River Valley Charter School
Minutes
Committee on Trustees Meeting
Date and Time
Wednesday February 7, 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
Committee Members Absent
None
I. Opening Items
A.
Record Attendance
B.
Call the Meeting to Order
II. Committee on Trustees
A.
Update CoT committee description based on feedback recieved
B.
Discussion: BoT Volunteer Event Recap and Future events
Both the kitchen organization/deep clean and E2 library organization was well received. Eight trustees participated on 1/31/2024.
Future Board team building suggestions:
- Bring back River Valley Views.
- Encourage all board members to participate in a classroom observations.
- One person can observe per classroom. Observations last 20 minutes or more.
- Perhaps classroom observation should be a requirement for all board members (consider part of orientation).
- Ali will organize the classroom observations
- Cathy will send an example observation policy
- Next event could be beautifying the strip of plantings that run along the front of the school.
- "Bring a Flower and a Friend" event.
- Target an April date.
C.
Discussion: Board Retreat Planning
Will suggest Saturday 5/18 or Sunday 5/19 for the Board Retreat
Invite/include Trustee-elects to the retreat
In the future, CoT will set the retreat date 2 years in advance, and participation on that date will be required by all Board members.
Past retreats have felt more productive when pre-work is assigned and completed before the retreat date. Could the new Elizabeth Slade book be part of the pre-work?
Understanding Montessori is the suggested topic
- Bring in speaker?
- Montessori immersion afternoon at RVCS?
- Learn more about Maria Montessori?
- How to have difficult board discussions (Role play)?
- Historical perspectives
Possible locations:
- Vesey Park?
- RVCS
- Other suggestoins?
D.
Board recruitment planning
Albert to create and share spreadsheet to keep track of potential new trustees.
Albert to send application materials to other CoT members
All prospective Trustees to apply in April, vote by BoT in May
Will target recruiting 3-4 new Trustees
Will ask Exec Committee for suggested areas of experience/ expertise needed.
No feedback was received from other Board members regarding the draft updated CoT committee description.