LSRT Minutes—February 5
Attending: Mkim, DNeal, MDacoba, Jalbright, Chumes , PSweeney; mostoller; jmeroney; dtorresen; rwattenberg; jkatz; kmcadoo

Principal’s report— >
Budget: After some more back-and forth-ing with DCPS, our final budget is pretty close to what Dr. Kim predicted at the last meeting. DCPS also granted Deal’s petition to convert its “two coach” positions and its social worker position (these are on-site teacher trainers) for additional classroom teacher positions and trade in funds designated by DCPS for special education aides for a special education teacher. The end result is that Deal will not lose any instructional staff; will lose non-instructional staff; and will be able to hire long-hoped for specialists in math education and technology plus a an additional Spanish teacher. The math specialist will work with students who are struggling to keep up in math. (Deal already employs an analogous specialist in reading). The technology specialist will help teachers make the best possible educational use of their technology and will keep the technology in good working use.

IB—We expect to get a notice very soon from the International Baccalaureate authorities notifying us that Deal has been accepted as an official IB school.

Auditorium—The auditorium is virtually complete. Suggestion is made to have a community-wide event to celebrate the opening of the auditorium and the official acceptance of Deal as an IB school.

Modernization- It is coming to an end. The “infill” classrooms have been opened up. The contractor is working through the punch list. A continuing problem is the inadequate functioning of the heating/cooling sensors. As a result, the classrooms get too hot. This is being fixed. But the field is still a problem. In order to complete the field in the manner that we hope, the National Park Service and DCPS need to make a land transfer. This has still not been done, threatening the plan for the field. Del Norton and Mary Cheh have been working on this already.

Whole Foods/Chartwells Healthy Food Initiative—Each Wednesday, Whole foods and Chartwells (the DCPS contractor that handles Deal’s lunch program) will be providing students with healthy foods, free of charge to students. Proposal to invite Fenty’s office to come over for one of the lunches. Jkatz will follow up with Fenty’s office.>LSRT Report

Neighborhood meetings.—The LSRT sponsored two neighborhood meetings, one in Ward 7/8 area, and one in Brookland. Emails announcing the meetings went to all Deal parents, LSRT members called each family in non-feeder school neighborhoods, plus a concerted effort was made on the part of the host family (Brescia- Weiler) to make sure area parents knew about the second meeting. Virtually all of the parents who attended both meetings were parents who have attended other Deal event. Having said that, this group of parents were happy with their Deal experience, and while the commute required more from them and their kids, they generally said that the experience was worthwhile, and that the requirements weren’t more than they had expected. The one area that came up as a problem was the difficulty of involving their kids in after-school activities and facilitating their children’s getting together with friends for social occasions or school assignments. The parents who attended seemed very happy to have a chance to meet other families from their neighborhoods.

A few suggestions for any future efforts in this area:

1. Parents appreciate the opportunity to get together and meet each other. The planned socials being put together by the team parents will be very helpful in furthering this goal.

2. Perhaps next year a set of outreach meetings in different neighborhoods could be planned and scheduled at the beginning of the year and spaced across the year.

3. The afterschool program might be able to play a role in aiding out-of-bounds students to socialize and do school work with their friends after school hours. Next year, when it is running at a larger scale, maybe the after school program could be a place where out-of-bounds students have planned opportunities to meet with friends to work on academic projects and have social time in a supervised setting.

4. The principal of Eaton holds regular breakfasts for parents. Perhaps the Deal principal could consider such events? But, we also want to be cognizant of how much time our principal already spends at pre- and after-school events. Much of the usefulness of the get-togethers is the parents getting together, we don’t always need to have administration present.

5. There are things that can be done to reach out to out-of- bounds parents before they even get to Deal, perhaps setting a standard for the future. It was decided that we should build a list of incoming parents who aren’t part of the regular feeder system and make a special outreach to them in the spring via phone calls. With only one new grade entering Deal this year, that should be very manageable.

6. At the back to school orientation, we should organize “neighborhood desks, where parents could easily find out what other parents/students are in their neighborhoods. This could include handing out “neighborhood packets.”

7. Suggestion made to comp some auction tickets to make sure that no parents are unable to come for financial reasons. Ms. Kim will note the availability of these comps in her weekly note.

Adjourned.