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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2010-05-10-Diamond-min DIAMOND MIDDLE SCHOOL SITE-BASED SCHOOL COUNCIL May 10, 2010 MEETING MINUTES Attendees: Peg Mongiello, Co-Chair; Matt Schnall, Co-Chair; Deborah Strod, David Kluchman, Ann Redmon, Cindy Starks, Judi Robinson, Kelly Tzannes, Rick Comeau, Janice Whitmore, Amit Roy. Kelly Tzannes, Ed Dube and Diane Corbett joined the meeting in progress. Audience: Eric Stout The purpose of the meeting was to review and approve the student survey draft, and to approve the Bylaws. 1.Mr. Schnall presented draft By-laws that had been revised to reflect the comments of council members at the April 12, 2010 meeting. After discussion of the appropriate terms for teachers and for the community representatives, the council voted unanimously to approve the By-laws in the form attached hereto. 2.School Council 2010-11: The council discussed the procedure for elections of parent and teacher representatives. There are three openings for parent representatives and two openings for teacher representatives, as well as up to two openings for community representatives (who are appointed by the principal). The Council expressed a desire for current members to serve to provide continuity for the new principal, although Ms. Strod also emphasized that there should be room for new parents to get involved even with this transition. The parent election is being conducted by the PTA, and they will be informed of the relevant provisions of the newly-adopted By-laws. Preliminary notices concerning the election were distributed by the PTA via listserv on March 27 and April 7, 2010. A solicitation for candidates was distributed on Tuesday, May 4, 2010. Candidate statements are due on May 28, 2010 — three have been received so far. The election is scheduled to be held June 1, 2010, with the goal of having newly-elected members th informed in time to attend the June 10 joint PTA/Council meeting with Anne Carothers, the incoming principal. Ms. Mongiello briefly outlined her plan for holding an election for teacher representatives. 3.Mr. Schnall reported that the School Council website is now up on the Diamond homepage. The survey will link to that page from the final screen. 4.School Improvement Plan process update: tomorrow night at School Committee there will be a presentation on District Progress, and the Clarke Principal will be presenting on Middle School achievements such as common assessments, data teams, math intervention etc. At Monday’s Faculty meeting, every school generated goals for their professional development time next year. These included: Bullying, Data usage, technology, “RTI” response to intervention. A parent asked if this RTI involved meeting the needs of students who need more challenge, but it does not. Dufour (???) does, and it was supposed to be added to No Child Left Behind. Tomorrow, all the principals will come together to compare goals. The hope is to get the District Goals out before June. The process is to come up with goals “from the bottom up” this year, as opposed to the more “top down” process last year. Four question govern: What do you want to know? How will you know when you know? What do you do if you don’t know? How can we work well together? School Councils can also report on achievements in addition to the goals each year, and can add goals in addition to the district and staff-developed building goals. 5.A group of parents and teachers volunteered to help establish the Garden for which an LEF grant was received; Chris Clark is in charge. 6.Ms. Strod presented the student survey draft, and the council discussed a number of revisions to the draft. It was agreed that Ms. Strod would implement the changes and Mr. Schnall would transfer the survey to the Surveymonkey platform, with a goal of having the survey go live on Friday, May 14, 2010. It was agreed that Ms. Mongiello would arrange for students to receive paper notices in their homerooms to inform them of how to access the survey. 7.Ms. Starks, Ms. Redmon, Ms. Tzannes, Mr. Roy, Ms. Strod and Mr. Schnall volunteered to digest results of the parent and student surveys and to present those results to the council at its next meeting on May 26, 2010.