Equitas Academy Charter School
Minutes
Board Meeting
Date and Time
Thursday December 2, 2021 at 3:00 PM
Location
120 S Los Angeles St
Los Angeles, CA 90012
Additional call-in locations:
4324 Franklin Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90027
1040 N Gardner St #11, W Hollywood, CA 90046
Join Zoom Meeting
https://equitasacademy.zoom.us/j/81689776204
Meeting ID: 816 8977 6204
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Meeting ID: 816 8977 6204
PUBLIC COMMENT AT EQUITAS ACADEMY BOARD MEETINGS – An opportunity for the public to address the Board will be provided prior to discussion and action on agenda items. Members of the public who wish to speak on any item are requested to identify themselves and indicate on which agenda item they wish to speak. The Board will provide an opportunity for the public to speak for a maximum of three (3) minutes, unless granted additional time at the discretion of the Board. Testimony shall be limited in content to matters pertaining to Equitas Academy. The Board may not take any action on matters discussed during the public testimony period that are not listed on the agenda. Brown Act Compliance: Agenda posted at School.
Pursuant to the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, any individual with a disability who requires reasonable accommodation to attend or participate in a meeting of the Board of Directors, may request assistance in advance of the meeting by contacting Equitas Academy Charter School at 1700 West Pico Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90015 or by phone (213) 201-0440.
Pursuant to the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, any individual with a disability who requires reasonable accommodation to attend or participate in a meeting of the Board of Directors, may request assistance in advance of the meeting by contacting Equitas Academy Charter School at 1700 West Pico Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90015 or by phone (213) 201-0440.
Directors Present
A. Santino, C. Langston (remote), D. Ortiz, F. Spindler, L. Heisser, O. Bajracharya, P. Reddy, T. Bell
Directors Absent
A. Perez, D. Krishna
Directors who arrived after the meeting opened
D. Ortiz, F. Spindler
Guests Present
C. Melgares, C. Osuna, J. Belcher, J. Rayas, L. Lofton, M. Borrego, M. Ford, S. Sobkov, ggonzalez@equitasacademy.org (remote), spacheco@equitasacademy.org
I. Opening Items
A.
Record Attendance and Guests
B.
Call the Meeting to Order
T. Bell called a meeting of the board of directors of Equitas Academy Charter School to order on Thursday Dec 2, 2021 at 3:17 PM.
C.
Approve Minutes
O. Bajracharya made a motion to approve the minutes from Board Meeting on 10-21-21.
A. Santino seconded the motion.
The board VOTED to approve the motion.
| Roll Call | |
|---|---|
| A. Perez |
Absent
|
| D. Ortiz |
Absent
|
| O. Bajracharya |
Aye
|
| D. Krishna |
Absent
|
| P. Reddy |
Aye
|
| L. Heisser |
Aye
|
| A. Santino |
Aye
|
| T. Bell |
Aye
|
| F. Spindler |
Absent
|
| C. Langston |
Aye
|
II. Public Comment
A.
Public Comment
There were no members of the public present.
III. Consent
A.
First Interim Report
P. Reddy made a motion to Approve the First Interim Report.
O. Bajracharya seconded the motion.
The board VOTED to approve the motion.
| Roll Call | |
|---|---|
| T. Bell |
Aye
|
| O. Bajracharya |
Aye
|
| D. Ortiz |
Absent
|
| C. Langston |
Aye
|
| A. Santino |
Aye
|
| F. Spindler |
Absent
|
| L. Heisser |
Aye
|
| A. Perez |
Absent
|
| D. Krishna |
Absent
|
| P. Reddy |
Aye
|
B.
Line of Credit
P. Reddy made a motion to Approve the Renewal of $3M Revolving Line of Credit.
O. Bajracharya seconded the motion.
The board VOTED to approve the motion.
| Roll Call | |
|---|---|
| L. Heisser |
Aye
|
| C. Langston |
Aye
|
| A. Santino |
Aye
|
| A. Perez |
Absent
|
| O. Bajracharya |
Aye
|
| T. Bell |
Aye
|
| F. Spindler |
Absent
|
| D. Krishna |
Absent
|
| P. Reddy |
Aye
|
| D. Ortiz |
Absent
|
IV. Audit Committee
A.
Board Review and Approval of FY20-21 Audit
This item was removed from today's Board Meeting agenda
V. Org Updates
A.
Organizational Updates: Talent and Equity Updates
Malka Borrego acknowledged all staff and committee members present and shared a presentation on Org Updates. Ms. Borrego highlights that the focus for this meeting is Talent, Alumni and Enrollment as shared in her 21-22 Meeting Focus presentation.
CEO Update:
Key Organizational Outcomes:
For the following Key Organizational Outcomes there is no/insufficient data to present updates:
- State Assessment Growth
- Map Grade Level Performance
- Staff Satisfaction
Ms. Borrego presented updates on the following Key organization outcomes as shared in her slide deck. All outcomes are progressing.
- Staff Retention
- Overall Financial Health
- On Target
- Fundraising
- Ms. Borrego was notified today that Equitas was awarded the Parsons's grant for $100,000.
- Facilities Pipeline
- Family Recruitment / School Enrollment
- Family Recruitment is currently at 89% and the goal remains at 90% so efforts are continuing.
- Parent Satisfaction
- Parent Conferences will be taking place soon. There have been some changes in the data.
- Student Discipline Suspension/ Expulsion
- There is currently one possible suspension.
Catie Langston asked what is the plan for supporting the social emotion wellness for suspended students.
- Equitas works with several partners to give students as many resources as we can connect them with.
Malka Borrego shared the following updates to the CEO Goals for FY21-22.
- A Director of DEIA was hired.
- Hoping to hire Director of People and Culture by January.
- An Interim Chief of Staff has been working with Ms. Borrego to take on some of the Chief work load but not the full load of work. Specifically the Interim Chief of Staff has taken on some of the responsibilities around the weekly CEO email.
- Two governance committee members have been added.
- Equitas will begin working with an external consultant to do team coaching that will give new tools and supports. This support will start with CEO, COO and Gregg Gonzalez, Interim Chief Schools Officer. The work will move on for there.
Ms. Borrego shared that Jessica Edelman, Director of Teacher Talent, worked alongside all School Directors and Gregg Gonzalez to develop an analysis of talent strategy based on exit interview data. This analysis is specifically focused on EQ4.
Ms. Borrego also shared Org wide Diversity statistics.
- 73% of all Equitas staff identifies as BIPOC.
- Ms. Borrego shared details about Teacher Diversity by School
- 48% of Teachers at EQ identify as BIPOC
- 65% of Teachers at EQ2 identify as BIPOC
- 60% of Teachers at EQ3 identify as BIPOC
- 47% of Teachers at EQ4 identify as BIPOC
- 33% of Teachers at EQ5 identify as BIPOC
- 56% of Teachers at EQ identify as BIPOC
- The average percentage of teachers that identify as BIPOC in California is 28.5%
- Ms. Borrego continued by sharing how these demographics reflect the Equitas community as seen in the presentation.
Malka Borrego continued by presenting the following data on Hiring:
- New Hires 21-22 compared to previous years.
- Teacher and Instructional Support Hiring 21-22.
- Percent of Vacancies filled as of 11/9 for teacher and instructional support.
Maggie Ford, COO, shared details about the Enrollment Growth.
- Equitas has served 11,977 students since 2009.
Seidy Pacheco, Director of Enrollment, presented on recruitment and retention.
- Equitas is aiming to change the enrollment thought process to become a long term partnership with families.
- Enrollment team was able to learn more about digital marketing and additional ways of recruitment and enrollment.
- The new strategy for recruitment is to recruit for the entire Network and individual schools only.
- Majority of families apply to at least two schools
- Enrollment saw a dip during the pandemic but the numbers now reflect a higher number than two years ago.
- Ms. Pacheco presented details on each grade level.
- Highlight: over 50 brand new Equitas 5th graders were recruited this year.
- Enrollment team will begin monitoring more closely our 6th grade enrollment numbers. Highly focused on TK, 1st, 5th & 6th grade.
Conversion Recap
- Focused on applicants that made it to the first day of school.
- Data has been shared with school teams and Ms. Pacheco will start pulling data and sharing with school teams on a bi-weekly basis.
- Approximately 45.87% of 5th graders are staying with Equitas.
Retention Recap
- This recap questions how many student we lost from the 1st day of school to the last day of school. Historically 95% of our student stay.
- Founding Schools seem to have smaller retention number
- Over the past year the attrition rate increased.
- Also questions how many students we lose from September to September
- We retained over 90% of our 4th graders during the last school year.
- The average retention rate in the Pico Union is 70% and Equitas is above that.
- Enrollment team is working to strengthen partnerships with the school teams by providing retention information to school teams earlier and more regularly.
Board Questions:
- Do we believe that we will be able to recover any previously enrolled students that left Equitas for any reason?
- This is determined on a case by case basis and is a part of the outreach process.
- How does Equitas divide resources between recruiting new students and retaining old students?
- Should we align our school calendar with other school calendar to lessen the attrition?
- although this may be a good idea, we would like to watch the patterns for several years to identify if this is a problem specifically related to the Pandemic.
- Is there a possibly to change the lottery process?
- We are not able to make changes to the lottery process because it is a very highly regulated process to ensure there is no favoritism.
- Where we are getting our insights about why families are leaving?
- Much of the information we are developing is anecdotal but we plan to continue gathering experiential data by changing the exit interview process.
Ms. Pacheco concluded the presentation by sharing the successes, challenges and goals of Enrollment.
Additional Enrollment updates:
- We have hired our first Equitas Alumni as a Recruitment Coordinator.
Malka Borrego presents School updates grounded in the four priorities including: Deepen Content Implementation, Student Culture, Data-Driven Leadership, Healthy Team.
Ms Borrego presents the Strengths & Gaps:
- Strengths
- Strong environment for learning
- High Quality Curriculum Adoption
- Board Members Lindsey and Dakota were taken to the school sites to have an experience with scholars and loved the experience.
- Gaps
- Using curriculum to integrity
- For EQ6: Strong Environment of Learning
Maggie Ford shared highlights from Student Learning: Fall NWEA Comparison Data
- The date shows that our MAP test results are moving in the right direction and we are on par with other schools.
Questions:
- Frank Spindler asked why does math seem to be a bigger struggle than ELA?
- The math content was harder to teach during the pandemic than ELA.
- Prabhu Reddy asked why we underperformed the BES comps?
- The relational elements required to teach virtually took president during the pandemic and we are working back to making sure that curriculum is our priority compared to the relationship pieces.
Maggie Ford presented statistics on HS/Alumni Programing and alumni college data collection.
- There are a total of 456 Equitas Alumni currently in High School.
- We are continuing to work to get more robust alumni data.
D. Ortiz arrived at 4:30 PM.
F. Spindler arrived at 4:45 PM.
B.
Board Review of Monthly Financials
P. Reddy made a motion to Approve 2021 Monthly Financial Package.
F. Spindler seconded the motion.
Slav Sobkov presented the monthly financial package.
- 2.3 million dollar variance due to the PPP Loan
- Details about Key Factors.
- Fundraising:
- $50,000 has been raised of our goal
- 1x funds have been slip into two categories.
- Network office makes up a portion of the funds.
| Roll Call | |
|---|---|
| C. Langston |
Aye
|
| D. Ortiz |
Aye
|
| P. Reddy |
Aye
|
| T. Bell |
Aye
|
| A. Santino |
Aye
|
| F. Spindler |
Aye
|
| L. Heisser |
Aye
|
| D. Krishna |
Absent
|
| O. Bajracharya |
Aye
|
| A. Perez |
Absent
|
C.
LAUSD Compliance Monitoring Document
O. Bajracharya made a motion to Approve the LAUSD Compliance Monitoring Document.
A. Santino seconded the motion.
The board VOTED to approve the motion.
| Roll Call | |
|---|---|
| F. Spindler |
Aye
|
| D. Ortiz |
Aye
|
| T. Bell |
Aye
|
| A. Perez |
Absent
|
| D. Krishna |
Absent
|
| L. Heisser |
Aye
|
| P. Reddy |
Aye
|
| C. Langston |
Aye
|
| O. Bajracharya |
Aye
|
| A. Santino |
Aye
|
D.
Educator Effectiveness Block Grant 2021 - Expenditure Plan
Maggie Ford opens a public hearing presenting on a one time funding allocated to schools.
- A Special Meeting before Dec. 30th to adopt this plan will be called.
VI. Academic Accountability
A.
Committee Goals
Alyssa Santino presented updates from the academic accountability committee.
- Thank you to Malka Borrego and the Board.
- An education terms cheat sheet was shared with the the board.
VII. Finance
A.
Committee Goals
Prabhu Reddy presented an update from the Finance Committee.
- Despite challenges, Equitas is financially healthy and on track.
- Processes were reviewed by Maggie Ford and Slav Sobkov. Comments and feedback were given.
- Project update was given by Maggie Ford. Project is on time and on budget.
VIII. Governance Committee
A.
Updated Nominating Slate for SY21-22
C. Langston made a motion to Approve the Nominating Slate for SY 21-22.
A. Santino seconded the motion.
The board VOTED to approve the motion.
| Roll Call | |
|---|---|
| D. Ortiz |
Aye
|
| A. Santino |
Aye
|
| F. Spindler |
Aye
|
| A. Perez |
Absent
|
| D. Krishna |
Absent
|
| P. Reddy |
Aye
|
| T. Bell |
Aye
|
| C. Langston |
Aye
|
| O. Bajracharya |
Aye
|
B.
Committee Goals
Tyler Bell shared committee goal updates and prospective members for committees and board members that may be joining.
IX. Resource Development
A.
Committee Goals
Maggie Ford shared update on Resource Development Committee.
- Malka Borrego received notice that Equitas was awarded $100,000 grant.
- Construction partner is giving Equitas $2100 that they would have spent on a party.
X. 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 5:49 PM.
Respectfully Submitted,
T. Bell