October 12, 2022 – Minutes – Hillcrest High School

Hillcrest High School–School Community Council Meeting Notes

Wednesday, October 12, 2022, 5:00 pm

ACR Conference Room (A129)

Attendance:

Ari Tavo

Atiya Nash

Brant Thomsen

Debbie Johnson

Elena Foley

Gregory Leavitt

Jenny Olsen

Jessica Dalton

R.J. Graham

Rebecca Martin

Stacey Kratz

Stacey Timmerman

Steve Brown

Absent:

Jeremy Wright

John Olsen

Karina Park

Guests:

Mont Millerberg (CSD Board Member)

Previous Minutes

Steve Brown made a motion, seconded by Debbie Johnson, to approve the September 14, 2022 minutes. They were unanimously approved.

Digital Citizenship and School Safety

Presentation by Jenny Olsen: Canyons’ digital policy exceeds the requirements of HB213.

School Wi-Fi is heavily filtered; home Wi-Fi is up to parents; they can filter, or not.
Clarification from November 9, 2022 meeting: School-issued Chromebooks are filtered even when connected to home Wi-Fi networks.
Ari Tava said that, if you want more filtering on ChromeBooks, you can request that through our district tech person and they can filter out YouTube, etc. to help your student focus.
Steve Brown said the district is constantly updating filters, so if you encounter anything inappropriate, let them know.
Students can’t use their school-issued devices without the csddocs login.
Teachers have the ability to monitor what’s on every student’s screen during classes.
Next week is Digital Citizenship Week; Jenny Olsen is the digital citizenship coordinator.
Faculty and teachers need one type of information about digital resources and standards; parents need another (for example, information on cyberbullying, etc. is best at home; lessons on things like determining credible sources and how to trust what you’re reading and seeing are good subjects for school).
- Next Tuesday, students will see a presentation from CommonSense Media on health effects of screen time.
Questions:
- Should we communicate filtering options to parents in HuskyStrong? These are our filter systems; if you have questions, please contact us (secretary at front office).
  - Greg Leavitt said that parents should remember that we can’t filter students’ phones, and we can’t filter their home network.
  - RJ Graham said that both Comcast and CenturyLink provide home-facing resources on how to limit your router, and we could provide links to that for our families. RJ will look at options for Google Fiber, Comcast, CenturyLink, and Utopia as well.
  - Greg Leavitt made a motion, seconded by Jenny Olsen, to give information to parents about our school filtering system and to have RJ Graham gather information for distribution about companies’ filtering and security options. The motion unanimously passed.
Steve Brown noted that the district’s digital citizenship and safety policies are VERY accessible online for any parent who wants to look.

School Safety Plans and Issues

Ari Tava presented on our school safety plan.

Ms. Tava presented information on safe entry, emergency drills, emergency communication, school safety tips, etc.
- During APP on Sept. 26, all teachers viewed a video on these subjects and discussed it with students. Hillcrest also held an open discussion session for teachers to come down, ask questions, and express concerns. No teachers attended and no faculty or staff member have since communicated any concerns in any other format. She said the safety plan was well received and that no one has raised objections to what Hillcrest has done so far.
A policy of “run, hide, fight” is in place, and they’ve showed us how they foresee students reacting when we have events.
Stacey Timmerman expressed appreciation for the plan being finalized.
Greg Leavitt said safety and behavior issues in the parking lot had improved, with vaping and other issues that were problems last year improving this year.
Stacey Kratz expressed concern about the large amount of garbage in the parking lots at the end of each school day and asked if garbage cans could be installed in the lots or other measures taken.
- Greg Leavitt said that every teacher gets to sign up for a day of service one day a week, and that three teachers a week take one of their classes to go out and do some service around the school. Many of them pick up garbage in the parking lot, which helps it look better by the evening of each day. But there may be other things we can do.
- Steve Brown suggested buying garbage cans and chaining them to the light poles.
Greg Leavitt asked the SCC for parent and community reactions to the Homecoming game incident: how did people take it?
- Stacey Timmerman said she was there and it was a bit nerve-wracking in the moment; but she thought it was handled well by the school (email sent out clarifying the facts of the incident, etc.).
- Greg Leavitt said that communication between Hillcrest and the police was not at its best that night; the administration and police had a meeting and at the end of it, and they apologized for some of the ways it was handled. It was a fight between students and the administration moved the crowd of students back, but the police had wanted a much more extreme response, which the administration refused to do. A lot of unfounded rumors got started. There was really no reason for that type of panic.
- Rebecca Martin suggested that, after pregame activities, students should be directed back to their seats in the stands rather than continuing to mill around above the stands without watching the game.
- Stacey Timmerman mentioned the fight at the Homecoming dance the next night that was captured on video by several students.
  - Greg Leavitt said the video was turned over to the police and that administration feels satisfied with the way the chief and his sergeant handled everything following that incident.
  - He also noted that it was the same small group of students causing the trouble at the Burning of the H and the dance.
- Steve Brown said that our goals regarding school climate are helped when we get good, prompt information out to parents so that they can both calm down and educate their kids about not only what actually happened, but about the fact that these types of choices have consequences.

Parent Teacher Conferences

Greg Leavitt said that, due to the conversations we had about how to structure conferences, they were switched this term to half online and half in person. Hillcrest doesn’t want to stop offering both options because they are hearing from people who like both.
He added that the teachers didn’t like online as much this year; and more parents came in person. In-person is more effective in some ways, but people like knowing the online option is there.

Equity Steering Committee

Elena Foley reported that, moving forward, we’re going to review data from past years to try to define what issues of equity are most pressing at Hillcrest.
We will form a focus group representing various populations at the school who may have equity issues.
Right now, the committee has six people but we hope to make a list of more community members to invite.
We will add notes from the meeting to a Google Doc so that people can see what’s being discussed at the meetings.
Greg Leavitt said that this committee is a big project and that its work is long term; it’s not going to go quickly. He added that we want to get a good solid foundation under us as we begin. We are going to work with the district to make sure our questions for surveying our community on these issues are approved, but it may take us the rest of the year to get a product together that we feel comfortable going forward with.

PTSA Update/Coordination

Rebecca Martin, PTSA President

The PTSA Student Service Club sponsored a food drive for the school’s Free Market; the first couple of days it was really slow, and then, Thursday and Friday, we got much more. We ended up with two big carts full of donations. The pantry is well stocked now and we are really happy with it.
Reminder that we are accepting ongoing nominations for Husky Heroes; anyone can nominate a student who deserves a shout-out or who could use a boost of affirmation.
The deadline for the Reflections art competition is October 28.

TSSP and LAND Trust Plans

Brant Thomsen said our current plans are available on the school website.
Greg Leavitt said that our spending is on track this year. He said the funds available for this year will probably be spent by about April due to some larger front-end expenses this school year.
- One of those was employing eight teachers: extra math and reading instructors, an extra student intervention person, and hall monitors.
He noted that administrators will monitor the progress of that investment by early morning systems, smaller class size, graduation rate, etc.
He added that, at our next meeting, the first item on the agenda should be our school grade from the state. That should take about 20 minutes, including time for questions.
Administrators and the BLT have already started our 2023-24 TSSP plan and hope to be ready to deliver that to the SCC in December.

Early-Out Fridays

Stacey Timmerman asked Mr. Leavitt about his concerns about early-out Fridays and how those are going.
- Greg Leavitt said he believes our teachers are doing PLCs hands down better than any other high school or elementary school in the district. That said, we still have 10-12 absences on a Friday, and it’s only going to grow, but we’ll keep having those meetings. He thinks our singletons are struggling (world language teachers, foods teachers, shop teachers); they’re organized into groups for PLCs, but they need better direction and accountability because they’re supervised by multiple principals. We’re “rocking it” in the core subjects. That will work out over time. If there’s any reason we’ve made progress, it’s because our teachers are collaborating well.
As far as the student population and parents, they’re getting the message about early-out Fridays; the rest of building is shut down at 12:50 p.m. and we’re holding teachers accountable to make sure they stay around, and they’re doing a good job.
Mr. Leavitt said he was still worried about student attendance on Fridays.
- Mont Millerburg noted that Hillcrest’s excellent past history with effective PLCs should help with Friday PLCs going forward.
Jenny Olsen, the school librarian, said she has found great benefit in the regular meetings held as part of her PLC with other high-school and middle-school media specialists.

Student Attendance

Ari Tava reported that, this year, we started something new where teachers send postcards to students who miss class. She said administrators actually have had parents show up with the postcards in hand to talk to a vice principal. So far, we’ve sent out more than 1,000 this year, sometimes to some of the same students several times.
As an administrative team, we’re also using data to contact parents, escort students to class, and send personalized letters home; parents are coming in with those, too.
- We’re tracking that data and we’re going to start seeing trends: sophomores are struggling more than the other grades so far.
Greg Leavitt said that we’re at 86% attendance right now; our goal is 90% for the year.
- He noted that schools are no longer allowed to ask for a doctor’s note for students who are sick or have medical/dental appointments; parents now can have basically infinite excusals if they choose to do that. However, we’re still required by law to take attendance and we’re required by law to code the reasons for the absence. We are trying to find productive ways to help students to makeup, because the best way for a student to make up an absence is to be in class with a teacher.

New Dress Code

Greg Leavitt said that the best part of the new dress code is not having to discipline students over hats: “It’s wonderful to not have to walk up to a kid and immediately be negative to them. I love it. I’m so thankful.”
We’re handling dress code issues with a new program at Hillcrest; as administrators, they put a Google Form out all of our staff. Teachers note the student’s name and what they were wearing on the form, and administrators call them down to the office and talk to them. We’re not addressing it in the hall, we’re not calling them out.
Greg Leavitt: “The best thing that helps dress codes is temperatures below 60 degrees.”

Construction Updates

The sod on all of our fields will be finished next Tuesday; we’re excited to have functional fields on campus.
The students really like the basketball courts.

R.J. Graham moved to adjourn; Stacey Kratz seconded.

Next meeting: November 9, 2022