Verified EESAC Meeting Minutes

Approval of minutes: Mrs. Robledo called the meeting to order at 8:23 a.m. The minutes from April 8, 2008, were reviewed and approved.

Principal’s message: Mrs. Gonzalez said the school year is ending on a very high note because we have received many honors lately: Mrs. Moghani has been named German teacher of the year by the Florida Association of German Teachers; Mrs. Vazquez is the Miami-Dade County Public Schools science teacher of the year; and Mrs. Garcia is the Miami-Dade County Public Schools social studies teacher of the year. We took second place at the Fairchild challenge. We excelled on the FCAT Writing test administered in February 2008: The mean score rose from 350 to 375, the average essay score increased from 4.6 to 5.1, and 100 percent of the students achieved at least a passing score of 3.5. This growth is statistically very significant. We were named winner of the Magnet School of America award as the top secondary magnet school as well as receiving the Blue Ribbon award.

Mrs. Stroleny reviewed the school’s End-of Year SIP in great detail for the EESAC. She has been working closely with department chairs on compiling and analyzing data regarding the effectiveness of the strategies as they pertain to the school’s goals as stated on the 2007-2008 SIP. For the SIP End-of-Year Review she highlighted successes this year and advised where there were opportunities for improvement. In reading, our strengths are an advanced curriculum with Advanced Placement strategies for all students; tracking reading progress through timed readings in language arts classes; and the use of Teenbiz3000 with the ESOL students. The school’s in-house data indicates that we are going to make our reading goals. An area of improvement is to offer ESOL students more access to the Teenbiz3000 program. In mathematics our strengths are, we enrolled students who did not meet state requirement on the 2007 FCAT in a supplemental mathematics class or provided homeroom tutoring. “Bubble students” with low level-3 scores last year were also included. We also provided tutoring before school on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. We aligned our curriculum to the district’s mathematics benchmark calendar so that all tested benchmarks were taught prior to FCAT testing. We also charted student progress to provide more individualized instruction. As an adjustment for next year, we will eliminate tutoring on Fridays because attendance declined during the year. No changes to the instructional focus are recommended for mathematics. Mrs. Greif asked about offering geometry tutoring, but Mrs. Gonzalez said that she does not see this as feasible. Mrs. Fernandez explained that Mrs. Rios has open-door policy for geometry students in the morning. Mrs. Broadmeadow asked about the focus of the tutoring and said students would like to use it to prepare for their final exams. Mrs. Gonzalez explained that tutoring is for struggling students. The writing instruction strengths include homeroom tutoring for students identified by seventh-grade language arts teachers as struggling writers. We had only two students score at 3.5 on the state test; all others were at 4.0 or better. Mrs. Stroleny said teachers of foreign languages, electives, and social studies also deserve credit because they emphasize writing in their classes. The Perfect 6 club is in its second year and the number of students scoring 6.0 increased from 20 students in 2007 to 58 in 2008. Parent workshops, setting goals, and diligent tracking of students on timed essays in language arts classes also helped. An opportunity for improvement is to add a visual arts curriculum to improve students critical thinking skills and descriptive writing. This likely will be the professional development program for language arts teachers next year. In science our strengths are, we provide an advanced curriculum for all students; teachers used FCAT-related warm-up problems each week; we identified students who had difficulty with science in seventh grade, and Mrs. Small worked with these students four days per week during homeroom tutoring. In-house date indicates that our students made great learning gains and no changes in instructional focus are planned. Parental involvement increased as indicated by a total of 1,044 parent or guardian signatures for 20 parent workshops held during the 2007-2008 school year. Six workshops had 24 or fewer parents, and we plan to improve that attendance through making sure dates are convenient for parents and publicizing all workshops better through the applicable departments. Mrs. Greif said the Internet workshop was phenomenal; Mrs. Copeland said a similar workshop will take place at the Coral Gables Youth Center. Regarding discipline and safety, preventive measures were emphasized with success; counseling sessions addressing bullying and teasing occurred during homeroom; teachers reviewed the code of student conduct with students. These steps made us a safe and orderly school. We had only 35 group 1 violations, 15 group 2 violations, and one group 3 violation this year. This is very minor compared to other schools. Counselors led 2,310 development sessions, and all students completed two activities for the nine core values program. We recommend that we continue addressing situations before they become a problem. In technology, all students completed two projects related to technology such as spreadsheets, multimedia presentations, and/or word processing documents with a table. Health and fitness goals included the FITNESSGRAM assessment where we saw a five percent increase in passing rate. As an opportunity for improvement, we want students to create their own personal fitness plans next year to increase achievement. Our Electives and Special Areas goal related to club participation. Student interest surveys indicate that 85 percent of students participate in clubs and rank their satisfaction with club activities as high. As an opportunity for improvement, we need to be ensure that clubs with large memberships design large club activities so that all student voices can be heard. As for our Return on Investment goal all of the strategies were implemented in a fiscally efficient manner.
Everyone present at the meeting was provided an accounting of the expenditures of 2007-2008 lottery funds.

Open forum: Mrs. Robledo presented the names of the EESAC parent representatives for next year. They are Gail Liu, Darby Plummer, Marcia Breiter, and alternate Elisa Junghahn. Mrs. Gramling reported that the school finished as second runner-up in the Fairchild Challenge.

Adjournment: Mrs. Robledo adjourned the meeting at 8:56 a.m.