Hillcrest PSSC November 26, 2013 Minutes

  1. In attendance were Todd Smith, Angela Michaud, Patricia Button, Nancy McWilliam, Shannon Baxter, Peter Trainor, Joanne Lutes, Erica Trail, Angela Murphy, Janel Willigar, Heidi Paris and Shawn Foster. Regrets from Marlene Campbell.
  1. Minutes from the October 8, 2013 meeting were approved. Peter Trainor said that he has already talked to the District about having a combined meeting with Bessborough regarding Immersion choices in the spring.
  1. School Improvement Plan was discussed.

Literacy

Goal 1:

90% or more of students meet the Provincial reading standard based on the September baseline.

Goal 2:

80% of students will reach an appropriate or above writing ability based on the Provincial writing standards.

Numeracy

Goal 1:

To increase numeracy scores by 50% for each individual student on each subsequent screener if they score less than 50% accuracy (ex: if a student has scored 10 on the first screener then they are aiming for a score of 15 on the second screener). Should a student score between 50-75% then a student will increase their score by five points on successive screeners. If a student scores above 75% then they will increase their score by three points on each successive screener.

Goal 2:

Increase the understanding of Math language to help solve word problems to increase math assessments by 5%.

  1. Peter Trainor went through the PSSC Training slide show that was provided by the DEC.
  1. Assessment Results–Last year’s Grade 8 Math results were below the district and provincial averages. Looking at ways to bring those up this year. Grade 5 Math results were better than the prior year when concerns were raised. Grade 2 Reading – 90% of students were at the appropriate level or above. This meets the SIP goal.
  1. There was a request to have more communication from the middle school French teachers regarding homework, class work etc… Peter Trainor will address the concerns.
  1. Request from Bessborough PSSC – Shannon Baxter introduced a request she had received from the Bessborough PSSC and handed out a letter from them. They are planning to approach the provincial government to have a new school built to replace the current Bessborough School. They feel that the current building is in need of too many repairs and should be replaced. They asked if the Hillcrest PSSC would be interested in combining efforts to perhaps have one school built which would replace both schools. Many PSSC members raised issues:

Peter Trainor – bigger is not always better. It is not necessarily true that there would be fewer split classes at a bigger school – depends on individual grade enrolments. Their suggestion that property values in this area would increase is not relevant and not necessarily true. Bigger schools can create bigger problems as witnessed with Lou McNarin and Lewisville Middle. Small schools allow kids to thrive – they are less likely to fall through the cracks.

Nancy McWilliam – there are lots of good reasons why this shouldn’t happen but financially perhaps it should/needs to happen.

Heidi Paris – People need to be careful what they wish for. We might have no control over where a new school would be located – it could be on the outskirts of town.

Janel Willigar – technology and air quality are lacking at Bessborough.

It was mentioned that the reason Hillcrest has a smart board in every classroom is because the Home and School raised the money and bought them. We also arranged to have our school office moved to the first floor to improve school safety.

A vote was held to decide if the Hillcrest PSSC would move forward and join in this effort. There were 2 votes in favour, 7 votes against and 1 abstention. (2 people left early and were not present for the vote) Shannon will email the Bessborough PSSC to advise them of our decision not to proceed.

  1. Our next meeting will be January 28, 2014 at 6:30.
  1. Meeting was adjourned at 7:45 PM.