What brings you joy? 

• Review of current board membership and upcoming departures. 
  • Sarah and Claire are both rolling off the board in the next few months. 
  • We will need to find individuals with development experience and the ability to make a time commitment. 
• What can the school based team do to help support board recruitment.
• Board Retreat: bring a populated list of next steps and spend some time brainstorming individuals in their networks who might be prospective board members? 
  • Ex. Contact TFA for assistance with board recruitment.
• Board leadership: 
  • Should we consider co-chairs on the three committees that will lose chairs next year? 
  • How can we ensure that the school leaders have voice in selection of new board leadership? 
    • Ex. Tom Huff to co-chair development. 

S. James: We have been meeting with Julia Bowen, Meekerley's coach and a leader in the charter world. We have received funding support from MCPSA to have her facilitate the retreat. Julia has been pushing us to think of the retreat as a means to develop the board and build board capacity. 

We will start with school and sector updates to frame some of the bets the school is taking on its strategic priorities. Julia will plan to utilize the MCPSA board assessment to guide the board to think about how it is working and what its goals are in the future. 

Kim: we'll ground this is in the strategic plan and where we are as a school and where we want to be moving forward. 

Sarah: It might make sense for us to preview what big strategic questions are developing for the school for this committee. 

Meekerley: We are in a world of academic recovery and making explicit bets on literacy in particular. For a future conversation, we have a question around our grade span and what grade span we should be serving. We are currently the only 6-12 charter school in Boston, many of our peer schools are 5-12 and BPS recently changed to a 7-12 model, which causes us to ask families to pull their students in their final year of elementary school rather than at a natural transition point. We'll need the board to consider whether or not we want to make a change in the next school year. 

Sarah: Do we want to give the board some context around the NAEP scores and how we fit into a national context. 

Meekerley: Yes, we will be framing the ED update around where Boston Prep exists in context from the macro and then moving toward more specificity. 

Claire: I would like us to think about what the timeline for this decision is and what the charter procedure would look like. 

Meekerley: Lauren and I will put together a timeline for this. We are deep in student recruitment season now, so we have done some comparative analysis throughout the process. What we are finding is that the majority of parents who are willing to move their 6th graders out of their school early are parents who are not satisfied with their current school. 

• One team trustee: 
  • DB has been struggling with attendance, so Sarah and Lauren will connect with him about his interest in continuing with the board.
  • We should consider the timeline for One Team trustee so that we are offering the position and offering the ability to elect the position with the school based team that will be represented. 
  • Next steps: Sarah will reach out to Dave Berkely and Dave Wolff for feedback on the One Team recruitment process
• Legal Representation: We will connect Claire and Mayeti to Matt at BG and Bettina to determine how we will direct the board's legal questions.