DC Everest IDEA School – Governance Board Meeting
January 23, 2017
Noon to 1:30 pm
Meeting Notes
- Call to Order – 12:05 pm
- Approval of October Meeting Minutes
Patrick Approved
Pat Seconded
Motion carried
No quorum in November and no December meeting
- Treasurer’s Report
None
- Student Representative Report
None – Not a school day
V.Administrator’s Report
Steve Pophal has accepted a position as the Superintendent of Janesville Schools.Gavin and Steve looked at the last contract when they talked. Dr. Gilmore will appoint a new liaison. Steve will be here until June, but will transition to a new position.
It’s an exciting opportunity for Steve, but bittersweet for the board. He’s been with the IDEA School since the beginning and in the District for 15 years. Steve believes IDEA School has stabilized during the last few years; the relationship with the district is good. Early in the school’s history, IDEA School was vulnerable to the change. Steve is confident that Dr. Gilmore will appoint a new liaison who is friendly toward the school.
Jane Miller has been out the first three weeks of the new year to take care of her husband’s health conditions. Since Jane is a part-time employee, she has no benefits. The District chose to provide Jane Miller with 10 sick days. The District has a sick-day bank that allows employees to donate sick days to others. The District donated 10 days to help Jane. Beth Schultz supplied administrative services in Jane’s absence.
IDEA School will continue to pay it share for administrative hours. The District will take fiscal responsibility for Jane’s sick days.
Acton Academy approached the District a couple of months ago about putting an elementary project-based model in place under the Everest umbrella. An elementary project-based school would allow families who want to choose a K-to-12 charter school pathway. Acton Academy would be a natural feeder for IDEA. We already get students from Acton Academy, which uses a program out of Austin, Texas.
Advisors get a pat on the back. They sent out the District Budget for the school year. To get the most of the money spent before the end of the year, means that it was used for education. It’s good money management.
VI. Advisor’s Report
Enrollment Update
IDEA School held its first informational meeting. We had 14 families and 16 students. At this point, we have 10 applications for the 2017/2018 school year. Two more meetings are scheduled: one in February and one in March. We have two shadow days scheduled that allow prospective students to shadow current students during a short project. Typically, we run prospective students through the project process and what a normal day looks like here. We can pair them with an existing student. Having two days would be a better use of time for use our students’ time.February is usually the most attended informational night.
Our enrollment is down to 70 students. We lost two at break, but had one student apply and join.
Patrick: Are there students that drop before the end of the year?
Andy: We’ve always had students leave. We may have more. The student with health issues has not been here since Christmas. He’s 18, we can’t use truancy to bring him back to school.
Gavin:Can we disassociate with this student?
Andy: We’ve reached out to NTC and other alternative schools for the student to attend.
Gavin: There is nothing we can do?
Luke: There’s nothing we can do.
Andy:Currently, there is no one on the waiting list who has gone through the step-by-step process. Seventy is a reasonable enrollment number. We should wait until the lottery. We have two or three students on a waiting list, but none of them have attended the informational meeting or the shadow day. We should wait until the lottery in April if they’ve not gone through the steps.
Andy:We will have 12 graduates, 11 seniors.
Patrick:So, we will need to have 10 to 12 students on the waiting list.
Andy: We can also have another informational meeting in April if we need to do so. We did that last year. I feel pretty good about where we are numbers-wise.
Andy: Carpet was redone here and under the desk. Our custodial and our tech staff came and installed it in three days. We’ve moved distance learning has moved into the conference room. It’s best for the students who are learning the language and those trying to study near them.
We have German distance-learning. Luke’s wife teaches German levels 1 through 3; Andy’s wife teaches German levels 4 and 5.
We’ve had a lot of snow and ice days. We’ve had some weird days. That’s what’s been going on so far.
Patrick: How’s is it going with four advisors? Is the work load more manageable?
Andy:Having Kendra here with science has been great. Spreading out the work load has been good. It’s been a big transition year because of the number of middle school students. We’ve already started on the national history unit. Note taking is still a struggle. I’m teaching note taking with the research. Next year, we have a list of skills that we want to focus on. We’ll take those into account when we work on the next year’s curriculum.
Patrick: Should we grow into a 5th advisor?
Andy and Luke:We’re good at 72.
Patrick: What would we need to grow?
Luke:When I think of growth, it would be to grow to two school groups. A separate middle school function group and a separate high school function group. Then we need to talk about facility. Would there be different building needs? I don’t know that it would work to have two different programs out of this facility.
Andy: There are 90 total seats out there. Every one of those seats would have a student. We are probably the biggest project-based school in the state.
Chris: NTC is looking at implementing a couple of STEM centers. Chris was fortunate enough to visit High Tech High. They had 480 high school students. After seeing what they had out there, the physical space of this building and everything that comes into play, I think having 90 plus students in one physical open space would be a challenge.
At High Tech High, the students led all the two-and-half hour tours. I appreciated seeing the school. It would take a lot from a budgeting standpoint. I think it would be very advantageous to send an advisor and a board member out to High Tech High. I also heard Waukesha is looking to buy into the High Tech High type of school.
Patrick: It would be good to have a vision meeting. What does IDEA want to be in the next five years?
Gavin: Middle school and high school? Matt had gotten a call asking about the student-to-student mentor and how the advisory is mixed?
Matt: There was a voicemail from a parent concerned about mentoring younger students who needed to be guided by older students. The parents always need to know what we are doing and how we are doing it. I think everything is going well. We had a an accomplished senior class. What are we doing to have those students help the younger kids how to do a project? Can they make five- or ten-minuteinstructional videos for the younger kids? What are they doing to make an impact on the kids and their imprint on the school indefinitely?
Andy: Our seniors are out of the school a lot taking classes at the high school, NTC and the MC. They are not physically here as much as they used to be. We are disappointed in that. We are also not a school that dictates they have to leave a legacy or an imprint on the school.
Matt: Could that be part of the community service element? At our developmental stage, it might be a good idea to give them credit for building the instructional foundation of our school.
Andy: We have kids that go out into the community. We have a CAB group that is designed to do the type of things that we are talking about. In February, they are planning a team building activity. In terms of mentoring on projects, it’s one thing that we have not done this year. Not all of our high school students can be mentors.
Matt:We need to think of some ideas. Could the senior project be focused on leading a major project and bringing in 10 or 15 of the younger kids?
Andy: I struggle with that because it limits what the seniors can do. If they are teaching students, you lose a lot of possibility for the senior projects. Maybe it’s a junior thing.
Matt: We have to figure out what kind of school we are. When we started out we were more like a one-room schoolhouse. If we are getting too big, we need to figure some of these things out.
Andy: We also need to talk about the terms of the lottery. Part of the issue is filling out the sixth grade first, so we know we have a reasonable-sized classes. Then we can allocate the number of students per grade. We need to figure that out so our classes can be balanced. That would be a suggestion for the next board meeting.
VII. Committee Reports
- Executive Committee – Gavin Celia
Strategic Planning Committee Formation
We need to a strategic plan for the school for the next five years. At first, we were thinking about a strategic planning committee of five or six people.
Matt:I think we should open it up to the whole board.
Pat: That would then fall under the open meeting rules, which is fine if that’s the way we go. We would have to publish the agenda as we do for regular board meetings.
Patrick: We need to open it to the whole board. We have ten board members—and possibly one more member. We should also include a few parents.
Matt: Last time we did it, we had everyone else join in and the we had a meeting at Wausau Homes. We had someone come in and lead the meeting. We also had someone come in and help us develop a strategic plan.
Gavin: The challenge is to get someone here for the meeting and talk about the strategic plan with the whole board.
Matt: If we set it advance far enough, we can put it on our calendar?
Gavin: Fifteen people is large group.
Chris:I think it should be planned outa few months so that we can invite someone.
Patrick: Would a week night or a week day be better?
Matt: Most people are tired at the end of the day.
Patrick: When do we do it?
Gavin: Do we need a facilitator?
Chris:NTC has a strategic planner. I’ll contact her to see if she would be willing to join us.
Matt: Do we have anyone from the Charter School organization?
Luke:We don’t have any funds for this.
Chris:We need to find someone internally. Is there something that we could give her?
Matt: Part of a grant.
Patrick: Can we discuss this more at the February 25th, meeting?
Chris: We will need preset questions. Does that give us enough time to we want to talk about plan for facility and enrollment?
Matt: Do we have anything to add to the agenda?
Luke:I’m not available any Saturday in April or May because of baseball.
Gavin: We can send out an email for a meeting in April.
Patrick:Do we need a facilitator?
Gavin: Does the District have anyone they use?
Matt: Every non-profit organization has someone to do it at some level.
Gavin:Can we ask at the parent involvement meeting on Thursday?
Patrick:Are there two to three strong parents, who would be willing to be involved?
Matt: You need the most diverse opinions that you can get.
Andy:We may need a plan for middle school and high school.
Andy: Our goals are based off the strategic plan. I don’t think we ever looked back at it.
Patrick: If you have measurable goals to accomplish, it’s beneficial.
Matt: I think in the last few years we’ve been trying to stop the bleeding and stabilize the school. We’ve been in a state of change for a while now.
Chris:I’ve seen certain boards who have allocated certain months for specific topics. Such as February might be the strategic plan review month. The Boys and Girls Club self-evaluates according to the strategic plan they have in place.
Gavin: Who will come up with the plan?
Chris: There will need to be some discussions outside the meeting. I was wondering how that would play out. We would need two more board meetings to discuss the issues.
Chris, Patrick and Pat will ask their acquaintances if they would be willing to help IDEA create a strategic plan.
- Marketing Committee – Patrick Schmidt
IX.New Business
Discuss Jackie Knoblock’s board member application
Chris: Jackie Knoblock is one of the adjunct instructors at the college, helping the students get into a project of interest. Her son, Dillon, goes here. He takes a few classes. She brings fundraising experience to IDEA. She’s assisted with her musical talents. She gave me her application last summer. She expressed her interest to me. She may have been a part of Faith Christian Academy. Some of her older children also attended here. She will bring good experience to bring to the board.
With Katie and I being as an NTC, I don’t want the board to NTC heavy.Dillon is a senior, he has been here four or five years. I could see her bring a parent perspective to the board.
Pat: The only thing we need to consider is the percentage of students that are related to advisors or people on the board. We want to avoid the appearance of impropriety.
Matt:I move to approve Jackie Knoblock’s application for the board membership.
Luke:I second the motion.
Motion passed unanimously.
New Business: The Grant Application
Patrick: Did we send out the application?
Andy: We also applied at ConnexUs.
Gavin:I will submit the application to B.A. Esther Foundation. I will also be meeting with Jim McIntyre. He has kids at Acton.
Chris: Tapping in to the BA Esther and Greenheck Foundation is a good idea.When I was at High Tech High, they mentioned that all their support comes from private donors.
Andy: That’s what we are trying to do.
X.Adjourn
Andy:I make a motion to adjourn.
Matt:I second the motion.
Motion passed unanimously.