GALILEO ACADEMY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Department Heads Meeting

5/31/12

Marcus called the meeting to order at 11:10am.

Marcus welcomed the new members, Lisa Warnke and Douglas Page.  Then everyone introduced themselves.

Department Heads

I.          Department Head Return Dates

–At the last meeting this was under discussion.  The return date will be August 13^th.  The mornings will be for everyone to work on their own and then there will be meetings in the afternoon.

–Department Heads will work 2 days prior to school and 3 days after school.

–It has not been determined yet if there will be department heads in the fall.  No one has received letters yet.

–Joseph mentioned a Grievance Meeting next Wednesday at 3pm, 555 Franklin Street, Room 306.  Joseph and Michelle are mentioned by name in a letter he read to Susan Solomon concerning all department heads.             Joseph encouraged everyone to attend.

II.         Calendar

–Katie mentioned that she and Tony will be working on the Galileo calendar for next year.  She asked members to give them any dates they wanted on the calendar.

–Freshmen Orientation will be the Friday before classes begin.  PE uniforms will be sold at that time.

–Doug Page asked for the end of the marking periods.

–Joseph wants the Winter and Spring concerts on the calendar.

–Date for Back to School Night should be on the calendar.

–September 20 or 27 will be the ELD Picnic/Team Building Activity.

–Human Rights Exhibit should be between STAR and AP testing.

–Kathleen asked for the CELTD testing dates.

–Joseph mentioned the concept of unbalanced semesters.  In the spring semester, there is STAR testing, 4 Furlough Days and a week of finals, which he felt made this semester so rushed.  Kathleen said the first semester seemed really rushed.  Joseph felt we should eliminate the Final Exam week.  He also thought we should have 3 block days for finals, and have teachers give 1-hour finals only.

–David said some teachers want that time to do their grades, clean their rooms, etc.

–Marcus said we want to get students ready to go to college and the finals are part of that.

–Kathleen said we should have a policy about finals as many do not give them.  She asked if this is a sight-based decision.

–The Furlough Days are not listed on the Instructional Calendar.  The district says it is 4 for next year.  If the state tax initiative does not pass, the amount of furlough days will be 9.

–Michelle asked about CPT for next year.  Marcus said we need to do the PD plan first.  We will go with the 2 days—Wednesday and Thursday.  She asked for the Cluster Time.  Doug also asked for more CPT for the clusters.

–Marcus said with the Cluster Time there must be agendas with a focus and a goal.  We need to be efficient with the time.

–Doug said that most teachers teach more than one subject so they are involved in 2 clusters.

–David had a suggestion on how to target both the admin requirements and the cluster activity and meet administrative requirements.

–Ray said he prefers the meetings to be longer than 1 hour.  The old 2 hour meetings were much more productive,

III.       Final Survey Results

–Joseph passed out the final survey results.

–Most preferred the 5-minute passing period.

–Most people preferred 2 homerooms per week.

–Most people wanted to keep 15 minutes of SSR.

–The survey also included the teacher comments.

–David mentioned that the teachers who travel do have a challenge to get to the next classroom.

–Marcus said the student survey results were not clear.  54% preferred the 5-minute period.  We will look at the student survey and make the final decision.

–Marcus asked about the SSR.  David said school literacy is a huge issue.  Research shows that it is very effective in literacy.  Literacy affects all disciplines.

–Denise said students like structure.  It happens every block day for each period.  Ethan said he requires books in PE.

–Ray said every classroom should have an SSR library.

–Lisa suggested having SSR during homeroom. She suggested making homeroom longer.

–G-House TV will continue next year.

–Ray said we use homeroom for class level assemblies as well.

–Michelle said that Homeroom is not supposed to be an additional class for the teacher.  Joseph said this is also a union issue, so homeroom is not a class.

–Kathleen said homeroom is a chance to talk to the kids and homeroom stays together 4 years.  It is a bonding issue.

–Kelli made a comment about the attendance strips and homeroom, which Joseph read to the group.

–Kathleen mentioned the citizenship policy and Katie said that there are teachers who do not enforce this policy.

–Doug talked about private schools, where the teacher just marks the attendance strips and does the grades.  The absences are calculated by the school and then citizenship grades are assigned accordingly.

–Denise talked about what the Deans’ Office puts out about citizenship.  She followed it and it worked.

–David said he thought many teachers might forget about doing the citizenship.

–New teachers may not know about the citizenship policy.

–Marcus thanked Joe and Stan for doing the survey.

IV.        Miscellaneous

–Denise asked about old editions of books in boxes.  Katie said the warehouse will come and collect, but they need a list.  Put the books outside where you keep the books.  Please email Katie if you have books to get rid of and where they will be.

–Consumables can be recycled.

–Kathleen has lots of SSR books and magazines.  Katie asked her to send that out in an email in the fall.

–Ethan asked if our entire faculty will be in place at the start of school.  He also asked about the budget.

–Ray said his department has their books on rollers.  Please do not take these books or carts.  The carts are labeled.

–Marcus said we will use the entire 2^nd floor for summer school, and the 3^rd floor in the Van Ness Building.  Some classrooms are a mess right now and have to be cleaned prior to summer school.

–Promethean Boards—Marcus encouraged the group to make the best use of them.  If some teachers are not using them, give them to others in your department.  Kathleen said we need training.

–Mat asked about tomorrow.  Marcus asked the members to stop in and see him tomorrow.  He will be here until 3pm tomorrow.

Meeting adjourned at 11:55pm.

GALILEO ACADEMY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Leadership Team/Department Heads Meeting

5/17/12

Marcus called the meeting to order at 10:10am.

Leadership Team

I.          Balanced Score Card

–Marcus distributed information on the Balanced Score Card.  This is a living document.  He asked for feedback from the group.

–Marcus will get into the WASC report over the summer and see what else we need to address.

–We need to go into next school year knowing what we need to do.  The first two sections are over view and data review.

–Michelle mentioned the Core Curriculum the district is putting together.  She mentioned what the district is doing with the Standards Maps.  At this point we do not know what this is.  Tony referred to her page 8b.

–Tony said the district does not have clarity about what this will look like.

–David said they are not using the Common Core to design the Common Curriculum for English.

–Part A concerns readiness and challenges.  This is followed by Next Steps.

–Patrick mentioned the lack of funds for professional development.

–Patrick said they will be dropping the CLA’s next year.  He said this was mentioned in the WAD from last week.

–ELD Current Status—we list what we are doing now.  Some of this is ELD department and the rest is other departments.  Language Objectives are listed as well.  We are not doing the BBC school-wide so we still have to address having a language objective in each classroom.

–Vocabulary development is spelled out on page 9. Brick word and mortar words are the same.

–Section 3 of the Lau Plan will be studied next year.  Tony mentioned some training that will occur this summer with Q-tell.  Jen Fong will help with PD next year.

–Special Ed is the next section.

–Marti asked about statistics on AA and Latino students.  Ray addressed this and indicated what the numbers meant.  Ray said he would explain any of the “Next Steps.”

–Administrators must attend the IEPs and administrators must arrange coverage for teachers who need to attend the IEPs.

–Ray expressed the challenges of scheduling the IEPs.  He also said there is a box to excuse administrators and teachers on the IEP—full exclusion or partial, depending on which box is checked.

–Proportional Representation—Ray discussed this and said we have talked about this before.  For 30 students, 3 or 4 Special Ed students is the max.

__Michelle said this has come up before—she would like some PD on how to arrange this.  Ray said his department would be happy to do this.  Marcus said he would like to know from general ed teachers where we should start with PD.

–Ray said the teachers who are delivering resource services, they should be in the classroom, not in room 352.  It should be a 100% commitment.

–Some in the group said they do not feel comfortable asking the resource teachers why they can’t come to class when they say they can’t.

–Increased administrative monitoring of how Special Ed resources are allocated in classrooms.

–Resource also includes the paraprofessionals.  Ray said we have some of the best paras in the district.

–Marcus said that the Inclusion model has only been pushed for the last several years.  He mentioned our new AP, Lisa Warnke, and her experience in this area.  He is happy to have her on board.

–Section IV

–Michelle wants other departments listed besides English.  Marcus said this is a school-wide activity.  This has also been discussed in the SSC meetings.

–Marcus said we need to add more to Closing the Achievement Gap.  We are having an extremely hard time with our Latino students.  Some of the students in 9^th grade are drinking, etc.  We have12% now Latino students in the 9^th grade and this will double next year.

–Patrick mentioned conflicts of getting the dens together.

–Marcus mentioned that the English Department has a small number of teachers working with the 9^th graders.  Marti said it is the same in the Math Department.

–David suggested that more teachers teach 9^th grade so there are more teachers available for discussions and improvements.

–Michelle mentioned a former professional development on different cultures—Sharroky Hollie  and how helpful that was.

–Marcus said he became very expensive very fast.

–Tony referred everyone to page 16 and cultural responsive teaching.

–Explore dens and define dens.  Are they useful?

–Look for opportunities in the Master Schedule and CPT for 9^th grade teachers to collaborate.

–Look for opportunities in extra-curricular after school activities.

–Patrick said Kristy Morrison and Doug Page said at the UBC meeting yesterday they would like to fund raise to save Futurama.

–Jessica talked about the SAP meetings.  This helps with the 9^th grade transition students.

–Ray requested .7 Adv.  Algebra and  .7 Chemistry on the schedule (item deck).

–Accountability (page 17)—

School Climate—Jessica would like to add Wellness to this area.

–Ray talked about the Move-Up Assembly and why some of the students wanted to leave as all the scholarships went to Asian students.  Michelle said we should include events like sports teams, athletic teams, Talent Show winners, etc.  David Barrios said we should revisit how we plan this assembly, to recognize a broad range of achievement.

–Marcus mentioned increasing attendance in class.  He will take more of a hands-on approach to this next year.

–Patrick mentioned teachers helping with the hall sweeps next year.

–Jessica wanted to add the SST meetings to outcomes of Measurable Outcomes.

–The PTSA came up with increased communication, reflection tool for students and teachers on how students are feeling in class about the instruction and one more.  We do need to communicate more with the parents.

–Michelle wanted to mention a priority of small class sizes.  If we get more students can we hire more teachers?  Marcus said yes.

II.         Academic Honesty

–We will table this item until next year.

–Denise said she caught 2 students cheating yesterday.

–Marti told of students taking photos of AP exams with their cell phones.

III.       Homeroom Survey Results

–Joseph told of his experiences in doing this survey—his first.

–The passing period time (5 or 7 minutes) was not clear.

–Most preferred the weekly homerooms.

–SSR overwhelmingly retained—most wanted 15 minutes.

–69 people voted.

–CPT 2times a week.

–Joseph will revisit the survey to prepare the results.

–We need more staff to fill out the survey.

Department Head Meeting

I.          Contingency Plans for Fall

–Mat talked about all the details that department heads handle.

–Marcus said he can’t see the district eliminating the department heads.  The principals express this to the district.

–As of now Department Heads have the 4^th period free.

–Michelle said there has to be a formal agreement for next fall to have the department heads report to school 2 days prior to the teachers arrival.

–Ethan said the district will put those duties on the responsibility of the administration.

–If the department head positions are not retained, the former DHs will have another class to teach.

II.         Department Head Duties 5/30 and 5/31 and 6/1.

–Marcus asked everyone to plan to return for these 2 days.

–Michelle would like to use the 2-3 days at their own discretion.

–Marcus would like to meet for an hour on 5/31 at 11:00am.

–David asked if there would be 2 full days of meetings.  We will do a 3-2—Friday and Monday meetings and Tuesday a free day.

–Patrick said 2 days of meetings would be difficult as it is hard to get things done.

–Suggestion was made to have meetings in the am and work allowed in the afternoon.

Meeting adjourned at 11:50am.