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The Next Generation: Our Kids, Our Community
Advisory Committee Meeting
February 21, 2007
Meeting Notes
Committee Members in Attendance:
Darby Brown, Jeremy Buss, Phyllis Carlson, Cheri Carson, Chris Carte, Ron Flint, Clay Good, Alberta Jones, Jackie Kookesh, Tracy Kubley, Gary Lehnhart, Nia Maake, Sarah Marino, Haley Nelson, Joe Nelson, Bill Ralston, Destiny Sargeant, Bernie Sorenson, Roberta Stell, Teri Tibbett, Charla Wright
Goals for the Meeting:
o Continue to create a sense of community within the Advisory Committee
o Clarify task and understand ingredients for creating proposals
o Increase understanding of best practices for high school education
o Generate questions for principal hiring process
o Create themes from community forum process
Clarifying the Task and Process Next Steps:
The meeting began with a diagram clarifying the process that the Advisory Committee will go through during the next two months in order to present a proposal to the School Board in May. The website was shown to remind members of the vast amount of information available for the committee and general public to look at and study in order to go forward in this process. The next steps include the following:
1. Complete tonight’s tasks of increasing understanding of best practices and studying community forum input in order to look for themes and commonalities in the responses.
2. Preparing for the upcoming workdays by reading/studying information that has been presented and the information available on the website.
3. Two full workdays next week will be devoted to developing belief statements and creating proposals.
4. A second set of community forums will be held in March to gather input on the proposals.
5. The committee will again study community input and responses in order to narrow the selection to one proposal.
6. A proposal presentation will be made to the School Board on May 15th.
Ingredients for Creating Proposals:
In order to create a proposal, Dave discussed the ingredients that must be included in the decision making process. In addition to the ingredients listed below, Bernie will share with the group the work that JDHS has done during the past year that should also be considered as we make a decision.
-->Community Forums/Input
-->Best Practices Research
-->Data and Implications
-->School District Goals and Strategic Plan
-->Personal Perspectives and Beliefs
-->Perspectives of Constituency Group
Best Practices:
Committee members returned to the Best Practice small groups that they worked in during the January 24th meeting. They were given the task of reviewing responses to questions that were sent out to members. Then they were asked to report out on their discussion.
Group 1:
- Breaking Ranks is a set of strategies, not a model. It’s about a structure that we put strategies into.
- What ever is chosen must be inclusive of all strategies that are a part of the research based model.
- We need to compare across models to include essential items.
Group 2:
- What is important is personalization, relationships, (smaller schools), cluster choices/real world, staff development, rigor/integrated options for all, we are interested in exploring career clusters
Group 3:
- Can have rigor in any model
- Models don’t compete with each other
- Connections include flexibility, choices, relationships, and rigor
- This group interested in theme and learning styles rather than career choice
- Can choose between four themed schools (5 themed choices)
- Fits Juneau’s frontier spirit
- Could have more than one theme in each school
- It’s about choice
- Like Mapleton and Indiana Careers
- Please staff and give them choices
- Choice will help diminish split in community
- Students liked the feel of the course fair because they like choice
- Implement pieces
Group #4:
- Best teaching practices are key—worry about changing teaching practices, not just the structure of the day
- Flexibility
- Buy-in
- Expand schoolhouse walls-use the community—host MAT students—use UAS to make teaching public with an audience
- Vocational—beyond school walls
- Liked the ideas of Breaking Ranks
- Advisories and personalization—Yakoose—staff go through all students weekly, and students know they’re care for
- Release time is crucial
- Collaboration/team building/all students are know well/no one is invisible
- Use peer observation model for collaboration and improvement in teaching
- Everyone included
Principal Selection Process:
Committee members were asked to indicate if they would be interested in participating in the principal hiring process. The superintendent will select the interview committee from volunteers. It is anticipated that this process will take 8-10 hours.
The committee was then asked to generate potential questions to be used during the hiring process. The drafts of potential questions follow:
1. How do you ensure that your staff makes sure none of their students are invisible?
2. What unique qualifications do you present as an applicant for this position?
3. Describe your views on the relevance of athletics and other extra-curricular activities in the school setting.
4. What models of teacher evaluation and teacher improvement programs do you support or recommend?
5. Tell us about a success when you were charged with bringing together diverse interests in achieving a common goal.
6. What are the ways you and your staff address the achievement gap with various groups in your school (AN Students, ELL, FRL, Sped)?
7. How do you connect and socialize with your students?
8. How will you integrate yourself into a process already in motion?
9. What experience do you have with high school reform?
10. How do you go about making choices for students?
11. What is your weakness?
12. What is your connection to Juneau, and can you handle the rain?
13. What CD is in your car right now?
14. How much do you know about the history and culture of this state?
15. What unique talents do you bring?
16. Qualities: Facilitation skills, collaboration, ability to bring groups together
17. Give/describe a real example of when you brought two, diverse groups together.
18. How do you feel about ambiguity in your job as principal?
19. How do you facilitate a continuous improvement process? How do you involve staff, students, and community?
20. How do you involve students?
21. Give an example of staff development that you’ve already done that improved quality of instruction.
22. If we asked a student, what would he/she say about you?
23. How do you involve parents and community in school?
24. What is your knowledge of best practices and how do you stay current?
25. What is your knowledge and experience in working with career tech and working with community based groups?
26. Describe how you have dealt with equity and racism.
27. How do you feel about the value of discipline grids?
28. What is your experience with small learning communities or theme/career academy structures?
29. What is your philosophy of what a diploma means, and does everyone deserve one?
30. What is your background/experience with distributed leadership models?
31. How do you make the teacher evaluation process hands on and a process of continuous learning (e.g. peer observation, student feedback with focus on best practices)?
32. What the top three priorities for you as a principal?
33. How do you interact and become involved with students?
34. What is the demographic mix of schools you came from, and how did you work with them?
35. What are your individual strengths/weaknesses, and what makes you the best?
Creating Themes from the Community Forum Process:
The committee moved into three groups in order for each group to study one of the questions that has been asked at the Community Forums. After reading the comprehensive documents, group spent time discussing commonalities that they had seen in the responses.
1. Describe the learning environment you DON’T want to see in high schools:
- Inequality
- Limited choice
- Lack of rigor
- Competitive schools
- Unengaged/invisible kids
- Not recognizing varied learning styles
- Racism/bullying/discrimination
- Open Campus
- Disengaged—have and have nots
- Homework for homework’s sake
- Tracking/social engineering
- Any child to fail
- Learning confined to classrooms
- Limited choices and lack of spaces in AP classeso
- Poor teachers
2. Describe the learning environment you want to see in high schools:
- Flexibility and choices
- Safe environment--kid centered—positive
- Small class sizes
- Quality Food
- Guidance—counselors and mentors for each student
- Peer role-modeling
- One school with two campuses
- Divide schools as 9/10 and 11/12
- Equity in all areas
- Vocational interests
- Extra-curricular activities
- Adult/teacher/community involvement
- Enthusiasm for learning
- Model after Yaakoosge
- Building relationships
- Life skills
- Challenging courses
- Parents feel welcomed
- Updated resources and technology
- Staff support
- Qualified staff
3. Describe your student when he/she graduates from high school:
- Confident
- College-ready
- Self-sufficient
- Happy
- Being a good citizen
- Ethical
- Compassionate
- Positive attitude about high school experience
- Wide range of expectations for graduates
- Prepared and ready for the future—to go in any direction of their choice
- Curious
- Life-long learners
- Goal setters
- Thankful for knowledge gained from high schools
- Critical thinkers and problem solvers
- Choices
- Acquired basic core knowledge: read, write, compute, economic literacy
- Care about themselves and others
- Resilient
- Risk taker
- Leave high school with plan for next steps
- Varied experiences leading to career
- Culturally respectful
- Global awareness
- Healthy and drug free
After sharing these lists, committee members were then asked to begin developing common themes:
- Students engaged
- High expectations for all students
- Equality between schools
- Relationships
- Quality teachers
- Staff support
- Small environment
- 9/10—11/12
- Recognize the importance of athletics/activities
- Importance of vocational/technical education
- Students are confident
- Students are college ready
- Students are compassionate
- Students have the skills to be successful
NEXT MEETING:
March 2nd and 3rd are two full workdays. We will meet from 8:30-4:30 each day, and lunch will be provided. In order to prepare for these workdays, please review materials and the website information. Come prepared to be engaged in conversation that will lead to the initial proposal
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