No public comment. 

Dennis reported that they received a letter from OEI regarding concerns at Kindezi Academy. Kevin and Dennis met with OEI last week and in the meeting the following was discussed: 

• They are concerned about academic progress and truancy. 
• They requested a plan to improve in these areas. 
• An improvement plan will be presented to OEI by April for feedback. 
• The plan will be turned in by June and implemented when the school year starts. 
• Kindezi has received a School Improvement Grant and with this money they will bring Equitable Education Solutions to come to Kindezi and do an extensive analysis of the school. They come highly recommended. 

Kevin went over the NCN Strategic Plan lag measures:

• About 60% of students at Kindezi Academy did not return. 
• Both schools switched their curriculum in ELA.
• Both schools also switched to a more rigorous math curriculum. 
• Ken and Kevin spoke about using NWEA to report progress to the board. 
• The state has moved to iLearn a more rigorous learning assessment that measures growth. 

Cody reports that at the upper school at Enlace Academy: 

• They have high quality curriculum that aligns to the test. In the fall of last year it was determined that only one classroom had tasks aligned to standards that they were intending to teaching. 
• Working on student engagements on a quarterly focus. Teachers are getting streamlined techniques at PD to help students remain engaged. 

Leah reports that at the lower school at Enlace Academy: 

• Leah has been tweaking the co-planning process. Teachers weren't internalizing the curriculum. Videos are being recorded, analyzed and finally are providing feedback.
• Teachers and coaches are working on weekly data meetings. Helping them build strategies in regards to what is the student misconception and how to engage the students based on their work.
• Prioritizing on teachers who are struggling the most. 

Shanae reports that at Kindezi Academy:

• Shanae feels confident with the jumps that have been made in the curriculum. 
• An area of growth is increasing a data driven culture. 
• Students are understanding what their goals are. 
• There are instructional coaches in grades K-4th and are using a mastery dashboard to see the average proficiency. A weekly tracker is being used with a 10 minute check-in. Teachers are getting another layer of feedback by having students provide feedback. 
• There is ongoing teacher recruitment for high quality teachers in every classroom. 

Cathedral acceptance:
The goal at both schools is that the students are prepared to attend college preparatory high schools. At Enlace Academy, student Erick Diaz, brought his acceptance letter to Cathedral High School. Erick struggled with limited English proficiency, living in poverty, had been retained and didn't think he could pass iRead. 


Kevin provided the board with a talent plan. 

• According to a research from Gallup, mission alignment is the number one thing people are looking for in organizations they want to work for.
• Compensation is extremely important in hiring highly qualified teachers and developing the talent that we do get and give them the pathway to grow into leadership positions. 
• Enlace is continuing to grow. There is currently two sections in grades K-5. Another section will be added in 6th grade this year. 30 new staff members were hired across the network. It is an ongoing challenge to find high quality teachers. 
• Enlace took a survey at the beginning of the year. About 30% of teachers said that it would be their last year. Which revolves around workload and relationships being built around the schools.  Moving forward both schools will participate in the Panorama survey by IPS.   
• National data for retention at charter schools is 25% loss rate. 
• Ratios are strong for smaller teams of people. There was also a trend for people to move up in the organization. 
• There isn’t a hidden pool of talent we haven’t accessed, so we need to focus on developing people internally.
• If we can decentralize the leadership structures, then the primary coaches can be more focused and supportive, which will ultimately lead to greater job satisfaction.
• A commitment to available residency programs, particularly the upcoming Marian University residents, will allow us to implement a residency program at a scale in both schools that frees up approximately $150,000/year.
• We will be able to rethink the way we spend our federal grant money (the Title programs) in order to cover the costs of additional training for teachers.
• How can we leverage the board and your respective social networks to cast a wide net in fishing for talent? 2. We are still three years from being fully scaled at both schools, which means we will continue to increase revenue for those three years. However, we are at a point now that requires us to get key staff in place in order to support our teachers’ growth and development as well as maintain reasonable workloads. Are we comfortable in decreasing the % of our budget that we save next year in order to build the staffing plan required to implement the Talent Recruitment, Development, and Retention Plan for the 2019-20 school year?

 

The executive committee met about the board performance and committee work. It has been a while since a board assessment was conducted. The key questions are: 

• How to implement the committees that were recently formed
• How to refill positions with the recent turnover in board members
• What is the overall health of the board and board participation

Dennis recommends that a board retreat is scheduled to make sure the board is understanding the ideas of implementing new board members. He will reach out to the board with dates. He also recommends monthly meetings to make sure we are dealing with issues and communicating. 

The board will continue to meet every other month while committees will meet the off month so that board meetings can be better effective.