We'll have to move to have him sit in.
Okay.
Welcome, everybody, to our rescheduled
curriculum council meeting due to the snow last week.
So we are here starting the meeting on February 18, 2019.
At this point, I'd like to make a motion to have Mr.
Able.
I don't know what it's
voted in for this.
He's going to sit in for one of the absent board members or an absent board member
so we can have a quorum. Right.
So we'll have three.
Okay.
So may I have a motion for that?
So moved to second.
Thank you.
All those in favor say I oppose.
Same saying.
Thank you.
That was a new one. Thanks, John. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Able.
So our first order of business, then,
is to elect a chair for the Curriculum Council committee.
So I will entertain
motions or nominations, please.
I'd like to nominate Cathy Seger
second.
Any discussion,
Mrs. Secker, do you welcome that nomination? Yes.
Okay. Okay.
All right.
So we will then hold a vote to have Mrs.
Secker being chair for the Curriculum Council.
All those in favor say.
I oppose. Same sign.
Wonderful. Thank you.
We'll just make it a clean four years in a row.
That's perfect.
We kind of got a roll going now. Yes.
All right.
We do have summary notes attached from our January meeting.
Those are there for your review.
We do have three informational items this afternoon.
The first one is a full day kindergarten update that Ms..
Lindsey's Lindsey Schmidt is here.
Sorry, stuttered on that
is here to share with us.
And I will just remind you that full day kindergarten is one of the goals
that Curriculum Council chose for the 20 1819 school year.
Since that is a brand new program implementation for us this year.
So thank you for having me.
Good afternoon. All of you.
Like Dr. Windsor said, I'm Lindsay Schmidt.
I'm the assistant principal at the K in one building.
So I just thought I would share a couple highlights
as well, as well as something that we are continuing to work through
as we continue to wake up, eat,
sleep, breathe full day kindergarten this year.
First, I have to mention that our 12 kindergarten teachers,
if you haven't had the opportunity to get down
and see what they do, is utterly amazing.
This year we are welcoming 239
kindergarten students through the front doors every morning.
It's the most we have ever had as far as kindergarten registration.
We are up from 198 last year.
So typically we see a bump every year
between kindergarten and first grade of about 30 to 40 students.
And I'm pretty sure we've hit that bump.
So, again,
those
kindergarten teachers are really the ones who deserve all of the credit.
They are waking up breathing and living full day kindergarten every day.
And it is tiring, definitely more tiring for the adults than the students.
But we are getting there.
Our motto this year is just to breathe.
So a couple of highlights with that.
Full day kindergarten has really a lot of just time.
So for those of you who are not familiar,
our half day program was two and a half hours tops.
So kids were coming in and before they could even
really get settled in a routine,
we were putting them on the busses or saying goodbye, We'll see you tomorrow.
This year has really allowed for things that you wouldn't
necessarily consider to have not been able to occur happen.
So, for example, arts and crafts in the classroom
this year for certain holidays, the teachers have been able to
spend an entire day devoted to these holidays or
completing some crafts, inviting families in to participate in them.
And again, it's arts and crafts.
So it's not in everybody's minds as a high priority,
but it's a high priority for our kiddos. They need that.
They thrive on that.
And it was not something that we were able to do in our short time
with the half day program.
Other things
that we're able to do is just take time to actually move through the curriculum.
So we had full day curriculum in a half day program.
Our math was maybe 15 to 20 minutes a day and now we're able to take time,
use manipulative CVS and actually work through our curriculum
the way it's intended to be worked through.
Our students
are coming in every day, and while they have essential arts,
which is not something they had last year, they only had library,
they get to participate in those essential arts,
but they also get to participate in time with their teacher and their community.
Building those social skills that we know are so important
and something that we were seeing as a deficit in our first grade students
because we didn't have the time to spare and with our kiddos
on those essential components.
So time has been one of,
if not the most important aspects to having full day kindergarten.
The second is play.
So our big push as we went to full day, Kay, was we're not going to overload with
academics, We're not going to have all day ela and math.
We're going to have time for play
because the research that we did as we pursued full day kindergarten
showed us the importance of that social and emotional learning through play.
So loose parts, for example, our kiddos
come into several of their classrooms every morning and they get to pick a tub.
That tub consists of pipe cleaners,
rocks, buttons, blocks.
They self-select and then they take it to a place in the classroom
and they have 15 minutes where they just create whatever they want to create.
Then part of our learning over the summer with Dr.
Nelson Millersville showed the teachers the importance
of taking pictures of that work and then talking about it later.
So several of our classrooms will do that morning play.
Then when they come back from lunch and recess, they'll spend some time
sharing what they created.
So it's allowing these kiddos to not only have that time to sort of decompress
ground and center themselves, but then also share
in these awesome creations that they've made
that they would not have had the opportunity to do last year.
Our teachers cannot complement
the option for having playtime more.
They have seen so much growth and development within our kindergarten
students.
And one thing that's really unique is we have two former first grade teachers
who are in kindergarten now and they can talk to you for hours.
Trust me, I've been there about how much growth they see
in the kindergarten kiddos compared to where they were even entering
first grade last year.
So we're excited to see not just academically, but socially,
emotionally and just as whole beings where our kindergarten
kiddos are going to start first grade next year.
Another highlight
is something that we promoted last year,
but I don't think we had a true understanding of what was lacking.
And that's our relationships that our teachers
now have with their students and their families.
So last year and years prior, our kindergarten teachers
were juggling up to 40 students a day in their classroom.
So that's 40 families.
So it took them a long time to get to know these 40 little kiddos because they only
had two and a half hours with them a day and they had 40 little kiddos.
This year they have been able to form those super important connections
right off the bat.
There is constant communication between home and school.
Families feel that connection.
One thing that the majority of our teachers use is a blog forum.
Some way to allow the families to actually be a part of the classroom
by taking video, taking pictures, having constant communication back and forth,
which, as any of you know, as parents, myself included,
when we sent our babies off to school, we're like, what is going on all day?
But this is really providing that relationship that was missing
that we knew was missing, but we didn't realize how important
of a relationship it is.
It's not I shouldn't say important, but how much we were missing
that relationship with our kindergarten family, specifically, because as they move
to first, of course, then it went to, you know, a 1 to 20 relationship.
But that first year, especially for families
sending their first baby into school, is so crucial.
And now we finally have the opportunity to build those relationships.
One thing we are still working through
and in total transparency, it's just the fact that our kiddos
specifically more this year than we have seen before, are coming in
with a huge need outside of just the academic realm.
So for example, we have a lot of kiddos that are bearing some trauma.
They have come into school and they have been a part of some sort
of trauma at some point in their five, six years of life.
And we need to continue to plan, purposefully plan ways
to support our staff in order to support our students
with that trauma informed care.
So academically, I feel confident in saying we can reach any student,
whether they are coming in with zero skills or they're coming in
with all of the skills necessary to be in second grade.
We have the capability of meeting those needs, but this year,
specifically the number of students coming in with a bunch of
needs outside of that academic piece
are higher than we've seen in the past.
And it's something that we have continued to work through.
We're continuing to look at opportunities
to develop our staff professionally around those needs,
but also ways that we can incorporate supports throughout the course of our day.
So we are very lucky to have an amazing school counselor, Mr.
Schroeder, who spends a lot of time working with the classroom teachers,
as well as the students, to build those skills necessary to be successful.
But it takes time and there's still some more learning to do.
So that's definitely on our agenda to continue to improve on.
So I did want to mention we do have a waiver still as an option.
We started the school year with 14 students on the waiver.
We are down to seven.
We were at six
and then we had a new entrant who came in and requested to be on the waiver.
So we have
still seven kiddos,
four happen to be in the same classroom,
but it is working.
I mean, our schedule is built around that waiver so students
get all of their core academics,
but they are missing out on some of that essential learning that occurs
throughout the afternoon in the play as well as lunch
recess, Essential Arts, those pieces. So
any questions that I can answer,
I would say thank you to you and the staff for committing to this.
I know
we were on the steering committee together and we felt
it was the best thing to do for the district.
How do we bridge the
the trauma and dealing with the trauma aspect to home?
And do we have enough supports in our district for that?
Like we can deal with the kiddo while he or she's here,
but sometimes that that's also helping the family.
Are we able to
do that or is that difficult for us?
So we have a school social worker or a district social worker
who has been a huge proponent in that piece
of bridging home and school.
One thing that we still need to continue to do is find ways
to reach some of those families that it's a little bit more difficult
to be present in their students education, not that they don't want to be,
not that they don't care, but we have to recognize
that we have families with very diverse backgrounds
that are handling multiple situations in varying ways.
So I think we can continue to be creative
as to how we can bring those families in and support them.
But I think right now with the current situation,
we are able to connect with those students, specifically
their families, and allow them to know that there's outside
resources available, help connect them with those outside resources.
But I think that as we move, we're currently starting
our early intervention conversations for kiddos that are coming through the ICU
and will be of age kindergarten age next year.
So we've included
distance or our social worker in those conversations already
to sort of open up the idea of how we can bridge that gap
earlier and provide supports even prior to them entering our school district.
Yeah, that's where I think the key is like we can't do everything.
So how does the county support us?
How does the state support us with funding?
Are there enough wraparound services that we can connect families to because
we have stretched our budget to accommodate for full day kindergarten
and we have hands on these children and can help them.
But we also need resources outside of our township.
And so if I can ever help with that, like talking to the county or the state,
I think that we should keep those conversations open with our elected
officials and making sure that they're put putting the money in the right places.
Now, that would be great.
And as we sort of continue to move through this and identify
the growing number of needs, that's a great conversation
that we should be having,
because I think you're right, there are a lot of things that we can do
during the day, and we're committed to that cause that
we will do everything we can in the time that we have them.
But it's also important to make sure our families are supported as well.
And we're trying to make sure that we can connect families to resources
prior to those kids even entering school, because that's so important also.
So that's great to know. All right. Thank you.
Thank you.
Are there any other questions?
Thank you so much.
Thank you, guys.
Have a good day. Thank you.
Cross your fingers for no smoke.
Okay.
Up next is Mr.
Smith, and he's going to give us a high school grading update.
I believe he passed around some information for us to have to look at.
And this is another one of our curriculum council goals
for the 20 1818 school year.
I'll turn it over to you.
All right. Good afternoon.
For those who don't know
me, my name is Jeff Smith, and I'm the principal of Hershey High School.
So today we're going to take a look
at some of the conversations we've had with our department chairs
looking at changing our our grade scaling and our grade reporting.
So there is an interest to take a look at the report cards.
And Hershey currently reports our report cards with a number on the transcript.
So if you have a 94, the 94 gets goes on your report card.
If you have a 75, the 75 goes on the report card.
So although the other part of it is
is although we claim to have a 4.0 grade scale, our our
our GPA calculations are quite different than most of our neighboring schools.
And actually a number of the schools that we looked at across the commonwealth.
So the first thing we did as
as a group is we simply, you know, like, well, let's look and see what's out there.
So the front page lists 27 schools that we sort of looked
at as a group with department chairs just to see what other schools are doing.
So the upper the upper half of this, these were the 15 schools in Pennsylvania
that were ranked as the top 15 high schools in the state of Pennsylvania.
So you can see that Hershey High School is part of that.
So that was an obvious place to start.
And then we sort of, you know, kind of pick and choose.
Some people chose some schools that were from out of state.
And we just wanted to get a sense of what are other high schools doing?
You know,
part of the conversation was around college acceptance and scholarship.
And every time someone applies to a college, they always say that
they're recalculating GPA because some some schools have a very inflated GPA
where an AP class in honors class might get up, go up to a 5.0 scale
and some might only award awarded as a half of an extra point
or even maybe 5/100 of an extra point.
So every school does it a little bit different, but ours is
is is quite different.
I'm saving that for the last page.
So these are sort of the schools we looked at and I gave an example.
So the next two pages are sort of, you know, what, what were we looking at?
So the first example is Downingtown STEM.
And, you know, they they have a street 90 to 100 and they report letter grades.
They do not have a plus minus system.
And you can see how they weight their honors courses
and you can see how they weight their I.B.,
which is international baccalaureate courses.
The next school was new Hope so very
pretty.
This one was pretty typical.
I would say about half the schools reported in this manner
where they had a plus or minus grade system
and they had various scales throughout the ABCD.
And then the third one pulled out was Conestoga High School,
and they had a straight, you know, 90 to 100.
They did not include their weights in their example that we pulled on,
but they had a similar weighting system to Downingtown STEM.
So part of these initial conversations
stem from looking at like the college acceptance.
So through Navient, we can pull information and sort of we can
each student gets a point, so they take SAT and GPA
and you get a point
and then they draw some lines and say
most of the people on that side of the line
will get accepted to various colleges and universities, and most will, you know,
don't don't have the equal chance to get accepted.
So in looking at our GPAs, when we are comparing ourselves
to neighboring schools, I think you'll see that like our
our students are may have may not
be getting all the credit they deserve in their quality point calculation.
The the document that we that I was given is a dot matrix printer and I couldn't
copy it because it was too cloudy.
But so this hasn't been discussed,
I'm guessing, for a whole lot of year.
So I talked to Barb Closer, who's like a 1989 graduate,
and she claims that the same was in place when she graduated from Hershey
High School.
So the system that we're working with has been around for quite some time.
But like I said, I want to say for the last page
what we really need to look at.
So I have a little note here that college accepts
all type of all types of grade reporting, and they do.
And the report, the GPA is only one piece.
So I also attached
something that we would send to a college, which is our student profile.
So what all schools try to do is give a snapshot
of what their school is made of.
What are the types of students?
What does a community look like? And
a lot of
schools, a lot of colleges will give this a look.
But this gives gives colleges and universities.
It gives them an idea of what type of high school we have.
And by reading through this, you should get an idea that we have a
a fairly it's competitive, it's challenging,
and our students score at a very high level.
One of the reasons
that Hershey doesn't have class rank is because you might be in the
like the 50th percentile and have a 3.7 GPA, and that's not fair.
I'm guessing when that decision was made, it was made in a similar fashion
where we have these students that are performing at very high levels.
But because there's so many students performing at very high levels, it was
actually, you know, working in against a large population of the students.
So I'm guessing that was sort of the same conversation that was had around
class rank.
So this is just another piece of information.
But if we go to the last page, it sort of sums everything up.
So the top half would be a neighboring school district.
And if you had a 94 in social studies and a 95 in math and a 96 in English
and 97 in biology, it would be reported as you get an A in each of the classes,
but your quality points for your GPA, you would be awarded a 4.0
for each of those subjects.
So your overall GPA is a 4.0 at Hershey.
If you got a 94 in social studies and a 95
in math and 86 in English and 97 in biology,
those numbers would appear on your on your report card or even your transcript.
But the quality points you can see are much different.
So a 94 in social studies at Derry Town
in Derry Township at Hershey High School is only worth 3.55 points.
But many, many of our schools that we're competing against for colleges
and universities for scholarships,
we I think we're selling our kids short a little bit.
So this was the crux of the conversation and why we took a look at this.
So we get 3.67.
Is that actually reported somewhere?
Yeah, from us.
I made it very simple. Yes.
I try to use the core areas, but this is this is what happens because we put a 94.
And in our system we have these calculations.
And most other schools, if you are in a you're a 4.0.
If you're an A-minus, you're a 3.7.
But these would be solid A's.
And the way that we're calculating GPA
versus the way some other schools are calculating GPA.
Now, colleges will tell you that they recalculate.
However, I'm not sure.
Committees and boards that are deciding on scholarship money
if they're recalculating and to what extent.
Because if you read all the information that we have, it says we have a 4.0 scale.
So a lot of people in our business say, oh, a 4.0 scale.
All right.
Well, how do you weight things all your weight at this much?
But just taking a peek at this,
pretty much every
school on this list looks like the top and then we look like the bottom.
I'm confused.
So when we send something to a college, don't they see the students?
Transcript With the 80 98% on it, or they just see the 4.0.
They see what the final grade is.
They see like you got a nine.
For. Four and okay, they see that and they see.
And then they have the quality points gets calculated at the end of the year.
Okay. They see both.
So they must take that and then make their own calculation.
But that. Yes, but if you talk to
a number of college admissions officers, they none of them.
So I know Stacy knows I reached out to probably 20.
I heard back from three or four, and not one of them could give me an answer.
And no one wanted to email me.
They all said, Can you call me?
And if you speak to Brendan Hensel and he has
higher level interactions with people like that, when we bring them
into our school, they do recalculate, but that it's like a mystery to everyone.
What does that actually mean?
What does it look like?
Because I couldn't get I could not get any straight answer.
And we we don't we don't have any control over that recalculation.
Correct. It's arbitrary. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's completely arbitrary.
The other thing that I think really got us to look at this carefully is
a lot of scholarships will ask you for your GPA and proof of your GPA.
Well, you know, we turn this and, you know, somebody in another school
that's calculating those same exact grades can submit to a scholarship.
I have a400 and we submit ours and it's 3.67
that automatically, you know,
that could even knock you out of the running for some scholarships
if it's if it's not high enough in that calculation.
And so that's where
we really we do not want to have something in place
that's arbitrarily hurting our kids, you know, in the competition.
For for. Colleges and for scholarship money.
Yeah.
Or even like summer programs like my son, just an application for a summer program.
And we had to get a copy of his transcripts.
And it's the same thing. We went to the same thing.
I'm like, Oh, that seems a lot.
I was surprised at how low it seemed compared to the grades that he got.
Yeah.
So yeah, it definitely is
relevant for a lot of different scenarios.
And I happen to have two of the department chairs here
that were in on the conversations and sort of what we were leaning towards.
So we started this conversation in August
and we've been having we've been picking up this conversation
so far August, September, October, probably not December, but,
you know, we would take a little bit of our meeting time every month to discuss
different aspects.
And we're leaning toward a plus minus grading system where, you know,
because we believe that an 89 should be recognized differently than an 81.
And so that's where the distinction, because some of the teachers
were concerned that, you know, how can an 89 be the same as an 81?
And I don't think any of the department chairs disagreed with that.
So right now, we're sort of in the we're
we're trying to decide what ranges we would like
and we would like to keep our 92 189 80
keep that D without because you can look at some of them
and they they they raise the failing grade up into the mid-sixties.
And we weren't really interested in that.
But we are leaning toward a plus minus where we'd have about the top two points
and the bottom two points with the exception of an A,
because an A-plus should be something over 100.
And we don't we shouldn't be having averages over 100.
So that's sort of our next step.
And we were looking to implement this with the class of 2023,
which would be our incoming freshman.
So implement this summer, change it.
This summer for our incoming freshmen.
Do you need to change the system? Yes.
By a new system? No, no, no, no, no, no.
So you can just going back.
And so based on what we understand,
going back and trying to change this would be a complete mess.
So whenever you make decisions like this, it should be from this point forward,
we can run simultaneous calculations
so we can have our ten, 11, 12 on the current,
what we're currently doing, and start ninth graders with different parameters.
And then we would slowly phase out the current system that we're using.
So you
can't change anything for current tense 11th and 12th graders.
So there's a philosophical disagreement about that.
And I don't know if we want to talk about that today, but it would be it would be.
We were told that systemically with the system, it's difficult
and it's really kind of messy.
So we could probably we may want to consider
and or some white discussion about for our ninth graders this year
because they're not too far into the game yet.
But I think changing it past that, I think I think that has some integrity issues
because we started with certain systems and students
may have signed up for classes because of the system that we have
and the way that they're awarded and rewarded for various classes.
So there's more to it than just what the numbers say.
There's still a lot of
work to do before this freshman class comes in.
Right.
We we're going to need a decision in.
So in April,
because we're going to need a sort of
before the summer even gets here to start our the foundational stuff,
because we'll be running two different formats with.
But each school can handle it.
We've been told that.
We've been told that from our tech people
and from representatives from the software company,
which thank you, like your team for us to take a look at.
That looks like a lot of thought.
A lot of thought has gone into it.
I, I guess I two thoughts.
One is I'm concerned about sort of the law of unintended consequences.
So what
what's a potential unintended consequence that we haven't thought through yet?
And I can't think of any other than we will have
we'll have a new class of starting.
And then historically, if we compare, it'll be it'll be apples
to oranges, right?
It'll be hard to there'll be a new benchmark.
So and I don't know if that's a negative, it's just a fact.
And then the only other thing I was going to suggest,
and I'm sure you folks are thinking it through already, is messaging
will be very important for that new class as they come in the school.
There are a lot of a lot of parents that have not had a high school or this.
They will just understand the GPA was when it was when they were in it, Right?
Yeah.
The confusion may come with with parents that have had someone go
through the system more in the system to understand the differences. We
I went through this exact same thing
I ran in our high school and we just made the messaging very clear.
Right.
And letters and we made sure we almost had well,
we are everything's electronic now, but right then it was paper
student handbooks and we made sure they were different colors.
And so if you were freshmen, you had this book
and the other classes said this book,
because we're very specific and didn't want things
that kind of get cross contaminate it.
Thanks.
So will you still report the
the grades as a percentage on this?
The teachers will still report a percentage.
This is just the final calculation at the end of the year that gets.
To the teachers will report a percentage and have a.
So it's
my understanding we can do percentage grade and letter grade on report cards.
On transcripts.
We were probably looking just to go to letter grade.
So the A-minus, B plus B, B minus.
So the report card, we would have
that information for parents to know where the student fell in the range.
But for colleges, universities, like that's
the plus minus should take care of that.
We don't want to raise questions.
We want to do what's better for and best for the kids.
So I think transcripts
should be as should not be complicated.
They should just provide the exact detailed information
that colleges and universities would like to see.
I think if we put a number on a letter,
I think I think it's almost like too much information.
That's just my opinion.
But we're going to continue to talk about it.
So we would like, yeah, we have a meeting tomorrow, We meet every two weeks.
We will be talking about this tomorrow and then we'll have something final
to bring to the group in April and we'll be looking for your support.
Is it does
it need to be board approved that the change?
I don't think so.
My impression was that
it needed to be board informed, right?
Yeah, but not necessarily board approved.
I will confirm that. Okay.
We make any sweeping changes.
But my my understanding at this point
in time is that it's informational for the school board
so that you have all the information and the details that you need.
Yeah, I don't think that as a parent
I've ever seen that three point something anywhere.
Should be on the report cards.
Should be I pulled one up I don't know.
I only I've been looking at my.
I've only see the cumulative percentage.
Q So percentage for.
A or current GPA and cumulative
I only see like the percentage like 99 point or 98.3.
I've never I never seen that the four point scale anywhere.
But that must be what you send out.
It's on the. Transcript.
So it's I don't think the parents are aware of it.
Okay.
Well, it's something that made it
something to add to report cards and even at different times of the year
because that's just the added calculation.
But I caught on to that when my daughter
was looking at colleges because I had to report for her
and I had heard other people talking because she was recruited for athletics.
And I always just made it 4.0 because it was like I knew that it wasn't 3.5.
However, I just you just know that that's not right.
And your report. We're going to we're.
Trying that because that's like a B, you know, it's not a B.
Yeah.
I think I think
I always believe that you do what's best for kids.
And as much as we might sit here and look at the last page and go, Well,
why wouldn't you do something retroactively?
But I think there's so many implications of doing that that it's moving forward.
And I think that's the best way to approach something like this.
I know that,
again, department chairs, we've we've we've spent a lot of time on it.
And I know even with Stacie and with the administration
at the high school, and we've given it a lot of thought and consideration
and we've really tried to look at what other schools are doing.
I'm look, Hershey has a great reputation.
It's a fabulous school.
But I wouldn't want someone slighted based because of how we're calculating GPA.
We can still have our high standards and we can still represent excellence.
I think this is going to maybe boost that a little bit for our kids.
So, yeah, thank you.
Are there any other questions?
Thank you.
So I would look forward to a final decision,
probably the May Curriculum Council just to make sure that the high school has
the full month of April to to work out any final pieces
and make final decisions on reasonable, perfect work for you, Mrs.
Seger. Yeah. Thank you. Okay,
great.
Thanks, everyone.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
So the next piece on here is
again, something that we're looking at for kids
and and trying to make some some changes that are for the betterment of the kids.
And Mr.
Smith and myself and Mr.
Governance and Mr.
Valentin and gifted teacher from the middle school.
And I highly invested in this conversation about
whether or not students who are middle school students
taking classes in the high school should receive high school credits.
In the past, we have not done this
for four kiddos who went over to the high school and took classes of any sort.
For whatever reason, we did not award them high school credits as middle schoolers.
I'm looking at some of our we have a two in particular
extraordinary students at the moment,
both who have
almost finished all of our
high school math courses as an eighth grader and a ninth grader,
and really looking at
what we want to do for them and what is in their best interest.
We knew they were coming up through really hadn't had this depth of conversation
that was we want them to be able to move on,
you know, if it's appropriate, graduate early and move on with their education
or be duly enrolled, whatever that case may be.
Obviously, there'll be a lot of discussions
with families and so forth as well,
but really wanted to free up space in their schedules and
and make it possible for them to to earn those credits.
We did want to there was there was some trepidation
because we did not want this to be a open camp
for let's see how fast my kid can get through high school.
That really is not the point of this at all.
Nor is it the the intent for us to award credits
for courses that are offered in the middle school.
So we offer algebra one, we offer geometry in the middle school.
So those are middle school classes.
It is a student who can whose needs can not be met in the middle school
through conversation with both and families
that the school is recommending that the child
take courses at the high school.
We did have a couple of students
who are I think, juniors this year who took some
AP computer science classes because they were interested in not as gifted students.
The students that we're looking at this accounting
for are starting with our students who are currently freshmen.
And then we would work backwards from there
because they are taking classes that are actual
non electives.
They're taking core classes that count towards their core graduation credits.
And we did look into
and clearinghouse regulations just to make sure that we weren't
doing anything
that would set up a student to not be able to participate in college athletics.
That is a
super important piece and Mr.
Smith enjoys
working through all the justifications that he has to focus
to make sure that our.
Boy Clearinghouse eligibility center I'm sorry the your name
it's fabulous organization.
Well, yeah, just to add to that, we did
one concern was were there implications for eligibility?
There is not.
And would there be NCAA eligibility concerns and there is not.
This is a very small group of students
and similar to the conversation we just had,
it would be nice that if if our students
are taking courses in our high school with our teachers
to start to create that track because a lot of schools will not.
They don't.
And talking schools, colleges, universities, they won't.
They do not want to know what happened.
They don't want to look at a middle school transcript that holds no weight.
They want to see it on high school like what happened at the high school.
So again, a
little bit of a challenge on what the transcript would look like.
But again, even if we have to create them by hand,
it's a very small group of students and we think that
they should be credited with a transcript just like it.
Dual enrollment for high school Students in college.
If we have a high school student, go to Penn State, they have a Penn
State transcript where they go to Cabrini or they go to wherever they go.
They get a transcript from that college or university.
And I mean, it only makes sense, especially because
it's our teachers in our building with our curriculum.
We're not talking about, you know, people coming from the outside or acceleration.
I think they're were pretty locked up with our prerequisites.
And generally this happens in mathematics.
So that's been the history. Absolutely.
Absolutely.
So our next steps are to work on the transcript piece.
That's what we're looking at right now just to see
are we going to be able to have one transcript or is it going to be it's
going to have to look like two transcripts. So
I will be working with Mr.
Shuey on that.
I was intending to do some of that work last week.
The snow days put a damper on that work
and she had been up to her eyeballs with roster verifications and pens work
prior to that, so I didn't want to trouble her with a transcript piece.
So we'll we will be starting that work shortly.
And this one, I did do quite a bit of investigation
about whether or not it needed board approval.
Oh, I was going to ask you that. Yes.
So this one is just board and forms. Okay.
So it must be an administrative regulation.
Yes. Yes.
Because it is not changing the amount of credits that students need
or, you know, any kind of core curricular requirements.
It's simply awarding those credits as they
take their courses instead of not allowing that.
Do you have any other questions?
There's there's there's the middle student.
And I actually believe the building in high school. Yes.
Oh, yes, Yes.
And that was that was one of the pieces of
both families were asking the students are asking
a gifted teacher who was helping them set this up was asking,
you know, they're in a high school class in the high with high schoolers
who are getting credits for this high school class.
So can we talk about for like,
yeah, so let's talk about that.
Yeah, I think it makes sense, especially for the reasons that Mr.
Smith mentioned, that the, you know, colleges only
want to see what you've done in high school
and if they can get an accurate representation of that. Exactly.
It almost for some students it would have looked like
they hadn't even had those classes.
And I mean, especially if we're going to, you know,
we're going to count the Keystone in middle school as a graduation.
Yeah, there shouldn't be any reason why we can't apply like, high school
related things. Exactly.
So thank you.
Any other questions?
Wonderful.
Thank you so much.
We do have some new business this afternoon. Mr.
Jeff Mumma is here to present to AP history books.
It's been quite some time since AP books have been
revisited and
looked at, so he's bringing to us to
two books to take a look at. One is AP.
US History is a new opposed history book and one is an AP human geography.
So I will turn it over to Mr.
Memmott to talk about why
these are the best choices that I think he has the text there.
So as you talk about each one, you can pass them around
and then we will put them on display out front for the 30 days
sounds from the review.
Okay.
So like you said, it's been a long time.
Our AP US books are completely out of print.
We have extra students now and I actually have to make copies
sometimes of these really old textbooks.
So the one that we chose
is the Brinkley AP US history book, people who make
these books are in a competition to try to make the largest book possible.
I think
it is
unbelievable how much they pack into books and to in our opinion, it's detrimental.
It's actually way too much information.
It's hard for students to keep focus.
So this is this book by Brinkley is actually one of the smaller ones.
Another big factor in picking this book over
most of the others is their electronic resources won't work on iPads
because they're flash, which is an outdated sort of thing.
This particular book is coming with
not just the textbook, but an electronic version of the textbook,
as well as a bunch of resources that work
and integrate with canvas, which is our learning management system.
At the high school,
I teach undergrad history
and I actually use the Brinkley version of this for many years successfully.
So it's a pretty popular format for an AP US history book.
Should I just go right into the next one so.
We can see if there's any questions on this? Yeah.
Any specific questions about.
Have a question
I happened have the AP current AP history book sitting in my house right now.
So I was looking at it from 2006.
Do you think that there's any issue in buying
a 2015 already four years old?
Do you want to buy something that's more current because
it's been such a long time since, what, our last edition of textbooks.
It might be another period of time till we buy a new set.
Sure.
The the there are other ones that are more recent,
but a couple of years is going to make a difference in the content.
And with this one, this is a this is a long standing, reliable version,
which I think is okay and a 2015.
But I understand why somebody would question
those other ones that are that are closer are the ones that are just huge
and packed with all kinds of stuff, and students kind of lose their focus.
Well, I know the.
Original one also was when people made textbooks at that point,
they had a different focus in the way that they made textbooks.
The 26 version.
That if you have the ABC, you had the one that we have now, correct?
Yeah.
Well,
that that's good to know because I didn't it's it.
But I do know that I don't think you get to the end anyway.
Right. I mean it's.
I get to the end.
Oh you get to the end. Okay.
I wasn't sure if that worked or not.
We have to discuss what the end is like today.
Do you get to today?
So not that close, right?
Yeah. I'm
good. One more question.
Do you think it's a good representation of gender, culture, race?
I mean, is it mixed?
Did you take a good look at it for that.
Yes, I already already knew about it and we already looked through them.
We were looking.
Every textbook is pretty much okay with that.
That's not that doesn't tend to be a problem.
Actually, for AP, especially her high school textbooks anyway.
Okay. Yes, it is. Good for that. Thank you.
You're welcome.
I have a question
you list here that it has the six year subscription online resources.
Would that include any updates that might not necessarily occur with,
you know, the copyright that it would allow for some
more current material, things like that?
I don't know for sure, but it might.
Yeah, it might.
It depends on how they all they all look at their online resources differently.
I mean if if most of the ones we looked at didn't we're still using Flash
that just kind of shows that they don't really once
they pop them out, they don't really do anything with them.
So we can definitely ask that question.
We also spend a lot of time doing things on the fly, and the textbook isn't always
the focus of what we're doing, you know, which allows us to certainly update.
Yeah.
I was just going to ask you, is there
back to the diversity question, Is there like the starting point?
Is there a large section about Native American history
this year and battles and the genocide and.
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.
And I was just reading a actually an a book that I'm reading about,
learning about about what you mentioned, about having too much information.
So I literally like, just read it over the weekend
and it's just really rang true about how
the sort of old standard of textbook writing was
so much information, so much information that it was actually not
conducive to learning.
And so
that's good to hear that you're
you know, that this is not representative of that,
that there is more or less less stuff so that you can actually dive
deep into the actual events.
Right? That's my experience. Yeah.
So thank you for that.
Thank you.
It is really interesting to see that you bring that up
when you do a historiography
of the AP textbooks from like the 1970s to now.
The way that those events were portrayed, we still have my
I used to do this with my own students, so this is like makes me excited.
So forgive me for preverbal for a second that I used to have my husband's
AP US history textbook
and we had done this work with my kiddos and the way that conquistadors
were portrayed as conquering heroes and this was a great thing.
And now we have this awesome land because of all that they did.
And now you open, you know, the pages and it's barely even mentioned as a
as a conquistador or victory.
But instead the, the,
you know, the decimation of native peoples and and what has happened.
So really publishers and authors have done a very nice job of people
say history doesn't change, but certainly the lens of history changes.
Right.
And not just whitewashed. Exactly.
A history book from from 1985 is more a history of 1985 than it is.
So I think that's a great way of describing it.
So are there any other questions on the AP US
history book?
Okay.
May I have a motion to accept the
American AP American
History AP Edition Textbook?
Brinkley Brinkley Almost for first read second.
Thank you. All those in favor say hi.
Although the Post is saying
the next book is the human geography People places and culture.
Okay so smaller as you can see,
this is a this is a book that updates pay off on this
because human geography is changing all the time so
so as recent as possible helps the other ones that we had.
We're I think the ninth edition.
This is the 11th edition.
We still looked at other human geography textbooks.
The deal with human geography.
What makes it a little different is the course
itself was designed and then we bought the textbook for the course.
And I'm
the one who designed the course originally when we started it.
And so therefore, that first textbook was chosen
to match what we already designed for the curriculum.
And this is the updated version of that textbook.
So the format of this book pays off for us.
There are other human geography books that cover roughly the same sort of thing
that could be more updated.
But in human geography,
you're not doing things chronologically, you're doing them thematically.
And so the themes of the book matching what we actually have
in the curriculum and what we do in class is much better.
So for example, we have a chapter on culture and a chapter on religion.
In some other textbooks,
they slap them together in one chapter and they put them in a different place.
And so therefore, this is we think this is the best one for us.
Otherwise, amazingly, it's almost the same sort of system.
This is also six year online resources subscription that goes with this book.
It doesn't come with a digital textbook.
I'm pretty sure this is the one that doesn't come with a digital textbook,
but it does have lots of other things that integrate with canvas, works
with iPads, things like that.
Are there are any questions?
And this is a world view,
sort of like a Guns, Germs and Steel version and a textbook or.
Yeah, human geography is basically if you take all of geography
and you get rid of the physical geography, which is volcanoes and clouds and stuff
like that, that's everything.
It's left so populated and culture and things like that.
Statistics
and other questions.
Okay, I have a motion
for a first read for the AP human geography textbook.
Sommers Second.
Thank you very much.
Any further discussion?
Since all those in favor say I
oppose same science.
So we have two books for first read.
They will go out on the credenza in the lobby
for 30 days, and then we'll have a second read next month.
Mr. Moment, I'm more than welcome to come back for the second read, but generally,
okay, all the questions that we have are asked in between if there are any.
So you necessarily have to be here.
Thanks. Thank you. Thanks, everybody.
Thank you.
We do not have any old business and we have no public.
We almost had Mr. Able as a public.
Good thing you were here.
I know that was would be today.
We would have to cancel, right? We probably would have. Yeah.
So thank you very much for being here, Mr.
Able.
Our next meeting is March 11th, 2019,
and if there are no further
concerns or questions, we will adjourn at 454.