Minutes of Faculty Council Meeting: April 27, 1999

President John Kolena called the meeting to order at 3:45. Guest included Steve Warshaw, Joan Barber, and students Jonathan Pahl, Jeremy Katz, Roshan Baliga, Shilpa Khatri, Paul Raff, and April Land.

John Kolena announced that we need an elections committee to nominate, in order, candidates for (1) Faculty Council officers; (2) Faculty Evaluation Committee; and (3) Curriculum Council. He will take volunteers until Thursday of this week and then ask department heads to select one person from each department.

John stated that we only have one more scheduled meeting this year, but that he would like to have one additional meeting during the workdays at the end of the year

John reported that the Search Committee for the new director has hired a search firm. He did not know if we would have an interim director for next year, although the probability of this at this date is very high.

The next forty minutes were spent in breakout groups continuing our discussion on the Third Decade questions. The groups were urged to think long-term and try to ask, but not answer, the big questions that the Board and NCSSM community should address as we approach our third decade. Each group was asked to narrow their list to three or four major concerns.

The reports of these groups can be found below:

When the entire group reconvened, Steve Warshaw announced that we would have an all-school assembly to discuss the recent school violence and that faculty who wished to help lead discussion groups were invited to lunch at 12:15 Thursday in the American Tobacco Dining Room. The assembly will be held at 3:45 on Friday.

The Action Plan Committee gave an update on their progress with Jonathan Pahl reporting. He stated that the committee has met frequently over the past two months and is very close to making some recommendations. He stated that these recommendations would be posted on the Action Plan Committee website at http://iluvatar.ncssm.edu/apc. He urged faculty to visit the site and give the committee feedback on their ideas via the website.

Two recommendations that need no formal action and relate to faculty include the Tuesday dress-up days and the posting a school calendar with all student activities in the mail room so that faculty will know what is going on and can plan to support the students by attending some of these activities.

Several more difficult issues include instituting a network of communications in which the adult community can discuss students who are having problems in some area of their life here at NCSSM. None of the issues to be shared will be confidential. Steve Warshaw reported that such a procedure is currently being studied. He, Joan Barber and Sandy Rothschild are trying to develop a procedure for dispelling rumors and sharing important information about students. Such a procedure would require teachers and staff to keep the information shared in confidence.

Another issue that the Action Plan Committee is addressing concerns the lack of regard and consequences for many rule violations. Students who are not athletes or aspiring to become an RLA do not take rules and consequences seriously. They APC is considering implementing academic day suspensions. Students who violate certain rules would be forced to miss school and go home for one or more school days. Parents would have to pick up the student and have a conference. The time at home with parents would give the student the opportunity to think about being at NCSSM and whether he or she wants to return. It would also get the parents involved sooner. Some faculty members felt like this would be a major inconvenience for faculty. Meaningful make-up work and conference take time. It was also mentioned we as a part of the NCSSM family of each student need to do what is necessary to help students. Some of the students present noted that students would take an academic day suspension very seriously, making it a good deterrent for breaking many rules. This would send a strong message to the student who violated the rule as well as the rest of the student body.

We were encouraged to continue our reaction to this and other recommendations of the Action Plan Committee via their website.

The meeting was adjourned at 5:07 by John Kolena.