School Culture committee:

IB announcements will be read each week. Ranger Store – open M-F next week – 7:15-7:50. Will place an item for new items. Will place another order for the 2^nd 9 weeks (awards). First grade is taking the dog tags that were left in the library. Cafeteria wagon seems to be running smoothly. Ranger bucks are in teachers’ boxes. 

Staff recognitions – lump December and January together. Review teacher expectations and appreciation to be in line with the teacher code of conduct. We need a more positive school culture using the IB attitudes.  Culture committee will research what other schools are doing and bring it back to SDMC. Will bring this issue to a staff meeting. Some teachers have seen some interesting ideas at other schools. 

Might do a Secret Santa. 

More icebreakers during staff meetings; could be tied to IB. Teachers want more fun! 

Parent involvement: 

Christmas breakfast for parents – invitation only on Friday, Dec. 17^th at 8:30. Every grade level will donate food so this can happen. Still up for debate whether to invite all parents or just those who volunteer regularly. We talked more about ways to involve more parents. Health fair/zumba night – Texas Children’s and other organizations will come. Hopefully will happen beginning of March. Recipe for Success would be involved. 

Need to publish a monthly calendar. Would be great to create a Sylvan Rodriguez Calendar that we could sell. 

Safety committee:

Ms. Cantu went to a district-wide meeting talking about how schools are soft targets for mass violence and need a plan in place. Nobody should be in the school without tags or authorization. Shouldn’t be letting in people from the back without knowing who they are. Need more safe drills (other than fire drills). Need a procedure for when the school goes into lockdown. Safety committee will address these concerns and develop procedures and share with SDMC.

New safety inspector is very by-the-book. Safety committee members will be checking classrooms by next Wednesday, Dec. 9th. The fire marshal (also new) will be here soon. The teacher will pay fines if they cause it.

Wellness committee:

Soap issue has been solved, but still urine on the floor in some bathrooms. Hand-washing/hygiene training would be good for all kids. Suggest that this be coordinated by Ms. Adamy, Mr. DeDios, and Nurse Key. It would be good if the cleaning crew could more frequently visit the bathrooms that are more heavily populated. Every class needs bathroom monitors who will do a check before kids start going in and report any kids messing up the bathroom during bathroom time. 

LPAC

Give to 3^rd-5^th grade teachers monitoring forms to fill out cycle 1 grades and linguistic accommodation forms for ELL students. 

Head Start

Last parent meeting – 12/11. Goal for the school year – 79/79. Class observation and binder reviews happening now. Teacher training on 12/9. Class supplies should arrive soon. Teachers will be meeting with parents about children’s grades. 

PYP

All the teachers should have a binder with all the planners. Our goal is to become more transdisciplinary this year. Need to integrate science and social studies. Did a walk-through yesterday and there were still some classes that weren’t ready. Use the key concepts for your current planner in your teaching. There is an IB manager for the district. Most Wonder Walls are empty. Each grade level needs to have a lesson to introduce the planners. It would be good for teachers to visit other schools. Ms. Moore should coordinate these school visits.

Bilingual 

The Neuhaus representative was here. Grade levels shared about their ESL blocks. Discussed 3^rd grade going all English next year. Need to enforce the use of English since Pre-K. Neuhaus representative talked about things we can do to help with the transition to all English in 3^rd grade and having more kids transition earlier. Then reviewed a writing sample from each grade level. Neuhaus will give us a quote. Support for next semester will be modeling, coaching, and PLCs. The language policy needs to be changed and run by IB if we transition another entire grade level to English. We will follow the model of transitioning the kids based on readiness.