There were no additions or corrections to the agenda.

There were no presentations from the Public.

Academic Committee Chair Cesar Lopez reported that the Committee met the week before to discuss verifiable data and its role in renewing the schools.  Additionally, he explained the CDE Data Dashboards, what they mean, and what impact they will have on schools in the future. Board  Chair Keipp asked Chair Lopez to explain AB1505 briefly. He provided an overview that encouraged the schools to continue pushing and striving toward academic excellence. The data tracking is working, as evidenced by more than 50% of students growing more than one year in Math and ELA.  The schools are also engaging students struggling with before and after-school programming to help close the gaps. The other encouraging data set is looking at how many students originally placed at 3+ years and below are moving up in placement levels. The schools are on target to decrease the lowest-scoring band by  20% or more.

Finance Committee Chair, Michael Green reported the Committee met on March 27th to review the 990 tax form, health benefits, and the teacher salary table.

Technology Committee Chair Dean Cho reported his committee will be meeting on April 26th.

Each month school council and committee meeting minutes are provided for the board to review. Board members will direct senior staff regarding any minutes or committee concerns that may arise.

Academic Strategies to Improve Academic Outcomes: 

To start our school year, we reviewed academic data and performance from last year, then followed that up with an analysis of our iReady diagnostic baseline data from the August administration of that assessment in math and reading. Using this information, we made plans to support student learning and growth. 

EL Supports and Schedule 
One of the under-performing populations from our 21-22 data set and on our initial diagnostic in the 22-23 school year was our EL population. The primary support we added for this group was the addition of an ELD teacher and a tutor for this school year. During the fall semester, this teacher supported students and teachers through push-in and pull-out support, much like a resource teacher does throughout the school year 45 minutes were designated for students but through a push-in-and pull-out model. This was a success regarding student growth, our second diagnostic in December, and our review of our Houghton Mifflin Reading Inventory data from the first semester. However, after discussing the data with our team, we determined that more targeted support was needed. As a result, we changed our schedule for the second semester to allow our ELs to have their regular, core ELA course and an ELD time explicitly designated for grouped language development instruction. With the new schedule, our EL teacher can teach the ELD courses' first three periods of the day, then provide support for the rest of the day in the classroom and through pull-out time for ELs. Moreover, the EL teacher provides instruction in the resource classrooms and our resource teachers co-teach with her once or twice a week. This provides much more time for support for our ELs and students who are both EL and SPED. In addition to the support our ELD teacher provides to our students, she also provides support and professional development for our staff. She has led several trainings on best practices to support ELs in the general education setting this year. She works with teachers one-on-one to help them plan instruction that will be meaningful and beneficial for our English learners. 

Acceleration and Study Hall: Another strategy we used to support academic growth was identifying students for acceleration courses and study hall before and after school to provide additional support for growth. We currently have six credentialed teachers teaching, providing academic support and lessons before or after school, and five credentialed staff members (admin and teachers) facilitating study hall after school. For the acceleration courses, students were targeted if they were performing 1-2 grade levels below their diagnostic assessments in August or in December. These teachers teach lessons targeted explicitly at learning gaps identified in their classroom assessments and by the iReady diagnostic (math and reading). The study hall is focused on iReady pathway completion and re-do mastery assignments. Students were targeted for study hall if they were on academic contract (more than one F) and/or were not completing at least two iReady lessons weekly. Our credentialed staff members can meet with students in these small-group settings to provide growth feedback and encourage students to progress on their iReady lessons. Often, when students are left to work on iReady independently, they do not complete the lessons or complete them with a high enough mastery score. Our teachers/staff support these efforts during study hall. Additionally, they work to complete missing or un-mastered assignments with students who finish their iReady pathway lessons each week.

At MORCS, we understand that many of our students are academically behind. Our state data confirms this, and it is evident that many of our students are not entirely performing at grade level yet. With distance learning taking place for so long, many of our students came to us with gaps in both ELA and Mathematics. In reviewing our state data and verifying data as a team, it became clear that although many of our students are not performing at grade level, they are progressing toward grade-level mastery. 

Our iReady Verified Data indicates that more than half of our students made positive growth and met their annual growth goals, which suggests they are progressing toward grade-level mastery (see table below). Support Classes After reviewing data sets, it was clear that we had to put together an action plan for the 22-23 school year to ensure that we were strategically filling academic gaps throughout the school year. This year, we created support classes where students were grouped based on educational needs. Our teachers had time to review CAASPP and iReady data at the start of the school year and create groups that enabled them to provide academic support in small-group settings. Our support classes are under 20 students per group, and teachers strategically use resources from the iReady program to target learning gaps in the classroom. These groups see each other daily for 50 minutes. In December 2022, our team was able to look at the data from their second diagnostic and move students around accordingly so that they were placed in classes that supported their greatest academic needs. Our support classes include Math Support, English Support, History Support, and Science Support. Advisory Additionally, we are using our advisory classes to have social-emotional and academic check-ins with our students, allowing our teachers to conference with them and ask how they feel about their academic growth and progress. 

This check-in during advisory is particularly helpful to our EL students and students with special needs as they can connect with their teacher one-on-one. One of the programs that we have been using in advisory this year is Sown to Grow. The program allows us to create check-in questions focused on social-emotional and academic needs. Teachers can see student responses, and our administrative team receives notifications if students indicate that they are struggling social-emotionally, which we forward to our counselor, who then checks in with students to provide the necessary support. Additionally, we’ve structured our advisory program to serve as a class that allows students to engage in goal setting, community circles, 1-on-1 check-ins, and journaling. The purpose of advisory this year has been to build community with students; to ensure that every student has a staff advisor that will look out for their overall academic and socioemotional needs; to provide students with wraparound supports, guidance, and skills to be successful in school and later in career and life. 

Summer School Program

YPICS is scheduled to operate Summer Schools at Bert Corona and Monsenor Oscar Romero Charter Schools. Summer School is currently planned to begin the week after school ends. Expanded Learning The Expanded Learning Opportunities Program (ELO-P) funds after-school and summer enrichment programs for transitional kindergarten (TK) through sixth grade. 

"Expanded learning" means before-school, after-school, summer, or intersession learning programs that focus on developing pupils' academic, social, emotional, and physical needs and interests through hands-on, engaging learning experiences. Expanded learning programs are pupil-centered; results-driven; include community partners; and complement, but do not replicate, learning activities in the regular school day and school year. Next year, schools will receive an audit finding if the ELO-P is not implemented and if funds are not spent. The budget update can be seen in the fiscal budget reports. The proposed legislation contains dozens of other changes. Most are technical, but more substantive ones of interest to charter schools include the following: 

• Clarifies penalties for not offering Expanded Learning under the state's new Expanded Learning Opportunities Program (ELOP). 

• It would clarify the interaction of penalties for (1) failing to serve eligible students and (2) failing to operate the program for all the required hours or days. The law would call for pro-rata penalties based on the proportion of eligible students not served. Any additional penalties for failing to operate the program for the required number of hours or days would be assessed after the first type of penalty is set (if any) and would reduce funding by 0.0049 times the number of days a charter school failed to meet the daily/hourly offering requirement. 

YPI Charter Schools provide students with various engaging vendors, field trips, assemblies, and special events. We are excited to provide our students with multiple possibilities and exciting opportunities. Oversight Visits The middle schools have each had their respective oversight visits. Monseñor Oscar Romero Charter School participated in this review on April 14, 2023. Thank you, Board President Keipp, for joining the visit! The Team was well prepared, and the focus on rigor and joy could be seen throughout the school that Friday. The Bert Corona Middle visit happened on Tuesday, April 18, 2023. Our Successful All partners also joined us for both holidays. Both schools were prepared and proud of the teacher instructional work and student engagement. The High School visit is Friday, April 28, 2023. Board Treasurer Michael Green plans to join us for this visit. The YPI Charter Schools' are still supported by CSD Specialist Dr. Blanca Alves-Monster. She has been with us for 7 (almost 8) years. We expect final reports by the end of June or early July. We will provide the Board with the words as soon as we receive them. 

LCAP Update 
The school leaders have been on listening tours all year during parent meetings, teacher TPDs, student councils, SAC Meetings, and reading survey results from the November Youth Truth Survey, Parent Conference Spring Survey, YPICS Community Data Walks, and Café Con Los Directores meetings. The purpose of the listening tours is to consistently gather stakeholder feedback about what is working at our schools and clearly define growth areas. The YPICS Teams have been collecting data all year. We are currently reviewing current LCAPS goals and are preparing new action steps. LCAPs will be shared with Stakeholders in May and brought before the Board for Approval in June.

The Board moved into Closed Session at 7:48pm for matters pertaining to Government Code 54957 PUBLIC EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE EVALUATION - Evaluation of the Executive Director.

No action was taken in the closed session.

The Board reconvened in Open Session at 8:07pm.

Board Chair, Mary Keipp reported there was no action taken in closed session.

The next Finance Committee meeting, Tech meeting and regular Board Meeting will be held on Monday, June 5, 2023.