Lawrence School School Council MINUTES January 8, 2013
Members Present: Monica Crowley, Jessica Eber, Leslie Fagen, Ryan Keser, Steve King Joanna Lieberman, Julianne Madrid-Kolb, Makeeba McCreary, Laura O’Brien, Rick Rogers, Deborah Wegener
Members Absent: None
Public Comment No members of the public were in attendance.
Approval of December 11, 2012 Minutes On a motion by Joanna Lieberman, seconded by Steve King, the December 11 minutes were approved.
Updates Rick provided the Council with an update on some recent events at Lawrence. 1. Lawrence Space Needs: An RFP has gone out for modular classrooms at Lawrence and Baker. A description of our space needs was highlighted in the December 17 Principal’s Corner on the Lawrence School website. A neighborhood meeting has been scheduled for Tuesday, January 22 at 6:30 at Lawrence. Superintendent Bill Lupini and representatives from the town will be there. Publicity will go out to the general public, including members of the Lawrence Neighborhood Association.
2. Olweus Bullying Prevention Program Kick-off: Overall, last Friday’s kick-off events were a success. A complete description is available on the Lawrence School website in the January 7 Principal’s Corner. The description was also emailed out to parents on the day of the event. Some of the highlights were: The presence of all of the adults who work in the school provided a powerful visual message of support – particularly in the K-5 Community Meeting when the children were literally encircled by the adults. Having adults share their examples of when they said or did something – or someone spoke up or helped them. The class meetings that followed the community meeting. The “Four Corners” activity done in Gr. 6-8 Advisories Questions Raised: Some of the middle school students may have a “wait and see” attitude. It’s not enough to say, “We will not bully others.” The proof will be in the follow-up. Should we have an annual day like this kick-off event to underscore its importance? Introducing the “bullying circle” language to parents and students – perhaps doing the role-play with older students. Cyberbullying: While survey results last year showed a low incidence, it remains
1 an important area to address with our older students.
3. Newtown, Connecticut: There was discussion on the school’s response to this tragedy. One parent representative reported she felt unexpectedly reassured by the police presence at school in the week following the events. Most parents seemed to support the decision not to discuss the events as a whole group with students in grades K-2. There was some difference of opinion about the best way to observe the moment of silence, with many parents of younger children requesting that a school-wide announcement not be made. Instead, we used a chime to mark the start of the moment and teachers in Gr. 3-8 read a statement in the classrooms. The district’s Leadership Team is reviewing school safety procedures and the Lawrence Crisis Team met on January 7 to review the school’s Lockdown and Evacuation plans.
School Council Working Groups Before breaking into working groups, Rick asked Council members to be mindful of generating ideas that may result in new tasks for the faculty, who already have a full agenda of work with this year’s initiatives. The purpose of the working groups is to provide Council members an opportunity to work directly in support of a school goal.
Differentiated Instruction Working Group Ryan Keser, Julianne Madrid-Kolb, Makeeba McCreary, Laura O’Brien, Rick Rogers
The faculty meeting schedule for the remainder of the year does not allow time to work on the task identified last meeting: having grade level teams generate descriptions of differentiation strategies they use – with an eye for which would be most useful for parents to know about (and at what time of year). Instead, the group discussed focusing on developing a process for highlighting strategies that could be implemented next year and experimenting with the PDF scanner to upload sample differentiation documents.
At the next meeting, we will take time to review the Child Study Team and Landmark binders that have been developed with an eye toward which documents might be useful to share with specialists and/or to post for parents. It was suggested that we include Enrichment and Challenge (ECS) strategies as well. A question was asked about the status of the “Math Challenge Option” in Grades 7/8. Another areas to consider is providing additional challenge to heritage speakers in Spanish.
Rick will arrange for the CST, Landmark and ECS resource materials to be available at the February meeting.
2 Home-School Literacy Working Group Monica Crowley, Jessica Eber, Leslie Fagen, Joanna Lieberman, Deborah Wegener
1. Plans for “Lawrence Reads” Event Date: March 5, 2013 Format: Snacks provided by parents from 6-6:30 Whole group gathering in auditorium from 6:30-6:40 Grade levels break out (K-1, 2-3, 4-5 and 6-8)-rooms TBD Staff will facilitate discussion and read aloud for K-1
Advertising: Literacy specialists have sent out save the date announcement to faculty Rick will put announcement in PTO Newsletter before Feb. vacation and afterwards. Literacy specialists will create a form to pass out to each child with book summaries included and an area to RSVP
Other Suggestions: Create a catch phrase for the event that can be on form and used each year Ask ELL teachers to preview books with ELL students Ask classroom teachers to preview books with students, perhaps by reading the first chapter out loud Ask Kathy Moriarty to highlight books during K-5 library meetings
2. Website Communication To be on website by end of February: Open House handouts Parent Articles (tips - including questions to ask and prompts to promote active reading) Book list by grade Information from ELA Coordinator about district literacy initiative
Still to be considered: Explanation of acronyms Explanation of guided reading groups Separate section of Young Adult books for middle school students Learn about literacy blogs re: literature connections and interactions
Next School Council Meeting: Tuesday, February 5, 2013 at 7:50 am
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