Meekerley started meeting highlighting the student performance of the Wiz last week. She highlighted the Key takeaways from this year. Which included an overview of Academic Performance, Attendance Concerns, Targeted Success, Strategic Alignment, DESE Compliance, Financial Health, Development Progress. In terms of Academic performance there was strong growth in Science & Math but 59% of students passing all of core classes in quarter 3. With attendance, there are still concerns with chronic absenteeism which is leading to credit loss for a chunk of kids. Positively, there has been progress with Targeted success in terms of identifying Multilingual and students with disabilities, allowing for strategic targeted interventions. 

For quarter 3 performance, there were mixed results. Areas of strength were increasing proficiency in Science and Math and targeted inventions showing growth. With culture, we are working to partner with families to work on chronic absenteeism.  ELA challenges are that there are big gaps for students with disabilities. Rob, shared that as we head into summer there has been a lot of progress with ELA curriculum. We have chosen a new ELA curriculum to implement in the fall. We are going to us professional development and the summer to come back strong. In addition, we are implementing a reading intervention class for students that will be taught by our reading specialists. For our students who are behind grade level we will continue to refine our robust reading supports. Another positive this year, 100% of 12th grade multilingual leaders passed all CORE classes. Additionally, 21% of our students have passed the necessary requirements to no longer be classified as a multilingual learner.

Up until this year senior students were able to take an English elective this year. But this year we implemented a required core English class for all students that was more aligned to AP English which would better prepare our students for college English writing and reading courses. 

Meekerley opened it up to board to ask any questions about current academic performance. 

Questions:

- The ELA language challenges we are seeing, what are the driving forces behind what we are seeing? Nationally, there are literacy challenges which existed before COVID and were exacerbated after COVID. There have been shifts in how literacy is taught from being focused on phonics of reading to a more high level view of reading, now there has been a shift back to a focus on the science of reading. Which is showing there is a shift back to focusing on the basics for kids, there is a reset and continued conversations on the best way to educate students reading. The changes in how reading has been taught has impacted students of color greater. 

- There was a mention of family engagement, and how it impacts student success. What have we seen those challenges been? Meekerley explained that there is an issue with tenacity, we are building the muscle around sustained work in school and they are struggling even more when they are sending it home and they are struggling to complete homework. We have aligned policies to make sure that homework is consistent and that we start to build the expectation. We are hoping to work with parents to sit and read and complete multiple homework assignments per night. We are are also starting to struggle with the impact of AI, we are learning how to create policy around this. And will lean on parents to help support the efforts we are taking at home. We are going to lean into families to support the initiatives we are taking. 

- What percent of our kids are more than two levels below? Currently, only 20% of students are on grade level. To norm this, to be on grade level there is the fluency aspect. We see this when our students are reading out loud. When they are not on grade level for fluency they can still comprehend but it just takes more effort to read the text. We are trying to balance the push for fluency and comprehension. There is improvement this year in terms of how our students are performing in reading across all grades they increased from fall to winter, all except 11th grade which we are investing to come up with a solution. 

- How would you describe the buy in for the new curriculum? The buy in is high because we created a committee to analyze and determine the best curriculum. Which engaged a variety of school staff who engage with literacy.

- Are there are any charter schools who are knocking it our of the park academically? Yes, and we have visited there and we have some ideas that we are going to implement.  We are focused on targeted intervention, and pulling kids to specialized locations to meet the needs of their reading.  We are still struggling to have teachers see the data markers in iReady and respond in the moment. This work has been done with instructional leaders so they can bring it to teachers next year to react in the moment. We are working to have teachers do it in the moment vs. the quarterly level. This kind of urgency is needed.

- What kind of new things would we want to invest in if we had the extra money? 

Meekerley overview the strategic pillars that will be driving the SY26 priorities. The first is Driving students graduating 4 year colleges in 4 years. Analyzing what we need to do to support the current students in college and what we need to do to better prepare our students for when they get to college. To do so, we know literacy has to be the focus. We have the new library and it is ready to go. We need to bring the excitement around reading in the community. We want to learn how to capitalize ethics as our compass and how to truly make it deeply engrained in our community, And while doing this we need organizational stability to make sure our successes are built to last beyond the staff who currently work here.

To support all of this priorities, we are implementing the following: Literacy will use Read180, iReady, Teaching Lab PD, Novel. Culture will have an ethics curriculum, panorama surveys, and an advisory relaunch.  We are continuing to make ethics curriculum stronger for upcoming years. For organizational health we will refine coaching systems, staffing alignment, and operational review.  We are going to review our facilities in the coming year including tackling the purchase of parking lot next door. Meekerley opened it up for questions. 

Comments:

- There have been efforts to retain teachers. Next year we are piloting a bonus structure for our year 1 and year 2 teachers to incentivize them staying for year 2 and year 3. We are implementing this because we noticed that staff were struggling to stay through the first two tough years of being educators.  We are also piloting a few other measures to see our staff tenure increase to years 3, 4, and 5. 

Canto, Director of Persistence, discussed key insights for Persistence in regards to College Persistence & GPA. Students enrolled in State, UMASS, and Community college are graduating at a less degree than other college and universities.  Our students are doing better are state schools vs. UMASS schools, they are all public in state schools but the size and models can vary. There are a lot of discuss about success in graduating as well as the financial burden. For example, UMASS Boston is the most affordable but also has a lower graduation rate for students of color. Fidelity Scholars, is a program that our students are participating in that closing the financial gap for our students to attend some of these other colleges and universities, private schools. We are hoping to continue participating in programs such as these to have our students attend these more expensive institutions. This year we are working on creating "report cards" for how our students are doing at these schools as well as students from similar demographics. Understanding how students perform as specific schools will help us better set our students up for strong and purposeful school placement. 

We also did a dive into how each Boston Prep graduating class has performed in terms of college graduation rates.  This slide has been a big driving force for the team. We are working to making sure that students are graduating 4 in 4 years, and that there credit course load aligns with the requirements to graduate in a timely manner. It helps to differentiate the necessary requirements of each semester. We have seen that students who are on track in the first 3 semesters they are typically graduating on time. We are going to bolster our supports for those first 18 months. .

There was also an analysis of how HS GPA impacts college readiness and graduation rates. We are thinking about our academic policies, grading policies, and instruction in a way that really drives mastery. We are hoping this data can leverage meaningful conversations around what needs to change in HS to better prepare students for college.

As we continue to navigate the upcoming years we will always focus on college as our north star, And will think about policies, as well as how we can engage with families to ensure students are best prepared for college.

Board and Meekerley emphasized wanting to look into are there new investments that we need to engage with to make our kids attaining degrees more feasible. 

In 2029 they will come back for a DESE renewal process. in 2027 the mid cycle review will occur. There is a new commissioner so we are waiting on more details. We will continue to maintain high standards. 

We are pleased to report full compliance rom our recent DESE integrated monitoring review. This achievement reflects our commitment. 

The charter renewal process follows a predictable cycle, with our most recent renewal granted in 2024. 

Sarah James explained that we are in the executive director evaluation is in process. There has been a framework and timeline in place. Additionally, data sources have been picked in terms of strategic goals, staff surveys, and student outcomes. These reviews will be finalized in the fall to ensure that all data is inputted the most up to date for the entire school year. 

Sarah also explained the retreat follow up. We reviewed Key takeaways, progress update on action items and commitments made. Next steps, discussions were made around what it means to be a board member and engage in a meaningful way. We are working to refine the board dashboard as well to make it easy to engage with and show the board fully needs to see. A lot of this work will be focused in committees and brought to the board. 

We are transitioning to BoardOnTrack as our Board management system. If you have been having issues you should reach out to Lily Jewell for support. It has a lot of benefits for school staff to streamline data gathering and board logistics. We will hold a training next year on this. 

We are currently running right on target for our revenue and expenses. We are right on track in terms of spending the right amount. In terms of FY26, we are still in progress of refining the budget. There have been some back and forth on the per student spending. We are expecting tuition for students to be up 3-4%. Our enrollment is looking to be right above 700 for the start of the year and land somewhere between 690-695 for the full year. For the expense size, we are doing salary scale shift1% increase to reflect inflation, as well as the bonus incentive for year 1 and year 2 teachers. We had a compensation working group, which we do every two years. Key investments also include expanded literacy programming. We are refinancing the cost of the building this year for first time. This puts us slightly above, we are looking at different ways to decrease spending to make sure we are in a good place. Opened to questions on the budget. Clarified next board meeting we will be reviewing the foundation.

We have a purchase and sale agreement signed for the adjacent lot. We are currently in the due diligence process currently underway. We will then at the end of June to decide if we are going to move forward with the final purchase. It is a great opportunity for the school to secure a big parcel of land. We will think about how the land can be used beyond parking in future years. 

For development we are at 1.42 raised year to data which is above last year. We are pushing to close the $140,000 of gifts that we received last year that we have not yet gotten this year. Thanked the Board for joining us and making it is a success. We raised $462,000. We increased sponsorships but individual ticket sales decreased. Some key takeaways were that we need to start earlier outreach needed for individual tickets. 

Feedback was to have closed captioning for at least the videos. Board loved the program and thought it was one of the best ones yet. 

Join us for events: senior signing day, Graduation at BU, 8th grade step up. If you are joining please give Lily or Meekerley a heads up. Please join us we would love to have you in attendance!