Agenda approved. Minutes approved with correction to the number of AVID classes.
Open Forum and Correspondence
There were no visitors at the meeting. Staff cluster groups submitted email to the effect of requesting access to detailed information from the recent surveys rather than only summaries. S.Barbarasch agreed to do so, with specific names being removed from the comment sections for privacy reasons. The surveys will be located at the front office and may be viewed in the conference room there.
The PTA will vote on a new slate of officers for school year 2006-7 on May 11th.
The Town Fair was held on the past Saturday and was very successful.
De-stress week will be held next week and will have noontime activities each day except Wednesday, prizes given at random and a "battle of the bands" event.
There was an elections event meeting held today and there is at least one person running for each seat, some have multiple people. The election will be held at the end of May for current sixth and seventh graders to vote on their next year's officers for seventh and eighth grades.
There will be several more meetings held this year to discuss the budget, what to do differently next year, how to eliminate more expense, etc.
The District Operations Supervisor, Chuck McDonnell, spoke to the Council regarding a Pilot Program for new safety features at three sites in the district, PALY, GUNN and JORDAN. It is recommended that each school install video cameras in select areas on each campus to test crime deterrence and prosecution. The cameras will record and store information for a given period of time wherein a theft, vandalism or other serious crime would be captured and could be reviewed if reported in a timely manner. The areas will be the bike racks, the snack bar and possibly other areas but not classrooms or locker rooms.
Installation of higher fences around bike racks and eliminating one entrance to each bike area will prevent easy access to the bikes left during the day/after school while students attend sports and other organized activities.
Additional exterior lighting, including motion detectors will be installed around the campus.
Keycard systems will be installed for rooms with valuable items, and gyms where there have been incidents of vandalism. The goal of this program is to make the schools safer for students, staff, parents and property.
The Council voted unanimously to allow the District to implement this Pilot Program solely for the purposes of deterring and prosecuting theft and vandalism. In the event there is a grave circumstance captured by the security camera, the Principal of Jordan shall present the situation to the Site Council for its consideration to allow providing the recording of such event to authorities as needed. The Jordan Site Council will oversee the use of any recordings on campus by any security devices.
The Surveys were finished and over four hundred parents, seven hundred kids and fifty-five teachers took their assigned surveys.
The Social Norm's information will be distributed to the students in their advisories this week and at the PTA meeting tomorrow evening. The information shows an improvement in the gap between what students say they do or don't do, and what they believe to be the situation at their school. This is the case across all middle schools in the District. The high schools in the District have a much lower percentage of students believing in the results of the social norms surveys.
The District will no longer offer Japanese I next year due to lack of enrollment. Policy requires enrollment of twenty or more and only sixteen students signed up. While there is much discussion in the District by parents wanting more language courses to be available, not enough sign up to warrant it. The Japanese II course scheduled for next year will be held however, since the commitment was for two years for those students. The other language courses will be one class of French and three classes of Spanish. A parent of a student enrolling in Japanese Ia would like to be in contact with other parents interested in an extra-curricular Japanese class and any interested parents may contact the Principal's Office to get connected for this purpose.
ACS has a new summer counseling program being offered.
2006-07 SLIP Budget for potential expenditures was discussed and unanimously approved by the Council as follows:
Salary for Computer Lab Tech. $25,666
Salary for 1 period Math teacher 14,889
(for Math Workshop)
Library Allocation 700
AddŐl period of a support class 18,000
Student Award supplies 1,500
Gym murals supplies 2,800
SEBI ideas were discussed without resolution except for the approval of the mural supplies budget for the two gym locker areas
An additional meeting was agreed upon for the Council to discuss the survey results in detail and the school plan. The meeting will be held June 6th for one hour from 3:30-4:30.
S.Barbarasch presented the Council members with lovely house plants in thanks for the job done over the course of the year, which were much appreciated.
Meeting was adjourned.