HSC Meeting March 6, 2014
Minutes — APPROVED
Board members in attendance: Dyan Chan, Erik Iversen, Heather Michaels, Jodi Bannon, Julia Lombardi, Karen Tamsen, Michelle Hall, Regina Barhydt, Sandra Ballestrasse, Sarah Johnston
Room parents and guests in attendance: Deborah Johnson, Susan Tjoflat, Emi Eto, Bob Mistele, Lauren Honda, Keri Valouch, Katie Harrington, Hoda Hakimi, Cynthia Fan, Joanne Cannard
Board members not in attendance: Anouk Sivi, Jason Ediger, Alyce Green, Carolina Fernandez, Heather Stinger
1. Board updates
a) Approve February Minutes
b) Jodi motion to approve; motion approved
2. Presentation by Superintendent Bob Mistele LGSUHSD
a) LGSUHSD includes Los Gatos and Saratoga high schools, plus small continuation high school
b) Planning for next century, technology and facilities, student enrollment growth
c) Board decided after 1 ½ years of planning, master plan, will go for $99M bond in June ballot
d) Basic aid district, all money goes back into program for students
e) Capital projects upcoming
f) LGUHSD was highest-performing high school district in the state last year, 99% of grads go on to attend college, 86% to four-year colleges
g) Bond would be $18 per $100,000 of assessed valuation; with a projected assessed valuation growth of 3%, will raise $99M
h) Prioritized projects – link to full list on website
i. Exteriors look clean and attractive
ii. Interiors
1. Leaking roofs, old heating and cooling systems
2. Aging classrooms and science labs
a. Safety repairs, e.g. intercom systems
b. Stairs
c. Athletic facility improvements, tracks, fields
d. Classroom improvements to support music and drama (marching band new in past 3 years)
3. Outdated classroom technology that does not support Common Core or fully prep students for college and high-tech jobs
a. Bandwidth challenges
4. Prevent school overcrowding with additional classrooms
a. Projecting close to 300 new students at LGHS in next few years (?)
i) Measure includes fiscal accountability provisions
i. Funds stay here, can’t be taken away by the state
ii. Qualify for state matching funds
iii. Citizens’ Oversight Committee with required annual audits
iv. No funds for administrators’ salaries
j) Split
i. 56% for Los Gatos, 44% for Saratoga (based on attendance; very close to property tax monies brought in)
k) Now
i. Volunteer committee taking over, will phone and walk, not walking in mountains but will phone Lex and Loma Prieta too
ii. Setting up phoning nights by elementary school; need 10 per night. Easy calls, just identify “yes” voters.
iii. Saratoga will be running a parallel committee
iv. Need 55% to pass
v. Part of general election, not special election
vi. Questions: or 408 354-5980
3. Parliamentarian-Julia
a) Voting
i. Julia and Jodi did some research, do we need to take a vote to create committees and do other routine business?
ii. If a quorum (51%) is present and there is no objection, we don’t need to take a vote , just say “if there’s no objection, we’ll do X”
1. e.g. Lexwear and commemorative bricks committees; these committees are not making decisions, just brainstorm and bring ideas back to board
b) By-law updates
i. Thorough review of by-laws over the next six weeks, may draw from other HSC by-laws, perhaps more definition of roles and committees, make sure we’re adhering to Roberts Rules
c) Nominations for next year
i. Need nominations by early May meeting
ii. Approve nominations at late May meeting
iii. General election in May
iv. Nominating committee needs help finding people who are willing to serve on the board
v. Post job descriptions, maybe write more personal descriptions
4. Budget Review
a) February: got escrip payment, more See’s candy money $220; made $20K worth of payments for classroom supplies, IB dues, IB conference fees, printer cartridges
b) 501.3.c update-Sarah/Jodi
i. Status still pending; once we get it it will be retroactive back to when we lost our status
ii. IRS is now reviewing applications filed in April 2013; we filed in September 2013. (At least it’s moving now; last time she checked IRS was stuck at May 2012).
iii. Application needs minor changes but we won’t know what they are until we get assigned an IRS agent.
iv. Have spoken to the school district, which has agreed to become a fiscal sponsor for us.
1. Exchange transactions like book fair don’t need tax donation capability.
2. For straight donations like for the jog-a-thon, etc., the district will accept that cash from us and write a donation letter and we can use that money for our needs. We need to figure out who/what to write the check to.
a. Going forward, any new donations will do this
b. Anyone donating over $250 to us needs donation letter; District will write those letters for us if we remit the funds to them
i. Write-a-check and fund-a-need, total of $17K will be going to the District (most of that would be going to the District anyway)
c. Need to figure out how to handle matching funds requests
v. Motion to have the LGUSD take over our tax-deductible receipts until our 501c3 status is restored
1. Julia motion, Dyan second
2. Motion passes
5. 2nd VP Update– Karen
a) Principal updates
i. Smarter Balanced field test March 25-May 15
1. Probably will be a week-long window for each grade, 3rd, 4th, 5th, probably four hours total per grade during the week; don’t know exact dates per grades yet
2. Each class will take English-language arts and math, and then either performance assessment for language arts OR math
3. Teachers going to training next week on how to administer test
4. 5th graders will still do science STAR
ii. Math textbook adoption for Common Core
1. District staff picked three they liked, our teacher leaders reviewed them and picked two to pilot
2. Getting Go Math and My Math to pilot
3. Teachers will pilot through beginning of May and then report back
4. Parents will be notified and can view them in May
5. May 20 board meeting will bring recommendation to the board
6. Order materials in June for arrival in August and will be implemented next year. Hoping to go forth with fidelity and give new materials a chance.
iii. No state-approved textbooks adopted yet for other subjects
iv. Previously did a presentation on STAR math scores, coming back in April 22 to LGUSD board meeting to update on new math progress, can also come back to HSC meeting to update
6. IB Update- Lauren Honda
a) Los Angeles was awesome, sharing out still going on
b) Work done: yearlong collaboration in teaching schedule, essential agreements, collaboration with Deborah to integrate with Cornerstone, regular meetings with teachers, Lex brochure update, 150th celebration, parent workshop, have updated assessment and language policies. District developing year-long context maps, we’re integrating with them (certain order for stuff) — rewriting some units, etc. but only have two hours per week to do that.
c) Fifth grade exhibition coming up “how we organize ourselves” mentor teachers, mentors in district office. Culminating project for fifth-grade student. Include all elements of PYP in their work. Mrs. Vaden is out of her mind excited.
i. May 6 – big deal, big celebration
d) Mini workshop in May on the program standards and practices, in preparation for our evaluation of our program in 2015, probably in the fall. Whole community needs to know about IB. Evaluators look for evidence, not judging, but they judge it.
e) Earth Day will do something
f) Lauren will put together a wish list
i. Cause Workshop in May she’d like to go to
ii. IB North America conference in Washington, DC in July – Lauren would love to go, but very expensive. Four days. Not her first priority.
iii. Music teacher, Barbara Lougee need to go to workshops. Lake Tahoe workshop this summer. Would love to have Aiden go; everyone needs to know about IB at our school.
g) Work together to figure out how to grow our school — capacity 385 enrollment
7. Old Business:
a) Commemorative committee-Jodi/Regina
a. Met once decided to compile information on attractive commemorative project at new school
b. Researching at hospitals, libraries, schools, museums and talking to artists
c. Soliciting input from teachers
d. Haven’t decided if fundraiser or just pay for the project itself
e. Diana’s input: take our time, something that comes from the kids
f. Just a fact-finding committee, will bring info back to the board, maybe not until next school year
g. Have already met with Martin; committee will do a tour with Martin
h. Lauren wants to be on the committee
b) E-waste event results-Regina
a. Last Saturday, made $81
b. Was easy to run
c. Advertised it throughout the district Links, poster
c) Bi-athlon update-Susan, Heather and Dyan
a. Lexington’s First Biathlon — Live Healthy. Spell Happy.
b. Event will be held Thursday, April 24
c. Will combine pledge form and instructions, so kids only need to get sponsors one time.
d. Will send letter to teachers describing joint event, including teacher roles and spelling lists -- March 10.
e. Will start recruiting volunteers & volunteers in Link March 12
f. Working on sponsors now that we have 501(c)3 figured out – packet will go out next Friday
d) Book fair
a. $2300 Monday, hit our goal of $5000 today (to hit the higher amount from Hicklebees)
i. We get split of cash and book credits
b. May make $6000-7000 for the week
c. Good feedback
d. Can also order any book you want
e. Kids loving it, having fun
f. Outstanding compared to Scholastic, quality of the books, etc.
g. Hicklebee’s contact has been great
h. Author presentation was great
i. Susan’s presentations were great
e) Teacher lunches
a. Class coordinators did plates, napkins, etc
b. Thank you to parents who brough food
8. New Business
a) Resource Council-Technology Update
a. 3 hour meeting this time
b. Need to upgrade infrastructure and get more computers
c. Trying to figure out how to fund that
d. Regina’s husband Bill from FAC came in to discuss; they’ve been looking at expenses, budgets for the district
i. Need a plan to sustain us over the next 15 years
e. Looking to HSCs and the Foundation to make a commitment to get us there
i. Lex HSC usually budgets $5K for technology; one year we did $10K
ii. Goal will be 1-1 computers 3-8th, ipad or something K-2
iii. Will ask us to commit about $15K per year to technology (includes teacher training, teacher toolkits, IT support), so if we don’t raise enough, we cut something else but not technology
f. District will pay for infrastructure
i. Bandwidth needs to be expanded; not all students can get online at same time
g. Not really an option; it’s a necessity to be successful in 21st century
h. Our school district is the lowest-funded in the state, including state and federal government, and HSC and Foundation funds. Cuz fewer low-income students and ELL. Foundation gets 35% participation; other communities have 75% participation in their Foundations.
i. Having a joint HSC meeting to discuss; District is asking us all to sign a MOU for this.
j. District got $600K from the state to implement Common Core; not enough
b) Selling items before move
a. Need to vote on selling the portable sink that we bought for teachers to use down here but they’re
b. Motion to sell the sink
c. Heather motion, Regina second
d. Motion passes
c) Yearbook – Heather
a. Moving along, cover submitted, reps for each room, deadlines are out
b. Will start promoting and doing fliers
c. Contract has expired; kept price the same — do we want to use the company again next year?
d. Check prices, user-friendliness of software,
e. Compare with photo company, which is a local LG company
f. We can do pictures through them as well, but we’re already committed with another company for next year
d) 5th Grade gift
a. Used to do dictionaries, last year did a glass frame with a class photo
b. 29 students, budget is $500
e) Fun Day
a. May 30
b. Looking for a lead
c. Tracey did a great break-down
d. Jodi looked at sites at Vasona; haven’t been able to lock in a field at Fisher
e. Close one with hill and bathroom is available as of now; will check cancellation fee, cost is $285
f. Budget $700
g. Other expenses: jumpy house, activities, last year had food donated
h. Motion to book the site at Vasona
i. Julia motion, Michelle second
ii. Motion passes
9. LGEF –Eric and Jason
a) Foundation’s focus on teachers and curriculum
b) We can have a unified vision – technology crucial now
c) Drive still going on; about $450K raised so far
d) Trying to get participation rate for Lex up, will call …
e) Got info on Fisher fundraising
10. Calendar
March
11 — LGUSD Board Mtg @630pm
April
3 — H&SC Meeting- @815am
3 — Lexington Open House, Minimum Day
7-11 — Spring Recess
8 — LGUSD Board Mtg @630pm
22 — Earth Day
24 — Biathlon
11. Adjournment
a) Julia motion to adjourn, Heather second
b) Meeting adjourned at 10:15 p.m.
Minutes prepared by Dyan Chan, HSC Secretary.