SIP Team Minutes from Monday, December 7, 2009

Introduction:

The SIP Team met on Monday, December 7 to discuss the progress of Ridgewood’s school improvement plan. The meeting was called to order at 3:25 PM. Representated at the meeting was Michelle Kumor of the Professional Development Committee (PDC) and SIP Team Co-Chair, Michelle Felde of the Response to Intervention (RtI) Committee, Sam Lewis of the Technology Committee, Rob McCarthy of the Discipline and School Safety Committee, Jennette Gonazalez of the Reading & Literacy (R&L) Committee, Jill Laubenstein of the Community Relations & Communications (CR&C) Committee, and Jim Smith as the SIP Team Co-Chair. Not in attendance was, Jennifer Buteyn, the school principal.

Committee Updates & Problem Solving:

Tech Update:

The tech committee continues its efforts to revise the school’s website. The members have researched multiple websites to determine which overall layout, design, functionality, etc. is most appropriate for Ridgewood High School. They are determining criteria to evaluate the necessary components of each website. It was suggested that an evaluation tool be developed and distributed to multiple populations (students, parents, teachers, counselors, etc.) in order to gather data.
Cognos is a business intelligence software that the technology committee is researching to help facilitate Ridgewood staff members’ use of student data. A demonstration will be set up for our next SIP meeting.

RtI Update:

The RtI team has decided to facilitate the second round of universal screening during an all-day testing situation. This day will consist of three shifts to include a session for cyber-bullying, a session for testing, and a session for a speaker about social/emotional issues. The committee is developing ways of informing the parents, students, and staff of their responsibilities on this day.

PDC Committee:

The PDC has distributed texts to the staff about differentiated instruction. During the January 19th institute date, teams will discuss and apply the principles addressed in the books. The committee will also begin more long-term planning; the committee will begin researching best practice in terms of professional development in highly effective schools.

Reading and Literacy Committee:

The Reading and Literacy Committee is developing a method of providing staff with a common language about literacy and/or learning strategies. “Ridgewood’s Activities for Teaching” will be presented to the staff through the Buteyn Beat on a weekly basis. There is a need for a more comprehensive professional develop initiative for literacy-rich instruction. The professional development committee will consider this in their long-term planning.

Discipline & School Safety:

Teachers and students have been identified by the student body as Natural Helpers. This select group of teachers and students have gone on their initial retreat together. The first speaker was brought in to speak to the students in the program about body image. Another speaker will be coming in to speak after the Holiday break.

CC&C Committee:

The community members have officially begun a PTO. The structure of the PTO will be modeled after that of our School Improvement Team. The first PTO meeting will be held on December 15, 2009. The next step will include the active involvement of teachers. The School Science Fair is in the planning process. The committee is working on finalizing Norridge and Harwood Heights “Help Cards” with

Minutes from the November 2, 2009 Meeting

Introduction

The SIP Team met on Monday, November 2 to discuss the progress of Ridgewood’s school improvement plan. The meeting was called to order at 3:25 PM. Represented at the meeting was Brian Eppley of the Professional Development Committee (PDC), Michelle Felde of the Response to Intervention (RtI) Committee, Jill Laubenstein of the Community Relations & Communications (CR&C) Committee, Sam Lewis of the Technology Committee, Jennette Gonzalez of the Reading & Literacy (R&L) Committee, Jim Smith as the SIP Team Co-Chair and Jennifer Buteyn, the school principal. Not in attendance was Rob McCarthy of the Discipline and School Safety Committee and Michelle Kumor, the Team’s Co-Chair.

After reviewing the minutes from the previous meeting, the Team prioritized the agenda and decided that due to prior commitments, Brian Eppley should update the team on the progress of the PDC.

Committee Updates & Problem Solving

PDC Update:
The PDC is currently working on the January 19th Special Ed Institute Day. Part of the work is to select a book on differentiation to provide a foundation of common vocabulary and terms for the entire faculty. Among the criteria for choosing a book is that the book should contain effective strategies that could be implemented in classes immediately. Currently the plan is to provide the book to the faculty prior to Thanksgiving break. The January institute then will provide time for teams to meet and discuss the book as well as strategies implemented in the classroom. The PDC hopes to provide a set of expectations for the faculty to meet the goals of the institute.

Beyond the January Institute Day, the PDC will begin researching on what professional development opportunities to provide for long term. Additional Institute Days are being planned to include technology and provide a teacher expert day.
After the update, there was no further discussion.

RtI Committee:

RtI began by focusing on seeking help and advice concerning the benchmarking testing using Performance Series that is to take place in late January and/or early February. Several ideas were discussed and proposed including using only Wednesday early dismissal days, changing the schedule for four days to an early dismissal schedule, and completing the testing in three shifts on a single day that would include speakers and/or sessions for students during the other shifts. The RtI Committee will review the responses and propose a plan by the next SIP Team meeting in December and will disseminate the information to faculty, staff, student and parents as soon as possible.


R&L Committee:

The R&L Committee is focused on how and what information to disseminate to the faculty and staff that would be the most effective in regards to improving literacy and eventually numeracy. Ideas include attaching effective reading strategies, vocabulary information and learning strategies to the Buteyn Beat. The committee will meet next week to discuss these ideas.

CC&C Committee:

Currently the big push for the CC&C is the development of a Ridgewood Parent-Teacher Organization (PTO). The current Parent’s Club is backing the plan and has embraced the ideas of a PTO to increase parent involvement with Ridgewood. In addition, Jill and Joe Rogalski are working with the elementary schools to plan and coordinate a Science Fair. Parent members of the CC&C are looking into how other schools require parents to chaperone sport and activities throughout the year. Their intention is to increase the attendance at these events. Additional efforts of the CC&C include the development of quick-reference cards for parents that has telephone and resource information to receive help, guidance and/or assistance with parenting. Finally, a request for information to be included on the school’s website was passed along.


Technology Committee:

The Tech Committee has two large tasks underway. The first concerns the school’s website. Other school sites were examined and discussed. Three criteria, layout and design, navigation, and content were used to study and evaluate other school sites. So far the top school web sites include New Tier’s, Maine Township’s, and Niles Township’s. All three had clean designs, concise content and easy navigation. The second concern of the Tech Committee regards the need to include instruction concerning internet safety for the students of RHS. Ideas to include this as a part of the Performance Series benchmarking days will be taken under consideration by the RtI Committee. One difficult task that must be a part of the internet safety instruction is tracking attendance and completion of the instruction.


Conclusion

The next SIP Team meeting is scheduled for Monday, December 7, 2009. If you would like to contribute to school improvement, please contact any of the chairs of the team. Thanks to all faculty, staff, parents and students that volunteer their time and efforts for the benefit of the entire school.

SIP Team's Last Meeting! (for the school year)

The SIP Team met on Monday, May 11, 2009 to convene on what committees are working towards in regards to improving student learning, professional development, and relationships with parents, and a host of other specific items.

Starting with celebrations, the team was thrilled to cheer Jennette for attaining grants via the donorschoose.org web site that allowed her to write a grant and receive a donor to support her continued efforts towards developing a love for reading and assistance to teachers.

The first committee to report was the Discipline & School Safety Committee that sent out surveys for the Natural Helpers program to students and teachers. The surveys are currently being tallied, but Rob expressed that invitations to the program may not go out to students or teachers until late into the summer to then begin implementation of the program next fall. Rob also expressed that questions on the survey regarding what students and teachers felt were the biggest problems at Ridgewood be the focus on the Natural Helpers group and the volunteers associated with the program. Kudos should be given to Rob and the entire Discipline & School Safety Committee for their time and efforts. If you would like to be a part of the committee for next year, be sure to contact the SIP Team or Rob.

Jill next reported on the ongoing efforts of the Community Relations & Communications Committee. Jill reported that she has had a great response from the parents that she is working with and is eager to continue the efforts of the committee throughout the summer and into next year. Among the celebrations of the committee was the ice-cream social it hosted where some parents who were less than sure about sending their child to Ridgewood, left with a much better impression of our school. Other ideas planned include welcoming the incoming freshmen, having RHS host a 7th & 8th grade science fair, and developing efficient ways for RHS teachers and parents to communicate and work together. Hooray to Jill and her entire committee for working so hard this year to meet with parents and community members and developing solutions to improve our school.

Michelle could not attend our meeting, but she provided notes on what the RtI Committee is currently enthralled with. First, the goals that the committee had outlined in the beginning of the year to accomplish have been! Interventions for reading and math will be piloted next fall. Information regarding PBIS has been attained and the SIP Team was able to discuss that it will be best for our school staff and faculty to move forward with training in the behavioral intervention. Work labs for special education will be piloted next fall along with an assessment system for identified Title I students through Scantron.

The SIP Team took some time discussing some solutions to the Problem Solving Team (PST) component that the RtI Committee must solve. Among the ideas discussed was allotting time in the afternoons for the Tier 1-2 PST to meet at least once a month with Division Heads covering the classes of the teachers who are on the PST during that time. That way it would not remove a teacher from their division or team meeting on Wednesdays. Congratulations to Michelle and the entire RtI Committee for the time spent on researching and meeting to discuss how best to serve the needs of our students!

The Professional Development Committee hadn’t met since the previous SIP Team meeting and is concerned with their focus and direction. The SIP Team offered up several solutions and Michelle K introduced the School Improvement Grant proposal at that time. The SIP Grant will provide our school with possible funding for professional development and school improvement initiatives. However, the grant must be very specific and concise. After some discussion, the team divided out the work to be done and will work with their committees to accomplish it by early next week. Thank you to Brian and Jason as well as to the entire PDC committee for the work accomplished this year with professional development!

Sam gave the team an overview of what the Tech Committee has been working on where they are headed. Included in the report was a discussion regarding professional development with new Mac Books. The team provided Sam with the suggestion of sending out a quick survey to attain the opinions of the faculty and staff. Sam stated the Tech Committee has much to celebrate including the completion of the Tech Plan to the State, brining in three students and at least one parent into the meetings, and assisting Tracy with a DVR grant. It’s celebration time for Sam and the entire Tech Committee!

Finally, Jennette discussed the Reading & Literacy Committee’s efforts this year, including the finalization of obtaining the last of the Borders Books provided through the Illinois Literacy Fund which are helping to increase teachers’ classroom libraries. The final R&L Committee will meet on Wednesday morning. Great job to Jennette and the entire R&L Committee for a job well done this year!

The SIP Team wrapped up the final meeting by agreeing to meet at 10AM on August 10th in the Board Room.

Have a great summer everyone!

March SIP Meeting

What an exciting SIP meeting yesterday. After we celebrate successes, each committee head shares the progress their committee is making toward our school improvement goals.

The community involvement committee, led by Jill Laubenstein, is on quite a roll. A group of twenty or more parents have met twice already since our last school improvement meeting. Parents are excited about their participation and finally feel like their getting a voice. I am most impressed with how there is a nice balance in their conversations about what they think we should be doing to help them AND what they would like to be doing to help us. Our parents want to work with our staff to develop groups (grief, divorce, etc) like we do for our students and eventually run these group independently without the need for RHS staff involvement. They also developed a subcommittee to provide feedback about parent issues on our school website – Scott will be starting a blog. Hurray, more blogs. The parents are also looking for us to provide more positive feedback about activities in the classrooms and student learning.

The RTI committee is prepared to present Tier 2 and 3 interventions to the administration, and the discipline committee is beginning to identify their Natural Helpers.

The Reading and Literacy Committee continues to provide outstanding opportunities to our students. We are all looking forward to our resident author’s visit this Thursday and Friday at Ridgewood and Saturday at the Eisenhower Library. Many students have rewad Simone Elkeles’ Leaving Paradise and absolutely LOVED it.

The technology committee, led by Sam Lewis, submitted their tech plan to the state. We can all get excited about the new technology coming our way – more laptops, here they come! We also continue to discuss the concept of an intranet to better meet our communication and data collection needs. The team also discussed to the use of blogs and wiki’s to facilitate better communication amongst the staff, students, and parents. These use high tech communications methods were also thrown around as professional development tools.

It is becoming very clear that we need to offer other professional development opportunities outside of the regular school day. There is simply too much professional development to fit it in our after school meetings on Wednesday afternoons. The results of the professional development surveys are coming back in and it appears that the opportunities for CPDU’s are an incentive for after school or before school professional development opportunities. There is also a concern that teachers are being given so many more things to do in their classroom without a clear the vision. Well, in my eyes, the vision is simple. We need to improve reading and in turn make AYP. I believe that before any and all professional development, we should ask, “How will this better able me to help students become better readers?” or “How can this better able me to help students meet or exceed standards?” I think if these essential questions are asked, we can see that the professional development provided at Ridgewood is not scattered, but rather quite focused. Since I’ve been here, I don’t know of any professional development that has not focused on reading.

Overall, we are making great strides already toward achieving the activities outlined in the school improvement plan. I think we need to keep our vision clear and our end goal in mind. We want to improve reading and make AYP.

SIP Team Meeting Notes for February

The SIP Team met on Tuesday, February 10th with the following members in attendance:

• Michelle Kumor – co-chair
• Jim Smith – co-chair
• Jennifer Buteyn – principal
• Brian Eppley – PDC chair
• Jill Laubenstein – C&CR chair
• Sam Lewis – Tech chair
• Michelle Felde – RtI chair
• Hillyn Sennholtz – RESPRO representative

Meeting Notes:

On the agenda were two major items:

1. The first was to discuss the changes and/or deletions/additions to the SIP that was submitted to the state for peer review. We were asked to review several sections in order to clarify our data, objectives and plans of action. The RHS Leadership Team assisted with this last Thursday and those changes were given to our RESPRO representative Hillyn Sennholtz for review. She had some questions and recommendations to assist our team as we prepare the final revisions. As soon at the revised SIP is approved we will provide access to for the entire school and community.
2. The second item on the agenda was to discuss the finalization of the tech plan. Sam provided the team with information regarding where the plan was in development and asked for some assistance in clarifying the language. The SIP Team along with members from the Tech committee will review phases II and III of the tech plan along side the SIP Action steps for comparison and alignment to ensure that the tech plan coincides with school improvement initiatives by Tuesday, February 17.

Cool Tip:

During the committee reports, Jill Laubenstein shared her frustration regarding the difficulty of physically meeting as a committee due to time constraints and other factors. After a brief discussion regarding possible alternatives or solutions, Sam Lewis mentioned that there is a website where users can create a virtual meeting room, like an instant messaging program, for free. Michelle Kumor found the site and emailed it to the group. The site is:

http://www.chatzy.com/

Next Meeting:

• The SIP Team’s next meeting will be on Monday, March 9th at 3:15 in the Board Room.
• The revised SIP will be submitted on Monday, February 23rd.
• The Tech Plan is due to the state on Friday, February 27th.

Want to join a committee?

Committees would love your feedback and your expertise. If you would like to join a committee but just can’t find the time, contact the chair of the committee or one of the two co-chairs. You can still be a part of the school’s improvement process!

January 14 SIP Team Minutes

The SIP Team met on January 14 at 3:15 in RHS Board Room. In attendance were the following:

1. Sam Lewis - Technology Committee Chair
2. Brian Eppley - New Professional Development Chair replacing Jason Rush
3. Robert McCarthy - Discipline & School Safety Committee Chair
4. Michelle Felde - Response to Intervention Committee Chair
5. Jennette Gonzalez - Reading & Literacy Committee Chair
6. Jennifer Buteyn - Principal
7. Micelle Kumor - SIP Team Co-Chair
8. Jim Smith - SIP Team Co-Chair

Celebrations:

The meeting began with celebrations regarding successes concerning Ridgewood High School, its students, faculty and staff. Chief among the celebrations was the completion of the School Improvement Plan. It was approved by the board in the December meeting and submitted to the State for approval prior to January 1st. The SIP Team would like to thank everyone who assisted and helped with the enormous task.

Committee Reports:

Each committee reported on it current status regarding the activities expressed in the School Improvement Plan. All teachers received a copy of the entire plan via an e-mail attachment. The Leadership Team hopes that all teachers will review and complete the Gap Analysis regarding the attainment of SIP Goals prior to the Wednesday, February 4th meeting.

If you have not yet seen a copy of the SIP, please contact any of the chairs on the SIP Team and a copy of the entire plan will be provided.

Response to Intervention (RtI) Committee: We are currently working towards our long term intervention plan and strategies to implement.

Reading & Literacy Committee: We are examining the SIP Goals and determining how we can best serve the teachers, students and parents regarding the reading goals.

Discipline & School Safety Committee: We are currently focused on updating the '09-'10 Student Handbook. We have all of the materials ready for Natural Helpers and plan to get surveys out to students soon.

Community Relations & Communications Committee: We have a meeting scheduled to talk to parents this Thursday, January 15th at 7pm (amendment - this meeting was postponed due to severe weather). We are discussing ways to involve parents with all SIP Team Committees. We would like to have more conversations with parents and community members to uncover their needs. We would like to develop a long-term plan for the possible development of a parent-teacher organization to facilitate a better relationship between parents and teachers.

Professional Development Committee: We have not yet met since returning from break. On our upcoming agendas, however are discussion regarding the upcoming March institute day. We would like to take the information gathered from the SIP Goal Gap Analysis sheets and develop workshops that will meet the needs of teachers.

Technology Committee: We are currently collecting data from teachers and looking for creative ways to collect data from parents and students. There are several ideas to collect data from students - including using study hall time, but we still need to find an efficient means for parents. Jen Buetyn: you may want to consider using 8th Grade Registration on January 24. We are also still working on completing the tech plan that is due February 27, but we would like to have it approved by the school board at the February 9th meeting.

New Business:

The Team moved into new business that included the examination of SIP Goal Timeline developed by the school's leadership team. We discussed ideas for developing a monitoring tool to track the completion of SIP Goals. We discussed how would we show the board and the community that the goals set down in the plan can be measured to indicate if they are having an impact on improving our school. Several ideas were discussed, but we had to table these until our next meeting.

Announcements:

The school's Tech Plan is due in February. Sam Lewis and his Tech Committee would like our team to review the plan at our next meeting.

The next SIP Team Meeting will be in the school's Board Room on Tuesday, February 10th at 3:15.

The meeting was adjourned at 5:08 PM.