River Valley Charter School
Minutes
RVCS Accountability Committee Meeting
Date and Time
Tuesday October 14, 2025 at 6:00 PM
Location
By video conference
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
A. Godino (remote), A. Salerno (remote), A. Ting (remote), C. Irose (remote), D. Herrera (remote), J. Patterson (remote), K. Kuse (remote), M. Mitchell-Daniels (remote), P. Ganley (remote)
Committee Members Absent
A. Thoele
I. Opening Items
A.
Record Attendance
B.
Call the Meeting to Order
C.
Approve September 2025 Minutes
Committee member Alison Salerno's name was misspelled in the Minutes
D.
Updates from Administration
E.
Accountability Plan update
Did not discuss due to time constraints.
F.
Accountability Dashboard
Did not discuss due to time constraints.
II. Other Business
A.
Accountability Committee administrative item
An additional Accountability Committee meeting to be held on Friday, Sept 17 at 5pm, by video conference.
Jane Patterson gave a presentation focusing on the school's MCAS scores and state accountability.
MCAS is just one data point RVCS uses in its assessment of students.
For state accountability regarding RVCS (K-8), they look at Achievement (MCAS scores in English language arts, math, and science) Student Growth Percentiles (English language arts and math - Student Growth Percentiles (SGPs) describe how much student improved their scores compared to other students across the state who scored similarly to them the year before), and Chronic Absenteeism (Percentage of students missing 10 percent or more of the days they were enrolled at a given school during the school year).
Looking at grades 3-8 combined, RVCS is above state averages in all areas (English, Math, Science).
Last year RVCS was at "moderate progress" towards our state set target. This year, we made it to the next category level - "substantial" progress towards our targets.
There was also significant improvement in chronic absenteeism.
Civics outperformed the state by 33% (Only grade 8 took this module).
RVCS MCAS scores for English/ Language Arts improved to above pre-pandemic scores for grades 3,4,6,7.
RVCS MCAS scores for Math improved to above pre-pandemic scores for grades 4,5,6,8.
Performance of various student subgroups was discussed, highlighting the significant score improvement trend in 7th and 8th grades. This is attributed to the culmination of Montessori method and the familiarity of test taking by students in the middle school.
While improvements performance were notable, admin also underscored that there were also trends where scores declined.
The committee emphasized the need for a parent workshop/ townhall to contextualize the MCAS results and reassure parents. The committee also discussed the importance of tracking patterns and addressing areas of specific concerns, such as the pandemic cohort and a decrease in overall female math scores.
This MCAS presentation will be presented at the October board meeting.
Non parent board members will follow-up with admin to examine desegregated MCAS data to further review.
The allotted meeting time was exceeded. A special accountability meeting is scheduled for Friday, October 17 at 5pm via video conference to cover the remaining agenda items from this meeting.