Brooklyn Junior High            

                     Site Council Meeting Minutes           

                                                            January 15^th 2008

Present:                   

Cheryl Billodeau, Michelle Burke, Laurie Dvorak, Wendy Ehlert (dep 5:30pm),

Kay Kust (arr. 5:00pm), Rob Mendolia, Pat Mohr, Kim Monette, Arun Sharma, Angie Vivatson, Christine Weatherman

The meeting was brought to order at 4:30pm by Christine.

Angie gave the report from the last Department Chair meeting on December 12^th 2007.

1. The math department will be showing the internet safety video to all students.
2. Letters will be sent home at mid tri for all students with failing grades.
3. Staff will use 90% as the lowest percentage for an A. There will be no rounding up for any letter grade.
4. We added four core classes in the 2^nd trimester in an attempt to balance class sizes; this equates to four teachers on overload.
5. We are looking into getting more funding for color printers as we have had two color printers die within a month. Special Ed funded one color printer but this is supposed to be used for Special Ed only.

Current enrollment numbers are 7^th - 403, 8th -321 and 9^th – 369 for a total of 1107.

Silent Sustained Reading is still going well. Ken Ehlert, husband of site council parent member Wendy Ehlert is working on getting book donations so that each classroom can have an ample supply of reading material; General Mills may be another source for donations. Rob would like to increase SSR to three days a week (Tuesday through Thursday) so that the PLC component could cycle through all grades in one week. 

We are ahead of the curve on the implementation of the Pre AP grant. OSH and MGSH will be able to accommodate 45 AP sections for our students to continue their studies at the high school level. More staff members will be trained in AP procedures this year. The positions vacated by the Pre AP coordinator and the Instructional coach have been combined to 1 FTE. This position has been posted.    

Site Council funds will be used to offer multicultural training to all BJH staff. This training will be provided through the Minnesota Humanities Council.

Kim and Christine gave a PowerPoint presentation about BJH results from the 2007 MCA tests. These results were used to identify students who missed AYP be one question. The PowerPoint also explained how the data was broken down into subgroups.

All areas on the current Site Improvement Plan are on track.

The site council discussed the Site Improvement Plan for 2008-09. Many of the current goals (reading, writing and math) will be retained for next year. The council would like to add a science component and to improve constructive responses. A draft will be drawn up for future discussion.

The By-laws were reviewed and as passed as presented, as no revisions were made.

The deadline to submit articles for the February/March newsletter has passed. Anyone wishing to have an article in the April/May issue should submit it to Laurie by March 15^th. The newsletters are mailed from the district office to every student household. Parents who feel they are not receiving a newsletter should contact the district office to verify their mailing address.

After reviewing the new Matrix, it was decided to send it back to EMO for clarification.

The meeting was adjourned at 6:00pm. The next meeting will be Tuesday February 12th 2008.  

Respectfully submitted

Pat Mohr