SCHOOL COUNCIL MINUTES

January 9, 2023

Attendance: Paula Carlson Cahill, Victoria Chbarbi, Mike Feeney, Victoria Fialho, Rebecca
Gonzales, Alan Harris and Paula Smith.

Meeting opened at 6:00 pm.

Our Agenda was reviewed and approved.
FHS will begin each class period with 3 minutes of all students in class - no one in the halls.
We continue our endless pursuit of bathroom excellence. Vape detectors have been installed
and we hope this will soon lead to all bathrooms being able to be open all day. When the
detector alerts administrators, an assistant principal or a staff assistant reports to that bathroom.
Students present will be safety searched. We are adding detector wands so students won’t have
to empty all pockets, etc. We want to discourage vaping in the bathrooms - we are not trying to
play “gotcha.” Students and families have been notified via the weekly communication and we
are holding class meetings this week - with eight (8) students presenting. This is about
responsibility. We are glad students are here, students need to be in class & we want students
to be able to use our bathrooms to go to the bathroom. A lot of students find it annoying to not
be able to. Our student members said it has already improved and believe it will continue to
improve as students see these changes. Dr. Harris mentioned that this doesn’t change with a
directive from the principal - it works when students are a part of the solution. This will be a
group effort and we will continue working at it.
We have a student group working with Ms. Marathas on developing signage for what rigor,
respect, responsibility looks like around the school.

Minutes from November 7, 2022 were reviewed and approved.

Handbook Review - we will email members specific sections we would like you to review.
Victoria C and Victoria F will meet with Mr. Feeney during Clipper Time to review.
It was questioned and confirmed that the Homework Policy was updated last year.
Falmouth contracted a consultant group this fall to look at Excellence and Equity. Mr. St. Julien
is working with a faculty/staff group at each school to review. Morse Pond, Lawrence and FHS
will utilize their department heads and faculty councils for this. Dr. Harris quoted “Excellence
without equity is privilege and equity without excellence is tokenism” and said that we need to
be constantly looking at both. Our Master Schedule is being reviewed in terms of who populates
the AP courses and what we offer others. Department heads are analyzing their department in
terms of equity and excellence and will report in February, along with what would this look like
when they’ve “crushed it” and if they could have one thing to do that, what would that be?

Athletic pricing: Charging for admittance to JV games was discussed - some towns don’t,
Falmouth does if a varsity game immediately follows. We will review this practice.
Our $10 Game Pass for winter home games for the rest of the season is for sale. This came
about because a student, Emily Frias, had the idea and brought it forward. Students pay for
hockey, basketball and football games. This is a huge financial discount for students and
hopefully will build even more student support at games. Students have been notified via the
weekly message, on the morning news and in the daily bulletin.
Upcoming Events are listed on the agenda for review.

Upcoming Meeting Dates

● 3/6/23 @ 3:30pm in the FHS Library
● 5/8/23 @ 3:30pm in the FHS Library

Meeting adjourned at 6:28 pm and we moved to the Superintendent’s Budget Presentation.