Aloha HE'E Members and Participants,

Our next Planning Meeting will be on Tuesday, January 15, 2012, from 9:00-11:00am at The Learning Coalition.  It is the third Tuesday of the month rather than the regularly scheduled second Tuesday of the month, due to the holiday break. 

At our last Planning Meeting we discussed items to recommend to the full Coalition for support.  The following are four items for review and consideration. The first item has some urgency; if supported by HE'E, the recommendation will be presented to the Board of Education Student Achievement Committee on January 8, 2012.  

1.  Recommending Center of Disease Control (CDC) Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) as an additional indicator for HIDOE's Strategic Plan, Goal 1, Objective 1a, on School Safety 

Hawaii's Department of Education (HIDOE) has proposed to use the number of students with zero misconduct occurrences and percentage of students whose composite rating on "School Safety and Well-Being" on School Quality Survey is positive, as metrics to measure school safety. The latest set of metrics provided to the Board of Education (BOE)'s Student Achievement Committee (SAC) for Goal 1 is listed here, and the entire DOE Strategic Plan is listed here. The last BOE committee meetings which will finalize all metrics for the Strategic Plan will be held on Tuesday, January 8, 2012. Therefore, it will be the last opportunity in which HE'E can provide testimony on these metrics.  

At HE'E's last Planning Meeting, the Department of Health's (DOH) Suicide Prevention Coordinator, Nancy Kern, gave a compelling presentation on teen suicides in Hawaii.  The survey used to track student data is the CDC's YRBS survey, a federal survey, which is administered to students by HIDOE.  It is a statewide, bi-annual survey, which is meant to track risk behavioral trends.  The Planning Team felt that the YRBS survey would be a good additional indicator for school safety, in particular, the questions in the  "Unintentional Injuries and Violence" section. For a fact sheet on the survey, please click here.  Please see questions to the 2011 YRBS here, and the Center for Disease Control highlighted results here.  

HE'E also plans to recommend that wellness or well-being be included in the targets, along with safety.   

Please review the information and let me know if you have any comments, or would like time to discuss in depth.  We will be asking for a vote prior to January 8, 2012.  Please send comments to cheri@heecoalition.org.

2.  Support a Hawaii version of the California Family-School Partnership Act

The Family-School Partnership Act is a California law that allows parents, grandparents, and guardians to take time off from work to participate in their children's school or child care activities. If you are a parent, guardian, or grandparent who has custody of a child enrolled in a California public or private school, kindergarten through grade twelve, or licensed child day care facility, or you work for a business that has 25 employees at the same location, you may take off up to 40 hours each year (up to eight hours in any calendar month) to participate in activities at your child's school or day care facility. The law allows you to use existing vacation time, personal leave, or compensatory time off to account for the time you use participating in your child's school or child care activities. You may also use time off without pay if permitted by your employer. The employee, not the employer, chooses from the options that are available. For a more in depth explanation, please see link here. 

HE'E continues to advocate for making family-school partnerships a priority for schools. Accordingly, we want to help parents and families have access to participating in school events, which is the rationale behind supporting a Hawaii version of this California Law.  

We are in the process of collecting input from the business community. If you have comments or questions on the law, or would like further discussion on this topic, please let me know at cheri@heecoalition.org 

3.  Support the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) Review of Teacher Preparation Programs   

Next spring,  National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) with U.S. News & World Report as publisher, will be releasing their Teacher Prep Review - a first-ever, in-depth look at over 1,100 college-based teacher preparation programs. HE'E is looking into being a supporter of this review.  A description of the review is here.  Standards of the evaluation are here.  We learned that NCTQ has sufficient data from University of Hawaii at Manoa, University of Hawaii West Oahu and Chaminade University to include in the review.   

If you have comments or questions or would like more discussion on this topic, please let me know at cheri.heecoalition.org

4.  Support the idea of an Education Ombudsman

The Washington State Office of the Education Ombudsman is a unique strategy to provide conflict resolution services for issues including school safety.  The Office is outside the DOE and acts independently for any k-12 student or family, and the services are free. The link to the Washington Education Ombudsman is here. 

If you have comments or questions or would like more discussion on this topic, please let me know at cheri.heecoalition.org

Mahalo for you continued support!