Academy of Collaborative Education
Minutes
Academic Excellence Committee Meeting
Date and Time
Wednesday February 5, 2025 at 3:00 PM
Pursuant to Louisiana Open Meetings Law - La. R.S. 42:19, notice is hereby given to the members of the Board of Directors of Academy of Collaborative Education and to the general public that the Board will hold a regular, special, or re-scheduled meeting, open to the public as specified below. To ensure compliance with the Open Meeting Law, recipients of this message should not forward it to other Board members, and Board members should not reply to this message.
Committee Members Present
Amy Marcus (remote), Carmen Parks, Joellen Freeman, Karen Roberson
Committee Members Absent
None
I. Opening Items
A.
Record Attendance
B.
Call the Meeting to Order
C.
Approve Minutes
D.
This being our first official meeting, there were no minutes to approve.
II. Academic Excellence
A.
ACE Charter Promises-Instructional Strategies
B.
ACE CHARTER PROMISES-Assessments PAGE 6
We discussed item 4 in the Assessments section on page 6 and were told that a committee, Karen, Dawn, Joellen, and a few teachers, has been formed to better implement and uphold this policy. We will get a different scanner and revamp the way we scan Google Docs for this purpose.
C.
ACE Charter Promises-Behavior Management section on page 7
Joellen will remind and check in with ABA therapists relative to charter promise 2 in this section.
Regarding charter promise 3 of this section, new students will receive the current handbook and a new one (possibly revised in April-May 2025-2026) at next school year's Parent Information Night. Current families have been given handbooks, and the current handbook can be found on our website.
Charter promise 4 in this section refers to the fact that ACE constantly creates more comprehensive behavior plans (written by BCBA with teacher and line-tech and implemented after IEP meeting) that shape behavior instead of punishment. We are also working to reduce the number of referrals to our principal by empowering teachers and staff to implement case-by-case behavior management.
The fifth charter promise in this section will be updated for the next school year to facilitate more effective reporting and response.
The sixth will also be updated for next year, to be more specific. Our goal is for our parents to be a part of "the team."
D.
ACE Charter Promises-Parent and Community Engagement section on page 8
Regarding the first promise in this section, ACE will use multimedia community outreach and community activities.
Regarding promise three, we discussed working toward parent training quarterly with family nights, a speaker, and maybe "make-and-takes." ACE will add more community resources for parents on the ACE website. We are also looking into the medical management processes and procedures to see if we can partner with medical professionals to help our students and parents in any way possible.
E.
ACE Charter Promises-Governance on pages 9 nd 10
Item 8 on page 10 was discussed, and Joellen informed the committee that Tammy Morgan told her that ACE would be judged on a traditional framework and could be an "F" school. However, when the charter is up for renewal, BESE will use an alternative framework by looking at PEAK assessments. IEP goals and student improvement.
The committee began by discussing Instructional Strategies, Methods, and Technologies on page 5 of the ACE Charter Promises document. We then discussed Item 7 of this section, and we learned that ACE is using PEAK instead of VB-MAPP. We moved on to Item 8 and were told we would probably replace ABLLS-R with AFLS.