Jan Baptist reported that she is enjoying her teaching position this year as she has fewer classes. David Eckert has left the field of retirement to take a position in Montreal, Canada, to work with the country's telephone system's yellow pages. And our guest John Polk was excited that his grandson received a great scholarship to attend the University of California.

Gail Fortes called in that due to a family emergency she was unable to attend this morning's meeting.

A.   The Governance Committee is looking at the best way to assess and evaluate the working of the Board Members.
B.  The proposed Executive Session to evaluate our Executive Director Will Gardner for the performance review for 2016-2017 was postponed to our next month's meeting.

Alice  presented us with a praise-worthy study that showed the teachers would be much more effective and happier with days during the course of the school year than ones added at the end for make-up of snow days.  The scholars are more attentive and learning better during the regular school days. It was perceived that we could help with teacher retention and scholar learning by adding any necessary days or extra work around the time of the snow days and reduce the number of days in June by three and still have more school days than the regular public schools.

Martha Kay reported that all is going well and at this point there are no new test results to report.
Jan Baptist asked Will is he could make a chart or listing of all tests - in-house and state - in order of their being given so that we could follow the results and know when a test had been given.
Jan met Maria Rosario for lunch and she has agreed to join the Academic Committee.

A. Will reported what is going well: (1) new scholars are being integrated into the Alma community without significant disruption to our culture or academic program. (2) The Culture Team led by Taylor DeLoach is a highly responsive team that is providing tremendous support to our scholars and staff.(3) our eighth Graders have begun the dual enrollment algebra program at New Bedford High and early reports are that they are doing  great work and enjoying the challenge.

We have kicked off talent recruitment reboot with external consultant this week
Nearly all positions filled (still some special education roles open)

Challenges came with an unexpected teacher departure on the 6th grade team leaving the school to fill a lead teacher position with the school underway. There will also be some adjustment with anticipated leaves in administration mid year.

B. Pursuing additional growth of Alma: A lengthy discussion ensued concerning the steps needed to be taken to investigate the possibility of pursuing additional growth of Alma.  We will look at options to think through WHY and SHOULD we grow and establish another school.  Our next step is to engage consultants.  It was determined by several board members that we will not be wasting our time as we will closely look at the school that has been established and determine what is the growth for it.
VOTE: David Eckert and Cile Hicks made the motion that the Board directs Will to engage with Bellwether Corporation, who have worked with other non-profit academic organizations to explore options to expand.  The Board VOTED unanimously to accept this motion.








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Will and Carolyn Ozcan have gone over the Annual Report and it will be published soon.

Cile offered praises for Alice for the extraordinary work that she has done in working with our auditors to avoid any financial findings that would be harmful to our report.
Thank you - Alice!

Our next meeting will be our RETREAT on OCTOBER 27th and a Continental Breakfast will be served at 8 AM.