Presented by Jared Cohen, Insurance Broker

• BCBS renewal was released about a week ago. There is an increased premium of 20.1% for medical coverage.
• Aging of the employees was another 3% and there was a rate reduction of about 4% and an aggregate renewal at 19.3%
• UnitedHealthcare has fully insured options, but they were not competitive and the HSA option was substantially more and copays were higher.
• Neither UnitedHealthcare or Cigna offered a quote at this time. Aetna provided a quote, but it was not competitive. Rates with Carolina HealthWorks were also substantially more. 
• The selected plan will increase by $113 per month per employee. The school will pay $587.56 towards every employee's monthly premium. The higher deductible plan is the plan of choice because the employee does not have to spend money to make the election and all of their dollars spent will go towards their care. The total cost of increase to Kestrel would be $5, 758.56
• The biggest difference between 2024 versus 2025 and 2025 versus 2026, is the reduction to less than 50 employees. Once we went below 50 employees, medical underwriting was no longer an option for Kestrel. Instead, the rates are pooled and looked at on an individual basis based on birth dates and home zip codes to see where everyone is receiving care. Last year, the rate differential was 7.5% versus 19% today. So, overall we cannot control the costs due to these factors. 
• The dental rates are expected to be about a 3-4% increase versus where it is now. $39.01 is the highest amount to be expected. 

Presented by Mr. KT

• There are concerns about the HVAC units that may require further maintenance and eventual replacement
• We have identified a company that will perform the repair for the FDC connection leak. The repair will be completed before the start of the new school year. Once the repair is completed, we will be back in compliance with the City of Durham Fire Marshal Department. 
• We are preparing to replace rooftop unit number 7 for the start of the new school year. 
• We must replace a defective compressor. Originally, it was under a 5 year warranty. We thought we would have to pay for it, but it's covered. We will pay up front for it and then submit for reimbursement. We also only have to pay a $350 shipping fee and a $70 core fee. We will also get the refrigerant at an amazing low cost at wholesale price. The refrigerant refill will be done at the same time as the replacement of RTU number 7, so we will take advantage of using the same crane.
• There are two roof leaks that were found in the middle school bathrooms directly related to the bathroom vent covers on the rooftop. The roofers were responsive and replaced the original rooftop vent covers with the lower profile covers under the new roof warranty. 
• The roof leak in the elementary school that was previously mentioned during last month's meeting has not resurfaced in subsequent heavy rain events. This suggests that the leak was related to high winds that were blowing in a specific direction that led to this unusual circumstance. Unfortunately, in this situation, it is still very difficult to determine the origin of the leaks in question.
• We also have a concern in our foundation due to a recent water intrusion incident. Quotes are being collected to determine pricing. It's been determined that the ceiling between the concrete foundation and the exterior walls is beginning to fail in these areas. That said, we are in the process of collecting quotes to repair these areas. Unfortunately, this may become our newest ongoing issue with the foundation. This would likely cost multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars to repair all at once. The reason for this is because everything is below ground and we would have to dig to reach that are of the foundation. 
• So far, we've received one of five quotes that we are anticipating. The quote entails improving upon our current drainage system in the front and the back of the school and digging down to the foundation in areas where we are currently experiencing water leaks, and resealing those areas at the joints where the walls meet the foundation.
• Our first quote came in just under $50,000. In the meantime, we have installed sandbags in the affected areas and completely unclogged the main drain cover responsible for a majority of the water flooding that occurs in the back of the school. We are still awaiting the rest of the quotes. 
• The preventative maintenance is up to date for the Schindler elevators and we are up to date with inspections, fire, life and safety systems.
• The annual fire alarm inspection was originally scheduled for 6/29. The vendor needed to push the inspection back two weeks to accommodate some scheduling issues on their end, so it has been rescheduled for tomorrow 7/15. 

Presented by A. Touchette

• 249 confirmed, 14 not returning, 45 no response. 
• Admin team had a conversation about improving and ensuring better outreach to those that have not responded.
• We have a total of about 38 confirmed new enrollments. The majority of the new applications are for incoming Kindergarten classes and for 6th grade
• We want to take a closer look at what is attracting people to the school and what is making families want to enroll. 

Mrs Jackson introduced Mr. Shawn D. Yarbrough as our new Enrollment and Community Partnerships Specialist. 

• He will be assigned to making contact with families, walking them through the application process and following up as needed to help us increase our Enrollment of scholars. 

Presented by Dr. Sherria Grubbs

• Dr. Grubbs discussed her accomplishments for this year which include, but are not limited to Partnering with teachers through instructional coaching, facilitating weekly PLC meetings, modeled research-based instructional strategies, and helped analyze data to assess growth.
• Impact on Teaching & Learning:
  • Increased gravel level collaboration
  • 46 classroom observations conducted (all teachers except Specials, support staff, and  the EC class)
  • Facilitated 102 PLC meetings
  • Increased assessment scores in grade levels for math and reading
  • Enhanced data driven discussions
  • 5 teachers on the coaching cycle
• Looking Ahead for 26-27 school year, we are aiming to:
  • Identify coaching needs
  • Help strengthen Tier 1 instruction
  • Increase teacher leadership opportunities & collaboration
  • Support student achievement through instructional improvement (continuous coaching, feedback, modeling and observations
  • Targeted professional development
• Dr. Grubbs presented options for both iReady and iXL and the teachers selected IXL. Overall, the majority of of the Teachers are excited about receiving further training in IXL.  Dr. Grubb is collecting teacher input on what teachers may need and how the targets can be developed further. 

Presented by A. Touchette

• Overall increase in proficiency at 50.46% versus 46.84% in 2025. 
• There was also an increase in college readiness which is linked to the number of scholars who scored 4's and 5's.
• ELA, Grades 3-8: Overall improvement
• Math, Grades 3-8: Overall significant increase in 4th, 5th, & 6th grade
• Science, Grades 3-8: Improvement for both 5th and 8th graders this year compared to the year prior. The 5th graders had a 5 year high.
• We are unsure of what this means for our grading in our Overall School Report Card

Presented by Mr. T. McFadden

• We hosted an Award Ceremony for those Admin, Teachers, and Staff that celebrated 1, 5, 10, 15, and 20 years of service where everyone received a certificate, gift bag, and plaque.  Mr. McKeiver hosted the Eulogy for the end of the year.
• We also hosted the Promotion Ceremony for K, 5th, & 8th grade. 

Presented by Mr. T. McFadden

• We are starting the House Structure and have asked for input from our community to provide ideas about what names we can use to name our houses and basing the name around SOAR. 
• We may implement "Tiny Houses" for K-2 so they can have an early introduction to the structure which will also build excitement and anticipation to join once they reach the 3rd grade. The remaining grades 3-8 will be randomly sorted into houses. 
• We are also aiming to build a leadership structure in the houses and create house committees, where scholars can elect a leader and have them represent their house. This will encourage student representatives to exercise leadership skills and attend meetings with Kestrel Admin team to present ideas for implementing. 

Presented by Mrs. Tonya Jackson

• The main focal points are completing the School Nutrition Application (in progress), policy work (ongoing), and to finalize and approve our budget.
• Overall, we are 100% compliant with our epicenter submissions. 
• We have three items that are coming up:
  • 1. Due Aug 3, 2026: We are entering Year 2 of a 3 year charter renewal cycle. We have been invited to renew our charter and are due to renew by June 30, 2028. The actual letter of intent to renew was submitted today and the actual application is in progress within the Epicenter platform 
  • 2. The Parent's Bill of Rights Report and 3. the School Mental Health Plan that details more professional development that our team participates in and both are in progress. 
• The Finance Committee report will be tabled until the next meeting when we've had a chance to go through the 13th month process to reconcile everything that is outstanding for the fiscal year 2026.  

Presented by Mrs Tonya Jackson

• We have 128.42 Days Cash on Hand, which exceeds our required amount of 60 days
• We are also meeting the Coverage ratio requirement which is 1.25
• The Daily Cash expenditure to operate Kestrel Daily is $16, 927
• The Finance Committee has reviewed the budget at least three times as of now and have reached a resolution on the budget. For fiscal year 2026, 20 day ADM for the revenue, was 369 students which was increased to 415 students. We are confident that we are going to have enrollment growth over last year. Also, the salaries in the budget are based on the dPS 25-26 salary scale. We have also projected allotments for grants, a consolidated grant, the Title II grant, and the IDEA grant--all of those projected allotments have been calculated herein.

Presented by Mrs. Tonya Jackson

• We have the largest number of students from DPS, which increased to $6K per pupil. There is also a reimbursement allotment for scholars based on their residing county
• Total anticipated expenses for 2026-2027 are just north of $6M.
• The following budget categories are in line with the state's benchmarks:
  • Salary line is 52.25% of the overall budget, while the benchmark is 58%
  • Instructional supplies/programs is 4.29% where the benchmark is 6.5%
• The following categories are higher than the state's benchmarks:
  • Facilities and Utilities are at 31.67%, Technology at 2.12% and transportation by .01%

Community Development: Presented by Mrs Hernandez and Cee Rhodes

• We have received one response thus far for the Grandparent Support Program, we will follow up to have the intro call. 

• Mrs Hernandez and Cee Rhodes will meet to strategize our

approach to recruiting grandparents as well as schedule a separate meeting with

the Admin Team towards the end of summer/ beginning of the school year to

discuss the program in further detail 

• We will leverage partnerships with the PTA when fundraisers are planned so we can also identify more community partners

Finance Committee: Presented by President A. Davis

• We were not awarded the Grant by Durham.

• We are still looking for other grant opportunities that align with our goals and initiatives

Governance Committee: Presented by Mr. Powe

• We are starting to help identify community partners and community service projects that we can get involved in, as a result we have created a calendar to list events and that can be shared on a master calendar. We are also working on a packet that will have helpful information that can be shared

• We will create an intake form that we can leverage and use until we have a proper CRM in place. We are in the early states of creating an overall process for how we receive information and how it is distributed/communicated to the school community and public.

Academic Excellence: 

• No updates presented

• President A. Davis requested that we look for community partners to partner with us during the school year on a continuous basis to tutor scholars. We want to start earlier this school year, this has been assigned to Ms Crutchfield and Mr. Allen. 

We discussed:

• Staff Benefits
• Faculty Incentive for Enrollment
• Our Bond Funding