Tiffany Johnson and Antonio Johnson

Laura will be our new governance chair switching from finance.  Greg Wallace will be appointed to Finance.  We will have a conversation with Laura about taking another vote regarding treasurer position.  Penny: Do we need to make changes as signers on the account?  Ernest: Yes, but we will need to do it next month and will need to vote on it.  Greg asked if he would need to bring ID, Penny advised no.  Ted Givens will be appointed as the facilities liason.  He led the 100 Acres project at IMA.  Conflict of interest forms need to be signed and turned in.  Even though some of us originals signed the form, these are now on official letterhead so we will go ahead and sign them.  

Nathan Tuttle read his report that is attached.  Henry asked what does it mean when it says they are displaced as an IPS teacher.  Nathan explained that it means there was a shortage at one building so that teacher then is offered other schools that do have open positions.  IPS Locked position means that IPS is paying the position, we are not.  ESL, SPED, custodial and food service are paid by IPS.  Henry - the two resignations are okay, we feel okay about that?  Nathan explained that Nicole found another position in a near district, leaving on good terms.  The other teacher came to the realization that this career was not what she wanted.  Miss Adams  is being replaced by Mary Katie Calvert.  She was able to come in the last two days as Miss Adams transitioned out.  It was a great opportunity.  Greg Wallace asked if we had replaced Hengen.  Nathan explained that we have not had any candidates but we do have a highly qualified teacher in there who is licensed.  The guest teacher did express interest in staying for remainder of year.  Amy explained we did have a couple of candidates but they were not up to the standards.  The current guest teacher does have a license, but it is currently lapsed.  Ted Givens joined the meeting.  We are also extremely pleased with our enrollment.  Penny will go more in depth into that.  Preliminary results from ISTEP have been released.  Amy will speak more to that.  Right now our school is rated as a D.  Nathan thought we would be an "F" due to the addition of all the other grade levels added.  Some of it was expected, some of it is not surprising.  We have certainly corrected everything with staffing.  We now have our official letter grade at this time.  Any questions?  

We had a proposal from one of our parents who has a 4th grade student here.  Questions to consider regarding how does it impact academics.  Most of the times you are finding this in a high school setting, not so much a K-8 building.  Right now we would like to table this until we see more interest and have a more solid foundation of Edison.  We would like to table this until we can talk more formally about this.  Dr. Leck mentioned his daughter is the faculty advisor to the gay alliance at a school.  He can contact her and find out if she is aware of any K-8 buildings.  Nathan stated we aren't opposed but we would like more information.  Dr. Leck asked if we have any other clubs going.  Amy stated our biggest obstacle right now is transportation because the earliest we can get a bus is 5:30.  Dr. Leck suggested maybe having an activities day and maybe students can rotated to 3 different clubs in one day, each club would be one hour.  Ernest suggested we come up with a policy and work with Dr. Leck to create that.  Dr. Leck suggested if we have 6 clubs we could bring in vetted community members to help run the clubs.  Ernest trust that we will create a policy frame work and the board will work with us to support this.  We could do a musical theatre club and one part could be makeup, costumes, etc.  Nathan stated our after school program is YMCA, it happens on a regular basis.  Greg Wallace mentioned if we have anyone from the outside to make sure they have background checks and properly vetted.  Greg mentioned he received an extracurricular handbook from another school district  that might be helpful.  Do we have anything we have given our parents?  We did put our parent handbook online, but the challenge becomes printing costs.  Nathan said he would love if the board could help us figure it out .  Ted mentioned that not all students have access to that and maybe we could find someone who could print that for us.  Greg mentioned we should take a look at best practices and completeness.  He would like to make sure as we get more formalized that we cover all our bases and that all the expectations are covered.  Nathan mentioned ours is pretty comprehensive.  Ernest would like for us to investigate what we have and comparing it to what we have and looking at the policy that we have.  Nathan stated he would give the link to the board members so they can look over what we currently have.  Ernest asked for the link to be sent again. In addition to that one, IPS also has more policies that we follow as well.  Ernest would like for Dr. Leck and others to take a look at this and build on it.  Ted Givens asked which one would override if there are any conflicts (the IPS or Edison one).  It would be Edison.  Greg Wallace mentioned he will leave this so we can look over it.   He will also get more information from another person that is on the board.  Dr. Leck and Amy will meet to further discuss.  

Amy went over the letter grades assigned by the IDOE.  We went from a "C" to a "D".  We had 98.6% participation and the goal is 95%. Under the performance domain we passed ELA at 55.8% which is up 2% from the previous year.  In Mathematics we had a 24.2% passing rate which is down 9.8%.  When looking at our growth domain, we earned 103.7 points for the bottom 25% in ELA which dropped 44 points.  In Mathematics we earned 67.9 points for the bottom 25%, down 17.1 points from the previous year.  Some things to take in considerations include the addition of grades 6-8 (200 more students).  This was our first year academically "touching" our 7th and 8th grade students.  The students that we had in 5th grade showed great growth in 6th grade in both ELA and Mathematics.  Last year was also the first year teaching EngageNY curriculum.  There were teacher turnover issues that could have impacted special education, mathematics and writing (ELA).  

This year we are focusing heavily on data driven PLC meetings along with bringing and analyzing student work and looking at best practices and instructional strategies.  We are holding strategic and intentional professional development trainings.  By having the early release Wednesdays it allows us to circle back to trainings we have delivered and follow-up with implementation in the classrooms.  We have instructional assistants that are working with kindergarten and first grade classrooms as well as 3rd, 4th and one 5th grade classroom.  The instructional assistants will provide small group instruction with very specific targeted support.  Students have been identified who need additional small group academic support.  Those students receive an additional 45 min. daily of remediation instruction with their classroom teachers.  Administration and instructional coaches are doing instructional walk throughs and providing actionable feedback.  
 
Dr. Leck would like to know what percent of students will be with us for just this year.  It should be around 7%.  All Kindergarten students will be new.  The 7% would be more an approximation of filling holes.  Nathan will work on getting a more accurate number for the next meeting.  

Greg Wallace asked about what goals we have set.  Amy advised that our instructional coach is working on getting a report together that has more detailed student information.  That information will be discussed at grade level PLC meetings to ensure we are aware of what students need.  Once we have that information we will sit down and set more concrete goals.  

Nathan explained next year we will only see growth scores due to being a new innovation school.  

We have had several teachers attend math professional development at the district, our instructional coach and middle school math teacher have attended training and will deliver that information to the staff on November 1st with follow-up training on November 15th.  Arts integration training is going well.  We have had our second training and some teachers have attempted tableau into their classrooms.  Restorative justice training is also going well.  We are in the process of selecting our peer mediators that will be trained by the Peace Learning Center.  Our 8th graders will be attending a field trip at the Peace Learning Center this week.  Proactive circles are being implemented across grade levels.  

ADM was something we have been waiting on and waiting on!  Official ADM count ended on Friday.  We should be roughly at 595.  It could go up or down one or two.  We had a lot of families that moved and we filled their spots.  Being a visual and performing arts school, we really like the students to start at the beginning of the year.  We are very happy with where our numbers are.  If you look at the dashboard you can see the numbers by grade level.  We had an overbook goal to be safe with numbers and the green category is our actual counts.  We were able to take a lot of kids off the wait list.  Ted Givens asked if everyone on the wait list got in.  Penny explained not everyone was able to, especially 7th grade because we had so many numbers.  IPS opened up the wait list for all schools so Penny was able to go in and call other students that were on other waitlist for other schools.  Next year Penny will pay close attention  to how many students we had start and leave from the beginning of the year up to the ADM.  She believes it is about 75 students.  Dr. Leck asked what was our attrition was last year.  Nathan advised it was about 50 students.  Dr. Leck asked if we see that happening this year.  Nathan advised that it might be slightly higher with the increased numbers.  Dr. Leck asked if we would be accepting anymore students.  Penny advised it depends on numbers and if we were to see a large drop.  It makes it hard to add students mid year with our performing arts program.  We do already have several tours set up throughout the year.  Dr. Leck confirmed that ADM is what determines our funding and that it won't change throughout the year.  So our budget was originally budgeted on 543, so our budget will be slightly higher having more students.  Penny would try and call anytime we had anyone leave from the school.  

PR has been wonderful.  Kitchen Community, Lilly Campus presentation, KDO, Valley Vision Community Meetings.  Lilly has a program that we are trying to get set up that tutors kindergarten.  Lilly Day of Service is next week.  We have about 20-30 that will be stationed in the library to level books and bar code books.  The playground will be repainted.  They are also talking about rebuilding or fixing our shed.  They are going to help fix our chicken coop because birds are getting in and eating the feed.  They would like to insulate the coop as well.  When you go around to the back, we are going to add a shade structure back by the garden.  We are going to be doing shade sails.  They have 80 people signed up.  They want to come up the other side of the fence, but we are running into some obstacles with the city.  They contacted Keep Indianapolis Beautiful and they are working on trying to figure it out.  Ted Givens asked Penny to email him and he will try and help.  

We had our tour with Any Given Child.  We took a group to Operation School Bell and they got school clothes and shoes.  We had a CAPS performance from the Eitljorg Museum (Native Flute).  Tutor Mate program is starting for the first time in first grade.  Each first grade classroom will have a computer set up and be able to work with a first grader.  Our 8th graders have been out to Shortridge already and will also be participating in Job Sparks.  Our Dance team has been invited to perform at the Circle City Classic on Friday.  Our middle school students will be participating in a writing workshop as well.

Kay organized to have Channel 6 and 8 come out to the school.  The PR was great.  Kay was able to promote what Edison does and it fit in beautifully with Arts in Education Week.  The more impressions that we can secure consistently will build awareness of our brand and how great Edison is and what we have to offer.  It was really nice that they got to see the actual arts room at work instead of just seeing performance groups.  They were really floored that this is what happens everyday at Edison.  Great content exists all over the city, but we have to have the right person making the pitch, so thank you to Kay for making that happen!

There are a few more things on the dashboard that is happening in September.  Kay would like to go ahead and get whoever to approve a release about our board as well.  If nothing else, it is another impression of the school and our mission. 

You should have 2 months of financial reports.  Good news is we have an excess of revenue and we are in a positive cash flow position.  Much of that is due to the initial 240,000 loan from IPS that has to be paid back.  The key date was waiting on ADM and so now that we have the firm number, Brian Anderson is going to redo the budget so it reflects the new revenue.  It is about 52 students above what the original budget was formed from.  We have decided since the ADM was coming quickly, that we would re-forecast what those monthly cashflows are.  The bulk of the expenditures are salary and insurance related.  About 85% of our expenditures will be payroll related.  Ted Givens asked what types of things go in the uncategorized category.  Greg Wallace will check with Brian Anderson.  Dr. Leck is asking if we foresee any additional expenditures with the increase.  Nathan said there might be, but we aren't sure just yet.  Greg said we have to be self-sustaining at some point and we need to build a cash surplus as well.  We probably need to do a one year cash flow projection.  Ted Givens asked at what point that loan is due.  Nathan said we will have it paid by the end of this year in 9 months.  It will be much more informative to look at the cash flows next month.  Ted Givens asked with the addition of the 52 students does it require additional staff.  Nathan advised it will not.  

Next meeting is confirmed for Tuesday October 24th at 3:30.