questions and comments from for any parent guardian resident or community group should have the right to present a request to gesture or complaint concerning district personnel programs or operations of the district at the same time the board  down personal attacks directed toward district personnel it is the boortz intend to provide a fair and impartial manner for seeking appropriate remedies any suggestions or complaints directed to individual board members and or the board shall be referred to the superintendent or appropriate administrator for consideration and action personnel complaints directed toward any individual or individuals are not subject for discussion or review at a public meeting up the board of school directors and i have no comments at this time back on all business no business all in favor  discussion all in favor i opposed motion passes mr bo that i'm aware of his or any discussion the only thing that i would like to say is that with the hiring of this the search firm we're going to begin the process now in honest of looking for a new superintendent as my understanding is they should be in the district very quickly to start setting up their program  planning on having me meetings with members of the community and our staff and the board and get this process moving as quickly as possible begin though that the agenda we're going to just kind of briefly review the elementary and to the middle school and into the high school because you really want everyone to understand the importance that we're talking curriculum and scope and sequence it is a k twelve process that you know really the foundational process is start at the elementary school it today our focus will be more towards the high school and some of the course proposals but again like to see not want to ever be emphasize the importance of that k to twelve process so that when we're looking at the scope we're looking at the depth and the content that's involved and we're looking at the sequence we're looking at the flow and exactly where it belongs in the whole process of the curriculum so with the elementary schools we have been busy this curriculum year in writing reviewing text and supplemental materials currently we have social studies k to six there will be starting to write of dismissing their alignment and looking at resources we also have our science k to three and i have to put a little note in to say that last year came three was on all the gear and so this is actually almost going into the third year of you know really wanting to write curriculum and looking at material so they're very excited for this year to come and then we have our health and physical education in k the six of us also writing i just want to also note that our big research group this year is math k to twelve with an emphasis at the elementary school we're looking at the middle school again who are doing a curriculum writing in physical education and health in grade seven and then we've had a two year  discussion and social studies and i think that now we're really excited about the programs that's going to be offered next year and we have to get speakers we have mr hannigan and mr person to come and speak a little bit about the some of the eighth grade social studies courses the interest of increasing the amount of global studies in the interest of increasing the amount of global studies in our socialist curriculum each grade level will be teaching one quarter of western hemisphere history geography and culture separate will be focusing upon north america including mexico canada and physical geography aspects of the united states not otherwise dressed in the curriculum there will also be a primer to the study of human and physical geography that will be beneficial as the students move forward in their secondary exploit their exploration of social studies it will be focusing upon the history geography and culture of latin in south america the time frame of american history that is only over the two years will still be the same from seven hundred sixty three to nine hundred forty five with the seventh great course ending shortly after the civil war this means that the time period that have been previously taught at the middle school over eight hoarders will now be taught over six quarters part of this curriculum revision will be to review the existing curriculum and instruction to determine what  sential question should be answered and what content can be removed or abbreviated without significantly impacting the historical concepts we want our students to master we're looking at a tax to get help support us in that area and one of the things that is nice to see now is the tax bill companies are are are recognizing some of the needs of districts that are trying to accrue really write their own curriculum not just by a textbook so we have a modular tax on the americas that you know looks but of the size of an elementary text but it's very appropriate for the quarter that we would be teaching that so it has pretty much exactly what we're looking in latin america canada mexico the caribbean all those areas without having to purchase an entire world culture is taxed so a fact they're meeting our needs through producing that resource along with the teacher and student online resources really helps us to be able to tailor a course that has materialized meet those needs also we would be looking at a seventh grade and eighth grade textbook as well that would come along with the american history with the  teacher resources and the online resource of the license of it minimum six years hopefully longer we would be able to have that online license it's worth noting that the copyright the current seventh grade textbook is the year two thousand with no online resources available and the copyright the current eighth grade textbook is two thousand and three with limited online resources available to my knowledge i was at the middle school last time b the belief that time was that no additional taxed was it was pursued the tax we have is you know a good tax the teachers enjoy working with it and when you're looking at certain areas of history and having a degree in history the study of the french and indian war in the content has not changed that much in the past ten years however that's one of the things that ever people always say you know why do we need new history books it's not the history that's changing that much it's the teaching the changing great deal the last curriculum revision you know we had a wonderful group of teachers we had some teachers who were closer towards retirement not necessarily looking at the newest resources in terms of online  guys and girls you move forward with this and that's part of the rationale for some of the things that we're looking at for some of the online resources that we would have and we want to give these teachers in our building now  nice blend of teachers with experience and some young teachers but all of them god willing have the majority of their teaching careers ahead of them so thinking about the way that education is moving the way the social sites instruction is moving and some of the online resources that mr always is going to speak about a little bit that the teachers can utilize in their classes for our kids it's really exciting to see we have a great opportunity at this point if we're to be purchasing a new taxed to a lot of our curriculum  more relevant to the students today and their learning styles and their actual abilities as we have diverse learners in our classrooms the technology components meet a variety of needs you could have the auto reading of the text which can be part of the online book in most cases ties connections to current events it one of the resources that they showed us was front pages of newspapers all around the world which is specific to this this company interactive maps which you can move around using your smart boards which basically get rid of the old maps that many of us learned with in the in the globes and being able to zoom in on those and see the actual google earth images are pretty impressive and something that really does help in the classroom is you teach most of these are state specific resources they they focus on the curriculum and the core standards that we're all trying to get to plus we also have interactive graphic organizers that kids can type right into either on their i pad or on the web sites and then they can actually save those for their for their work at home or even to submit to class if the teacher so shoes is also one of the nice things about this what we're asking is that they have a connection with the history channel with all the resources they have videos that are embedded into their their program and their websites and their websites are also checked in verified that makes it a lot easier on the teacher to find relevant resources that our kids can actually use but i think by far the coolest thing and it's where everybody seems to be going with the books now it is is that they can all be downloaded to their i pads or their or their other you readers to take with them and i mean t anywhere and to me as a teacher that's pretty exciting as well the things that are going to grow with the with this program as it continues to go the different resources that will be available to me are something that i would highly recommend in the classroom and i know that my students is that as they take a look at them as we've taken gone through this and really found that it was a pretty impressive website when upgraded from the ones that we've had in the past i would i would like to think you know police came i mean the seventh and eighth in the whole k to twelve social studies in their time in looking at these resources and like you said we don't need a whole book we can get into modulars and i just again thank you for wants a geography geography history culture and geography smuggler we're discussing that it's not just where things are human geography also talks of a population who has culture things of that age that so essentially the thank you i just wanted to mention thank you very much is it is very exciting the way you presented all the new things coming up that sometimes you know just to step back and look at it and just think it's worth mentioning we have to keep up with the way our kids want to work and are used to learning sometimes you think ok this sounds great but really you know we really cuz we're always looking at the budget let's face it but i just think we can't reach the kids if we don't keep stepping up our program is being exciting in teaching the way they want to or the way they  linda now that was a middle school and then some highlights of the high school because what we're going to be presenting are the courses that are actually bringing proposals but we've also had the health and physical education departments writing in the high school social studies with math algebra two linear that we're going to go into the specific proposals so we're going to start with our new high school social studies the new sequence kind of twelve is that mr della and mrs clinton and mrs ok both together i high school principal and miss sanders who's the assistant principal at the high school also facilitates the curriculum so i just want to make sure they are properly recognized also and patti i would tempt to do this like as i know where they are excited about the changes that are happening in fact this is my tenth year teaching as well for you we've kind of been waiting for this for a long time and we finally have a chance to i think make some changes that we're very excited about and that appropriate for a long time the first thing is we've been researching for the past couple of years looking into changes in terms of the courses that we teach and the scope and sequence the order in which they're taught and we have some changes coming up in the next couple of years again that we think are very appropriate first of all i think the government course historically if you had children the district you know we've offered it in night and i think it's historically kind of been misplaced people felt that it's been misplaced that it might be better off later on junior senior year and so we're going to be making that change and we're coordinating with the middle school some of the changes that they've made also help us include more of that global connection and so we've increased that as well on the other hand we're still maintaining a focus on american history and civics and government and  than likely the civics and government keystone will be the first social studies keystone that comes down if in fact so over the next three years we're going to roll this out now the first thing to mention is if you have a child in the high school currently this will not affect them this will affect first of all students coming in next year the incoming one three class of twenty seventeen as you can see up there will take the new global studies course which has an emphasis primarily on the eastern hemisphere as opposed to incorporating a little bit but excuse me i misspoke students in the other grades at that point next year softeners next year's juniors next year seniors will not be affected still be taking the same forces they always did fast forward to the next year the class of twenty eighteen will again coming in take the new course that sophomore class will take a new american history course which will begin around the one nine hundred thirty s and cover to the present day kind of a little bit of overlap with what the american history course is doing at the middle school level just to kind of make sure we have the period cover to move them forward and i think that will facilitate also that group reaching more of the present day perhaps and they've had the chance to certainly past september eleventh i think was very significant  the next year you'll see the government course come back actually in the junior year and this is what we really thought was appropriate for our kids in our research we found that there are very few schools that offer government tonight great i mean i really can't think of very many that do it at all you can imagine why it's more appropriate for an older student first of all a junior or senior high school is getting close to be age where they're going to be voting so naturally that connection is there for them i think they're a little bit more mature a lot of the ninth graders we have are lucky if they're starting to formulate their own opinion separate from their parents as you get to be seventeen eighteen years old i think you become a little bit more of an independent thinker it's a great age to hit those kids with these kinds of issues and finally the last year is the first me to thirty years the first year that will actually have all of those things in order the way they will finally be the last year that you see there is simply a repeat of the previous year with our new scope and sequence again in place the senior year remains relatively unchanged besides a few  curricular changes within those courses and so that's the scope and sequence that we're planning it will roll out over the next three years and just i guess the biggest change you know this changes that is really i think to be honored with  teachers not many teachers not many staff and more can probably talk to this will come to you and say please change our world change our everyday change what we're doing because we get into those you know teachers we like to have the same routines we like to teach what we we know best these teachers are going to have to the government teachers are not going to i'm sorry the government teachers are going to i don't want to sacrifice but they're not going be teaching their passion for two years so they're giving up what they know best with these they're they're kind of most dear to their heart content because they know what's what's best for kids so we're going to go two years without government and so essentially these government teachers are going to be lumped in here you know teaching some of the world cultures and teaching some of the american history when we double up on those years to kind of get this phased in so i think t commended on their part this is a huge change and it's going to really shake up you know some teachers are probably going to have more perhaps these two years coming into play but i think by year three and four of the sequence in the phase in plan we will have everything ironed out and it will be as it yeah right so the kids that are currently in the building like mark said nothing changes with their scope and sequence there as it is but at the same content we're not getting rid of government for two years and not teaching any students so students already have gotten it ninth grade but you know there is a strong correlation between american history and teaching government and to have those courses back to back will make sense for  kids and will help them understand things better i talk government to ninth graders and seniors there's a huge difference in their understanding because it is so theoretical it's really hard for ninth graders to grasp some of those concepts they can memorize them but to really understand the impact of them when you hit students later on with those same concepts their understanding and recognition and being able to as mr avila said form coherent thoughts about that have changed significantly so the big course will look a lot different it'll probably be a lot more rigorous because the level of learning for those students will changes at the middle school we've already talked and discuss some of the changes that will need to be made in order for these two groups to continue on with what we're doing we kind of have a internal plan to work that out so the thought process is next year we will be teaching global studies to our ninth graders which will be the new course world cultures well we have already to our tenth graders american history to our eleventh graders and then one of the changes we are holding to is  western civilization and econ our senior courses and over the last few years we've allowed juniors to take those to get them out of the way we are going to require them to wait and take that in their senior year they'll be able to read  up their eleventh grade schedule and then they have a lot of opening thirteen year year so we're going to try to keep those as truly senior courses was probably what this is do the a p and honors courses the a p and honors courses will remain as it is we do have a new proposal for a new a p which we're coming to but the courses that are there now they will still be able to take they will not be able to take a p american history and tenth grade though the courses is very rigorous correct i think we have we have an option we're going to let them take i think ok i guess but so tenth graders can take a p american so that will be a change a p european history will still remain junior senior or by appointment i think we've had for tenth graders proposal to do the a few economics first and that if i if i might about the a p american history this actually this sequence works out very well i think because i think the of b p american history might be the most accessible a p course for a student and putting in a tenth grade gives  opportunity to try out their first a p course perhaps and a subject i think for our kids that is a little more accessible haps than you know a p european history which they might also choose to take so it actually kind of works out pretty well for the tenth graders to have american to have that option of taking a transition well as far as new courses government is not a new course i taught for the past three years it's always been a semester as long as i've been there and i would ask that the course be made into a year long course a couple of reasons for that it's the only a p course in the high school that is a semester long and as you can imagine the amount of material that you're asked to move through in any a p course significant let alone trying to do it in a semester basically you're trying to fit in a college level course for four high school kids at the same time in a semester you're talking about length to read and reading assignments every night let me give you an example of what my kids are up against they have a unit test tomorrow and the next day is their final exam and the finals today so basically they just ran up to the end they've got their final unit test tomorrow which is the last day before finals and then their final exam is the next day so i have some kids waiting on this last test to see if they're going to take the final the next day and a lot of a p classes you at least have a couple of days a lot of semester classes you at least have a couple of days at the end to review a little bit so by that token it's it's very difficult discussions often are truncated teachable moments are nearly impossible to work in because you're simply under too much of a pressure to to get the course completed  not only that there's a three month window between the time we finish the class and the time they actually take the a p test in may so there's a lot of time in between actually being enrolled and taking the exam now i do offer review sessions in april for those tests but as you can imagine having an after school review session for an a p student they're very busy with extracurriculars it's not always the easiest thing for them to attend so that can be very difficult and it makes having the material be fresh and mind tough for those kids and one of the things that i think we've really done a good job with yours is encouraging kids to take the a p test and getting more kids to take these a p courses and i think the a p gov course being a semester has probably been an obstacle for some kids in choosing to take it because  they maybe have to find something else in their schedule to fit that second half of the year and they also may realize that not only is it a very fast paced course with a lot of information and a small amount of time but they've got that huge gap between the finishing of the course and the a p test same as a p american used to be and also as far as moving it to a year long course that actually would really only be a change technically maybe that you would enact for the next two years proposal e the the us government course will be a year long for twelve in the class i would probably say that ninety percent or above would would get above a three i think i probably had a low score of three last year there may have been one or two kids who didn't take the test but people don't focus on that yes but thirty yeah now we have enough i think we have about a class set of text right now and i don't predict that moving it to a year long would create a second section i can't i mean i i don't because i don't have information about back that up but i don't think right away we're going to have kids  prevent college board will change or have to get a new work and you know well that's that's the one thing that i think and i know this was an issue with our with some of our other a p courses of course the college board does make some statements about having an updated text i'd have to look at the copyright of ours it's not new but again like with history it's not that it changes so much as you want to update it to to change with the way you deliver the course and you know to update the text in terms of different things that happen at their current events wise and so at that time i think it would make sense for us to look at new text  economics at least from my portion of the presentation we've had requests for an a p economics class for the past couple of years at least that i've been there and i think this is a very very important class to include the course would be kind of taught as a door semester microeconomics and then maybe macroeconomics of course you know that microeconomics invites a thorough understanding of the principles of economics that a plot of the functions of individual decision makers both consumers and producers within the larger economic system mac the other hand give students a thorough understanding of the principles of economics that apply to an economic system as a whole i personally had students ask to take this course so do we have a can do we offer it i've signed off on a couple of students who've chosen to take it outside of peter's online one of the things that i think is important here economics not just for social studies i think that for students who are interested in business which is probably a fair share of our kids or the science this is a this is a great course to take again it's an opportunity for college credit i think it would be much more in demand also for students who maybe don't like history but still want to take a social studies and so from that perspective i think it's really unfortunate we've had some research also on schools that have a p econ in the same schools have the year it's just one more piece of the puzzle that gives our kids that same opportunity that other schools have in the area i think it's really important also important to note every year we have students take the a p econ test even though we don't offer the course some students to our scores have not been great in that category but there's definitely an interest there for students to pay said i think this is a really a testament to the people that that you've helped bring in that have really given our department a lot of energy and moving forward so when i want to thank them for that i'm finally intro to psychology it's an academic level course introduction to psychology  and i think the justification for this a lot of students in our high school you can imagine are interested in psychology i've had students at community service even just today tell me that they want to pursue psychology but maybe the a p avenue is not exactly the one that they want to take their they're more interested in learning about it but maybe not at the pace and in the depth that an a p course requires we did a survey of our students to see how many would be interested in taking a an academic level psychology course out of about almost seven hundred students we had about two hundred fifty that said they would be interested there is definitely an interest out there for an introduction to psychology course a lot of colleges obviously offer this as a as an interim course when you get there for the first year and so we'd be giving our kids an opportunity prepa requests for student schedule changes any of our a p courses this is the one course that we continually get students that want to drop because they get in way over their head they don't want to understand what technology is even at now and to may have this might be their first chance in taking an a p class just because they're slightly interested in the area of psychology so we really feel like this is going to be that stepping stone to kind of first let's just see if you like psychology can some people it's not what you think it is and let's get that as a foundation and then those ones that master the content let's but out into the regular with a p so i think that is something that we're looking towards to help give our students a little more intervention a step to be successful because i think some  because we have the a p psych so intro to psych would just be a very basic introductory course but that i believe students would still be able to go straight to a piece like i used the term academic and perhaps that's a misnomer i didn't i didn't want to keep faster than i agree but in the past i mean i would let you know my first year here in dealing with some of this i mean i think you guys had an education committee meeting in like march or may in we were already scheduled i mean we were already scheduling so we're used to this would be great worry i would i would next week would be bad but it was yeah i mean the sooner the better for a first kettling but we've always had it pending board approval when we've had those difficult discussions with students to look a this didn't run we need to pick another if they're if it's a matter of we have a teacher who can teach it with ten students then we'll try to run it but if we have another course or class that exceed that let's say we ran both a p econ and intro to psych and we ha lot of intro to say can we have enough staff to cover it but that would mean the ten kids who picked a p econ wouldn't get it because i would have a staff member to teach it then than that but that also weighs into the equation wor for economics as part of our curriculum the intro to psychology we already offer psychology as part of our curriculum but philosophy is something completely new to the social studies curriculum and this would be a semester elective for students and it would be at the kind of general education level essentially we came up with this idea because there seems to be greater demand for electives with  change in the graduation requirements with physical education and health and driver's theory that now there really is a demand and a need for students to have electives to be able to fulfill all of their requirements is something that actually i have been at the school for thirteen years and have been dreaming about teaching for about ten years and because there seemed to be a need that i proposed this and a fellow colleague of mine kevin lawrence also actually is very much interested in philosophy so we're planning on writing it together and hopefully being able to teach it if there's more than one section that emerges so i want to talk to you a little bit about why philosophy in the high school level i think one of the major questions that maybe come to mind is what is in philosophy a college level class or you think about it as  kind of the old white men in the dusty you know dusty old philosophy text but actually a lot of high schools middle schools and even elementary schools are now integrating some type of kind of offical curriculum into their learning and they're finding that it really has a lot of great advantages for the students just to kind of go over a little bit about why philosophy is actually appropriate in a high school level students are open minded at the high school level it's really a great time to kind of engage their thinking also philosophy is something that really helps students to identify arguments to evaluate arguments to start to form their own arguments form their own opinions really kind of work on scrutinizing what is a good question what is a good answer and also a little bit as far as a school wide advantage a lot of studies are coming out talking about how in fact students that are taking philosophy score well on standardized tests because a lot of the focus is on things like logic and reason and those tend to be skills that students use on  standardized tests so this helps out with standardized testing this also helps out as far as just really cross curricular general clear thinking reading and writing that can be used  a high school level as far as how a high school philosophy class maybe differs from a college level class or the object isn't format for the class that we propose it's really about engaging the  doing philosophy it's not you know this is socrates this is what he thought you know let's learn a little bit about him but instead of starting off with really some of those find the philosophical questions those questions that are just kind of great thinkers great great thinking questions and then after having the discussion moving through kind of the philosophical conversation you can then move to discussing w here here are what some other philosophers in the past and now present have to say about this question and here's how they have answered the question and really it's not necessarily about one particular answer at all philosophy is  really about and having the discussion and engaging your mind in learning how to ask good questions and form good answers as far student interest goes artist social studies survey we actually did a survey last year and this year and the statistics are about twenty two percent this year about thirty six percent last year said that they were interested in taking an introduction to philosophy course that wonderful textbook that i think would kind of hit the spot with this also it's the type of course that i think is organic enough that mr lawrence and i plan to use a lot of kind of online tools putting things on edmodo just kind of using teacher resources from different places and creating essential lee what the students need material wise from  this i think one of the things that we're trying to do with the curriculum at the high school is make sure that we've got opportunities for students so that they can explore different areas we've done a lot of research about what students are going to be experiencing when they're in college and it's freshman what types of courses are they going to be taking we don't necessarily expect our seniors to know exactly what they're going to do after high school in terms of what they're going to study although a lot of them will tell you they do which is fantastic but we and at least give them enough of an education that they can say i've taken a philosophy class and now not for me to take in psych i really like that they've they have those experiences and this is an area that we haven't had a lot of rich electives in and we want to broaden that scope so that kids can kind of get a taste of with a new g p a calculation taken unweighted elective will no longer heard a student's  a so that you know the world's their oyster they can pick any class that they want and we saw a lot of students this year with the elimination of the two years of p t struggling to find electives they wanted to take so we end up with and we're dealing with right now you know the students who are looking at their second semester electives going to don't know if i really want that anymore because they were settling for things they were just picking things to fill up their schedule because i wouldn't i would let them take three stud a really two areas that we often see a deficit as far as student skills go especially when we're talking twenty first century and that is being able to look at the mass of information out there with a critical eye understand what is a good argument what's a logical argument where they use you know real factual information to kind of back it up as opposed to students just kind of taking what is in front of them you know as as the gospel truth i think also we run into especially with social studies really teaching students how to craft a logical argument students will tell you what they believe but they won't be able to defend why they believe it without just saying well that's just what i think or you know because of so and so does it to her but philosophy actually teaches the skill of being able to present an argument that has logic and reason behind it and i think that's something that the well i was in an engineering program to mrs a it's an elective in college and it was fabulous it was the logic part of it and it was very helpful so right and that will actually be our first unit because that's the basis of everything else will do  if there's no more questions right now we're going to change the tape and we'll start again thank you or at the high school level to support them and we even start talking about programs for the middle school so they were really helpful with designing these new course proposals to the new elective offerings right now interruption to directing in stage management or introduction to stage management directing i've seen it flip flop both ways but either way to same course musical theater and portfolio workshop those would be the th theatre arts i think that was a semester course performing arts was a semester of performance studio different aspects of each of these courses that we will be eliminating will be included in some of the new proposed courses as well must take before they can progress through the curriculum the second course will be theater arts to now currently theatre arts two is a year long course which a lot of students find trouble scheduling in their schedule so we have been running it the last two years kelly has been doing a phenomenal job but she said really this curriculum can be taught in a semester course so the that would be the major change in theater arts too is taking it from a year long course down to a semester course so those will be the pretty wrecked kind of course as the foundation courses and then the students will have the option to branch off they can do the intro to directing and stage management which i have a little blurb here that they  for me and students will be able to analyze scripts organize and prepare a production book which includes a lot of blocking and stage direction planning performances conducting the historical research and talking as they are directors stage managers talking about time management performance space maintenance things like that so that's one avenue if they take that then you can see that that's the kind of the third layer or they could go the direction of musical theat which is something that we really heard ring true from not only students when we surveyed students but also from the college of representatives that we have you know it's that triple threat you know if you can sing dance now you have it made in so this is going to be something new that we're going to kind of i dabble in and lori being the scheduling guber that she is we hope that she can make this happen this is a collaboration course that will be with that arts apartment and the music department we're going to try to be creative schedulers and open up ryan's schedule a few times throughout the nine weeks to get him in there and do some tutoring some some some voice lessons things like that that will then supplement the rest of the theater musical theater curriculum which is  for a student that is really wanting to move forward in the college theater arts department and have that triple threat so that if you go to the last layer students have options to go to either track and that would be portfolio workshop which again we talked very highly at the college level the students need to come to college with a portfolio you know we have students right now have a great performance but it's not really organized it's not really you know tutor miss they might just come to a teacher and say hey i need help with this i'm going to go perform in the sound of music and they need audition so we want to course that gets them ready for that they can put together videotapes they can put together you know our head shots and things like that so that the poor studio is the new courseware for students who seek to prepare themselves for university level theater and who wish to investigate the complexity in art of craft and live theater building portfolios and resumes seeking theater programs at the university level things like that we would like to also down the road develop some partnerships with some colleges and universities to get that partnership from the college coming into our school and vice versa and then the last course we've already talked about is education committee a few years ago and that is the mentorship the pro arts journey mentorship so that could be that final commentating thing is once you've gone through the courses that you want to and you would like to see that mentorship and that's with all the fine arts music art and theater arts that's available so yes they are they are all semester course so a lot of her classes before while we were doing research when we would talk to the professors in our meeting she would go back and talk to her class so we did a survey monkey and these were the three two that that had the most we'd a bunch of we had like a shakespearean drama we had all these different him and i think that's what we're most excited about is that co curricular opportunity of having you know i mean if you just look at a musical production it's not just the director there's also the vocal director and then there's the orchestra the stage manager and the technical director and so that allows for collaboration and so that the piece is going to be tricky with scheduling i would imagine we would run one section of again thank you we are moving into the final phase of our mouth sequence change and so next year the new edition will be algebra two which will replace integrated  three and so we won't be running any innovative integrated not three next to the only integrated about foss we will run next year will be integrated math or and probably just the essential level for some seniors who are still in that track but after next year about that will go away and you can see the new lineup and how it will look i know that three years have flown by perfectly but if you look at great nine next year our student choices will be algebra two honors geometry honors algebra one academic academic or algebra one foundations and then it just kind of precedes on algebra two on earth students in tenth grade can take it depending on what they took a ninth grade you can kind of see the sequence here so it is our final phase it seems  attending that class and they've been doing a poly com we have a staff member who actually we selected to facilitate that program because this teacher was interested in teaching the course next year so our math teachers have been working with their classes talking to students about that so that we will have we do have students who will be ready to take honors linear algebra at the high school so we expect a lot more than three we actually had more students who would qualify this year but again they were paying for it on their own and it was limited to the that time of day that we could do the class with mount lemmon and so it created some handicaps for some students to be able to take it so we would like to offer that class as our fourth year option some students that might even be a third year option depending on how advanced they are in math yeah they instituted a when they first institute it was a slow growth because the students are learning what the sequence could be as it's you know over the last few years our students have been actually slowing their mouth sequence because they were running out of options  we don't want them to do that anymore we want to keep up with the challenge they're presenting us by being so smart so this will allow students to jump straight to become b c which a lot of our students can't take an eleventh grade and are ready for and then from there accelerated in the middle and there's thirty five forty kids that are already a year ahead by the time you get to the current freshman sophomore so you're going to have at least two and if you look at i would say math is one of our strongest just looking at our test scores standardized test scores whether it's  semester course that this would replace the current personal finance course and we have been doing a lot of research on creating a course that meets the literacy standards financial literacy standards that are established by the national national financial educators council and this has been a team effort over the course of the last one to yours they would be studying topics like employee compensation payroll deductions banking income tax personal credit investment something i've probably all the figures repression on since this course will cover all of canada literacy standards and the math department would recommend that this be a required course so we are looking at this being sort of a replacement for driver's theory this current sophomore class is the last class to be required to take driver's theory we would like to see seniors be required to take a semester financial literacy moving could take at their junior senior year we see a lot of need for it we are looking at the entire curriculum of the high school and sort of where we're headed and we're we're directing our students what  we the skills we want them to have in the twenty first century you know one of the reasons we kind of pulled away from driver's theory is we didn't see that the relevancy of that and their post secondary life but we do see a huge relevancy with financial literacy and this is something that a lot of schools are moving towards and certainly a lot of our students are going to need as many of our kids work so we would like to offer the course regardless for the next three years as an elective and that we hope to make it required with the  incoming ninth grade class next year thank you thank you and i have been asking for this since two thousand and eight and the economy exploded it we have a real nice group of those been working on it we have a teacher that is new to our building this year who's been teaching the personal finance and and she has really taken on all of the research for this and done a  credit to their elected pool so we just said you have to pick up another liked if you pick it now we're kind of pulling back a little bit and saying ok we know what we want you to so and if it is always best to start at the incoming class because you're giving them the information before they start we currently do not have a textbook for the math personal finance just f y i so we've been doing some research and we feel strongly that there are so many tools like mortgage calculators and there's so many online web two point  tools that are at our fingertips for free and they're always changing so instead of always changing our books we're going to be updated and so we figure the i pads are the you know newest hottest thing why don't we try to get those in place in in the classroom instead of textbooks and use all those online resources we don't need a textbook so the math department basically sat down we said ok that's the ideal direction we want to go and that's the direction i think we all as educators and leaders want to see schools go zero is are we would we would factor in a bubble in case there was a class of apps that needed to be purchased most of the apps now so you know for thirty bucks if there is but that's a good question and i think that they would stay in the e the well the librarian is been telling us that the probably have with our laptop cards is that the charge is only holding up to one or two classes and then have to plug in for a whole you know two three hours and then you can use them again so the really become outdated quickly the i pads are holding a charge a lot longer and those either have kindles and knocks it out but i mean you know even the week without charging them that we won't be at one of our probably as much as the kids would be but she's guaranteeing i mean she's she said that they could probably stay for six periods in a row easy and then you plug it while the teachers at lunch and come back so we're really really fast so we don't think that that's going to be a problem with the right it's my turn it's pretty thing we pursued it washington financial held special workshops for educators and watching county they actually are giving us every school that wants to accept it which will take three things all the time you have to catch the piggy now but it is there is a lot of it it is amazing we got to see it how the teachers i took an economics teacher and i took a math teacher to kind of just feel out what they thought they gave us a big script of curriculum  models and they fit seamlessly with what we already have been doing both in x some economics there was two units that were pertinent to economics and the rest of the six or seven other ones eight were for math so we talked as a team and we said w this gets approved in it's a required we're going to just use the whole thought for a program in the math classes if not then they're going to divvy up between economics and the financial risk to course because again it's free and he comes and does free training so we can train as many teachers we want trainees like forty five minutes it's a really neat program you can teach the modules out of order so you don't have to follow their script there's pretest post test data collection each kid gets an account a license for free one of the best part of this is this is where i wish i would have had this they will keep that license for eternity so when they graduate they can go back to these lessons so you know where some i remember something about credit cards and interest rates and they can go back to their account and reread and supporting it and its ever five ever fine is the company name so we were supposed have a conference call today but that didn't happen but he's going to come out and we actually want to start this semester one way so we're not going to wait to do the transition we're going to get it in the personal finance class this year an economics class second semester so we're going to play around with some of those tools and see how they work with the kids nine week course this which proposed scheduling conflicts all the time one was for ninth graders for the students that were not proficiency and great they went to the p s a nine on line and the twelfth grade was students who did not meet the proficiency level of the state so that was kind of what we considered we got approved for their local assessment for the twelfth grade and that was not online so what we're looking at and we really don't know how this is going to go because this is all very new at the keystones but our best idea  moving forward at this point i have some sort of remediation in place and some interventions in place for students would be to replace the p s a nine online going from a nine week course to a semester course and we would have remediation for not only the skills that they need to be successful on our state mandated tests a lot of schools from lauren i have been networking are going to something like this everything looks a little bit different some of them are doing summer school classes some are doing a evening classes some are doing just within their schedule they're all redoing their piece of it pretty much everybody had a p s a remediation course of some sort they're all kind of looking at that and we have to at this point we would continue using a blackboard as  online supplement and study island study on has come out and that's something if this moves forward we will be scheduling our demo with that they have keystone elements lessons units and they also have the p s a and i believe there is just like a flip the and that's where for example study island the teacher can go on and still lack time what lessons that student is doing based on what their got particular students needs are so you might have ten kids in the class and not might all be working on something slightly different depending on what areas they need to be focused on are totally individualized and the students aren't losing anything in terms of us going from nine weeks to a semester because what ended up happening is we don't have any other one we classes they went to so they were taken nine weeks of  need something now for our kids so this is the best that you know this is kind of the best brainstorming that we've come up with  evening everybody however you and let me give you a little historical information real quickly when i was hired in the fall of ninety six the tech at program had gone through a transitional period from the traditional industrial arts milling machines the lathes that type of academic program it was here at one time had moved over into a more technology education based and in about two thousand and four we went through a curtain revision what we were able to do is adapt at that time from the transitional type environment to the current trends with the technology as it's changed through the years and then the few years ago we went through a another revision to what we have today but the common denominator to all of the curriculums and what we've seen over the last you know many many years has been entry level courses technology cation has always been very diversified the four major areas from production manufacturing transportation communications can accomplish a lot of information and to address the needs of the students appears township we were  force but it was only logical that we have these different types of courses and with the population the students that we've had and the many many schedule changes we've had over the years since then our role has always been able to sustain a strong interest within elective areas but it did not allow us a lot of freedom for the upper level courses and so we we are here today with recent schedule changes that has allowed us a lot of freedom and opportunity to finally offer what the students have been asking for for the many years that i have been employed here at the high school the first one in the intro to stem the district's initiative for stem it was only launched a cold that we look at what we offer as a part of a building wide and district wide initiative and i probably will be a little bit remiss if i didn't share that many things that we do that we talk about with the stump program we have had  existence for many many years the national awareness for stem has been the sort of the driving force to finally take what we've always done with science technology engineering mathematics to finally come together in a collaborative effort and one of the things that we laurie and emily and i have talked about and along with some of the other members of the other disciplines is this would be something where we could do this collaborative yes we'll be written within our program but input from the different disciplines so that we can then bring everything together and actually having true stem not and not a late so often times even within my department others neighbors school districts will make a name change and that is really all that it is just a face value name change we want to make sure that we are not following somebody we're leading and we've been very supportive supported by the you folks the many many years that i have been employ so you know i  feel very fortunate that we have an opportunity here to really truly have a stem course that meets the needs of our students so as we looked at the course offerings we have many many years ago i rewrote a course that was called careers in technology to the what we have today and that's the technology engineering systems course and it was originally designed as an entry level course for students that would want to pursue all the different aspects within  so as we move into the technology education engineering it was a logical course that we would them eliminate keep in spirit of the source many things we've done over the years but then with the stem initiative really bring it and hit it hard with the stem and that is why we chose that course to eliminate and rewrite one that was new that would bring in the other disciplines many of the courses that we have have always been problem based learning the the activities the students have worked with over the years would remain in place with this one as well through simulation actual hands on we would do some testing the  philosophy with engineering floss with creative problem solving has always been a research build a test analyze approach and that is something a we have had long as i have been employed here and this would be no different than any of the other courses we've had as far as the activities within and that is sort of what we are looking at some of the topics the big trend within design firms is rapid prototyping simulation the software that we have at the high school existing so there'd be no dish will cost we would be able to do some of the three d model some of the other courses some of the electronics have talked with susan levinsky many many times about the soar in green initiatives that we have and this would be no different it would be a spin off we would hit again all these different areas that are existing but yet then finally have an opportunity expand on it and so i really can't say this will be a list of everything that we would we would be currently doing  for us offer but as we go through the writing process certainly those would be the different disciplines of the different other teachers within science and math that we would bring in collectively as to put together the it's not necessarily focused on technology and pretty graphing there we were all operating like that it's the concepts of engineering i don't know whether that is intended to be in this particular course  students in one thread say i want to be an engineer why i don't know my neighbors an engineer who seems to be doing pretty well so i mean kids will make their decisions up based on what their experiences are with people that they know and then they get into some science but that is absolutely an error area we talked about we talked about this introduction to stem and when i've talked with fred and dave down in the tech at department that this would almost be a course that ninth graders could take to see what is out there it kind of hits on a little bit of everything else correct and that one of the things i think i'd like to see at the high school we've talked about this even with project lead the way is that there be something in our math and science departments that is stem related math areas that they take intro to stem and that would kind of give them sort of a global little snapshots of everything and some hands on experiences and then from there you know one of our long term vision it's to have place we recommend you you explore you know and that's kind of where we're headed and this is part of that long term vision one of the things that that credit said so eloquently is that we have a high demand for these courses i was shocked when i started scheduling when i first came to peters how many students we're turning away because we couldn't fill the demand and good ended up happening was our teachers with to take the teachers and they were teaching kids  repeating the class they would repeat the same classes they were so interested in for example edge over box kids would repeat it and then the teacher would differentiate to kind of raise the level up with the kids for learning and that's what we found as our kids weren't really going as they weren't advancing because we didn't have a now to enough forces or enough staff to get them to the upper levels of the courses and that's one of the things we want to kind of do because they have such a strong program that we want to sort of  recreate so introduce some would be the start of that and then the architecture and engineering too would be for kids who are advancing the next level because right now we don't have a next level that they would repeat that course and then mr burns would differentiate but if he had a whole course of kids that are in that second tier then he could take that so so much further with what they're doing historic wall what is engineering so while you may not be quite at the level of what you're talking about it is something that you know is very unknown to the students you know a special thing architectural class know what is an architect what is an engineer and we go through that with i go over that with the students and so this was certainly you know it was a no brainer that this is that needed to be a capo to to the course of actually what is engineer and you know the different aspects with for example if a student in one three eight said you know i'm thinking about engineering or i'm thinking about going into health care or something like that and they're under the stem academy that we would tell them like right now what we have listed here these are courses so here's all the courses we offer at the high school that would support support an engineering concentration now we're not out with this is where we can say take this and then this and then right what we done right now we have a lot of all of our courses in concentration areas because this is where our families need the assistance the most and they were learning the guidance counselor and they rely on their neighbors and other kids who've gone through the system hey you went to college for this course that peters helped you and so we're trying to put that information together in a fashion that will help families and students be able to kind of see where they're going so what we have are this stem academy at global connections academy we're not through with that name but we're still working on it and then our communication account i mean what we found in doing this exercise better teachers take the classes and identify what it supports we were able to see where we're strong and where we're weak for example media i mean our kids can graduate eighty k like our media department is that good the offerings there are tremendous social studies we have a want to core classes we did you know we have some electives but that's an area we need to give them more exposure there's somebody who's going into the field like pretty law or or something along those lines or going to politics or history in science and math we absolutely need because right now most of our classes are kind of core classes you know we're starting to expand with the organic chemistry we're starting to expand in now but we've we've got more to go naturally we will get we looked at project lead the way we have the gentlemen come out and do a big presentation with us  it was interesting because we set out and when i talked to mr burns mr walsh afterwards what we're doing is better than what they're doing for to you know if they're yeah big big charging money we've already got i mean our plan our long range plan i think is a lot stronger than project lead the way project lead the way it's meant to come into a school that has not really translated the traditional which shop curriculum into something that is more engineering based and we are there and have surpassed it  now they do have something on biomedical engineering that they just started we're interested in and there's one school in the region that's doing its mine tour we're going to go visit and see what that program looks like because that's an area we're our science needs to move you know so we'll look at the curriculum there but we don't want to scrap what we're doing in tech to by project lead the way because we think we're doing so much better than what they have so that is our long term vision we hate fred this is a great time putting a little blurb about one product that we local business that would partner with us for that would pay for it i mean it's one of those things where as i mentioned in our earlier of the the rapid prototyping of the virtual three d printer type design work i mean the solid work software that we use a high school  and even prior to we use the autodesk inventor again another leading industry but with the packaging that we're able to do the financial savings we're able to bring in by buying it it has been tremendous in the kids  so one of the components of we have been missing has been a way to take those conceptual ideas aside from just a print out of paper but to have some type of three d in it is something that i think we drastically need any other specific questions regarding the interest on and last but not least the the architectural engineering to that is a a semester course as well currently at the high school the architectural process one course is a four year course and in that four year we go through the historical influences of architecture we talk about modern needs modern features how these are sort of hybrids and ultimately at the end of the semester students are walking out with a virtual home that they have built from studs to the beams to siding to a coffee mug on the counter they do virtual walk  through it is very impressive the talent that we have in our student body and having a medium where they're able to manipulate and change or move a wall wherever they want has been so important of flowering students to really be creative honestly for many of the students that i have right now that are repeat offenders i call them they far exceeded sort of their knowledge base with the software and then what i have that i can they have on their home computers  it's the cannot get enough of it they can turn out a house in no time and we're not talking just about a ranch home one of the states i have right now has a very contemporary style house it is impressive  it's so impressive as far as the layout of the home i can't render the computer the we have is not powerful enough to actually run or the house there's so much components to it and literally when i say a coffee mug i'm talking about a coffee maker and any student that i've had come back post high school in and shared their experience at you know the culture of choice to say the exact same thing first year i live in a studio all we do is build models and i'm not talking about models in a sense of just a conceptual idea scale components something where you would walk in with a prospective client is sort of out late here's our idea it's tangent we can see it and that's a component that does not lend itself this force time constraint to the architectural one class so the architectural to that certainly would be a component within that course in addition some of the more advanced from electrical h v a c to some of the green technologies that are now becoming almost a standard within homes yeah we can address that within the architecture one class but we really can't expand it to really apply it as to the level that it really should be and within the semester course the architectural  engineering to course that sort of my vision that's what it would have with the modeling yes that is correct just so we know the three d printer that you would like to know what's the cos one of the things that you will find is you know as believe me i have looked high and low you can find one that's fairly inexpensive couple thousand dollars but you have to understand what you get for that couple thousand dollars the technology within the software of the technology within the compatibility of what we have is something you really have to look at as far as the big picture when you start talking about what is the best bang for your buck as you look at some of the more expensive ones they come with so much stuff that's not included so it's kind of like batteries not included well some of the ones that are your lesser expensive in the nine thousand zero range you're buying all of the medium you're buying all the fixtures and when you finally factor in all those things are so close to a far superior product by going with the better but that's why for is that the way how much does your local vendors allegheny education i know dan walters very well dan and i were talking in a lot of the information to share with you he sort of gave me the nuts and bolts of the basics of here's really what you're getting and you can spend anywhere from twenty four thousand and up and what you get with a more expensive one is more of a bigger product as far as the actual product that you can make they talk about the well bed size a six by six by eight you can get a ten by ten by twelve and all your don't want to able to make bigger parts that to me is not a driving factor as far as really needing to go for the most expensive one because we can achieve the goals and objectives with one it's not as large you know it's one of those things where if we can get ourselves into a product that is going to have longevity it's going to be very user friendly for the students and really address the needs of what the curriculum is driving minced current trends i think that's why it's to shoot for the little bit higher end model because it it's a better fit of the gears and some of the competition the grippers that type of stuff we can design in solve the students the student generated it's not anything it's canned and then from there you hit print and make the printer basic lays a thin layer of a b s plastic if you could think of a piece of chain a chain link where there would be air there is a false medium laid so any time where you see the link in the chain of  metal the materials layer what would be air is another product and then once you when you're done with your product you take it out use it in a biodegradable solution that eats away at the other stuff and you actually have preassembled actually spread the pain they will to test it doesn't work throw it away and this is the sort of the trend within engineering firms being able to create some of the smaller parts the chevy h three hummer the gas that retired last year that we did not replace on one of the yeah yeah because we brought we just brought people back in different departments i mean that's what we're going to see over the next couple of years is just shifting that's where bringing our curriculum in line with some twenty first century thinking that has a certain things kind of are faced out we're just kind of shifting that we anticipate that at the half time social space business will become full time and the full time or the half time take that will become full time position so we have one person who's doing both so that person will have to make a probably make a decision about where they want to go and then we would look to hire somebody else i i don't think we'll see them for another couple of years i mean there's with emily as things there's a possibility back to her now if financial literacy becomes a required course we wouldn't see the fruition of that until the class of two thousand and seventeen got closer to their junior year so  you know there's a lot of shifting that i think we see happening so it's hard to say we're stepping exactly will be until kids actually pick their courses and see we see where they are shifting themselves to one of the things we wanted to do and like i said in social studies was in providing students more options and social studies that will limit the students who are loading their schedules with required classes in eleventh grade with a history of western civ an econ putting those off to their their senior year opens up the schedule for teachers i have one of our history western civ teachers has one hundred  in two thousand and eleven twelve ninety eight full time ok and three traveling in two thousand and twelve this year you have ninety five point five full time time and five trial so that trial the increase in traveling  really affects us scheduling was because we only have them for maybe two periods we only have them for three periods and then they're off to mcmurray or they're off to you know donna fox we have one period so we've increased our traveling teachers when we kind of had these retirements in not the staff so we are down from ninety ninety five point five to ninety eight or ninety eight ninety five so that's kind of where we are and when we look at a full time person they could teach you know period one you know that's what we kind of look at when we talk about staffing and we' supplement it neat just based on little you know pockets of traveling teachers that are shared amongst the district so that is something that we look at as a reality i thank you sorry it was just in if they want to keep in the thank you thing i know i was the person who originally said it be nice to have these if they were going to be approved approved before the scheduling of stuff takes place but i guess i would like to know from the board do you have enough information on the stuff for this to move forward for next week's voting meeting or would you prefer to  turn all your questions and have another discussion on these and during a february meeting just let him put them in the book and then if we don't approve them they can they can redo the scheduling what does the fourth consensus what would you like to do who spoke on it she teaches at a college level and that's where she was saying she's been saving resources so she has been i know she said she i think she was auditing in class and trying to get as many materials and supplements that she would want to use it at high school level philosophy class so i think that's where she's looking at her materials but we have no and that's what she said it's really going to be this kind of organic thing that they work to together we don't have a prescribed curriculum  so you guys have kind of done the approval for it so so we have some classes that have been on the books that you've approved we haven't run because of low romance or lack of staffing or low or resources or location or things like that so you would want to spend time writing right we don't do that unless we well possibly let's try to break it into there it seems in my opinion that there are some items on here that could very well go on next week's agenda for approval such as honor's linear algebra we know we're going to have those kids we know we're going to have to do those things for math online whether or not we're going to offer some of the a p courses because one is simply changing from a semester to a year long course and then maybe we could leave things a before i go to public comment i just wanted to get to know next steps on the agenda we did have a lot of items that we wanted to discuss in an education committee meeting and tonight was just going to be too long we're pushing up on nine o'clock already  we're looking at having a discussion very elementary presentation next time talking about the keystone exam updates and potentially getting some feedback on the ones that were just taken last week talking about the p s a test in the p s other folks to actually make sure that those testing things are rolled into this presentation because the one thing that i thought that the board would want to know is if there were any type of color remediation even though that makes it sound like there's something wrong if are any kind of issues that they would like us to consider during the budget period of things that need to be addressed to help alleviate that dip in the test scores of pensions that they be able to present that to us so that we can then roll it over into tom's that at the voting meeting on monday or tuesday sorry keep forgetting the next one ok thank you thank