J. Boulet shared her perspective on the mission and vision. She reviewed the vision of Met and how they tie into the strategic goals.

K. Davidson started with his report naming two things. K. Davidson has been working closely with K. McGuire on preventing learning loss due to COVID. K. Davidson named that they have been taking advantage of starting a full month prior to DOE. The first few weeks were spent on culture building and emotional repair. K. Davidson briefly ran through the goals outlined in the board packet. K. Davidson highlighted that these goals are still ambitious, even in light of COVID. K. Davidson believes that the school will still be on track to make 10 points of growth annually if the school keeps going with its current initiatives. They are working on the strategic plan and will have it in front of the education committee for review soon.

A. Bothner asked if K. Davidson is working with the consultant on charter renewal. K. Davidson confirmed.

K. Davidson put forth a resume for consideration. A teacher that was entering his fourth year of teaching at Met was hired by TFA. The new teacher has been working really hard to build relationships with students and the school was able to overlap and learn from the previous teacher when she was hired.

J. Boulet asked what brought her to work with Met given that catholic school populations and Met's population may look different.

K. Davidson shared that Met has similar demographics to what she'd supported in the catholic school side.

K. Davidson also shared that the school started IReady testing this week (will replace MAP). IReady will begin with 2nd grade and will move on with the rest of the grades in round two. Next month, we will be able to share data for K-12 assessments.

 

T. Williams will have a social worker resume to present next month because she signed on very recently.

T. Williams outlined that the high school has been testing (IReady) in person this week. She has been sharing the importance of IReady throughout this week as well. Some of the data came back and the results seemed really low. So she told students that they may have to retest if they scored alarmingly low (3 or more grade levels behind).

Strategic goals still remain the same. There hasn't been any guidance on January Regents, but the school is planning as though there will be one. L. Hara will be discussing students that are earning alarmingly low grades who will need RTI. Goals around graduation and college admission have also been added to strategic goals. Met landed on a 90% on-time graduation rate. 2021 is looking to be higher than the 90%.

Starting in October, the HS will begin reporting on the HS path to college each month.

A. Bothner clarified that amidst COVID, Met is graduating its first class and it may be helpful for the board to hear select key metrics to track progress toward that first graduating class.

K. Shabazz asked if students are SAT/ACT ready and what the average GPA is right now.

T. Williams said that seniors will take the SATs one more time October 14 at the school. Otherwise, students as young as Sophomores are able to participate in the SAT prep course that the school holds. T. Williams is not sure what the average GPA is for seniors, but the valedictorian and salutatorian have a 3.97 and 3.95 respectively. Next month, T. Williams will be able to report back GPAs.

K. Shabazz asked if the top students' SAT scores correlate with their GPA.

T. Williams said yes for one, but not the other. Vocabulary is hurting most of the students in terms of the SAT. The school has started exposing students to high-level vocabulary on a regular basis to address this weakness.

A. Khanyile asked if the school is providing some type of financial assistance for college apps.

T. Williams said since most of the students fall within a certain economic threshold, they likely will not have to pay. However, there is money set aside for this.

A. Khanyile asked if college tours are happening with COVID?

T. Williams said there are virtual college tours happening and they're open for all students now since they're virtual. Teachers gave extra credit points to students who attended.

A. Khanyile asked if there will be a workshop for parents to navigate the application process for scholarships.

T. Williams said yes, this will happen as part of the FAFSA training the school is providing.

L. Hara discussed her goals for the role.

• Better structure the SpEd department while tightening the RTI system
  • Would need to streamline scholar supports and align all of it from K-12

A. Khatiwada asked what kinds of things we're doing to ensure that students are eventually graduating off of IEPs and how we're going to meet our increase SpEd population per the charter agreement.

L. Hara shared that the biggest thing to address is going to be through RTI and early intervention. The school needs to committ to proactive support rather than reactive, as it's been in the past. Through progress monitoring, I expect to be able to make strategic groupings for the students that will directly impact the SpEd population.
L. Hara also shared that since the schools is only offering SETTS, which is small group. But offering ICT would be a great incentive for parents to enroll SpEd students. An ICT environment would be able to reach more scholars over time.

K. Shabazz asked a clarifying question and asked if the school would be entirely ICT, or if certain sections would be ICT?

K. Davidson said he aspires to a fully ICT school. His hope is to make it there within 3 years.

K. McGuire shared that the authorizer met with the team and provided feedback. The school updated the closure procedure and specific language to make sure we don't catch ourselves in a bind around closure. There may be an impromptu call needed for the board to vote on a closure if needed. The updates were shared in red within the board packet.

No changes made to the grading policy.

S.  Pressley named that the first priority was to get RFPs out to financial companies to receive proposals by October 1 and then enter the interview phase.

Additionally, the finance committee would like to get votes on the budget amendment and move forward with the PPP forgiveness plan.

M. Rousseau reviewed the August financials. The school is in a strong place financially, but as the school begins to receive invoices, the finance team will be closely monitoring the financials.

B. Elliott shared that we are still under the 24-week period for the loan which will end mid-October. The banks are not accepting forgiveness applications at this time, but when they do, the banks will have 60 days to review, and then the SBA has 90 days to review. So we don't expect to hear a decision until Spring 2021. The school will have about 10 months to apply for that forgiveness.

Once the school submits the application, the school will not be responsible for interest or principal payments during the review period.

The school received 1.1 million.

S. Pressley discussed with the finance committee what could be done with the PPP funds.

A. Bothner asked if the school could apply for multiple rounds of forgiveness. B. Elliott said we cannot, but we can use all of the salaries that we've paid out during this time, which has been recommended by the bank, as they are almost equal to the PPP allottment.

M. Alston reviewed the budget narrative included in the packet.

The school has determined that there have been COVID-related expenses that should cause us to reconsider the budget. Without considering the COVID-19 related expenses incurred, the school would be trending on budget thus far.

M. Alston reviewed budget lines that were subtracted from and added to. She asked for the vote to approve these changes so the school can continue with strong instruction this school year.

A. Bothner asked if the additions would include all of the bullets on the narrative?

M. Alston confirmed.

A. Bothner asked why capital expenses are shown in the income statement portion of the budget.

M. Rousseau shared that the capitalization threshold is $5000/unit. So tech is not considered a capital purchase because per unit, they are not capital expenses.

M. Rousseau shared that the audit is progressing well and they are doing their paperwork behind the scenes. All questions have been responded to.

A. Bothner asked if there are any areas of concern.

M. Rousseau said no.

A. Khanyile asked to hold these updates until after the strategic plan discussion.

K. Perez shared that the school is currently at 691 scholars, which is above the charter goal. There is no change so far with SpEd and ELL students.

There are currently ~1,713 students on the waitlist.

A. Bothner asked if there are concerns around any specific grades?

K. Perez confirmed no.

K. McGuire shared that there's no update.

No one for public comment.

Discussed earlier in the meeting.

Discussed earlier in the meeting.

M. Rivera shared:

• The DOB shared the inspection date, 9/29. There will be an update next week.
• There's an elevator sign off and generator sign off that needs to be put through the DOB as well
• Punch list items are being finalized this week
• Final payment is outstanding to contractor and will be remitted once punch list items and NCRs are closed
• The project is still under budget, don't expect any last minute bills

M. Rivera shared that A. Ames, K. Perez. and M. Alston discussed what the ceremony could look like in light of COVID.

She shared that the ceremony could be an intimate, invite only event for now. When the students are in the building, we can host a larger, student-centered event.

A. Bothner was in agreeance of this proposal.

A. Khanyile shared that he is connected with a well-known DJ that would be able to attend and being an up-and-coming artist for the kids. We can confirm when we choose a date.

M. Rivera said that once we have a date for a TCO, we'll gather everyone back together to settle on a date for the event.

J. Boulet shared that it's the time to review bylaws. The board will receive red-lined changes in about a week to review. There will be a couple of changes that will be included:

• The executive committee will likely be re-introduced given the current size of the board
• The external relations committee will be added based on what was discussed in the June meeting

Please also review the description of each role in the board.

A. Bothner clarified that executive committees are legally allowed to execute items that the board delegates to them. The executive committee includes all of the officers of the board. This would work by defaulting all outlined items to the governance committee, then the board would vote as things arise, whether they should go to the governance committee or the executive committee.

J. Boulet also shared that conversations around strategic goals have already begun with committee chairs and how to create cohesion between committees.

A. Bothner shared that we will use this agenda item to share what each committee is doing to work toward the strategic goals.
 

Discussed earlier in the agenda.

A. Bother to discuss this post-Executive session

Began at 8:32.