November 2012

Hi Everyone,

We continue to work to improve the high school. We are committed to continuous improvement. I appreciate everyone responding to our last survey about parent-teacher conferences. The data we collected was insightful and helped us gauge our efforts and the event.  In response to some of the data, we will be advocating for a second parent-teacher conference for Spring 2014 - so next school year will likely have two parent teacher conferences. In addtion, in collaboration with our academic boosters we are pushing for students to attend our academic intervention study hall and for our teachers to support this after school study hall by providing assignments students can complete to earn credit in their courses. I've appreciated the continued support of our academic boosters to help us shore up our graduation rate. In addition I encourage you to check out the following website created by Jamie Williams our media and broadcasting teacher and her students - take an inside look at MHS and the learning opportunities we provide for our students:

at   http://worklikeadog.weebly.com/

I apologize for being a bit behind in my posts; I'm going to attempt to catch up this month, the October board report is below for your information.

OCTOBER BOARD REPORTS FOLLOW:

Month/Year: October, 2012

Current Enrollment: 719
Free / Reduced Lunch Enrollment: 320; 42%
Student Services Listing: IEP-84, LEP-10
Students of the Month: Jake Anderson and Sarah Smith

Academics

Administration Team:

Dr. Terry Robinson, Principal:

Using Data to Inform Instruction

Department chairs will have four collaborative department meetings during the month of October to complete their Plan Do Check Act continuous improvement cycles. Tentatively these plans will be presented in November by each department so all faculty will be aware of and consider plans in the building. These cycles of improvement are team level efforts by MHS departments to improve EOC scores by 10% in the top two levels - advanced and proficient and to meet at least the state-level annual performance review requirement for the ACT. Ms. Gina Gilman, Mr. Michael Auer and I have facilitated department chair meetings and attended department level meetings when available to support his effort. In addition, Mr. Auer, from our Columbia, Missouri Regional Professional Development Committee will be assisting department chairs and attending some department meetings to assist in building teamwork within departments and embedding professional learning community and quality improvement practices. Overall, the goal of the high school is to grow teacher-leadership capacity and teamwork to achieve results

Our first practice ACT was held for seniors on September 27. This date was moved forward to gain data sooner about areas teachers could address with our seniors and possible affect final ACT scores. We are also attempting to enhance the data processing in the high school of the results via a computer program using scanned answer cards. Mr. Neely and Ms. Gilman have been instrumental in working toward implementing the new scanning machine and working with our vendor and Jenn Kraft and Dana Hunt.

In classroom walkthroughs I have observed more use of PLAN, EXPLORE and ACT test items to prepare students. We are still planning to enhance our finals for December 2012 by better reflecting the rigor of the ACT and EOC assessments.

JROTC Continued Growth

Over 40 students are currently participating in JROTC with support from the Missouri Military Academy. This program has nearly doubled in growth. Our homecoming parade featured the first Mexico High School JROTC color guard.

Parent-teacher conferences measured in post-conference online surveys

Our parent teacher conferences were measured as part of our continued improvement in this area at the high school. Parents participated in their conferences with teachers, then parents privately responded to a survey online which tabulated the results.

I’ve included the results below from an email memo sent to our teachers. The items we measured consider respect and communication, as well as the overall experience at parent-teacher conferences. 202 parents completed the survey. Our goal is to continue to improve these areas in our communication with our parents. We have collected these results which now allows us to chart our progress and monitor our performance each year. (see email memo next page).

Summary from an Email to our teachers follows:

September 28, 2012

Congrats to everyone on Parent-Teacher conferences!

Here are our overall approval ratings from Parent-Teacher Conferences Sept. 2012:

Total responses: ranged between 196-202 parents for each one below; some items were answered, while others were not

Overall rating of experience: 95% Positive or Very Positive - A

Communication on child's progress was helpful: 87.3% Agree or Strongly Agree - B+

Communication about grading: 85.5% Agree or Strongly Agree (parents understand how

grades being determined) - B

Communicating respect to parents (Teachers): 92.5% Agree or Strongly Agree - A minus

Communicating respect to parents (Administrators): 84.9% Agree or Strongly Agree - B

Child feels safe at school: 82.8% Agree or Strongly Agree - B

**note: a few items not calculated here for the "other" category in the question asked would push a percentage up or down by 1%

More to come, but good grades all around with some room for improvement

Our next goal will be to have all As in every category.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Jeff Anderson – Vice Principal/Activities Director:

Mexico High School hosted softball districts this past week as an addition to our homecoming festivities. We will be meeting this week to determine the location of district competition for basketball. Due to some district reassignments being made by MSHSAA, Mexico was not the top choice by voting schools in the new district for wrestling districts competition for 2012-13. St. Charles West will host district wrestling for the 2012-13 school year. However, the wrestling district tournament will be held in Mexico for
2013-14.

PBIS – Positive Behavior Intervention and Support Team – Coordinator Patty Swisher

The team has continued to attend trainings and is meeting requirements for PBiS with guidance from the Columbia, Missouri RPDC. The next meeting will be in Columbia on October 11, 2012. An informational video on proper assembly behavior was shown to seminar classes just prior to the homecoming assembly. In addition, students continue to be frequently recognized with bulldog respect, responsibility and safety tickets each week. A drawing has been held each week for dinner and food coupons to local Mexico restaurants. We have also expanded the collaboration and idea sharing at the district level by attending a district level meeting for PBiS. We recently completed our first set of discipline data to review. This data provides areas to improve with our students by category of offense, area and time of day.

Bridget Bingham – Special Education Teacher

The Home Management students will be walking to Westlake's next week to purchase mums. We will be planting them in the flowerbed adjacent to the MHS circle drive. This is an annual project for the students and a welcome addition to enhancing our school environment.

Sara Given – Speech, Drama and Theatre Teacher

On Friday, September 28 Sara Given presented a workshop at the Speech & Theatre Association of Missouri Conference at their annual conference. Sara was asked to present about her Advanced Children's Theatre program. She specifically addressed the current script writing unit the students are completing and their original anti-drug program they will perform at our elementary schools October 9-11.

The Advanced Children's Theatre class will present their anti-drug program at St. Brendan's Tuesday, October 9 at 2:00, Eugene Field Wednesday, October 10 at 2:00 and McMillan Thursday, October 11 at 2:00. All are welcome to attend.

Jami Williams – Media, Technology, Yearbook and Publications Teacher

The Mexico High School broadcast journalism program debut their first video newsmagazine, The Bark, on the MHS student broadcasting network, The Bite, on October 4, 2012. The network is currently an online channel and is currently housed at www.thebitemhs.weebly.com. The show, which was student-generated, student-written and student-produced, is the first broadcast since the program moved to Mexico High School from Hart Career Center this year. There are 21 students enrolled in the class and each student had a hand in one of the six stories that aired. The Bark will be produced every two weeks with the next show going up on the site on October 18, 2012 at 9 p.m. The October 18 show will feature digital profiles of each students' "hero" or a character in their life that has had an impact on them. The Bite has recently been invited to become a Midwest affiliate of STN (Student Television Network), which is a division of the Academy of Scholastic Broadcasting. Ms. Williams, the instructor/adviser, has also received an invitation to present her student work at the ASB Vid-Con held in Springfield, MO, at the end of the month.

The Bite, the overarching student broadcast network, will also begin working with KWWR/KXEO within the next month to bring a student presence to the local airwaves. One possibility that has been discussed is a morning drive-time show "Drive with a Dog" which will be pre-taped by members of the class and submitted to KXEO and run one day each week during the morning drive to school.

Stay tuned for GREAT things from the Broadcast Journalism students!

Guidance and Counseling Team:

Guidance Office activities during the past month of September:

• ACT practice day Sept. 27

• ACT meeting with senior seminar groups

• Mr. Neely attended the Articulation/CTE Advisory at MACC in Moberly

• Parent/Teacher Conferences

• College Career Fair

• Counselors meeting at HCC

• Mr. Holman administrated Explore and Plan Tests for 9th and 10th graders

• All counselors proctored small group testing for Explore and Plan

• MACC visited concerning DC Classes

• Senior Parent Night

• Scantron integration

• Mrs. Turlington and Mr. Neely attended the MU Counselor Meeting

• Mr. Holman attended our local Interagency Meeting

• New Scholarship opportunities have been downloaded on our website

• 8 College/university visits during September

• MHS/HCC College Fair

• 1 Army presentation

• 8 Army lunch room visits

• 104 transcripts requests mailed

MHS Events and Activities:

We concluded District Softball on the 6th. We hosted this event with 2 games on Wednesday, 2 games on Thursday and the championship game on Saturday.

Girls Golf is competing in sectionals on October 8th. They and tennis both finished up district competitions earlier this month.

School House Rock practices are well under way. Our students will perform this wonderful musical on November 16th & 17th at 7:00 pm and again on Sunday the 18th at 2:00 pm.

Football, Cross Country, Volleyball & Boys soccer will all wrap up regular seasons this month with districts to follow at the end of the month.

The MMS & MHS Student Councils will be bringing “Rachel’s Challenge” to our district on the 23rd of October with an assembly at both the Middle School & the High School.

Winter sports will have practices starting on October 29th. Schedules are posted on the MHS Athletics page.