Cleveland High School PTA Meeting Minutes

Location: Zoom video conference

Date: August 26, 2020

Time: 7:00 pm

Board in Attendance

Board Members: Amy Lewin, Rosemary Breger, Melissa Toledo, Leslie Kossoff, Cindi Carrell,

Jessie Fan, Janet Morgan. Minutes taken by Rosemary Breger.

Other attendees: Principal JoAnn Wadkins, Julie, Jessica Dumas, Elizabeth Stephens, Colette Livermore, Robin Mc Swain, Christina Williams, Andrea Schulman Cox, Beth St Amand, Josh Piper, Lorissa Klaus

Agenda Items

Call to Order and Introductions

• Amy called the meeting to order, welcomed attendees and introduced Board Members.

Approval of Minutes - Need to approve June minutes at the September meeting.

Principal’s report - Jo Ann Wadkins (district & school updates)

• Welcoming teachers back virtually tomorrow. Information is continually coming from PPS.
• Cleveland and Lincoln will be having an 8 period year-long schedule. This will help students do well by having a year-long relationship. Over 1362 students showed up for picture day and registration.  Make up day for pictures is Sept 11th.
• Bell schedule information will come out soon for families. Cleveland will be using Canvas, a new web based, learning management system where students can access all classes in one place. Students can see calendar and assignments. Teachers can monitor learning in Canvas. There will be more structure and students will be earning letter grades for fall semester.  Teachers are working towards transparent and equitable grading practices.
• Schedules are now live on ParentVue and StudentVue.  Counselors are working to make school-wide corrections and will send an update 8/28.  Students will have the opportunity to make a schedule correction if there is a mistake in the schedule.
• Soft start- counselors will have more time to work with students on schedules before academics start.  Freshman jumpstart and will meet all their teachers.  Soft start activities are in mornings only.  Attendance will be taken during soft start to capture students that are not engaging or connecting so that tech problems can be solved.  The soft start will also be used to build community.
• Student engagement coach position is being interviewed for.
• September 14th academic work will start.
• Some teachers will teach from classrooms.  Materials may be distributed on Wednesdays if needed for a class.  
• School is digging deep into racial equity work, and working with staff.
• Principal email detailing school start will follow to show a week in the life of a student and availability of teachers.
• Students will get books and there will be a separate schedule to pick them up.  Each student will get a bag of books for all classes.  
• 160 chrome books have already been distributed.
• There are now 3 full time vice principals.  Shaun Murray was just hired as the third Vice Principal. Mr. Murray is a Cleveland high school teacher and is a well respected faculty member from the special education program and participated in the equity certificate program. Shaun Murray will join Kristy Mize and Margaret Berriors-Brown as Vice Principals.
• Fall athletics updates from OSAA are posted on the Cleveland Athletics webpage.  
• Total enrollment is 1651 in Synergy, we are staffed for 1500.  If we stay around 1600, we may get additional FTE in fall.  We had 8 FTE cuts since last year. All schools had to redo staffing and master schedules in July.
• What is top of list for add backs for classes? IB and non-IB electives and core classes.
• How are they planning to do electives? Carpentry has plans to put things together for students to do safely at home.  PE  will work with students to develop personal fitness plans and goals and meet on Zoom.
• Will there be 9th Grade Academies? There will be home rooms and cohorts this year.  Homeroom will likely be 2nd period.  If a teacher doesn’t have a 2nd period, they will partner up to provide support to another cohort.  Teachers will be checking in on students and socio/emotionals activities, even if they have good attendance. This will be a touchpoint for students by a caring adult. This will be called cohort support (but are working on coming up with a snazzier name).  Academies will be that touch point for freshman. Home rooms are listed on StudentVue.
• Do you need room parents? JoAnn loves outreach, needs to get school started first and then she will be able to talk about parent volunteers and possibly peer mentors.
• What is the plan for freshman to feel welcomed and connected?  Academy teachers have been working with John Golden and 2 week soft start will be about community building and orientation. Staff went to classes on community building in distance learning.
• Amy also had ideas for PTA to build community, including a student directory and family meet ups. JoAnn is also interested in parent nights for groups.
• Flipgrid is a new software that will be used for video.
• Date has not been set for virtual back to school night.
• Parents appreciate JoAnns participation in the meeting and her enthusiasm for our school.

Board Business

        President's Report

• Introduced Board Members.  There are still board openings for President Elect/Vice President, Assistant Treasurer and Programming Coordinator.
• Registration - Thank you to all volunteers that helped with registration.  Ilka and Kristin did chalk art, balloons and yard signs with Ms. Brighouse and the CHS Student Leadership team. JJ Heldmann did social media.  
• Board training- Thank you to Melissa Toledo and Jessie Fan for signing up. We should be good for Board sign ups.
• Board survey feedback / year focus

• Slack - Board supports using Slack. Cindi suggests screen shots for making records. Hope to hear more in the next month.
• Goals that were top of mind in the survey were building community and supporting teachers in distance learning, including Teacher Appreciation and Grants.  

• Standing Rules - BOARD VOTE REQUIRED. 7 members present. Cindi said ok to vote.  Edits were to formally name what we are doing and edit out what we aren’t.  Oregon Bylaws are given to us and not amended, the standing rules are how we operate (Cindi).  Motion to approve- Leslie Kossoff. Second- Melissa Toledo will second. No questions or discussion. Standing Rules unanimously approved with 7 votes.

        Treasurer's Report

• Review year end financial
• Cindi’s submitted and reviewed treasurer report. Victoria will start reports in September. PTA has about $48k cash on hand. Amy is working with Jordan to get money that is held at school returned. We have completed “good standing” documents for Oregon PTA. Spending overall was down last year and no auction.  Taxes were filed on time.  Amy credits Cindi and previous board members for strong carry forward.
• Draft Budget 2020 - 2021 - BOARD VOTE REQUIRED

• We aren’t too far off from past years.  We don’t know what this year will bring and there may be individual student requests for support.  Cindi’s advice is to spend the money to meet the needs now.  Amy screen shared the draft budget and went through line items. Motion to approve- Jessie Fan. Second- Rosemary Breger.  Draft budget unanimously approved with 6 votes.  
• Future budget ideas include Covid Relief line (Amy), care packages for teachers (Melissa), Cleveland Masks for teachers (Colette), support student leadership groups like CARE (Rosemary).

New Business

• Building Community “Champions” for each grade level. Amy thanks those that responded to be grade level champions. Huge response from 9th grade families. Colette Livermore volunteered in comments to help with 11th grade.  Kristin and Ilka are interested in helping with 12th grade. Still need someone for 10th grade. Amy wants to start scheduling meetings for grade levels in October and possibly assign a bit of money for each grade.
• Events & fundraising for Fall 2020 (Amy) - to be discussed later
• Teacher Grants / feedback from teachers & staff (Rosemary) -  Survey will go out to teachers and staff to ask what kind of support teachers and students need this year and how grant funds might be used.  In the past we have budgeted $15k, but this year will look different.  Survey will help guide us in supporting teachers, staff and students.  Melissa suggested adding more information about funding amounts from past years to provide more context.  

Motions

• Motion made by Leslie Kossoff to approve Standing Rules, and was seconded by Melissa Toledo. There were no questions or discussion and the motion was unanimously approved with seven votes.
• Motion to approve the 2020-21 Draft Budget made by Jessie Fan. Motion was seconded by Rosemary Breger. The draft budget was unanimously approved with six votes.

Notes and Announcements

• Amy opened the meeting to questions, discussion and announcements.

• Colette asked if Principal Wadkins will come back and give an update on slow start, how faculty are doing and how we can support students at home?  Jo Ann has committed to come to every PTA meeting and is building a leadership plan for communications.
• Melissa asked if teachers are teaching from school? Yes, they can teach from their classroom.
• Melissa will start a spreadsheet for care package ideas and bring them to the next meeting. Total staff is 110. Melissa suggested the idea of string backpacks branded for Cleveland.
• Amy - noted that Cleveland branding was positively received last year.

Meeting was Adjourned at 8:36pm

Next meeting:

Wednesday, Sept. 9, 7:00 p.m. (Conference call via Zoom)

Minutes Approved:

September 9, 2020