PSD District Advisory Board Meeting Notes

August 24, 2009 7:00-9:00pm JSSC Boardroom

Call to Order - Terri Sunset, DAB Chair

Introductions – Everyone introduced themselves and the school or group they
represent.

Policy Governance, Board of Education, and Superintendent

Given the adoption of Policy Governance as the way our school district is
governed, the role of the District Advisory Board is also potentially changed. Below,
Tom Balchak of the Board of Education (BOE) describes what Policy Governance is,
then Dr. Wilson describes what he would like to see from the DAB, and the Tom Balchak
describes what the Board of Education would like to see from the DAB.
The idea that the DAB has deliverables to provide back to the Superintendent and
to the Board of Education is a departure from how the DAB has operated in the past.
Prior to this, DAB has largely been a tool for keeping parent and community
representatives informed about various PSD related topics and issues. Some feedback
has been solicited from DAB Members and the parents and community members they
represent. Some members of the DAB have also served on various PSD committees and
as such, have been able to keep the DAB current on the progress of these groups and have
also been able to get feedback from the parents and community members they represent
to give back to these committees.
The ideas presented here tonight are giving the DAB the opportunity to expand
the role it plays within PSD.

Policy Governance – Tom Balchak, Board of Education

Policy Governance is a method of leadership which our school board has
adopted. It allows the educational professionals to make the best decisions they
can without the interference of the Board of Education. The Board’s job is to
determine what the goals are that the district should meet. The Superintendent is
evaluated by the board based on his ability to meet these goals.
Tom described the policy governance as very streamlined, comparing the
thin notebook he now carries to the policies and revisions to policies which were
quite thick, cumbersome, and wasteful of paper.
For instance, the BOE shouldn’t spend time discussing types of school
busses or which science textbooks to use. These determinations should be left to
the professionals, and the BOE can judge result.
The system of policy governance is continually evolving as the ends goals
are constantly reviewed, evaluated, and updated as necessary.
This link will take you to page containing the current district ends policies
(DE 1.0):
http://www.psdschools.org/documentlibrary/downloads/Board_of_Education/Poli
cy_Governance/Policies/District%20Ends/DE_1-0_General_Ends_Policy.pdf

* Note: Tom had two additional handouts. The first describing the Four
Foundations of Policy Governance and the second describing the 10 Principles of
Policy Governance. If I can get these in electronic format, I will forward them
onto the DAB e-mail list and post them on the DAB Blog (see below).

Proposed DAB Deliverables to the District – Dr. Jerry Wilson, Superintendent

Dr. Wilson presented the following as what he sees as the role of the DAB
in PSD.

1. DAB is advisory to the district as it reflects the points of view of

representatives from multiple school sites
2. DAB offers advice or input on district decisions as part of a community input
process
3. DAB may provide formative input regarding district policy or procedure
4. DAB provides a forum for community input on matters pertaining to charters
and other district salutary requirements
5. DAB communicates with site councils about the work of the DAB
6. DAB may serve to share best practices of schools/groups of school that could
be recommended for sharing district-wide
7. DAB input is expected to represent the work of site councils and other school
sites in order to have validity for district work

Dr. Wilson pointed out that the DAB is the only group in PSD which
meets regularly and is able to provide the unique points of view parents and
community members can offer from our variety of different schools.
Examples of input the DAB can help provide to PSD include the new
graduation requirements which are due June 2010, various textbook adoptions,
curriculum, calendar, and grade configuration options.
In cases where the DAB may provide formative input regarding district
policy or procedure, this is getting DAB input at a different stage of the decision
making process. An example of this would be the committees used over the last
couple of years to help determine if we should reconfigure the grades in
elementary and secondary schools (as we just implemented this fall).
Public input is required for Charter school applications, and this is again a
case where DAB members could have input, although more likely in a
representative capacity than as a whole group.
Because DAB is a representative group, representatives are expected to
carry information back to their sites or communities and also to get feedback from
them.

Dr. Wilson recommended looking at the District Ends (DE) policies which
have been developed and adopted by the PSD Board of Education since the
adoption of policy governance. These can be found online at:
http://www.psdschools.org/psdinfo/boardofeducation/policygovernancepolicies.as
px . Dr. Wilson pulled some information from the DE called Executive
Limitation (EL) 2.1 to share with us:
 “The superintendent shall neither cause nor allow organizational circumstances or
actions for students, prospective students, their parents/guardians, and the general
public that are unsafe, untimely, undignified, or unnecessarily intrusive or
restrictive. Among other things the superintendent shall not:
1. Change any material district practice or condition without considering
public input.
...
7. Fail to establish with students and parents/guardians a clear
understanding of what may be expected, when it may be expected, and
what may not be expected from the educational and other products and
services offered.
…
11. Operate without written rules which (a) specify district and school
expectations, standards, and procedures.

If you have a look at the attached document, DAB Deliverables for

2009/2010, you will see the list of deliverables divided into DAB subcommittees.

Proposed DAB Deliverables to the Board – Tom Balchak, Board of Education

Tom reviewed the attached District Advisory Board Role and Charge (Rev
2) document and explained what type of information the BOE would like to
receive from the BOE. The BOE would like to hear from the DAB twice a year
on the items they have requested from us.
The DAB is a wealth of untapped ideas and knowledge. The DAB can help the
BOE to focus on what the BOEs vision is versus reality. This role does ask DAB
members to think about not just what is best for their individual school, but what
is best for all our students.
The BOE would like to be proactive, not reactive. We should be asking
What? and Why? not How? and When? As an example, the cost for the upcoming
BOE election is $125,000 for an all mailed ballot election. So the board has
asked the question, why not reduce cost by holding the school board election with
general elections to help lower these costs.
Maybe the DAB should start with definitions. For instance, how do you
measure levels of proficiency of creativity?
Elaine Holmes of the Student Thinktank brought several students to the
meeting this evening and offered their services as trained student facilitators to
help with these discussions. The Thinktank would definitely like to be involved
and to help.
For learning goals, what does it mean to be post-secondary ready? We
measure this by using ACT scores. PSD currently has a 2.5% dropout rate, we
want to reduce this. We have an 81% graduation rate, we want to increase this.
We can measure attendance in various programs. We would like to measure how
many students exit PSD and go on to post-secondary education.

Calendar for 2010/11 – Mark Ryby, Riffenburgh Principal & John Howe, Preston
Principal
 * The 2009/2010 Calendar (the current year) was the handout for this
presentation.
Many issues impact the design of the school calendar:
• Although many elementary schools are quite warm in August, the impact on
families has made it not feasible to start elementary schools later than secondary
schools.
• Recently the teacher work day on last Friday before the winter holidays was
moved to the Monday before school starts up in January.
• This year with one third of the PSD students transitioning to new schools, a
transition day was added to the school calendar for these students. This extra day
was added for one year only.
• Last year when elementary school principals were unanimously agreed they
would prefer half day segments of collaboration time to full days. Input from
parents and staff was solicited, and the ultimate decision was to leave the time as
full days since half days presented too many problems for families.
• Federal Holidays must be observed.
• Contract Negotiations create teacher work days which must be respected.

A proposed calendar will be developed around mid-October. Principals will be

the primary conduits responsible for disseminating this information to their sites and
collecting feedback about the proposed calendar.
There is a plan for a DAB representative to be invited to the fall calendar
meetings in order to provide a parent and community perspective to the calendar
discussions. The DAB representative is expected to be invited by either Tom Garcia or
the Assistant Superintendents.
The calendar will be brought before the board of education in January for
approval.

PSD 101 Agenda for September – Will Walker, PSD 101 Chair
The DAB’s second annual PSD 101 conference will be held Monday, September
14 from 6:30-9:30pm at O’Dea Elementary School. Nine sessions will be offered
including a District Overview session in Spanish. Every attendee will have the
opportunity to attend three sessions.
Tables will also be available in the registration area featuring Board of Education
candidates and various other PSD related information.
These are the sessions which will be offered:

• District Overview (English and Spanish presentations): find out about the scope of
the District, demographics, decision-making, policy governance, site-based management,
comparison to other districts

• District Initiatives: Learn about boundary changes, facilities use, zonal transportation,
grade configuration.

• Finance: Hear about the current district budget and process, bonds and mill levies.
 • Assessments: School Accountability and Accreditation: Learn about the CSAP
growth model and other assessment tools; changes in state standards and graduation
requirements.

• Course Catalog: See what is taught in each subject at each grade level; materials in use
and how they interrelate (i.e.: Open Court, Everyday Math, Connected Math, and Foss).

• Curricula Choices: Hear about honors courses, advanced placement courses, current
curricula in use (district curriculum, Core Knowledge, International Baccalaureate,
expeditionary learning, etc.).

• Web Training: Learn to navigate the PSD Web site including Pinnacle Internet Viewer,
Blackboard, and CSAP information.

• Response to Intervention (RTI) and Professional Learning Communities (PLC):

Learn how this required framework will be used to help students be successful: essential
learnings, differentiated instruction, acceleration, remediation, gifted and talented, and
ability grouping.

DAB Sub-Committees & Chairs – Terri Sunset, DAB Chair

Based on the deliverables requested by Dr. Wilson and by the Board of Education,
we have proposed three working subcommittees to spend time on responding to these
deliverables this school year. These are the Best Graduate, Academic, and Legislative.
We would like every DAB member to sign up to serve on one of these committees.
These committees will work on their own, then coordinate with Terri to bring their work
back to the entire DAB.
We had the following three members volunteer to set up the first meeting of the
committee they are willing to serve on.
• Best Graduate - Jeffrey McClure
• Academic - Rob Petterson
• Legislative - Ben Stein

We will try to schedule subcommittee meetings when most people are able to
attend.
Some people chose a committee at the meeting. We will send an e-mail shortly
asking everyone to sign up for one of these committees. The new PSD Blogs (see below)
can be an additional way for subcommittees to communicate.

DAB Blog
Terri Sunset and Cathy Kipp met with Ben Johnson from instructional Resources
to get some ideas on how to create a solution to give the DAB and additional way to
communicate, similar to a BLOG. Ben gave us several good ideas. We went with the
idea we felt would be the easiest for everyone to use. All you need to do to post to the
Blog is send an e-mail to post@dab.posterous.com. If you put an attachment in your e-
mail, the attachment is viewable and downloadable within the displayed Blog message.
It is actually pretty cool, although very basic.
 The Blog will accept posts from anyone who has been entered into the e-mail list.
Cathy will get everyone on the DAB e-mail list entered, hopefully within the next week,
and you will be sent an e-mail notification that you have been added.
Anyone can view the Blog at dab.posterous.com.
Additional Blogs can be created for DAB subcommittees. This can be useful
especially for those who might have difficulty attending additional meetings.

DAB Agenda for October – Terri Sunset, DAB Chair

• DAB Subcommittees Q&A
• Facility Utilization Process
• Mill & Bond Level

Because we have such a full schedule, instead of inviting Board of Education

candidates to the October meeting, we thought it would be better to let everyone know
when and where the Board of Education candidate forum(s) would take place and when
they would be televised. This will give everyone an opportunity to participate in the
board election process, but allow us to wisely use our meeting time.