GAIT – PASS MEETING NOTES
Tuesday, November 15
6:00 – 8:00 p.m.
Main Office Conference Room

***PLEASE NOTE: The general membership of the GAIT-PASS group does not review and approve minutes. Therefore, what follows should be considered notes, and not official meeting minutes. ****

The meeting started at 6:00 with introductions. There were 11 parents and community members in attendance as well as Grandview’s principal, Dr. Lisa Sprague, and assistant principal, Trevor Watrous. Francile Beights and Chip Boykin are the parent chairs of this group.

3A/3B Update: The counting of ballots is completed and 3A/3B has been approved. The group went over the basics of both 3A and 3B and how they will/might impact Grandview and its feeder schools. Group members discussed the possibility of thanking the community for passing 3A/3B with a sign or postcards.

3B allows for the building of a new middle school in the Cherokee Trail (CT) feeder area, but does nothing to help the overcrowding at CT. The most recent information has the district trying to alleviate the CT crowding by allowing middle schoolers from Liberty to attend Grandview, even if they would have gone to CT in the past (Creekside-Liberty-CT Feeder). Letters will go home to Liberty’s current 8th graders inviting them to attend Grandview, and allowing a choice process prior to the regular open application for school of choice. A similar process will likely be happening for 8th graders at Thunder Ridge Middle School, inviting them to attend Eaglecrest. Questions were asked about the capacity of Grandview to accept additional students. It was explained that Grandview currently has just over 2,600 students with a capacity of 2,800 and still be comfortable within our current facilities, thanks to the new wing built with 2012 3B Bond money. For comparison, CT has our same floorplan and now has over 3,000 students.

School Start Times: A ConnectEd message has gone out to parents as a heads up to check their e-mails for a survey on start times. When the high school start times were moved earlier several years ago, the Board recognized that it was contradictory to the research on high-schoolers sleep needs/patterns, but that the change was necessary because of the budget shortfalls. The district now has an opportunity to revisit the issue. The district is trying to get community input to inform the Board and hopes to move forward with any changes in time for the beginning of the 2017-18 school year.

Grading Practices: About 100 parents attended the grading practices forum held October 19th. The forum lasted about 3 hours and included teachers and students answering questions in addition to the administrators. Some attendees were positive and some had concerns. There was a suggestion that grading for learning be explained to incoming parents and students as part of the information nights for incoming 9th graders.

There is a new tab called Grading for Learning on the left of the Grandview website home page with a video of the forum, FAQs, grading research and other information/resources for parents. In terms of teachers communicating their grading practices, every teacher has the percentages of how their grades are calculated on their Power School page. It was suggested that some type of educational piece/primer be devised to help parents understand how to use PowerSchool effectively; it was suggested that it is not as intuitive as one might think, particularly in light of the grading changes. Other schools are ahead of us in implementing grading for learning and some of our teachers have an opportunity to shadow teachers and ask questions at Summit High School in Breckenridge, which has been grading for learning for a while.

October Count Report: October count is the official record of the number of students at Grandview, and is used to determine the funding the building receives. On October 5th, our official student count was 2,628. The district will receive roughly $7,200 per student from the State for each student enrolled on October 5th. The group noted that the $7,200 is what comes to the district and is not the amount that comes to the school.

Grandview Parent Guide: A brainstorming guide with some ideas of what topics should be included was handed out to members. There was a suggestion that the guide be in the form of an app rather than paper to let members think on what should be included (also because the meeting time was drawing to a close). We will be sending a survey or document to the members to start narrowing down what will or will not be included in the guide’s first reiteration. The consensus was that the guide should be a living document and expand to meet the varied needs of the parent community.

Current/Upcoming Events: The group heard an update on Veterans’ Day activities and the upcoming musical Spamalot. Grandview recently hosted the Steam-a-Palooza event with more than 4,000 attendees.

General Discussion (throughout the meeting):

A member brought up an issue regarding a proposal to close certain roads to the south of Grandview. If implemented, it could hinder access to Grandview for those students residing in the areas around E-470 and the Travois area.

A member asked whether Grandview was experiencing issues around discrimination/intolerance stemming from the elections. Administrators responded that there have not been any problems that have been brought to their attention.

There was a request to make sure we are meeting the intent of PASS as part of the combined group by including Inclusive Excellence data and information on efforts as a standing/recurring part of each meeting. Our January meeting is intended to look at concurrent enrollment/AP and the related student data, so there is an opportunity to bring in the information and discussion around access and success for our students of color.

Next Meeting: January 10, 2017