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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2025-11-13-DIAMOND-minMinutes for Diamond Site Council meeting 11/13/25 Attendance Johnny Cole Whitney Didi Joyce Dvorak Katina Lawdis (note taker) Topic One Taylor Casey Ramesh Kumar Darren Rough Beth Bristol Staff: smoothest start to school year in awhile Christina Finegold Remy Coombs Community: Can we feed more information to parents before school starts. Example: you need "x" amount of notebooks for subjects. Its a help to know ahead of time what supplies are needed. Community: still has things left over for school prep. She never used note cards, and had extra supplies. One consistent list could be helpful, as her family overbought. Community: parents should have a list of "needs" and "wants" Community: other preparations, social emotional, readiness for kids to high school, how to bridge gaps from previous school years (add to school innovation plan) Community: agrees. He wants to know, at the beginning of 8th grade, what adjustments should be made in preparation for high school. Staff: this is often integrated into high school, and wants to see this in the school innovation plan. The change from grading is a worry, the team model, the data is influencing what the middle school is doing. Kids really need help juggling expectations from different teachers. STaff: the extent to which process standards are valid at the high school is something that is on deck. Staff: the learning process standard is more predictive of success in the high school Learning and homework habits are the thing that impacts the letter grades Community: his student in college has seen that everything counts. He thinks kids take it easy in 9th, and are more serious in 10th and 11th. If kids are serious about college, they should have the info as soon as possible. Parents want to know what to do about grading and college preparedness. Community: echoes process grades. Her son is doing well in high school and thinks that for kids its about the social emotional impact on the pressure of getting grades. Lexington is trying to avoid the mental health component. Learning to be a student is a key feature. Kids should not be so focused on just getting a grade. This is point of standards based grades - how you learn. Community: My child was placed on a "half team," which was a bit surprising at first—especially since many people have mentioned overcrowding. I assume this means there weren't enough 7th graders for a full team. It has turned out to be a wonderful experience so far, though it did feel a bit jarring at the start of the summer. It might be helpful if the school website included a brief overview of how team structures can vary from year to year (for example, showing something like "Team structure may include X/Y formats depending on enrollment"), so families understand this flexibility in advance. Community: Small team definitely has a different connotation. Staff: the importance of the learning process grade is the skills behind the content. If a student is not succeeding at the high school the learning process is highly important. Staff: Christina and Beth: Whitney Didie and I were a half team for many years. It was hard to overcome the sense of 'less than' that assigned students came with in September. It's a good comment, and students themselves proposed the the idea of calling the team a "small team" as a way to counteract some of the negative perception. Community: agrees but math is a problem, especially with honors math. The math curriculum does not align with this piece. Community: feels that the practice on learning standards continues to high school. Community: if we ask kids to do both, they should be able to understand both to get the content as well as learning standards piece. Staff: he will get more info on this Any staff updates? Community: still no knives in the cafeteria Staff: new school innovation plan. Community: how does the team determine ranking of priorities in addressing some topics? Staff: we will do our own KLDI on the 4 goal areas. We will take info from staff and funnel it into the 4 district goals. KLDI is around the new leadership Community: on the school plan, what's missing is how do we benchmark ourselves against our peer groups? Peer schools? How do we measure up against writing? Other standards? How do we prepare people to be successful in high school? Towards universities? Staff: We can think of how to incorporate these in school improvement plan. Community: this is a broader universe point. What are cousins in UK learning in middle school? What are kids around the globe doing? Community: this is a lot to look at. Where are we? What have we done? How can we be helpful? Staff: at the next meeting - lets dive into 1 st goal of addressing achievement gaps Community: not all students are naturally outspoken and participate in all things. What opportunity do parents have to develop this? With robotics, what about this? This is missing. Ramesh had to find a team in Boston as there is no robotics team. He would like to see a robotics team Staff: we can use the WIN blocks to get kids excited about this. Science community can also invite someone to come in and talk. We can try to launch it one of these ways, and maybe do a club after school. There is a feasible path to doing an after school club this spring. Community: Diamond has no robotics club. Ramesh wants a team to be formed. Community: This list is good - WIN comes up, tech use comes up. Joyce wants to know if kids are playing games on school issues chromebooks. Can kids use phones? Staff: kids should not use phones in school. Chroimebooks are on the internet, phones are not. Some kids get around firewalls and tech blocks. Community: blocks websites, and she takes pictures to help the kids not use the chromebooks for games. Joyce thinks WIN blocks are useful. Some kids in middle school are developmentally ready for this. Should 1 WIN block be directed? And one a few choice? Kids don't have the executive function to make determinations on their own. Staff: All staff have 1 intervention block, so this is happening. The developmental piece is important. Some kids need to have movement, lots of options, we are retooling it. WIN blocks should have a performance opportunity too, In terms of in person, what do people want? Community: after school Community: we can do a doodle poll, Beth will spearhead this. What month? Staff: we will do a deep dive into the 4 goal areas over the next meetings. We will then have outreach to families. Community: will send out a doodle poll for in person meeting times Staff: we need to vote on minutes. Everyone approved minutes. No one opposed. No abstentions.