No members of the public were in attendance for this meeting.

The committee reviewed the academic excellence member job description and committee roles document.  Mandy gave an overview of past work done by the academic excellence committee and described how the committee has been aligning itself more accurately with the job description/roles document each year it has functioned.  With the regular assessment schedule instituted by the ED last year, the academic excellence committee agreed that it is now in a position to be in complete alignment with BOT best practices for this committee.

Sra. Davis has set a goal with the teachers to iIncrease academic achievement by 20%.  She thinks it is likely to be around 10% but wants to keep the target high to instill urgency amongst staff.  Improvement plans are based on two initiatives: regular meetings of subject-level teams and the regular submission of achievement data to the ED.  Monthly attention to data will drive instruction at the school and at the classroom level.  Teachers are being asked to use the Charlotte Danielson model for lesson plans with a goal of creating more correlation between lesson plans and what teachers teach/do during the lesson period.  One interim goal Sra. Davis is working on is to improve the consistency of the monthly data submitted by teachers so it is comparable within and across grades.
Some of the new professional development will address reading fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension strategies.  Sra. Davis has planned a school-wide reading challenge initiative: if the kids read 100,000 minutes of reading by the deadline, they will be able to dunk the executive director in a dunk tank. 
 

The academic excellence committee recommends the board approve following goal for 2016-17.
Systematize the collection, analysis, and reporting of student achievement data across subjects and grade levels.
 

This year Vida will be audited in special education.  Sra. Davis would like the committee to consider reviewing the charter with regards to the gifted services it requires Vida to provide.

The academic excellence committee recommends the board approve the following goal for the 2016-17 school year.
Systematize the monitoring of all special services provided through Vida (speech, special education, gifted, occupational, academic intervention programs).

The committee agreed that teachers are central to improvements in Vida's instructional & co-instructional programs and individual student achievement.  The group discussed the usefulness of using a staff survey to create a baseline for teacher satisfaction.   The committee agreed to use the survey formulated and used last spring to draft a proposed staff survey for administration after board approval (early December to follow approval in the November board meeting?).  The committee will attempt to re-use some or all of the survey questions from last spring.  The proposed survey would be for staff only; the parent survey would be administered as usual in the spring.

The academic excellence committee recommends the board approve the following goal for the 2016-17 school year.
Create a baseline and measure elements of teacher satisfaction for purposes of teacher recruitment and retention.

The committee agreed that it needs to draft a goal around assessment of recent resource allocations, like the ESL/SSL programming and the new math curriculum.  The committee has not yet determined if it will devise a measurement approach for all recent academic resource allocations, or only a specific one(s).  The committee would appreciate input from any board members with a strong opinion(s) about priorities evaluating resource decision outcomes. 

The committee does not foresee adding any other goals for the 2016-17 school year.

The committee did not have much time to discuss potential outside consultants but it did agree that the individuals listed should be invited to participate.  The invitation of outside consultants can be ongoing throughout the year.