January 2015 SIT Meeting

Members Present:

Douglass
Downs
Eisebacher
Gardner
Gentry
Griffin, Brian
Halverstadt
Jones, Julie
Martin, Jennifer
Miller
Turner (for Sherman)
Thorne
Turner
Young

SIT Chair -- Miller:

Gentry on the Staff Survey:

• Delayed—is not quite ready to go, but Gentry will make it happen very soon wants it to tie to data on school improvement plan

AP process update:

• We were walked through a process prior to now and still working out the kinks in this process
• The new process (not in writing) has been commonicated in  different ways
• We have now been approached with the potential of  having an interim in place for Cole who is retiring in March
• This is despite what HR has said about the process
• We also may have an opportunity to bring in a specific interim
• There are people on staff who know him and speak highly of him, so that is good
• This person is pro middle school and pro kids
• With Dr. Emory’s blessing, we can have stability coming in the door for the last four months of the year and would require less training. 
• With SIT’s blessing then Gentry will close the books on this and he could come in soon and sub even before Cole leaves.
• We would still go through the interview process in June and this person could be eligible for the hiring process

Any questions for Gentry?

• Everyone was in agreement for bringing the interim on.

Signed Progress report issue?

• Some teachers require a parent signature when a child’s grade is below a certain level.  But some parents would like to have the hard copy to keep.
• What can we do? Go back and have conversations with your groups with suggestions for handling this?
• Give teachers  a couple of choices?  Discuss feedback at the next SIT meeting.

Review of the SIT plan

• SIT plan review teams have been establisged by the district and they have an evaluative rubric for  our plan which will be graded
• We will then be visited by a review team
• They will be looking for things like:
• Measurable goals?
• Who was involved in the SIT plan process? (inclusive?)
• Because of this, we need to review and see how much of our plan is actually in practice, 
• What can we measure at this point?  
• Over the next couple of meetings, we will go through goal by goal and then express any concerns about the different goals.

Here's an example:  School priority Goal 1:  reading proficiency

• Any of the strategies not really happening?
• LEP plans?  Yes—Melissa Jackson is working on and are similar to IEP plans
• Mentoring program?
• Came to a standstill back in the fall –A meeting took place but the transportation piece fell through from the grant group.
• Central office met with the group and asked them to come back with another proposal and Gentry will be hearing from them soon.
• EC concerns:  Robin asked that the 7^th grade teams contact her since they missed a Dec meeting.
• Classroom walk through data has not really been provided because of difficulty with the reports
• If there are things we need to tweak (add or remove) then we can send in a revision and may have to respond to several things on the rubric.
• Bring SIT plan to future meetings for further review