Eugene IHS Site Council 4-10-2012
Convener: Chrisi Morrison
Recorder: Rebecca Hammons
Present: Stephanie Cannon, Joanne Moorefield, Peggy Farris, Wade Powell, Deon Saraceno, Kayla Smith, Susan Ventura, Courtney Leonard, Bob Bolden, Janell Schoellhorn, Kaycee Schoellhorn, Kayla Smith, Jesse Fromick, Londa Rochloz, Craig Wiebe
·April minutes were reviewed and approved
· Student report: Dance is 4/21 at the Boys and Girls Club, and students are trying to sell tickets. They’ll work on this more next week after Churchill’s prom has happened. Wade asked for parents and/or teachers to be present; two police officers have been hired. Londa will be present with a laptop to check any students who have forgotten their i.d.
· Parent report: CAS Fair will be 4/19 and so far we have 25 yeses, two maybes, and 8 unreturned phone calls. Courtney confirmed that this is a good number for booths. The evening will begin at 7:00, and Janell they’re very excited and even that she’d be willing to do this again!
· Staff report: On our inservice day, we first looked at projected enrollment for next year and discussed program and staffing. Then we met in subject matter groups and continued our conversations about coordinating with changing IB standards
·Deon shared that the recent trip to Borneo that she led had students from all three campuses and was a wonderful reminder that of the world that lies outside the classroom.
· Planning for next year: Courtney reported on our projected enrollment for next year and the expected class sizes these enrollment numbers will generate. We do have students on a waiting list and some students requesting exchanges from other districts, but we’re unclear as to how many of those students we’ll be able to accept.
A primary concern is the projected class of 64 juniors at Churchill, as well as the 11th grade at South, which may be two sections of 50, and the senior class at Sheldon, which may be 50.
We will run 27 sections next year but would like to run 28. FTE will be .668 for head teacher and .500 FTE for IB coordinator (a reduction from .6 in the past), with 11/12 Project Coordination using 1.00.
French Immersion parents will contribute .167 for an FI Geo class.
Our buyback adjustment is .167, and High School Services contributed .330 FTE.
We have money in our Fleet fund, equipment fund, and EEF funds that we can use towards staffing.
Courtney continued to discuss options for next year that the staff discussed on April 2. She discussed the three option IHS staff has discussed. Option 1 is off the table, largely because it is too problematic for our freshmen. Pros and cons for Options 2 and 3 were discussed.
Dr. Bob asked if 9th and 10th graders will have a free period, and Courtney said yes. Dr. Bob continued to ask about our plan in lieu of the fact that our new superintendent has mandated full schedules for all 9th graders. Courtney discussed some of the unknowns and challenges that we are still facing and the fact that Eugene IHS didn’t get additional staffing for 9th grade because it is said that IHS students already have an enriching experience with three classes in IHS.
The IHS staff has discussed these three options and decided that we need more time to discuss options two and three, though we have already decided that we will spend extra funds to augment either of those options.
Reactions from the Site Council regarding options two or three:
Peggy is concerned that we’d have very few students who want to drop TOK, and we’d end up separating our IB and non-IB students.
Stephanie asked about downs for number three, and Courtney reported that that option would use our monetary resources. Wade commented that that model is not sustainable, and asked if it’s just a one year solution. Courtney said that, yes, it’s a one-year solution.
Wade said that Mr. Berman came to CHS and explained how he’s financing his requirement that all freshmen are fully enrolled. Wade is concerned that if we cannibalize ourselves for one year, that we set a precedent with the district that we can’t keep up. Does it make sense to go forward with a one-year solution? Craig added that we wouldn’t have money for equipment if needed; Courtney said we’d have about $20,000 left in equipment.
Peggy said that she thinks both options are horrible but that she doesn’t see another.
Deon agreed with Peggy, but thinks that choosing number two will make us disappear and it won’t matter if we have no money anyway. We’ve already lost so much at 9th and 10th grade; can we afford to “cannibalize” our program, too?
Courtney wonders if, as all schools move into a new schedule, perhaps we’ll have more opportunity to think about IHS in different ways in the context of a new-shared schedule.
Londa said that number three appealed to her because she’s hoping that next year we’ll see fewer cuts.
Dr. Bob said that Sheldon made a decision not to tap their Fleet fund, as they’re saving it for a real rainy day.
Susan reported that funds are being depleted at the elementary school level.
Stephanie wondered if there’s a compromise between not using all the funding monies and reducing 11/12 project somewhat, so that the options are combined. Courtney said that one of the main issues we’ve talked about in reference to this is that we ultimately still have the same number of students to shepherd through the project process.
Put to a vote for Site Council: Can we spend up to this amount of money from our extra funds, knowing that we still have a ways to go in deciding between these options? Unanimous vote approved using those funds.
We then discussed full scheduling of 9th graders along with the reality that IHS did not get extra funding for 9th as all other high schools did. The argument is that our 9th graders are already getting a rich experience and garnering three out of the six required credits in IHS classes. Dr. Bob said that this argument worked better when we had projects. Others had good questions and comments, but no clear solution appeared.
Courtney said if we had 1.0 more FTE, we could have two teachers oversee a 9/10 project model such as 11/12 had, but Londa said the new superintendent wants students actually in instructional classes. Dr. Bob said that there’s a discussion coming about the viability of projects themselves, and Deon commented that we had conversations last year around credit-based proficiency and were urged to develop that program.
Courtney responded to Dr. Bob’s warning about projects that as an IB school, we can’t simply put projects back into our 11/12 classes because of curricular restrictions.
Peggy asked if it’s correct that all other high schools were given FTE to fully schedule 9th graders, but IHS wasn’t. Courtney confirmed that. We did get .300 FTE from High School Services after the conversation on fully scheduling 9th grade. Our 9th graders get half of their required six credits in IHS.
Janell said that current freshmen parents wondering why the current freshmen class is the magic number; what happens to next year’s sophomores?
· Common schedule: Tomorrow night, the School Board makes the final decision on the proposed 3 x 5 schedule. Courtney said that the School Board has asked very pointed questions based on feedback from the community, and the expectation is that they will approve the 3 x 5 schedule tomorrow.
Upcoming discussion for Site Council will be how IHS can adapt to a 3 x 5 schedule, especially if one high school goes to this schedule and others do not.
We ended the meeting at 5:04 with a collective big breath.