Sky View High School

School Community Council Minutes

March 19, 2024

Present: Janine Justis, Teri Rhodes, Kathy Christiansen, Don Darrington, Amanie Crosbie, Brady Fonnesbeck, Shane Jones, Sheri Egbert, Jessica Higginbotham, John Louviere, Melanie Daines, Connie Rawlins, Mason Cardon, Stephanie Thatcher, Kathy Bullen

We were welcomed by John and he called for a motion to approve the minutes from last month. Janine motioned to approve, Sheri seconded the motion. All were in favor. (A wording error was previously noted and corrected)

John asked if there is anything they can help with for graduation. Shane reported that it will be at USU this year again. The Senior class officers want to make it more student led so they have been in on the planning for the program. They would like to do the yard signs again, but funding them is in question. We started  doing them during COVID- it was a great way to make connections.  The last couple years we have had some funding and money donated to help.  The cost is around $3300.  It’s hard to ask for money since we already have people donate for booster club, etc.  Shane asked the committee what their opinions were about it and asked them to check with other parents. Sheri said that her opinion was that some kids could use the recognition. The PTA was asked to help but they couldn’t and suggested to them to maybe ask businesses for support.

Teri asked that we make sure the students know that for graduation, the school board still has to accept the graduates.

Communities that Care                                                              

Shane talked about this new organization that is headed through a grant, or something through Bear River Mental Health.  The purpose is to help coordinate help with the mental health crisis. Shane said he will be on staff and wanted to invite anyone who would like to help as well. 

Shane is President of the UASSP (Utah Association of Secondary School Principals) and the consensus from their meetings is that we need help in the following ways. 1.  Teacher shortages and retention

2. Mental Health

3. Funding – especially Special Ed. The Federal government was supposed to fund at 40% and right now it is at 13%. It has been 20%.  Shane went back to Washington with the group and talked to state legislators.  There are lot of people making decisions that have no education background.

Teri asked if the congressmen were receptive.  Shane said they listened and were gracious, but they told them a lot of issues are state issues.

Resiliency Month

Since it is Resiliency Month, Shane wanted to talk about some of the things that we are doing to help build resiliency. We will email some videos and articles out that are good.  One of the things we do in the RCK Academy class is use the Habitudes for learning life skills. One of the sections is about Tollbooths or Roadblocks. When hard things come up do we go around or go through and pay the price?  Resiliency is a big topic everywhere. With our LIA students, the world view is limited. When they were talking about role models and heroes, the role models are close to home. Other classes could be different. There are many different opportunities in high school to practice resilience. We had Tia Stokes here for an assembly at all the high schools in the District.  She has a great life story about resilience. We know what issues the students face, what things we are having discussions about.

John said he has a staff at USU that he shares things with that we talk about here.  They are impressed with what is going on in our community and how intentional we are and expressed appreciation for what we are doing.

Shane mentioned that we’ve implemented a 90% attendance requirement for athletes for the term before their season as well.

Stephanie said her experience in high school was very different and it means a lot to see relationships built here for her students.

Trustland Plan 24-25

The Trustland Plan is pretty much staying the same, the same goals as last year.  There will be some minor changes. It is not finalized yet because we are still missing a bunch of data. The timing for this needs to be better.

The Vape detectors will be coming off the TSSA plan.  We have already purchased them and have them placed in the bathrooms.  The students don’t know we have them.  It sends an alert on phone and emails to the Administration.  The 1^st time they are caught we just record it.  The 2^nd time a student gets caught they get a warning.  The 3^rd time they will do cessation training at school.  The 4^th time they will receive charges from Deputy Carley. The parents are contacted on every offense.  It happens a lot, we could spend all day dealing with it.  We are good for 5 years on the Vape detectors.

The major goals are on the ELL program.  Next week Shane and Anna and other teachers from the District are meeting with Wasatch High Schools in Park City for the 1^st ELL Summit.  There isn’t a model program for ELL that exists so no one is sure what to do 100%.  The big plus for Park City schools is accessibility to concurrent and higher end courses.  Shane will report what they talked about at the next meeting.

Shane has a meeting about accreditation this week, and that could change some things on the plan as well. We need to have a finalized plan by end of this month when it is due to the district and the school board will approve in April.

Our other goal is raising test scores.  We just finished the State ACT test and will be doing the Make Up test next Tuesday.

We will be announcing the Valedictorian, Salutatorian and Top Scholar.  We have a great senior class, they are a great group of students. We have 38 seniors with 4.0 GPA’s.

Council Membership/Elections

The Trustland guidelines have tightened up some, so we need to make sure we are following them. So, we need to decide what size we want the council.

Toni, Summer, Jessica and Sheri’s terms are ending this year. John, Stephanie, Melanie and Don’s end next year. They are 2-year terms.

It is required that High Schools have 10 at a minimum of members.  Jessica proposed to have 8 parent positions.  John seconded the motion and all were in favor. We will send out email to parents to see if we can get any one that would be interested.  If we get more than 4 that are interested we will have an election. 

We also need to look at our posted Rules of Order and Procedure to see if they need to be changed.

Meeting was adjourned.

Next Meeting: April 16^th, 6:45am