• Bill and Meghan presented a holiday gift for board members.
• Bill shared video from the holiday concert
• Bill gave Kelvin a shout-out for his willingness to take on a more active role in development

Wendy gave a presentation of the school's assessment program and philosophy with a focus on these points:

• The school believes that assessments are an important and powerful way to keep ourselves accountable to our mission
• We use a number of formative assessments to drive instruction: STEP is our primary reading assessment.  It is a very rigorous developmental reading assessment tool.  We have begun using ANet in the 2nd grade.  It is specifically designed to be rigorous and drive instruction; it also gives SPCS the ability to compare our data with other schools around the country.  We give standards-based grades, as opposed to the more traditional letter grades.  The goal is to track mastery over time
• We also use summative assessments: MAP is a computerized test given in K & 1 at the beginning and end of the year.  We administer the state-mandated ACCESS test for ELL students in January (results are released in spring and are intended to drive instruction planning for following year).  We will begin administering MCAS 2.0 next year in the 3rd grade.

Bill reviewed academic, attendance, and demographic data.  The STEP mid-round window showed significant growth, which was a sign of a lot of targeted, hard work.  Meghan presented a comparison of ANet and STEP scores, which show very strong correlations - a sign that the data is reliable. The board also reviewed attendance data - there was a drop in December but this was a short month with some bad weather, and year to date data is still strong.

Danielle asked those who had not yet completed the assessment to do so. Kelvin requested that we be open about who has not completed it.   Bill will double check on assessment status and contact people directly about completing it.

The board discussed having Sherriff join the board; there was strong support for him to join.   Given that all board members were not present to learn about Sherriff's candidacy, and because there was no agenda item indicating a vote on this,  it was decided to wait until the following meeting.  It was also decided that Bill would speak to Sherriff about the potential scheduling conflict.
 

Robin led a review of the November financial statements.  The budget is on target and there projections indicate the likelihood of a healthy surplus.
 

Meghan reviewed the updated Fiscal Policies and Procedures (FPP).  There was discussion about the Treasurer responsibilities, and the appropriate amount of Treasurer involvement on a monthly basis.