-
Heritage Elementary School
School Community Council Minutes
Wednesday, December 13, 2022
In attendance: Lance Robins, Maria Jones, Kendal Welker, Julie Clark, Melisa Richardson, Andrea Linton, Matthew Mallory
-
Welcome to Heritage Community Council
-
Review minutes from last month
-
Approve Last Meetings Minutes
-
Motion to approve Julie Clark 2nd Melisa Richardson
-
-
School-wide Positive Behavior Intervention and Support Plan (PBIS) (Matthew Mallory)
-
The Cache County School District has adopted the Botvin Life Skills curriculum, and Mr. Mallory teaches it to the 4th graders. He teaches every 4th grade class on Fridays. This program gives students life skills and teaches them how to avoid tobacco and e-cigarettes. It also discusses alcohol. Mr. Mallory tailors the lessons for 4th graders. The lessons also cover self-esteem, decision-making, assertiveness, peer pressure, and advertising. Mr. Mallory will show the students advertising from the 30s and 40s that show things like Santa selling cigarettes to demonstrate how attitudes have changed and how people used to think that cigarettes were healthy.
-
PBIS Plan and Husky Habits
-
We consider these two things as one program. Mr. Mallory is a part of this program. This program teaches students positive behaviors. It is discussed at least 3 times a year, and all the teachers in the school reinforce it. It aims to promote a positive atmosphere in the school. It focuses on kindness, and a kindness club is held every Friday. Activities include doing kind things for people in the school like the custodians and cooks.
-
Teachers and aides hand out husky paws for positive behavior. They are trying to give husky paws for things that go beyond expected school behaviors. Students put the husky paws in a designated place in their class and then the teachers bring them to the office for a drawing on Fridays. Some teachers give extra prizes in their class. Students like it when their name gets called over the PA system. The husky paws are discarded each week after the drawing to start fresh each week, unless a week ends early and then the paws will be rolled over to the following week.
-
-
Mr. Mallory distributes snacks that he obtains from the food pantry. Some parents also donate snacks to the school. He will have a food drive in February.
-
-
Information to Parents
-
Lunch with a deputy is going well. The deputies are great with the students, and this is a wonderful program. They do fun things with the kids like sound the alarms from their cars.
-
Holiday break
-
The last day of school this month will be Thursday, December 21. The teachers will be at the school on December 22, but school will not be in session.
-
School will be back in session on January 2, 2024. It’s a shorter break, but it limits the time students are away from school, which can be a good thing.
-
After school club will be held the week of December 18th.
-
NOVA graduation will be on Tuesday, December 19th. Mr. Mallory will attend.
-
-
-
Safe Technology Utilization and Digital Citizenship
-
Each council member received a handout that discussed safe technology utilization and digital citizenship in the Cache County School District.
-
Heritage pays to use GoGuardian, a web filtering and monitoring system, and it is worth the money. It is an important part of our plan to create a safe environment for the students.
-
Students are taught digital citizenship throughout the school. Digital citizenship has been added to the curriculum in the computer lab, and students are taught it every four to five lessons throughout the year. The librarian teaches it in the winter, and the classroom teachers are continuously teaching it. We also have an organization that teaches digital citizenship to all the students once a year. Lessons cover things like people you meet on the internet might not be who they seem.
-
GoGuardian Teacher allows teachers to monitor what students are viewing, and administrators like Principal Robins are flagged if students search for inappropriate content. It’s a powerful program, but it doesn’t catch everything. It has caught suicidal attempts in the past. It’s rare for Principal Robins to get suicidal flags. He gets alerted if a search comes from any school called Heritage, so his flagged content often comes from other schools named Heritage in the state. Mr. Mallory and Principal Robins also use the Safe UT app.
-
-
School LAND Trust funds spent to date
-
Amount Spent: $59,881.55
-
Amount Left: $50,996
-
Percent Left: 45.99%
-
Most of the remaining funds are for paraprofessionals, and the percentage left will go down a lot this month.
-
-
-
School breakfast
-
We’d like to see more participation in the school breakfast. Students might need more time to eat. If students arrive five minutes before the bell, they won’t have enough time to eat lunch. Bus students might be in this situation. The council discussed some problems with bussing (sometimes the driver comes to the stop early and leaves before the designated time, students need to wait in the cold, sometimes stops are in areas that don’t seem safe and where cars go fast, etc.). Principal Robins will look into this to make sure bus students have enough time to eat breakfast before school starts.
-
Ms. Clark said her son often brings food home because he’d rather play than eat lunch. Principal Robins said that parents have approached him asking to let students play first and then eat lunch. Some schools in Salt Lake City do this, but studies showed there are problems with this model. For example, at Heritage, teachers have 30 minutes of duty-free lunch, so 800 students are watched by a few people. Sometimes it’s a 1 - 200 teacher/student ratio. We don’t have the personnel for the reverse model. Right now teachers walk the students to lunch, make sure they’re situated, and then they get their lunch. They give up some of their 30 minutes to do this. Students then eat lunch and play when we’re prepared for them and can supervise them. Another problem with the reverse model is that students will not want to come back in to eat. Parents at Heritage have wanted the reverse model, but when they came in and observed the situation, they realized that the reverse model would not work. Our current system is working.
-
The cooks at Heritage are operating by the minute and they are on a tight budget. The teachers take a count of who is having school lunch so that the cooks cook the right amount of food. We have a fantastic cook who has a lot of experience, and we want to keep her at Heritage as long as possible. Breakfast foods are prepackaged and can be reused, which helps because the cooks do not know how many students will want breakfast.
-
Sometimes students have behavioral problems because they didn’t have breakfast. The staff is trying to extend breakfast and clean up a little later so that students have time to eat.
-
-
Other information
-
AMITY Aides
-
It can be difficult to find housing for AMITY Aides. We have had two people offer to house the aides this year, but it fell through. Ms. Welker knows someone who might be able to do it next year. We’re going to turn our attention to next year. We have until January 31st to turn in our application for the AMITY Aides. When Ms. Welker hosted last year, she ended up hosting all year. Hosting involves room and board. Hosts must provide food and transportation to the school. AMITY Aides can use the bus and carpool. Principal Robins is not allowed to host because he is a supervisor. AMITY Aides can live anywhere, even at different schools, but the family must provide transportation.
-
The Chinese and French DLI programs did not have AMITY Aides this year. The Portuguese DLI program had one. We’re fortunate to have great aides. We have awesome people coming. We need to discuss this in the next meeting to fill out the application in time. We tried to get three AMITY Aides last year, but we only got two.
-
-
We have teachers working on a J-1 Visa and one won’t be coming back next year. We are currently working with the teachers to keep them here. There are some things we need to do to make sure they get visas. Shauna Winegar is very valuable to the DLI program, and she helps us with this process.
-
Principal Robins showed us the schedule for the paraprofessionals. It requires a lot of individuals. The lessons are all prepared, but the paraprofessionals need to go over the lesson plans. We want to hold onto experienced professionals because they get better every year. They know what to look for and how to help the students. We want to rotate the students throughout the groups and challenge them. Principal Robins does not want the students to get bored. If they are ready for the next level, he wants them to move forward. He wants to improve what we are already doing. Our professionals are great at what they do. We could probably improve the paraprofessional schedule so that it’s even better.
-
-
We have been identified for TSI because our ELL students weren’t making progress on our RISE test. Last year we tested well enough that if we do it again this year, we will be removed from TSI. Eight schools in our district didn’t score well enough, but we did. We just need to do it one more year.
-
Thanks for attending
Motion to Close Melisa Richardson 2nd Julie Clark
-