Minutes for 05/23/2008

May 23, 2008 

Friday 

School Leadership Team (SLT) Meeting 

Minutes 

In attendance

Jose Maldonado, principal 

Miriam Hubbard, PA president 

SLT members:  Candy Gulko

Miriam Hubbard

Adam Stern 

SLT non-member parents:

Eve Cagan

Lisa Peters  

Discussion of posting of minutes on the web

--JM: would like to put faculty meeting minutes on the web site, including faculty decisions applying to all

--Mention was made that there are too many places for minutes on web site and that it would be a good idea to have a section dedicated to minutes

--Adam suggested having a digest of bullet points

--JM suggested that Monica Marin could post minutes and translate them at the same time

--Miriam mentioned that the point of putting minutes on the web was for them to be accessible

--JM mentioned that the left side of the office bulletin board could be a dedicated parent association section and thus accessible to students and parents

--JM: SLT, issue of translation, cc to Monica;

(**JM mentioned needing to talk to Monica about having posting of minutes and bulletin board to be weekly assignment for her) 

Discussion of school newsletter

--Last semester it was suggested that we create a CSS biweekly to be sent home

--Miriam said that some parents had wanted this as well, but that others were against it for ecological reasons 

Discussion of need for web site training for parents

--JM mentioned the continuing concern of access of CSS parents to the web site  

Discussion of June 26, 2008 Awards’ Ceremony

--Safety issues were raised in the travel arrangements of children from the event

--Miriam voiced a concern that some children were going home by themselves from school events at night; this had been brought up at hospitality meeting; she stated that children should not be going home on the bus by themselves at 10 pm;

--There was a discussion of how to involve and inform parents about supervising the transportation of their children

--A consensus was to send in the invitation to the dinner a notice that children must have a parent or guardian present

--Jose felt this was not enforceable

--Adam felt this should be stated in a positive tone, that parents should be asked to arrange a suitable way to get their children home

--Miriam felt that Victor could serve as liaison to work on coordinating rides for kids 

New faculty hiring and adjustments to the curriculum

--Some aspects pertaining to these subjects were brought up by JM.  He stated that next year’s social studies curriculum will be world civilizations

--JM: mentioned that there will be some thinking of transitions not only between classes, but also between activities

--Engineering will be in half groups next year

--JM: mentioned that 32 courses were built from scratch this year, and that these classes were offered at CSS in one grade

--JM: Schedule items that will remain the same: Creative Arts will remain on Fridays; electives will be on Mondays and Wednesdays

--Afterschool study periods will continue to be offered

--Grade-level meetings will be held during assembly times

--The issue of maintaining the requirement that children read at was discussed and various ideas were proposed as to how to structure this.  The possibility that different disciplines would assign monthly book assignments was proposed. 

--JM mentioned his interest in getting feedback on the sex education program.

--JM mentioned the peer-mentoring taking place among the faculty

--JM described 2 philosophy programs, 2/3 of children in program designed and assessed by team from Teacher’s College under guidance of Diana Kuhn, which uses cognitive philosophy method (brain-theory); 1/3 in Paul Thomson’s group. Paul using a classical-philosophy approach (case-study approach) like that in Paul’s book; the two groups are to be compared against each other. Both groups are exposed to critical thinking, but are following different models.