Thursday, February 16, 2012

Thursday Notes

Jason Sargent –Principal
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Enrollment HS: 155 MS:115 Total:
270 _____________________________________________________________________
IMPORTANT DATES:
Feb 23-24: No School
Feb. 29: MCTM Math Contest
March 12: MontCas Starts
March 15: Ghost Out
March 17: Prom
March 22: Student Led Conferences
March 25-27: State FCCLA
March 29: MS Ski Trip
April 15-18: Youth Leg
April 19: Career Day
April 26: Community Showcase

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Faculty
Advisory:
We have had three meetings. We have created the Bulldog Slant; Many
wonderful conversations about next year’s calendar and many debates about PIR
days.
We have discussed with teacher input:
-Calendar; Schedule and Class Offerings; Graduation
Requirements; Policy and Needed Changes;
Senior Project; Advisory; We have also done two teacher surveys: 1) one about
offerings, schedule and requirements 2) one about PIR time and time needed for
the 2012-2013 school year. There has
been a lot of useful information that I will be using for 2012-2013 planning.

Graduation Matters Grant:
I applied for a grant from
OPI that could potentially give us $10,000 towards being able to fund a program
manager for MBI, At-Risk and Graduation Matters Initiatives in our school. This would help with our Strategic Planning
for our Sense of Belonging and Student Support initiatives. I asked for $7,000 to pay a program manager,
$2,000 for stipends in the summer for planning and $1,000 for incentives and
meals for community involvement and support.
I hope we get it and I am excited to get this program going in our
school. We will be doing the “I Pledge
to Graduate Initiative” during the Community Showcase. Our dropout rate in 2011 was 2.6 % compared
to 4.3% statewide. Our completion rate
was only 82.2 % last year and we can do better.
Our students going to college is quite high in relationship to other
schools in the county, again we can do better.




We attended MHSA Cultural
Diversity Training at end of last month and that was actually a pretty good
training.

I also attended a day of
Graduation Matters presented by Denise Juneau and got some great ideas for
Sense of Belonging and helping our School Improvement Plan.

Zero Policy: Comparison of failing classes from this
year to last year:
HS All 1st
Quarter 2nd Quarter
2010 81 152
2011 95 87

MS (Core Subjects)
2010 58 55
2011 48 65

The data does show so positive movement in the right
direction and from input from staff they feel it is working for 80% of our
students.

More Data:

Explore Test 8th Graders
This test is a comparison to what students would score on
the ACT. Our students did fairly well
and I broke it down by students that scored a 15 or better which would be in
the top 50% compared to National%ile results.
62% of our students scored in the top 50th
percentile.
38% of our students scored below the 50th
percentile. (Half of these kids are
SPED)

Plan Test 10th Graders
This test is a comparison to what students would score on
the ACT. I broke it down by students
that scored a 16 or better which would be in the top 50% compared to
National%ile results. I do feel that
students either took this seriously or not at all. Students that I know are very intelligent
scored in the bottom 1% nationwide which just isn’t realistic. (To score that
low a person of average intelligence would have to just fill in boxes which I
believe is the case in some situations.)
50% of our students scored in the top 50th
percentile.
50% of our students scored below the 50th
percentile. (53% of these students are SPED)

PSAT Test 11th Graders
This is an eleventh grade test that compares students’
current levels with the benchmarks for the ACT.
Not all students took this test and really only college bound students
from the eleventh grade participated. I
did not figure foreign exchange students in this data. The benchmark score for college bound
students is 154. We did have 5 out of 16
hit this benchmark. I believe an average
score that would place students in the upper 50th percentile would
be 141.
56% of our college bound students scored in the top 50th
percentile.
44% of our college bound students scored below the 50th
percentile.


Student Led Parent
Feedback:
Student Led Fall Conference Student Guardian Feedback:
Was your child’s student-led conference worthwhile?
97% Yes
3% No
Should the school hold student-led conferences next
year?
88% Yes
12% No
The negative remarks attached were from guardians that would
like to have traditional conferences with the ability to visit with all
teachers that are involved with their kids.
I understand this concern it is tough to have it both ways. The turnout was 97%in the middle school and
94% in the high school. We could go back
to having student led and traditional conferences back to back which was a high
turnout for student led and low numbers for traditional.


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