SIT Minutes February 24, 2014

Members Present: B. Parker, A. Miller (for M. Mariano), K. Himes, G. Perry, D. Groce, M. Palmer, J. Patterson, L. Duffey, and Parent Representative T. Anderson

Agenda Items

Professional Development Request

Fourth grade requested approval for different teachers to attend two conferences. Three requests were made for the “Teach Like a Rock Star” conference to be held in Charlotte on March 24. One request was made for a teacher to attend “The Incredible Flexible You” conference in Raleigh on March 27 and 28.

The team felt these were exciting and worthwhile conferences and wanted to open this opportunity up to teachers in Kindergarten, Second grade, and our Specialists. (These are the teams whose turn it is to attend professional development opportunities during this school year.)

Motion by Patterson (second by Perry) to give each of these teams a chance to review these conferences and see if any of its members want to participate. Members are to notify Patterson by Friday of the interest level among their peers.

At that time, a decision will be made as to who will attend these workshops.

Working Conditions Survey

Miss Duffey shared the results of the in-house staff survey recently conducted. Sixty teachers responded. (The district survey will be sent out sometime in March with a window closing sometime in April.)

Several areas of concern were noted. REMEMBER: Our responses should reflect what can be controlled within the walls of J. R. Ingram, not what we are asked to do by Central Office or the state. The number of teachers that disagreed with the following statements is reflected.

  1. SIT members must be elected – 10 teachers disagreed

This is a misunderstanding. SIT members are not elected nor are they appointed by our principal or assistant principal. Typically, the SIT team member is the grade level chair who is chosen by those grade levels teachers.(The member may be someone else in the grade level.) The grade level chair is decided upon at the end of the year for the upcoming year through discussion among the teachers. New teachers or teachers switching grade levels are not usually asked to serve in this capacity. All experienced teachers, however, can expect to assume this role so no one teacher is overtaxed.

  1. Teachers are protected from duties that interfere with their role as educators. – 15 teachers disagreed

Grade level chairs will discuss this with their team. SIT is interested to know what specific duties teachers feel are keeping them from focusing on instructional activities. Teachers do not have car or lunch duty. Teachers volunteer to assist on cold weather days. PEP’s, reports, testing (such as MCLASS) are requirements beyond the control of our school. Our frustration with these areas should not be reflected in our response to this question.

  1. Discipline – all questions concerning discipline received higher response numbers than desired. These included students following rules of conduct and school administration consistently administers discipline. SIT members felt that communication, specifically, follow up, was lacking.

IPADS

Grade level chairs will discuss with their teams the applications they would like loaded on the mini IPADS for use in the classroom. Discussion was held regarding a schedule for their use. Each grade level would have an assigned day and time to use the Ipad cart (soon to be received from West Lee). Teachers would then decide among themselves who would use the technology on their assigned day.

There being no further business the meeting was adjourned by Patterson.

Debra Groce

Secretary