberg, Robert Huberth, Denise Spring, Ed Schwartz, Todd Bohannon

Minutes approved for June and August.

Robert Huberth/Treasurer

Still waiting for some checks to clear so the current report isn’t final. Can push discussion of this to next month.

Lisa Calvert & Nicole Swedberg/Curriculum

Proposal for tutoring assistance distributed. Because federal funding has dwindled to almost nothing and the burden of the cost has been shifted to parents, we need to find a way for the parent group to fund this service for families. Most other schools of our size are trying to do the same thing.

The proposal:
To be called “Academic Coaching” which means small group assistance in reading, writing, and math.
Funding: Combine funds from a)LAP (federal learning assistance program); b) first grade reading; c)tutoring budget; d)monies previously budgeted for drumming; and e)budget surplus not elsewhere assigned, to create one funding source for small-group academic instruction.
Pay rate for tutors: Pay Academic Coaching tutors $30/hour, which is approximately the per diem rate for teachers.
Student Selection:

• Small group academic instruction is slated for “Tier 2” students—students who are struggling and either do not need or have not yet qualified for intensive “Tier 3” intervention (Marcia or private tutoring outside the school day).
• For “Round 1,” fill Cindy’s schedule with a) high priority Tier 2 students and b) first and second grade struggling readers.
• As teachers have an opportunity to identify more students, add “Round 2” for November through April
• Begin a Kindergarten Phonemic Awareness group in January (save room in Cindy’s schedule).
• Second tutor hired should a) have a teaching background and b) be able to teach Every Day Math.

Discussion: The surplus budget line is still a question. If we include the surplus (approx. $6K, we can offer 21 hours of tutoring per week. Even without it we can offer 17.7 hours per week, which is still more than the 13 hours per week available last year. The $6K was originally in the library budget line, earmarked for new books, but John has already bought $18K of books from his building budget this year, and does not expect the parent group to repay him. John sees no problem in using this $6K surplus for academic assistance in 07-08 but that might not be true further in the future.

Ginny usually uses $1K per year for library supplies and has used approximately $500 of this already so we need to allow for this.

Denise raised the point that Ginny will need approx $5K per year to maintain the collection and we need to plan on that for future budgets. Lisa said this plan is just for this year and is a first step in a long-term plan that can be budgeted/hired for predictably. Also there are issues that the teachers want to address to avoid the need for academic assistance in the first place. Therefore, the funding needs for academic assistance will likely be different next year.

Motion: Commit to a new line item that will include: $6K from the tutoring budget; $4K from the first grade reading budget; $1500 from the drumming budget. (The $3721 in LAP resources will not be in the line item, but will come from John for this new program.) Discuss with Ginny what her needs are for the library for this year before we assign a portion of the library line item to this budget. We will also determine exact program needs based on teachers’ input before we allocate any reserve funds anywhere else. Vote passed.

Lisa: Hard to put together a new tutoring program and do a curriculum night. Agreed not to do the curriculum night so we can do a math night in November.

Denise Spring/Fundraising

Still looking for an auction assistant. Needs site council members to attempt to personally recruit someone for this position. This is a crucial need.

Also need a new caterer, someone who can give us a good discount.

Denise would like to speak at Back to School Night. John ok’d.

Discussion about Back to School Night: Remind parents this is a parent/teacher event. Announcements need to be explicit that children are not a part of this night. Should be in the next newsletter.

Kelly: Publicize the academic coaching program in conjunction with the Walkathon  to help kids/parents understand what we will use money for.

Maria Gutierrez/District Relations

Circulated a draft of school calendar. Will distribute the calendar next month.

Dean LaRue/Strategic Planning

Short-term: Mission/vision statement draft coming in next couple of weeks.
Mid-term projects: Issue: Our budget has expanded significantly in recent years, so we will be taking a look at the budget to see if we are using the money in best possible way. Doing comparative analysis for what other schools in our cluster are doing to recruit new families. Will work with marketing/communication group.
Long-term: What is long-term future of school? We are below district staffing/funding lines for 08-09. Will examine whether we grow program to more kids/expand to K-8/move to another building/become a neighborhood school. Who do we want to be? What do we want to look like?

Denise: Our building space limits the flexibility of our current program. Is there a shorter term mechanism so that we can get a portable? (John will answer in his report.)

Robin Hing (new co-chair)/ Communications introduced himself.

Denise Gonzalez-Walker/Grants

KING-5 weatherman Jeff Renner interested in coming to school. Denise will follow up on what he does.

Denise is now doing a P-I school blog (check the reader blogs/chalkboard)

Ed Schwartz/Chair

Meredith Berlin wants to do drama class again this year. Starting October 1st. Needs John’s approval. Meredith coordinates with Kids Time. Ed will tell Meredith site council supports. Todd: Brought up that it can be confusing getting the little ones to class. Needs to be worked out before it begins.

Mad Science: Wants to come back but has not been really well received in the past. Ed proposes not to have them back.

Jenny Stewart /Recruitment/Hiring

Should do exit interviews with any families leaving school.

Discussion: There is an instructional assistant (Justin) for next 6 weeks in K classes. He is a district hire and is not being paid with site council money. It would be helpful if Jenny could help put together a pool of people for teachers to draw on. Teachers ultimately select their own assistants. Todd and Crystal are very happy with Justin. To hire him for the year, they will need additional funds beyond their classroom funds. Ed asked them to bring us some cost options next month for hiring Justin.

Tamara/Ombudsman

Feedback box: Welcome back letter that came home on first day would have been more helpful if it had arrived before school started. Suggestion that it could be done via email, because we have emails for kindergarten parents before school starts.

John/Principal’s Report

There will be a configuration change next year. He’s checking the numbers to make sure his picture gels with the district model. Already he’s found the district model has us at 30 students less than we have. He needs them to re-run based on actual numbers. Staffing reductions anticipated for library and office assistant and counselor if their numbers stand. But if the numbers are corrected then we should be able to hold onto these positions. Depending on how that works out, we would get an extra general education teacher that will allow us to move from multi-age classrooms to a looping model. Much easier to maintain uniform enrollment with a looping model.

08-09 weighted staffing standard going into effect. A huge change for our cluster.

Student assignment process will also be undergoing significant change. Our strategic plan will play a huge role in this. We have to be very active in the next year working these questions.

Smooth strong start to year, except a few hiccups in transportation. Kudos to the staff for working so hard over the summer to get ready. New kind of staff gatherings at end of summer emphasized building community and it is showing.

New math will bring issues of pacing/grade level material –staff will spend a significant amount of time on that this year.

New school name is stalled at district level. Superintendent and CAO have approved. Stalled out w/Brita Butler-Wall but hopefully will get her response this week.

New resources in library are fantastic. Also the K-2 library allocation from district for 500 new books for each classroom will be great.

ELOB: Decision to postpone involvement this year with EL because of need for staff training in new math. Will postpone on-site work with EL for this year, but will be doing their expeditions as usual. Teachers can use their funds for professional EL development if they want to. Hope to go back to them next year to renew partnership.

Meeting adjourned.

DRAFT Site Council Meeting 8/21/07

Attending: Ed Schwartz, Robert Huberth, Ann Delestine, David Delestine, Sandra Brettler, Alexandra Gerst, Lisa Calvert, Nicole Swedberg, Elinor Appel, Janet Kimball, Nova Herzog, John Miner, Tamara Leonard, Maria Gutierrez, Al Tietjen, Ann VanLoen

Treasurer Report /Robert Huberth

More info to come on budgets at next meeting. Scholarship: We budgeted 5K but 06-07 will be closer to 8K. Do we want to adjust for next year? Or was some of the funding shifted into tutoring budget? Nova reports that the combined scholarship cost with tutoring was around 10K.

Ed Schwartz/Chair & Facilities

Ann VanLoen has agreed to be volunteer coordinator and Janet Kimball is the new site council secretary. Still need: a co-auction chair to help Nancy Lichter; a hospitality coordinator; a co-chair for grant writing; and a carnival coordinator. (Jessica Phillips will be coordinating the first-day kindergarten welcome for parents with the fifth-grade parents so this first hospitality job is taken care of.)

Staff positions open: a drumming instructor still needs to be found. Anyone with a suggestion can contact John. We also need a playground supervisor. John will put the word out during the first two weeks of school.

Contracts are still needed for some other part time paid positions. Ed and Nova will coordinate on getting any needed contracts signed.

Tutors

Some difficulty last year getting parents to pay for tutors. Anticipated cost this year is $19,300. Last year’s budget was $10,000 so we have a gap. Ed suggested last year that site council fund the entire amount to ensure that tutors get paid for their work. But as it came in so high, how do we handle this amount?

Some discussion defining the differences between regular tutors and first grade reading tutors. Perhaps a partial solution lies in something like Linguistic Remedies (explained by Nicole as a method of vowel patterns; articulation of sounds) to perhaps reduce the need overall for tutors. We may need to plan to fund for this year while we explore teacher training, other methods. Or perhaps we need to define scholarship need more clearly, reduce the amount of tutoring available, or let parents know we can’t subsidize tutoring as much as we have in the past. Al: Inform parents of the exact cost of tutoring and the site council funding for it (call it a matching fund) and then let them know their part. Sandra: Suggestion to run a Linguistic Remedies program as an after-school program, partially funded by the site council.

$350 for basic Linguistic Remedies training for teachers—a week-long session. So $600 to $800 per staff member. John not suggesting site council pay this, but two teachers are already going through this training.

Upshot is a curriculum committee (Lisa/Nicole) will research short-term/long-term solutions with the teachers to make it work within our original budget for this year.

Fundraising/Denise Spring

There is a core group of seven parents already working on the auction. Need one or two auction assistants to the auction coordinator. Also need a parent to cater next year’s auction. Deb Brownstein has done it for free for three years. Next year’s caterer does not need to provide services for free but a discount would be ideal. We need to fill these roles by the end of September.

Walkathon coordinators are Lesley Pfeifer and Cosette LeCiel.

Holly DeMaranville will be coordinating the Bazaar. The date of December 13th was suggested.

Communications/Al Tietjen

Topic: Using email lists to communicate site council committee information. This would be particularly helpful to the auction committee, but other committees might also find this useful. Also a good way to better inform the school community about what the site council does.

Al has three separate places where people sign up for information and is concerned that it’s too much. But the forms are for completely different things: site council info, newsletter, and the directory. Should this be an opt-out rather than an opt-in? Ed suggests putting it all on one page and having parents opt-out of anything they don’t want. Lisa suggests saying: If you are receiving the newsletter electronically, from time to time you will also receive information from the site council. You can opt-out from any that you don’t want. Should this be coordinated with the volunteer coordinator? Or is information for the community a completely separate issue from volunteering.

Ed suggests that Al come up with a solution that makes the most sense given the evening’s comments.

Curriculum/Lisa Calvert & Nicole Swedberg

Need to plan a curriculum night for October. John suggests one later in the year for the new math curriculum as well. Lisa feels the math night should be later so the staff is up and running with it. We should discuss in October. If parents have questions and concerns earlier they should use their classroom teachers and class meetings as their initial resource.

District Relations/Maria
District reworking student assignment plans for 08-09 school year. Maria will be attending a district meeting this month. The district is moving toward larger elementary schools of 400 to 450 students. There is also a large need for more middle school space in the northeast.  The strategic planning committee will continue their work this year on any proposal we may put forward in the future about becoming a K-8.

Maria is putting together the calendar for the year so she needs to know about any events during the year. The calendar will be on the web site and given out as a handout at Back to School Night.

Principal’s Report/John

Staffing is now complete with the hiring of Sandra Brettler to fill the part-time vacancy in Jo Voss’ class. Our enrollment is full (55 kindergarteners!). This is the fault of the district—they have overassigned us. We may need to increase aid time for those kindergartens, which is a site council issue. John is willing to approach the district for funding help. Lisa: The additional pay for K money may be able to drive more assistance for these classes. Nova: The problem may not be cost but is finding somebody.

There is real support for the name change. Nothing has yet been said against it but it is moving very slowly. John hopes to hear tomorrow.

John placed a significant order for additional library and art materials this summer. They will be arriving soon. The staff is going sailing on the Mallory Todd all together next Monday (nice beginning!). Next week’s staff meetings will cover cultural competence, math curriculum, expedition planning.

The new superintendent will use data analysis for any decision made in the building. Buildings have to earn their autonomy based on test scores. This will guide training and professional development. We’re way above district averages so we’re in a good position. We’ll have to make any future proposals based on data.  All staff have received some training this summer on math, which will continue. Teachers will also receive training on emergency preparedness. Site council might want to be involved in this. There will be some other inservice on student safety issues this year.

We still don’t have a contract for ELOB, which is frustrating. The staff feels it might not address all needs and might need flexibility in selecting curriculum anyway. This might come up for serious discussion with staff

Ann VanLoen/Volunteer Coordinator

Reworking the volunteer form. Ann is looking to get a little more background from families to know better when to contact them/how to give them opportunities. Suggestion to include expedition topics on this form so parents can easily see where their talents might apply.

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