There was no public comment.

Executive Director Michelle Herron presented updated information on reopening school. Items discussed include attendance cohorts models; staff vaccinations; liability protection requirements; guidance if cases surge if onsite students; cleaning and safety protocols; staff training; BSD model; and parent survey. 

Ms. Christa Billings updated the Board on RFP proposal, which is now on hold.

Executive Director Michelle Herron presented the following report: 

Decisions Needed:
● RFP for PERS Alternative - Our lawyer recommended that we get board approval before putting this plan out for proposals. He also suggested that we connect with BSD to let them know our plans once we have the RFP ready. Some of the key things we learned from meetings with our lawyer and with another school who has done this successfully:
○ We have to have complete separation of responsibilities for all personnel matters, including supervision, evaluation, hiring, and termination. If teachers are asked who they work for, they should say the new company, not Arco Iris.
○ The Director would be the only employee of Arco Iris. All other employees would work for the new entity.
○ In order to create an effective system for managing employees, we need to create a link between Arco and the new entity so that teachers feel supported. One way to do this is to move the evaluation responsibilities to the new admin position (we might want to have this morph into an Assistant Principal role instead of a Student Success Coach to better reflect the responsibilities). We found out from PACE that employees with a teaching license can do evaluations of other teachers. It does not require an administrative license.
○ It will take a year to fully transition to a new system of practice in terms of procedures, but we would start to see financial benefits right away. Ideally, we would channel the savings into improved compensation to help us hold onto good teachers.
○ The timing of this change could allow for succession planning.

Decision and next steps:
● Reopening attendance cohorts - Should we follow the BSD model with ½ days of instruction 4 days a week (am and pm cohorts) or stay with our original plan of 2 full days of instruction each week (Mon/Tue and Thur/Fri)? In either plan, teachers would have Wednesday as a parent outreach and planning day. Teachers would either work in person or in CDL, but not both. This would require a new staffing plan. Some teachers would have different grade levels or subjects and some students would have different homeroom teachers.

Decision and next steps:
● Requiring vaccinations for staff - My recommendation is that vaccinations should be required. My rationale:
○ BSD is strongly recommending, but not requiring vaccinations. However, they have more capacity to keep people in non-contact positions than we do and they have to work with a very strong teachers’ union.
○ Our legal advisors said we have the right to require vaccinations. “ With important exceptions such as those for employees with disabilities, employees with sincerely held religious beliefs, and health care workers, schools can require that employees receive the COVID-19 vaccine before physically returning to the workplace. Because this is a safety issue directly impacting the employee, associations may issue a demand to bargain in response to such a requirement. Schools should review their current CBAs and/or contact OSBA’s Labor Services for guidance”.
○ The health department has limited ability to do contact tracing and one adult with COVID could force us to send multiple classes back into distance learning.
○ COVID has a disproportionate impact on communities of color. I feel it is important to do all we can to safeguard these vulnerable populations.
○ Liability protections are untested. If we have someone file a suit based on an infection by a non-vaccinated adult due to a lapse in safety protocols, we could be liable. Jim Green from OSBA gave the following advice: “ We have to include all ODE’s required safety elements in our blueprint and follow them. We should also consider as many of the recommendations as possible. However, this WILL NOT prevent all liability. We should focus on minimizing liability as much as possible and decide how much risk we are willing to assume.”
○ The more contagious variant will be the dominant strain by March. Modeling is predicting another wave starting in mid-February, either due to the variant or due to mitigation fatigue. “If I was opening a school, I’d be ready with plans B and C”. Peter Graven, OHSU

Decision and next steps:
Information to Share
Student Achievement
● We will start our second round of EasyCBM testing next week. This time, we are going to try to do all of the tests during regularly scheduled class or extra Spanish times because parents had a hard time with schedule changes and special meetings in the Fall.
● We moved our grading day to Feb. 5 to align with the BSD calendar. We also adjusted our grading procedures following their suggestions. Instead of receiving proficiency marks of 1-4 for each learning standard, students will get a progress grade to show how much growth they’ve demonstrated during distance learning. The grades will be ++ for significant growth, + for steady growth and ie for insufficient evidence or lack of growth. We’ll send an explanation letter along with the report cards.
● The state is still pursuing a waiver for most state tests, but we will need to test English Language Learners in the spring to determine whether or not they still qualify for services. There is also an option to use interim assessments for school level data which we will explore.

Climate and Culture
● I did a staff survey to see how people feel about coming back to school before the announcement that teachers could get vaccinated beginning Jan. 25. I followed up with anyone who requested a meeting and I think most of people’s concerns will be eliminated if they can get vaccinated. We currently have 3 people who still have significant concerns about vaccinations. One of them would be able to continue in CDL, but the other two would not. They would have to make a decision about staying at Arco or resigning if we require vaccinations.
● We have organized teachers into work groups to develop action plans for the following school
improvement initiatives:
○ A schoolwide plan for assessing Spanish proficiency
○ A schoolwide plan for incorporating Hispanic culture and celebrations, both in the classroom and for special events.
○ Revising the mission statement

Professional Development
● Several teachers recently attended a workshop sponsored by the Oregon Association of Bilingual Educators and a BSD training on culturally relevant teaching by Dr. Gholdy Muhammad. Both were excellent and we’ll bring the information to the rest of the staff at our next work day on Feb. 26
● BSD is hosting an Equity Summit on Feb. 10 with many different presentations. The schedule is from 1:00 - 3:30, and I’m hoping to move classes around that day so that everyone can attend. I will be presenting with one of our parents to talk about our equity and inclusion efforts at Arco.

Hot Topics
● New RSSL guidelines and reopening metrics . The safety protocols in the document are largely unchanged. The new metrics come from the Harvard Global Health Institute and they are recognized by several states.

Seeking Input
● Mission statement process - Thank you to Sara for gathering information and getting the ball rolling!
○ The mission should be a short, factual statement of purpose. We’ll look at all the iterations of the mission since the school began in order to determine what we want to keep. We don’t want to lose sight of where we’ve been.
○ We plan to develop a new statement with staff and board input. We will involve the community when we start the strategic plan but we feel the mission needs to be in place first in order to guide this work.
○ We can contract with Kristen Miles at any point if we need support.

Feedback?

The Board asked about current enrollment numbers. 

Ms. Shagun Trivedi presented the Treasurer's Report: 

-  ADMw received for (Month):    $ 213,109
-  Total income for (Month):        $ 232,995
-  Cash balance for (Month):       $ 1,985,053
-  Accts Receivable for (Month): $ 120,146
-  Net gain/loss for (Month):        $ 13,436

Ms. Trivedi reviewed the Budget to actual at December for 6 months and asked Tonya about numbers that stood out. Tonya responded to all questions - the most noteworthy change we made based on that review was Kaiser benefits were double billed for the month which Tonya has corrected. Also, as mentioned last meeting accounting expenses are a little higher but Tonya has spent time in grants and PPP work which were new this year. All other charges are as expected since we are 6 months in 2020-2021 school year. 
 

Ms. Yessenia Jones, PTO President, presented a summary of the PTO Officer meeting, including: Restaurant Night results from December and upcoming restaurant nights with locally owned small businesses; sock fundraiser; recording meetings and making available for viewing; Teacher Appreciation Committee with in evet in February; Social Interaction Committee; OBOB book clubs; family BINGO night; fundraising multi-cultural cooking lesson and kids themed cooking classes; student oriented movement activity classes; Parent meeting next Thursday; Black History Month Committee; Spanish speaking breakout groups; tentative plan for April auction. 

There was no Development & Community Relations Committee business to report.

There was no Governance Committee business to report.