S. Ortega ask to please consider making staff who are in an IA role salaried employees instead of their current hourly employee status due to the five weeks of breaks throughout the year where they are typically unpaid.

A. Schlenk took a survey asking how some of the elementary and afterschool staff felt about the communication between the ED & board vs the staff.   She advised more needs to be done for better communication and provided some possible solutions.

N. Stewart advised on the status of the AoA budget.  She advised that as of now we have enough to cover 24.7% of our expenses. We have enough to cover 1 month of payroll and 1 month of savings currently.  

For next FY 25--26, we are projecting an increase in TK-8 enrollment. Operating income for next year is expected to be positive $23k.  Next meeting will show the projected budget for next year.  

J.  Whatley said we are anticipating an increase in enrollment and wondering where the information is increasing on the presentation.  She also asked if we were to budget the COLA at being 2% instead of current budgeted projections (2.43% in FY26 and 3.52% in FY27), then we can be pleasantly surprised if they are higher instead of always decreasing it when we receive the notice of change.
 

A. Price asked if the extra students we will be due to the 2nd TK class and also asked about where the other 20 students come from.  J.  Yang advised that is due to attrition in MS, 10 in increase from 6th grade and then the other 10 are from the other 2 MS classes raising up .

K.  McCoy asked if we are worried about federal funding and how it will be affected with the changes.  N. Stewart advised current about 2-3% so not too much to worry about.

D. Morgan and A. Hannah advised on the system of supports.  They advised that tier 2 is very much needed and will explain why it is needed.  ELA Tier 1 has 30 mins a day of small group targeted foundational literacy for TK-2nd graders.  In grades 2-5 they get 2- 30 minute "what I need" session times per day where they receive literacy and math intervention.  In grades 6-8 peer tutorial is offered during their tutorial class and can be pulled for extra attention.  Tier 2 presents more individual and small group support to the students who need it.  73% of our smaller kids from Tk and 1st are at a proficient level.   When broken down by race/ethnicity AoA Black and LatinX are preforming at less than a 50% of the state average.  D. Morgan advised that this year math AoA has a math intervention plan where someone trains them with their specific needs to help them catch up however, that role has been cut from next year.   Emerging bilingual students are mostly coming with needing intervention in order to catch up to the state level.  Their ask is to get a stronger Tier 2 support team and to focus more on supporting our new and ELA students coming in.  D. Morgan advised a thought would be to use the position of afterschool staff that will remain full time to be used as a math intervention and ELA intervention from 10am-3pm and then help with the after school so that it will not take from the budget since it is already a position working for AoA.  

C. Robie asked if there is any data showing the amount of help that the Tier 2 brings to the school. D. Morgan advised she does have it and shared with Amy McGeorge last week.

A. Price asked if there is any comparison from the beginning of the year and to see if there is growth.  D. Morgan advised yes and can share with the board.  She also advised that attendance is a huge part of why they are falling behind.  A.  Price advised she is asking because if the board were to approve the position would it be worth it since attendance is not there.  D. Morgan advised that the class sizes worries her a lot more since they asked for the decrease in class sizes for a reason.  

R. Rentschler said that the math and the reading are in a close proximity of percentage wise and he asked if they are the same students.  Both A.  Hannah and D. Morgan advised mostly yes but there are some outliers.  R. Rentschler advised if the individuals in red emerge to a state of green. 

D. Morgan advised the red group is usually based off 3 groups: 1) new incoming students to AoA, 2)  students who ultimately end up with an IEP and 3) students who are chronically absent.

M. Payne asked if there are behavior issues with the students in the red.  D. Morgan advised that they are not necessarily clustered but run throughout all of the students.  He advised that if there is a way to like get students to concentrate to get their attention span to focus.  A.  Hannah advised that it is already happening. 

A. Price asked if we took out the chronic absentee data what would the school look like.

C. Chilcott advised of the enrollment process including the dates for the lottery process. She provided an update of how many students we have added.  Advised this is the first time there is a waitlist in middle school.  We do get more parcel tax money from Alameda residents and she wanted to keep that in mind when seeing the sibling possibly decrease due to the change of lottery order and focusing more on Alameda residents.  C. Chilcott advised that word of mouth is the biggest way people hear about AoA with online and web searches being second. She shared yesterday was the first PTSA meeting and they talked about ways to get AoA out there more.  C. Chilcott advised since word of mouth is so big we may want to focus on this a bit more.  She also provided the proof showing how both Larson Communication and Reputation Simple have helped bring in students to AoA and a brief overview of what each company does.  J. Adams from Larson communication gave a presentation showing the statistics on enrollment and how much it costs us.

A. Price asked who is responsible for the AoA Instagram.  C. Chilcott advised it is 2 parties, the actual posts come from an employee who is in charge of deciding what is posted and Larson who runs the ads on social media.   

R. Rentschler asked how can you target Alameda specifically.  J. Adams advised that the way it is marketed and where the ads are coming from and who they are going to is changed constantly depending on our needs. 

A.  Price asked if the fact that we have a waitlist is promoted.

Finance committee- did not meet, nothing to report.

Student success committee-  met today and talked about absenteeism.  They also talked about how the school resources are used to support the students with absenteeism and the impact on the students and the families.

Governance committee-  reviewed final 2 policies that the board will be getting for the next board meeting.  Will meet next week and will discuss the possibility of former AoA students becoming student board members. 

A.  Price asked that we add a section to the meeting next month to discuss the form given to us today with the survey.

C. Chilcott reminded the board to fill out their 700 form.  She also reminded them to continue filling out their board meeting RSVP's going forward so that we can get a better count of people coming to the meeting.