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Frayser Community Schools

Minutes

FCS Board Meeting (Web Meeting)

Date and Time

Tuesday February 9, 2021 at 5:30 PM

Location

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Directors Present

A. Cathey (remote), C. Houston (remote), E. Henneghan (remote), J. Thornton (remote), M. Matthews (remote), M. Shepherd (remote), R. Dowell (remote)

Directors Absent

K. Adams, T. Hartwell

Ex Officio Members Present

B. White (remote)

Non Voting Members Present

B. White (remote)

Guests Present

B. Lawson (remote), G. Thompson (remote), Katie Wise (remote), L. Warren (remote), T. Hervey (remote), T. Pearson (remote)

I. Opening Items

A.

Record Attendance and Guests

B.

Call the Meeting to Order

A. Cathey called a meeting of the board of directors of Frayser Community Schools to order on Tuesday Feb 9, 2021 at 5:36 PM.

C.

Approve Minutes

M. Matthews made a motion to approve the minutes from FCS Board Meeting (Web Meeting) on 12-08-20.
R. Dowell seconded the motion.
The board VOTED to approve the motion.
Roll Call
R. Peterson
Absent
C. Houston
Aye
E. Henneghan
Aye
T. Hartwell
Absent
A. Cathey
Aye
D. Mickey
Absent
L. Robinson
Absent
K. Potts
Absent
M. Shepherd
Aye
K. Adams
Absent
J. Thornton
Aye
M. Matthews
Aye
R. Dowell
Aye

II. CEO Updates

A.

Remembering the Vision

Dr. Bobby White:
We ask our Principals to share things that are going on in their schools. Dr. Robinson shared with us a great story about one of her six-grade scholars. This scholar reached out to her classmates to let them know what the tutoring schedule is. She has taken it upon herself to encourage them to log on to attend tutoring classes.

 

For a sixth-grader to show that type of leadership in the space that we're in right now, speaks highly about what the students at Humes are learning and being taught. I feel this is a part of who we are - creating and empowering our scholars that we serve to be leaders. She is already stepping up in a big way. I thought that was something worth sharing.

III. Academic Excellence

A.

Academic Excellence Committee Updates

Mr. Brett Lawson:
  • We started our push to expand our hybrid model and we've had students in school now. We're in our second week having them back in the building with our hybrid one model that we were using between fall break and Thanksgiving break. Functional skills students are back in the building and our internet cafes are up and running.
  • Covid cases are continuing to go down in Shelby County and we had a meager case count today. When we were on the call today, I think the number in Shelby County today is only 158 new cases. That number continues to be very encouraging. The actual case percentage they will quote is not below 5%; it's at 8.9%, which the CDC guidelines have said, 5% is in the red, All year long, that's always been the level, but nobody has followed that. Everybody gets pushed on to about 10%, so we said when it drops below 10% in Shelby County, we felt ready to start moving towards a more robust hybrid model. And so, we're at the point now where we're getting parents to send us their choice about whether or not they want their children to be in the building or not.
  • So far we've had about 100 responses. I'm still watching and correcting information as it's coming in. Beginning to track it in the Power BI dashboard, all those things are going on behind the scenes simultaneously.
  • We sent out a notice to teachers last Friday that we were moving towards a more robust model. The timeline goes like this:
    • On February the 16 we will have teachers come back into the building full-time, every day. Once they come back into the building, they're in for nine days without students coming into the building.  Teachers will get acclimated to being in the building, making sure their learning space is clean. That it's well ventilated, everything is comfortable in their teaching space and taken care of before students come in the building.
    • Simultaneously, we're making plans behind the scenes, making sure that we're not overloading any classrooms. We will be assigning students to those locations within the building as we move forward.
    • March 1st, we will bring students back into the building. During the first week, we will be moving to a more robust model. We will max at 30% of the student population coming into the building, gradually ramping up to 50%. Yesterday we had a meeting with all of the teachers and staff from all three locations. Dr. White and I spoke to the staff; we gave a presentation and made the case for why we're doing this at this time and the conditions that are allowing us to do so. We told them some of the things that we're doing in preparation and I was in contact today with the organization that will be testing in the buildings once we come back. We have an MOU to give back to them to schedule, and they are aware of our needs when we are ready to start testing. 
  • Details regarding outreach to students who have been absent and out of touch:
    • We fleshed out attendance really well last week and it is rolling. Mr. King is working with three individuals, one at each school. They're actually going to the houses' of the students who have not been attending at all. They're seeing what's going on in those situations and why the students have not been attending class. And the reason they're doing this is that we have to consider, at this point, dropping students who are totally not attending. We were doing that on the  11th day that a student does not show up to school. You know you have 10 days of absence, and on the 11th day, the student is dropped from enrollment. Well, we didn't feel like that was really the right thing to do in the pandemic. We consider the fact that if you've got our laptop, you've got a hotspot from us, we're trying to connect with you, we're gonna keep trying as long as we can, but we're at a point now where we have to drop students. So they were making initial visits, and, in some cases, a parent would assure us that their child will start logging on daily. In which case, we would leave the laptop and everything. And then they would check to see if that actually came to pass. If not, then we made a second visit to inform them, you know, we're going to have to drop your child at this point; they simply are not attending.
    • When our attendance person would visit houses and there wasn't an answer, they would leave a door knocker. On the second visit and the knocker was still there; we now know no one lives there, so we have no choice but to drop them. We obviously have to address the issue of laptops that are not being returned. We're in the process of sending our certified letters to those individuals. Again, we are hopeful the letter is received. If not, we have to move forward with notifying the police that we have a device that's not being returned and those devices are our $600. We really hate to do that; we don't want to unnecessarily put that on somebody's record. This is the last thing we want to do and that's why we are taking these extra steps - going out and visiting at least two times before we take this final step.
    • They will have another round of visits that will address around 165 individuals. 

IV. Governance

A.

Governance Committee Updates

Arlinda Cathey:

 

  • There are a few things that we'll be discussing for Governance today. We'll first start off with board membership updates. As you all know, at the close of the fall 2020 semester, Steve Lockwood and Pastor Floyd rolled off the board. We also want to let everyone know that Theo Hartwell will roll off the board at the close of the fiscal year in June. So we resume recruitment efforts to identify new board candidates and onboard new members by start of new fiscal year in July. 
  • The previous recruitment process involved the following steps, specifically
    • Step 1: Initial phone call with board candidate (Arlinda)
    • Step 2: Invitation to meet with select board members (2-3 board members)
    • Step 3: Meeting and tour of FCS facilities with Dr. White
    • Step 4: Extend invitation to join board
  • Our next steps include identifying expertise/profiles of prospective board members and asking current board members for leads and begin the outreach process. We specifically want to focus on parent representatives and individuals from Frayser community churches and organizations.
  • The Governance committee  is also ramping up for our annual evaluations. We traditionally have evaluated the CEO, Dr. White - but this year we will also conduct a review of our Executive Director, Mr. Lawson. We will be sharing the evaluation timeline with the board and network staff by next month.
  • Lastly, we just want to let everyone know that we are still working on the FCS Advisory Council framework. This framework provides insight for committees on how they can recruit individuals external from the board to contribute to specific projects and initiatives committees are engaging in. We will roll out details in the coming month for committees implementation this spring

V. Finance

A.

Finance Committee Updates

Greg Thompson:
Cash balance at 2/5/2021: $4.3M
BEP Revenue – Revenue is based on 1,167 students (approximately $10.9M) for FY21
• MLK: 585.7 students
• Westside: 331.7 students
• Humes: 250.05 • Total: 1,167 students

 

Public Grants Frayser Community Schools has approximately $3.7M in non-recurring, COVID related grants and $1.9M in public grants that are awarded each year to ASD authorized charter schools.

 

ESSER 2.0
Frayser Community Schools is expecting to receive $2.9M in grant funding as part of ESSER 2.0. FCS will be able to expend funds through the 2022-2023 fiscal year.

VI. Development

A.

Development Committee Updates

Mr. Erik Henneghan:
  • I had a conversation with Dr. White and Mrs. Cathey last week about the FCS Day celebration.
  • To give you a background on FCS Day, we've been celebrating FCS Day for the last two years. We received a proclamation from Mayor Strickland in 2019 that May 23 is FCS Day in city of Memphis. This year we're coming up on year seven for the organization so we're looking at some cool things to do to make it special.
  • I want to give you guys a quick rundown. We're looking at doing the same type of fundraiser that we did last year - the telethon we streamed live online social media, and then we promote the event so that people could donate leading up to the day. Everyone is also able to give on that day. We'll have a live performance, a host, and a DJ. The event would be set up like last year.
  • Last year, it was pretty successful; this year, we have more time to plan. What I need from you guys - I would love for anyone that would like to be a part of the planning committee for the FCS Day celebration to let me know. That way I can invite you to the meeting. We're going to try to meet next Tuesday. 
  • With the committee meetings we will have, we will talk through marketing and talk about the ideas we could do leading up to the event. Right now, we have individuals giving on the link at the website. So what we'll be able to do is market the event a little bit before FCS Day, where each board member can continue to raise money.
  • We can have some preset verbiage for you to say "Hey, FCS day is coming up on May 23, you can donate to this link here." At our committee meeting, I think we can think of some cool ideas and approaches for us to have. We can make it competitive where whoever raises the most FCS funds gets a gift certificate or a gift card.

VII. Network Updates from the CEO

A.

Pertinent Network Updates and Developments

Dr. Bobby White:

 

No updates at this time.

VIII. Closing Items

A.

Adjourn Meeting

There being no further business to be transacted, and upon motion duly made, seconded and approved, the meeting was adjourned at 7:27 PM.

Respectfully Submitted,
A. Cathey