The committee discusses the documents included in the onboarding folder on Board on Track. The documents that were sent to the committee members would serve as important anchor documents for a new trustee to review. 

Rachel asks what else are we missing?

David asks if there is anything more particular to Veritas that we could include?

Rachel says we did include the Annual Report from last year. 

Davis asks if that includes the academic data from last year?

Rachel says yes. 

David asks if Michael Freeman has received any of this?

Rachel says that is the next step - what else should Michael, for example, be reviewing or what else does he need to know?

Rachel suggest the most recent Charter Renewal report from DESE could be helpful. 

Nikki mentions the Board's current strategic priorities. 

Aaron thinks a new trustee should understand what a charter school is and how we are different from the public school system. 

Rachel says there used to be a document about the history of charter schools and why they came to be - we can look for that. 

Rachel mentions we could get rid of accountability guidelines. (Rachel deleted in real time). 

Rachel says we could organize this folder in a few different ways like creating several different folders. 

1.) "About Charter Schools" 

2.) "Charter School Governance and Accountability"

3.) "Veritas Prep Charter School"

We can also organize within the folders themselves. 

David says in terms of rolling this out, we should provide a new trustee with these documents as soon as they are approved to be a member of the Board. 

Tom is wondering if there could be a welcome letter from Rachel and the Chair of the Board included that serves the purpose of introducing the resources contained within the folder. He also mentions creating a frequently asked questions document that addresses common questions about charter schools. (MCPSA document myths vs. facts - also include the document on the finance piece). 

Aaron says this folder is almost a marketing piece that could also be used in other places. He could envision this as a packet we could hand out to new trustees and potentially a broader community (i.e. parents). 

Tom suggests recording our parent information sessions and putting them on the website. 

Aaron asks about adding the following to the first goal: creating a strategy to build a college advisory and develop strong counseling supports for our students.

Rachel mentions that we think most of our students will attend college, there are a group of them that will need to enter the workforce right away and we want to develop opportunities for them as well. The college trajectory is implied. 

Aaron hoped that 70% or 80% would go to college as opposed to 50%. 

Rachel says we hope that too but the more feedback we hear, it seems that many students will need to go straight to work to help families so we want to make sure we are preparing our students for both college and career. 

Tom mentions that he has been very involved in HS track planning and he feels that, in the technology field, students that are on their way or have achieved the equivalent of an associate's degree by graduation, will be highly sought after in the tech field. Many companies in this field will then also pay for their continuing education if it is necessary. 

Skills assessment - we can look at what Xiomara sent when we get to this topic at a future meeting. We could potentially talk about this as part of an intake process. 

Save the remaining topics for the next meeting.