River Valley Charter School
Minutes
Accountability Committee Meeting
Date and Time
Monday February 3, 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
A. Godino (remote), C. Irose (remote), D. Herrera, E. Simone, J. Patterson, K. Kuse, M. Mitchell-Daniels, N. Durkee, T. Murdy
Committee Members Absent
P. Ganley
I. Opening Items
A.
Record Attendance
B.
Call the Meeting to Order
C.
Approve December Minutes
D.
Approve January Minutes
At end, MCAS follow-up - this comment will be deleted from the minutes.
At the BoT monthly, survey neutral option - incomplete statement, remove.
Point on how to approach survey for multiple children brought up again. Currently parents can complete it multiple times. Might have to revisit options within survey monkey next iteration ('25-'26 school year).
Survey status:
As of this morning 177 students accounted for (149 responses as just before this meeting). Qualitatively the feedback has been very thoughtful/informative. In general, trending # of responses decreases with the older student/family pairings. Response rate is markedly improved vs. last year when we were less than 100.
Plan is for Karen and Jane to review data and send out summary in March, directly to the community/sending families/caregivers. Potentially in Current or email format.
-reserve time for next AC meeting at March 3rd data to discuss results. Plan to distribute to families that same week.
Criterion 6: Program Delivery Update
-Curriculum maps made in 2018. Accessibility to faculty perhaps could use improvement, would need more active support, a coordinator. Would also be useful to communicate these maps to caregivers.
-Instruction. Focus areas identified. Montessori materials, consistency across classrooms.
-Assessment of Program evaluation. DERS, screeners, Montessori audits, etc. - how well are we using that data to drive curriculum development and continued improvement. Curriculum maps could/should be part of audit (internal and external) review - would be opportunity to review and potentially update maps. Internal audit planned end of Feb/early March this year. Second round of screeners due next week. DESA used by Tobin Montessori school, something Jane is interested in looking into as additional assessment.
-Supports for all learners. National Centers training completed this past summer. Some aspects from training seem to be working well.
-Question on where culture, values, discipline, etc. are incorporated in Program Delivery. Would fit somewhat under Instruction. Also falls into Criterion 7, safe and supportive environment.
Mentioned that future work could cross reference common core standard mapping with Montessori work (MSCA, Montessori Curriculum to Standards Alignment). Would also be useful to pull in mapping efforts that Laura Hunt had run several years back. Reference is from National Center for Montessori in the Public Sector, aka The National Center.