We will approve these minutes along with the February minutes at the next meeting as some members were unable to access and review the January minutes ahead of time this month. 

Updates on Board Members whose terms are ending 6/30/22

David checked in with Dale & Judy:

Dale - Willing to serve another term but he is done being chair since he has completed his third term. 

Judy - Hasn’t been able to reach her yet. 

Aaron checked in with Matt and himself: 

Aaron - He thinks he is going to go off the board at the end of his term to make way for a new person.  He would still like to be advised of Board meetings and still attend. 

Tom asked Aaron if there is a committee he would like to be involved in still because his knowledge and expertise is very valuable. 

Aaron would like to stay involved with a committee but at this point he is not sure which one. He will give it some thought. 

Matt - Interested in serving another term. 

Xiomara checked in with Robbie:

Robbie - Contacted, hasn’t heard back from him yet. 

Rachel checked in with Rebecca and Tony:

Rebecca - Left message for her yesterday 2/8.

Tony - Will not be continuing, we will pull him. His term doesn’t officially end until 6/2023. David, do we need a vote at the Board meeting? 

David says we should get a resignation letter for him. He doesn’t think we need to vote him out. 

Xiomara asks David if state employees can serve as trustees? She has someone in mind but they are a chief deputy for the governor. We will check on this. 

David says that leaves us at ten Board members. Does anyone have any suggestions as to which way we should go from here.  

Xiomara thinks this would be a good time to be intentional with our recruiting tactics. Dig into our networks and really think about diversifying the Board. She is thinking of Jose Delgado who is a Chief Deputy for Governor Baker. 

David asks if this person would be done with his position in a few months because Governor Baker is not seeking another term?

Xiomara says he would like to stay but a lot of times a new Governor cleans house and brings in their own people. 

Tom agrees with Xiomara in her thinking with Jose because we need political insight and understanding of local and state government. If there is not a conflict of interest here, this makes a lot of sense. 

A few months ago, Tom sent a number of people to Rachel that fit the “profile” of what we’re looking for. For example, a law professor at WNEU, Elizabeth Rodriguez-Ross.

Xiomara also has in mind a prosecutor in Hampden county. 

Tom says we may want to think about one of these slots in terms of the high school and our early college program. 

Aaron suggests that at the next Board meeting we make a strong appeal that each Board member makes a list of names. 

David asks Xiomara if she is going to follow up with Jose?

Xiomara said yes. 

Aaron suggests Terry Maxey could make a call to his friend who was on the Board at UMASS and see who he might recommend. Aaron also previously approached Jeff Sullivan from New Valley Bank to come on the Board and he was interested but he did not have the capacity for it at the time.

Xiomara says she can follow up with him, she works closely with him. 

David asks if we’ve formalized a list of skills for Board Members?

Xiomara thinks we should take that list and create our own. 

Tom says if he was going to think of how to go through that, let’s take the article and come up with our list of desired skills for Veritas. Then have each Board member rank themselves based on the skills we present, then we’d have an idea of areas that we are strong in and ones we are missing. 

David will script a list of skills for future Board members. He will circulate that within the committee. Then we will ask the Board to rank themselves. 

Aaron thinks we need to hone in on our onboarding process for these new trustees. This should be a priority over the next few meetings.

Tom and Xiomara will start to finalize that document. 

David sees that working in parallel to the skillsets analysis. 

School leaders will lead on the content of the plan. 

Governance’s role is to consider a process that involves the Board and timeline.

• Check with guide re: timeline for when the plan must be approved (recently renewed charters have a goal of having a new accountability plan in place by the beginning of year 1 of the new charter term - July 1st). 
• Start from approval date and consider how the committee will set expectations around getting drafts and offering input. 
• Consider it being looked at by every committee and the full Board. 

Aaron thinks for sue it will have to go to academic achievement and finance committees since they play such a big part in the accountability plan. 

David would like us to have a plan developed in terms of implementation timeline at the March meeting.