Rachel mentions this is the new accountability plan for our next five year term. The Board has seen it once before, from there it went to our liaison at DESE and came back to us with minimal changes which Rachel highlighted. 

See attached document for highlighted changes. 

Ann asks if this plan it weighted evenly between middle and high school?

Rachel says yes, each objective has at least one area related to each school. 

David asks if we get a report card going forward to measure our adherence to this plan?

Rachel says every year we produce an annual report that demonstrates our faithfulness to these metrics. The annual reports then becomes part of the body of evidence to demonstrate that we are achieving our goals related to the accountability plan. 

Denise asks about objective #1 - is 12 credits the maximum our students can obtain?

Rachel says no, we believe many will obtain more. 

Lisa asks about teacher scores on competency #2?

Rachel says this is one of the 6 competency areas in our teacher evaluation rubric. This ties to how well teachers are able to produce and meet expectations around student outcomes. This is our own scoring. 

Dale asks if 8th graders will still have an advancement ceremony?

Rachel says yes, it is now called "stepping up day". 

Denise presents the audit report to the Board. 

We received an "unqualified audit opinion". This means we had a clean sheet and there were no findings. AAFCPAs also audited our use of federal grant funds. They also had no findings here. We are fiscally sound and have successfully weathered the pandemic. 

Over the past year some things have changed:

- FY 22 marks the transition from a stable operating environment to a period of growth. 

- We expended a lot of cash surrounding the build out of the high school.

- We terminated our contract with the Holyoke Public Schools which had partially offset the cost of our leadership team. 

- During the pandemic we hired additional staff to accelerate learning for our students.

- We opened up an investment account during a time of volatility. 

Within that backdrop, looking at the income statement, revenues increased however, the breakout of the revenue sources changed. Traditionally, tuition revenue is more than government grants revenue. This was was opposite this past year. Operating expenses, personnel expenses, and direct student costs were all up. 

At the end of FY22 our net position declined by $160,000. With all the turmoil we have faced, this is not too bad. 

On the balance sheet we see the greatest change in cash. The high school build out, personnel costs, technology, etc. all made it so we drew down cash from prior fiscal years. Many of these costs were covered by ESSER grants but these funds are reimbursable and not all reimbursements had come in yet. 

This year we would like to build back cash reserves but there were legitimate reasons why the cash was taken down - the ability to execute our plan for the high school successfully, which we did. 

ESSER grants will terminate in 2024 so we need to figure out how to control our costs or increase our revenue over the next few years. 

Rebecca asks about how many positions are being funded by grants at this point?

Rachel says right now we have so many grants we are managing as well as some private funds but as part of our projection planning we are taking these grants into consideration as well as the Student Opportunity Act and when those funds will expire (2026) and then see what the gap truly looks like. 

Aaron asks about a having a note that we have an investment account?

Rachel says when we report to DESE on the dashboard we have an opportunity to include some narratives. 

Rachel wanted to mention the page of ratios that compares how our ratios compare with other charter schools that AAF audits across the state. 

Matt mentions that even though we had a loss in our investment account, Seeley Howard has done a nice job of staying on the conservative side and looking for opportunities. We also must remember we went into this with a 10 year plus investment horizon. 

Dale asks if we are borrowing anything under the line of credit?

Denise says yes, we took $300,000 just before the end of the fiscal years to cover the reimbursements still to come in from federal grants. We plan to pay this down to zero by October.