Town Meeting 2/7/2017

Precursors

• SAB: n/a
• Staff Meeting: Transition: what do we need to be doing now in prep for transition to new school?

Announcements

• School Store Donations
• Philosophy Class on course request forms
• Senior ads due to Deidre by March 15
• Stupid F***-ing Bird

Motions

• Econ Club-James & Jack-
  • Economics club with Brian, meets during lunch,
  • motion passes
• Protest Organization-Tom Byron:
  • Facebook group announcing and facilitating protests
  • motion?
• Feb Fest-
  • Feb fest is moving forward!
  • Approximately 2 student led classes, 2 days before spring break, April 6 and 7, 9:24-12, ABCD after lunch Thursday, EFGH after lunch Friday
  • For high school only to prevent classes from being overcrowded or of low quality,
  • Dan: how does middle school scheduling work? Changing the schedule only for high schoolers will throw things off-
  • Graham: many elective classes have both middle and high school students-
  • Teachers expected to be a “mentor”, sitting in on classes, potentially helping with lesson plans (?) –
  • Casey: last year with only 2 hour sessions, found things ran long, making it longer could be difficult-
  • Maggie: What are the expectations for the teacher mentors? How active are teachers supposed to be in planning lessons? How has the system been improved than Feb Fest last year? Close proximity to Junetime could also make planning difficult for teachers. –
  • Aidan: 3 hours is way too long, possibly make it over multiple days with shorter classes?-
  • Henry: more action needs to be taken if we want greater student interest and involvement-
  • Dan: this motion is too much to vote yes on without knowing how it will affect the schedule –
  • Erin: there are pros and cons of both possible scheduling situations, at this point a decision should be made and we should figure out how best to implement that decision-
  • Maggie: help facilitate planning of these classes, at this point not enough structure at this point to allow for this to be successful-
  • move town meeting to Friday, make it a middle school town meeting, TA on Thursday, if we do some juggling of the schedule we could make it only two blocks each day and shuffle things around to make sure as few blocks are lost as possible-
  • Eleanor’s friendly amendment: move town meeting to Friday, A block to Tuesday, only two blocks on Thursday and Friday replacing A and TA on Thursday and town meeting and B on Friday –
  • before we abandon plans for middle school classes we should have discussion with middle school students and teachers-
  • Possibly have both middle and high school classes being taught, some separation as cross-grade teaching can be different, but having separate middle school classes can be good for many reasons, concern that high school students will check out while middle schoolers would probably be more focused –
  • main reason that middle school Feb fests not planned for because not enough student teachers and planning would be simpler-
  • Dave: we could have student teachers only teach high schoolers, or if we got increased faculty involvement having teacher taught classes could allow us to teach classes for the whole school-
  • Erin: possibly make surveys for middle schoolers to take about how they feel about feb fest, if they would like to be involved or wait until high school, either way discussion with the middle school is important-
  • Middle school hive meetings could be used to survey for this-
  • Dan: if middle schoolers vote yes (which is likely), how will we then go forward?-
  • vote on the dates now, vote later on specific scheduling and scope?-
  • Eleanor: with our vote we should give ourselves flexibility, a range of scheduling possibilities-
  • Tom: we have data about the success of fab Feb fest-
  • Springtime hullabaloo and April jubilee, possible names from Aidan-
  • Motion: April 5, 6, 7,  we will choose two of those days in that 3 day window, we will return to town meeting to discuss specific logistics and scheduling and the middle school question,
  • motion passes
• Theatre Outside Teacher-
  • Outside teacher fund for middle school play: Josh Rosenblum is directing How to Eat Like a Child, we need a technical director and a musical director, total cost is $2000-
  • would need to be approved based on if funds were available-
  • technical director is lined up, music director still being searched for, would be nice if we could find people with experience in APS-
  • motion passes

Discussions

• Results of Alternative Education Activity Block (https://goo.gl/FY4aYU – spreadsheet)-
• AP Classes
  • last week discussion in cafeteria discussing issues with APs and other problems in HB community,
  • AP pressure is one of the biggest problems, other problems such as lack of information could potentially be solved with discussion and better use of TA time,
  • questions about the value of APs,
  • information could once again be a solution-usually TAs are unable to provide much insight about what specific courses are the very best to take, possibly have a more scripted plan so that TAs personal opinions are not taking too much sway-
  • tracks are laid out in program of studies, and there are many resources in addition to TAs such as other teachers and staff and other students-
  • this would be a good opportunity to make some short informative videos-compiling data from alums could help greatly in facilitating good information-
  • In junior year English classes, students are taught about finding letters of recommendation and writing essays,
  • TA system does a good job at helping the actual application, but the building of expectations can be harmful and cause stress-
• Capstone
  • Capstone is an opportunity for juniors and seniors to choose what they want to study, 9th and 10th graders should have this on their radar as an alternative to AP classes
  • Capstone is a seminar-based class allowing the free exploration of real world topics of their choosing from multiple perspectives –
  • Capstone sounds exactly what we need if we are looking at a solution to APs that is more personalized and rigorous

Chair: Jacob Hall

Co Chair: Emma Siegel

Secretary: Nathaniel Klein