UAI High School Newsletter for November 2014

UAI High School Parent Newsletter

Volume 2

Issue 3

November 2014

Announcements

Kiana, me, and Brittney
dress up for Halloween

Principal's Address.

In Halloweens of years past, our attendance has been traditionally very low.  This year, UAIHS celebrated the highest attendance rate on a Halloween in the history of the school!  This is strong indication that we are making large strides in reaching our attendance goals this year.  Together, we can make this goal a reality!  By getting closer to meeting our our attendance goal, we are also well on our way to achieving the rest of our academic and family engagement goals.  To learn more, visit HERE.

Olivia Hyman, Class of 2014

Celebrating our Alumni.  It's always a wonderful surprise when our UAI alumni come to visit.   Recently, Olivia who is currently enrolled at Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology stopped by to visit teachers and staff.  During her visit, she shared the opportunities and experiences she's been having since graduating.  As one of only 2 females in her aeronautics program, she says she's having no problems "showing the boys what's what"!  In addition, Olivia has been selected for a highly competitive paid internship at NASA this upcoming summer.   Olivia is thrilled to be a strong, young woman of color thriving aeronautics and technology!  Congratulations Olivia, and we are so proud to highlight you as an exemplar alumni of UAI!

05Nov & 07 Nov were SLCs

SLCs were another wonderful success!  Over 120 family members joined our students as they discussed their learning thus far for the year.  Students walked family members through their work to date and helped them understand their strengths and weaknesses.  During these meetings, students set learning goals that they plan to achieve throughout the course of the term and year.  Parents expressed overwhelming satisfaction.  Not everyone got a chance to share their opinion, so please do let us know by clicking HERE if you haven't had an opportunity to do so already.

November Benchmarks are Tuesday, 24NOV14 and Wednesday, 25NOV14

November Benchmarks.  Next week will be our second round of benchmark testing to check up on our students' progress towards meeting Regents exam requirements.  Please make sure your daughters are well rested and ready for the exams.  Because these are benchmark exams for the end of the year, at this stage, she will not know everything that appears.  That's ok!  We're looking for growth and how much she has grown academically in each subject from September until now.   If we work together to help our young women try their best, we can only get the best outcomes!

SLT Parent Meetings.  The School Leadership Team met on Wednesday, November 12th.  The next meeting will be at 7:30AM on December 10th in the main office conference room.

Here are the Notes from November Meeting.

Members present were:
Kelly Demoncaco (Chair), Kiri Soares (Secretary), Elena Brollo (Time Keeper), Susan Johnson (parent), Nequan McLean (parent), Felicia Woods (parent)

Absent members were:
Donna Belgrave (PTA President), Keara Small (student, senior class president), Lucindia Lewis (student, junior class president)

Agenda and Minutes

• Report on Open School Night.  Ms. Kelly and Ms. Kiri reported back initial numbers on Open School night.  Ms. Kelly stated that middle school attendance was surprisingly lower than normal with about 40 parents coming to open school night and open school afternoon.  Mr. Mclean suggested that the switch from SLCs to a more traditional open forum parent conference evening may have been new to parents and thus, they weren't sure to come or wait for advisor outreach.  Ms. Kiri reported that the high school had well over 100 families participate in Student Led Conferences.  She also shared the preliminary results of a parent survey (CLICK HERE).

• Prose Schools.  Ms. Kiri shared that the Urban Assembly as a network is considering submitting an application to become a PROSE school.  As a group of like-minded schools, the UA is looking to continue working together as a network beyond the changes that are bound to come in the future with the Chancellor's reorganization of schools.  The SLT will consider the proposal once the UA has put forth an initial blanket idea for all the UA schools.

• School Quality Review.  Ms. Kiri also discussed the upcoming Quality Review for the school.  The school will have a quality review this year and we are currently preparing as a staff.  The SLT will continue to prepare for the review by reviewing the last review, the school's performance last year for both middle school (snapshot and quality guide) and high school (snapshot and quality guide).  In addition, the SLT should review the school's budget and school goals (2013-2014 CEP).

• Formalizing SLT Practices.  Ms. Johnson and Mr. Mclean raised the question of formalizing the UAI SLT practices.  There seemed to be some confusion about positions and historically, the SLT had been very informal.  The group agreed, and formally elected the following individuals to their positions:
  
  Kelly DeMonaco - SLT Chair will work with PTA president to set agendas and facilitate meetings
  Kiri Soares - SLT Secretary will take notes and publish to UAI community
  Elena Brollo - SLT Time keeper will keep the meeting on pace

• Items for next meeting.  The following items are already on the agenda for the next meeting:  Family Engagement, Quality Review, and CEP.  If you would like to see something added to the agenda, please reach out to Donna Belgrave at donlyance@optonline.net or Kelly DeMonaco at kellyd@uainstitute.org.

Upcoming PTA events

• High Benchmark Exams on 24NOV and 25NOV - Special Schedule and Early Dismissal
• PTA Dinner on Tuesday, December 9th.