CSC Meeting – March 2, 2018

  • 2018-2019 Calendar
  • Start two days early in the 18-19 school year – voted yes
  • Spanish Speaking SPED
  • Approved previously as a CSC team
  • Posted as qualified ELA-S and SPED
  • Made an offer to a candidate, but the candidate is concerned about the money piece (she currently receives about a $5,000 stipend for hard-to-serve and hard-to-staff)
  • CSC must approve to pay her a stipend
  • Overall, the team wants to make sure we (1) can continue the stipend without affecting other positions, (2) she is truly strong, and (3) she will stay here for a while
  • I-Zone
  • Current Options
  • Do nothing
  • Stay as an innovation school in our network
  • Internal I-Zone
  • The Empower Zone
  • Schools we’re currently partnered with in our network
  • We would still be under the district umbrella
  • The plan is to come together under the commonality of developing our teacher leadership
  • District would give us some financial flexibility, but not much
  • All the extra money would go towards that commonality in developing our teacher leadership
  • What that means is hiring an outside contractor (RELAY) to come in and coach teacher leaders and leaders to better coach teachers and TLs
  • Jessica’s perspective right now – this option doesn’t feel like we would gain a lot from it
  • Joining the LLN (Luminary Learning Network)
  • An established external I-Zone
  • Increased autonomy with the district that operates outside of the district
  • External board, Executive Director, and coaches
  • More financial flexibility
  • The board includes people from the school system (school board, principals from current schools
  • We can get out of the I-Zone if we don’t like it after a year and go back to being what we are right now
  • Next year will be their third year as an I-Zone, so they’ve had 2 years to do a lot of learning about it
  • The other schools: Denver Green School, Ashley, Cole, and C3
  • Sustainability – the LLN has been working with the district to get lots of things in writing in terms of the flexibility and commitments over-time
  • Other questions
  • Dual-language schools – they aren’t Innovation, so they can’t join I-Zone and Jessica is already connected with them
  • Teacher jobs – no impact (it’ll stay the same as it is now)
  • Spanish and ECE resources – we’ll have to decide what we want to do in terms of opting in and out
  • How much say will we have – this will actually increase a lot of the say we have
  • Is this a lot of work for little benefit – Jessica is getting the sense that we get to choose how much work we want by opting in and out of certain things (example of an opportunity: The Teacher Council)
  • Two big benefits
  • (1) Increased learning opportunities
  • More available resources from the outside that are currently hard for us to access due to money and connections
  • Opportunity to connect with other schools
  • *We have the options and choice to join certain things or not
  • (2) Financial flexibility
  • Increased opportunities to opt out of services we are not using and get the money as a school
  • E.g. the Imaginarium – we pay several thousand dollars a year, but don’t use it
  • We choose what we want to keep with the district and what we want to opt out of – it doesn’t have to be the same as what other schools have opted in or out of (e.g. keep specials district support, but opt out of literacy and math district support)
  • From other schools, they got more than $200,000 back, paid a little back to the zone for operating costs, and ended up with around $160,000 back
  • What are the cons?
  • The relationship between the LLN and district happens every 3 years – it looks good, but is possible
  • There have been some formation and growing pains in the LLN because it’s a new idea – it can be choppy or messy because it’s new
  • Next Steps
  • Application is due next Friday
  • 50%+1 teacher vote
  • CSC approval: everyone present agreed to move forward in the process