Counseling Advisory Committee

Even though we don't go back to school until after Labor Day I have been getting my "advisory council" organized.  I asked, and they agreed, two new teachers to serve and 3 will return.  We have 2 parents returning and we will recruit 2-3 more when I return in 2 weeks.  We try to have about 1/3 of the committee be new each year.  We are fortunate to have most of our parent members with mental health related field backgrounds. We also try to invite at least two minority parents since our staff is 90 percent Caucasian. We also invite two fifth grade student representatives who are SCA officers. We have always met once a quarter. That keeps the committee in the loop all year but is not a huge burden. We meet before school and the meetings are only 40 minutes long ( and then we generally debrief with the parent members for about 10 minutes longer).  The first meeting of the school year is always in October (then December, February, and April).  We propose draft counseling program goals and solicit other ideas for the year.  We also share the evaluation results from the previous school year.  For example, suggestions for books for our parent-staff book discussion.  Each subsequent meeting we update the committee on the goals. I sent out tentative dates for approval by our administrators.  Officially both our Principal and Assistant Principal are on the committee but they take turns actually attending. We send out an agenda before each meeting with handouts and follow--up with minutes about a week after each meeting. Last year a big part of the Committee's work revolved around our applying to Re-RAMP.