Minutes 3.8.17/Agenda 3.22.17
Post date: Mar 22, 2017 12:42:06 AM
Agenda 3.22.17
Approval of Minutes
Reports
March Conference Update
Notes and New Business
Council Minutes 3.8.17
“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously, that you might as well not have lived at all; in which case, you’ve failed by default.” - J.K. Rowling
Approval of Minutes
Reports
Exec: The Bylaws are the rules guarding Council and the Handbook is the school policies that Council has the ability to modify. Exec (leadership and committee chairs) set the agenda on Monday, committees meet on Tuesday, and then members of leadership follow up with the Administration.
Mod: Welcome to our visitors and members make sure you are speaking loudly.
Secretary: Junior alternate can vote
Treasurer: Council Fund: $5,753.29 and has decreased since the reimbursement for a gift from last week, Co-Curricular Budget: $5013.03 and an allocation will be coming out of this account today
DSB: The district budget passed at Town Meeting.
Curric: Worked on analyzing Curriculum survey
Admin: Nominated members of the community for the Skip Bean Award and discussed cell phones
SAC: Discussed future improvements to Winter Carnival and will be moving on to extra-curricular budgets in the next few weeks
SL: Discussed school building and worked on planning field trip to other schools
OEC: Worked on handbook edits
Service: A schedule change will prevent us from presenting at the staff meeting today so we will be presenting at the meeting after MI
Inclusivity: Trying to set up an assessment on Bathrooms from Outright VT
Exec Duties Bylaw Notification
Quiz Bowl Money Allocation
“I move to allocate $500 to the Quiz Bowl Team to support the team's participation in the National Academic Quiz Tournament in Atlanta, Georgia over Memorial Day weekend.”
The money will be coming from a fund meant for clubs
They may not use the full extent of this allocation
SAC recommends that this motion pass
If they win and receive victory money, rather than seeking for reimbursement, we will just allocate less money to them for next year
Motion Passes
Revised Athletics Over Break Motion
“I move to add to the handbook Section 7 “Co-Curricular Activities” under “Athletic Specifics” the following wording: ‘All sports teams must have two consecutive days off over the Thanksgiving, February, and April breaks, and three consecutive days off over the Holiday break. The coach will chose the dates and will notify both the players and the Athletic Director before the start of the season. If for extenuating circumstances, the coach feels they cannot abide by this policy for a particular break, they must appeal to the Athletic Director.’”
The AOB wording from last year was vetoed but a similar idea was put into practice through the Administration and Athletics Office and this is attempting to put that current practice into Handbook wording
If there are two Sundays in a break and the days don’t have to be consecutive, those two Sundays would cover the requirement
Parents are very frustrated on the difficulty to travel for college visits or to see family because of practices
“I move to amend the motion to read ‘All sports teams must have two consecutive days off over the Thanksgiving, February, and April breaks, and three consecutive days off over the Holiday break….”
The original spirit was to give a break for college visits and travel and this allows it by taking away the loophole of just taking both Sundays off
For situations where consecutive is not possible, there can be an appeal made through the outlined process which gives the necessary flexibility
One day off does not allow flexibility to do something out of town in many cases
This amendment only gives a Saturday Sunday off for the week long breaks and it would be better if the days could not include the Sundays which are already given off
Amendment Passes
“I move to amend the last clause to read ‘If for extenuating circumstances, the coach feels they cannot abide by this policy for a particular break, they must appeal to the Athletic Director before the beginning of the season.’”
Last minute appeals could throw off the schedule of a family and this gives the family more awareness
Schedules change mid-season because of weather and games being rescheduled and the appeal process should be used to address things coming up mid-way through the season that cannot be prevented
We could add another person the appeal is made to in order to act as a check by focusing more on the schedules rather than just about the sports instead of this
Amendment Fails
The appeals clause makes it seems that we should include more days. If it doesn’t work for a team the appeals process can fix that but this sets a low bar and doesn’t encourage coaches to have more days off
We could make this more aggressive in the number of days
If we are discussing adding more days, that is not codifying current policy as was the original intent of the motion
Last time this motion was stronger and that had a huge backlash so we want to start small and not push for an aggressive number of days off so this can pass and raise awareness about this issue
“I move to amend the final sentence to read: ‘If for extenuating circumstances, the coach feels they cannot abide by this policy for a particular break, they must appeal to the Athletic Director and the Principal.’”
“I move to amend the amendment by adding ‘at least two weeks ahead of the recommended change’ to the end”
We want a time frame so families have some wording and if this raises controversy we could change it to one week
This reduces the purpose of adding the Principal, who hopefully would be aware of how close to the date the proposed change is
If a player has already planned to be away and there is a last minute change, the parents should be able to take the player out without problems
Meeting Adjourned