Latrina read it.

Jessie Burt brought up the report card grading system. She still doesn't understand how it works after 8 years with kids at PVPA. She would like the school to consider traditional letter grades. She thinks it motivates students to work harder and they are easier for colleges to understand....  

Brent wants to respond briefly: Standards Based Grading has been a subject of discussion within administration recently. The concept is great, but the way it has been implemented at PVPA has been confusing. We are planning to make some updates to make it more effective and easier to understand. And a hybrid structure is also being considered/discussed. PVPA's grades do need to be translated into traditional grades at times which can be tricky. Admin also want it to be easier for everyone to stand where students stand between grades, throughout the term. The grading system is going to be one of Brent's annual goals. 

Brent will send document with notes to clerk after meeting. 

Enrollment is looking good. Have 400 students total right now. There will be a supplemental lottery for 8th and 11th grade, and have the applicants to fill the available spots. Last year 104 spots were declined, this year only 84 declined. 

Staffing is looking good. At one point this summer we were fully staffed, tho now we currently have 3 spots open. 

Events updates:

- Soccer games. 

- Puerto Rican parade participation. 

- PTO first meeting this week. 

Wireless mics have just arrived to the school. Broadway version of mics! Big thank you to everyone who helped this happen (over 20K in donations to help). 

Sept 28 is the Open House. 5:30 starts with welcome from admin team. 6:00pm rotation of classes start. Ends at 8pm. 

Community Day was scheduled for tomorrow but it is supposed to rain, so it will be on Friday. 

The school calendar... the board previously approved a draft of the calendar. A couple of things are updated but MOST things are the same. We did it as a draft at first because union negotiations had just started. Negotiations aren't finalized yet, but everyone involved with negotiations have approved this, so the final version is ready to vote on it. 

Sept 9 - Finance Committee had a special meeting. 

- Reviewed the annual committee timeline. 

- Finance Committee reviews PVPA's financials quarterly. 

- Hoping for a vote on the capital budget. 

Some left over funds from 2020 and 2024 capital budget. 

PVPA also received a grant from MA to help make schools safer. Were granted ~37K to update the front entrance to PVPA. Have some left over funds.

Finance Committee wants to amend the capital budget because we don't need as much as was originally approved. It would be a reduction in the capital budget by ~6K. 

INCLUDE ATTACHMENTS. 

Shino and Latrina still need to pass the torch. 

Still working on bylaws updates. 

There are some potential new members as well. 

This was discussed at the board retreat. 

The Board (through this committee) will need to work with Brent to set goals for himself this year. 

Some things that have been brought up are 

- Teacher Diversification (hiring)

- MCAS support of some kind

- other things from the Strategic Action Plan

- university design / multi-tiered student support / a structured Student Support Team model

- curriculum development

- grading system review. 

There should be more follow up to get goals from the board to add to Brent's annual evaluation goals list. 

Votes will happen this month. Marcy will lead the vote. There were zero nominations for staff reps. Marcy will try again to see if there are any nominations. 

Student council is also about to have elections this month too. 

N/A no students elected yet this year. 

The retreat included committee updates, no votes. Most of these updates have now been discussed at this meeting at least briefly. 

The second part of the retreat was a DEI workshop with both the board and admin. The bulk of that work was about sharing identity among the group. It felt like a great place to start. PVPA just applied for a grant to continue this work for all PVPA staff (TBD on whether we will get this grant). We ran out of time to do the final step of how to bring this work out into actionable steps. 

Folks in the meeting agreed we should delay the continued discussion of this until we have more trustees present and maybe when we are in person.