Inspire School of Arts & Sciences Board of Directors

Regular Session – 7:00 pm

Monday, February 11, 2013

Inspire Classroom PC11 on the Chico High Campus

901 Esplanade Chico, CA

The mission of Inspire School of Arts and Sciences is to provide high levels of learning and support within a personalized environment that allows students to explore their interests and develop their talents.

AGENDA

1.  Call to Order – 7:00pm

Attendees: Jay Goldberg, Jann Reed, Denver Latimer, Dan LaBar, Eric Nilsson, Debbie Travers, Ben Juliano, Jana Gosselin

2. Consent Calendar (10 min.)

a.  Consider approval of minutes on January 14, 2013.

Minutes approved with following changes: all ISAS references changed to Inspire.

b.  Consider approval of donations.

Future donations will be shared with the board, even those that are made to the foundation.

c.  Consider approval of expenditures.

Monthly reports will be moved to principal’s report (for information only).

3. Student Report

Sara Kraatz – Student Gov’t – Senior Class Pres. – 3rd year Inspire student – StuGo working primarily on winter formal and recycling fundraiser. Sara is in charge of senior trip, this year they are going to Disneyland. Mtn. Mike’s fundraiser tomorrow night (2/12).

Sara is also Chicago stage manager. Has to know all dancing, singing, blocking, lines. Stage Manager’s role is to support Jarrah. Lots of work right now on set building. Students responsible for much of the work on the sets. Students also working with costumer Gail Holbrook. Kids saw some of the costumes today, they’re amazing.

Courtney Barnett – 3rd year Inspire Student – role of Velma in Chicago. Her whole world is Chicago right now. Rehearses every day until 8pm or so. Worked on set this weekend. Sang with orchestra for the first time today.

Vendini is up and running for ticket sales, both online and in the office.

VAPA performed for two hours for Boys & Girls club Gala Fundraiser on 2/9. Choir, musical theater 2, antidivas, one voice – all performed. Performance was well received.

4. Principal’s report (25 min.).

a.  Safety Meeting – Dan Labar

Parent safety meeting held on 1/7/13. Three parents attended. Went over what Inspire has in place. Code red drill last week, went pretty well. One student was in bathroom, protocol needs to be developed for that situation. Handed out Emergency Information Guide for parents & guardians. Copies are available to parents in the office.

b.  Facilities Update.

Seven new buildings approved. Five of seven in factory in Sacramento. Chem lab and Admin building not in factory but scheduled. Painting of campus. Nilsson and John Nickerson have a plan to use students from both schools to provide labor to paint buildings. Project request to CUSD M&O to get approval to move ahead with plan. Question is if district will allow District Supervisor to oversee kids. The hope is that painting can begin in mid to late spring. Katherine Sherman has started on mural on wall facing Inspire quad.

c.  FAFSA Meeting.

25 kids showed up to fill out FAFSA paperwork so one Inspire student will win a $1000 scholarship.

d.  Breaking Down the Walls

Popular program designed to lower barriers between students and open them up to better understanding each other. Debbie thought it was very well done and well worth every penny. Very safe environment for student sharing. Core activity was “cross the line”.

e.  Freshman tour of Chico State.

First trip to CSUC. Two trips of 50 kids each day. Student panel stacked with Arts & Engineering students. Zingg was going to talk to kids but his health may not be good enough.

f.  Partnership with Gateway Science Museum.

Nilsson met with Gateway. Looking for tangible things that we can build upon. Three solid outcomes.

1-student intern w/credit;

2-bike week 5/7-9; will use lego mindstorm kits; Paul Bailey will recommend 8-10 students to help

3- sports medicine science career day – Inspire will work to get kids to participate.

g.  Foundation Fundraiser – Raffle.

Kids are selling tickets. If sell all 700 tickets will gross $14k. There are costs associated with prizes. Grand prizes will be drawn on final day of Chicago.

5. Discussion/Action Items

5.1Public Hearing/Discussion/Action. (60 min.)

5.1a. Discussion/Action: Approval Algebra 1 “every day” instruction.

80 minutes every day of algebra 1. Conclusion of faculty that this is worth doing. Costs associated with change include altering intervention teacher’s schedule to teach 4 periods of alg 1, 2 prep periods, and 2 periods of intervention. Inspire’s math achievement data is weak. Will see how effective intervention is but think this is the logical next step. In terms of numbers, 50% of freshmen went to geometry, 50% went to alg 1. No way to know how effective the geometry student’s alg 1 instruction was. Don’t know how well they’ll do in alg 2. Important to give students a real mastery and foundation of basics. Inspire is planning to do an assessment test in summer, MDTP. Test will be given as a diagnostic tool for assessing placement. Will offer a waiver for families who are insistent that they want their student to move forward and not review or take alg 1 again. Goal will be to try and add richness to the “why” of math. Math teacher’s salary would not change except step and column increases. Jann moves to approve alg 1 as an everyday course, Debbie seconds. Approved unanimously.

5.1b. Discussion: Input regarding agenda at the summer retreat.

Eric asked the Board to think about items of discussion for the staff summer retreat. Eric will present agenda for Board to consider. Sustainability? If a board member wants to attend, they are welcome. Community building, family building time suggested as important.

5.1c. Discussion/Action: Consider request for leave of absence for student #74642.

Student and parent have decided to pursue a referral to Fairview instead. Item pulled from agenda.

5.1d. Discussion/Action: Consider NextEd grant.

Research proposal designed to recruit groups of 50 students willing to commit to a 4 year PLTW sequence. Students randomly split into two groups, the experimental group to complete the engineering sequence; the control group not allowed to take a PLTW class while at Inspire.

Schools see attrition in engineering (and other career path) programs, sometimes as high as 25%. The researcher was expecting attrition of 5%, felt 25% too high for research design.

Board comment that a program like that could compromise the whole engineering program we’re working to build. Inspire’s population is too small. Debbie motions to say “thank you but we can’t participate”, Ben seconds, motion approves unanimously to not participate in NextEd research project.

5.1e. Discussion/Action: Approval of Safety Plan.

Sign-out for safety plan at front desk. Important to know who has viewed the plan. Inspire/CHS considered one site for emergency incidents. Inspire “umbrellaed” under CHS’s plan. Site administrators trained on NIMS. Inspire site plan needs Board approval, its specificity to Inspire as an adopted CUSD document.

Incident command chart needs to reflect Inspire names under roles instead of CHS names.

All emergency communications will be on channel one on the radio.

Staff directed to make sure they get attendance entered into aeries within first five minutes of class. This makes student tracking in an emergency much quicker and more accurate.

6. Items from the floor.

Eric will get by by-laws regarding CUSD Board members spot on the board.

7. Announcements.

No announcements.

Meeting adjourned 8:45.