Ridgeline High School

Ridgeline High School

School Community Council Minutes

Tuesday, April 10, 2018 at 7:00 a.m. Ridgeline Conference Room

Members Present: Brittany Foster (Assist. principal, non-voting member), Emma Smith

(teacher), Jerry Skidmore (teacher), Jim Crosbie (Assist. Principal, non-voting member), 

Joshua Nelson (parent), Maria Hunsaker (Vice Chair/parent), Michelle Israelsen (parent),

Sandra Hugie (Chairperson/parent), Wendy Finley (Secretary/parent), Kay Sweeten (parent), Robert Henke (principal), Jeff Neilson (parent), Bonnie Odd (teacher), Craig Bracken (school counselor).

Members Absent: Kerri Williams (parent)

 isitors: Diane Theurer, Marcie Lyons, Karina Brown

Conducting:  Sandra Hugie

Agenda Item #1:  Approve minutes from March 13, 2018 meeting

Discussion: Wendy Finley made a motion to approve minutes from the March 13, 2018 meeting.  Bonnie Odd seconded the motion. The vote was unanimous to approve the minutes.

Agenda Item #2:  Update on trust lands budget

Discussion: Bob Henke reported there is about 35% of the budget left for the remaining year and that should cover April through June salaries and the summer items.  We are supposed to have 10% or less remaining in the budget by the end of the school year and he thinks we are on track for that.  The trust lands budget for next year has already been approved and just needs to be submitted this week.  For next year there will be $5,000 that will need to be spent on character education.  He thinks we are already doing that with the 9^th grade FLEX class during the first trimester and also with the VISTA interns that meet with the students.  The interns can meet individual as well as in groups and talk about character education and then the Freshman FLEX talk about a variety of things relating to character education.  Bonnie Odd asked if it was supposed to be an additional $5,000 or if we just needed to show that we spent $5,000 on character education.  Mr. Henke said he received the email explaining the $5,000 stipulation over Spring Break and he hasn’t had a chance to look over it, but he will do that later today.  Since this is a separate budget item, he thinks we should make a motion and approve the character education stipulation.  Mr. Henke made a motion to add character education as part

of the VISTA interns as well as the 9^th grade FLEX class, which would enable every student to receive that education as they come through the school and then additionally as needed with the VISTA interns.  Michelle Israelsen seconded the motion.  The voting was unanimous to approve the motion.

Agenda Item #3:  Update on Grading for Learning

Discussion:  Mr. Henke stated the administration met with the school wide PLC team and have been talking about Grading for Learning.  The administration met as a team and decided it would be a good idea to focus on Grading for Learning and invite every teacher to read the book “Grading from the Inside Out” and participate in a book study every Monday for the remainder of the school year.  They would pay the teachers for their time.  So far it has been a good thing.  The team is taping the book study meetings so those teachers that want to come but can’t will be able to see what was discussed.  There were still other teachers who just wanted to read the book on their own. Bonnie Odd mentioned that parents can get a copy of the book for free on their children’s overdrive account.  It would be like checking it out from the library.  Mr. Henke knows that when the departments meet over the summer they will be trying to implement Grading for Learning into their subjects. Some departments are going to be implementing it 100% and others will just be implementing it slowly.  There is about 30+ teachers learning about it in more detail.

Agenda Item #4:  Gear Up Grant

Discussion:  Mr. Henke reported the district received a grant through Utah State where they will provide people to help students graduate from high school.  The district hires someone through Utah State to be in charge of the grant for the district and then they will have people assigned to each of the schools.  It will simply offset some of the cost for summer school and tutoring.  We have already been doing a lot of the things using our Trust Lands funds and so the grant will cover some of those costs.  Sandie Hugie asked what the VISTA interns are doing for the school.  VISTA stands for Volunteers in Service to America.  The school has two interns and they get paid about $20,000 per year and they are full-time employees.  Most of them have scholarships or are working on a Master’s Degree.  We pay one-third of their salary, $6,500.  They run the data for our teachers for test scores and state-wide test results.  They also meet with students individually to work on their grades.  They help in the Nest and put on workshops.  Sometimes they help with research projects involving student success.

Agenda Item #5:  Counselor’s Update

Discussion:  Mr. Bracken stated that registration has been a big priority over the last month. 

They have been working on making sure students are on track for graduation.  Also, the counselors have been working with our Latino students, i.e. first-generation college bound students.  They are helping them to be more prepared for college and encouraging them to take more concurrent enrollment courses and college-prep type courses.  On April 20^th they will be taking a group of students to Minority Days up at Utah State.  The students will get a tour of Utah State and meet other minority students attending the university.  

Agenda Item #6:  Upcoming Items

Discussion:  Sandie Hugie asked if there would be a council meeting in May.  Mr. Henke stated the council is required to meet a certain number of times per year.  He seemed to think we had met that requirement and that it is up to the Council to decide if we want to meet in May.  It was concluded that we did meet in May last year and we should meet again next month.  Mr. Henke reminded the council that we will need to replace some council members and possibly teachers on the council as their 2-year term is up after this year.  Mr. Henke described the process for the election.  An e-mail is sent out to parents asking for nominations.  The parents would respond to the e-mail telling us about themselves and why they wanted to serve on the council.  Then all parents would have a chance to vote for two members.  It was decided we needed three parents and three teachers.  Mr. Henke reminded the council that parents can extend their terms for two years by running again for the next school year.  Teachers can also extend their term for two additional years.  

Mr. Henke stated the council members will get an e-mail from Mr. Henke in regards to approving the Trust Lands budget for next year.

Graduation will be May 30^th at The Spectrum at Utah State.

 Karina Brown (visitor) made an announcement for Thursday May 3^rd at 6:00 for an opioid awareness meeting.  The meeting will be held at Mt. Logan Middle School.  Mrs. Foster stated she would send an e-mail out with all of the details for that meeting.  Mrs. Brown stated she would forward the e-mail to Mrs. Foster that she received from South Cache with the information.  

 Michelle Israelsen stated if there was an opportunity for the school or district to do more in the way of digital citizenship that parents would be in favor of proceeding with that.  Emma Smith reminded the council that the school is doing as much as they can at this point.  But maybe adding a lesson regarding digital citizenship to the Freshmen studies would be a good idea.  Bonnie Odd stated she teaches the digital citizenship in her media classrooms and she doesn’t think we should put all of our focus on it for a single classroom, but it would be better to sneak it in around the academic lessons.  Josh Nelson stated he felt there might be a shift coming soon where the schools will have the opportunity to help with the cell phone/social media monitoring.  Wendy Finley stated a headline she saw in the news stated that cell phone addiction was more prevalent than the opioid epidemic.  She agreed there may be a point in the future where schools will have more opportunities to help.  Mr. Henke asked the question of what more can the schools do for this problem?  What is the expectation?  Is it the school’s responsibility to prevent students from getting addicted to their cell phones?  Kay Sweeten stated she felt her children were learning about proper cell phone use at school, but they weren’t getting the emotional and mental health benefits of proper cell phone use.  Her kids understand what cyber bullying looks like and they know there are social media sites to be careful on.  She felt like they weren’t understanding that a certain amount of time engaged with the phone is affecting their skills and understanding behavior around people.  Learning how to engage with others is part of being a healthy person.  Bonnie Odd suggested that issue is something the parents should teach the children at home and it isn’t the school’s responsibility.  Ms. Smith stated she didn’t feel the school was ignoring the impact of digital citizenship.  She asked if any parent could job shadow a teacher for one week they would see how teachers put their heart and soul into teaching and adding one more thing for teachers to implement can be problematic for both teachers and students.  Mr. Henke stated everything brought up today was important and as an administration they can talk about it more.  Michelle Israelsen stated it would be helpful for parents to get more information about how they can teach their children from the school.  Mr. Bracken stated that would be a good thing for the VISTA interns to work on and get out to parents.

Jeff Nelson, school board member, stated the district had sent out an email about holding quarterly or semiannual town hall meetings to discuss items of interest to parents that were generated from PTA meetings or school community council meetings.  The feedback they have received so far is favorable.  He encouraged parents to give more feedback for what kind of topics they want to discuss and also the frequency of the meetings.  Wendy Finley stated this might be a good avenue to discuss the emotional and mental health of cell phone use. 

A motion was made by Robert Henke to adjourn the meeting.  Sandra Hugie seconded the motion.  The meeting was adjourned.

Next meeting: Tuesday, May 8, 2018 at 7:00 a.m.

Minutes prepared by: Wendy Finley