J. Scalice discussed this year's board meeting will have an update on Commissioner's Network Grant.

J. Scalice also let the board know the plan with the State focuses on steps around talent acquisition and professional development, academics, culture and climate and operations. 

J. Scalice shared that with our partnership with Post University. Students were able to have their transcripts analyzed and possible early acceptances. Post University immediately accepted 19 students and offered over 115,000 in merit based awards. A student received a full scholarship to Morris in NY and another student to Penn State.

Last year we were behind around this time and struggling withs students to apply to colleges. Now, we have over 25 senior acceptances of about 60 students so far. C. Pellegrino, HS Principal and Jackie Perez, Guidance Counselor have helped college awareness around the school. The onboarding of our Career and College counselor as part of our grant has made a big significance. We received a second year of the FAFSA college challenge grant and an additional thousand dollars to that grant for meeting our targeted goals last year. 

B. Carlson states that this information needs to be shared for Fundraising. D. Zieff states he will be meeting with a foundation to get a match of his donation to get started on fundraising. 

J. Scalice mentioned that the school was able to start a reengagement conversation with the Buck foundation which is a big educational organization in CT. The Buck foundation is also working with some of the original donors to Great Oaks that disengaged in the first couple of years of the school. This is a great opportunity to get back in touch with those donors. 

L. Hubbard discussed the final pieces of the separation of the foundation. We are finalizing benefits, payroll, finance.  L. Hubbard mentioned that there was a slight issue with FSA accounts but the school was able to find a quick solution for this. 

• ADP recently recommended we stick with the vendor who currently manages our FSA accounts which is Prime Pay. They recommended this because if we move over to ADP, staff will have to spend down everything they have on their cards by end of December. 
• L. Hubbard reached out to Prime Pay directly, they weren't sure how they ere able to service us separately. L. Hubbard also reached out to Austin & Co. who is the broker currently managing our benefits through the foundation and they said there is no way we can extend with Primepay and keep the account as is so that staff cause their benefits until June.  
• L. Hubbard also spoke to Dinsmore Steele to get their feedback. 
• L. Hubbard found out that the school pays for the FSA funds up front for staff for the year. There isn't anyone the school has to pay back for the funds that were put up front. What is currently happening is that we are taking deductions from staff to pay back what we front loaded. We won't be able to do that from January- June if we are asking everyone to use everything by December. 
• Our solution is the following: 
  • Making FSA accounts available through ADP
  • Send message to staff stating that they have to use up what they currently have by end of December but they have to sign up through ADP for a new FSA account starting in January.
  • This means that the school is going that the school will lose out on the money that the staff is paying from January to June. But, this helps staff not focus/ worry about losing money and having to pay back the school. 
  • L. Hubbard reached out to Austin & Co. to find out how many staff members are enrolled in FSA and how much money the school is essentially losing and we're estimating it is going to cost a little under $8,000. We will have a definite number from Austin & Co's report. 
• ADP did a session with staff regarding benefits and did an  introduction to the new technology.
• Enrollment season will be open in January and the application will be on the website. Applications will be collected between January and April.
  • Director of Community Partnerships has been talking about enrollment to our community partners