PS 87 PA Board Meeting Minutes, June 2022

6/13/2022 3:11 pm

PS 87 SLT Meeting Minutes  - June 13, 2022 

 

Present

 

Monica Berry, Principal

Jill Rackmill, SLT Chair

Diane Berman, Teacher

Lauri Posner - UFT Rep

Kristin Meister, SLT Parent Rep

Justin Schwarz, SLT Parent Rep

Meredith Thompson, PA President Elect

Rita Kakati-Shah, PA President

Jennifer Stark, Parent Coordinator

Andrei Clark, Teacher

Cindy Lachow, Teacher

Pam Unger, PA President Elect

Shoshana Jaffes, Parent 

Beatrice Yang, Parent

Stacey Cousino, Parent

 

The meeting was called to order at 4:20pm and the May SLT minutes were approved.

 

PA Report

 

Rita led off explaining that PS 87 did a great job coming together this year and listed some accomplishments. The Afterschool program hit the ground running and was a success. The year started off with the Fall Festival, which was the first in-person event since the pandemic. The Spring Fair had a great turn out. The Auction raised 130k and counting. The Last PA meeting will be Wednesday and the community will vote on updated bylaws. A new Board will be put in place over the summer. It was a great year of rebuilding the PA. 

 

DEI Task Force review. The DEI did a survey, looked at issues of communication, empathy, and in-person events. They worked on adding different languages to PS 87 communications.  The group hopes to get more staff on board next year and they’d like to send out another community survey.

 

Principals Report

 

Principals received school budgets and across the board they were cut by at least 25%. There is a Budget meeting Thursday afternoon and Monica hopes to get more clarity on the situation. Currently there is a projected 1.9M deficit, but Monica assured the group she is not too worried yet. She cautioned class sizes will most likely go up. Monica hopes more funds will come in later the summer and she will appeal the cuts where she can. Some of the federal money had stipulations on how it could be spent and many of those expenditures are multi-year – like the five-year social worker position. There is room for six Kindergarten classes, which should increase enrollment numbers and Fair Student Funding.  

 

Discussion turned to how the DOE makes budgetary considerations and a question was raised about how families can help support advocacy for more school funding. 

 

There was discussion about class size increasing and how that affects social emotional learning, especially coming out of the pandemic. Monica mentioned that one of the reasons we’ve had smaller class sizes is that the PA funded two cluster positions. 

 

A question was asked about middle school admissions. Monica reported acceptances were similar to the past -- the vast majority of families were pleased, while some were left frustrated. The majority of students got one of their first three choices. Monica mentioned they may reintroduce screenings again next year.

 

New Business

 

The group discussed PS 87’s Comprehensive Education Plan and the iPlan Portal. 

 

A question was asked about what smart data metrics the school could track. 

 

The Student Council created a survey for the students but it hasn’t been presented this year. They looked at the green surveys sixth graders take to gauge Social Emotional Learning and some diversity questions. They hope to survey the third through fifth grade soon. Some issues touched on in the survey included - do you feel safe at recess? A question was raised about Recess Monitors and how the school used to have 5th grade conflict mediators. Will that program be reintroduced? 

 

Following up on Social Emotional Learning, a question was raised about Ruler training and the roll out to the school. A follow up question was asked about the OORS numbers – Monica reported they have not been increasing significantly. There was a discussion about students taking responsibility for their actions and how teachers mediate conflict in the classroom. 

 

Discussion turned to other CEP requirements and what metrics the school uses so we can create smart goals. The attendance team tracks Chronic Absenteeism. What are the IEP compliance numbers? In ELA, the school uses Fountas and Pinnell to track student progress. In Math, the school uses Performance Tasks to gauge student proficiency. Other metrics discussed included MAP screeners, Acadience in K-2, and iReady.

 

Discussion turned to how the CEP works -- the focus on priority need, data trends, and root causes for each goal. 

 

The meeting closed before the SLT was able to create any new smart goals for this year’s CEP. The group decided that Monica would submit goals that aligned with last year’s CEP and next year’s SLT will take up revising the CEP in September.