After thanking trustees for attending and supporting the 20th anniversary celebration event, H. Darilek invited members of the Core Leadership Team who were in attendance to share highlights from their areas of work. Highlights included:

• Nearly all staff completed their performance management tasks on time, and 100% employees' goals are aligned to the Strategic Plan.
• We recently launched the Assistant Principal in Residence program to strengthen our school leadership team.
• Our enrollment and financial audits both went smoothly, ensuring stable organization-wide operations. 
• Our elementary schools looks forward to opening our new Pre-K playground in the new year.
• We hosted a successful 20 anniversary celebration event with more than 300 community members attending.
• At our elementary school, classrooms continue to focus on strengthen reading and writing, and our Student Government Association has been very active this year so far.
• At our high school, our College Office hosted another successful 10th Grade Career Exploration Day, and in classrooms, teachers are focused on strengthening academic discourse and questioning.

R. Hunt Taylor led a high-level review of the E.L. Haynes organizational dashboard, previewing that the data captured will drive new, mid-year investments.

R. Hunt Taylor shared a proposal for new, mid-year investments to address ongoing learning gaps and challenges. In response to questions by different trustees, R. Hunt Taylor provided additional details:

• She clarified that her funding requests are maximal, adding that they may not utilize all the requested funds but that she did not want to under-estimate the cost of the work.
• She and the Chief Academic Officer (CAO) Team will develop a plan to measure impact.
• Many of these solutions are already being developed for the following school year, but that it makes sense to initiate the work now while we have funds to spend.
• It could be possible to find ways to double-down on attendance for students who are benefiting from the new investments.
• Regarding Goal #3, she clarified that we want to increase the number of students who are proficient by 20%.

K. Wynne highlighted that we have exceeded our FY25 fundraising goal by more than $200k.

F. Sutton led a debrief of the 20th anniversary celebration event, and L. Robinson Mills reminded trustees that, while it was primarily a fundraiser event, it also helped us strengthen stakeholder relationships and build our brand. Collectively, trustees raised the following questions:

• How can we grow an alumni presence at our celebrations? How can we develop activities/programming for alumni outside of these fundraising events?
• Could we integrate any light programming, or color-coded nametags, to help get the crowd mixing more?
• Could we assign certain donors/stakeholders to trustees so they have people they're focusing on?

K. Wynne shared an overview of the end-of-year development campaign. Trustees requested information comparing how the campaign is performing last year to date.

• J. Hanna shared that we passed our FY24 financial audit with no issues.
• H. Darilek thanked all staff teams who helped ensure we met all requirements and completed all requests for information.

• J. Hanna outlined the FY25 budget planning timeline.

R. Payes shared next steps with trustees as the Governance Committee works to develop and share new onboarding resources.

R. Payes shared that the Governance Committee is meeting with a potential new trustee, whom they hope to present to trustees at an upcoming meeting.