Meeting Minutes – Hillcrest SCC
Date & Time: October 9, 2024, 5:00 pm
Location: ACR Conference Room (A129)
Attendees: Rick Robbins (Superintendent), Jeremy Hodgson, Melissa Hodgson, Brenda McCann, Areli Nevarez, Alexandra Martinez, Elena Reyes, Jenny Olsen, Eric Murdock, Jessica Dalton, Korina Jagiello-Caldwell, Stacey Timmerman
September 11, 2024 Meeting Minutes
- Motion to approve, seconded, and approved.
Agenda and Discussions
Visit from Superintendent Rick Robbins:
- A 215,000 sq. ft. building was acquired in Draper, previously owned by eBay, and will become the new Technology Center. Hoping to open by Fall 2026.
- Goal for this new building is to “Prepare high school students for high demands jobs of the future”. Planned programs include farm tech, cybersecurity, and student showcases.
- Strategic location provides access to FrontRunner and Silicon Slopes for student apprenticeships.
- Feedback encouraged via survey – Brenda will send out. SCC members will consider a future visit.
TSSP and Land Trust:
- Land Trust: Funds are primarily used to hire additional teachers, reduce class sizes, and support credit recovery programs.
- TSSP: Focuses on targeted interventions, such as mentoring for multilingual learners, to address student performance gaps.
- Some of the challenges include balancing budget priorities, especially with COVID-related funding expiring and identifying measurable academic growth.
- BLT teachers will review past goals and current assessment results and come up with proposed measures.
- MAP assessments are also new this year. Teachers need to review and provide feedback.
PT Conferences:
- Parent-Teacher Conferences focused on a hybrid approach this year, with online sessions via Zoom on the first day and in-person meetings on the second. Teachers noted the benefits of pre-scheduled appointments, which improved attendance and allowed for more productive discussions. However, some challenges included managing wait times and ensuring every parent received adequate attention.
- The group explored ways to improve future sessions, including possibly adding buffer times between appointments and refining the online scheduling process to avoid overlaps.
Cellphone/Electronics policy:
- Our “brown bag” policy is still in place and so far, we haven’t received any negative feedback from teachers or students.
- A committee will be formed to review the policy, alongside attendance and PBIS (Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports).
- The council noted differences in policies across schools, with HHS being the only school in Canyons School District that did not make changes to the cellphone policy. There was concern about the challenges of enforcing stricter policies, like at Brighton High School, where cellphones are placed in individual pouches at the front of the room. Some of the concerns are creating unnecessary anxiety for our students and opening up the school’s liability for possible lost or stolen cellphones.
- For this year, no changes have been implemented so that Brenda has a chance to connect with teachers and collect feedback.
- The current policy is: the first warning, the student is asked to put the phone away. For the second warning, the phone is put away in a brown bag at their desk and they get their phone back at the end of class. The third warning, the teacher can send the phone down to the office or alternatively, if the student refuses to give up their phone, the teacher does a referral so that the student is sent to a vice principal and meets with the parents and asks them to keep the phone at home.
- Brenda shares that it can be challenging for each school to come up with their own policy as there is no policy coming from the school district. Other considerations that have come up sometimes is when parents ask that chromebook are not issued to students in an effort to limit internet usage at home. 35%-40% of our kids do no have access to internet. School chromebooks are sometimes the only device they have at home.
School Safety:
- Parents have been receiving alerts about perceived social media threats from the school and the district. Brenda clarifies that it has been difficult to balance how much communication to provide parents. The district’s policy is to be transparent, but there is information that the school cannot share, like details about student names and specific issues that were brought up by them.
- As an example, Brenda mentions the concern brought up by parent who asked about “increase police presence” and if we can have more context as to why that is needed if there is no threat. Brenda reassured the council that she is committed to keep student and staff safety first and alert parents if there is ever a threat.
- Safety measures were also highlighted, including emergency evacuation plans and the new “CrisisGo” system to enhance teacher communication during emergencies.
Motion to adjourn the meeting, seconded, and approved.
Next meeting: Wednesday, November 13, 2024.
