The committee discussed the slate of officers.  Given that Bill is considering a role change next year and Sherriff's term is ending, the committee discussed whether to have both a board Chair and a director change simultaneously or to make a change in the Chair role now and have Anne move into that role. Donna suggested maintaining some continuity of leadership.  Sherriff expressed his willingness to stay on and partner with Anne during the transition.  The consensus was to have Sherriff remain as Chair but have Anne work closely with him to lead the board so she would be ready to Chair the board the following year.

In the meeting, Bill led the discussion on the organization's bylaws, term limits, and meeting frequency.  

It discussed term limits for Officer positions.  Bob, Donna, and Garth expressed the view that having a three-year term limit for Officer positions made sense so that there is less dependency on one person and there is a practice of developing members to serve in board leadership roles.  Bill shared that a change now would mean that Amy would not be able to serve in the Treasurer role next year since it would be her fourth year in that role, and how that would not be ideal since they have not planned for a successor.  The board ultimately decided that three years should ideally be the maximum but that they could wait until next year to amend the bylaws. 

As part of this discussion, Bill noted that the current proposed board calendar only had 7 meetings, versus the 8 currently required.  There was agreement that it would make sense to make a number of bylaw changes simultaneously, so it decided not to revise the bylaws now to reduce the number of required meetings.  Bill will add an additional meeting to the calendar to meet the bylaw requirements.  

Garth noted that the language around serving three three-year terms was vague in that it did not address whether a director could return for additional terms after taking a break.  He suggested clarifying this when the board discussed future bylaw revisions. 

Bob asked about Jean Callan's interest in joining the board and Bill said in the past, she had been content on a committee but that he would ask her about this since she has very valuable nonprofit accounting experience.  

Bill discussed the need for a more integrated approach to board recruitment and succession planning, merging the two processes.  

The committee agreed to hold off on making any changes to the board slate and officer roles for now.

Garth shared his experience at the Open Meeting Law training he attended.  

• Ultimately, the training was about following commonsense requirements of the Open Meeting Law guide and referring to the guide when needed.  Basically, as an organization that oversees public funds, the public has a right to know how we make decisions.  
• The attorneys gave the group advice about specific situations, such as avoiding informal conversations or creating separate email chains.
• Donna shared that she attended an Open Meeting Law training as well and her takeaways were similar.
• Bob noted that Bill and the staff are well organized, which makes it much easier to comply with the open meeting law. 

Bill presented the staff and family survey report, highlighting high response rates and positive response rates.  He noted some highlights, including staff member perceptions of the quality of work colleagues do.   

He also discussed some of the issues the survey surfaced, including a desire for more schedule and time off flexibility, the hope for more professional development opportunities tailored to non-teaching roles, the desire among a small group about changes in how compensation works (with more focus on performance and contribution), and school schedules.  Bill noted that a schedule change would be a complex one with a variety of considerations, but he and other leaders would begin to explore the issue further. 

Donna expressed her appreciation for the high response rate in the staff satisfaction survey.  Bob complimented Bill and the staff on their great retention rate of teachers, which he believes reflects their positive attitude towards the school.  Bill discussed the challenges faced by schools in managing challenging student behavioral situations, emphasizing the need for support for teachers in such situations. 

Bill highlighted the generally high positivity rates from families across all areas, with slightly lower scores in areas related to school discipline and conflict resolution.  He also mentioned the decline in family survey participation rates, attributing it to over-surveying and many families having been at the school for a long time (and having completed this survey for many years). Bob asked about the homework question, noting that BIPOC families responded more positively than white parents.  Donna suggested changing the question to a rating scale, i.e., my child gets too little HW; my child gets too much HW.

The committee reviewed the board effectiveness assessment.  The committee generally agreed that the board is functioning well and taking its duties seriously.  

Bill asked about board engagement with the community, since this was noted as a potential challenge.  The committee did not have specific insights about why that would be, but Sarah suggested sharing the monthly calendar just to have awareness of what is happening.

Bill also asked about fundraising and why this might be coming up since he views the board as engaged and supportive in this work.  Sherriff asked if this is an information gap.  Sarah said that maybe we need to do more regular reporting about fundraising.  

Bill noted that it was the time of year we begin this process so we have what we need in the fall.  He and Sarah will connect about this to begin this process.