Davenport Ridge Elementary School Governance Council Meeting
MINUTES OF MEETING: January 9, 2013
Davenport Ridge Library Media Center: 6:30 – 8:00PM
ATTENDANCE:
Council: Amy Beldotti (non-voting), Pina Dudics, Gail Flaster, Farrah Forbes, Kathy Gentle, Kim Kempton,
Elisa Licata, Kevin McKeever, Crystal Mayo, Juan Medrano, Michael Pisseri (non-voting), Raji
Sundararajan, Ashley Tiscia, Lynne Weinberg, Jeffrey Wirz, Claudia Wolen
The meeting was called to order at 6:37 pm by Mr. Pisseri.
Mr. Pisseri acted as Facilitator. Mrs. Gentle acted as Recorder.
MEETING EVENTS:
Communication Survey:
Mrs. Beldotti reviewed the data collected from the survey filled out at the parent teacher conferences.
96% attendance for conferences! Data collection from questionnaire at conference:
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554 population/371 completed surveys
If you click on the responses on the spreadsheet, it will “populate” the list: give you the list
of actual people responding. (helpful when looking at question 5, who wants to be
contacted)
Not a whole lot of comments from survey takers.
We asked if families were willing to be contacted; now we have to do that. Need next steps:
o How do we improve means of communication? Email and Phone calls are the most
commonly chosen responses. Teachers will respond to a parent the same way a
parent communicates with the teacher.
o Creating a script is important for the SGC members who will be calling the families.
o Create a master list of contact info, using information from what the teachers
collect AND from what the PTO solicits.
o General information should go out one way (backpack fliers), and then more
important information going out in multiple ways.
o Create one way for the Davenport fliers to be identified, like having a Gator stamp in
the corner. This can help an ELL parent to know which fliers to pay attention to.
How will these phone conversations go? Will there be a script? What information are we looking for?
We can’t be a go-between for a problem between teacher and student. Any issues like that
need to be directed to Mr. Pisseri.
Davenport SGC
Meeting minutes of Jan. 9, 2013
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The two points that we are looking for more information are communication and involvement:
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Are we holding our meetings in the right place to reach our community? This can lead to
questions like: What community center do you attend/use?
ACTION ITEM: think of a tough question that you think you might be asked.
Maybe ask the first question just to identify whether it’s communication or involvement
that they want to discuss, then have two scripts available for what they want to discuss.
Needs to be scripted: “I am calling from the SGC at Davenport, you stated that you would
like to be contacted about the survey you took at the parent teacher conferences in
December. Would you still like to talk?” (Important to have something consistent and
positive to use to lead the discussion.)
ACTION ITEM: Mr. Pisseri offered to draft the script and send it out to the group.
PTO Email Blasts:
Kim Kempton presented information on the PTO eblasts. It has the capability to create subgroups for
grade level, classroom, volunteers, Spanish language, etc.
Goal for Sept 2013: establish ability to distribute to a targeted group, improve ease of use by multiple
users, add functionality
Start from scratch creating the master list, and then be able to create subgroups
Investigate single opt-in option: Have the parents fill out contact information ONCE, to put into
a single master data base.
Mr. Pisseri will look into whether there are confidentiality issues with this type of contact info
collection.
Multicultural Event April 26th:
Claudia Wolen presented. Faculty is really behind this event. The groups are broken up into the
continents (each grade received a continent). Faculty is taking care of the academic parts of the event,
the PTO is covering the food and entertainment. Each grade will be creating a map of the continent
assigned to them. Each classroom may select one other topic to study that is related to the continent.
That might include a folktale, currency, language, game, landmark, famous person, etc. They will be
sending a “passport” home with the kids that they will bring in for the event, so they will get stamped at
each continent. We’re meeting the goal of bringing people in and sharing our similarities and
differences!
Davenport SGC
Meeting minutes of Jan. 9, 2013
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Kim spoke about the PTO piece:
PTO spring fundraiser is a multicultural cook book.
The night of the event, parents will be invited to set up a heritage display set up in the continent of their
heritage. People will be able to move from one display to another. There will also be culturally based
performances (Irish dancing, African Drum group)
Who will be sending the evite email? Teachers, PTO, or admin.
Mr. Pisseri adjourned the meeting at 8:07.
Next meeting is in March.
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Davenport SGC
Meeting minutes of Jan. 9, 2013
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