Board member G. Winn is attending today's meeting by telephone and therefore cannot vote nor count toward quorum . The remaining 4 board members are attending remotely via videoconference and therefore quorum is met.

G. Kuriakose stated that, due to an error, the minutes of the last Executive Committee Meeting of 08/09/22 were not attached to today's agenda and therefore approval of those minutes will have to wait for the next Executive Committee Meeting on October 13th. There was no objection from board members to postponing consideration of the minutes.

L. Gyimesi welcomed the attendees and thanked them for being available for such an early morning meeting.

R. Kerr stated that the Academic Committee has not yet held its meeting for the month of September; the committee will be meeting next Wednesday. 
A few updates: 

• The school opening yesterday was successful; the only issue was bus problems, which always seem to crop up on opening day; all children arrived safely to school.
• T. Castanza reported that there has been some staffing changes at NYSED: Kim Santiago, our NYSED CSO Liaison resigned and we don't know who will be replacing her. Also, David Frank, Executive Director of NYSED Charter School Office is being replaced by a woman named Wilson. Those NYSED staffing changes will impact our school.
• We don't know if the state assessment scores have been made public yet. We will share those scores at our board meeting when available.
• L. Gyimesi said that she, R. Kerr and C. Volpe are reaching out to the creators of the MAP data to get a real understanding on how that data is accumulated and useful to us because we need it for our renewal process. 
• R. Kerr added that they will also be meeting with the Core Collaborative, an academic structure program to understand what MAP data is actually showing us and the significance and impact as it related to our children's' performance on standardized tests. This is important since it helps to inform our language when we are speaking to NYSED.
• We have not yet received the report on NYSED's school visit last June.

The next Academic Committee Meeting will be September 14th at 9:15 AM. 

G. Winn welcomed G. Kuriakose and L. Gyimesi to the Finance Committee this year and reported that the committee will meet next week at a time convenient not only for the committee members, but also for other members of the board who'd like to attend. 

• The E.D. has reported to the board that the school is working toward completion of the audit, after which a draft report will be presented in October to the Finance Committee and then the board for review and approval, ahead of its required filing with the state by the end of October. Given the timing and the filing deadline, G. Winn will ask the E.D. if he can share a draft any earlier, especially if there is any area of concern that the board would need to see. That said, G. Winn stated previous audits have been without exception and he knows nothing that would suggest any other result this year. 
• G. Winn said that he hopes to have the 5-Year Budget very soon, for use as a tool as soon as it comes in, even in draft form, so we have a context for spending and strategic decisions.

• M. Harmon-Vaught reported that we are starting to see the effects of the NYSED staff changes; 
• We discovered that NYSED needs the final approved minutes from the meetings selecting new board members, a draft version of the minutes is not acceptable, so we will have to wait until the next board meeting to do so; at that point NYSED needs about 2 weeks to confirm the new board members.
• Tomorrow we will have a conversation on the Open Meetings Law, which is important; he thanked L. Gyimesi for spearheading that.
• L. Gyimesi added that the Governance Committee will be tasked with working on some of the requirements under the new Open Meetings Law, specifically a resolution to define what we consider "extraordinary circumstances"; we need to adopt policies to allow for remote participation; and we need to hold a public hearing that we hope to do at a Family Association Meeting.

• M. Harmon-Vaught reported that tomorrow's special meeting will also cover the E.D. evaluation goals; he met with the E.D. twice this week to discuss goals; he already shared the draft goals with the board; after tomorrow's meeting, he will see where the board members are and what everyone is thinking and will put together a more cohesive plan.
• E.D. will prepare a revised and finalized version of the goals, based on board feedback. In September the board will have the opportunity to review the goals; we're on track; he can see how the goal-setting for the school is flowing into the goals that the E.D. is setting for his reports. M. Harmon-Vaught has not seen the goals set by the E.D. for his staff, but they talked about school-wide goals and how those flow into what E.D. is setting as goals for his team. They also talked about the cadence of reporting and will establish a calendar of dates for when reports must be submitted.
• He was glad to be in the school yesterday during student dismissal and see the busing process proceed smoothly.

L. Gyimesi met with our consultant, Nora Clancy of Pasek Consulting, and they discussed:

• The pace of our board meetings; the consultant offered us a draft of what should be covered in our meetings; 
• The consultant likes that we formalize the goal-setting process tied to benchmarks and that we cover at our meetings how the E.D. is meeting the goals; addressing how we are meeting those goals is helpful for our charter renewal process; 
• Our consultants are very happy that we put goal-setting in place since this will help us while we are working toward renewal and are under more scrutiny that ever. 
• Our consultant would like to meet with the entire board, but right now it is very difficult to get everyone available to meet at the same time; the consultant may listen in to tomorrow's special board meeting; perhaps we can hold a board renewal strategy meeting sometime in October and we can decide what we want to do about any material changes to our charter. 
• We need to focus on what our school needs for renewal and whether we have any comparative schools or not. If there are no comparative schools, then it's even more important to understand our MAP data and how to show our growth and development.

• L. Gyimesi would like to assign benchmarks to the committees so that board members can see how the E.D. goals are connected to the benchmarks. 
• There are 3 Tuesday night board meeting dates that conflict with school closures or other events; January 17th, February 21st and June 20th. She wants to present this to the full board and suggests that we move those 3 meetings as follows: January 17th to January 24th; February 21st to February 28th and June 20th to June 13th. 
• Another topic; the NYS Open Meetings Law requires us to keep "recordings" of our meetings for 5 years; however, it does not specify that the recordings need to be video recordings; digital video recordings are very large and we may have to purchase additional storage if we must keep all of them for 5 years; the law does not specify what type of recordings must be kept; we already save and post audio recordings of our meetings on our webpage; what does the board think of our current method of saving audio recordings and do we need to change that? The board members agreed that our current method meets the requirements and that we should continue as we have been doing.
• Another item: merit-based bonus payments to staff; L. Gyimesi would like to suggest that we put aside $30,000 to be used towards merit-based bonuses; she asked G. Winn if he would like to bring this up at tomorrow's special board meeting. G. WInn suggested that the language be "UP to $30,000" and since the board already discussed and agreed on this, it can be brought up for formal approval tomorrow.
• E.D. was interviewed by CBS News and M. Casale was interviewed by a cable station. We hope to see those interviews soon.
• R. Kerr asked the status of our new board member candidates. M. Harmon-Vaught responded that we are working on a few small additional criteria, i.e. candidates need to submit both their diploma and transcript and the minutes of the meeting when approved by the board need to be final minutes, which can only be finalized at the next board meeting. R. Kerr asked about Jane McCord's status; her application is still in the pipeline; it will be some time before her application is finalized. In the meantime, J. McCord can serve on any committee if she wishes..
• M. Harmon-Vaught requested that we hold additional time on the next meeting agenda for E.D. goals and to list the item on the agenda so that T. Castanza knows when to present those goals.
• G. Winn asked if the E.D. goals would be discussed in the public board meeting or in closed executive session? M. Harmon-Vaught responded that the generalized school-wide goals should be discussed in a public meeting, but the E.D.'s performance can be discussed in closed executive session as it pertains to a particular individual's employment.