Dr. Mason, MYP Principal
Ms. Lawrence, PIP Principal
Shannon Sanders, Parent

Dragon Boat race - came in third place.  Congrats to all!

Charter Renewal meeting with APS went well; waiting to hear back from APS.  Anticipating either this week or next week.  May be a document of some items that need to be addressed.  Kudos to the team that represented WIA.  There were 7 members from WIA and 9 members from APS.
Items we anticipate hearing from APS on:
    Teacher Retention - we know this is something to work on.  We've been working on this and talking about this for a year.
    Administrative Retention
    Board Succession Planning
    Broad Model - Work through the IB model, single gender and Chinese - From a lack of academic gains over the last five years, it is clear we need to update this model
    Leveling of Classrooms - Have started to implement and they may want additional information
    YTC - Access and price.  Why are so few students taking YTC and what is the cost to take the test
    Restorative Justice - APS felt strongly we've done a great job of having a low suspension rate.  This may play into a part of the frustration with teachers; the fact we do not automatically remove children from school for behavioral issues.  They may want additional information on our training and process.

Single Gender Deep Dive - Several meetings as administrators, have been surveying as many stakeholders as possible.  Working on a community meeting date.  Shooting for the first week in October.

Hurricane Irma - WIA was closed Monday and Tuesday.  Came back Wednesday.  Very proud of the staff.  Out of 104 employees, only 3 people were out.  Had 2 families directly impacted by the storm; have been in touch with both of those families.

Dr. Mason (MYP Principal)- MAP System to let us know where our students are academically.  Gaps in 1st and 8th grade reading.  Largest gap for math is 6th grade.  Test is given in August and serves as a baseline.  Test will be taken again in December to measure growth.  Test was also taken in Science, but no report available as we didn't test with Map in Science last year.  Projections are based on Fall 2016 assessment.  Compares cohort from previous year.  It was a nice to see so many grade levels meeting or exceeding in Math.

Ms. Lawrence (PYP Principal) - PYP will be training teachers on how to use MAP data, understanding the lesson planning template and how to structure the literacy block (90 minutes).  Working on reflections.  Weekly observations with feedback; this has been started per the charter renewal petition.  Focusing on data from the observations.  Working on getting Campus Portal back up and running for parents.  Goal is to phase out progress reports and move toward constant communication.  Working on a partnership with the Woman of College Computing Club at GA Tech to help introduce technology to students.

October 26th and 27th - participating in a field test for testing from GaDOE.

13 members at last meeting; 6 new members. 
Voted on the matrix of success for the end of the year - 3 point increase on either MAP or Milestones.
Will be sharing testing scores for Chinese with Board hopefully by next meeting.

Off to a really good start for the year.  Close to $20K raised through Red Thread already (includes monthly pledges committed by not collected)

Going to continue to stretch as a committee.  Budgeted fundraising goal of $75K with a stretch goal of $97K.  This is comprised of:
                               Goal / Strech
    Monthly Giving - $25,000/$30,000
    Individual Donors - $7,500/$10,000
    Special Events - $10,000/$15,000
    Foundations - $10,000/$12,000
    Business / Civic - $8,000/$10,000
    Staff Contributions - $7,000/$10,000
    Board Giving - $7,500/$10,000
Planning a big push on Georgia Gives day - Tuesday after Thanksgiving.
Special Event - Talking with PTSA and working to develop a signature event around Chinese New Year.  Working to create a panel of events representative of the culture of WIA.  There will not be an auction this year per PTSA; working on several smaller events for this year.

Next scheduled meeting is during fall break.  Meeting will be moved; check public portal for updated time and place.

Presented by Suzanne:
Met with Lisa on the 8th to review financial policies to wrap up work started last fiscal year.  A few final changes and finance committee will vote on them at the next regularly scheduled meeting.

Meeting with auditor moved to this Friday.

Goals: See goals section under governance section.

Lisa - Month end financials for July sent out yesterday.  The rest should be caught up by next month's board meeting.

Members:
 

Members:
Jason Marshall
Sarah Quezada
Anthony Chung
Tracy Trammell
Kristen Prude
David Mitchem
Katie Delp
Nicole Jones
Beth Gay
Kate Boyer
Ewa Carter

Tom Tidwell
Mazie Lynn Causey
Elisa Buckner
Jan Hansen
Ewa Carter
Thomas Ryan-lawrence
Exoffio Members:
Beth Gay
Jason Marshall
 

Annual Goals:
Review routinely the MAP and Milestones data
Monitor the increase by 3 percentage points on MAP and Milestones data
Review sub-categories routinely in terms of their progress on testing

Annual Goals:
Raise $75,000 as stated in the committee report.

Annual Goals:
Update WIA Policy Documents
Update the Family and Staff Handbooks
Update Bylaws
Formalize the board recruitment and on boarding processes
Ensure creation of measurable goals for the board as a whole

Strategic planning committee dismantled by earlier vote - see minutes above.

Will research a new secondary counsel to replace McGuire Woods.

Creation of Policy Roundup Taskforce - work to shore up all school policies.  Current taskforce includes Jan Hansen, Tom Tidwell, Dr. Mason, Donica Johnson, David Mitchum and Lee Durden.
Single Gender effort – accountability and oversight has been shift from Governance to Academic Excellence.
Charter Renewal Update – Governance asked the 7 participants in the APS interview to jot down their ideas and experience for future reference.  Governance committee is going to formally recommend we sever our relationship with current legal counsel.  There is a board member with a conflict of interest and while we did everything correct,APS is not comfortable with this.  Our secondary counsel would move to become primary counsel.
Next mandatory board training is October 19th from 4:00pm to 8:00pm
Weighted lottery – Working on coming up with proper system for weighted lottery.  Hope to have more information in October.

Strategic planning committee dissolved per previous vote.

September meeting moved to August to discuss Auction.  No auction this year.  No one came forward to lead it.  Next meeting 10/3/17. Board members please join PTSA via online application. 
Working on new event - Save the Cookie Dough.  Fall Festival.  October 9th and 10th.  Students get pledges for running laps.

Mazie Lynn checking on if we actually need a separate document for action items from each meeting.
Everyone else doing well with BOT implementation.
 

Shannon Sanders:
Teacher retention - addressed in strategic plan.  What measures are taking place this year and how is administration being held accountable?
    Jason Marshall - Collectively, MYP and PYP have been focused on relationship building with teachers.  Letting them know they have a part to play in our growth as a school.  Teacher advisory committee - one for each school.  Can talk about anything going on at the school, both inside and outside of the classroom.  Provides an opportunity to give feedback.  Also, putting more focus on hiring and how we bring people in on the front end.  Retention starts in the beginning.  Moving away from focus of "having a body in the room" and moving toward finding the "right teacher for WIA".  Worked on moving up teacher contracts, which pushed up budgeted.  Goal this year is 90% retention again this year.  Working on partnerships with Spellman, Kennesaw, and GA State.  Jason is ultimate responsible for teacher retention; he then works with principals and staff to enact the vision. 
    Katie Delp, Mazie Lynn Causey, Lisa Price and Thomas Ryan-Lawrence - As the board, we evaluate the ED, not the administration.  Administration is evaluated by the ED.  The ED Evaluation Committee works with Jason to approve and support him in his goals, and for this year, teacher retention is another one of his goals.  Board approved a salary step program to help with teacher retention despite the fact it caused a barely breakeven budget projection for this year.  Also have built in a number of programs to be rolled out over the next 5 years (included in charter petition) both to attract and retain talent. Retention calculated by removing those who have documented reason for being unable to return (ie: Spouse relocating for school).

With the single gender survey, was the purpose if the school should eliminate single gender education at WIA?  What prompted the survey?  Felt one of the questions was confusing.
  Jason - Not specifically about "do we want to get rid of single gender".  One of the things heard last year was that many of our teachers left because the boys classes were difficult.  Wanted to find out how true was that.  Surveying teachers, parents, former teachers because we wanted to know if that statement was valid.  Goal is to find out how important it is to our families.  IB and Chinese is the feedback we received as to what was important to our school community. Single Gender rarely came up in strategic planning.  Wanted to see how married we are to the concept.
  Suzanne Burns, Darryl, Mazie Lynn, Thomas - Do we have any data to indicate that single gender is beneficially to our students from an academic perspective.  Board has been looking at this for almost five years.  Data goes both ways at times.  The data, historically, has been inconclusive.  Board feels as though we continue to bump up against SG in terms of conversation, money, classroom costs, teacher retention.