Public Comment #1: Cecilia Fisher had two minutes to give her public comment. She wanted to speak on the instances that surrounded her May 15th grievance. She mentioned that she was told on May 12th that her contract would not be renewed after being told verbally that she would have a contract. She explained that she was let go due to organizational restructuring. She also explained that she feels like she was retaliated against when she was taken off of the summer school assignment.

Jerry Brown expressed his gratitude for Cecilia Fisher for giving a public comment and he will advise the OMI staff to give a report to the board on her statements.

Ryan started off by introducing himself as the 4th Brigade Commander for OMI and explained that he serves as the voice for the student body. He expressed his gratitude for allowing him to present in front of the Board. 

OMI sent 27 cadets to the annual encampment over the summer in conjunction with the California Cadet Corps (CACC) and sent another 28 cadets to the annual survival camp. OMI held two entrance camps, one for middle school candidates and one for high school candidates. The first camp had 85 candidates attend and 77 of those candidates passed the camp. The second camp had 106 candidates attend and had 99 candidates pass the camp and given a seat in the school.

Ryan expressed his belief that the "We Are OMI" recruitment video and campaign really helped with the amount of candidates that applied to OMI and were able to pass the camps.

The first orientation day that OMI had for the upcoming and returning students was deemed successful because almost all of the anticipated students came to register with OMI.

Ryan believed that the students were already assimilated to the OMI culture after the entrance camps with the willingness to adapt.

Ryan gave us a breakdown of the upcoming 30 day schedule that included Back to School Night and senior sunrise. He explained that OMI has been working to build the cadet-parent-staff relationship and Back to School Night would really boost that relationship for high parent engagement.

A new activity that OMI staff is pushing for a more accurate daily and weekly attendance figures is to have teachers turn in digital and physical counts of attendance.

At the time of the meeting, OMI had a student body count of 549 and can say that the recruitment effort was successful, roughly a one hundred student gain. The school is fuller but does not feel overcrowded.

In order to meet the stringent goals that are needed for charter renewal, OMI staff decided that more experienced teachers in the classroom was needed. The ten new teachers ranged in experience between 4 and 18 years and the average experience was 7-8 years.

The organizational chart that was displayed showed personnel in certain positions and what those positions entail but Dr. Streshly mentioned that everyone on the chart has mixed responsibilities and they collaborate.

Marc Mares, Joseph Wire, Jacque Eischens and OMI staff will be conducting a monthly meeting together to help in the budget fixing process.

Marc Mares asked what the Florence Velasco Cruz Eriksson payment was for and Dr. Streshly explained that this was our food vendor's name.

Jacque Eischens explained that the cashflow will be in good shape. The chart shown showed the actuals for the July 2023 month and the projections for August to June. She explained that there was an influx of funds given to OMI, some of which will be needed to give back because of the cutting of funding for certain grants. Funds will be taken back monthly as opposed to in full. Other grants were fully paid out.

She expressed that April was going to be a low fund month for OMI because heavier expenses will be occurring. Jacque looks back at the previous two years to project the budget spending in the upcoming months of the current projected fiscal year. The results may vary depending on factors like issuing of late grants.

Marc Mares reiterated from previous meetings that having a bank account that has better interest rates could help OMI make money. Dr. Streshly, CMSgt Thomas James, and Jacque Eischens agreed to work on finding a solution for a better interest rate account.

Marc Mares asked the OMI staff what the parent interest was for the after school program and Dr. Streshly explained that there has been interest and for the time being, someone will be put to have all the students waiting for their siblings in a homework group.

Dr. Korey Sewell and Brian Ware gave a presentation for the board. Dr. Sewell was announced as the founder and CEO of the HOTE program. HOTE is a STEAM program that helps students in an after school format get exposed to the world of technology since 2013. HOTE specializes in expended after school programs that includes tutoring, career explorations, and social emotional learning activities.

Brian Ware started by giving the OMI Board some of the highlights from the previous year and explained that those highlights will continue in the upcoming school year. Highlights included program consistency, engaging students in STEAM activities, and HOTE helped decrease the amount of missing assignments. 

Brian showed some of the activities that the after school program helps the students explore their interests like making robots, facing off in esports games, and team building activities. Last year, HOTE introduced intramural sports to their program and helped OMI cadets get the most out of the STEAM and Intramurals aspects of the program. 

This was placed on the board agenda for OMI staff to ask for direction from the Board of Directors.

The Hybrid nature of the regular board meetings was brought up earlier in the year for review and was advised to stay as an in person meeting only because of the potential spending on audio equipment. Now, the topic was revisited because meetings are going to be held in B104 instead of Regimental Hall.

If the Board wanted to start hybrid meetings, we would have to decide and begin posting the link in the agenda for public posting 72 hours in advance, per the Brown Act.

The Board of Directors came to a decision to not have hybrid meetings unless there is a special occasion like charter renewal. The OMI staff and the Board of Directors will decide when it is appropriate to have hybrid regular board meetings.

Marc Mares asked if the OMI staff can have a poll as to what they would want, hybrid or no hybrid meeting.

David Toston began by expressing his gratitude to the OMI Board of Directors for allowing him to give a presentation on the conclusion of engagement between CCEE and OMI.

OMI was the second systemic instructional review that CCEE has made and it gained valuable knowledge from the partnership. 

CCEE used data and research gathered from OMI classes to coach teachers. Rocio Gonzalez-Frausto explained that OMI had a great source of support with the monthly professional learning communities that helped the OMI educators to reduce barriers to learning and increase equity. Adoption and implementation of new curriculum and increased focus on community engagement has helped in the implementation of more strategies to help students.

Rocio and David gave OMI a series of recommendations to keep the trend of improvement in the positive direction.

1. Accessing materials in the statewide system in support. These resources would be of no cost to OMI.

2. Programs like the community engagement initiative as well as the multiple tier system of support initiative provide resources to OMI like $70,000 to strengthen the relationship between OMI and the community.

Along with the transition of the CFO office, Dr. Streshly asked CMSgt Thomas James to look into all the contracts that could be modified for reduced payments.

Ismael Robles helped get several proposals that would help OMI staff find a better contract for security and SafeTight Security was the preferred vendor because of the less expensive figures that would be used. With the transition from First Alarm to SafeTight Security, the annual bill would reduce from $110,000 to $21,000.

In the midst of transition, a 30 day notification was sent through certified mail  on July 26, 2023 and at the time of the board meeting, 15 days remained. OMI staff have tried to reach out multiple times to notify First Alarm by verbal communication but First Alarm had not responded.

Shann Chu and Cindy Murphy gave the presentation to the Board of Directors about the initial findings in the CAASPP results.

Cindy noticed that in the RenStar tests given, more students are in the nearly met section of the scoring system and that is a good sign because these students are close to meeting the grade level standards.

The seventh grade graph showed the growth between the previous year and the current grade that these students were in. The eighth grade had similar results in that the students are moving away from the lower standard brackets and moving closer to standard met and exceeded. 

Dr. Streshly explained the whole school is a part of pushing towards meeting or exceeding standards but wanted to give praise to Rachel Mahlke, the 11th grade English teacher, for helping bring cadets up in their scores consistently from year to year. 

The OMI staff will be administering a summative assessment to establish a baseline in the coming weeks after the August 10, 2023 meeting and in January and the real state test will be at the end of the school year.

This was not voted on because it was the first reading of the board policy.

This is a sample policy that the OMI staff was looking for the Board of Directors to review and edit for OMI to accept donations.

Marc Mares asked if the OMI staff can look into different charters to see if they have a similar policy and what their language looks like and the staff obliged. Marc Mares was asked to find samples from different charters and will put them in a pool of other samples found by Dr. Streshly for Board Chairman and legal review.