QUORUM IS MET. As per Public Officers Law, Article 7, § 103-a (Videoconferencing by public bodies) although board members Mark Harmon-Vaught, Traci Frey, Nicole DeStefano, Amanda Wolkowitz and Tara Gore are not present in-person for this meeting, they are attending via videoconference from locations posted on the public meeting notice/agenda and open to the public; they are therefore considered to be in attendance for purposes of quorum and are permitted to vote. 

Quorum is met for this meeting.

M. Harmon-Vaught thanked everyone for making time tonight. I don't think this meeting will be an hour and a half long, but the essence of this conversation was to engage together with the Key Design Elements of Bridge Prep. 

M. Harmon-Vaught started with an overview and then he invited colleagues from the school team to frame a little bit more. The Key Design Elements are a core part of the school's Charter. They were part of the original Charter that was submitted. We have to reaffirm our approach to engagement with them in our renewal, as we did in our prior renewal. We also made some changes and updates to those during our last renewal. And this renewal provides us an opportunity to look at those design elements, to interrogate what's working, what the challenges are, to make sure that there are commitments that we can continue to keep, and that we're actually keeping in our work with students, parents and families. It's important that we know these elements because when we do interact with NYSED about renewal, both in our materials and also when the Board speaks with NYSED in the fall during their site visit. It is important that we can reference the work we're doing around these particular design elements. We wanted to take an opportunity to step back to learn more and remind ourselves what the Key Design Elements are, what they mean, and what they look like in practice. I shared a document that was put together by the school team that frames some of the key pieces in relation to our work so far. T. Frey commented that she found what was submitted for the Key Design Elements in our previous charter renewal application so we can see what it looked like before versus the proposed changes. She is adding the previous KDE list to the KDE document presented to the Board for tonight's meeting. The Board then reviewed the current Key Design Elements and the past KDE and discussed the differences and their suggestions for changing the elements. For example, T. Frey said that in the new KDE list the school submitted, under "Connections to the Larger Community", a lot of that information fits more into KDE 4, "Supportive Network for Families", because she reads "larger community" as beyond the school. When she looks at the "Connections to the Larger Community" in the last reauthorization, those are all the organizations that we have a relationship with outside the school as opposed to what's listed now, those are more internal school and would fit better in the family part. It is helpful to see what we've submitted previously, and how we can build on that to add in the things that we've done since. Principal Livingston added that the Impact Charters rep that is supporting us in drafting our renewal application sent me the Key Design Elements, and then my team and I started mapping out the different things that we do, that are aligned to each of the KDEs, and this activity that we're doing now is super helpful, especially to see the language that was submitted before, and how we're submitting it this year. She was surprised that the past answers relied so heavily on OG. N. DeStefano said for the portion on "Student-Centered School Structure" she thinks there's an opportunity to be a lot more granular with the work that's going on there, and you could see that in the year-over-year comparison if we formalize the thought work that the principal and her team had done. I think that could help build up that response. T. Frey asked if under the "Connections to the Larger Community" do we still have relationships with all of these organizations? Or are there organizations that we have relationships with now that we didn't then? A. Pecoraro said that looking at the list that we submitted here, some of these seem mission-relevant, and some don't necessarily, so it's sort of an interesting list. M. Harmon-Vaugh stated that he thinks the relationships here are broadly defined and looked very different. this list comprises quite a variety of things. T. Frey added how many of them are relationships that the school has versus former CEO T. Castanza's relationships? C. Zilinski said he sees no issue with keeping a list, but going deeper with these are the organizations and what they bring to the community, because that's really what the state wants to see, is how are we interacting with the larger community, not just how many connections have we made. M. Harmon-Vaught added how does the relationship benefit the school and the community. If we have a list like this, we can be really explicit about how we're working with each of them. C. Zilinski responded that we can tell NYSED that here is a list of organizations that we've had relationships with, and the ones that are most prominent are, and then you can go a little deeper into those. M. Harmon-Vaught said he is encouraged and does believe that Orton-Gillingham is really critical for this school. But Principal Livingston has taken many other steps that have fleshed out our curriculum and made intentional moves that we can talk about that are really important for Benchmarks #1 and #2 relating to student performance and teaching/learning. We have a litany of actual action steps that we've taken in the last year to move our school forward in addition to and beyond the OG core. T. Frey asked if it would be helpful to see the actual 2003 renewal application that we submitted - and then shared it with the Board.
 

The Board continued to review the listed KDEs both past and present, made suggestions and a question and answer session continued regarding the Key Design Elements list and original renewal application.

M. Harmon-Vaught said that tonight has been a bit of an undirected conversation, but we've had some meaty moments here, and thought a little bit about these important things, and entered some provocations that can continue the conversation. Are there other questions, ideas, reflections others want to offer? T. Frey suggested that we think about our next meeting and what we want the focus to be. It was helpful at the end of the last meeting to say that this one was going to focus on Key Design Elements, and so we should decide what the main focus of conversation would be at each of these Strategy Sessions. We should have a similar kind of outline of what we want to accomplish at each, especially as the deadline gets closer, and it may even be what the school needs help or support with what we can do to help support the school team in preparing items for Impact Charters LLC. M. Harmon-Vaught agreed and asked if there are any things in particular you need the Board to be thinking about, or things you need from the Board that might require us to engage? A. Pecoraro responded that she doesn't know yet. M. Harmon-Vaught said then we can follow up with this group and others who will be joining us soon after to confirm what our plan is for not just the next meeting, but for the upcoming meetings, so we have something coherent and consistent. The next regular Board meeting is scheduled for June 11th and our next Strategy Session will be 2 days before on June 9th. One of the things that we're going to do at the June 11th meeting is approve the budget, and there's an integration of the conversation around the budget and renewal, and we need to be thinking about these things in coherence. A lot of work has gone into thinking about next year, and we want to be intentional in planning. I think that would be a good use of time. It might also be helpful for us to think about what else in the renewal process requires Board engagement. We could do that in the next Strategy Session.