SSC Meeting 1-12-2010

No need to create new Balanced Score Card (BSC) – we can monitor and attempt to implement goals from the current BSC

For next meeting – read contents of Pink folder (Balanced Score Card & Budget Summary) – and come back with questions/comments. 

Discussion about how BSC was created during last school year, and how to implement its goals.

Discussion about budget challenges, and in particular about the challenges of health care costs in the creation of the budget, and the framework/district average costs associated with these costs.

We won’t know next year’s budget until after 1/26/10 when Principals meet with the Superintendent.

Presentation by William about Claire Lilienthal, including demographic and historic data.

Discussion about student ethnic representation, in particular the decrease of African American students, and by extension, the effort to control enrollment through student vacancies and much communication with the Education Placement Center.

Kindergarten class sizes were increased to 22 students to maintain this year’s budget; increased class sizes could create problems later, in 4th grade when class sizes increase.

Discussion about test scores, and the breakdown according to various factors.

Discussion about English Language Learners, about their increase in the lower grades, and how to best support them.

Discussion about Everyday Math and how students were successful in last year’s tests – skills are integrated and used throughout the year, and the curriculum is more interactive.  It will be interesting to see what happens as the Everyday Math curriculum continues.

Question about how CL compares with various sub-groups in other schools, but Sang-Yeon noted that our African American sub-group, while they did better than other schools, that improvement and narrowing the achievement gap is still a very important goal.

Discussion about achievement change for various students.  Data includes special education students if they did not take the test without any modifications.

CL began to identify the students who were below proficient to try to better support them through partnering with their teachers, families and after-school support program.  

How do we interpret the test data?  What does it tell us and what does it not?

Questions about the meaning of the Socio-Disadvantaged grouping.

Gloria noted that testing, while important for assessment, is just one benchmark of what students are learning in school.

CL has never had special funding for lower achieving students, only students who have an IEP.  However, unofficially through our school partnerships with parents and the school community CL is able to help “at –risk” students.  The resource teachers help students beyond who has an IEP designation.   Also, Bryn is the school’s Learning Support Professional, which is funded through the district, which helps students who have socio/emotional issues, and is a huge support to the school.

Questions about how to evaluate and measure the BSC goals?  How do we measure “Joyful Learners” for example?  How do we measure success beyond looking at test scores?

Community meeting schedule?  Parent Survey through Survey Monkey.  Also, make sure to survey the students as well, along the Café Conversations model.

Student focus groups should be broken down according to natural age groups, K-2, 3-5, 6-8.

Next meeting:

What other kinds of assessments are we going to use beyond CST data to identify if “joyful learning” is occurring?

Assessing student input/voice to joyful learning.

Creating parent/student surveys.

Next meeting:  Tuesday, February 9th – 5:15 p.m.

GATE Parent Meeting, March 11th – discuss GATE issues at March SCC meeting?