Minutes of Climate and Safety Committee Meeting/December 16, 1999/2:45 to 3:30 PM

Persons present: (No sign in sheet circulated)
Sheila Tasman- parent-(Chair in absense of Beccie Tardy)
Janet O'Koon-parent
Stephanie Wolf-student
Bebe Brechner-parent
Trude Scharff-parent
Barbara Martin-parent
David Hoeh- parent
Ellen Prizant-parent/SBDM member
Amy Herman-Teacher
Fred Harbison-Principal
Maritza Cassidy-Counselor
Cassandra Minor-Teacher
Sara Martin - student
Melissa Ferry - student
Barbara Neff - teacher
Beverly Moore - School Board Representative

1. No minutes of previous meeting available. Ms. Tasman will contact Eli Levine and post those minutes on the e-mail group web site and bring them to the next meeting for approval.

2. Discussion of future meeting dates for committee. Agreed on January 13th at 7PM for next committee meeting. Tentative agreement for January 27th at 2:45PM. Proposal to meet every 2nd and 4th Thursday of each month at the alternate times of 7PM and 2:45PM could not be agreed upon. One opinion was that it would be beneficial for resolving issues of importance and that once a month was too long in-between for progress to occur. The other opinion was that two times per month may not be needed. Some persons were of the opinion that meeting two times a month had been agreed upon at previous meeting of committee and some persons did not remember that discussion. Suggestion was to refer to previous minutes for direction on that issue. The Jan. 27, 2000 meeting will be decided upon at the Jan. 13th meeting. Ms. Tasman will get the next meeting date put on the school calendar and in the newsletter.

3. Dress Code Discussion centered around intentional and unintentional violations by students and enforcement of dress code which is not done consistently by teachers from what was reported by various parents and teachers. One reason given by teachers for consequences of referral to office for unintentional violation by student was to keep paperwork statistics even though that could be easily corrected and not cause the student to lose class time. Question was raised of "what are we teaching these students?" by referring them to office for simple things that could be easily fixed and that take them away from "learning." One answer given by a teacher was that they were teaching immediate consequences for actions by referring all students with violations easily correctable or not to the office where they could be logged into the computer system to keep track of the number of violations per students.

Another teacher stated that the time a student spent in the office was very, very short and that being asked to leave class to get logged into the computer for the violation was of no consequence to the student or his/her learning. Issue of disruption to the learning environment when student leaves and enters after class begins was also raised by a parent. Issue of selective and inconsistent enforcement of dress code by teachers was raised as something that needs to be addressed by the administration. A request for statistics of referrals for dress code violations by type and for how many students have left the school over this issue was made. Administration said that would be made available.

Also requested was a list of how many referrals by teacher since the Fall have been made for dress code violations. One parent expressed concern over the confusion of the dress code and stated that if adults have a hard time understanding how it is enforced how could we expect children to understand.

Concern was expressed over in school suspensions for dress code violations and what goes on for students who are in there. Suggestion was to look at another way to deal with dress code violations that were not intentional. It was stated that this is how other schools handle the same "problems" and that Atherton staff had researched this and tried to make a simple system of accountablility.

It was expressed by a parent that taking students out of the classroom because of dress code violations isn't keeping the education of the students as a number one priority. The parent suggested looking at an alternative to suspending students over dress code violations. A teacher informed us that this was up to the SBDM Council and not the climate and safety task force. It was then suggested that since this didn't fall under climate and safety then maybe dress code didn't either.

We were unable to get to any other important business because of the issues surrounding the uniform dress code.

4. Before meeting was adjourned several articles were passed out and will be followed up with at our next meeting. These included: 1) Is your school a welcoming school?; 2) A Native American Approach to Diversity; and 3)Diversity matters...building skills that build community.

Next Meeting: January 13, 2000 at 7PM.

Meeting adjourned at 3:30PM

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