PCHS Mgmt/Staff: Dr. Pam Magee, Greg Wood
Facilitators: Richard Tauer, Beverly Hempstead

Russel Howard, Mary Bush, Jeff Hartman, Chris Lee, Monica Iannessa, Dave Riccardi, Amy Nguyen, Ben Makhani, Lea Toubian, Amir Ebtehadj, Abby Fisher, Neku Dorri, Cedrise Miller

 

Introductions of all present.  Culture and climate facilitators working with the Board today are Richard Tauer and Beverly Hempstead.  Alan Rasmussen not able to attend for medical reasons.   

Norms for the Retreat were established.  The facilitators discussed that there needs to be a balance in tasks versus relationships.  Always doing tasks and not working on relationships causes the relationships to suffer. If always working on relationships, then nothing gets accomplished.
 
Participants broke into groups to do an icebreaker activity.

The specifics of the survey will be discussed at the next Board meeting including how the Board and the administration did with regard to achieving the goals since it was not available in time for the last Board meeting
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The survey had the fewest C’s in the history of the survey.  The vast majority of the survey grades were A’s and B’s.
Faculty and staff generally are of the opinion that Pali is a good place to work.  Parents think Pali is a good school to send their kids to and most of the survey respondents would recommend it as a place to send students.
 
Pali faculty and staff would like to have more professional development offered.  Students would like to see an improvement in cultural competency and diversity.  Most students feel supported overall but there is a sense that people could be more compassionate and understanding.  Parents are happy overall.  Parents are happy with the rigor but some think the instruction is too rigorous. Most of the concerns are about the Math and Foreign Language Departments.  There was also some concern about needing improvements in school facilities.
 
Columbia noted that they would like to see more stakeholders participate in the survey.  While there were a fairly high number of employee responses, the consensus is that we would like to see more, as well as more parents and students participating.
 
There was a discussion that the information provided would be useful in measuring the progress toward our school wide goals.  The survey does seem to indicate that there has been an improvement in culture and climate, which was one of the goals from last school year.  Richard noted that as an outsider, he felt that the turnaround from last year was remarkable. 
 

Discussion of the goals from last year included progress toward goal achievement.  Members broke into groups for each goal, with each group ideally consisting of at least one board member, one student, one parent, and one faculty/staff member to ensure a diversity of stakeholder opinions.

Progress toward each goal and current status was discussed.

 

The facilitators presented a strategy for developing goals that focused on 4 possibilities for how to develop the goal:
Achieve – What do you want to attain that you don't have?
Preserve – What do you want to keep that you already have?
Avoid – What do you want to stay away from? (There isn't an issue now and you don't want one.)
Eliminate – What do you want to get rid of?
 
Facilitators discussed that there should be a pathway to embracing growth. 

Groups were provided with materials including the Board Goals Policies from PCHS Governing Policies, copies of previous goals and progress reporting, Columbia survey results, the organizational climate assessment conducted by the facilitators last year, and 2016-2017 LCAP goals.

Each group reviewed one goal from last year.  Through use of all resources available to them including stakeholder input, groups discussed how to move forward and build on the progress we've made. Following extensive discussion, groups each presented recommendations for a new goal in their area to everyone. Following discussion, the consensus was to build on the progress we've been making in our goal areas from last year and continue goals that support further progress in the direction we've been moving, not start over with completely different goal areas.

Five draft goals were discussed and recorded on large tablet sheets.  These draft goals were photographed to preserve them and will be typed up and presented in an appropriate format for adoption at the next Board meeting.