SIT

Madison High School

School Improvement Team

Minutes

December 4, 2013

Approval of Minutes from November 6.

Lunch Survey Results: 224 responses (roughly 1/3 of the student body—660 kids)

Obstacles: AB Tech, anyone without a first period class, table discussion until next week. Desire to get seniors to buy in. Extend voting during the senior projects? Lobby during Smart Lunch right before break? Teachers are encouraged to take their students to the computer lab during the week of 12/9. Between 12/16 and 12/20, manned laptops.

Results: Out of 224, 60 do not ever eat in the cafeteria. Salad bar was an overwhelming recommendation/request. Brush Creek wrote a grant to support the implementation of a salad bar. Check with Chastity Jenkins. Raw vegetables. Why do we only eat turkey and dressing twice a year?

PBL—Project Patriot: Initiate rollout the first week of January. Project Patriot will be introduced in the advisor groups, but shouldn’t be limited to these groups. The ideal would be for these projects to be student driven, across grade levels, with teacher mentors.

Project based learning, shifting graduation project, ownership of school and environment, school-wide effort, groups of students who were required to participate.

Starting point: Create a $1000 grant, parameters, representative from each class, let the kids run with it and see what needs to be tweaked for next year. Make it a big deal and start with the people who already have buy-in and school pride. Even if only 3 groups participate, that’s more than we had to start with.  Perhaps this will build to the kids writing the Bright Ideas Grants.

Use January 8^th SIT meeting to hone in on the actual implementation/packaging of the PBL.

PBIS:  Assessment of our PBIS status, district and regional representatives will be able to help us to move forward with this initiative. We are aiming for the level of green.

Committee has been invited to Watauga HS to view and learn how high schools successfully use PBIS.

Student group involved in creating a banner of appreciation for the Faculty Dinner on January 3 for the teachers.

PBIS members are sharing their action plan because they would like for SIT to be the storehouse for committee sharing, and for all committees to present action plans.

Is PBIS being used effectively? What are the teachers who are using the system using PBIS for? What’s happening to the kids who are always good? (Last year, those kids did make it into the party because grades and other positive behaviors are also factored in.)

Recognition of top scholars is a priority. Top ten, etc.

SGA: Zach Hollister has turned in a proposal that students who have “A”s in their online courses, could be allowed to leave campus. Students are aware that there is an evolution in process.

Graduation Project success bracelets have been purchased by the administration to acknowledge those students who have successfully completed their projects and they will be receiving them next week.

Reading/Literacy Committee: A lot of positive things are happening.

                Mars Hill University tutors are working with our students.

                Over 12 students went to Barnes and Noble, bought $500 in books.

The Power of Reading has been purchased for checkout by teachers. One copy for each faculty member in the school.

Peer tutoring.

Relationships are in process between CIS, MHS, and MHU to develop a vertical support system.

Teacher Manifesto: Part of the culture change that is in the air. This would be a voluntary acceptance on behalf of each individual teacher. The goal is for all faculty to buy-in to this culture of individual accountability. Only sign the Manifesto if you are committed to doing it and if you’re not doing it, you have to be okay with someone calling you on it.

Smart Lunch: It isn’t working as well as it has in the past.

Ideas: If students miss tutoring, could they be assigned to a Lunch Detention to be held in the Student Activities Room?

Assign someone on the Attendance Committee to duty in the cafeteria in order to take attendance notes. Attendance Issues with students were discussed. One central spot would be advantageous. Could Sandy Z. be the central location? It would simplify the process and eliminate students shopping for an attendance committee member to approve their excuses.