Dale talked to the trustees about the challenges of getting a majority of trustees present and in person at meetings. He explained that not having a quorum of trustees present is not acceptable as we have important oversight responsibilities that require full board participation. We need to monitor our remote participation and use only when necessary. Dale has surveyed all trustees and followed up with individual trustees to explore the possibility of changing the date and time of the meeting, whether this would help us to increase trustee in-person attendance. We will shift our meeting day and time to Thursday from 4:30-6pm with the understanding that this will enable more people to make it to the meeting in person. We will continue to meet fourth Thursday of the month. 

Amy Clark, principal, presented the trustees with an overview of the Accountability Plan and benchmark of progress against goals. She talked about these as ambitious targets and we are on track to meet all of these goals. When this plan was developed a few years ago these were very ambitious and we knew we may not meet them all but we believed these were the right targets and we wanted to focus on them. We have made significant progress and the school is in better shape because of these efforts. This is an example of how our state's charter school accountability and authorization practices help to ensure that MA charters are high performing. Awesome job Amy and team! 

We have currently received approximately $17k from manual checks and have some online donations that haven't yet been counted because of an issue with Paypal which Lynne is working on resolving. The $17k includes a $10k donation that came in prior to our recent team competition so won't count toward our short-term trustee challenge but will count toward the SGP match. Rachel will send out a list of donors and the total amount raised (without naming the specific amounts donated from individuals to respect privacy).  

Lisa Doherty walked the board through the October financials. She pointed out that revenue is higher than expected thanks for Barr Grant funding and a few other things.  She also noted that we are down from our enrollment target but have contingency built into the budget. We assumed enrollment at 378 and are currently at 372. The team is working to backfill seats and will continue to do so through February 15th.

Rachel Romano presented the space and services fee assumptions to the board of trustees. She recapped that the space and services agreement is an agreement between the board and Friends of VPCS so that VPCS can fulfill its dissemination obligations and do district turn around work in Holyoke. She walked through the assumption and share the first quarter time study and how that snap shot aligned with the assumption. Given that the relationship and work is new, we have taken longer to approve the management fee each year so we knew it was accurate. Moving forward we are aiming to have these conversations in March and approve the fee by July. Rachel informed the trustees that the Friends of VPCS Directors met this week and reviewed all of this information. They voted to approve an amendment to the space and services agreement and also to approve the management fee as proposed here. The board discussed the fee, the relationship with holyoke, the facility vote in Holyoke and how that might impact VPH. Lisa explained to the board that in the agreement it states the fee will be paid quarterly but this is not happening and probably not realistic. We would like to amend the agreement to say that the fee will be paid at least annually instead of quarterly.

 

Rachel gave the trustees an update on the high school expansion request. She and Dale Janes had an interview with the charter school office last week. There was a letter submitted by the SPS superintendent opposing the request. Data presented in that letter painted an inaccurate picture of enrollment at VPCS and Rachel is preparing a response to provide more context about attrition and backfilling at the school and what we have proposed for the high school enrollment plan. Next step is for the commissioner to review our proposal and make a recommendation to the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE). The BESE will vote on the expansion request at their meeting on December 17th. 
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Rachel also shared with the board plans for a new website to launch as soon as January. Our current website does not fully explain our organization, the work we do in Holyoke and we need to update the content. We are working hard and fast to get this done and hope to launch in time for teacher recruitment season.