Ashanta opened the meeting by acknowledging that there has been a shift in Administrative duties with BoD meetings.  Yetta has taken the reigns and it is noteworthy, so Kudos for the evolution.  Also, The Hard Hat Tour was exciting to go from the picture to actually walking through a building and seeing the excitement of the teachers and staff that this is real.  Kudos to Adrianna and all who are involved in the day to day process of making this happen.  Finally, welcome back to Katie who's been on maternity leave.

Norriese updated the Board on Finance.
We are set to end the fiscal year with $2.1M.  Between April and June, we project revenues totaling roughly $5.6 M.  The bulk of this coming from BEP.  We are estimating our final BEP payment to be around $1.7M.  This is conservative given the fact that our final BEP payment last year was $1.685M based on 1,891 scholars.  We have approximately 100 more scholars than this time last year.

There are several areas of concern in regards to the income statement, depreciation having the highest variances.  The good thing is depreciation is a non-cash item; but it is still important that we budget properly.  The other areas of concern include:

Liability Insurance:  Need to pass the Mendenhall portion of property coverage to Mendenhall
Teacher Supplies: Did not budget for
Communication Services:  Incurred additional expenses
Student Recruitment:  Incurred additional expenses
Advertising:  Incurred additional expenses

Student Recruitment, communication services, and advertising are areas that we incurred additional expenses (over what was budgeted).  These expenses were necessary and played a major role in getting the enrollment results we’re experiencing. 

Bobbie Turner gave an update on the current state of academic progress.  The report reflected the March data from the schools third interim assessment and winter Map data.  The trend reflected a progress in four of the schools.  

Adrianna updated on the Mendenhall project.  The hard hat tour was a success.  The Teachers were very excited to see the new space with visibly larger classrooms.  They actually clapped as they saw certain spaces.  We are 90 percent complete.  We are scheduled for final inspection of 9th Grade Academy by Fire Marshall on today, April 25th.  We are scheduled to have substantial completion on the north side of the Elementary.  The 9th grade Academy is scheduled to be complete on May 15th.

Yetta Lewis spoke on student recruitment.  The big changes are that we are investing more into scholar recruitment as it drives revenue and sustainability for our schools. We are centralizing recruitment and enrollment functions at the network level to ensure consistency, quality, and customer service (We added more resources and started earlier).  Enrollment has increased 15% over this time last year. We are 80% overall (K-12) enrolled as of this date.
Upcoming Recruitment Event:
June 1st - Community Enrollment Carnival 

Mike McFarland spoke on Teacher Recruitment.  We started our year with Goals to retain 75% of our talented teachers in each school.  As of April, 84% of our teachers are returning. We currently have a goal to have all positions filled by April 30th.  It is a stretch but we feel like we can get close.  We are also working closely with the Academic Team in our selection process.  We have one Application Tracking System for Onboarding that allows us to better communicate with the Candidate throughout the entire process.   

Yetta stated that we need to have a recruiting event for May or June whereas the current Board Members can bring perspective candidates to network with.  Each Board member will do pre-work such as (asking potential candidates, "can you make meetings?" etc.)  It was suggested that we try May 22nd for Happy Hour.  It was also suggested that they be invited to events as well.  We also need to select a date for the Board retreat.  Wednesday or Friday days were suggested in June either AM or PM for the Board retreat.  Ashanta suggested we do a doodle for the events.