• 11/13/2025

    GHS Site Council Minutes

    Slidedeck

    Present: James McGee - Principal, Jayme Causey - PAT Teacher Rep, Chavonne Allen - Community Partner (SEI), Ezana Wolday - Student, Karen Lefere - Parent and Teacher, Harold Treinen - Parent, Jason Breaker - PAT Counselor Rep, Luis Jara - Vice-Principal, Keith Stoker - Admin Intern and Teacher

    Purpose: 

    • James: To hear from Grant stakeholders before big decisions are made at Grant as things come up this school year.

    SCIP:

    • 4 Goals: Literacy, Math, Attendance, 9th Grade on Track

    • Literacy & Math

      • This year there is an expectation that teachers have learning targets and success criteria posted every day for their students to help students understand what they are going to be learning that day

      • At Grant, there has been overall success with getting these posted and ILT has been working on providing PD around teacher clarity

      • We are also seeking to ensure that we are using grade-level and standards-aligned tasks and curriculum

      • Jayme: How is this measured? How do we know if this goal is met?

      • James: Asking students if they can say what they are learning that day through instructional walks. Asking teachers what are the standards that their lessons are aligned to.

      • Harold: How has the buy-in from staff been so far?

      • James: So far pretty well, given that there wasn’t a lot of time for staff to internalize it before starting to implement it. However, learning targets are not necessarily new but the way they have been used has changed.

    • 9th Grade On-Track

      • Improve on track from 91% to 95% for all students and focal students from 73% to 80%

        • Baseline: Black students 53% and Latine students 75%

      • Use of M98 funding to help work toward this goal

      • Grant was awarded a Promising Practice school because of its work around On Track rate for students

    • Attendance

      • We started working on attendance nine months ago, knowing that this is a problem for the state of Oregon and something that needs to improve on for our school

      • We have normalized the conditions for poor attendance and lateness to class, especially for our students of color

      • One potential issue is that some students feel like if everything is on Canvas, they don’t need to attend class everyday

    Attendance:

    • Attendance tracker on Canvas and consequences for students who fall below 90% attendance and have accumulated over 300 minutes impacts ability to participate in or attend sports or extracurricular activities

      • Students can earn minutes back with detention, Flex, and after school tutoring

      • Ezana: Can those minutes be earned back by going to the library during Flex?

      • James: No, it has to be with a teacher

    • Individual attendance plans are worked up with the attendance coach, counselor, and VP for students who need unique needs

    • The reason being late is part of attendance is because there is a culture at Grant of lateness and also it impacts the students in the classroom when students are late

    • Data: Increase from 30% to 57% for Good Attendance and Chronic Absenteeism (or worse) has decreased from 40% to 22% so far this school year.

      • The gains have only been from Q1 25-26 vs. the entire school year 24-25

    • Family feedback on detention has been overall positive

    • Importance of sustained focus on the big schoolwide initiatives: last year -> cellphones, this year -> attendance

      • James: willing to be flexible when students and families bring up blind spots, but also without consistent and sustained focus, there is a lack of credibility

    • Focal Students: 65% (Good or Acceptable) in 25-26 Q1 compared to 42% in 24-25

     

    PPS Budgeting:

    • PPS forecasted to lose 50 million dollars as a district

      • 2 years ago, we lost support staff, Maker’s Space

      • Last year, we lost teachers

    • What is important to you that you think we need to keep?

      • Ezana: Engineering & robotics, theatre, dance

      • Harold: CTE classes and industry partnerships

      • Karen: Performing arts

      • Chavonne: Engineering, culinary, college & career, dance

      • Jayme: 9th grade teams playing a big role in the 9th grade on-track

      • Jason: cuts should come based on student interest

    • One strategy for keeping CTE has been stacking classes (multiple class levels in one class)

    • Personal finance and college & career class was added this year to be in compliance with new state grad requirements and it is primarily being offered to 11th graders

     

    12th Grade Engagement:

    • Large discrepancy in attendance for Seniors

    • Talking to recently graduated seniors, James has heard that they felt academically ready but that they had to change a lot of habits they had picked up senior year since they often only need two credits (English and Gov/Econ) to graduate

    • Question: How do we add more rigor and engagement for our seniors?

      • James’ idea: have all students be required to take 4 years of math

        • A lot of students express that they wish they had taken math senior year

        • Ezana: If this happens, we need to make sure that there is better alignment across that 4th year of math class teachers

        • Keith: There isn’t a lot of department or PLC time built in to gain that alignment

        • Karen: Having had 3 kids come through this school, they’ve always had such drastically different experiences based on the teacher

    Next Steps:

    • Think of ways to engage our seniors more

    • Discuss the personal finance & college/career class

    • Discuss ideas around Senior CTE engagement or capstone

    • Next Meeting: 12/18/2025 3:45pm