Agenda - 09-23-2002 - 1 - Laserfiche WebLink

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} APPROVED 09/03/02 y Dana reported plans for OCS to move forward with the International Baccalaureate certification process. Val Foushee said if that application is successful, she thinks CHCCS students might be interested, but it's not anything they can move on at this point. Susan Halkiotis remarked that the OCS Board periodically discusses the cost of workforce development and facilities needed to teach them. It is one of the higher priced aspects of school space. She thinks there might be some students who would cross district lines,,but only a handful - most teenagers don't focus on a unique educational program, but would rather be with their friends. It might be best not to fully enroll a student in the other school system, but let a voc ed program serve as a hub that kids might attend for part of a day. Barry said we need not to reinvent the wheel about what collaboration opportunities might be — maybe someone from the Institute of Government could share with us others' experiences. Dana feels the need to move forward with a survey of opinion. We're not in a perfect world, so there are other pressures like crowding that might cause parents to examine other educational programming opportunities more closely. The survey is a key piece. Teresa Williams observed that a survey should attend to more than just interest— are parents willing to go further and enroll? Depending on survey questioning, it might lead you to make expensive programming choices on "interest"that doesn't actually materialize. John noted one of his departmental staff as an example of an OHS student who developed her own plan and graduated from Mount Olive this weekend. How do we help folks not necessarily ready to go to 4 year college? Durham Tech may help. He sees a core need for high school space of at least 750, but notes that CHCCS doesn't yet seem wedded to a traditional high school set up. Have we thought about all the opportunities? Maybe middle college high school, or other options? How do we provide an alternative approach to kids who may not thrive from a mainstream approach? Dana said she recently met with their alternative school programming folks and community agencies. Many agencies have a wealth of wisdom, if not resources, to put into alternative approaches to schools. Barry asked why the two school systems started meeting separately. Dana explained that there are so many different kinds of kids who need this that it's difficult to offer just one program. She noted that they just decided to head in different directions. Val agrees —there were no other points of intersection in their discussions besides potentially failing kids, who attend Phoenix Academy. Susan cited a plan back during Nancy Farmer's time that would have addressed more than just kids with behavioral problems. It would have met the needs of students who just have a different learning style. Has anyone dusted that off and looked at it recently? Neil says they used that model when they started up Phoenix Academy. When the joint process fell apart, we took the model and worked with the person from UNC who wrote it. The model works— we just don't have enough capacity.