We do not have a quorum so can not approve minutes.

Great news, we went into the fiscal year knowing it was a tight year. We have managed the budget very well and are ending with a surplus. This will leave us with a total of around $700k in cash reserves. We will have a tight fiscal year 20 budget and will earmark some of the surplus from this fiscal year for website rebuild and curriculum development. 

Rebecca shared an overview of the common criteria for charter school performance and reminded returning trustees and informed new trustees about how these criteria are used by the DESE to hold charter schools accountable for performance. She reviewed the three buckets of accountability: faithfulness to charter, academic performance and organizational viability. Rebecca explained which of these areas the academic achievement committee monitors and how the others are monitored by other board committees. She shared the accountability plan and reviewed our performance against each goal for the 2018-19 school year. 

 

We are making progress with our development strategy but the clock is ticking on the SGP challenge grant...goal is to raise $75k. One donation of $9k counts toward the match so far....$66k to go!
Two types of potential donors:
1. People who already know us - strategy is to send letter (review draft and get feedback from trustees)
2. People who we need to meet (strategy TBD, tailored to individuals with consultation from referring trustees)
We plan to schedule events to introduce larger groups of people to the school and can have Rachel meet individually, we will confer with with you about any person you refer. 

 

Rachel shared that the leadership team is gearing up for the school year to start and shared the following dates.

• August 5th: New staff start professional development
• August 12th Returning staff join professional development
• August 22: First day of school!

Retention - an all time high!
● 94% teacher retention in Holyoke (1 out of 17 teachers left)
● 86% teacher retention in Springfield (5 out of 35 left)
● We retained all leaders at both schools
● 94% of teachers who received offer letters in Springfield accepted (30 accepted out of 32 offered)
● 94% of teachers who received offer letters in Holyoke accepted (16 accepted out of 17 offered)
VPCS vacancies: math/science teacher
VPH vacancies:Associate Teacher, PE Teacher, School Culture Coordinator
Network Team Staffing Changes with Katie Maron, Director of Network Ops, resigning - coverage plan and holding off on filling
-Shannon Langone, Director of Talent, accepted offer and starts August 5th!

2019 MCAS Results update is that we have some preliminary data now but no comparison data. August 30th - release of scores, achievement levels and growth data which will help us to make sense of the scores. We will report to board in September/October

Rachel submitted a proposal for a Barr Grant - board meeting today, should hear tomorrow on 7/27 and the Amendment request for high school seats  will be submitted by 8/1.

Rachel informed the board that both the school and Rachel were named as defendants in a summons received earlier this month related to the non-renewal of a former employee in 2016. Rachel informed Dale and the insurance company and is working with attorney to respond.