Gestalt Community Schools
Minutes
2024 October Gestalt Board of Directors Meeting
Date and Time
Thursday October 24, 2024 at 8:30 AM
Location
Power Center Academy Elementary: Hickory Hill
3540 S. Mendenhall Road
Memphis, TN 38115
Directors Present
A. Jacobo (remote), D. Bradford (remote), D. Selberg, G. Gonzalez (remote), G. Raggs, G. Sago IV (remote), K. Satterthwaite, K. Thomas, K. Walker Burt (remote), M. Lady (remote), N. Woods Dobbins (remote), Y. Lewis
Directors Absent
A. Evans Blackwell, L. Harris
Guests Present
Antonio Ryan, BoardOnTrack, D. Generette Walker, L. McGee, N. Rogers, T. Leftwich
I. Opening Items
A.
Record Attendance
B.
Call the Meeting to Order
C.
Approve Minutes from Gestalt' Board of Director from 8/22/24
II. Finance and Human Resources
A.
Finance Report / HR Vacancies
B.
Loan Extension for Mendenhall Vote
Norriese stated that the need to extend the loan for Mendenhall is due to the expiration of the current loan. We entered into the new market tax credit in July of 2017 for a seven-year period.
C.
Vote to merge PCAMS Holding
Norriese stated that we are going to merge all of PCAMS holding into Gestalt Community Schools.
III. Operations
A.
Operations
Scholar Mobility & Attrition
We are seeing a higher number of movement at SE (issues re: transportation). We are also doing exit interviews with parents who leave to see if there are trends in the data.
2-minute video with Malco and where we are
- We are still on schedule, no concerns regarding occupying the building on time.
- Everything is in progress
- Hard hat tour will take place on Nov. 4th (9am-10:30am)
- We also have a construction club with our High School scholars that will do a field trip to the site.
Next phase is looking at furniture
IV. Academic
A.
Academic
Mr. Antonio Ryan presented for Academics. We are trending in the right direction with our school AMO and double AMO achievements. We are seeing strong movement in most of all of our areas. The second quarter we are devoting a lot of our energies on moving our special population toward AMO.
V. Schools
A.
School Updates
Docia Generette-Walker. GCS Attendance Challenge. This year we are trending up significantly from last year. Over 60% of our students have perfect attendance. We are recognizing scholars and parents for this effort. Our overall goal is to be at 10% or under for all of our schools. Right now, we are at 12%.
VI. Board Announcement
A.
Board Announcement
Yetta made board announcements:
- She needs all Board of Directors to choose a date for our upcoming luncheon from 3 dates. We are trending towards December 2nd. The luncheon meeting is not a full day; however, all are needed, if possible, because the meeting will cover expansion and committee work.
- The State requires that all Board of Directors complete the TN School Board Compliance Training (We must have 100% completion) They have an online version that you can watch at your leisure (6 modules). Please mark complete once you are done. Reminders will be sent out.
- We have current job openings that we are actively looking to fill. We are asking all board members to post, and/or share our openings. Yetta will send a link of the job postings.
Norriese went over the TISA - budget to Actual. Given what we know so far about TISA and where we currently stand, we are trending in the right direction.
Top Reasons for the school vacancies were:
1. School Culture
2. Not feeling valued by school leadership team
3. Salary
Norriese suggested that we do a stay (current employees) interview to give us some reasons to compare with exit interviews.