Jackson Middle School

Site Council Minutes

November 12, 2008

Attendees:

John Ferraro, (Principal)

Liz Kobs (8th grade rep)

Christi Lossner (7th grade rep)

Donald Rose (6th grade rep)

Melinda Murdock (Electives rep),

Nancy Hand (Community rep)

Jenny Owen (Site Council Chair and Parent rep)

Karin Chesnutt (Secretary and Parent Rep)

Maggie Daly (Parent Rep and Acting Secretary)

Amanda Brown (Classified Rep)

 

Absent:

John Mashek (SUN Coordinator)

Jill Sage (Asst. Principal)

 

Donald Rose announced he will be the 6th grade team representative on a permanent basis.  All email concerning Site Council should be directed to him.

 

School Improvement Plan

 

John Ferraro stated that the Site Council’s goal for the 2008-09 school year would be to completely revamp the School Improvement Plan and that the Council would work different sections of the plan at each meeting.  The focus of today’s meeting would be the writing goals.  John discussed that he would like to see other ways besides state testing to assess the students’ writing skills.  The school district has set targets for the school.   The 2008-09 goal is 79.2% of seventh grade students meeting or exceeding in writing.  The 2009-10 goal is 90%.  The goal for 2007-08 was 83.7%, however only 68.3% of the students met or exceeded in the writing assessment in 2007-08.  The breakdown is as follows:  70% of the white students met or exceeded, 13% of the black students met or exceeded and 10% of the ELL students met or exceeded.  John then put out the questions: “What is our target for this year?”, “What is our goal?”, “Should there be a goal for the entire 7th grade?”, “Should there be goals for each group; i.e. white, black, etc.?”  A discussion then followed about the testing process, the usefulness of work samples and how to work in more writing across the curriculum.  At the end of the discussion, each team was tasked with coming back to the next meeting with several instructional strategies with the goal being the approval of three to seven instructional strategies to be incorporated in the School Improvement Plan.

 

Family Involvement Plan

 

Jenny Owen reported that we are currently implementing our Family Involvement Plan.  An example of meeting one of our goals is the recent posting of approved site-council minutes and other important documents on-line through the Jackson PTA website. 

 

Liz suggested that we look into ways that we have reached out to the Somali population in the past with Barb Mutnick’s efforts and the Somalia Summit.  We need to find out if Barb is still actively working in this area.   Jenny will contact her.    Jenny reported that she previewed the Somalia language film produced to show a typical day at Glencoe Elementary School-(dvd on loan from Principal Robby Osborne).  Jenny also reviewed the Jackson film produced last year by the film class to see if it could be dubbed with Somali as a way to reach out to Jackson’s Somali population, and actively help bridge the gap of communication regarding outdoor school.   Jenny will keep working on this project and report back to council.

 

There was discussion regarding the need to improve our signage for the Somali and Hispanic speakers locating the main parts of our Jackson building to encourage parent presence and involvement in the school.  Jenny asked for a volunteer to pursue the signage help.  There were no volunteers at the meeting and Jenny said she would pursue this with Annie Bottinelli to identify a parent volunteer to pursue this project and maybe collaborate with the Spanish teacher Jack Rainey and his class.  There are approx 25 Somali families and 30 Hispanic families in our school.  Questions of cost were unanswered.  With the use of “Babelfish” the Jackson  pta website pages are easily translated into other languages.  The Jackson Journal already is produced in English and Spanish as well.

 

Jagzine Update:

 

Donald Rose presented the updates to the Jagzine.  The grant application to SW Neighborhoods Inc for the Small Grants Program was written and completed on November 3rd .  Donald provided copies of the application to the council Donald and Dave Wierth will be creating an editorial staff of students.  They will be seeking applications from 6th, 7th, and 8th graders and looking for writers, artists, and editors.  Their goal is 15 students (Tag extension especially for editors) – and mostly 8th graders but some 6th and 7th graders to create rollover each year.  The student Jagzine committee will then be responsible for promoting the zine with classroom presentations (how to submit student, community, and staff writing.)  This committee will meet 2 times/month to evaluate submissions, create zine cover, and organize zine. The committee will also write together as a group every session.   The editors may propose small revisions to all pieces.  Goal of the zine is to present a diverse group of submissions from various levels of writing.  One of the uses of the grant money, if awarded, will be for purchasing a scanner thereby allowing the zine to make a PDF link on the  PTA website to student writing.  Donald plans to  put into volumes, and archive.  A hard copy will be available in the library. The zine student committee will register through SUN and be eligible for activities bus.  Goal:  To publish first zine by late January and distribute to various community centers. 

 

 

 

Team Reports:

CHIF levy did pass in the November 2008 election thereby protecting SUN programming in Multnomah County for next year.

 

Jenny Owen requested, as per council’s previous agreement when changing the meeting format, that team reports be made to Jackson Journal.  John Ferraro confirmed that plan.

Respectfully submitted,

 

Maggie Daly

Karin Chesnutt