Hale Site Council

Date January 14, 2019

Time 4:30 – 6:00 pm

Location Hale School – Ms. Tapia’s Room 217

Attendees Hale Parents Kelli Abar John Farrell Leah Spafford Omar Mark Darst Rice Jessica Tupper (Community Rep) Kristy Wesson (co-chair) Greta Wicker (Communications) Stef Thompson (PTA rep) Andrew Williams (WE Committee)

Staff Kristi Alman (co-chair) Kristin Dingfelder (Minneapolis Kids) Dr. Ryan Fitzgerald Julie Peterson Liz Roth Evelyn Tapia Steve Uhler

Topic Owner

Principal Updates / News ESSA update: (see December 2018 notes for basic info) Scooter City night about 40-50 parents were brought into conference room and participated in the evaluation activity. Those parents were not very representative of the target audience. Discovered that lots of families are unclear what ESSA is. Admin decided Holiday Helper event was not an appropriate venue for engaging families. After dot activity, narrowed down to 3 challenges: 1) Literacy challenges for Benefit Eligible students

2) Kindergarten literacy assessment 3)Math literacy for high risk students …based on FAST test 80% at risk did not make yearly growth District Reps (Ron Wagner, Sarah Nagli) worked with ILT to work on Root Cause Analysis to identify:

a clear definition of what the components of each challenge are

what additional training is needed

what’s the due process to implement changes Deadline: March 1st next year’s SIP needs to be entered into the portal

Ryan

What’s next: 1) Set SMART goals 2) Initiative inventory 3) Select school evidence-based strategies

Reminder that this is a 3-year process. Currently in WHY stage…Solution/Implementation stages and changes will begin in Year 2.

Stakeholder involvement is done—there may be parent engagement later in the 3-year process, including a possible family engagement worksheet—

How do we get these worksheets turned in by the targeted audience?

Concern that the very people we need info from may be the people we are not able to get to turn in the worksheet. List of students who don’t turn in can be available.

District limits how we communicate with the target audience…basically, there’s no way for us to access our at-risk populations. We’ve been directed to avoid segmented outreach. Why both addressing/identifying Root Causes without being able to communicate or engage with those families we wish to help? Hopeful that process will still be valuable for awareness…but does pose a challenge for providing specific, helpful attention. Need to talk to other districts about how THEY tackle these communication issues…particularly SpecEd directors. NEED SOMEONE TO ACCEPT THIS TASK Who coordinates ESSA? MPS Dept of REAA…Interim Director of Accountability and Evaluation: Lizzie McNamara James Gleckner (Evaluation Specialist—School Improvement) came to W.E. committee meeting to discuss engagement opportunities. Can we find out which other non-Title 1 schools have the same challenges/concerns? Possibly Kenwood? How are they communicating/engaging? Admin and Social Worker (RF, SU, JP) are making targeted calls to all students who have accrued 200+minutes of unauthorized absences. So what is Hale doing now for some of our targeted populations:

Free breakfast in AM

Lunch groups with kids of color

Intervention Team (RF, JP, SU, Medora Schou—Engagement Specialist/AE) makes calls to families regarding attendance, behavior management

MTSS—academic concerns and tracking ***some students overlap but not all***

Imagination Lab Update Open House 4-7pm February 21st Room 205 Used money from Spring Fundraiser to create a 21st century learning space for teachers to check out for project-based activities (using google calendar for room reservations) Have robotics, legos, building materials, ipads, hope to get a 3-D printer Ms. Johnson will lead Professional Development

ALL

Hale/Field Collaboration What can we do as a site council to build a collaborative partnership and transition from Hale to Field? What can we do as a school? We definitely need to BRIDGE THE GAP Are we acting as “one school two campuses”??? Many parents don’t understand how to prepare for middle school—Field PTA will work to add more parent info to the spring orientation…have an academic component and parent forum. Encourage parent discussions/meetings. Continue principal meetings. Start sending MS info to 4th graders earlier. Friday parent forum once a month, back-n-forth between schools like 4 years ago.

How do academics transfer?…Telescoped Math programming? See below.

New Business/Items for Discussion Field Math vs . Telescoped Math At Hale, 4th grade Telescoped Math started 4 years ago with students in 3rd grade MCA scores in 9th stanine and some students in 7th/8th stanine recommended through teacher eval and student surveys-- goal is to reach students who would benefit from harder math and boost underrepresented students. 1st year had 1 class of 4th graders, last three years have had 2 classes. Parents have questioned why Telescoped Math is not continued at Field. Field has explained at orientations that instead of Telescoped Math, all students complete the Field Math sequencing. Field Math has been its own thing (all kids accelerated 1 year by the end of 8th grade) and Field administrators have shared that their data supports the Field Math program as very successful. During this programming, all students are pre-tested for each unit and then differentiation is given to students who already exhibit understanding of unit being taught. Differentiation and Extended math is assessed and taught for each lesson.

ALL

This year, the district told Field they must implement District Telescoped Math, so current 5th graders have 2 regular Field math classes and 2 Telescoped Math classes. Now District is telling Field admin that Field Math will be discontinued and only Telescoped Math and grade level math will be administered. Concerns:

1) Is acceleration really what students need? How about a deeper understanding of math/critical thinking/application of math skills?

2) Can Field continue Field math without Telescoped Math? Can Hale offer different advanced math opportunities?

WHAT WE NEED:

Update from district on policy…and why this is changing now.

Parent forum with admins from BOTH schools—we are a PARTNERSHIP. Hale needs to support Field and understand community concerns, not just implement district policy without a joint understanding

Action Items/Owner:

Ryan: set up Parent Forum with Field in re: Field/Telescoped Math

Send out info to parents after District meeting…ASAP

Steve: copies of SC minutes in/outside office

John: summary?

Kristy: February agenda

Greta: send notes to PTA for newsletter

NEED AN OWNER: check with other districts about how handling communication with target audiences/SpecEd coordinators, etc.