Digital High School Grant Committee Meeting Minutes
Friday, February 6 1998

The meeting began at 6:15 in F4

Present:    Joyce Daubert, Nancy Gray, Mike Maguire-Carroll, Jeff Wenger, Nori Hepler, Steve Eisler, Bea Rodriguez, Karen Lafferty, Pat Miller, Jason Anderson, Li Chen, Chris Morris, Pat Walsh, Carey Meier,  John Earnest,  Rosemary Anderson,  Mathias Cohen,  Harold Dorr,  Tim Sager, Kushal Dave, Al Weiner, Douglas Nicoll

• Pat Walsh started the meeting by telling the committee that we must increase the number of visitations to other schools.  All attendees to stakeholder meetings need to prepare a typed summary for the committee to see.
• Nancy Gray shared the responses from the certificated staff meeting.  Two big themes were:  (1)  the resource rooms should be upgraded   (2)  the certificated staff would like on-going, self paced training implemented.
• Pat Walsh shared the responses from the Rotary Club meeting.
• Nori Hepler shared the responses from the meeting with Department Chairs.
• Pat W. and Steve E. shared the responses from the district meeting with Bob Reeves and Charlie Garten.  Three major themes were:   (1)  Bob R. wants our students to be connected to "something" (as our schools get bigger - students need this).    (2)  We need to "catch up" our teachers; train them to use technology in the classroom at the (at least minimum) level of computer skills our students will be coming to us with.    (3)  Design a screening test for students to assess what they've actually mastered in terms of basic computer skills.    Steve said Bob R. will be sending us two video tapes produced by futurists; we should view them in the committee and perhaps set up multiple viewings for any other interested staff to attend.  Steve suggested using E-mail to keep people at the district office better informed.   Steve also said that we need to visit schools that are actually implementing technology throughout their school, not just using it in isolated curriculum areas.
• Pat W. said we need to "dream big" and go for applications at the cutting edge of technology (even if we exceed the grant money doing this).  Pat said we don't know what "far-out" looks like; visitations will help us know what we can reach for.
• Steve discussed video teleconferencing; cameras in the classroom (and posed the question of how this would improve student learning).  He also discussed the idea of a student exit portfolio on a CD - this would be a tangible product of student learning from grades 9 - 12.  Steve suggested we develop a long term plan; set future goals for the year 2002.  The plan would be broken down into reachable goals for each year which would allow us to include training in the basics and "catching up" teachers.  Ultimately we would lead up to "cutting edge" goals.
• Pat W. said Pac-Bell is donating 3 ISDN lines to MCHS for 1 year free of charge.  At the end of the year, we either buy them or Pac Bell will remove them.  Pac Bell is talking about adopting our school.  Pat told the committee about a video teleconferencing meeting downtown (sponsered by Pac Bell) today from 2-4PM and arranged for volunteer committee members to attend.  Pat also talked about using video technology to "show case" great lessons (daily basis?) and/.or student work;  the lesson or product would be published on the MCHS web page for public viewing.
• The committee broke into subgroups to organize stakeholder meetings and visitations.  The subgroups reported back to the whole committee at 8 AM until the end of the meeting.  Pat discussed the feasibility of asking teachers to call one parent to personally invite them to the parent meetings.  Joyce gave several suggestions to supplement this idea (to increase parent attendance at the meeting).  Pat asked all the subgroups to give him a schedule and a copy of their questions; and reiterated the request for a typed summary of each meeting. 
• We will report back on our progress next Friday.