River Valley Charter School
Minutes
Accountability Committee Meeting
Date and Time
Monday June 2, 2025 at 6:00 PM
Location
River Valley Charter School Middle School Great Room
River Valley Charter School welcomes your participation at Board meetings. The purpose of a public meeting of the Board of Trustees (“Board”) is to conduct the affairs of the organization in public. Your participation assures us of continuing community interest in our school and assists the Board in making the best decisions for our school. To assist you in the ease of speaking/participating in our meetings, guidelines are provided at the bottom of this agenda. All materials for all board and committee meetings, are available on our Board on track public portal found at rivervalleycharter.org.
Committee Members Present
C. Irose, E. Simone, J. Patterson, K. Kuse, M. Mitchell-Daniels, N. Durkee, P. Ganley, T. Murdy
Committee Members Absent
A. Godino, D. Herrera
Guests Present
A. Solerno
I. Opening Items
A.
Record Attendance
B.
Call the Meeting to Order
C.
Approve March Minutes
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- Review of Accountability Plan for external reporting (Criterion #1) (annual dissemination of educational information). Karen is taking care of audit report. One DERS assessment complete, didn't get to second one this year. History, culture and ecology essays from E2 students - scores from this will be part of this. Metric on "experiences" across grade levels, plot is being built currently by Jane. COLs are part of this. New for the 6 years, is a "mini-COL" "6th Grade Project". The last objective for dissemination - Kat's mural project has been shared with sending districts and community in general. End of year email will also be shared. Also shared with Harbor Light Montessori and Mass Charter Association. Karen also spoke at Rotary Club about our Charter Montessori. Mary and Karen also had a booth at Earth Day at ACE (Action for Climate Emergency). Also went to legislative dinner.
- Committee self assessment, discussion, all.
--Yearlong plan of topics for year to be discussed ahead. There does exist a file that maps this out, but it needs to be better shared/find-able. Currently resides in a sharepoint site of the Board Chair.
--Nancy - Succession planning for AC leadership needs to be better laid out. Transparency.
--Achala - prefers meetings are not hybrid. Either all in person, or all virtual.
----Jane: this would help with getting more diversity in membership. Patti: would rather at least have someone present virtually, vs. not at all if can't be in person.
--Mason: dashboard next steps are not clear. Prefer a setting so that non-board members are able to view it.
--Mason: was looking at last charter of AC - reporting of issues - what does that mean? e.g. caregiver survey results on math or special education? Should follow-ups be more explicitly laid out? Perhaps AC can more formally lay this out so follow up can occur?
**Maybe there's an action item tracker within BoardOnTrack?
--Jane: BoardOnTrack is not as helpful for live documents? Nancy: perhaps link out to Google drive documents from BoardOnTrack. How is this working for other committees.
--AI minute taking may be an option. TL:DV is an option that has a free version. Concern that it would not be time well spent. Concerns on equity and diversity and inclusion, might not be the safest forum to archive our public meetings. Colin: there are options to keep it fairly closed/safe (would not recommend ChatGPT). Could have an assigned secretary (Deb used to do this for all committees).
--is 6pm a good time?
--can there be a committee onboarding for new leadership? Perhaps a more formal visual or organization slide to help orient leaders and new members.
- Annual Report due to Charter School Office by 7/31. Status and Accountability Committee acknowledgement. Not yet started. On the docket.
- Financial Audit status - meant to be internal Montessori audit is complete. Using DERS rating system, Jane is trained up, Karen is almost complete with training, once finished can add in feedback on DERS results. Would like to update format to more in line with one that would align with updating accreditation, not DERS (as is the case currently). Content would essentially be the same. Internal audit will be presented to faculty and staff first, prior to AC.