Lexington (MA) High School Senate

LEXINGTON HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT-FACULTY SENATE

2005-2006

Moderator Peter Lubershane, Assistant Moderator Sam Kafrissen, Secretary Peter Kim

TODAY'S DATE: 1-18-06

Today's Agenda: Announcements

Open Comments

Committee Reports

Median Grade Reporting Bill

New Business

Minutes from Meeting: 1-11-06

I. Call to Order: Meeting is called to order at 7:55 by Moderator Lubershane

II. Approval of Minutes: 1) The Lexpress comment should say Try-Lexpress not Child Lexpress.

2) Senator Colarusso's counselor is not actually heading into space, but is overseeing the launch into space.

III. Approval of Agenda: 1) Motion to move Median Reporting Bill above New Business passes.

IV. Announcements: No announcements.

V. Open Comments: 1) Moderator Kafrissen tells an amusing anecdote about a kid who was dropped a "foot" from the door by the parents.

2) Senator Eid-Reiner asks for a clarification of the Voting Records bill.

VI. Committee Reports: 1) Elections committee met to hear the appeal of Senator Kalsow-Ramos. Thank you Senator Jeon, Shuster and Sewell for being there. The appeal was granted. The many appeals brings up the issue about usage of X-blocks. X-block should not be the only time teachers or coaches can meet with students.

2) Oversight met and enforced the Honor Code Bill. The process went well. Dean Cole said each house secretary should keep all the forms.

3) Communications will meet in Room 633 on 2:30.

4) Executive committee met last week and compiled stuff about substitutes for Dr. Jones.

5) Policy met and discussed the Median Grade Reporting Bill.

VII. Median Grade (In discussion of the amendment proposed to replace "school year" with "quarter")

1) Amendment is a bad idea. Also, if we do want to do this, there are other changes that must be made throughout the bill.

2) Publishing at the end of the school year is sufficient to give the prospective seniors a chance to see if the course is a match for them.

3) This quarter reporting may be helpful to colleges. Also, there is a 1st quarter panic, especially with seniors, and they do a lot of schedule changes. The quarter reporting would alleviate some of that.

4) Keep in mind the weighted GPA debate. When parents find out that something will go on the transcript, there may be an incredible firestorm.

5) We should deal with paragraph 2 or 3 to support the quarter reporting.

6) End of the year reporting may be too late for students to decide if they are in the right course.

7) Amendment proposed to the amendment to change "quarter" back to "school year" and add a sentence after the first sentence that reads "Teachers will make available to students the median grade of each section the end of each quarter."

a. This could work. All the teachers of one class would do it for that class.

b. Is it better to do it by block or section.

c. In each section, you may have two different teachers and a lot of classes.

d. This was one of the reasons why section median reporting was eliminated. It pits teachers against teachers.

e. A compromise solution would distribute the median grade at the end of each quarter for each teacher. But the end of the year median grade will be a median of all the course grades.

f. Is this amendment out of order? It may warrant a separate discussion.

g. There was a confusion about the distinction between this amendment and the amendment before that.

h. If it is in the discretion of the teachers, it doesn't have to be worded in this bill.

i. This debate should be separate because it is a separate issue.

j. (There is a lot of confusion and lot of comments out of order towards the end of the meeting that the secretary could not keep up with).

List of Senators Absent from Senate meeting: *Denotes excused/notified absence.

Collins Ghazarian BSewell* Weiser* Douglass Earle Shuster*

Shen* DSewell Bogart David* Stein Richardson Sher

Tall Zagaeski*