There were no parent or student visitors in attendance.

Max was the holder of the globe.

Elaine Harris was the recipient of the "World Recognition" globe.

May is going to be a busy month:

• ED evaluation is coming up
  • K. Venable-Croft is to give the Leadership Team a heads up about ED evaluation participation
• Move planning for the next fiscal year into the current year
  • B. Blaufuss will be leading the effort. 

There was a plug for the wellness series.

• GGA did nothing for April; however, there was a May outing to the Washington Spirit game.
  • 21 staff will be going to the game to kick off teacher appreciation week
  • The Washington Spirit outing has provided one step in a relationship to build and grow.
• Role in rotating different members into the wellness series
  • Shalini has acted as "Ambassador of Fun."
  • Shalini will continue as Board Treasurer and head the Finance Committee.

Proposing a new Fun Czar role- asking for volunteers

• Recognizing board members and staff- doing things in a structured manner as possible
• GGA will officially look to fill this role in June.

Make an ask at the beginning of the year to create a pot from which these things are funded.

New Board Members need to sign docs for the current school year via Adobe.

Consider Board Terms

• A slew of people is completing their first terms.
• Directors can serve two consecutive terms.
• The annual meeting will hold elections for all four offices.
• Officers serve 1-year terms.
• Think about continued service.
• Consider officer positions.

The Screening Process for New Trustees:

         The screening process was shown. 

The newest board member, Laura Bartos, stated that the process was reasonable.

• Goals for Screening Process:
  • We don't want the process to be too arduous.
  • We need to approve Screening for New Trustees
  • We want it to be clear so that it's repeatable.
  • We need to have a process to assess fit and fill in the skills required.

Recruitment for New Board Members: 

• We want to fill 15 seats.
• In recruiting new board members, we should be mindful of DC residency.
• Consider:
  • Racial and ethnic diversity
  • Gender diversity
  • Availability and engagement are the essential attributes considered. 
    • Availability, time, enthusiasm, willingness to contribute
• From a professional skills standpoint, needs include 
  • Legal background
  • Real estate finance
  • Construction
  • Accounting/audit 
  • Policy/government

Current Board:

• Board has a pretty diverse set of skills and backgrounds
• Currently have 11 directors

Potential Board Candidates: 

• Someone who Maura knows (clerking) is a potential board candidate.

Enrollment- Virtually

• 81 students automatically certified
• Julie and the team are calling all families.
  • Julie works on new students/families
    • Students and new families have until May 13th
  • Cynthia works on families who have to submit various paperwork
• Admissions coordinators filed complaints, so the process transitioned more streamlined.
• Parents still have to docu-sign or sign in person.
• More than half of the applications matched to GGA- 208 applications (115 matches and offers)
  • 17 to 47 post lottery applications, the target is 150.

For the next board meeting, show how this compares to last year and provide a comparison to the target. 

PARENT ORGANIZATION:  

• Working with a core group of six parents.  
• Schedule to meet monthly.  
• Parents have homework to talk about what service looks like to the school.
• The objective of the Parent Organization: Not to grow wealth but to help students and the academic program, enrichment programs

Parent engagement has six keys.

Focusing on more parent education

Parents want to develop a non-profit organization for the school.

Questions to Consider:

• Is there best practice guidance on this from the charter board?
• Would they have officers?
  • How sustainable is this model?
• Consider the relationship of the parent organization to the school and the board.

Beth will follow up to determine the audit process.

FUNDRAISING:

• Raising funds to support student travel abroad/service learning would be one of the primary purposes of having a C3, with accountability and transparency
• Beth can take this question to the auditors.

Questions: 

• Can we have the business case laid out benefits & risks?
• Is there another route for this purpose? 
  • Explore what other groups are doing.

GGA Board will have pros and cons written up by the May meeting.

COMMUNICATIONS CAMPAIGN:

4 AREAS

• Tell the story of why the school was created and invite people into the GGA space- parents and students.
• GGA does a lot of communications.
  • They want to hear directly from different leadership perspectives
• Diversify how GGA is doing that.
  • The founding parents will help layout long term goals.

Brand Strategy:

• Increasing the number of people posting positive messages
• Make it more interactive
• Create calls to action
• Want student voices to be involved
• Include parent participation in the call to action for social media
  • Instagram and social media connected to Facebook
• Looking at review ratings
  • Increase positive review ratings
    • Tell the story in a positive light
    • Present a well-rounded side
    • Why did you join the board?
      • Let's get back to our roots.
  • Put that out and live up to what GGA is saying
• Clarity on goals
  • How to leverage existing goals
  • Please make sure everything is attainable and meaningful: Let's be realistic to ensure sustainability for the school team and parents who are already engaging.

Prioritization Process:

• Qualitative and quantitative data

Trimester 1 and Trimester 2 Survey Data:

• Teacher feedback data
• Parent organization feedback
• Student self-perception data:
  • Where they feel they are (Strengths & Difficulties self-reported)

Synthesis: The leadership team synthesized the data into four core priorities from community feedback

4 Core Priorities:

• 'Because You Matter' CULTURE
• SUPPORT STAFF development, competency, and resilience
• Systematize GGA norms for STRONG INSTRUCTIONAL PRACTICES across every classroom
• Establish the GGA EXPERIENCE

Overall Objectives:

• Understand audience and stakeholders
• Want fewer goals
  • Ones that are measurable throughout the year
  • Enable us to inspect what we expect
  • Want to do quality
• We are not focusing on items not related to culture and IB.  
  • Has to fit in IB structure
  • Not focused on a curriculum that can't be tied back to IB ways of learning
  • Want a narrower scope- elevating and supporting IB programs
• Not focusing on a vast amount of vendors.
  • Know what GGA wants and who GGA intends to work with (Want to streamline)
• Uniforms were not the focus.

We have not brought this to the Culture and Audit committee to work through the language and several goals. Culture, alone, would be a big job.

Action Items:

• Communicating with Beth
• Shobha and Beth are tasked with a quick goal-setting process for the board.
  • Give the committee a chance to look at this.
  • Google space is suitable for collaboration.
• There is a need to get clear on priorities.
  • Tell the story about why these are the key data priorities
    • It would be helpful to communicate which inputs went into the priorities.
    • What got voted off?

Budget process overview.

Facilities and Finance have met practically every month.

Anticipated costs were presented.

Phase 3:

• Aggressive timeline
• Calvary approvals
• Construction is to start in May
• Received drawings on April 25th
• Decisions are to be made by a smaller subset.
• Demolition is to begin on May 16th.

The approval timeline was presented.

Action Items:

• Ask for the board to delegate authority to the committee.
• Complete OSSE loan for up to $2M.
• Approve phase 3 process scope.

Facilities Process:

• During the facilities process, things will be discovered. 
• $25K or more expenditures have to be approved. 
• Materials trade-offs may need to be made. 
• We can't wait until board meetings to make decisions.
  • Call to Action:
    • Proposing to delegate authority to Finance and Facilities committee.
      • Designate a point person for Jason to leverage FFC.
    • Listing of votes and expenditures to be included in monthly reports to the entire board.

This is a short-duration project.

There is a seasoned project manager.  

• The project manager will also be held accountable and have thresholds.  There will be safeguards.
• Hope to preview and provide heads up on what needs approval.