HomeMy WebLinkAbout2012-12-13-CLARKE-minOVS MopNi
O 1775 he
(� 0
Qry - SD
Jonas Clarke Middle School
3 a
v APRILI9'
`FxI N 17 Stedman Road ❖ Lexington, Massachusetts 02421
Anna W. Monaco, Principal Office: (781) 861 -2450
Jennifer E. Turner, Assistant Principal Fax: (781)674 -2043
Jonathan R. Wettstone, Assistant Principal
Jonas Clarke Middle School
Site Council Minutes
December 13, 2012
In Attendance: Anna Monaco, Principal; Kristen Rangel, Teacher, Tessa Riley, Guidance Counselor, Kelly Manor,
Teacher, Dana , School Psychology Intern; Suzanne Cherenson, Parent; Sandra Mayo, Parent; Jonathan
Schechner, Teacher, Krystal Bavin, Teacher, Jennifer Turner, Assistant Principal
I. Meeting Minutes
Principal opened the meeting....
• "I thought I would leave the agenda sort of open today - approve minutes from last meeting, questions and
feedback, update on blue ribbon status, survey discussion, etc."
• introduces Dana as Mary's intern from Tufts
• thanks Suzanne for contacting Harrington site council - distributes their survey
• reviews minutes from last meeting (11/15/12) and asks for editing changes.
• November minutes are approved by the site council.
II. Questions? Feedback?
Parent: Asks if there is a new bus procedure
• AP: talks about the last buses - asking students to line up
• Principal: talks about not allowing students to board near the end of the loop
Parent: Asks about the crossing guard
• Principal: explains "she stepped off the curb and hit her head - was not hit by a car" - reports she is ok
and "rumors were laid to rest with an email to staff so they could answer student questions."
III. Principal:
Principal discusses the Blue Ribbon Application process...
• "Clarke is eligible to apply as a blue ribbon school - we were nominated by the DESE."
• "Schools are nominated when they have excellent academic achievement and /or growth. It's quite a long
application process and there is a lot of writing involved." There is a lot of data gathering. They want to
know about interventions, differentiation, Philosophy of leadership etc."
• "If you are interested, you can go to the website and actually see their applications. The application is due
in February and we will find out if we were selected in the summer and if we are, we can go to Washington
D.C. to receive the award."
• "At our next meeting I may share our application with you so you can take a look at it."
IV: Survey Discussion
Principal: "Tessa (counselor), do you want to talk about where we are at this point ?"
• Counselor: "I met with Dana and have brought her up to speed on what we discussed last year. What
Dana shared with me was that she does this at Tufts as well."
• Intern Dana: "I work part time at Tufts in research, where I send out surveys, so I thought this would be a
good match to my skill set."
• Counselor: "So I guess our question now is what is our main goal? Students first or parents ?"
Principal: "I gave you a copy of the Harrington Parent survey." (Everyone reviews survey)
• Counselor: "This survey is very much geared at parent awareness, how much parents know, but we also
talked about finding out what parents' concerns are. So I don't know if we want to focus on one over the
other or try to do both ?"
• Teacher: And if you give a student survey, do you give it to all or only a few?
Principal: "I think it would be interesting to ask parents what they would like to hear more about, what their
concerns are, etc. and then ask students the same questions."
• Intern Dana: "You can have that in the same survey so depending on who they are the path changes but
it can be the same survey."
Parent: This was Survey Monkey, and we had a really high response rate - over 50 %.
• Principal: "I think if we make it reasonable people will respond. I guess I would ask what sort of
information do we hope to get out of this? Is it to see where we want to focus our efforts or where the
needs are for communication ?"
Counselor: "I would like to know concerns and needs around social and emotional programming. What do
students and parents see about the issues ?"
• Principal: "I like the idea of finding out if people are aware of our goals."
• Parent: "I agree with Tessa because it is really important to have the actual data from kids and parents
because it's really hard to tell it's hard to gauge that."
• Parent: "And we all have boys so we don't know what's going in with girls."
• Parent: "I went to the coffee the other day and it was great - the parents of boys were struggling with the
computer and the boys appearing to be withdrawn and depressed but a lot of that is how they are
connecting with each other - through the computer, and then there's a whole bunch of behavior around
detaching them from that so I think it would be great to tie in that issue - maybe if you think your child is
having difficulty with social media or not able to detach from computers, and I heard from girls" parents that
they are concerned about the negative things."
• Counselor: "The mean girl stuff - yes."
Parent: "I'm really glad this group is not taking the attitude of just trying to wring our hands, because we can
assess the climate, and it's free because I don't think there is a huge problem, but there are things that could be
addressed."
• Principal: "This is a time of transition too with technology - for example, google plus is the new media tool
they are using. And I think we need to make teachers aware of this too - we need to think about how we
make sure kids are being responsible. So what kinds of questions on here do we want to keep? Add? "
Principal: "What about question 2 ?"
• Counselor: "I like these because they are broad but they hit the big needs, safety, academics, etc.
They're very broad but they give you a good idea."
Intern Dana: "Something you can do is anyone marks not satisfied they would then get a specific questions asking
why."
Teacher: "I think there might be a benefit asking more academic questions - like how much time do you spend on
homework each night ?"
Counselor: "In the student one we had asked about awareness around Rachel's Challenge, bullying, stress, and
homework."
• Principal: "Are we talking about giving the same survey ?"
• Parent: "No, but similar."
Teacher: "Should we include something about what sort of grades the student is receiving to see if there is a
correlation between grades and the other factors ?"
Parent: Talks about putting more information on the website, also discusses the parent coffee and how much
information was shared.
• Principal: Shows the guidance page and explains that Guidance could add the documents from the
parent coffee. "It would also be interesting to find out if people go to the website for information."
• Parent: "Right and I didn't know where to go to find it."
• Counselor: "We don't publicize it well enough."
• Principal: "We could streamline it more for parents - I'm curious if people even go to the website to find
information."
• Intern Dana: "You could change the question to ask how many times people have accessed the website
in the past number of days."
Principal: "We can add to this but I don't want to go too far beyond 10 -12 questions. Let's look at the questions
we generated."
• Guidance: "We discussed bullying and we asked where bullying is happening. We could ask a mirror
question to parents about their perception of where bullying happens. We also discussed stress."
• Parent: "Do we need to define stress ?"
• Principal: "By the way this is a survey we developed but never administered. Any other big areas we
want to hit ?"
• Counselor: "I do like a few open ended questions."
Intern Dana: "When would you give it to students? Typically you should give a school climate survey when they
are in the school."
• Principal: "We would have to do it one of the classes - we can talk to team leaders."
• Counselor: "The timing is important too - February people tend to feel down."
Teacher: "Would we want specific questions about 5 -6 transition and 8 -9 transition, and about who they would talk
to if they had a problem at school ?"
• Counselor: "We never ask the direct question - do you feel safe at Clarke? We could ask that and then
ask who you would go to ?"
• Teacher: "Not just safety but emotional well -being as well."
• Counselor: "Maybe we ask it after the safety, stress, etc. and then ask it ?"
Intern Dana: Asked if we needed consent to survey the students?
• (The group discussed passive consent)
Parent: "The budget is data driven so this will give us great data."
• Principal: "Looking ahead next year that will be a great resource."
Counselor: "When we do meet again? Ok we can have a rough draft by January 17th."
• Principal: "In the meantime, I will talk to the team leaders about distributing it."
• Dana: "I would like to use Qualtrics - I have access through Tufts."
AP: "This is a recurring conversation about wanting to get information, so this is something we should keep,
because next year we will probably be looking to do the same thing."
• Parents: "We get surveyed for lots of things and I don't mind because things change."
Principal: "We will come together in January and look at the rough draft.
Next Meeting - January 17, 2013