The school opened on August 29th and it went really well – the administration invited Trustees to visit the school in person. Patience Brown mentioned that the school is in full swing of activity, Freedom Riders project has continued, and her team has put an emphasis on family engagement. Had first successful PFO meeting of the  year, had 33 parents show up and they were very engaged. The school has also ramped up their marketing efforts to continue strong enrollment.

The school was allocated $60K for a Title III grant, primarily for ELL students who are migrants. Mikhael asked about the overall testing nationally and the results compared to NY students to understand learning loss during the pandemic. Nick and Patience will present more once City and District scores are released, so that school’s relative academic performance can be reviewed by the Board.

Doris Givens mentioned that board orientation was the focus, in order to strengthen it. We’re putting together the finishing touches on an orientation packet for new trustees who are being onboarded. This will be sent to the full board for feedback. We also discussed providing new board members with a Board mentor to ensure that new trustees are able to easily get up to speed.

Board Chair nominated Cynthia Aker to join the board and commended  her candidacy, for the subsequent vote of the full Board.

Doris deferred to Lisa Renee, who talked about current revenue and expenditures – nothing is out of the ordinary.  The Board reviewed the current bank account balances and per pupil numbers.

The team is continuing to focus on recruitment and marketing efforts to ensure students know of our school. We had low turnover of educators and students. The finance and HR team went on one of their first retreats ever – it helped them to think about how to be more strategic overall. We are preparing for the finance and audit meeting in the fall, which is open to the public.

 Patricia asked about how a community member can get in touch with the school. We’ll be providing the email for Patience Brown. 

Nicholas Tishuk mentioned that he met with Per Scholas, a nonprofit that focuses on technical training – we will be sending out the information to our alumni. Joseph Sciame asked about alumni data, specifically about college graduation rates for different cohorts that graduated from BSNBCS, which was discussed in the context of our alumni network.