HomeMy WebLinkAbout2022-03-17-DIAMOND-min RECEIVED
Diamond School Council Meeting Minutes 2022 27 Apir, 1piiim
March 17, 2022 TOWN CLERK
LEXINGTON MA
Members in attendance: Jennifer Turner, Chhandomay Mandal,Joyce Dvorak, Ye Tong, Remy Coombs, Stephanie
Burroughs, (Liz Sharp, non-voting member)
A. Approval of Minutes from 2/17/22 meeting
B. Updates
Principal
• Masks are off in the building; a large percentage of students are still wearing their masks. We have a
full return to the cafe and still having recess. We are still having B block mask breaks and kept the
staggered dismissal.
• Starting to plan the fifth grade visit to Diamond but need to confrim that we can use May 20 PD
afternoon.
• Field trips have started being approved. The Quebec Trip may be happening, with some restrictions.
• Staff are exhausted. More colds and other viruses (not Covid).
• MCAS will be coming up in April and May. Full testing resumes.
• Eighth grade activities will take place the last week of June. No longer having the LHS formal type
ceremony. Planning to start within the next week or two.
Parents
• Question about the Quebec Trip: "French teachers are trying to get the trip organized this year.
Canada does require vaccinations, for now. We will add chaperones, in case we need to deal with any
quarantine situations."
• Grading question and question about transition back to letter grades for 8th graders to get ready for
LHS: "No, we believe that SBG is better for students and offers more information, along with being
more equitable. Many of the teachers at LHS do use standards based grading and instruction even
though they put letter grades on report cards. The philosophy is the same. Same type of transition that
used to happen between elementary and middle school and students were fine with that adjustment.
We do recognize that we went very fast with the transition, so we are circling back to some of the
questions and concerns. We have goals on more communication and details to come out'
• Question about the lack of other trips: "Yes, we have had trips for Spanish classes, but we had
decided to change up the location of that trip before the pandemic. The Mandarin students used to
travel to China, but that was a big trip and we were questioning whether that was appropriate. We do
waant to get back the 8th grade trip to DC next year."
Staff
• No updates.
Innovation Plan Review
• Updated the wording for our document in the first objective: Address and Narrow Equity Gaps
• Discussion around some of the specific details in this objective.
• Background Information to be reviewed on our own time.
• Review of Benchmarks and Timeline.
o Will add details to Equity Team and Project Based Learning
• Early Evidence and Outcome sections still need to be outlined
• Objective Two has some of the outline ready to review.
o Members to add/update document before the next meeting.
C. Meeting Adjourned: 7:54 AM
D. Next Meeting April 14, 2022