January 13, 2021

In Attendance:

1. Brant Thomsen
2. Greg Leavitt
3. Stacey Kratz
4. Jan Hansen
5. Nicole Huff
6. Karen Conder
7. Karina Park
8. Julie Cluff
9. J. Graham
10. Stacey Timmerman

Meeting Notes:

TSSP and LAND Trust plans

We need to start diving in to have our plan ready to approve in April.

Principal Greg Leavitt: The TSSP plan is really part of the Trust Land plan; the acronyms change about every three years. Obviously they gave us more money; we have TSSA money with trust land money; the TSSP plan accommodates both money streams.

The district has a good plan and we spend it together. You all read our TSSP plan; what I would like to say is the school community council should have a united voice, but there obviously are individual voices. I believe that you do have a voice in this trust land money. You do need to know Hillcrest is moving forward. Our data shows we’re making progress. Our graduation rate is highest it’s ever been; up to 87 percent. That was our main goal for our trust land spending. Instead of 85 dropouts this year, we only had 62. A lot of credit goes to our counseling department as well as the rest of the staff. 

Hillcrest will be honored as a school of excellence at the state board meeting Jan. 20. What that means is that, out of all the many high schools in Utah, we’re one of eight high schools that has been chosen because we’re doing well enough and progressing well enough with our ELL and refugee students that they’re honoring us as a school of excellence. That’s great, but the more important thing is someone has noticed that when they run all the data on these things Hillcrest High School pops up as one whose data is improving.

With those two indicators, we hire teachers and extra staff members so we have lower class sizes and can offer more sections; I think that’s working. But there are things we do that don’t cost money: school wide disclosure statement, professional learning communities where teachers collaborate, PLC group, testing protocols, writing rubrics, APP program. We have these essential documents; it’s taken me six years to put all those in place. All of those I’ve also always brought to the SCC to preview and get feedback on. And we’re always refining them; for example, we just sent out to parents how to access the APP electronic hall pass so you can see where your students are signing up to go. We want to increase parent-student-teacher accountability across the board.

I’m working with the BLT and I don’t plan to have any big movements the next few years. We need to solidify, we need to make these initiatives specified, strategic, and systematic as we go forward. 

From that perspective, our trust lands plan and TSSP plan will not change much. We might decide we need a little money for different things here and there, but my proposal to the SCC is that over the next few years this TSSP plan substantially stays the same. Changing it every year will not harbor success with our teachers.

We have good data to see how our teachers are doing and follow through with them on things like how they handle APP and following through in reteaching and the other aspects that the trust lands and TSSP plan indicate we should be doing.

We want to get everybody on board to follow the school wide disclosure and treat everybody with equity and social justice, and we know that as we do that our graduation rate and success rate will continue to climb.

Brant Thomsen: we want to be transparent and give everybody a chance to see what we’re doing and speak up. But if what we’re doing is working, it’s hard to argue for wholesale changes. My personal preference is stick with what we’re doing for the most part and just refine it.

Leavitt: We’ve seen a consistent movement towards integration and a more systematic approach to education, rather than every teacher and every department being all over the place. 

Karina Park: We’re seeing good progress and we want to stick with it. I haven’t seen anything that works better to bring to your attention.

R.J. Graham: The numbers are proving that what we’re doing is working well. The only little piece is we allocate almost every dime to extra teachers. Do you need a fund for computers or something like that that we should reserve, as many elementary and middle schools do?

Leavitt: I don’t think so. High schools are different than elementary and middle schools in that our budgets are so much bigger. … I have several places I can access for money for computers if I ever needed it. Three years ago I and my financial secretary put $800,000 into the PTF interest-bearing account at the state. It’s gained $10,000 in interest in the last three years, even with interest rates quote low. We’re operating quite well and Hillcrest is in good financial shape. That’s great because we need the money for salaries. Six years ago I could buy seven teachers with $250,000, and now, thanks to pay increases, I can only buy four. And they should get that much.

It sounds like we’re bragging, but we’re bragging as a team. Hillcrest High School is the only school that had enough computers to distribute to students because we’d done such a good job of making sure we had enough Chromebooks to distribute. We still have more waiting. Where other schools have had to scrimp and scrape and figure things out, we’ve been in good shape.

I really want to be transparent and clear that just because Jan and I and probably Nikki believe our plan is solidified and we need to keep working it doesn’t mean that we can’t add and take away based on your thoughts.

Hillcrest recognition

Leavitt: I take a lot of pride in Hillcrest and I know you all do. When this school was built in 1962, it was built in somewhat of a farming community. Now it’s grown into the heart of this valley. We have a population that is part of our boundary that needs a lot of support and help. I’m proud the community council is behind helping them and pleased our teachers  are coming on board more and more and learning how to help and support these students. That’s not our only agenda: we want students in stable homes with good academic support and capacity to succeed at higher levels, as well.

Stacey Kratz: One of the things I’ve always loved most about the Hillcrest community is that the school prioritizes helping every student reach their potential. Students with learning challenges, students who are English language learners, students whose families struggle with poverty or homelessness, all the way to more privileged, high-ability students who choose to come here for the IB program: Hillcrest finds ways to meet their needs and to make all of them into a community.

COVID-19 updates

Thomsen: The district sent out new guidance on the updates; I encourage everyone to look at that to get updated information.

Leavitt: Most teachers are getting vaccinated; the first round are teachers age 51 and up; the next round is down to the 30s, and then down to the early 20s. They sent a survey out and each person had to reserve their portion of the vaccine or defer. They seem to have a good process going where there’s a lot of choice. I don’t know the results of how many teachers in my building are choosing not to get the vaccine; that’s a private thing.

Online learning preferences

Leavitt: Next week we’ll be putting out information to register for the 2021-22 school year. Nikki and Matt and myself are on that committee. We will be offering online classes next year, but instead of doing hybrid, we’ve decided to only offer online or in person, not hybrid options. If families and parents and student continue to be concerned about coming to school in August, we want them to have that online option. It’s very likely we will not have the vaccine fully rolled out by then, so we are offering either full in-person or full online experience. That rolls out Feb. 27 and, at that time, a student wanting online school will fill out an online registration card and we will enter it manually. We will do all of that for them in our offices. Students choosing in-person school will do it the traditional way through Arena Scheduling. If a family decides to change their mind after they’ve made the choice, they will be placed on a waiting list and offered an in-person spot on a first come, first served basis. Once we build the board for online and in-person classes, it’s hard to change those numbers. I’d like feedback from our SCC on this. You’ll see the first announcement for that in two weeks, with explanations and a Q&A section.

Graham: Does doing that allow teachers to do one or the other without doing hybrid?

Leavitt: No. We’ll build a traditional board, so it will be, say, that we’d tell a social studies teacher, “Your fourth period will be online this year.” This year, our board was all over the place because we did it at the last minute and were making a lot of changes all along.

We want to take attendance, follow disclosures, and have more structure to the students’ online school world. I don’t want those gaps between online and in-person students to continue to grow.

If you decide as a family to go fully online, you will have a first, second, third, fourth, all the way through eighth period, you will have an A day and a B day, you will have to meet at the right times because that’s when the teacher is available. We’ll be popping in and checking to see it’s all happening like it should. It will be more like traditional school with the accountability and scheduling.

School is really a safe place for kids. Most of the year we’ve been under 1 percent (positive test rates. That’s way below the community itself. Midvale right now is at a 13-14% positive test rate.

Thomsen: Any plans to continue online school in the 2022-23 school year, or is it a one-time thing because COVID isn’t completely gone?

Leavitt: Once the governor puts us under no more COVID alerts, we will not have online classes. Students will be expected to come to school. Because the schedule will be in place already, that online class will just become the in-person class for that period. I will add this: there is a niche for online education. We will start building online schedules for kids just for the fact that they want to take an online class for various reasons. You will see, in the future we will start building online and non-in-person classes into our schedule. But they won’t be for safety. 

There’s very few good things about COVID, but it has pushed us to think differently and we won’t be abandoning some of that thinking moving forward.

Construction updates

Leavitt: There’s not a lot new to say; they are on time and going to deliver our building on time. Teachers will be moving in Aug. 1 and students will start the year in the new building. Athletic fields and a fully functional parking lot will take another year, but we’re on the move. The old school is done June 1. They have to do a lot of abatement in the building before they take it down. Between June and August, we’ll run the school from the gym; that will be our offices for that time. We’ll deliver the bricks and lockers to the alumni association.

Karen Conder: we’ve made more than $1,000 with that (salvaged gym) floor. It’s been very popular.

Graduation

Leavitt: We will probably do a virtual graduation this year. We are figuring out how that will look but it most likely will be somewhat different from last year.

We also probably will do Husky Strong over the summer for incoming freshmen

Reminder: Roster needs to be finalized; send updates to Jan

Next meeting: Feb. 10, 2021

Prepared by Stacey Kratz