Hillsdale High School Site Council Minutes
December 5, 2005

PRESENT:  Jeff Gilbert, Marty Kongsle, Marty Roberts, Allie Pitts, Cheryl Lawton, Aryn Shelander, Sormeh Kafi, Christine Crockett, Greg Lance, Yvonne Shiu, Claire Mittler

I. House Reports

            Marrakech is thinking about keeping their advisees for four years.  They are discussing how that would affect curriculum.  It brings up questions about autonomy, and how to make junior/senior years more SLC-like.  They are working on ways for students to earn Marrakech money.  The plan is to recognize students who show respect, perseverance, personal responsibility, courage and altruism.  There is a meeting tonight with parents who have volunteered to help raise funds for the program.

            Florence sophomores hare doing the Trials of Human Nature and the freshman teachers are helping to evaluate. The freshmen are working on literacy, doing Sucher Allreds.  They have found that students need more time and practice reading.  They feel they need to discuss this with parents.  They are sharing some terms across the curriculum.

            Kyoto is discussing literacy at the freshman level.  The upper classmen are working on building unity and house spirit.  They did a joint prep for Elizabeth Eckford. 

II. Announcements and Updates

            Cheryl reported that they are entered hundreds of student course requests into a spread sheet.  They will not be able to do much for next semester, but are hoping to be able to help for next year.  They are looking to see if they can make a few changes and most mistakes for next semester have been caught.  They noticed that there are a number of students who do not have classes in the middle of the day.  The library and computer labs are impacted by this.  She and Deb Stucke have spent many hours on the project.

            Claire reported that locators will be given to advisors for distribution on Dec. 12th the last day of advisory.  Advisors will have a second copy if students need them for 1/10.           

            Yvonne said that if individual classrooms have heating problems or lights that are hanging the teacher should email her.

III. Department Head Money

            There was a lack of understanding about dept. head money and there is none to pay for teachers to attend curriculum council meetings.  We do have some professional development money, but we need to decide if it should be saved for summer professional development.  Jeff and Yvonne will be meeting with the Cabinet next Monday and after we need to have further conversation.

            It was decided to reimburse Jessica Hahn $26 for a computer hub.  It was requested that teachers not purchase things prior to approval.  Kathryn Rodriquez requested over $700 to get a site license for software to monitor computer use by students.  It was decided to bring this request to the district curriculum council on technology.

IV. WASC Action Plan

            The action plan suggestions from each focus group were distributed.  After reading them and discussing them, the following broad categories with some sub-items were identified:

A.  Struggling students: ELD, low SES, low skilled 9th graders, students entering mid-semester, literacy levels: low/medium/high.

B.  Parent/community involvement: more interactions/bridges for students and more student community involvement; marketing HHS; helping students see the relevance of their studies.

C. Sustainability: Core and non-core teachers, staff development on roles and responsibilities of teachers for resiliency, advisory curriculum; clarification and communication of the school vision; vertical and horizontal articulation between all levels in the houses, between the houses, and in the whole school; governance and decision making; communication about how things run and expectations; benchmarks.

D.  Curriculum and assessment:  Struggling students could fit under this topic; reliable, quantifiable, differential; performance assessments, and consistency; advisory

The WASC Report has to be at the District Office on Monday, January 23, 2006.

Some people (Jeff G., Marty R., Greg L., Zack, Christine) will work on finalizing the writing of the Action Plan before winter break.

We will use some time on January 9th to share the Action Plan with the staff.

Next SLC Site Council meeting will be on Tuesday, January 17th.  The final draft of the WASC Report will be shared at that time.