R. Kerr welcomed all as we try to figure this school year out with so much uncertainty

Two subcommittees were formed at the executive committee. They are the Executive Director Support Committee chaired by L. Timoney.  This subcommittee is not an evaluatory committee but the intent is to support the ED. The evaluation comes at the end of the year and includes the entire board. The first meeting will be held on Nov 16th @ 7pm and all are welcome to attend. 
The second subcommittee formed is the Facilities Task Force to be chaired by T. Castanza.  This committee will look at additional space at Petrides and other sites off the Petrides campus as well. The ED's past experience with the NYC DOE in space planning will be an asset.
The ED  joined the recent executive committee meeting. The goal is to work more collaboratively together and his participation will become part of the committee's meeting structure. 
Standing committees all gave reports.

ED took his reporting time to give an update on the status of Covid related closings in schools.  The Mayor announced all schools are closed until further notice. The Petrides campus was due to be closed until December 1st due to Covid cases at the Petrides school. Bridge Prep does not have any active cases and thanks to everyone for the hard work in keeping everyone safe. There are daily calls with DOB, DOH and DOE to keep Bridge Prep open and scenarios that would allow for that. Bridge Prep has been closed but not due to cases in our school but on the campus in other buildings. If NYC Public schools are closed, Bridge Prep will be closed. The re-entry plan is being figured out by the Mayor's office working with NYS. Bridge Prep will have school food operating if families need food. Families can also go to the closest school for food. The school building is open to the staff, school safety is stationed at the front door, and the admin team will do a sweep of the building before the holiday. Two other charter schools in private space on Staten Island will be all virtual until January. 
Can Bridge Prep be considered a separate building and not fall under Petride's school closures?
Bridge's main site is Building E and has its own building code. Based on that we should not be calculated with cases in Building B. We have two classrooms in the Building B - they would need to go virtual if Petride's school had cases. We are looking at moving one classroom to the Building E.  If we make that change, this would happen in January. The ED is lobbying and making the case to be considered separate and should know when we have a back to school date. There is a stand alone D75 building on the campus and they can stay open. It was noted Principal Buckheit has been a good partner to Bridge Prep. 
R.Kerr stated the focus is to get students into the school building as much as possible for their emotional health and well being. They need to be with their peers and be safe. 
The ED stated he would never put staff and students in harms way, there is no chance of cross contamination and will maximize the amount of time in school.
F. Santarpia - suggested a letter in writing to the chair and perhaps approaching the Borough President. This will be taken up at the facilities task force meeting in December. 

Nothing was discussed.

Nothing was discussed.

The academic committee focused on reopening, remote and blended status, special ed, compliance, busing, and family communications. Not every student has been to school on a regular basis, but we have been in contact with every family. The dashboard was formalized and populated by the ED and staff. 

The student enrollment is broken down by demographics and student subgroup analysis. Title 1 information is forthcoming.
Monthly Attendance - taking a close look at this and going behind the numbers by grade and individually to find out issues. Trend - when in person, they are attending, participating.  When virtual - see an attendance dip. We are working with families to see if it is technology or other issues. 
Health reporting - new addition to the dashboard and includes calls to the Situation Room, the reason, the action and the timeframe. 
Academic Data - Ms. DiCanio did a lot of work on OG data and breaking it down. We are aggregating the data to understand what it means. Assessments were done based on grade level and broken down by special ed and general ed. The data shows that a high number of students are well below grade level in decoding. This foundational data is critical and paints a realistic picture of who are students are.
Returning students were assessed from last year to this year. 100% of students made growth. NYSED is interested in seeing proficiency. Our charter speaks about growth metrics and we can break this down to specific skills. We can show what skill level they made growth in. They still may not be on grade level but with fidelity they will make growth.
Special Ed service data is forthcoming after upcoming IEP meetings. Map Data and then F&P reading level data will be in future dashboards. 

The Finance Committee meetings will be held on the Monday preceding the board meeting.  We discussed Covid testing numbers and whether to do this in school or use outside testing. If we had to do it over 10 weeks and pay for it to keep our population safe. 

The ED shared this budget is post 10/31 BEDS day numbers - the surplus is higher than approved budget due to additional students. The surplus is strong and gives us flexibility. Each budget line has been maintained which also allows us to accommodate changes to virtual learning and adjust technology or professional development as needed. Additional funding from CARES Act is anticipted after resubmission. The status of the budget is good and no revenue dips are expected.  The ending cash balance is what we look at for long-term planning. Any surplus goes into cash balance and being conservative has paid off.

We are working on a handbook for new Trustees and having a repository for all documents including by-laws, job descriptions, protocols, committee descriptions, etc. 
Recruitment - short and long terms plans.  Short term is to seek participation on committees and then join the board.  Grass roots strategies to recruit and focused on areas including IT support, business operations, and property management. 
Remote meetings are still allowed under Open Meetings Law and supports attendance and is effective for public access too. 
Governance is committed to fidelity to the charter, time savings, efficiency and has a very active committee. 

The Chair recognized the Herculean efforts to teach and create a dashboard at the school level and the top notch work of the Governance committee in formalizing and documenting board procedures. The hard work is appreciated. The ED also acknowledged the Executive and Governance committees for inclusion on the EC committee and Governance for accessibility to documents to help school operations.

Board Gmail account - this will be included in the handbook on BoardOnTrack. The board email is used to communicate with the ED, for assignment of work and to create a repository in case of FOIL requests. A disclaimer was created in the email body and the board member signs the email. To access, simply log into board@bridgeprepcharter.org with the confidential password.  The password will be changed on an ongoing basis. 

RK - are students 100% technology equipped if we have to go full remote? Yes. When doing attendance we are also doing technology checks. We are getting to them written materials like work books. 
 

ED - as we approach Thanksgiving, we appreciate all the work at the board level and at the school level.  We want the board to be involved at the school level in the coming months. More to follow. 

Happy Thanksgiving to all!