Sky View High School

School Community Council Minutes

January 16, 2024

Present: John Louviere, Toni Gibbons,  Don Darrington,  Kathy Bullen, Brady Fonnesbeck, , Amanie Crosbie, Ellie Christensen, Mason Cardon, Shane Jones, Ryan Grunig, Connie Rawlins , Janine Justis, Jessica Higginbotham                           

We were welcomed by John. Toni motioned to approve the minutes from last month. Don seconded the motion, all were in favor.

Course Fair/PCCRS

Shane talked about how we are gearing up for next year.  We will be starting our PCCR’s next week. Class meetings will be held today and tomorrow for the Sophomores and Juniors. A Course Fair will be held in the Commons during RCK hour today and tomorrow as well. Teachers will be able to share information about their courses with the students.

Freshmen/Welcome Night

We will be having a Freshmen/Parent Welcome Night on February 5^th at 6:00pm.  This is where we talk to 8th grade parents and students about high school, talk about getting involved, and about our RCK Academy class with mentors.  The Student survey that we previously did, the 9th graders scored higher than any other grade on the social and emotional section.

Toni said that USU has a flyer about how it is never too early to prepare to go to college and asked if they could bring some to share that night? 

Shane said he has talked to the counselors about students that don’t enroll in Seminary and opt out of full schedules.  Why do they not stay here and take BTECH or Concurrent? Instead they are choosing nothing.  We have AP and concurrent available now for Freshmen and sophomores. 

Teachers will be in Commons area that night to showcase their programs.  It should only last about and hour and 15 minutes.

Recent Hires

Shane reported that we have 3 student teachers that are currently employed with us- Sarah Harmon has finished her student teaching, Carter Hansen is working on his in English, and Kade Ogden is in science. We had a teacher leave mid-year, so Erica Howes was hired to teach math. We also have quite a few student teachers this trimester.

We have interviewed and will be announcing a  new football coach tomorrow.  We just hired a track coach - Ryan Egbert, who is a former SV and track student.  We are rounding up assistant coaches to help him. We will be hiring a boy’s tennis coach soon.

Utah College/Career Advisor and Gear UP

Ellie Christensen is our College and Career Advisor. It is through the Utah College Advising Core – a program that works kind of like a grant, but it isn’t a grant.  It is based at the U of U.  She is one of 60 that work in the schools.

The objective of the program is to help students have somewhere to go to talk specifically about college.  Ellie works mainly with seniors and helps them apply for college. It is a very similar job to Amanda, our Career Center Coordinator.  Amanda does more with Careers, but they work together.

Gear Up is a grant program.  They are not sure it will be funded next year, so this may be the last year.  Landon Lloyd is our Gear Up Advisor.  Gear Up is focused on the low-income students. They have to qualify to be a part of the program.  They work with them helping them to get to college.   A lot of them are first generation college students.

Don asked how do you get the students to apply?  Shane said our Advisor is strategically placed in the same room as Ellie and as our food pantry They also put up at table at parent teacher conferences and will have on the Freshmen parent night. There is also a Gear Up Advisor at the Middle Schools so they are familiar with it when they come to Sky View.

Ellie also speaks Spanish so she works well with the Hispanic students.

Kathy asked about how we are handling the refugee students.  Shane said we really haven’t had very many.

We have had major changes in our ESL program. It is now a team program headed by Anna Barkle. We hope we are ready if/when we get some refugee students.

We will be doing an ELL training with the teachers on the February 16^th Professional Development Day. 

CTE Summary Sheet                                                                                 

Brady shared a spreadsheet that shows the District CTE testing percentages for Sky View and compared to other schools in the District. Every year each CTE class has a state test at the end of the course.  A score of 80% or better passes as certified. Brady says it’s a perfect opportunity to create a scoreboard. It is also tied to funding. Funding for CTE program is based on how many receive their certificate and pass the skills assessment too. SV is the highest percentage of students passing in the District.  Brady said teachers should focus on what is needed to pass the state test to meet the 80%.  A lot of the CTE classes are concurrent enrollment as well. The teachers have curriculum they need to follow.  Shane said the CTE model is a great one to follow.

Other: 

A reminder that we will be going through Accreditation again and the Community council will have a big role. It is always a little bit different each time so we aren’t quite sure what will be needed?

Jessica Higginbotham asked about the student suicide that happened right after the Christmas break. They have a son that has struggled with suicidal ideation and they hadn’t heard anything – so they weren’t sure how to talk to their son.

Shane explained that we have a district response team that will come to the school and talk with students.  It happened first thing right back from break.  We sent a letter to parents with the appropriate amount of information. The parents asked to not share that it was suicide, then on Thursday they said we could share that information. It was shared with students. But w we probably should have shared with parents as well, so they could have had conversations with students afterward.  We had to make decisions quickly.  We definitely learned some things.

Jessica also said that her daughter was at a boys wrestling match.  One of Exec students was leading the students in booing the opponents when their name was read. 

John mentioned that USU is a bad role model.  Kathy said it is also a parent issue and gave an example of parents at a hockey game. She thought that Cache Valley teams and parents are the worse. 

Toni said she thought the first line of response should be through the coaches.  Brady said there is a night and day difference from two years ago because we have been addressing it with the students. We just need to let the students know what the expectations are.

Meeting adjourned

Next meeting – Tuesday, February 20th