M. Harmon-Vaught stated that before we get started on the agenda, we are absolutely excited to officially welcome one returning board member (A. Wolkowitz) and one new board member (D. Medina). Welcome back, Amanda! Welcome to the Board, Deidre. You have both been officially approved as trustees. We're excited to have you.  As K. Baldassano noted earlier, with you both joining as trustees our quorum is now 5 board members. We're still waiting to hear about our other board candidate's approval.

T. Frey said that she and M. Harmon-Vaught proposed a calendar for the board's work for this year and a different committee will be responsible for leading the meeting agenda each month. This month the Academic Committee is leading the work that we're doing to engage in an Academic Data deep-dive. T. Castanza and C. Otterbeck support this effort and will do most of the presenting tonight. The academic data was shared with the board members prior to tonight's meeting but there are some changes that T. Castanza will cover tonight. As they go through and present the data, keep in mind it's the beginning-of-year data. So it's not as rich as the data we'll have in February or in May, when we have a full year's worth of data. If you see something that you don't understand or a term you don't know, please ask, because we want to make sure that everyone around the table has a good understanding of what they're looking at. This is about the school and is not an indication of how we feel personally towards school leadership. We're all in this together to make the school work well, and in the end to support our students. She then gave the floor to C. Otterbeck and T. Castanza.

T. Castanza gave some overall context on the work that's being done. The beginning-of-year data is baseline data. Before we start, one of the things that we considered is what is the impact on the data of the large number of new students that we have? This is the the largest new cohort that we've taken in our history. Over 90 new students. And they come to us with varying ability levels. So as we go through the year and look at data. maybe we'll add some metrics. What does data look like for students that have been with us for 2 years? This is a data point that's been helpful to us during the renewal process. The month of September felt very assessment-heavy and the teachers did a really nice job administering the assessments. We saw a lot of improvement in practice of administering assessments, which is important to get the accurate real and true data. That was an issue that we had last year wondering how accurate or how close the data was. We've noticed some real improvements in practice. He then gave the floor to C. Otterbeck to review the Academic data using an on-screen Excel worksheet presentation.

C. Otterbeck presented the following Academic data:

• Student Behavioral Incidents (General Ed. 36.9%; Special Ed. 63%)
• Average Daily Attendance (94%)
• Percentage of New Students in Each Grade
• Beginning-of-Year Proficiency Percentages for Math & ELA with Charts of MAP Data
• Beginning-of-Year Proficiency Percentages Disaggregated by Grade Levels
• Beginning-of-Year Acadience Benchmark Composite Scores Schoolwide & For Each Grade Level

Board members asked for specifics and clarification of some data as it was presented and a question and answer session punctuated each topic with T. Castanza adding more information in each section of the presentation and answering any questions raised by the board. 

T. Frey thanked C. Otterbeck and T. Castanza for the Academic Data information and said that the board appreciates the amount of work that went into preparing this presentation and the time they spent to go through this data tonight. She also said that the trustees appreciate the fact that C. Otterbeck and T. Castanza were open about the data but also offered information on what the school is doing to improve the scores and percentages.

T. Castanza said that there's a lot happening in October at the school and gave the following update:

• Schoolwide teams have been working on U.N. DAY, which will be held on October 21st.
• We celebrated DYSLEXIA AWARENESS DAY schoolwide on October 8th, and had great participation from staff and students. 
• Students did a really nice job celebrating HISPANIC HERITAGE MONTH. Our social media highlighted the wax museum that they held for famous Hispanic men and women from throughout history. 
• On October 28th, we're hosting our 1st campus-wide event a CAMPUS COLOR RUN with our colleagues from the other campus schools, Hungerford School and Petrides School.  
• We uploaded our DISTRICT SAFETY PLAN to NYCED per regulations; we updated our safety plan ahead of time since the board approved it early. We are doing really well with our safety and security drills. We must hold a certain number of drills by October 31st and we have a drill scheduled for next week that will put us in compliance before Halloween.
• BEDS DAY (Basic Educational Data System) for charter schools is early October this year when charter schools need to submit annual enrollment data; we reported 260 students enrolled. 
• We are working on the next big level of data reporting, the remainder of the ANNUAL REPORT, which is due November 1st. 
• Right now he is at the READING LEAGUE CONFERENCE in Charlotte, with our coaches and our Director of Operations, F. Ebanks. 
• Next week he will be going with some of our teachers to the INTERNATIONAL DYSLEXIA ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE; excited to watch our staff dive into really good content that they're going to turnkey for other staff on November 5th.
• Our EXTERNAL AFFAIRS TEAM, a new team that we started this year, met to discuss the types of information that leave the school building, whether it goes to families or the community. We are focusing on our website, refreshing and updating of our website within the next couple of weeks. Our social media is increasing its game.
• We have a NEW MESSAGING & INFORMATION APP. that we're going to be rolling out to families on October 25th. It will also help us within the school with staff members having the ability to email and message each other on the app. And we put a lot of school information on there, so it'll help us reduce the amount of paper that we are using in the building and notices that we're printing.
• At last week's Executive Committee meeting he gave a SEARCH FIRM UPDATE; we are looking to bring on an external search firm to help us find our new instructional leader. He spoke to Storbeck Search and they offered a proposal. One of the things discussed with the Executive Committee was that our Financial Policies & Procedures Manual has a provision about obtaining at least 2 competitive bids for proposals over $20,000. He's reached out to Carney, Sandoe & Associates, another well-regarded firm in the school leadership search industry; he's waiting for them to get back to him with their proposal, so that he can discuss the 2 options with the Executive Committee before presenting recommendations to the full board in November.

D. Medina gave the following Family Association update:

It's been a very slow start, but everything's merging and meshing well.

• We're holding our 1st school event this weekend - our TRUNK-OR-TREAT in the school's parking lot on Sunday October 20th (10:30 am to 1:00 pm). We're trying to offer some new options. We have a fun DJ and a lot of interactive things for the kids, like face painting. 
• On October 31st we're holding our PUMPKIN PATCH event and every student will get a pumpkin and we take pictures. Every class gets a turn coming to the pumpkin patch.

M. Harmon-Vaught wanted to mention the things that we have on our Board Business Calendar for the next meeting - just as a point of discussion. 

Tonight's meeting was all about the Academic Data Dashboard and next month in November we have a few items, particularly a deep-dive on Student Enrollment and Student Support.