SCC 14 February 2024
Attending: Jessica Dalton, Elena Foley, RJ Graham (vice chair), Debbie Johnson, Stacey Kratz (secretary), Greg Leavitt, Rebecca Martin, Eric Murdock, Jenny Olsen, Stacey Timmerman (chair)
Equitable opportunities at Hillcrest
Stacey Timmerman reminded the SCC that the equity steering committee had chosen to disband and let the SCC—hopefully, fortified with more diverse parent representation—handle equity efforts going forward.
Principal Greg Leavitt said that Hillcrest’s two most pressing needs related to creating equitable opportunities are increasing the percentages of minoritized students who take upper-level classes, like AP, IB, and concurrent enrollment. “So many of these students are capable of that, but there seems to be barriers in the way,” he said. “We could use some thoughts on addressing that.”
In addition, he said, attendance continues to be an equity issue at Hillcrest and many other high schools. Mr. Leavitt said that parents who have lived in the United States for a long time and who have had their children progress through our school systems are much more familiar with both attendance policies and ways to excuse absences. These excusals are happening at far lower rates among minoritized students, who also tend to have higher absences than the school population in general. Counselor Eric Murdock said parents often are surprised, when contacted by the school, to find out how many absences their children have, and Assistant Principal Elena Foley said that, in addition to being negatively affected by missing class, students who don’t receive parent excusals are also targeted for interventions specific to absenteeism, when their actual needs may be far different than that.
Stacey Kratz said the access problems relating to attendance systems that Mr. Leavitt mentioned could be symptomatic of larger access issues for parents: they may be less able to, for example, enroll their children in AP or CTE classes, or to monitor their progress through Skyward and Canvas.
Ms. Foley agreed and said that a trend is developing at Hillcrest in which newcomers to the school are showing higher rates of skipping classes. Mr. Leavitt said this problem likely arises from the very natural tendency of immigrant students, who often do not speak much English at first, becoming friends with other students with still-developing English skills, and feeling more comfortable with those students and somewhat alienated from the school community at large. Ms. Foley said that, like many other Utah schools, Hillcrest has seen a “huge influx” of newcomers, and particularly Spanish-speaking newcomers. The school has begun holding Newcomers Nights to try and reach parents and families to welcome them to school and help familiarize them with programs and resources at Hillcrest, but those types of meetings are often not heavily attended by the very populations administrators hope will come. “We’re just trying to reach the parents,” she said.
When Ms. Timmerman asked how the SCC can best support these efforts, Mr. Leavitt acknowledged that these are difficult-to-solve problems, and finding solutions to them will likely be complex and difficult. He noted, however, that there are schools with diverse populations who do comparatively well at broad participation in high-level classes—Highland High School here in the Salt Lake Valley is one of them. And while many non-White students take upper-level classes at Hillcrest, they tend to be students of Asian and Indian descent, with relatively few Black, Latinx, or Middle Eastern students. That’s why efforts to boost equitable opportunities at Hillcrest must be an ongoing part of our work, he said. “This is always a good discussion to have,” he said. “We want to come up with plans to help things get better.”
Ms. Timmerman added that the next item on the agenda, recruitment, could make a difference if we are able to recruit some parents to the SCC who could help give us more insight into how to boost opportunities among under-represented populations.
Recruitment
Ms. Timmerman said SCC representatives presented at the Husky Fair. She said she didn’t get any follow-up emails from anyone but that the SCC plans to keep working on ways to get the word out to as many parents as possible about serving on the SCC.
Stacey Kratz said she will finalize the letter she drafted for coaches, club advisors, and other activity leaders among the faculty to present to parents at season-starting meetings. Mr. Leavitt said he would be willing to mail such a letter to targeted populations, as well as including it in the Husky Strong newsletter.
Ms. Timmerman said it likely will be a matter of inviting as many as we can and trying to get other parents here, and then making the effort to welcome them and hear their perspectives, including having translators at meetings, handing out multilingual agendas, and doing whatever else we can to welcome new perspectives to the SCC.
Teacher Student Success Plan (TSSP)
Mr. Leavitt reported that administrators were able to complete data for formative assessments for the second quarter of this year. This will allow school leaders to compare the second quarter of this year with the second quarter of last year, a good way for the school to measure the success of learning over time.
Besides that, school leaders slightly simplified the TSSP to sharpen its focus on its most important measurable goals. He urged SCC members to read the TSSP carefully before the March meeting when we will need to vote on it. RJ Graham said he has read over the TSSP and feels it’s substantially similar to the effective plans of previous years: “It’s been working, so we don’t need to fix what’s not broken.”
Land Trust Plan
Similarly, Mr. Leavitt asked SCC members to read over the Land Trust Plan closely to make sure everything was clear and to seek any questions that might arise at the March meeting. Mr. Graham said he had heard from Canyons district official Susan Edwards a couple of years ago at an SCC training that schools should see an increase in Land Trust funding and asked if that had ever come to fruition. Mr. Leavitt replied that there is a bit more funding this year and that Hillcrest is likely getting more money next year, possibly $20,000 or $30,000 more than this year’s total.
“That money is invaluable to us,” he said. “They give me money at the district to run this school at about 82 employees, but it really takes 105 teachers to get class sizes where they need to be. All this TSSP and trust lands money contribute to that.” He added that eight teachers and two or three staff members are paid out of those funds.
PTSA Update
PTSA President Rebecca Martin said she has been up at the Capitol twice in the last week due to busy events related to the current Legislative session.
She said the PTSA is feeding the teachers a chili dinner for parent-teacher conferences on Feb. 28 and could use volunteers to help in this effort.
She also said the PTSA is seeking committee chairs for Grad Night: “Graduation is only three months away, and we have to put together this party really soon,” she added.
Cell Phone Policy
Stacey Timmerman asked the SCC if discussion of possible changes to Hillcrest’s cell phone policy should go back on our agenda as a continuing item, given that they are an ongoing and fairly major topic of education-related conversation around the state. She mentioned that she has young relatives who attend Evergreen Junior High in Millcreek, which requires students to leave cell phones in their backpacks. She said, however, that parents there somewhat question whether this is working because they are getting a lot of texts from their children throughout the school day.
She noted that, before deciding to cancel the January meeting due to inclement weather, the SCC members who were able to reach the school had a brief informal discussion of Gov. Spencer Cox’s request that Utah schools ban cell phones and spoke about the fact that an outright ban may have complications that those who support it may not foresee, or may not consider important.
Mr. Leavitt said that the district’s position regarding cell phone policies seems to be shifting: at one time, he felt that Canyons was strongly behind developing a district-wide new cell phone policy and helping schools develop their own based on it. But after Gov. Cox “kind of went around the district and sent his request to all schools,” the district seemed to alter its approach towards allowing schools to develop individual policies.
“We could develop one, but we just would like the district’s support,” he said. “We need the district’s backup on dress code, and this is similar. We need to know that if we take a student’s cell phone, we’re going to be supported.” He added that he has not seen any Canyons schools moving forward yet on stricter policies, although several Hillcrest teachers have ordered glass- or acrylic-fronted lockboxes that allow all students to lock away their phones but still have them visible. He suggested we invite the new Hillcrest principal, who will be named in early March, to SCC meetings to help that person jump-start these discussions. Ms. Timmerman said she would add cell phone policies back onto the agenda so that it is an ongoing discussion item.
Rebecca Martin made a motion to close the meeting, seconded by RJ Graham.
Next meeting: March 13 at 5 p.m.
