No changes needed.

Greg appreciated Teacher Camisha Fatimah.
Davis appreciated the teachers for all their work.
Loren appreciated all of the Support Teachers, and all the teachers, for their work administering NWEA MAP at a distance -- appreciate their time, patience, and energy.
Parent Deborah Jue appreciated the staff, the teachers, parents, and the kids!, for sticking with it during assessments.
Krishna appreciated the fundraising committee for their work around the Read-a-Thon.
Daniel appreciated students for creative work, projects, and follow-ups during Learning Everywhere.

Greg commented on the lack of justice for Breonna Taylor.
Davis commented on the need for more empathy, to rear children who can be more successful than we are.
Olivia commented on how our own laws and structures create the harms for which we need justice. Need to look inwards in our own organization as well.

No public comment.

Krishna shared her report for the month.

Teacher Tobie from Sunflower shared sample student work that was turned in via Seesaw, showing the creativity students show in choosing how they do follow-up work from their lessons. Tobie shared about staying true to Montessori during Learning Everywhere.

Calendar and professional development: tomorrow, 9/25, is a non-student day of staff professional development. Later in October, back to school evening and family education nights coming. At PD, community building, data analysis, SEL training, planning time, and more. Recently had more anti-racist / anti-bias training supported by Dr. Rachelle Rodgers-Ard.

 

Krishna spoke about reviewing policies and procedures -- the documents themselves -- surfacing and addressing racism in codified policies and changing to anti-racist language, policy, and procedure.

Enrollment: currently at 400 with 1-2 offers still out. Attendance is at 95.1% with outreach begun to support students with attendance.

Seesaw dashboard shows over 31,000 student work posts.

Regarding reopening: Alameda County is out of purple and into the red tier. County must remain in the red tier for two weeks prior to reopening school. Oakland and zipcode data doesn't simply match Alameda County averages overall. Our community includes families who want in-person ASAP and families who want distance learning all year. Much more communication would come first from County and the school prior to any reopening for any students -- even if only for a relatively small number of students.

Loren shared a concern about handling a future "positive case" amongst the staff -- how might that work if a staff member has to quarantine. Krishna share that is exactly the sort of dynamic that has to be planned for prior to reopening -- want to avoid the disruption of reopening and then having to shut down again right away.

Jan asked about the SEL screener. Krishna shared that the Counselor is being trained now on it, YIPS and YEPS, and done later in mid October. Youth Internalizing Problems Screener and Youth Externalizing Problems Screener. Can be done in surveys and also during conferencing with teachers.

Greg asked about disaggregated Seesaw data -- not available on the platform currently, but staff are looking at solutions.

Greg appreciated teacher Tobie for sharing tonight.

No other public comment.

Greg presented the August 2020 financial summary and update. The forecast has changed slightly.  There was as small unexpected spend on the alarm system at the new school campus. We also allocated a stipend for teachers who did work over the summer to help the school. Cash balance remains very strong (especially in comparison to last fiscal year). We are currently over 2 months of expense on our cash balance. Our goal is to have 3 months expense, as there is timing uncertainty of payments at the state level. We are also attempting to grow as a school. There is a waiver for growth funding that we will be applying for (under SB 820). That potential funding is NOT included in the monthly cash balance. The cash issuance under this waiver would actually be paid in FY 2021-2022 if we did receive the funding.

Questions or public comment:
Loren asked what fundraising will look like this year. The categories under the fundraising and grant portion of our budget will not necessarily be applicable. What does matter is that we are trying to reach the total give amount. The fundraising committee is actively looking at what can be done in terms of read-a-thon, a possible auction, and other thoughtful ways that we can reach our fundraising goal, which includes $78,000 from families, a historic low for the school overall and historic low per student enrolled, under $200 per student. We ultimately want to run our quality and expensive two-teachers-per-classroom model without any fundraising. This will take more time.

Hae-Sin shared the committee report.

The committee reviewed the Learning Continuity and Attendance Plan. The committee discussed the data capacity needs to support with renewal. The committee talked about COVID in the red tier, but still really hard hit zip codes in Oakland. The committee agreed to create a roadmap document and engage the board and community related to reopening. The criteria would include COVID case rates, along with staff and family intentions. We'd need to consider if we are operationally ready, like reviewing HVAC systems and PPE supplies. We will use data and need to identify which students need in-person the most.

Davis left briefly from 7:17 to 7:19pm.

Hae-Sin shared that facilities-based learning is not likely to occur at a large scale for a while. We would need to give staff lead time to set up physically in the new campus.

Greg shared that there are multiple pathways to reopening under different legal guidance, and Hae-Sin shared that regardless, we have to make sure we're prepared no matter what.

Loren shared about the importance of communicating with families who may be hearing about the County's status. Krishna shared about starting to communicate more at committee meeting, tonight, and in tomorrow's Friday email.

Jan commented about how the committee discussed how important it was to get to in-person instruction, and that Learning Everywhere is going relatively well, and that switch to in-person will take time and resources -- which could have an impact on current distance learning. Need to balance helping kids continue learning now, while preparing for future phases of the school year.

No other public comment.

Loren shared the FAC committee report. They met with Krishna regarding Back to School night ideas. The FAC is working on a form to help gather questions from families at anytime -- could help inform future parent engagement evenings. FAC continues hear about how amazing teachers are doing in such a difficult situation -- and things are going about as well as could be, but it's still very difficult for many families to function this way. Some families are reporting that students are having more instruction than ever before, and others reporting students finishing sooner. Some families are asking for more support in students working with peers and student-to-student contact. Loren also shared some concerns from families about NWEA being administered at a distance and that it may not be accurate for their student. Loren suggested additional communication about the nature of an adaptive assessment to support parents and students to persevere. Suggestion of surveying families on how assessment went for their child.

Greg shared about how the school needs multiple ways to "triangulate" around a student to understand their progress. Loren clarified about how it may or may not relate to renewal, and Greg shared that the data and its context are still whatever they are, and it's always important to understand and present academic data in context.

Jan shared resources from NWEA and about an adaptive assessment. Important that everyone knows that these aren't the type of assessments where a student would get a 100%, say.

Loren raised an issue with a specific MAP item that a parent felt was racially biased. Krishna shared about the bias in pretty much all standardized assessments. That item was flagged for Krishna, and Krishna agreed with the parent -- unclear who else may have received that specific item in an adaptive test. Krishna sent on the item to NWEA and has not yet heard a response. Important to look at multiple data points to mitigate the bias in any one assessment.

Greg agreed with Loren that is difficult work to analyze data and share how students are progressing. Loren asked about assessment options. Hae-Sin shared about limited assessment options under new AB 1505. Greg shared about leveraging all the data sets, student achievement and other data sets, when making a case for renewal.

Jan asked about parents "over helping" and Loren shared that she didn't hear about that.

No other public comment.

Christina shared the committee report. The committee reviewed the annual topics calendar, noting that some were different given COVID. All committees should review that calendar of topics.

BoardOnTrack joined and we looked at the Board Self Assessment. Christina shared the results and how a lower rating isn't necessarily an issue, but definitely want to investigate areas where Board and Krishna may not be assessing similarly.  BoardOnTrack shared some recommended goal areas for the Board to consider.

Greg shared about the annual training resources.

No other public comment.

No changes needed.

No public comment.

Hae-Sin shared about Families in Action candidate forums for Oakland school board. D5 is tonight. D7 already occurred. D1 and D3 forums are next week. Important to communicate with families about forums. The forums are recorded and the links can be shared.

Christina recruited one of the candidates for District 5 to be a principal back years ago, and would be happy to answer questions offline about him.

No other public comment.

No new items at this time.

No actions taken.