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River Valley Charter School

Minutes

Committee on Trustees Meeting

Date and Time

Wednesday January 10, 2024 at 6:00 PM

Location

River Valley Charter School, 2 Perry Way, Newburyport. Middle School Humanitarian 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

A. Fields, A. Ting, C. Getz, C. Martin (remote), E. Bradley (remote)

Committee Members Absent

None

I. Opening Items

A.

Record Attendance

B.

Call the Meeting to Order

A. Ting called a meeting of the Committee on Trustees Committee of River Valley Charter School to order on Wednesday Jan 10, 2024 at 6:03 PM.

II. Committee on Trustees

A.

Update CoT committee description

Reviewed Committee on Trustees Committee Description (2011-2012).

  • Director Review to move to Executive Committee responsibility (The Director Review is not currently part of the CoT Committee description
  • Added Montessori Education as an item to provide training on to the BoT
  • Clarified responsibility of CoT to evaluate BoT operations and evaluate BoT Committee effectiveness. 
    • While the CoT would implement evaluations of the BoT and BoT Committees, the actions taken to rectify any improvements needed would fall under the responsibility of the Executive Committee.
    • The idea of how "checks and balances" within the BoT is important and how internal evaluation plays an important role in this. 
  • The Committee description is also an outward facing document to the community, and should be easy to understand and interpret the committees' roles.
  • All Committee descriptions should be passed out at the first BoT meeting of each year to all members and new members should receive the Committee descriptions during orientation. 
  • Need to confirm if current Accountability Plan still requires bi-yearly external audit of BoT operations.

 

 

B.

Discussion: BoT Volunteer Event

  • CoT will propose  the paired dates of:
    • Wednesday January 24, 5:30p-8:30p and Saturday January 27, 10:00a - 1:00p or
    • Wednesday January 31, 5:30p-8:30p and Saturday February 3, 10:00a - 1:00p
  • The idea of paired dates is to allow the most BoT members to participate during the same week. Some tasks may take both dates to complete. 
  • Public will also be invited
  • Tasks include:
    • Kitchen clean-up, de-clutter, and organization with labeling of item "homes"
    • Ball retrieval and possible fence repair in playground and around entire school grounds
    • E2 Classroom library organization
    • Front entrance planting area clean up 

C.

Discussion: Board and committee recruitment for 24-25

Importance of non parent members discussed - Pros and Cons

 

Difficulty of finding community members to become effective BoT members, given the time commitment for an organization, that they may not have any relationship other than BoT membership.

III. Other Business

A.

Announcement

A. Fields announced that participation in classroom observations would be available to BoT members upon request. 

IV. Closing Items

A.

Adjourn Meeting

There being no further business to be transacted, and upon motion duly made, seconded and approved, the meeting was adjourned at 7:02 PM.

Respectfully Submitted,
A. Ting

THE ORDER OF BUSINESS MAY BE CHANGED WITHOUT NOTICE Notice is hereby given that the order of consideration of matters on this agenda may be changed without prior notice.

REASONABLE LIMITATIONS MAY BE PLACED ON PUBLIC TESTIMONY The Board Chair reserves the right to impose reasonable time limits on public testimony to ensure that the agenda is completed.