Site Council Minutes

April 2, 2008

 

 

 

I.                  Additions—none

II.             Student Concerns—none

III.         Monthly Reports

A.     Staff Development—nothing to report

B.     Curriculum Review—Social Studies committee met.  Some adjustments were made in the Secondary curriculum.  Elementary will discuss this issue at the next Wed. meeting.

C.     Climate—Caaren’s shower will be on Wed., April 30.

D.     Discipline—not many concerns.

E.      Scheduling—Registration is out and coming back.  6th graders have not been talked to as yet.

F.      Finance/Budget—nothing to report

 

IV.             Old Business

A.     Standardized Grading System for High School—It was decided not to adopt anything standardized.  70 % is the suggested passing requirement.

B.     Gincana—Grades 7-11 will participate in the team building activity primarily during homeroom.

 

V.                 New Business

A.     Writing Standards for students—A discussion was held concerning data presented by a report authored by the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities and the University of Minnesota.  The report suggested that a relatively high percentage of our Wabasso students were required to take remedial classes when attending post secondary institutions.  Gary Thomas reported that he had studied the data contained in the report and had followed up on this information by calling the Dean of Admissions at Southwest Minnesota State University.  The Dean of Admissions, Rich Schirrer, stated that students were encouraged to take the remedial class “Fundamentals of Writing” regardless of their ACT scores in English usage.  This is a class that many of our students did not really need to take as they had high scores on the ACT English usage portion. This unjustly inflated the percentage of our students taking remedial classes at SMSU, the school reporting the largest number of remedial enrollments.  Mr. Thomas concluded that we always need to be concerned about the development of our students’ writing skills, but that the magnitude of the problem was not what the report cited.

B.     Student Mentoring Program—Mr. Suss presented a handout explaining a possible mentor/tutoring class for HS seniors.  Everyone had a favorable opinion of the suggestion and it will be pursued for a possible fall addition.  More info to follow….

 

Next Meeting:  Wed., May 7th and Thursday, May 29 (in the afternoon)

Respectfully submitted by:  Linda Carlson