Alba, a fifth grader who is new to Alma this year, stopped by to share about her first month in a new school. She even showed the board the "pizza slice" method for solving a math problem!

Note the Board Retreat has been rescheduled to Friday, November 4th. Please let W. Gardner know if you have a scheduling conflict with this new date.

M. Kay shared preliminary state testing data. M. Kay reported that the Academic Committee has discussed the importance of staff Professional Development opportunities as well as teacher retention and how it relates to scholar performance. It was also reported that our kindergarten classes have a high ELL rate this year - around 30% of the 40 scholars are English language learners. 

Trustees are encouraged to pass along any feedback regarding the Annual Report to B. Kurie. J. Eagle and B. Kurie will discuss appropriate timing of the annual appeal mailing this fall and inform the board of final decision. Everyone is asked to please pull up the Google Sheet with the 500+ names (top 200+ names are in alphabetical order) to assign yourself to 10 or so recipients to then write short notes to them that will be included in their envelopes. 

Back to School Night is from 5:15-6:30 pm on Thursday, Sept. 29th - trustees are encouraged to attend to interact with scholars and families as they check out classrooms and scholar work that has been completed so far this school year. 

PARCC and state accountability data will be made public at 5 pm on Monday, Sept. 26. W. Gardner and B. Kurie will be preparing talking points for the Standard Times.