Arts Academy Revitalization Action Team

Arts Academy Meeting Notes, April 9, 2008

April 9, 2008 at 2:39 pm | In Minutes |

Summary:
Next meeting: Wednesday, April 16 in Room 320 (Web Programming)

Please see the PATHSFEST Planning page for updates (or read the full notes). We made lots of decisions about which students to invite and talked about publicity letters, post cards, and posters.

We also heard a brief update about Vicky and Phil’s meeting with Michael Hale about possible collaboration opportunities between PATHS and Casco Bay High School.

Present:

• Vicky Stubbs
• Phil Divinsky
• Val Green
• Diane Manzi
• Jane Krasnow
• Dave Nichols
• Dave Beane

Jill has had 1000 post cards printed for PATHSFEST.

We need to decide what we should do with middle school students. Are they coming? What about the 8th grade exploratory students? If Portland and Deering aren’t sending 9th graders, maybe we should be inviting Portland and Deering’s 9th graders instead.

It’s easy to invite 8th graders, with teachers, to PATHSFEST, is easy for us to say “yes” to. What about parents? How can we get parents here? Encourage them to be chaperones? Could we e-mail parents of 8th graders (e-mails in PowerSchool?) And then give some paper invites to the middle schools for people they know without e-mail. We could also give out an invitation for parents, and give it to 8th graders to bring home.

separate discussion: letters to students/parents of students who have visited PATHS this year. The administration agreed that they could send this. Where is the money coming from?

For this project, it’s more likely that we could access money from our student activities accounts instead of our budgets, which are semi-frozen at this point.

Summary of PATHSFEST:

inviting 8th grade teachers and students from:
Lyman Moore
Lincoln
King

Inviting: 8th grade parents from those schools

Inviting: prior visitors

Need: coordinate the prior visitors. Who is in charge of a visitor who visited 3 programs? Letter to visitor could be a permission slip that could be signed by a parent and the principal of the sending school.

parent signature
student signature
administrator signature

Valerie will craft a letter to visitors and their parents, that includes a place for teachers to write a note and includes a permission slip.

Also: modify it slightly to be a post card for 8th graders’ parents.

We need to find a responsible student from each school to take a stack of post cards (100) to their sending school offices

Note: this idea has been nixed (see below)

Dave Beane: Windham, Bonny Eagle, Kennebunk, Casco Bay
Val: Deering, Gray, Greely
Dave N: Gorham, Yarmouth, Baxter
Diane: Scarborough, Falmouth, Portland
Jane: South Portland, Cape Elizabeth
Phil: South Portland, Westbrook

If we’re inviting students from sending schools, what if we get a ton of students and what about supervision and permission slips? Yikes!

Maybe instead we should just send letters to prior visitors and then send the post cards somewhere else. Where? Along with a letter, we should send a post card.

Also, we should invite our advisory committees.

Could John M. personally invite the guidance counselors and administrators?

Summary of things to do for PATHSFEST:
(copied to the “TO DO” tab at the top of the blog)
call middle schools and invite 8th grade teachers/students (John M.)
if possible, e-mail 8th grade parents with an invitation. (Phil will ask about this)
make a written invitation to PATHSFEST for 8th graders to bring home to parents. (Val)
send letter/permission slip to prior visitors, along with a PATHSFEST post card (Val will make a letter)
ask John to call sending schools to notify them that more students than usual may be on to buses 5/22.
ask John to personally invite guidance and administration from sending schools.
encourage to invite advisory committees to PATHSFEST.

attach post cards to poster, maybe? Make them pads and stick to the posters. (Val will work on this)

Update on collaboration with CBHS (meeting with Michael Hale)

lots of similarities with cross-curricular stuff between CBHS and PATHS
Bruce Tracy (sp?) will be working with 19 CBHS students next week in Lisa’s space . Some of Vicky’s students will be participating, and CBHS students will have the option of recording down in Vicky’s class. Vicky’s students who are participating in the intensive need to be excused for a whole week from their sending schools. Performance will be held in Room 250 on Friday.

Counting CBHS kids towards our enrollment will make it more enticing for PATHS teachers to want to participate.

CBHS was interested to hear our ideas about us becoming a comprehensive high school.

When CBHS was figuring out standards for intensives, they had an English teacher right there to help. It made the whole process very smooth.

Next week we’ll hear about Phil and Vicky’s trip to the creativity conference at the Samoset.

Note: let’s revisit the idea of having teacher photos and prominent signage for CBHS and PATHS right inside the main doors.