Council Report for 10/8/14

Lilly Cadow wants to add an inspirational quote to the morning pledge and announcements. While it has received an administrative okay from Ian Smith, Lily pushed to have council vote on the motion for the purpose of making it official. While students overall voted “aye” to the motion, teachers and community members voted “nay” or “abstaining”. The motion passed, with Madame Doyle explaining her abstention as being that the motion was trivial, and not something the council needed to do. This was echoed by all abstentions.

Daniel Osofsky’s motion that a “web site” was required for all teachers was passed last year by council, but administration vetoed it because “site” does not include google calendars, edmodo pages, or moodle, all tools endorsed by the administration. It is back again, with “web presence” instead of web site. The motion requires the web presence to include a syllabus and an up to date assignment calendar. The questions posed ranged from how far into the future a teacher must plan, to whether teachers who don’t like computers need to comply with the motion. A consensus was reached that help would be available to teachers who were not good with technology, and that the council could not impose a date in advance that teachers had to plan out to.

Mae Butler said ludicrous instead of onerous when suggesting that for teachers such as a Mr.Hackman that don’t plan their classes’ day-to-day happenings in advance.

Madame Doyle doesn’t support the council making a concrete definition of what a web presence is, since we can’t predict what a web presence will be in the future. The motion to append a definition of web presence to the original motion was defeated with a resounding “nay”. The referral of the original motion to the curriculum committee was passed.

Madame Doyle brought forth a motion from Bonnie in the caf with the exact wording “I move to move all unclaimed lost & found items to the Haven after 3 weeks of stagnation”. A friendly amendment was raised to make a specific date for the drop off made publicly known, still with the three week stagnation clause. The point of this was that it would motivate students to check before that date if something of theirs is missing.