Minutes from 01/19/21 Meeting

 HiCap Parents Council Meeting

via Zoom
Jan 19, 2021

10:00 am – 12:00 pm

 

1.    Recap from high school meeting this morning with RAS & Chris Bigelow

a.    Amity acknowledged council for preparing slides.

b.    Austina summarized presentation and would share with us later. 

c.     Successive discussion from council: Students rely on peers, friends for course or catalog. They should be more informed.

d.    Amity mentioned the biggest concern is time, need to find out time for how to broadcast these catalog or course info to teachers.

e.    Council suggested how to proceed the course catalog: get syllabus and contents from all four high schools; make differences visible; summarize contents.

f.      Council suggestion: course catalog declaration need to be done without writing down. More progress or great changes are expected. systematic way is suggested for review. It is needed to make principals be aware of this conversation and bring this discussion to table.

g.    Amity reply: course difference highlighted helps; ask to get substantial change done; ask what is meaningful to parents; will go back to talk to principals and won’t involve them in the last minute. 

 

2.    Amity updates on assessment & screening plan for this year

a.    6th & 7th is 60% done.

b.    5th grade should be done by mid-February. 

c.     Referred 4th grade students, possibly online. 

d.    Early elementary plan. There are no lower level graders conversation yet.

e.    Results will be available after everyone is done.

f.      Figured out how to do emails/letters with student name!

 

3.    Grading guidance to teachers

a.    Amity will meet teachers tomorrow, send grades to students. Scoring is based on standards, i.e., 4th-grade is scored on 6th-grade base. Will send out one page guidance on why scoring is this way. Grade level report card is explained.

 

4.    Single-qualified math program

a.    First unit learnings

b.    Parent night tonight with tips, grading, Q&A 5:30-6:30pm. 

c.     Amity & Austina presentation online: https://www.withunderstandingcomescalm.com/lets-talk-2e-2/

 

5.    Temperature check on online learning, how’s it going?

a.    Academic aspect from council: Both my students enjoy online meeting. they love it and share with others. My students love iReady. Both kids find way to pull things together. Prodigy is good.

b.    Academic aspect from council: My kids do not like iReady. Because it needs to read it again.

c.     Academic aspect from council: Prodigy keep my kids busy. Kids need parents to complete their learning. Parents are suspending 2/3 for learning service.

d.    Some council thinks math from prodigy is so many. Some wish kids learn independently.

e.    Academic aspect from council: My daughter gets bored; she wishes to choose any topic. Some of my students are missing classes. They are struggling. iReady is painful. One cannot finish. It is lucky to have everything done in a half day. Online learning is not a good experience to my kids.

f.      Academic aspect from council: I have 4th and 8th grade students. 4th grade student has challenging time to learn online. Learning online is not engaging. Playing guitar is more engaged. Physically assisted learning is more helpful.

g.    Academic aspect from council: I have 2nd and 4th graders. It is impressive on 2nd graders learning. 4th graders cannot catch up async tasks. Both teachers be aware of one to one meetings to check if all assignments are done or not. They need to adapt to online learning and need more assistance from teachers.

h.    Social aspect from council: My kids are missing the chance to talk to friends. They are interested in this topic. Then they have meeting room to talk friendship.

i.      Engagement aspect from council: in high school, lots of students have no cameras. It makes it to feel odd to have only two cameras on. The kids’ classroom would be more engaging if more cameras are on. It might be a good idea to find the balance between learning and social aspects in order to engage kids for more.

j.      Social aspect from council: I have high school students, it sucks. And it is not going on well. 6th graders did not do anything. 8-graders have hard time. It is hard for them to do things right emotionally.

k.     Suggestion to fix social issues in online learning: join club. 

l.      Engagement aspect from council: school chrome book doesn't allow students to do more interesting things. chrome book block and isolate kids' engagement. 

 

6.    High school registration

a.    The time and date info have been discussed by council.

 

7.    Council questions / updates:

a.    Library: library upgrades for EAP sites?

                                      i.     Question from council: nobody know what book to borrow for kids from library.

                                    ii.     Suggestion from council: generate a list for EAP kids from library.

                                   iii.     Question from council: Should kids reading rely on teachers or PTS? Or wondering which group should be relied on?

                                   iv.     Answer from council: PTA don't give a lot help. Some Librarian helps before. But now it is harder in pandemic time than usual. We have to train kids to get books.

                                    v.     Insightful observation from council: 2nd or 3rd graders have book check out limitation. Library solution is not very helpful. I volunteer in library for 3 years. It is challenging for kids to have solution or policy for kids to borrow higher level books.

                                   vi.     Suggestion from council: Kids needs freedom to get more engagement. Library books reading help kids to protect their eyes.

                                 vii.     Amity replied to take a look for this library reading issue.

                                viii.     Austina summary: this topic is great for it was brough up never before; it is great for Amity to work on.

 

8.    Austina shared the presentation slides

a.    Contents include EAP student’s ratio, history of universal screening, results and so on.

b.    Amity explained why some families did not accept EAP program: one reason is that two forms are confusing. Parents thought they have accepted, but actually they did not. Another reason is they are concerned to move site. After explaining they have option not to move. they accepted eventually.

 

9.    Parents-Only Meeting

a.    Lauren shared the budget this year. There is no individual donation this year. The main issue is that we have about $240 short this year.

b.    Council discussed ideas on how to broadcast for people to donate: ask PTSA to use newsletter to broadcast; mail chimp letter inserted with pay-pal option for donation. 

c.     Next Step: survey tool; Jasmine will draft a letter.

Minutes from 12/01/20 Meeting

      HiCap Parents Council Meeting

via Zoom
December 01, 2020

1:00 pm – 3:00 pm

 

1.    Updates on assessment & screening plan for this year

a.    Assessments are currently taking place, though not simultaneously.  So it is important for families to know that assessments will happen in their schools just not all at the same time.  Communication being worked out.

b.    Devices are currently being delivered given that old chrome books need to be updated in order to take the NNAT 3. 

c.     Currently, there is no timeline for kindergarten to 4th grade. 

 

2.    Services to Math Single Qualified Students

a.    Implementation of EDGENUITY is an overall success.

b.    258 elementary students are being accelerated though EDGENUITY; only 4 students chose not to continue. Currently, 4 teachers are meeting with these students.

c.     Some students enjoy this program, some students are struggling, and some are working through it 

d.    A positive side effect of remote learning is that in online learning, students can join their appropriate Math level (a different class.) 

 

3.    Cathi Davis: Ruby Bridges

a.    There are 460 student at Ruby Bridges:

1.    112 students: holistic/single/EAP = 24% of the school

2.    2^nd through 5^th is 22%

b.    Implemented ‘Walk-to-Math’ online:

                                      i.     6 students in 2^nd grade join the 2^nd grade EAP class for Math

                                    ii.     12 students in 4^th grade join the 4^th grade EAP class for Math

c.     ELA Challenge: text more advanced than Benchmark or others. It is working well for EAP learners. 

d.    To further support students and to create community (for example, ‘buddy program’, lunch room, etc.) schedule has proven to be a challenge.  In January, they may have a new schedule that can support this effort. 

e.    Feedback from a parent: 

                                      i.     Grateful because the student is currently experiencing challenge for the first time; the student is learning to push through challenge. 

                                    ii.     Parents are happy about building this capacity for students. 

f.      Adding rigor to the class curriculum is a matter of educational justice. It is a responsibility to challenge students early on and expose them to a rigorous curriculum so they are prepared for Middle and High School. 

g.    Leadership program: no voting or elections; all students that were interested in this leadership program were allowed to participate; 19 students shown interest. 

 

4.    Council questions / updates:

a.    High School: Course catalog, consistency among schools, clear and accessible classes syllabi

                                      i.     Course registration is very important and will take place very soon. Need to make it better for next year.

                                    ii.     There should be a consolidated course catalog across the district. Not sure what's the benefit to have separate class catalog. Need to provide enough info for families to make informed decisions, mainly because students cannot change classes.

                                   iii.     Course description: how many books the students must read in that class; how many reports the students might writhe in that class; etc. 

                                   iv.     Course catalog: having an accurate course catalog for all High Schools. Only 1 year, there was a single course catalog for the whole district, and it did not happen again. A single course catalog for the 4 comprehensive High Schools in the district. It improves transparency, completeness.

                                    v.     Elective classes may be different, but core classes need to be the same.

                                   vi.      If you have to teach an AP class, you have to teach the same syllabus in all schools. 

                                 vii.     The syllabi students are given do not include what will be covered in the class, but how they are going to be graded. 

                                viii.     NEXT STEP: write a letter to Dr. Michelle Reid asking some very concrete requests and specific timeframe. Volunteers: Myriam Juritz, Brenae Brix, Audrey Kozel, and Jasmine Lee.

b.    Middle School: some schools have very good AAP classrooms but some barely differentiate among Gen Ed, Challenge and AAP classes.

                                      i.     Some teachers are differentiating. Some are doing well; some are doing nothing. It is very frustrating. It does depend on teacher.

c.     Differentiating is important but extremely difficult. EAP classroom needs more differentiation than a Gen Ed class. And, an AAP class does not mean that all students are at the same level; they usually aren’t.

d.    The solution may be to have some specific curriculum for EAP and AAP. 

e.    A council member shared how different the experience of her students was in different schools, even though they were in the same district. So, how are teachers selected?

 

f.      HiCap Teachers: What are the requirements for a teacher to teach an EAP class?

                                      i.     None in particular.

                                    ii.     Council suggested having a requirement of PD clock hours in order to teach an EAP or AAP class. This is very difficult to implement. 

                                   iii.     Currently, not much can be asked in terms of training.  Given the pandemic, all PD has focused on moving teachers to teach online. There was a huge learning curve, professional training, for some teachers so everything else became optional. 

                                   iv.     Professional development is a long-term issue, not short-term issue.