Notes+9.9.08

//**Agenda for September 9 meeting**// Present: Jodi McGuire, Tom McDowell, Lorrie King, Chris Hill, Melissa Noack, Brenda Michaelsen, Deborah Johansen, Rick Biskup, Amy Bongard, Ted Hall, Emily Davison, Todd Shaw, Mandy Peaslee, Suzanne Hamilton

Check in for opening of school: All seemed fine. Laptop roll-out went well. Opening assembly was good. Extended advisory the first day was appreciated; scheduling has been good. There seem to be fewer add/drops. Did having three faculty days beforehand help ease the opening days? We didn't try to do much more with the extra day, which gave us more time overall to get ready. We could have used more time getting PowerGrade up and running. We should probably make a better effort to orient new-to-Yarmouth students to technology.

Items from staff:
 * 1) We could have had more time to set up PowerGrade. Perhaps we could find some time early on to allow people who need support to get it. Would this coming Monday be a good time to work on PowerGrade. It may be possible to have a representative from Power School via a live feed or in person.**Decision**: Monday afternoon will be allocated to work on PowerGrade. Those who have made more progress with the program can help others. Lorrie will email teachers about their needs and collate their responses. She will provide Alice with the results. Monday afternoon's faculty meeting will be in the Flex Room.
 * 2) Some teachers would prefer to have singleton classes scheduled during Period 3. The short answer is that this isn't feasible given the other factors that go into building the schedule. Ours is a student-driven schedule; the more limits that are placed on the schedule the less likely
 * 3) The mufflers on the chairs in the classrooms -- could there be more of them? Answer: as the identified student progresses through the grades more classrooms will be fitted with them.
 * 4) Can we get electronic copies of IEPs and PLPs, the 504s, etc.? Answer: Jodi will investigate this.
 * 5) Attendance: will we set aside time to get feedback about taking period attendance? Answer: Yes, we will revisit this in a couple of weeks.

A decision about this extra expense should be made in the context of the overall budget needs and problems. We are facing (of course) higher fuel costs. We also have spent more than we have budgeted for textbooks. Rick explained what his request entails. Other learning areas have equipment requests. We will need to shift some funds to cover the shortfall in the textbook budget. We realize that we can't meet every equipment request this year. Decision: Ted asks that every learning area let him know whether we think we can shave off a bit from our supplies budgets to meet the shortfall.
 * Equipment budget discussion re: AP Physics equipment
 * Next steps with school culture survey results -- we will take this up in our next meeting.


 * Portfolios/Collaborative Inquiry/Action Research -- what aspects of this process should be revised?


 * Plagiarism policy-should we have a school-wide policy? The current statement that appears in the Student Handbook seems pretty inadequate and should be updated. Ted will bring this to the Student Senate so that we can go forward with a revision this year.


 * Study halls -- There are a few concerns: with the lack of access to the cafeteria, will students have a place to have 'down time'? Will they be adequately supervised in the upstairs lounge? We could also provide more guidance to teachers so that study halls are conducted in a more consistent way. We need to keep an eye on the upstairs lounge to be sure students continue to be respectful. Deborah and Suzanne will write something up for new teachers.


 * Best practices -- Ben McNaboe has asked to talk with the faculty about this project. We decided he should come to a Leadership meeting first.