E Rangel: On Sept. 15, we kicked off Latinx Legacies Month, or Hispanic Heritage Month. We have had 15 days of celebrations. Yesterday, we represented our flags. Today, we celebrating our favorite football clubs. 

At a meeting of the minds, Ms. Sotelo's club shared their slides on legacies. 

Kendra Randle: I am going to introduce Mr. Kyle Gavin and Ms. Jordyn Goins, our academic Assistant Principals. They have been working on ways to celebrate students and cultures. 

K. Gavin: Twice a week, we lead an event called Meeting of the Minds with our scholars. We start with some energizers and call-and-response. And then we move into an academic component, or recently, impactful Latinx leaders. Today, there were several dance presentations as well, with scholars showing off what they had learned. The meetings are a way for us to build ebullience and have a positive touch-point first thing in the morning. 

J Goins: In 6-8, we have Town Hall in the middle of the day. Each class/cohort has a chant. Students repeat affirmations. We share cultural and academic updates. And we share shout-outs. Once a week, we bring in entrepreneurs to share their journeys. Board member, N. Frech, will be joining us next week. We are able yo build community and work in swing. 

E Rangel: It looks like a lot of ebullience, but it also goes a long way to build belonging and to feel community.  It's a special community event. 

E Rangel: We are going to revisit some work we have been doing with our partner, Advisa.

We started by asking ourselves, "What do I bring to work? How do I show up to work?"

We got feedback from a staff survey about the leadership team and how the staff feel supported. 

We defined what we got back from the staff survey and evaluated our core values. Can we tie back our work to those core values? 

When looking at our leadership and culture - Advisa was pleased to see that our leadership received high marks. Our staff have exceptional loyalty. And we are retaining our staff. 

There was also an opportunity to address our own leadership, being much more critical of ourselves than the team was. We could also increase collaboration and communication. 

We learned that our core values could use updating to: Ownership, Swing, Optimism, and Solidarity. OSOS, is "bears" in Spanish. This process was very, very hard. And losing some of the core values was difficult. 

The leadership team is dedicated to reframing their discussions around the Core Values. They will be looking at what it looks like through all groups - emerging leaders, people leaders, and culture leaders. 

Next steps: We have to activate this leadership development from above. We are thinking about our internal development. Second, we are going to work on leadership capabilities. Third, we need to enable systems to name what makes a leader great. 

Proposal: We will be taking it to the Finance Committee for what we need to do next in terms of leadership development. 

K. Kainrath: For the Governance Committee, we are leaders too. We can think about how we play into this. 

Board: How was the experience? 

Leaders: it was hard work. And it was long. And we were working on it during the spring and at the beginning of the year. It was good to have so many people in the room. It was a really reflective moment for everybody. It was a testament to the talent that has been brought in over the last five years. 

M Staten: How long does Advisa recommend this work? 

E Rangel: They didn't say yet. The process was very strategic. They asked a lot of probing questions. They were very skilled in asking questions and watching it all happen. 

J Habayeb: We are going to set the page on what will be going on with IPS for the next few months. Our Innovation Network renewal is up this year with IPS. 

Right now, we pay IPS for some services and they offer some services in-kind. 

New law: IPS cannot charge us more than what is given per student according to the property tax levy. Also, charters can enter into an agreement to transfer the ownership of a school building to the charter organization. 

Right now, we don't directly receive tax funds. It is passed to IPS, and then IPS passes it to us. 

The new way, the tax money will flow directly to us. Then we can decide what gets transferred back to IPS. And they cannot charge us more than the tax levy amount. 

The ongoing debate is over what is defined as a "service". Our Finance Committee is trying to get strong legal definitions for those services so that we can decide if we will be continuing to use IPS services or looking for other, outside services. 

At an upcoming board meeting, we will bring a proposal for Board approval. 

There are several different options or road maps. 

1. Continue as an Innovation network building with a pathway to building ownership, using IPS facility care, seeking bids for new custodial services, and using continuing with IPS tech and transportation 

2. Continuing with the status quo 

3. Becoming an out-of-network public charter  

We hope to move forward with Option 1.

K Kainrath: Legal definition of services - where are we? 

JH: We are talking to other schools to ask for the same thing. Our legal team worked on that bill as well. What is the balance in seeking that definition versus the amount of legal fee that we would accumulate? 

R. Scott: Custodial contracting is a labor market issue. The grass may not always be greener. 

JH: Custodial and maintenance at IPS is all part of the same union. How would severing one impact the other? 

E Rangel: Our agreement is different than most. Being an innovation restart, we have some differences. We are working with schools in the same boat. 

Enrollment:

J Habayed: October 1st was our Count Day, when our official enrollment numbers were entered with the state. 

This past year, we were able to retain about 60% of our scholars from last year to this year. That gain is incredible in terms of culture and academic retention. 

Part of this might be thanks to IPS's new zoning model. 

Actual: 454 

Budgeted: 426 

+7% of our goal 

(numbers could change just a touch once they are approved by the state) 

We are also able to cap enrollment in grades/classes where classrooms are full. We already have waitlists for all of our grades that are already over-enrolled. It allows us to be more consistent in class and with assessments. 

K Kainrath: This is the highest enrollment so far? 

ER: Yes! 

JH: This is also our highest rate of return. We also have a number of "boomerang" scholars who left, but have returned. 

Our Latinex population has grown substantially. Which affects our special services. Our SpEd population is growing as well. 

Attendance: 

JH: four thresholds for attendance: No issues, trending chronic, nearly chronic, chronically absent. 

Attendance is a problem nationally and in our state. We are seeing improvement! 

YTD attendance average: 94.32% 

YTD Chronic: 14.1% 

We have a new Safety and Attendance officer who is incredible and working to reach out to families, stay compliant with new state attendance laws, and working to bridge gaps between services and communication with in the school. 

We are trending higher than we have ever. This week alone, we have had our highest attendance days ever in school. 

Attendance Officer is reaching out to families, going on home visits, putting attendance plans in place, and responding to prosecutor's office when required by law. It seems like the prosecutor's office does not have all of their systems in place. We are having really difficult conversations with families. 

H Munn: What are you finding to be the major reasons for absences? 

JH: One of the biggest is that if they have a doctor's appointment, they are out for the whole day. So, we are helping them find days that are good for those appointments or getting them back after. Also, some families still have challenges from remote learning during the pandemic. 

We are doing a lot of celebrating. We are celebrating scholars and families who are consistently meeting attendance goals. There are prizes, punch cards, shirts, and digital post cards going home to families with the message of being how absent days can stack up. 

K Kainrath: Kudos! This has been hard since the start of Adelante. 

N Frech: What about education at home if a student is out for several days? 

JH: Now that scholars are taking their Chromebooks home, teachers can assign work digitally. And now they still have access to work. It's a remote-work policy, but use limitedly when necessary. 

N Frech: Board Goals

1. Board Recruitment - Each committee will recruit and reccomend a new board member by Feb 1st, 2025. And reach 11 board members. 

2. Engagement - Have 10 committee meetings in a year, with a total of 27-30 committee meetings as a whole by May 2025. We would measure based on a January 2025 goal of 5 meetings. 

We are targeting a 90% attendance goal per board member. This would help with both compliance and with engagement 

We will vote on these goals for the next Board Meeting in December. 

Please reach out to your network in search for new board meetings. 

H. Munn: Is that attendance goal in-person? 

N. Frech: We need to meet Indiana Open Door laws and have as many members in person as possible. 

M Whitley: No updates - in December, we will have lots of updates and a presentation regarding testing data. 

M. Rooney: Recently, we had an internal leadership walk-though of the classroom and to look at student data. It brought all leadership team members together to see what is working and where there are gaps. In Math, we are seeing what we asked for from teachers. The growth opportunity is now using this data to inform instruction. 

C Franz: Teachers are doing a really nice job of implementing systems. And now, they need to dive deeper into their texts and internalize their texts. 

N Frech: Job descriptions for board members - Do they need to be board approved? 

K Kainrath: No, it does not 

N Frech: We will get the secretary role description out to the board.