School Leadership Team Meeting

Minutes - March 4, 2010

Attendance:

Valerie Loop – Special Areas/Chairperson SLT

Robert Crow – Second Grade, Secretary SLT

Mike Drye - Principal

Kiron Johnson – parent

Amy Pace – Fifth Grade Chairperson

Abby Boyd – Family/School Advocate

Nikki Braswell – Second Grade Chairperson

Jeffrey Hoover – First Grade Chairperson

Pat Ryckman –Media Specialist

Wendy Yates – parent

Michelle Ifill – Kindergarten Chairperson

Ashley Librecht – Third Grade Chairperson

Kasheena Connor – Teacher Assistant of the Year

Deborah Geiger – Title One Teacher

Melissa McCallum – Fourth Grade Chairperson

Menesta Williams – Parent

Kristina Sartell – EC Teacher

Susan Copeland – Math Facilitator

Action Items/Conclusions:

Item One – School Improvement Plan

Ms. Loop, Mr. Crow, Mr. Drye and Mr. Golden will meet on the previously documented revisions to the SIP and post the revised document on the shared I drive.

Item Two – Field Day

Field Days are planned for June 1-4, 9:30 – 12:44. Ms. Ligon is the owner/coordinator of the process. Bag Lunch on your field day. Communication needs to be made to custodians for large trash bags for classrooms.

Item Three – Title One Update

Abby Boyd is our Family/School Advocate. Fourth quarter ranking of students will be done shortly. Next year, all students will qualify under Title One. Focus will be on increasing parent involvement.

Item Four – Car Rider Dismissal

Ms. Loop will identify students who are chronically late being picked up.

Developprocess for communicating with parents about late pickups.

Create flyer/document for informing parents of alternatives such as bus and After School Care.

Document and communicate expectations of staff at all duty stations, including car rider dismissal.

Item Five – In-School Suspension

Ms. Loop will add this item for discussion to our next SLT agenda.

Item 6 - 330 minutes of Instruction

Ms. Ryckman will change the television broadcast to begin at 7:20. It is expected that classroom instruction, following the NC SCOS, will begin in classrooms at 7:30 until 1:45. Mr. Drye will evaluate changes in the dismissal process to ensure the required instructional timeframe is met.

Item 7 – Entry Plan for Mr. Drye

Staff - Expect summer staff development and planning. Teachers will receive paid stipends for 1-2 weeks. Teacher evaluations are to be done by April 23.

Mr. Drye will survey teachers on their priorities. Where do we see Nathaniel Alexander in one, three, and five years? Please provide ideas about questions you would like to be asked and validated. Please email those to him. What do you want to ask him?

Item 8 – Teaching Matters

Formative Assessments showed great growth recently. Congratulations!

Agenda:

Item One - School Improvement Plan Review

There was a brief discussion on clarifying and improving the process for updating and sharing the school improvement plan document. Previous modifications discussed in SLT and documented in SLT minutes do not appear to have been incorporated into the document. Mr. Drye suggested that we maintain the School Improvement Plan document on the shared “I” drive on Nathaniel file server where all can see it and can submit suggestions for changes. Ms. Loop, Mr. Crow, Mr. Drye and Mr. Golden will meet on the revisions and post the revised document on the shared drive.

In thinking about school improvement actions, Mr. Drye noted that he does have “freedom and flexibility” as defined by Superintendent Gorman to make changes within the boundaries set by CMS District Administration.

Next meeting of the SLT committee will be on April 15 following Spring Break.

Item Two – Field Day Update

Ms. Ligon provided an example of how the proposed field days schedule would look. [See sample document file “Field Day Example 2010”] It is planned as an all day activity for classrooms with 13 stations. It will be done in 4 days with a majority and minority grade level each day.

Ms. Pace explained that her previously requested field day ofFriday had run into a conflict. That Friday is also the date of the 5th grade ball. Ms. Pace indicated any other day would work.

Mr. Hoover asked if there was any way to do it in the grass in place of the bus parking lot due to the slickness of the pavement when wet. The issue in the back field would be mud created from the water activities which would be more of a problem than the pavement.

Ms. Ifill asked about the lunch plan on those days. The plan is for the cafeteria to provide bag lunches.

Question was posed about whether a movie would be shown during lunch for the classes participating on each day. Mr. Drye asked about the type of movie…it would need to be something appropriate for the classes participating.

Mr. Hoover asked about the availability of the big, black garbage bags for the classrooms. They can be requested from the custodians. Notice needs to be given to the custodians of this need.

Mr. Drye asked about the timing ofEOG retests. Field days are the week before school lets out so there is not a conflict.

Mr. Drye asked about ownership of the Field Days, i.e, who is responsible for coordinating the activity? Ms. Ligon is the owner and coordinator of Field Days.

Field Days are planned for June 1-4, 9:30 – 12:44.

Item Three - Title One update

Ms. Geiger introduced Abby Boyd as our Family/School Advocate. Please provide any suggestions to her about ways to involve parents here at school. She is already meeting parents.

Weekly common literacy assessments are showing student growth. However, largest growth is in individual study habits, students applying themselves to learning. Ms. Geiger explained that an important objective was selling students on the fact that they are coming to school to learn. Fourth quarter ranking of students will be done shortly to identify the seventy qualifying Title One students.

Next year all students and classrooms will qualify for Title One assistance. Those plans are being worked on now for next year.

The Title One Audit went well. One item that has worked well is a strategies and goals form that the regular education teacher has been providing to the Title One teacher. This has allowed for coordinated instructional activities to meet learning objectives. Thanks to the third and fourth grade teams for their help with this.

Next year, a major focus of Title One will be on building parental involvement

Ms. Boyd, Family/School Advocate, spoke about her role and activities to date. She is working with 3rd and 4thgrade Title One students on parent involvement with student education. She sent out a flyer recently to introduce herself to families and students. She asked students to provide informationaboutthemselves and for their parents to do the same. Pizza coupons were provided for students returning the information. After one day, she received ten back. Now have about two thirds of the forms back andshe is calling the remainder of the families. She shared the example of gains that the Title One identified students are making: two students went from scores of 40 to 84 in Math and Reading! While she can not provide funding for anything outside of Title One students she is going out into the community to garner support for our school and students. Please let her know if you have situations where she can help solicit for reward items for students and she will try to help.

Item 4 - Late Pickup of Car Riders:

The team discussed the problem of car rider students not being picked up from school promptly following dismissal. It was noted that it is not always the same children, but sometimes. It was agreed that we don’t have a set process for communicating with parents about late pickups.

Mr. Drye suggested that a note be put on the front counter in the office about the expected timeframes for pickup. It is to include information about bus transportation and after school care services at Nathaniel. The communication is to be framed in helpful manner to parents to encourage resolution to the problem. Ms. Abby (School/Family Advocate) noted that she can be a conduit for touching base with the parents, in a polite way, to find out what is causing the late pickups. This communication channel with the School/Family Advocate can be a way to find out issues that we need to be aware of.

Mr. Drye noted the need to document duties and expectations of school personnel dismissal and morning arrival duty stations.

Ms. Loop, who assists with car rider dismissal,said that she would check on identifying students who are picked up late on a regular basis.

Mr. Drye discussed the sign-in process for visitors and parents to Nathaniel. All CMS personnel are to have their CMS ID displayed. All other persons on our campus must sign in on a log sheet and display a visitor’s badge. Currently many parents and visitors may or may not pick up a visitor badge and do not sign a visitor log. It is a requirement that we know who is present on our campus at all times.

A discussion was held regarding walk-in students and parents not using thecrosswalk. Mr. Drye noted that this issue will be included in an evaluation of our dismissal process.

A question was asked about ASEP (After School Enrichment Program) parents and the requirement of signing a visitor log? Are they required to have an ID on their person?

Mr. Drye noted this was a question he would discuss with Ms. Scott, ASEP director.

A question was asked about unlocked doors. Nathaniel has a very large campus with proximity to a high school and middle school. The entrance door at rear of green hall is the normal traffic avenue for students coming to and from the trailer units and are kept unlocked. Doors at the rear of the cafeteria provide access for students coming to lunch from the playground area. However, they should not be left propped open and unattended after students enter the building. Students, at no time, should be traveling outside the classroom by themselves.

Item 5 - In School Suspension

Ms. Loop asked for the groups input on adding this topic to our next meeting agenda. This was agreed to by the group. Mr. Drye noted that ISS (In-school suspension) would require personnel to staff along with a room.

Item 6 - 330 minutes of Instruction

Mr. Drye provided a form for detailing a daily classroom instructional schedule. He noted that we have control of people and time, and to a lesser degree, money.

What we do with time is a choice. CMS has a very short bell-to-bell time in which to fit the state required 330 minutes of instructional time. Dismissal currently takes 20-23 minutes of our stated instructional time at the end of the day. In the morning, instruction is not beginning until 7:45 in most classrooms resulting in 15 minutes of loss time on the front end.

He asked the SLT team to share their frustrations around instructional time constraints.

The following comments were given:

  • At the beginning of year, no firm schedule made.
  • Teachers were told to start instruction at 7:45 at one point and then the time was later changed to 7:30.
  • Our specials area times are set for 40 minutesand should be 45.
  • At the beginning of the year, special areas were not included in developing the schedule.
  • Teachers were told to be outside our classroom doors from 7:00 – 7:30. This prevents attending to and assisting students who have arrived. It was suggested that there be a rotation so not all teachers need to be in the hall. Teachers could use that time for directing students, getting them on AR (Accelerated Reader), etc. Teachers feel they are losing a large block of time that could be sent in the classroom with students.
  • Frustration was noted about late arriving students, late buses, and students coming late from breakfast.

Mr. Drye noted that we can’t penalize those who are here on time by delaying beginning instruction due to students arriving late.We should expect a late child to miss something. We must serve the ones who are in the classroom.

He is counting the number of students in the cafeteria to track how that process is working. After 7:30students are tardy.

  • Ms. Braswell, second grade chairperson, noted that the scheduling of specials, recess and lunch together for her grade level has helped eliminate transition time, especially for the second grade classes in the mobile units.
  • Ms. Sartell, EC Team chairperson, noted that all classes are scheduled with math in the morning during the same time block. EC is not supposed to pull students during math for literacy. Expectation is that the greatest need, literacy, be addressed by EC. Having all classes having math at the same time is a problem.
  • Mr. Drye noted the positive results from the recent formative assessments in math.
  • Ms. Ifill shared Kindergarten classes difficulty with specials from 9-10 and lunch at 10:00 – 10:20. Lunch has often not been ready at 10:00and due to kindergarten children’s inexperience in the cafeteria process, there are delays in getting through the line. Kindergarten legs are shorter and tightly booking specials and lunch is not a good idea.
  • Ms. Librecht seconded the difficulties of getting through cafeteria line and dealing with unrealistic start times.

Mr. Drye - Mr. Scott Muri, Northeast Regional Superintendent, expects the Gov. Village principals, all of whom are new to their schools, to work together. He said that these issues (noted above) will drive the master schedule for next year, along with the understanding that other issues may require tweaking the schedule. Mr. Drye said he is in favor of grade levels having common times for subjects in their schedule but not all grade levels doing the same subjects at the same time.

  • Ms. Pace brought up that scheduling fifth grade specials at the end of the day has created difficulties for special area teachers due to behavior issues. It may be better for fifth grade to have specials earlier. It was noted that this may be a problem with this years’ fifth grade and maybe not with the rising fourth grade class.
  • Mr. Hoover, first grade chairperson, noted that his grade level had too many transitions built into their schedule which reduced instructional time.
  • Ms. Ifill expressed concern around the dismissal process and kindergarten students short legs with so far to walk. It takes them more time to get places.

Mr. Drye asked if the location of afterschool destinations was a contributing factor to the length of time for dismissal. Could that be part of the problem?

  • Other issues expressed included:
  • Classrooms not leaving from mobile units on time.
  • Idle children waiting to be called in the classroom.
  • Crowded hallways – Are there other avenues to exit to the buses? Can more students exit from the rear of the hallways to the buses?
  • Talking in halls
  • Inconsistent dismissal procedures with halls not called on time etc.
  • Too many all-calls noted. Also too many bells.
  • No sense of urgency.

It was stated that last year seemed to run smoother with exiting of 5th grade out the back of the school to the gym. Other 5th grades on Green hall went out the back also.

Mr. Drye - What would happen if we dismissed when we are said to dismiss? He sees that no one is moving real quick. Why was the 5th grade process changed? Process changed because of the timing of 5th grade special area classes.

Mr. Drye – Beginning instruction in the morning is an easier fix. The team discussed the morning television broadcast process. The broadcast beginning after7:30 delays instruction in the morning. It was noted that the newsteam does not arrive early enough.

Problem of complexity noted. However, a lot of people don’t listen or follow the broadcast. The broadcast is not broadly valued. Ideas posed included reducing the number of times per week it is done. Mr. Drye asked if it can be done earlier.

Ms. Ryckman said that the broadcast team would like to try a start time of 7:20.

Mr. Drye – We don’t value our time between 7:30 and 7:45. We must make that time important. If teaching is started at 7:30, kids that are late put their stuff away faster.

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Ms. Abby – What are you offering them to look at in the morning broadcast? She shared that at her previous school, instructional content was provided by students, input from the Math facilitator and Literacy facilitator.

Mr. Drye - All activity between 7:30 and1:45 must be rooted in the NC SCOS (North Carolina Standard Course of Study). To include any other items in that timeframe it must be more important than anything the teacher is doing and that is rare.

Some classrooms do not have a TV which is a separate problem.

Mr. Drye – I am looking at changes which will ensure instructional time is met.