October 20, 2021

HHS School Community Council Meeting

Present:

Brant Thomsen, Gregory Leavitt, Jan Hansen, John Olson, Suzanne Riches, Nicole Huff, Jeremy Wright, RJ Graham, Rebecca Martin, Amir Zaidi, Karina Park, Stacey Kratz

Absent:

Steve Brown, Juan Perez Del Valle

Previous Minutes Approval

The previous meeting’s minutes were approved unanimously except for one abstention by R.J. Graham. Rebecca Martin and Amir Zaidi missed the minutes approval vote because they arrived late.

Digital Citizenship/School Safety, Suzanne Riches, Digital Citizenship coordinator for Hillcrest

Kids use technology extensively for their education (Canvas, Skyward, the Google suite, Quizlet, etc., plus software for testing on school Chromebooks).
Kids are online a lot at school now.
If you have questions, please ask us so that you know enough to sign off on the report when we make it.
Parents are always interested in the filters, and the district does their best with ContentKeeper, but no filtering system will ever be perfect (it’s scaled, so the elementary filters are most restrictive and high school’s are least). We are also teaching kids to be responsible digital citizens so that they can responsibly handle whatever they may encounter online.
Our software operates both through the district WiFi and through software installed on the students’ school-issued Chromebooks; if they make inappropriate searches (even at home) on a school machine, the school gets a report.
Students play games too much, but we don’t have a lot of other problems with student use of technology.
This week is Digital Citizenship Week, and students are getting a digital citizenship lesson next week during APP
- What do we teach? Screen time/media balance, privacy and security issues, understanding your digital footprint, cyberbullying, news and media literacy
We are applying fees to our new Chromebooks; the kids will be fined for damage to the Chromebooks and for losing them, depending on the circumstances
This has really changed the job of the library; they spend a lot of time on Chromebooks and working with students on Chromebooks, though they still do the other things libraries have always done.
Do get your students offline if you can: they spend so much time looking at screens at school that any time they can spend doing non-screen activities is great.
Clear the cookies and cache once a week to help your school-issued machine run faster (suggestion from a parent).
Parents had questions about where to go for IT help (answer: the school) and who finds out when there’s an alert about content (the school, and parents are absolutely notified); AND comments about how we are evaluating alerts we have.

School Safety, Jan Hansen

Evacuation system works quite well by now. The school has had a few more practices than anticipated due to alarms caused by construction and have gotten better every time
Kids go to their APP teacher in the stadium during the evacuation
Next topic was shelter in place/lockdown. Administration went through the building with the district’s at-risk manager and have some suggestions. They will discuss evacuations in January, and earthquakes in April.
Stacey Timmerman: Teachers are worried about our line of sight; Hillcrest and Brighton are both very open and we need to adapt our emergency procedures and guidance because of that. We are no longer a traditional “brick and mortar” school.
- One adaptation to our safety procedures is having students determine safe line of sight and then flee rather than hunkering down; it’s nice to have the cameras up and going; one issue is that it would be really helpful if those cameras were marked with where they are in the building; we need to label them so we can get there quickly when we see something
- Resource officer? Every school has one and he is here full time; he’s in the halls, helping with hard cases, doing any criminal stuff (devious licks, drugs, etc.).
Pickup and drop-off: Speed bumps and opening the back entrance helped; things overall are going well

Parent Teacher Conferences

Jan Hansen: Attendance is about 2-3 percent more altogether than last year
A sizable majority of the teachers like Zoom better than in-person
May do the same format (one day Zoom, one day in person) again for next Parent Teacher Conferences, since there were no complaints or concerns from parents

Construction Updates

Front entrance is done and usable by students
Auditorium: struggling with getting the seats; they’re unloaded; we have all the backs here, most of them; we just need the seats. We know where they are; they should be arriving soon.
Cafeteria is open; there’s lots of hot food; lots of tables on the side; fall and spring lovely places to eat; we are pushing hard to keep food out of the second, third and fourth floors and keep it on the first floor
Before Thanksgiving our hope is that parents will be driving in the area of the actual front entrance of the school, because it will be paved; if not, the oil and asphalt plants will be shut and we’ll have to wait until spring
We’ve only handed out 20% of our lockers, so the locker reduction was not a problem

COVID-19 Updates

Hillcrest is averaging between 7 and 9 cases a week, and expect that, due to that low number, they’ll be able to have Husky Howl next week. That can’t happen if they hit 15 cases.
Travel will start for cheer and drill and sports and other things. What the kids can do is dependent on where they’re going and the rules of that place.

School Vandalism

The administration thinks issues with “devious licks” are winding down; mostly what’s happening is they’re taking the soap dispensers off the wall. The school is not immediately replacing them right now. The kids are taking the exact same ones every time. When they pull it off it breaks the bracket, so they wait a week before putting them back.
The school offered some rewards on those licks, caught those kids and they were arrested.

Bylaws Update

If you haven’t seen your bylaws update, look at the email Brant Thomsen sent
Karina Park: Need to clarify this sentence: The number of SCC members will be at least 6, and limited to 18 total members with 8 or more parent members and up to 6 employee members. The group discussed it and will change that sentence to clarify.
Plan to vote on the updated Bylaws at the next SCC meeting.

TSSP and LAND Trust Plans

Tabled for a future meeting due to time constraints

Next meeting planned for November 10, 2021