Eugene IHS Site Council Minutes
Tuesday March 10, 2015 4:15-5:15
South Eugene High School, Room 538
Present: Hannah Stupasky, Wade Powell, Catrin Steckler, Lubos Hubata-Vacek, David Inouye, Janell Schoellhorn, Jessica Schabtach, Amy Duncan, Deon Saraceno, Lisa Joye, Brian Kuzma, Mike Speiser, Lloyd Madden
Convener: Catrina Steckler
Recorder: Lisa Joye
Minutes from the previous meeting were reviewed. Lacking a quorum, the group was unable to approve them officially.
Old/New Business: No new business.
Reports:
Students: Crewneck IHS Sweatshirts are selling like hot cakes! 40 sold within 2 days. More maroon crewnecks coming. Making a profit for the first time.
Elections for next year’s IHS student government will be held this upcoming Sunday March 15th @ 3:30 during the IHS student government meeting, South Eugene High School, room 538
Ultimate Frisbee Tournament for the IHS students will move ahead and take place on June 6th, 2015.
Parents:Next upcoming general Parent Group meeting on Monday March 16th @ 7:00pm at the Ed Center at the District Office. There will be a meeting after site council today to discuss Parent Group organization.
Janell Schoellhorn is organizing the CAS fair. 15 volunteer groups so far.
Staff: There is a guest, Gail Tsukiyama, the author of Samurai’s Garden,coming to present to IHS 9th graders on March 18th. All 9th graders will be bused to Sheldon. There will be one presentation by the author in the morning, and one in the afternoon. There were some extra slots made available for Sophomores, Juniors, and Seniors so there will be a full house for the afternoon presentation. All 9th grade Literature classes wrote questions for Gail. There may be two small sessions after the larger sessions for one on one/ small group conversations with the author.
Amy D. and Joanne H., two IHS teachers, went to Minneapolis for IB training.
Amy reported that Joanne was feeling very excited about the upcoming IB History Curriculum changes and she will have a lot to bring back to the staff.
Amy attended a session surrounding upcoming CAS changes and found the CAS focus “wonderfully human.” Amy is encouraged about the upcoming changes that will take place with CAS. The CAS fair is an excellent example of something we will have to submit as evidence of building culture and community with CAS.
Jessica reported that there will be a grading day on Thursday March 12th for staff. Friday March 13th, there will be 5 ½ hours of staff development and 2 ½ hours of planning time. The staff will discuss the IB History curriculum restructure, and Smarter Balanced testing.
2015-2016 Enrollment Projections: Jessica handed out IHS Projections and Enrollment Information. School funding is largely based on student enrollment. From year to year the school district makes predictions on enrollment using the averages over the last three years to make their predictions on next year’s enrollment. Jessica went over the handout with the group. She explained that Exhibit A is the district’s projections…this information will largely determine our funding for next year. We usually compare the projections with the amount of students that we currently have “in seats.” Exhibit B: is the current total enrollment as of 2-6-2015. The numbers for next year look larger than this year, and that is good for us, the funding for next year looks solid and will not be lower than this year. Exhibit C: Current Enrollment vs Projections. Exhibit D is the best one to look at for the truest projections of next year’s numbers. The enrollment number for next year looks like 1,018 total students.
Amy asked why the difference between 994 and 1018 in Exhibit D for the total projections…Jessica said that it was talked about with Marilyn and at the staff meeting…the difference is found in a variety of small places….there tends to be some spots were there are bubbles higher and lower here and there….however these numbers are not looking wildly off…another way to think about that 1018 number…it would be hard for us to have more students enrolled than that next Fall.
Jessica explained that this if the first phase for planning for next year. Next, we make predictions about staffing allocations, how much FTE we have, and how we distribute that FTE among campus and class sizes. We have a number of temporary employees who are unable to be placedinto our staffing plan, but who are eligible to apply to any open positions within the district.
Finalized IB Language and Assessment Policies:
Jessica wants to bring to Site Council the final Language Policy and Assessment Policy Process and Action Plans. Two areas were identified as needing to be addressed after the formal IB review. They were the Language Policy and the Assessment Policy. Both policies, after being restructured, were submitted to IB a few weeks ago and we should be hearing back from IB anyday regarding whether they accept these new versions. Jessica wanted to share these two documents with Site Council because they are not plans that “will just sit in a drawer”, rather they should be living, breathing documents that are talked about, discussed and put into everyday practice in IHS.
Jessica opens the discussion to specifically talk about the parts of the documents titled: Actions for the Future. Lloyd asks if the policies are online and Jessica says that they are not at this time. No one has any concerns, additions, or comments about the Actions for the Future.
Smarter Balanced Update: Jessica says that all of our Juniors will be doing interim testing to understand how the interface will work for Smarter Balanced testing and how the actual test will look. The hope is that students will be better prepared after interim testing to take it in the spring. IHS teachers are being trained to administer the test and the first round of training takes place on Friday.
Brian reminds the group that we chose to do the interim testing for our Juniors to allow them to be as prepared as possible. Then Jessica reminded us that Sheldon made the interim testing mandatory and that we then felt we should offer the interim test to all students in IHS.
Meeting adjourned.