Brooklyn Junior High
Site Council Meeting Minutes
February 12th 2008
Present:
Esme Apostolou, Michelle Burke, Laurie Dvorak, Nisa Giaquinto (guest speaker), Rob Mendolia, Pat Mohr, Kim Monette, Arun Sharma, Angie Vivatson, Christine Weatherman
The meeting was brought to order at 4:30pm by Christine.
Guest speaker Nisa Giaquinto, 8th grade counselor, gave an overview of the support groups run by the counselors here at BJH. These include Grief Group - to help students at BJH who are dealing with grief over the loss of a loved one, Academic Groups - to help students who are underachieving academically, Positive Connections (Girls’ Group) - to help students explore ways to form positive relationships, Recovery Academic Meetings - where 9th grade students discuss after school program classes to make up core class failure, North Hennepin Community College-Upward Bound Program – offering High School tutoring and mentoring and assistance applying to college, and Individual Academic Meetings – to include goal setting with a plan for academic success.
There has not been a Department Chair meeting since the last Site Council meeting.
Current enrollment numbers are 7th - 393, 8th - 316 and 9th – 365 for a total of 1074.
The school board is meeting in March to finalize the budget reduction. Rob will have more information on this at our next meeting.
Multicultural training for staff has begun with Hmong history and culture. The following presentations are planned in the upcoming months: African American history and culture, African history and culture, West African history and culture and Latino history and culture.
Christine presented the testing calendar. Major testing starts in March and continues through the end of the school year, with April and May being the heaviest testing months.
The Site Improvement Plan for 2008-09 will not include a science component, as there is not enough information available regarding science testing requirements. We will reconsider this option next year, so for now we will concentrate on improving constructive responses.
Many Site Council members have terms that expire at the end of this school year. Any member wishing to continue serving next year should let Christine know by the next meeting. Christine will be responsible for soliciting new membership amongst the staff and she will submit an article to the school newsletter to requesting parent participation.
The deadline to submit articles for the April/May newsletter is March 14th.
The Matrix review was tabled until March.
The meeting was adjourned at 6:00pm. The next meeting will be Tuesday March 18th 2008.
Respectfully submitted
Pat Mohr
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