None.

None.

ECMS-Gardena Principal Dr. O'Leary presented the ECMS-G update:

Focusing on priority goal 2b through Equity and Diversity initiative. The Equity and Diversity Committee promotes and supports the development of school culture that relates to fostering equity and inclusion and the appreciation of diversity within the school community.

The priority goals for this presentation focuses on improving enrollment, retention and achievement of African-American students at each school and recruiting teachers and staff that reflect the ethnic and racial characteristics of the students in the communities served.

Reviewed site level challenges and created action plans with ACE (Assess, Collaborate, and Execute) leadership team. This team reviewed the conditions for African-American students and staff at ECMS-G.

With four African-American families that unenrolled their students, the team found that it was because of being displaced by their home, families not feeling supported by staff, and discipline infractions that were not sufficiently restorative.

The ACE team also found that African-American staff frustrations included lack of representation, lack of staff to staff support, and feeling underutilized--not maximizing their skills or capacities.

Next school year, with the switch to the El Dorado Charter SELPA, Principal Dr. O'Leary was able to attend workshop conducted by this SELPA and was impressed.

Tier 1 action plan is to enhance recruitment by pairing the current recruiting staff with African-American staff. Also, to recruit in nearby cities with high African-American populations and to administer exit surveys to exiting 8th-grade students to assess their experiences and understand their perspectives. Tier 2 action plan focuses on providing more opportunities to African-American students to promote student events on campus. Tier 3 action plan is each one reach one, where teachers can connect with students beyond the curriculum through after-school, lunch programs, and clinic enrichment classes.

CEO Alison Diaz applauded these efforts, noting the tiered structure was awesome and seeing that many best practices have been implemented from equity and diversity workshops that ECS has attended or hosted.

The Black Excellence Club is launched a Mathlete program to develop a tutoring support program for struggling 6th graders.

To close, a video was then shared showing a recent ECMS-G student event celebrating students' cultures in a high-quality way demonstrating excellence.

ECHS Principal K.C. Fabiero and Counselor Rossa Dono presented the ECHS update:

Partnership with CARPE has begun; ECHS has been accepted into the consortium. This partnership with CARPE has been a great benefit to ECHS students. CARPE has helped ECHS grow their capacity.

Introduced Rossa Dono, who has spearheaded the effort. Ms. Dono shared the work that has been done to date: a thorough review of FAFSA applications has been completed for every single student. Every eligible student has completed their FAFSA application by the March 2, 2019 deadline.

At the next CARPE event, ECHS will network with other organizations to improve their recruitment efforts.

Finally, a student was tragically shot and killed several weeks ago. Over 17 counselors came in from outside ECHS and worked with students. Students and staff rallied together and became closer as a result of this tragic event. Students stated how proud they were to be a part of this communion, including moments of silence and events at the home of the family. A fundraising event held for this student raised almost $1,000 toward providing support to the family of the student.

Finally, out of over 2,000 Los Angeles area schools, ECHS was recently rated as a top school (around the 99th percentile) serving low-income Latino students based on academic achievement in English Language Arts.

LESD board rep Dr. Hamilton commented that regarding the tragic death of the ECHS student, it was a pleasure for LESD to offer support and further expressed her condolences for what everyone at ECHS went through. Secondarily, LESD was pleased when they discovered that four LESD schools received the same award that ECHS did.

ECMS-Inglewood Principal Beth Bernstein-Yamashiro presented the ECMS-I update:

Priority 2a - closing the achievement gap. Meaning closing the gap between ECMS-I students and students in wealthy school districts. Select ECMS-I students are members of MESA and recently competed in a competition held at USC.

ECMS-I has been putting a heavy dual focus on English Learners and AA students.  As a result, English Learners has been keeping up with non-ELs in meeting or exceeding NWEA targets.

English Learners v. National Norm slide was shown. The conclusion drawn from this slide was that more attention is needed to help EL students close the gap.

The next chart shown was the % of AA students vs Latino students meeting or exceeding NWEA targets.

ECMS-I was also recently rated in the top 1 percentile of annual Low Income Latino middle school students. 34.89% Latino SED students on the state level met or exceeded vs 56.56% of these students at ECMS-I.

CEO Alison Diaz also commented that though it is not 100% verified yet, ECMS-I rated a #1 in LA County middle schools in positive growth rate.

CEO Alison Diaz and COO Farnaz Flechner presented the CEO/COO update:

Alison Diaz thanked the principals for sharing the successes at their schools. Planning for school year 2019-2020 is underway, including prioritization of top goals and budgeting.

In exciting news:

• Current ECMS-I Principal Beth Bernstein-Yamashiro is being promoted at the end of the current school year to the position of Principal Coach (working with all ECS Principals), which means that current ECMS-I Assistant Principal Geneva Matthews will be promoted to ECMS-I Principal.
• Lucia Banuelos was promoted to ECHS Assistant Principal and has started attending ECS Cabinet meetings.
• Huge positive culture shift at Home Office reported by sites due to the leadership of Farnaz Flechner.
• Further updates will be shared for the board to consider around succession planning, including how Alison Diaz can best support ECS' growth goals moving forward

Alison Diaz also shared about her recent trip to the CCSA conference as well as the Hike the Hill event, where she had the opportunity to introduce CA State Senator Steven Bradford. At the CCSA conference, Alison Diaz heard about new bills currently being considered that if passed will impact the ability for charters to initially become approved and/or be renewed.

Alison Diaz will be attending the Green Schools Conference in early April. With ECS being a Catalyst School District, ECS frequently is called on to share best practices with other schools. Toward this work, Alison Diaz presented recently at three schools.

ECS will also have a strong presence at the Accelerator program in April in Houston, Texas.

EdTec Consultant Dorothy Lee presented the Financial Update:

The fundraising slide was shown.

ECHS actual attendance was compared against the forecast.

ECHS changes to income were compared to forecast. The income level remains very positive for ECHS.

The ECHS balance sheet was then shown.

The ECHS CapEx slide was then shown with no irregularities to report.

ECMS-G actual attendance was compared against the forecast.

ECMS-G changes to income were compared to forecast. The main change was in depreciation because of on-going Prop K work.

The ECMS-G balance sheet was then shown.

The ECMS-G CapEx slide was then shown with no irregularities to report.

ECMS-I actual attendance was compared against the forecast. The forecast was found to be a bit low, so there will be an expected $30-40k in ADA revenues.

ECMS-I changes to income were compared to forecast. The income level remains very positive for ECHS.

The ECMS-I balance sheet was then shown.

The ECMS-I CapEx slide was then shown with no irregularities to report.

The recently passed Charter School Transparency Law was then reviewed, to be go in effect on 1/1/2020.

ECS Development Manager Julie Vo shared the Fundraising YTD Update:

Total fundraising goal is $1,390,000. To date, ECS has raised $1,014,355. About 75-80% of the overall fundraising goal has been reached.

Great Public Schools Now has been a dedicated funder, recently awarding $55,000 to support ECS's teacher retention efforts. In addition, several other multi-year grant funds have been received. New grant applications continue to be submitted toward other development efforts at ECS schools.

School tours continue to be held twice a month. Board members are encouraged and challenged to bring one of their contacts to attend a school tour. Board members are also encouraged to invite a friend, colleague or acquaintance to speak at the upcoming ECMS-I Career Day on May 2.

Finally, the 2020-2021 school year will be ECS's 20 year anniversary and everyone is encouraged to start making plans for how this can be celebrated across the organization.

COO Farnaz Flechner started the LCAP, Budget, and Strategic Priorities study session:

A brief overview was shared on the Local Control Funding Formula, which drives each ECS school's Local Control and Accountability Plan. The Governor's Budget assumptions were shared, including a 3.46% Cost of Living Adjustment increase, along with about a 1.5% drop in One-Time Grant funds available. In addition, over the next five years, there will be increases to the STRS and PERS pension costs.

ECS preliminary budget assumptions were shared:

• Assuming 10% increase in ECMS fundraising with a slight reduction in ECHS fundraising
• Slight increase in benefits allocation
• Revenues from the new SELPA partnership with El Dorado Charter SELPA for school year 19/20 will increase approximately $25k, but much of this will go to paying psych services that were previously being offered to ECS by Southwest SELPA.

Home Office changes in staffing were shared.

A salary comparison with multiple schools across Los Angeles was then shared. ECS schools were shown to be in the low range for year 1-3, mid-range from years 3-9, and mid-range for teachers in their 12th year and 20th year.

The projected 19/20 budget for each school was then shared.

The budget timeline was then shared. Initial meetings will take place in March, following up meetings in April, staff will be consulted on their LCAPs and budgets will be finalized in May, and then board review and approval will take place in June.

At 2 of the 3 ECS schools, the budget presentation will be shown. The meeting attendees were then asked to share with their table partner: how should we engage with certificated staff about salary increases? What is missing in this analysis?

Board member Ernie Levroney commented that this presentation appeared very much in line with what he's seen at other school leadership to staff meetings. Recommends that ECS remains competitive but continues to keep long-term sustainability in mind.

Dr. Hamilton commented that there are other factors as well that impact teachers such as professional learning, time to collaborate, and more social workers and counselors. The one refrain heard in budget talks that she's been in is don't cut the social workers.

The conversation then shifted to academic priorities at ECS. ECS Director of Curriculum & Instruction Danielle Kelsick led this session. Academic highlights were shown: ECHS students completing coursework, ECMS-I ranking #1 in ELA and #5 in Math, as well as ECMS-G achieving rankings nearly as high in this same award program.

Four strategic priorities were then shared. A need for coherence, for how these 4 priorities align with the mission statement was talked about. The challenge for ECS home office and site leadership is being able to focus on fewer things since everything that is ongoing is viewed as really important to the success of the organization. Slides showing the success of the current academic model were then shown.

There is an opportunity for change: having one clear academic focus and one organizational focus for school year 19/20. What this means is that some existing priorities will necessarily have to be put on hold to execute these foci. These foci will be directly implemented in the Local Control and Accountability Plan which drives each ECS school's strategy for the academic year.

LESD Board Representative Dr. Betsy Hamilton asked if raising student ELA scores have been found to correlate to higher student Math scores.

ECMS-G Principal Dr. Qiana O'Leary commented that with the high proportion of English Learners at our schools, it would be a great bang for ECS's buck to focus on literacy within all disciplines.

Principal-In-Residence Dave Trejo commented that in his experience, being behind in Math can start at an early age: students can become extremely underprepared in Math as they move up each grade level and when they get to college they are so far behind that they don't catch up and gain access to majors and professions with higher Math requirements.

ECS Director of Strategic Initiatives Kami Cotler commented that there is a level of passivity and fear that many students face when learning Math and this must be addressed directly.

ECMS-I Principal Beth Bernstein-Yamashiro commented that the goal is to see what needs to be attacked and with an interdisciplinary lens at ECS, many of these academic areas are interlinked. The most important aspect is to be extremely intentional with whichever plan of action is taken.

The meeting attendees were then asked to pair share to the following questions:

• What other data would you want to see?
• In your professional work, what have you learned from your experiences with focus?
• Feedback on the process for selecting priorities?

LESD board rep Dr. Hamilton commented that given the high proportion of English Learners, a focus on literacy, not just in English coursework, but across all subjects, will pay high dividends.

Board member Ernie Levroney commented that up until 3rd grade, students are learning to read. Then after, students are reading to learn. If students are behind in literacy, they will not be able to fully take in the content from all of the other subjects.

Board Vice President Ken Deemer commented that with either focus chosen, the important thing is how well the process is done and how many iterations can take place.

Board President Anthony Jowid commented that in his experience, having a singular focus and aligning all work activities toward that singular focus will help ECS achieve success. Furthermore, Anthony Jowid believes that with the intelligence and passion that the ECS team demonstrates, they will certainly achieve their goals through a singular focus.

Tabled.

Tabled.

Dave Trejo appreciated the way that the ECS organization worked with Dave through his paternity leave as he had his first child. He is infinitely grateful for how well this leave was handled.

LESD board Rep Dr. Hamilton appreciated the conversation around the Accelerator process and the strategic background behind the singular focus discussion.

Board member Ernie Levroney appreciated the vulnerability displayed by the ECS principals in their presentations, standing in front of the board and being open about what they were struggling with.

Kami Cotler appreciated the opener, particularly the last question posed.

Ken Deemer appreciated the energizing meeting just held, focusing on what matters.

Alison Diaz appreciated the board's advice that it doesn't matter which singular focus is chosen, that ECS will win either way.

Board member Jenina Ramirez appreciated the growth and potential with the new leadership and with the laser focus on the strategies.

Anthony Jowid appreciated Dr. Hamilton's participation at ECS board meetings as she contributes her experience and insights to the board's discussions, which helps the board to think about things differently.