Brittney Gove, PTCA President, gave an update on PTCA. It has been a busy start to the year. See report in Board packet.

Registration will go live tomorrow for new Kickball Tournament. 

Principals provided updates for the start of the school year. 

Principal Goodgame highlighted the start of 8th grade project and new "backyard" recess fields. 

Principal Zelski highlighted parent participation (and nonphone use) at morning meeting. It has been a smooth, happy start to the year. 

Meeghan Fortson distributed a calendar of board meetings for the year; they are also posted on Board on Track.

Eric Teusink discussed meeting schedule for year. Meetings will take place on the 3rd Tuesday of Month except for October due to Fall Break and no December meeting. 

Committee scheduling: recommendation to get committee on a regular schedule.

Business Operations - Thursday prior to meeting
Fund Development - Wednesday prior to meeting
Governance - will establish regular meeting schedule

Prior to next board meeting, committee chairs should have schedules set and uploaded into Board on Track.  Can cancel if a meeting isn't needed but best to have it set up in advance so we can coordinate with communications staff and be legally compliant.

New board members will get training on Board on Track tomorrow evening.  

New Board Member Retreat is tomorrow evening. Specifically for new board members but old board members are welcome to attend for additional training. Will include dinner.

1. Brief history of ANCS
2. Intro to leadership team
3. Talk about measures of academic success
4. Website and policies
5. Training on Board on Track
6. Prepare for what will be covered on Saturday's board retreat

Full Board Retreat is on Saturday 8/24 from 8am - 2pm. It will include light breakfast and lunch. 
1. GA Charter Schools Association will come in for three-hour training. A board goal is to be more on top of training requirements. Training will cover governance, risk management, fiduciary obligations of board members. Might do additional training at midyear meeting. Members will also have online trainings available for additional hourly requirements. 
2. Committee assignment work
3. Strategic plan
4. Goal setting

Eric Teusink asked for a motion to approve slate of officers and committee chairs for 2019-2020 school year. Proposed slate is included in board packet. 

 

Chuck Meadows reported that we will have a security assessment soon.

We were scheduled to have a new visitor management system in place prior to first day of school. This is pushed back to October. Will be using a driver's license scan system that is in place in other APS schools. Allows school to automate warnings about certain people in the community; these alerts are currently paper driven. Can control at what time of day the system is in place (e.g., after MM at elementary campus). 

ANCS got funding for session initiation protocol - an advanced intra-school communication system that allows for announcements, video, data transmission. Initial feedback was the system was more IT than safety. Made the case that ability to transmit directly to classrooms was a key safety issue. Cleared APS threshold for funding. Waiting for response from GA DOE. School resource office identified this as a primary need. Meadows expects funding to come this school year. Communication will be within each building. 

Board Member Hanah Goldberg will be part of this initiative to examine racial disparity on standardized tests on Milestones and MAP. Honing in on this as an indicator of work that needs to be done. Leadership team will be the steering committee. Effort will be primarily comprised of teachers. Reporting back to the board will be through Educational Excellence Committee, likely monthly. 

2019-2020 is the year of the first element: building an inclusive community of parents, students and educators. Work on building relationships between various stakeholders (teachers/faculty/staff; board; parents) in the school community. 

Have a list of things to work on through the year to advance the community building efforts, e.g., kickball tournament - great opportunity to bring people together. 

Question regarding external stakeholders and whether they will be included. Meadows asserted that the work needs to start internally first. Another of the five elements is community engagement. Teusink challenged board members to think about how to engage with other stakeholder groups other than board-specific activities. Melton asked for the leadership team to let board members know how and where they can serve to be more helpful to the community. Meadows said that topic is under discussion. 

Milestones is administered annually for grades 3-8; results are used for CCRPI calculation.

MAP are not used in CCRPI - these scores are administered internally to measure growth at each grade level. Tracked down to individual data. 

Milestones Results - currently have only high-level raw data. Additional data will come in through the year to measure growth and sub-group breakouts. 

K-5 scores are among top 10 APS elementary schools of 55 total. 

MC ranks in top 5 of APS middle schools of 16 total. 

State ranks are in upper 3rd for social studies (67th percentile) and in 91st for 7-8 grade english and 5th grade math.

APS has reporting tool called APS insights. ANCS math proficiency - 65%. Meadows will provide link. 

Word of caution from Cathey Goodgame: public data. The smaller the school is, the more important it is to use the data kindly and cautiously. Ask questions to leadership team about what's happening with teacher-related question. 

Social studies and science - social studies was lowest state percentile but have been improving year over year. 

Math and ELA tests are more conducive to type of teaching ANCS does. It helps with test. Science and social studies are still multiple choice tests and doesn't match what GA standards ask for. ANCS doesn't teach that way and kids needs practice with taking those tests. Testing for these topics is only in 5th and 8th grade. 

Major themes from May 2019 survey (see report included in board packet). 
139 responses out of about 400 families
overwhelmingly satisfied
 Effective teacher communication - majority always or frequently
Students known well
Academic challenge - slightly less positive results; leadership team says this comes out each year. Used survey monkey analytical tool showed that certain words came up. This showed up in faculty staff as well. 
Information has not yet been compared to prior year. 
Survey has always been mostly the same - developed by leadership team and tweaked annually. 
Is there an opportunity in the tool to provide written feedback? Yes. 
Who reads comments? Discussed results yesterday in leadership team meeting. 
Board requested more information about previous years' surveys for comparison purposes and asked to see specific written feedback. 

Common theme: parents are in search of more opportunities to challenge their students. 

Midyear survey focuses more on teachers & staff for parents and students. Midyear survey for teachers looks at leadership team. 

Hanah & Eric mentioned that the Educational Excellence Committee would like to see historical data. 

Is there a way to find out if the respondents are a truly representative sample? Chuck said he thought group of respondents was fairly representative. 

Question: Is there any communication back to the school community from leadership team in a "you asked, we answered" format. 
Answer from Zelski & Goodgame: yes for faculty & staff and kids. Have made changes around the building at MC based on survey.

Faculty & Staff answers were heavily skewed to EC - 46 of 120 responded. 
vast majority are satisfied with their experience

more of a range of answers about challenging students; Kristi Malloy asked for more info about the responses. Zelski and Goodgame indicated that they don't think this is a resource issue and there is no pattern to the answers. 

range of answers on a school being supportive regardless of their background. The responses and the comments caught Meadows' attention. Acknowledgement of and appreciation for equity and diversity work and also a desire to do more of the work that is already being done. 

Common theme: faculty and staff seek more unity and collaboration among the school community. 
 
 

Sabrina Sexton provided update on summer activity, which is included in the board report.

Task force has reviewed draft policies from consultant on social media and media engagement. After drafts, decided to talk more about fundamentals of communication strategy. Chuck Meadows is looking at programmed communication vs ad hoc communication. 

More work on comprehensive strategy and plan needed. Communications work could be prioritized around the first element theme. Communications work has been repeatedly focused on identifying all the potential stakeholders. Very clear is that there is a lot of communications work to be sorted and managed. School is putting out a lot of communication, but there is no way to track/monitor/evaluate the effectiveness of those streams of communication. If you pull something out of the puzzle, you don't know how it will affect the whole. Some of communication decisions are very block and tackle - who gets to send what? who has access to lists? Tactics need to be identified and streamlined to support overall strategy.  

Laura Melton provided an update on the strategic plan. Draft is completed to present to the board and the community. Made a decision at start of summer to hit pause and give Chuck and communication task force time to get into their new roles/work. As of now, need to bring the draft plan back to the board. Laura will cover it in the meeting on Saturday. Next question for board is best way to bring it back to the community. Last year did a meeting and then a survey. Should be ready to approve at October board meeting. 

Current plan went through FY 2018. This is an update to the strategic plan. It should run for 6-12 months past charter renewal and then will need to be updated again. Current plan is on the web site. Nakia Echols commented that strategic plan should not change dramatically with each update. 

Update is included in board packet. 

Currently in second month of fiscal year. In a great financial position. Not a lot of activity over the summer. Standing committee meeting is set for year. 

Jordache Avery provided update on roof. Maintenance supervisor met with APS about 10 days ago and APS went with a new structural engineer. They will use an infrared scan to repair active leaks this school year and then replace the roof over the summer of 2020. Everything else is straightforward. Fire doors replaced. Working on intercom system - getting bids. Grounds repairs at MC almost done. 
 

Beautification projects - front of school initiatives underway/funded by PTCA grant and coordinated by and supplemented by parents. PTCA gets feedback about state of grounds. PTCA did a mini grant of $500 for 2 campuses to help make 1st day of school more exciting and community building. Kari Lovell mentioned that she hosts 3 grounds and buildings work days. We don't have grounds staff and minimal budget. Kari encourages board to come out and participate. Brittany Gove said she got some volunteer names which she will pass along to Kari. Sabrina Sexton asked if the general community comes out to grounds day. They do for farm work but not for elementary campus days due to safety considerations. PTCA can help with advertising. PTCA does see enthusiasm wane over the course of the year.

Backyard work at MC was led by design students. Lots of hardscaping and draining issue. Grey Kaiser is working on a plan for this year based on the vision and data in design classes. Seeing thoughtful feedback from students on the plan. 

Resolution is in packet. Email from Laura Melton yesterday explained the resolution. The only outstanding item was to add a member of the executive committee as a check signatory. Kari is checking with bank to make sure that is possible. 

See report for details. Basically met Gather & Grow Fund (Annual Fund) goal of $140k with $139,500 raised. 100% board participation. First time. Would like to keep that up. Having a part-time staff member dedicated to fund development has helped increase total fundraising. Gather & Grow Fund goal for 2019-2020 is $150k. Plans are already in place for this school year. Donor appreciation party on 9/10 for last year's top donors. 

School sponsorships are reserved for corporate sponsors; individuals are encouraged to support the Gather & Grow Fund. Raised $36k in school sponsorships last year using new model. Was a success but hard to compare it to prior years since this was the first year. Not reflected in Gather and Grow Fund. Funds are shared between PTCA and operating budget. 

Auction will be on March 7, 2020. 

Working to get more statistics on donors i.e. parent participation rate. Stephanie Galer (Fund Development Staff) will be tailoring donor letters by grade for the first time this year. 

Focus on building matching gifts awareness among donors this year.

Howard Franklin reported that there was a big protest outside of APS about charters. Organized by Georgia Federation of Teachers. Two weeks ago Kemp announced that he's looking for budget cuts across the board - 4% this FY and 6% next year. K-12 school shouldn't be affected but there will be implications for related organizations. There will be pre-session budget hearings on this topic. Sept. 17 is open school board seat election. Destined for a runoff on 10/22 due to many candidates. A lot is up in the air going into 2020.