• Danielle recognized:
  • Our wonderful elementary lunchroom ladies who have worked tirelessly this year to ensure every student receives lunch, even when situations aren't ideal 
  • Stacy Tempas and Lynne for their work on helping to make Doug Appreciation Day a success
• Meryl recognized:
  • All the teachers for the work they're doing as we wrap up this year 
  • Parent volunteers who are providing things for the staff during Teacher/Staff Appreciation Week
• Ray recognized Lynne for her work on our sound finances. She is the best and we appreciate what she does.
• Shaun recognized:
  • After Prom committee, specifically Liz Friedenson and Jennifer Gelston for their continuous work to ensure it is always a success
  • Those who attended the new family night 
• Samantha recognized the After Prom committee, specifically Danielle Fox who doesn't even have high school students but cares about our school and traditions.
• Lisa recognized: 
  • Those involved in Teacher Appreciation Week
  • Danielle Fox for putting so much work into Doug Appreciation Day
  • Robin and Wayne for their Community U presentations
  • Ms. Delevoryas for the musical talent show
• Lindsey recognized:
  • Students that are determining their post high school steps
  • Our incredible Administrative staff who celebrated who Administrative Professionals Day on April 24th
  • Lindsey Sims for the Elementary Dance
  • Mrs. Beatty and our parent volunteers for Art Show
  • Mrs. D for the talent shows and coaching elementary Rock Band
  • Mr. VP and Mr. Halter for running club and Lions Club Relays
  • Students and staff that put on Mean Girls musical
  • Dr. Rundquist for transparency in curriculum selection process
  • All candidates running for Board
  • Therese Morin for moderating the candidate forum
• Community recognitions: 
  • Mrs. Mallick for her support and extended time after school in running Coding Club and for being Yearbook Advisor, helping the Yearbook Club after school.
  • 3rd grade teachers for their work in pulling off another incredible overnight field trip to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Their work in ensuring this field trip happens every year is paramount to the traditions we have at Stargate and the students look forward to it all year long. The attention they put into making sure every detail is thought of is top notch.

Danielle attended the coffee chat, board candidate forum, art show set up, art show, after prom committee, and 3rd grade over night field trip

Lindsey attended the elementary dance, art show, talent show, Dr. Greene's CommUnity presentation, board candidate forum and Lion's Club relay

Samantha attended the board candidate forum

Lisa attended Dr. Greene's CommUnity presentation, elementary dance, candidate forum and talent show

Shaun attended the board candidate forum, Mean Girls play and new family night

Identified the need to remove the agenda from the consent agenda for the addition of the F990's for both Stargate and the Foundation that were approved right before the meeting.

Mr. Wayne Granger presented his report

• Mice mitigation: Mice are not poisoned with and therefore pose no risk to students or other animals.
• SAFER grant won't be determined until the end of June. If Stargate is awarded, the system won't be installed until later 2025. 
• Lunches: Orders are taken via parent ordering, not off of ordering trends. Intend to re-evaluate this process at the end of the year and make determinations for next year.
• Health insurance: Renewal is underway. We will renew with Kaiser for the rest of 2024, looking at Hub insurance collective/captive. There are many lots of advantages - including cost.
• District bond - four charter schools requested to use same formula as previously used. We will get fairly close to what we asked for - potential for $20-24 million

Dr. Greene presented her report

• 5th to 6th grade: Transition team meeting with teachers to ensure transition will be streamlined, to include shadow days
• New Family Night: Timing was off, causing issues. Reached out to families, thanked them for coming, did the presentation twice, those who want a follow up night are invited to tour.
• Enrollment: Maintain student number at 1575. May need to add seats to younger grades as kindergarten sits at 83 students. 
• Hiring:
  • Middle School Assistant Principal:
    • Feedback was for MS AP candidate to meet with teachers during lunch and after school. Will solicit feedback from staff after interaction.
  • Sandy Francis was hired as the Elementary AP
  • Hiring a Student Success Coordinator. Job will be to work to support students doing online learning, with ingenuity, computer and tech check out.
  • Request to create a document showing what positions are changing for transparency. Explain rationale for changes

Lynne Whitney presented the budget:

• Budget: Governor signed the School Finance Act, increasing PPR 3% from last year ($11,270.70) 
  • Increases have gone to salaries and benefits this year, trended to continue next year as well.
• School funding formula is complicated and has not been revised in many years. Currently have a 4 year hold harmless so no one will see a decrease in what was received previously.
• $401/kid - capital funding
• Mill levy will likely be on next ballot, in addition to the bond. Has potential for $1.2 mil extra in revenue 
• Investment expectations will not be added into proposed budget next year because it's unknown, will revise budget when it's known.
• $28k in credit card rebates this year
• Don't expect food service revenue to be as high, but it's a passthrough and to avoid a need to revise the budget, will leave in as is and modify as needed
• Cost for the athletic director will be put into the athletic program budget (wasn’t part before)

Salaries and benefits: 

• Goal to keep pace with district, pass along cost of living increase, 75% of increase to PPR will go to staff
• Benefits increased by about 6% - expected an 11% increase so this is good news
• PERA is not increasing from employer side
• 70% expense goes to salaries and benefits - typical for a mature charter school
• Moody to evaluate our investment grade rating 
• Moral Obligation Program - saves us in interest we get better rates for participating in this program
• League of Charter Schools expense has increased, are important for political representation
• Custodial service is providing day service during lunches, went up $30k
• Gas and electric savings of $323k. With fluctuations in the past market, there was a $100k placeholder put on but haven't seen as much change as expected and brought back down to actual budget.
• Accounting and legal fees are for audits and F990s
• Contemplated use of accounting next year is $60k

Classroom budgets:

• Art and Adroit receive higher budgets due to class being fully based on consumables
• $250k for curriculum allowances with new requests, teachers are thoughtful about how they spend their budgets
• Half time athletic director
• We do not consult the district for any of our needed SPED. We house all our own. 

March KPI report:

• Includes additional interest that we are earning that we don't usually budget for. 
• Days cash on hand 158
  • At 160 days cash on hand -  what do we do to simply maintain them?
• 34 people waived benefits - $10k per person.
• Last salary overage was done in November, revene expenses running solid month over month. No big fluctuations, tying out to correct percentages year to date. Cash on hand is $10,240,721.00
• 990s are charitable return for organization, gives information on charity itself. Both the foundation and school are charitable organizations, 990's to be approved below. 

Danielle Fox - running for parent Board seat 

Samantha Howorko - running for independent Board seat 

Lumakar Challa - running for parent Board seat  

Ian Bennett - running for parent Board seat 

Bibi Paul - running for independent Board seat 

N/A

Elections: 

• Smooth election process so far

Recruiting: 

• Discussed where candidates came from

KPI Report:

• Discussed KPI changes with a differences in numbers with the current survey having a 5 point scale with a change from a 4 point scale. KPI's show change in scores with and without neutral
• Adjusted thresholds within the survey. When neutral is considered as positive, every score went up. When neutral scores are considered as negative, every score went down.
• Need to reconsider thresholds to represent this change
• Makes sense to keep the 5-point Lykert scale in the future for best practice

Candidates:

• Samantha Howorko
• Bibi Paul

Independent candidates discussed the Board's questions. 

• Discussion regarding 2 vs 5 year proposal 
• Wanted options to see both. Cost includes PD around implementation.
• Grace to be given to teachers with notorious implementation dip with new curriculum
• Requested a 3 year contract at a set price and a 2 year extension at a higher cost than the 5 year but with the ability to back out if we desire. 
• Decision to make a motion on the curriculum only but not the duration. 
  • Will vote on duration once we hear back from HMH regarding a new cost potential

There was a lot of input from staff. 

Discussed: 

• The combination of the policy and the procedure into one
• The original placement of this policy and the misunderstanding of the enforcement of this to staff
• Will vote next month, once completed

Discussed:

• The word identified within the policy was changed to eligible 
• Keeping 7 days to accept the seat offer instead of the proposed 5 due to competition of other schools having different acceptance dates
• Make changes to help clarify that returning families do not have to complete a new body of evidence
• How to determine the loop hole of students being held back or repeating kindergarten to be able to get in "when it's easier"

Discussed leaving Mission and Vision out for now

Discussed the starting times of the new board members 

Discussed:

• 2 current independent director positions ending in July
  • 3rd candidate will interview in June
• Possible intent of plans going forward:
  • Appoint 3 but stagger the terms
• In June, we will determine the number of and who fills those seats

Bylaws Clarification

Having consulted legal, it was deemed necessary for clarification and transparency that the changes that were made on bylaw amendments be noted 

Spent time and money on this process to make sure it was legally sound and wanted to ensure these clarifications were transparent 

Discussed:

• The results of the Mission and Vision survey sent out
  • Smaller sample size, therefore not a clear consensus
• Making potential change with vision while waiting on mission, due to lack of participation with staff and students
• Board getting in front of the staff at the beginning of the year to get immediate feedback on both mission and vision
  • Will lead to immediate change and action
• Samantha and Lindsey will send communication to staff for next steps to close the feedback loop at this time.

Concluding this year and moving to year 2 soon

• Board onTrack codes their "yes", "no" and "I don't know" but assigns them numerical figures that isn't easy or practical to align with what we are currently using. Discussed using the BoT survey to look at the SAC survey and use any questions deemed helpful.
• Lindsey discussed the results of the SAC administered board self-evaluation. Despite the overall score remaining the same at 3.5, there were minor different changes in scores throughout the assessment 
• Utilize this in the fall for strategic planning.

Meeting with CRC and ED's went well and was determined that an events committee was redundant and unnecessary. Plan is to get CRC into a robust committee, they're meeting with StuCo to align with their plans and create a symbiotic support system together.

Identified that there is a need of a paid volunteerism position - will revisit this next month.

Changes were made to ensure Communication Pathways were followed. 

• Legal meeting to discuss contract was moved to tomorrow from today. 
• State policies that apply to charter schools - review for waivers to be requested
• District waivers are complete
• Automatic waivers language needs to be updated

Trainings due to the district by the end of the month, submit to Ray when completed.

• Independent director interviews
• Admissions Policy
• Instructional Materials
• Timeline on math curriculum adoption, 
• Org Chart
• Communication Pathways, based on org chart

May 29th at 8:30

Lisa and Lindsey will attend

• Senior Walk
• Doug Day 
• Senior Sunset
• Concerts in elementary
• Graduation