March 27, 2023 Minutes
School Site Council
March 27, 2023
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Meeting to be held at school - Library |
Members:
Administration/Teachers
Melissa Bowdoin/Kristy Jackson
Stefanie Pappalardo (K-2)
Jill Faulkner (3-5)
Anna Rivoli (6-8)
Parents
Mary Robinson
Roger Detloff
Lisa Webb
Jillana Downing
Mark Peldius
Classified Personnel
Annette Bacab/Steffani Lera
Agenda
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1. Opening 1.0 Welcome and Roll Call 1.1 Norms 1.2 Public Comment
2. Information 2.0 Measure U 23-24 2.1 English Learners Updates 3. Adjournment Next meeting 4/17 |
Meeting Minutes
Members Present:
Melissa Bowdoin
Kristy Jackson
Roger Detloff
Steffani Lera
Stefanie Pappalardo
Jill Faulkner
Anna Rivoli
Mary Robinson
Mark Peldius
Lisa Webb
Members reviewed the various options for funding school programs.
The first version of the budget included a discussion of music funding. This budget includes the SSC paying for the music teacher. Melissa explained that because of Prop 28 and Measure U funds, our music teacher, Mx. Washburn, would be on the Roy Cloud campus as a full-time teacher for the 2023-2024 school year for K-8. The SSC would cover half of the cost of the music teacher, and the other half would be covered through Measure U funding.
PTO would continue to pay for James Henry, who will teach music for the TK, K, & 1 students.
The district found LCAP money to put towards paying for our 4th-8th intervention teacher, Karen Hinojosa. This would leave $32,000 that we would need to allocate for the 2023-2024 school year. This year the District paid $78,000 for that position.
Release time for teachers will be continued. Release allows for sub pay while teachers observe other teachers during teaching time or meet with their teams for planning purposes approximately monthly. Teachers have found this time to be very helpful. Each budget allows for $10,000 towards release time. Sub pay is approximately $240 per day, so this budget allows for about 10 release days per year.
The budget for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging (DEI&B) is $3,000.
The budget for online resources (for example, iReady, Literably, Desmos, Actively Learn) professional development is $2,000.
The total budget is $158,768.
A different version of the budget which doesn’t include the cost of the music teacher, but does include NUA, would leave a surplus of $11,768.00.
A discussion of what National Urban Alliance (NUA) ensued. Melissa explained how it supports thinking maps, student voice in their writing and how it expands students' thought processes when they put their ideas on paper. Trained NUA teachers come to our school to do modeled lessons and they support the teachers with planning. Our teachers have witnessed students write more, and utilize the thinking maps across curriculums. They have seen more student connections between cross-curricular activities and themselves. Next year, the whole district will be encouraging our schools to use it, so it will go beyond Roy Cloud.
Next year, the NUA will be rolled out to the K-2 & 6-8 grades. This year, it was started in 3rd-5th and one 2nd grade classroom. There is an element of community building that most of our teachers feel has been helpful. Some teachers feel they already have been trained in these techniques. Melissa explained that the mentors and the coaches will meet teachers where they are to support them with the best way to implement it in their classrooms.
There was a discussion about PTO funding for our music teacher. The PTO prefers to fund programs versus an employee.
The District met with each site administrator to discuss budgets. We have a deadline of April 6th to vote on each version of the budget. Melissa has a meeting tomorrow, March 28th, to have a final number of what we will be getting.
It appeared that Option A (with the music teacher) is the budget that the majority of SSC members were in favor of.
Roger wondered what our carry over would be and if that could pay for the NUA program. This year, we had a good amount of money that carried over, but that won’t be the case this year. Melissa is checking with the accounting person to see what funds could be remaining. It is not a situation where if we don’t use it, we lose it, which is positive for our school.
PTO is taking over the costs of transportation for field trips.
A question was raised about what other schools use their Measure U funds for. Some schools receive Title I funds, whereas others do not, so funds are used to meet their school site council goals. Melissa and Kristy will ask other site administrators so that we can compare our programs and funding.
Melissa and Kristy presented our School Site Improvement Plan and about our EL reclassification students. We had 11 students reclassified this year. We still have 17 EL students at Roy Cloud. Our goal is that students who have been in the district for 5 years be reclassified. So far, we are on target to meet that goal. Our intervention teacher is doing English Language Development. Our Reading Specialist is also seeing students who are non-native English speakers.
This year, we have had a few Russian language newcomer students. We have recently begun a free collaboration with the Stanford graduate school of education to support us with how we support our emerging bilingual students by providing better access to lesson plans and worksheets. They work to simplify our curriculum and remove barriers to accessing the content. Their help can be applied to any students who are struggling with accessing their curriculum.
Roger expressed concerns that our school seems to be leaning towards becoming a school with a bigger classroom population size. He explained that in previous years, we have had 3 classrooms per the 3rd, 4th and 5th grades with about 20 students, and now we have 2 classrooms per grade with 30 students each. Melissa said that she hasn’t heard that the District has a plan to reduce our school classes. She hopes our enrollment increases. There is a balance between our school population increasing too much where we cannot meet those needs. Roger wondered if our School Site Council has any sway in this unfortunate trend of a higher number of students per class.
Mary shared there seems to be a history of parents who have left the school when the classroom size becomes too high. In the past, parents have expressed that they feel that their complaints haven’t been addressed and when they feel unheard, they are likely to leave the school.
Roger said that there is little transparency about class sizes and the number of teachers so parents don’t find out until the new school year starts. Melissa asked about going to the board meetings for the open comment section to voice his concerns about this topic. During the open comment, it is one way communication where board members are not able to respond.
Anna explained that we used to hold our open houses earlier in the year, and it helped other parents to check out the school. This gave potential parents an opportunity to see our Roy Cloud school and classrooms. Although some teachers didn’t like having our open house night so early, it did help to increase enrollment when these parents saw the quality of the school.
Meeting adjourned at 4:14 pm.