DCIS Faculty & Staff Meeting Notes - Recently Updated Pages

December 19, 2007

Anonymous — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 16:41:54 CST

Announcements:

Second semester admissions policy (see handout). It will be difficult. We want to make sure students aren't coming in the back door. See Dan with any questions.
Student interviews schedule: Most people will be able to do first Saturday in February. Second most popular date was last Saturday in January. Some were able to do evenings.
See Dan if you are interested in being in a bullying prevention advisory group. Darlene and Kirsten are interested.
9th Grade Academy: Two teachers have expressed interest. See Dan if you are interested. It will be two weeks prior to registration. We'll focus on literacy, math, and our school culture.
Board will vote on next year's school calendar in January. They are deciding whether or not to start school after Labor Day. Give feedback if you have a strong opinion on it.
Fred runs a BINGO night for GI Forum. They donated $900 for our school. Please thank Fred.
Personal and business school leave: Dan has a hard time getting copy back to us. Dan asked Carol to stick it right in his face when we give it to her. Culum asked what if we want to stick it right in his face?
New teacher librarian: Today we had our first interview. We have three candidates. We'll make our selection if three interviews are enough . Dan and the faculty gave Davinna a plaque and a card to thank her.
School Leadership Team: we need four teachers. Jennifer has applications. You can nominate yourself or anybody else.

Reminder from Stephen : thank you for posting grades.

Agenda item: A to Z grant application
Presenter: Dan
Discussion: Schools are eligible for up to three per year. $500 to $5,000. Dan wants help with writing them. Lori asked if they can be used for travel. Dan said yes. Kirsten said that Susan is going to have her A.P. kids write grant applications for teachers. Darlene would like to see a grant for Crow Canyon. Frank got $2,000 from them last year. He said that they want as many kids to be affected as possible (it's harder to get a grant for just five kids).

Agenda item: SICO
Presenter: Caitlin (student)
Discussion: Working to make bathrooms better environment. There's a lot of tagging, all doors don't have locks, some stalls don't have doors. Will paint bathrooms a darker blue so it's harder to see writing, pencils, tagging. Flyers in bathrooms to create awareness. Will use whole meeting on Friday. Representative from district facilities maintenance will be there to approve it. Jennifer wants presentation next semester too since many students won't be here this Friday. They will present first Monday back too. Will also send flyers to advisements.

Agenda item: Peace Jam survey
Presenter: Jaala
Discussion: Jaala sent out an email yesterday. Survey evaluates efficacy of PeaceJam program. Thanks to those of you who distributed permission slips. High school students don't need permission. Please still give middle school students survey even if they don't have permission slips. Everyone who does pre and post survey will be entered in to a drawing for iPod shuffle.
Action: Advisements will give our survey tomorrow morning.
Deadline: This Friday (12/21/07)

Notetaker: Davinna

December 5, 2007

Anonymous — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 16:26:19 CST

Announcements:

Agenda item: DCTA Update
Presenter: Jennifer Portillo
Discussion: New contract changed the governance of schools. Work wasn't being done by commitees and teachers felt they had no voice. New commitee called SLT (School Leadership Team) consisting of at least 4 elected teachers and 1 one principal appointed. It is responsible for the budget and School Improvement Plan. It will meet once a month. The SLT plans to start meeting in January.

The Professional Development committee will be a sub-committee of the SLT.

The CSC will still exist and it will approve the work done by the SLT.

Action: Teachers need to think on whether they want to be a part of the SLT.

Person Responsible:
Deadline:

Agenda item: Grant approval
Presenter: Kate Farmer
Discussion: Grant received from the Rose Foundation to write the business plan for the whole school and how to sustainably fund programing and departments (including community relations) that DPS doesn't fund.
Action:
Person Responsible:
Deadline:

Agenda item: Friday's agenda
Presenter: Dan Lutz
Discussion: breakfast starts at 7:30 in room 217. Stephen will direct us grading the middle school benchmarks. The afternoon will be for personal planning. Reminder that the high school benchmarks will start next week. So no high school students will be allowed to go on any field trips. Think about having a holiday party for the faculty.
Action:
Person Responsible:
Deadline:

Agenda item: Bully Prevention
Presenter: Lisa Pisciotta
Discussion: Olweus Bullying Prevention is the only district program about bullying. Male bullies typically start verbally before physically. Handout included data about criminals with convictions had bullied in school. Our school is a good tight knit community that would take to this program well. It is helpful to get student voice to help make the program successful. It would take 4 hours to train faculty. Nena mentioned that in a school she'd been at, with the program that it brought more bullying because more people were aware of it. Diana suggested get students involved in the initial training and not just teachers.
Action: Get a core group of 8 together to get the initial training
Person Responsible: Dan Lutz
Deadline: within the next day or so to decide

Notetaker: Misa Williams

November 28th, 2007

Davinna — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 16:31:39 CST

Announcements:

Let Dan know if you want to be part of a student publications dialogue. We'll set up a time to meet with students in the near future.
Nena worked with the ten year old girl who was killed in gang cross-fire Monday night. Please keep her siblings in mind.

Agenda item: World Cafe Night
Presenter: Susan
Discussion: Put on by sixth graders on Thursday Dec. 13, 2007. Three parts to evening: overview of Twenty-One Balloons book; student project displays; language skills showcase and food.

300-400 attendees last year. Susan predicts more this year.
There will be a book fair.
German club will have a booth.
Susan wants sixth grade colleagues to know how much and what type of display space they need.
If you have high school students who need school service, send them to Susan to help set up or take down.
Susan has made changes this year to minimize impact on custodians.
Jennifer was concerned about schedule conflicts throughout the evening for students with various responsibilities. Susan said they will work in shifts.
Frank asked about liability with childcare. Frank volunteered to help with childcare.
Susan made sure that first floor teachers were okay with displays happening in their rooms on the night of the cafe. Diana is not comfortable with it. Spanish language cafe will be in Munoz's room. Culum invited an after-hours, all night dance club to take place in his second floor room.

Action: Stephen will look in to childcare liability.

Notetaker: Davinna

Home

Davinna — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 17:40:27 CST

Welcome DCIS faculty and staff! This is an experiment in group recording of faculty meeting notes. One person (ahem, me, unless anyone wants to volunteer?) will initially take notes. Everyone else can add, edit or delete as they see fit. Hopefully this will help us to keep track of and follow through on specific discussions and decisions.

To get started, click on the meeting date in the Navigation window on the left to see meeting notes.

If you want to make a change, just click on "Easy Edit". You don't need an account or password.

If we didn't have time to finish a discussion or you have more to say, you can start or contribute to a thread at the bottom of the meeting notes page.

Please see Davinna with any questions.

November 7th, 2007

Anonymous — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 21:20:50 CST

Announcements

Karen announced that we have an ELA plan for the 40 students struggling with English. Karen will test them then go in to classrooms to provide support.
Culum requested that advisors enforce more noise control in all school meetings in between announcements.
Culum wants all school meetings to be more about presentations of learning than announcements, so please sign up for these.

Kate said that next week is international education week. Tuesday - event at Brown Palace (free for us if we chaperone students). She'll email us the information. Friday a delegation of biodiesel energy specialists will be here from Brazil.
Please give Kate any photos of students engaged in classes or clubs.

Agenda item: How assignments are put in to IC
Presenter: Karen
Discussion: Misa suggested changing the M to a 0 if a student can't make-up an assignment. Jeff prefers to keep the M because it conveys that the student never turned it in.
Action: Dan suggested that we communicate with parents in our letters home to them the reasons behind our grading systems.

Agenda item: Bullying
Presenter: Dan
Discussion: We need to be transparent about how we are going to be dealing with bullying in our building. This will take time. For example, we need to define what constitutes bullying. Davinna and Susan requested that we hear names so that we can keep our radar on for bullies and victims. Dan and Stephen said that the situations are confidential.
Action: Lorie will be working on an anti-bullying program. Teachers, please be in the hallway looking for and responding to this type of behavior in between classes. Stephen suggests asking them what they did and their plan for fixing it, so that they take responsibility. Teachers can also do journaling prompts in advisement on this.
Person responsible: Dan, Stephen and Lorie
Deadline: (Dan, Stephen and Lorie will follow up with us as they develop this)

Agenda item: Testing
Presenter: Stephen
Discussion:

CDE now requires that any student on an IEP or 504 Plan ILP have an Assessment Accomodation Plan.
We will start benchmarks in December. Misa was concerned that the exam would come before she had time to cover everything. Dan said the coordination of this is still an evolving animal.
Stephen provided CSAP training.
Dan said that relevant to the district, our CSAP scores are good. We were proficient. Still, he and Kate don't use them for recruitment.
Linda said our reputation precedes us. She commended Dan for hiring the creme of the crop.

Agenda item: Letter to kids whose home schools aren't proficient.
Presenter: Heidi
Discussion: Parents get confused because these letters aren't referring to DCIS. These letters say that the kids can choose to go to another school that is proficient. They are just a bureaucratic head scratcher, according to Dan.

Notetaker: Davinna