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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2018-01-19-BOWMAN-min BOWMAN SITE-BASED COUNCIL Thursday, January 19, 2018 MEETING MINUTES Present: Mary Anton, Kathy Caron, Rosanne Barbacano, Lauren Avery, Alison Stevens, Melinda Webster Loof, Seth Moeller, Kavita Ravi December 7, 2017 minutes unanimously approved at 8:01 : motion made by Alison Stevens and Kavita Ravi to approve the minutes. Minutes recorded by: Beth Glick I. Announcements Mary Anton will be retiring from Bowman School at the end of June and will be relocating to California to be the head of the lower school of the Chinese American International School. II. Public Comment (on topics not on the agenda) III. Update on MLK Jr. Day of Service and Race Conversations forum • About two hundred people attended • Speaker who does a lot of analysis and looks at pipeline to prison • Talked about ways to address the concerns. • Human Rights committee and school at the same time working on creating a survey to look at discipline and how it is handled. • Speaker has looked at disaggregated data on African American students and Special Education students around suspension and time out of class, shows a disproportionate number of African American students and students with disabilities have a higher number of suspensions. • Questions being asked: Is there unconscious bias going on? Are African American students and special education students having higher suspension rates and discipline rate? What is the education going on in different schools, what are teachers being taught around responding to behavioral difficulties? • Data at the High School and Clarke • Not the same concern at the elementary level • Powerpoint on the Human Rights website for more information on this presentation. A follow up conversation with Site Council included: • Association of Black citizens of lexington, SEPAC, Lexington Commission on disabilities is working on the survey. Hoping to have the survey out in February. • Equity leadership was discussing different cultural lenses yesterday and ways to respond. • Differences on how different children will respond to no. Can have different responses to teachers. How do we provide education to teachers around responding and looking at the cultural lense. How do we continue to look at methods other than discipline. IV. Bowman School Curriculum Updates Will go on the February meeting agenda V. MCAS updates • Third grade paper based, fourth and fifth grade on devices • Extra day for Kindergarten screening. Will be an additional day at all elementary schools. PAR has been added this year for screening. PAR looks at vocabulary pieces, memory pieces and phonemic awareness and phonological awareness. • Parents will receive the screening results as they have in the past. • Kathy Caron shared it is not overly identifying students at this point. • ? who will administer the PAR. Will need more staff for Kindergarten screening. • When there are red flags in literacy, progress monitoring is used to make sure student is making progress towards their goals. • Discussion about dyslexia • There is great support for students with reading differences here at Bowman. VI. Discussion - Superintendent Search • Discussion to give feedback on the search and/or thoughts about important initiatives to keep going forward. • Update on the search Unanimous vote to adjourn at 8:49: Alison Stevens and Seth Moeller made a motion Next meeting: February 9, 2018 7:45-8:45, Center Conference room