No public comment

Board would like to explore outreach to bilingual preschools in the area.  Consider sending out materials, making outreach phone calls, offering open houses for preschool staff.  Jesús has experience with outreach from his previous position.  

There are Board members with direct connections to Little Einsteins and Aprende con Amigos. Christa will create a survey for school families to find out what other connections there are in the community. 

• Large focus on Move-a-thon.  We reached our goal of $65,000!  Final event is tomorrow
• Room parent program is up and running
• Feedback from parents that they would like to be present during the move-a-thon in the future.

PTO meetings are virtual at 6pm

Nov 1st:  Josh

Dec 6th: Adreana  

January 3rd:  hold, may change

February 7th: Sarah Z

March 6th:  Christa

April 3rd:  Erin

May 1st: Yessenia

Academic (Excellence)

• Academic updates during the month of October include:
  1. Internal assessments
     • We use easyCBM as an internal assessment.  This assessment is used as a starting data point which is used to measure student growth throughout the year. We are conducting these assessments, presently. 
  2. Data analysis and additional supports
     • We conducted a brief data analysis PD using past data points as easyCBM data is not yet available. This step allows us to determine which students are in need of interventions, or additional support, this 1st part of the 1st semester.
     • Using current data, student Interventions started this week
     • Jesus shared timeline for assessments throughout the school year
• Updates re: Early Literacy Curriculum Adoption
  • Reminders: 
    • ODE is asking schools around the state to have a more aligned curriculum to teach Language Arts (ELA). ODE will cover 75% of the costs related to purchasing this program.
    • We are exploring the “HHM” Curriculum. It has a Spanish Component (“Arriba la Lectura”), also for all grades KN-5th.
    • Our goal this year is to purchase this program and adopt it next year for all grades - for consistency and alignment purposes
    • Application for early literacy curriculum costs are due the first week in January
      • Application will need board approval/review, so we are planning on presenting initial drafts in November for review and approval during our December meeting at the latest
      • Total cost: _(this has been requested - don’t have a total quote, yet. However, it should be around $60,-80,000 for the English curriculum.

(Empowerment) Staff Training and Retention

• Team building opportunities: 
  1. We had an opportunity to engage in community building activities as a team during our SDW/Staff Professional Development Day.
• Staffing:
  1. We continue interviewing this week for one more IA position (last vacancy)
     • This will put us at 10 (ten) IAs:
       • 2 IAs are Administrative Assistants supporting the office and BD/BT
       • 1 IA supports our lunch program
       • 7 IAs support classrooms and BD/BT
         • Our vision of how our 7 IAs support students in classrooms looks like this:
           • KN-1st: 6 (six)IAs support these 6 classrooms about  80% of the time
           • 2nd-5th: same 6 (six)IAs support classrooms 20% of the time (during lunch and workshop, as well as additional support during the day whenever possible).  1 more IA splits their time supporting upper grades.

(Engagement and Equity) Community Engagement and Positive School Culture

• Upcoming events: 
  1. Move-A-Thon (October 20)
  2. Dia de los Muertos Altar and 8th grade’s Informational sessions for all students on November 2nd
  3. AFG kick off in November
  4. Library: Great volunteer response to run the library!
• (Reminders) Recurring events:
  1. Coffee with the Principal (1st Friday of every month). Great response to the first two socials: 25-30 family members in attendance.
• Playground: Jesús shared results of staff survey on use of outdoor spaces for recess.  Staff priority is adding a fence. Need more paint and activities in recess areas.  The back is now being used primarily for PE class, which creates challenges with the original plan.  It seems there may be changes this year in how the outdoor spaces are used.

Financial Responsibility

• Grant opportunities and updates 
  1. PE grant (Jesús will send a draft by Thursday 10.19.23 to the board. Please provide feedback to me directly.)
     • Information re: this grant.  
       • There is an opportunity to submit an application to ODE to cover the costs of 1 PE position - we currently have 2 PE FTE
       • Proposal is due Monday, Oct 23 by 12 pm 
  2. There is one more grant opportunity we are exploring, and Erin and the development committee are spearheading this application, which is also due this month.  
     • We are thinking of using this grant to support the acquisition of the Spanish components of the English curriculum we are aiming to purchase with the Early Literacy Grant application, via ODE.
  3. Re: Early Literacy grant - we will start the application process (draft) in November, share it with the board that month, or the following (December), as it will need board approval prior to submitting it in late December/early January.
  4. SIA grant updates: Michelle submitted Q1 report for the SIA grant
• Enrollment for 23-24 is at 422 students in grades KN-8 as of 10.16.23
  1. We continue enrolling - see Kinder and 5th examples below.
     • New students in upper grades need an assessment, and this can sometimes be impactful in terms of quickly enrolling students in those grades.
  2. Based on feedback, we added “reason for leaving” as a question/response in our withdrawal forms to capture information/reasons from families leaving Arco.

• Month of September cash in/out was an improvement from this time last year
• Still waiting to be able to cash in on SIA funds

▪ ADMw received for (Month): $315,947
▪ Total income for (Month): $424,555.87
▪ Cash balance for (Month): $3,070,837
▪ Accts Receivable for (Month): $ 73,726.50
▪ Net gain/loss for (Month): ($13,804.30)

• Received the recommendations from Ed Fund clients.  Contract start date is Nov 1st.  First meeting being set up with school team and company.

Discussed during Director's report.  Board members will meet with PE teachers to discuss next steps.

• Christa to survey families re: preschools
• Sarah to share preschool list with Jesús.  Need to make this a shared google sheet, versus the excel sheet it is on.
• Jesús to work on meeting options with PE teachers
• Christa will send out edited operating agreements
• Jesús to send out grant info for PE hire thru ODE. Board to send any direct feedback to Jesús by early Monday morning.