M. Chisely, left at noon as he had another meeting, he then called in to finish the meeting. M. Gonulalan was not present at the meeting however, I can not change his status.

"I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." "I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

D. Coats opened the floor for public input. No public input was given. 

T. Miller asked about parent participation at our board meetings.  He asked if we could maybe work on getting more parents to attend the meetings.  D. Coats asked for suggestions on how to do that.  M. Chisley suggested sending a flyer to the parents, T. Miller suggested an invite. B. Valentine-Watts thought maybe finding a different setting for the board to meet with parents might be a good idea.  M. Dunn suggested a "Breakfast with the Board"  in a more casual setting and R. Ernst suggested maybe on  a quarterly basis.  The board will look into these suggestions.

M. Dunn went over the root causes of the South closure, 1. Financial Viability 2. Climate/Culture 3. Academic Performance and 4. Student Enrollment.  All of these area worded inter-dependently no one item was independent of each other.  Financial struggles were due to lack of enrollment.  There was a large number of "high need " students.  An example was Kindergarten students that could not do the basics that were needed in the classroom.  D. Coats Where does the emphasis come from for students in that situation? They may have been failed in the traditional setting, they see the Charter School as the saving grace. M. Chisley some parents just don't care about the success of their students.  

R. Ernst, what did we lose out on and what did we do wrong?  M. Dunn What we learned was - 1. we didn't have systems in place 2. No strategic process and 3. No financial processes.  B. Valentine-Watts It seems like we were not proactive at the time and we were not prepared for the competition moving into the area.  M. Arslan, We did some interventions, but they were too late. We had a new principal come in in 2015 with the full go ahead, this was a key piece but not the only piece.  We turned it into a group effort.

What would we do differently involving leadership?  Have the board more involved in administration changes. D. Coats was on the South school board when it opened. They opened South assuming that it would run just like West/North.  We received notice from OEI and changes were made, M. Dunn and H. Becker were brought on board and things started changing for the better.
Then we were told the school had to close however, we finished the year with a solid "C" score from the DOE.

This definitely had an impact on the board and how they need to do things going forward.  M. Dunn, we operate like Google does - The person on the team that has the best ability to do the project takes the lead.  We did it twice and it worked so we tried again and it didn't work like we thought.  We work as a team on all items. K. Pattison (OEI) says he hears the concerns of the board in regards to the South closure and the people that were involved are no longer working for OEI and we have a new Board Chair.  K. Pattison stated that he sees good changes in the conversations that the board is having now and we are making great progress on our goals for the North school. R. Ernst stated that he would like to hear from Kevin and or Hugo at each of our meetings going forward. 

T. Miller appreciates that the OEI gives us the autonomy and getting kids that have greater needs is definitely perhaps things were missed, however, it can change going forward.  We have the invitation to change things and he did not see any board items in M. Dunn's report.  M. Dunn - we will see more at the board level of monitoring.  We need to do a better job of bringing these things to the forefront.

We will discuss this further at the Governance Committee meeting.



 

 

R. Ernst shared that the Governance Committee recommended that a Development Committee is started to make a home for fundraising efforts, to set policy and guidelines on how to raise money for the schools.  D. Coats asked OEI how common is it for charter schools and is anyone doing really good at it?  K. Pattison said yes it is common and KIPP does well at it.  
T. Miller and J. Sparks are volunteered for the committee.

M. Chisely  - We have methods in place to insure the success of our students.  With state standards  assessments, with internal measurements.  For students that are not achieving the 70% there are remediation steps for them.  Methods and implementations are data driven and they are using best practices and everyone is working from the same page.

T. Miller reported that IMSA North is waiting on some revenue to come in.  The summary has been updated for a better understanding and visibility.  We can see better where we are trending well.  T.Miller asked Halil if we can breakout fundraising out of Misc Revenue, and yes it can be done and they will make that change.  Cash on hand is good.  There are no major expenses to report.

T. Miller - IMSA West has some supplies that they are going to offer to Home School groups for re-sale to recoup some of the costs.  We will be opening negotiations with BMO Harris Bank on the fees charged to the schools for their services, this is to see if they can be waived.  T. Miller also shared that the rent expenses for West look different as the payment is paid every six months out of the Foundation Revenue.   Textbook supplies are being purchased differently and they will be selling some back.  

D. Coats asked K. Pattison about the board fellow from IUPUI, it was approved and they will be contacting Mr. Coats.  J. Sparks will be the board mentor on this project.   T. Miller shared his experience at the West visit.  He invited all the board members to memorize the board mission/vision statements so when asked they know.  He shared that the key to success they shared at West was consistency.  T. Miller also went to the BOT workshop and found it useful.  He also attend the Core 4 visit at West.  T. Miller highly recommended that if you have the opportunity to go to the schools please take it.  We need more engagement by the board and "bring your friends to the party" were his closing remarks.