Rachel gave background on high school leadership

Amy to be principal of  grades 5-9.

Middle School Assistant  principal role posted.

Matt Landon for principal

Candice Person(Current Dean of Curriculum) -  applied for vice principal position.

Staffing middle + high school - Looking at how we can utilize all of our resources across the board.

One point to call out (Rachel) - Trying to create fresh slate to design the high school from ground up to spark innovative movement. We are pulling resources from our current middle school. Will require training and support to not base our practices on existing middle school.

(Ann) Who is replacing dean of Curriculum - (Rachel) - No replacement up front.

Considerations currently being discussed on what positions to be filled.

(Xiamara) - is there a concern in attention and quality to the students? How will these movements effect the students - (Rachal) Giving teachers the opportunity to coach and develop. Impact would mostly be on the teachers. Considerations on hiring a DCI.

David - Looking for 9th grade teachers now? - Rachel Yes. History, ELA Math, Biology

Principals job to hire? - Rachel Yes, but we are currently hiring. Involving Amy and Candice in that process now

Aaron - Introduce Candice to board during next meeting - Rachel After hiring for middle school

Rachel gave background.

Feb 28 lifted mask requirement for schools. Up to the school to make a decision.

Springfield to mask through march, we are following.

Most suburbs are making it optional. SPS tonight plan to make masks optional. 

Holyoke phased this optional in starting with teachers.

We want to try and follow what the PS's do with their timeline. 

Authorize Rachel to make decision with school nurse(kim) and amy to make masks optional based on what Springfield decides.

David - How many positive students have we had. Rachel - no data atm. Data is collected and reported to DESI

Rebecca - While there were some instances in springfield of in school transmissions, the data does not supprt COVID spreading in school. Cases were result of community transmission. We have been very diligent in schools. City mask rule has been lifted a while ago. Cases not transmitting frequently in school.

Rachel - Agreeing, very low instances of transmission. Followed up very well on few instances in september and january. Numbers overall trending well

Denise - Are the teachers comfortable? 

Rachel - Majority of kids dont have an issue wearing masks. MAking it optional wont remove all masks across students.

Terry - Will we be offering testing? Rachel - Yes Rapid

Rebecca

Rachel gave background

Teacher recruitment and retention. Smoothie day along with other small things to support our teachers. Teachers here are generally happier than most places

Longer day/Longer year has been a pain point recently. 

Our current model - all of our core teachers teach multiple subjects.

Middle school teachers don't like to specialize while high school teachers tend to specialize.

Market doesn't necessarily agree, so hard to staff those positions. 

Rebecca

Changes to staffing model. General model is Co-Teacher. Every class has 2 teachers.

6-8: Partially rotating model. 12 staff members in each grade. Positions rotated to meet student individual need, along with trying to allow teachers to focus on their main subjects.

Example:

This creates a hurdle of a great math teacher possibly being passed up because they don't want to also teach science.

Interventionist position: A person who is specifically responding to student needs in a highly individualized or small group focus.

Found a lot of downtime in the current model. Looking to improve this.

Shaving down time in various areas to be more efficient.

We have 5 more days in our school year than public schools. Also a deterrent for staff.

Rebecca - Content demands in middle school dramatically increased compared to high school. It is harder to be a SME on multiple subjects. Also not the typical structure. 

Dale - Concerns around recruitment referencing Davids earlier question. Is talent hard to find?

Rachel - More turnover this year than any other. Job market has changed. Based on expectations on teachers, it is difficult to fill roles. Working on keeping our current staff with the proposed model changes. Also increasing starting salaries. We are working on being competitive in the open market of teachers.

Lisa - Didnt we shorten the school Day. Want to make sure this does not interfere with our core design of bringing students up to grade level. - Rachel - We voted to shorten the YEAR. We are focusing on the effectiveness of the teacher rather than time spent. Throwing time at the students doesn't seem to be working. 

Rebecca - METRICS. We will track them based on changes made.

Xiomara - Have we done an internal climate survey to figure out what some of the asks of our teachers are? Are these changes the correct move to incentivize staff retention?

Rachel - Currently anecdotal. Focusing on main pain points that are experienced and expressed by staff. 

Is this 1 year amendment? Rachel - No its permanent.

Trying to normalize STAYING with Veritas.

Denise gave background.

Expenses - Lynne has begun going through them to identify savings. Some have already been outlined. This year we have a projected loss.

ESSR grant is closing this fiscal year. 27k~ish left that will be expended. 

David - Is adjustment of starting salaries reflected in bedget-

Denise - Will be reflected in 2023 budget. Looking to push change to be voted on next month.

David

Accountability plan. We are in last year of second charter.

Rachel - Will be revising the accountability plan. Draft to be forthcoming in around 2 months. Due around august.

Strong focus on high school vision along with middle school in this run.

Dale gave background

Proposed board comfortability with involving Rachel in attendance with compensation review.

We are basing the increases on existing comp surveys.

Are we compensating Rachel in the correct way? Trying to line up best with her unique role in comparison to existing fields data.

Looking to possibly hire a 3rd party to assist in the fair compensation of our leader and leadership team.

Arron - we have an exceptional leader. We should be paying in the hire end of the category we find her in.

Dale - Open minded to further discussion in a larger increase. Currently in the top 40% of like positions. Unknown if those numbers are TOTAL comp.

David - Should we be looking at other employee benefits as part of total package? 

Dale - This is the reason why I want to look at professional salary support. Lots of considerations in going through this. No simple solution. Would like to see a more comprehensive analysis and to create a more concrete plan on how to compensate our leaders. 

Dale - Proposing to change Rachels title to CEO.