Because we do not have a quorum, we will hold the approval of minutes vote until our June 6, 2024 meeting. 

The Board of Directors and Executive Team welcomed school leaders: Dr. Veda Turner, Ms. Melody Smith, and Ms. Tonye Smith-McBride for a special recognition. Each of the school leaders shared what motivates them, what they attribute their success to and also what they are looking forward to this coming school year. The Board Chair and CEO presented them with an award and token of appreciation for their work, leadership, and guidance getting three schools to Level 5 and Reward School Status for the 2022-23 school year.

Interim Committee Chair, Holly Coleman shared a high-level summary of what was covered in Committee. The highlights are below.

Student Performance

• ELA/English: all schools exceeded their double AMO goal on Benchmark 3
• Math: KMCE and KMCH exceeded their double AMO goal on Benchmark 3, KMCM improved from Benchmark 2 by 17 percentage points
• Science: KMCE and KMCM increased by 5 or more percentage points from Benchmark 2

College & Career Preparation

• Class of 2024- With a Cohort of 110 students (we currently have 76 seniors), our preliminary graduation rate is 73.6%; we have a goal of 86% graduation rate. 
• Class of 2024 - 90% have completed FAFSA; making us #2 in the KIPP network for FAFSA percentage completion for the Class of 2024. (As of 4/18/2024, they were up to 93% completion).

Question from D. Hopson: Is the graduation rate a matter of tracking students? Yes, of the 110 that started in 9th grade, 76 are seniors with KIPP Memphis now. We're working to get to 86%+ graduation rate for the seniors that are left with us. As of today, our team has located 12 of the 23 that are not currently in our school building. Four of the 76 seniors currently with us may need summer and another semester to complete the full requirements for graduation. If they complete the requirements by October of 2025, it will still count towards our cohort graduation rate.

Question from M. Davis: What happens if we can't find the 11 remaining students? It's a years lag to clear the cohort. If we don't find them by October of 2025, then they will be coded as "did not graduate/drop out."

Finance Committee Chair, Dr. Lin Johnson, shared an overview of what was discussed in the Finance Committee Meeting. The highlights are below.

Committee Actions [APPROVED]

• New vendor selected for IT Management Services (Wired Technology Partners) - $196,435.20 annually (Savings of about $100,000 with the new IT Services contract with Wired Technology Partners. This is one way the team is working to be fiscally responsible and find savings.)
• New vendor selected for Security Services (Laine Federal Security, Inc.) - $113,983 annually
• Renewal for Janitorial Services - SKB Facilities & Maintenance - $489,724.92 annually
  • Funding sources for approved contracts are state and local funds

Financial Update & Enrollment

• KMPS is on track to end the year within the adjusted budget (Current Year's Budget (2023-24): Financial Statement - our revenues are exceeding our expenses by $1.4 Million. (Includes the receipt of about $1.5 M in Employee Retention Credit Fund.)
• 58 days cash on hand projected for June 2024 (Does not include Charles Swab & our Certificate of Deposit)
• Updated Audit Report related to eliminations - The update does not have an impact on the overall financial results, the audit outcome, or the filing of the report with the State of TN. 
  • Future, KIPP Memphis is looking to prepare our own financial statements and hand them over to the auditors for review. We will also consider other options for auditing services in the future.
• Reviewed the 2024-25 Initial Budget, which includes budget and personnel cuts at the schools and regional level with an overall deficit of $726k. 
  • We reviewed the overall budget for 2024-25 with a number of reductions representative of ESSER rolling off and enrollment trends. We expect to see a budget deficit of about $726K. There is a request to use ~ $300K of Employee Retention Funds and the rest to come from cash reserves.

Question from D. Hopson: Regarding the Janitorial services and other contracts, have we inquired about piggybacking off an MSCS contract for some of these, specifically for SKB. 

G. Phillips and A. Burt shared that we are currently paying a very competitive rate for the services we are receiving with SKB and we have been pleased with their services. The other vendors were proposing $600K + two years ago. The price per square foot we have with SKB is favorable compared to the most recent contracts the District has secured. With piggybacking on contracts, the vendor would have to agree to the piggyback. We feel fortunate with the vendor we have now and are staffed pretty well. After this year, we have two additional one-year renewal options.

Governance Committee Chair, Dorsey Hopson, shared an overview of what was discussed in the Governance Committee Meeting. The highlights are below.

Board Updates

• The committee discussed the context for board member tenure and the pros and cons of term limits - currently 3.2 states that no board member shall serve more than 3 consecutive terms (each term is 2 years) without a break in service. The committee decided to leave the language as is.
• The committee discussed the timeline for potential board members to recommend and noted four potential board members who will be brought to the committee in May and to the June Board of Directors meeting. 
• The committee reviewed and discussed updates to board officer job descriptions as noted in the bylaws and the 2021 Board of Directors Handbook.

Committee Actions

• The committee recommended the following for full board approval: general language in the bylaws to include:
  • Change Executive Director/Principal to Chief Executive Officer/Executive Director
  • Change board officer role references to gender neutral language (instead of Chairman, Chair or Chairperson)

COO, Genard Phillips shared an overview of what was discussed in the Operations/Facilities Committee Meeting. The highlights are below:

Facilities Updates

• Howell HVAC Project is 100% Complete
• Henry HVAC Improvement Project is 51% Complete, target completion date is 4/30/2024
• Exterior Lighting Improvement Projects at Henry and Howell have a target completion date of 4/15/2024 

Enrollment & Recruitment

• Period 7 (ended 3/28/2024) total enrollment of 1,041 
• Student Recruitment Teams Activities

As of today, the exterior lighting projects are complete at both the Henry and Howell campuses.

We are at 989 for the 2024-25 school year for student enrollment.

There was a question from D. Hopson: With the official news of Humes Middle School closing, do we have plans to recruit from that school? 

A: Yes, our teams are on top of it and have visited Humes multiple times over the past couple of months and most recently on Tuesday, April 16th. We got about 35 leads from our last visit and our teams will follow up with those parents/guardians. Our team has also been to MLK Prep to share enrollment information and recruit students.

We have about 81 students who are new to KIPP Memphis as of 4/17/2024 and the rest are re-enrollments. Several are coming from MLK, Manassas, and Humes (Chief Phillips will look into which schools the other students are coming from who aren't kindergarten new enrollments). Part of One KIPP in the future is to share our retention rate/re-enrollments, new enrollments and what's making them choose us.

Dr. Johnson asked about our rate of attrition: last year was around 10%. This year was 14%. We retained 86% this past year. (How many that enroll actually stay with us. This is something to continue to think about. How do we get them to stay enrolled and attend once they are enrolled.)

SP1 | Rigorous Instruction for All:

• Our final benchmark assessment was on an upward trend. We are proud of our students and teachers. 
• TCAP and EOC testing is currently underway. Testing began on Tuesday, April 16th and will run through May 3, 2024 for some of our students (includes make ups). Attendance has been high during this time. We are expecting preliminary raw data for the 3rd grade by May 20th
• We are tracking on our One KIPP monthly tasks to implement One KIPP priorities that the foundation is pulling data from. KIPP School Summit (KSS) will take place July 29th - 31st  in Orlando, FL. This is the first time for the gathering in 5 years and under the One KIPP umbrella. (Copy from Dr. Burt's highlight notes)
• Our Academics team recently held their last Professional Development session of the school year on April 10th. The team received over 95% ratings on the content and strategies covered throughout the year. We will continue and expand our partnership with CSL this coming year. They are supporting our week early teacher training July 22 - 25th. Next year, our Early Release Wednesdays will allow for more focused time for Professional Development.

SP2 | College & Career Readiness:

Calendar invitations went out for two upcoming events. We would love to have board members at both events.

• Senior Decision Day - May 15, 2024 from 9:30 a.m. - 11:30 a.m. at the KMCH Auditorium (a select number of elementary and middle school KIPPsters will have the opportunity to join the event, with the ultimate goal to have the entire network attend in the future).
  • Seniors who have decided their pathway after graduation will share with their peers, in front of staff and families
• Graduation - May 16, 2024 at 6 p.m. First Baptist Church Broad Avenue, 2835 Broad Avenue, Memphis TN 38112 

SP3 | Affirming School Culture:

• Thanks to Jane Maina for representing the Board of Directors.
• The town hall was led by some of our awesome Teacher Leaders who are part of our Teacher Advisory Committee who shared good news from each of the schools
• The Executive team shared Key Regional updates and celebrations that included Employees of the Month and staff members celebrating 10 years with KIPP Memphis
   

SP4 | Engaged Families and Communities:

• The Daily Memphian published Dr. Burt's Op-Ed around a Call for Action to prepare students for their future collaboratively with communities, schools, and others. He received a lot of positive feedback and Chalkbeat also picked it up and shared it along with the TN Charter Center.
• The Scruggs Family Scholarship Ceremony also took place in March. Nine KIPP Seniors were awarded a total of $6,000 from the family; the Scruggs family shared that they hope to offer more scholarships next year. Last year, they were only able to award 3 students a total of $3,000. 
  • Our KIPP Forward team participated in an interview with Mr. Scruggs on WMC's lifestyle Newscast, Bluff City Life

SP5 | Organizational Coherence:

• Fundraiser --> over $26,000 was raised.  
• $6,000 will go towards ACT/Tutoring support that the Indian Community Fund of Greater Memphis is leading;
• $20,000 will go towards our multi-year effort to renovate the high school gymnasium (Utilized for Middle and Elementary games)
• The additional funds that come in will support our KIPP Forward college & career programming.
• Thanks to Ms. Crutcher for sharing your journey and experience with KIPP and the KIPP Through College program.
• Thank you also to Dr. Sweet for coming out to support and represent the board along with Ms. Crutcher.

Comment (Dr. Lin Johnson) - It's encouraging to see how Dr. Burt is elevating the KIPP Memphis network and he knows it will continue. Couldn't agree more about having the younger KIPPsters attend Senior Decision Day. He plans to be in person for both events. 

Board Chair, Mikara Davis announced that our last board meeting is June 6, 2024. We need to have an in-person quorum to transact business.

The Board also surprised the 2022-23 Executive Team (CFO, Angela Carr; Chief of Human Resources, Dr. Tracy Brittmon; Managing Director of Teaching & Learning, Laquita Tate; Chief Schools Officer, Chief Brooks; and CEO, Dr. Antonio Burt) with a token of appreciation for their efforts in helping three KIPP schools achieve Level 5 and Reward Status. 

This item was held for the June 6, 2024 meeting because we did not have an in-person quorum.