Minutes from
the AGTS Board of Directors Meeting
August 13,
2007
In attendance: Michael Kearney, Anita Haywood, Donald Jennings, Richard Truman, Carlos Sam, Sherry Scardina, Sherry Brock, Julie Sheffield, Jennifer St. Cyr, and Jennifer’s mother (Jennifer please provide name)
Not in attendance: Lannette Cohen, Gideon Carter III
Introductions
A warm welcome was
extended to Sherry Scardina, who is the new Supervisor at the Office of Gifted
and Talented Programs. Sherry
began teaching gifted in 1990 at Buchanan, then was the gifted coordinator at
Buchanan, and recently returned to
Abbreviated Treasurers Report (Michael Kearney for
Gideon Carter)
▲ Account balance ~$10,000+
Membership/Website (Dick Truman)
▲ Currently we have 642 email-registered members / families.
▲ The website needs content, please send to Dick via email; this task needs to migrate to our V.P. for Public Relations (see also below).
Programs (Anita Haywood)
▲ Fall general meeting will be October 23rd. It was requested that the G/T office prepare a presentation for the meeting regarding G/T program status and stats, especially with regard to the new sites and new students in the program. We also need for the budget to be reviewed/approved at the fall general meeting.
▲ Spring Showcase will be April 22nd
▲ The bylaws include a special elections meeting in August. It was agreed to forgo that meeting this year because most officers are into the 2nd year of their 2-year terms.
Magnet/GT Merger and General GT Update (Carlos Sam and
Sherry Scardina)
▲ Magnet Mania will be renamed “EBR Mania” and will be held Oct. 27th at Cortana Mall. Ads will be run in La Vie magazine and other publications.
▲ The special summer screening generated ~700 phone calls and ~300 screenings were conducted.
▲ Carlos indicted overall enrollment was up, although it may be down at some sites. Sherry S. is working on finalizing the numbers before disseminating.
▲ The magnet website and newsletter will be modified to reflect the merger
▲ Only one teaching vacancy remains (5th grade at Brookstown); Bertha Hinojosa will come out of retirement to teach 1st grade at Buchanan.
▲ Lee Dixon has committed to Oct. 1 evaluation deadline for screening completed by September 7th.
Public Relations (Don Jennings)
▲ BRAGTS still needs our own logo. We will have a contest for middle and high school talented art students. Carlos will ask Jo Garner to publicize the contest to the talented art students. Submittals due October 1st. Winner to be selected at October 8th board meeting and announced at Fall General Meeting. The board voted to approve a $150 prize to winner (individual or group).
▲ The board voted to buy more pencils; ~1 per enrolled student (thought to be about 16 gross).
▲ We need to publish an online newsletter and Michael asked everyone to commit to sending one item to Don for this newsletter.
▲ We asked Sherry S. to hand out our brochure to new parents at IEPs. We need more copies printed. Don worked with Amy McLin previously to have the school system produce the brochures, Amy paid the bill, and BRAGTS reimbursed Amy. Sherry S. and Don will work together to repeat this process, although there has been a personnel change with the school system employee who did the production work.
New Board Members
▲ Jennifer St. Cyr and Sherry Scardina were added as members-at-large.
▲ Earlier this year, the state DOE put conditions on the waiver regarding how Scholastic Academy (SA) is implemented. EBRPSS appealed to BESE and BESE denied the appeal. End result is that EBRPSS must now enforce a 2-year limit on SA students that do not pass the gifted test. There is verbal agreement from a retiring state employee that current SA students will be grandfathered in. Also, effective July 1, EBRPSS can only accept in-district SA students into preK-6th grade. The older grades can accept SA students from private/parochial schools or from outside EBRPSS.
▲ Sherry Brock stated that most of her 6th graders that start out in SA pass the gifted test within 2 years (about 40% per year do not). However, there is anecdotal evidence that many students remain SA for several years.
▲ EBRPSS may propose a new program (e.g. “Scholars Program”) to provide services to high-performing non-gifted students. Such a program could possibly be offered at gifted sites and, per Anita’s suggestion, could possibly also be open (on a per course basis) to identified gifted students who deny services (on the IEP) in that particular subject area and, under those conditions, could be taught by a gifted teacher.
General Concerns
▲ Michael suggested that the board and BRAGTS educate the parents about the IEP process and the broader purposes it can serve
▲ We continue to have grave concerns about students leaving gifted for magnet programs if the student’s needs would be better met in the gifted program. Carlos committed to continue to prohibit negative recruiting tactics by magnet employees. Many board members strongly feel that the playing field needs to be leveled by having dedicated gifted sites and we would like to see the Office of Special Programs lobby for that change.
▲ There is a new concern that the new resource sites (if they remain resource) will have a long-term negative effect on the program because those students will not be maximizing their potential and we will see the effect in future high school test scores. It is understandable that many parents will choose resource gifted closer to home at a more attractive site and BRAGTS is generally supportive of expanding gifted into geographic areas that have been historically under-served. However, this also pulls students out of current self-contained programs and we don’t want to see those programs suffer. Making the current self-contained programs more attractive (e.g., dedicated sites) would help retain/attract students.