Minutes of the June 11^th meeting of

The 19^th Ward Community Association Schools Committee

Attendees: John Boutet, John Laing, Dan Ross, Jay Ross

Approval of Minutes from May Meeting

Approved

Volunteer recruitment and Square Fair

Deb Leary and Janice Taylor agreed to co-chair (with fraternity brothers) the 5^th Annual Spelling Bee. Janice is the mother of Christian, one of the school 10 4^th grade spellers. She had helped at the Arnett library sessions.

Bruce Pollock attended Square Fair and recruited 10 potential volunteers by walking around with a clipboard and asking “Do you want to read with a student?” Another 8 people signed up with us. Deb Leary made bookmarks with volunteer information on them and these were handed out and are available from John L. The most effective recruiting is face to face and the Westside Market provides an opportunity for us. John and John will attend the delegates council meeting and ask folks there to consider volunteering and recruiting

Jay suggested that an orientation session would be valuable for new volunteers before school starts to assure that folks know how to access the building and are aware of sign in and sign out procedures as well as information on the teacher-volunteer relationship.

Vision Quest

At the last meeting Dan promised to see if there have been any good evaluations of teacher led schools.  It was not a fruitful search.  Several points:

• There are a lot of accounts of particular teacher led schools but the evidence is largely anecdotal.  The movement, while small, is larger than Dan realized.

• Several groups/organizations have put together "how to" manuals for starting teacher led schools, but they are relatively silent on the evaluation issue. 

• As the vision quest folks noted, teacher led schools can be either charter schools or reside within a traditional school district if appropriate accommodations from the union can be reached.

John B shared two documents: one a list of people who have commented on teacher-led idea. None of those took the position that it wouldn’t work, but it needs to be properly configured, accept all students, and have the details worked out. The second was a list of articles on teacher-led schools that is available electronically from John B. Our discussion centered on the readiness of the Value Quest team to sort out the details on the configuration and how the governance would work.

School 16 renovations

We need to support the legislative process to gain approval for the funding of phase II of the FMP.

New Business

We need to have a presence at the Westside market throughout the summer and other affairs to bolster the volunteer pool

Minutes submitted by John Laing

Next Meeting Tentatively Wednesday, August 13^th at 7 pm in the 19^th ward association office. Let me know if you can’t make it.