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Cecilia Andrade

EDU 210 - 2001

February 7, 2017

Artifact 1

The board meetings that were watched in our team were from January 14th, April 12th,

May 26th, and November 10th all from 2016. There were plenty of issues and concerns

throughout the meetings, but one of the main topics was sexual education; both April 12th and

May 26th dealt with the subject. As the year went on to its end, the November 10th meeting had

numerous key topics which were about the trial and error of new systems, the assessment of

various zones, and what was to come for the approaching school year of 2017-2018.

The similarities between the board meetings watched in our group was the length in of

each meeting. All of the meetings watched in our group were over two hours long. Another

similarity of these meetings were the beginning of them, all of the meetings began with salutes to

the flag. In addition, all meetings had a public comment period where parents, teachers, students,

and community members shared their concerns and ideas with the Board of Trustees.

On the other hand, there were plenty of differences between board meetings. One of the

difference in meeting was the student reports. Only two out of the four meetings shared student

reports. Student reports are when students from the valley share their story and their

accomplishments. Another difference between meetings would be the attendance between the

Board of Trustees. In one out of the four meetings, there were three of the Trustees members

absent. This was strange to our group because it's unusual to have 43% of the Board of Trustees

be absent for such events.

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Starting off the year was the board meeting on January 14th. The issues that were

examined in this meeting had to do with students’ graduation and bullying. For graduation,

diplomas should not be mailed. Students work hard to graduate and they deserve to get their

diplomas in their hands the day of graduation. When it came to bullying they looked into more

anti-bullying support and Hailey’s Law. Another matter of discussion was about not having the

bullying website link and hotline number on the school district’s and school’s website to make it

easier for parents and students to seek help.

Sex education is a controversial topic when it comes to the development and direction of

the course. That is why there were two board meetings that focused on the topic. On April 12th

the issue was about the teens. Many believe that this age is too young to take a sex education

course. Sex oriented bathrooms was also one of the many issues talked about in the April

meeting. While the April meeting was about the problems that sex education provoked or

prevented, the meeting on May 26th was focused on what was needed to improve sex education.

The most important asset in the meeting was the need for up to date information and the need for

supplemental sexual education materials for grades 5th-12th. Those include fact sheets for

sexually transmitted diseases and infections, pregnancy and fetal development, and about

contraceptives and how to obtain them for grades 8th-12th. The planning and lesson plans for

health instructs regarding rape, setting personal limits and standards, legal age of consent, and

sexual violence prevention for grade 8th-12th was also discussed. With all the need that was

discussed in the meetings, there were still oppositions; arguing that it should not be mandatory,

that it is inappropriate, or that it should only be taught at home with the supplemental materials.

Planning for future is very important, which made one of the meetings near the end of the

year mostly about what will happen in the next school years. In the November 10th meeting, a
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new organization called FACES was presented. This online based organization gives parents

information on how they can get involved with their child’s school, such as creating PTA’s or

becoming school ambassadors. In the meeting they stated that they will also be looking at the

performing zones and see if they are effective. Budgeting was one of the topics that they looked

into quite often in this meeting. Strategic budget workbooks were sent out on January and they

will begin working on the workbook for the 2018-2019 school year. During the month of

February they want to begin lobbying the new legislative session for accelerating the waded

funding formula. This formula is meant to be implemented in order to stop taking money from

students in the system from one group to accelerate another. The new calendar for the 2018-2019

school year was also chosen in this meeting. The last main point of the meeting was about how

they were going to communicate information faster to the community who cannot go on a

computer or phone and look at the information.

The board meetings were very informative, but here are some suggestions as to what can

be done in order to make them more beneficial for students and teachers. First thing would be the

attendance, if there was more promotion for the meetings there would be a larger audience that

could take part and gain the information given. With a wider audience there comes more

opinions, both teacher and student opinions which would help with decision making. After all the

most affected are the students and teachers. The second suggestion that can be beneficial is for

the trustees to make things more comprehensible or to give examples of plans, materials, or

ideas.