No public comment. 

Kevin Invited Jamie Vanderwalle, the Chief Portfolio Officer, from IPS to do a Q&A with the NCN board. Jamie has been involved in the innovation process from the beginning of the partnership. 

Q: Ken asked Jamie about what other schools are doing to address the significant learning gap due to covid.

A: Jamie stated that all schools are doing their own plans independently. Some approaches have been through summer academies, high dosage tutoring, an increase in FTE support for social-emotional learning, and ESL type support. 

Q: Dennis and Katilin asked Jamie about the reason behind the IPS transportation changes that were recently made in which students that live within a 1-mile radius must walk to school. This has affected our Kindezi families greatly. Especially as Kindezi continues to deal with challenges in attendance. Kindezi has now contracted 2 buses from Miller to transport those families that live within a 1-mile radius of Kindezi. The board hopes to work on a resolution with IPS that works best for our families. 

A: Jamie stated that the 1-mile radius policy was actually in place for 5-6 years although IPS had not enforced it. IPS is experiencing a driver shortage. and also had to shift off buses due to social distancing. Therefore they enforced the walking policy. Jamie asked Kevin to send the transportation charges that they had to incur due to the transportation changes. 

Q: Dennis asked Jamie about the continued facility issues at Kindezi in order to address safety issues for our students. He asked for enhanced communication in what services would be provided by IPS to address the structural facility concerns. 

Q:  Kaitlin stated that both IPS and NCN need to come up with an amendment to the contract that can include a working plan to address the facility issues. In the current contract as well as the renewal contract. 

A: Jamie stated that IPS will be working on a district-wide rebuilding plan that will be voted for in July of 2022. Therefore they are unable to address any major renovations at this time because they are in the planning mode.  Jamie had the opportunity to do a walkthrough of Kindezi and was able to see several roof and pipe leakages throughout the building. Kindezi is a low-scoring facility, one of a few in the district. Jamie has been working with Kevin and will continue to work with Kevin and IPS to address these issues. She is unable to answer all questions related to the contract but will look into it further. 

Kevin reported that for some non-academic OEI school-specific goals, we did not meet with. One was around parental engagement in the schools. Due to covid, the overall rate for the school year was 2% when the goal was 75%. Kevin spoke with OEI with some pushback. A reference to the pandemic was. included to address why those numbers were low. In all other areas, NCN is meeting or exceeding standards ratings. 

Kaitlin was involved with the OEI discussion and shared her thoughts regarding the goals. A teacher licensure issue came up. It's a brand new goal. that had not been shared.  Moving forward OEI will make some changes for their reports. 

Brian presented the financials to the board for the first quarter.  There is currently a deficit in the first quarter for 684k combined. In looking at last school year's first quarter the deficit was 400k. Although it seems bad the entirety of it is because our funding is reimbursement based and expenses are front-loaded. A big chunk being the charter innovation grant which will come in the 2nd quarter. We also have 213k and 195k coded to the federal ESSER grants which will come in the 2nd quarter. Once all grant money is received, there will be a surplus. Overall both schools are in good shape and stable. 

Both schools do not have any debts other than some payables for the charter innovation loans. As far as the OEI targets all will be met with the exception of the surplus which will be fine by the next quarter. 

Ken shared appreciation his appreciation to Kevin and the board for their continuing push to improve the lives of the students in the communities that we serve given the drastic learning loss that covid has brought. 

Kevin reported that several things have been done to address the learning gaps.

Kevin presented the board with an update on the board dashboard. 

Financial metrics are all strong. Days cash on hand is above. Financially we are in a very strong position. 

The strategic plan will be discussed at the board retreat at Barnes and Thornburg. Audio will be set up for those that can attend virtually. Kevin will share a board deck with a swat analysis for preview. Board members can determine if there is anything they would like to include or omit.