GUADALUPECHARTERSCHOOL

Board Meeting Minutes: September 25, 2012

Present: Kelly Gutierrez, Dave Lamb, Kathie Miller, LuAnne Reese

Absent: Shaun Bawden, Maria Martinez, Debbie Reid

Staff: Vicki Mori, Ernie Nix, Moira Rampton, Kristi Aoyagi

Dave Lamb called the meeting to order at 7:35 a.m.

MINUTES

A motion was made by Katie Miller and seconded by LuAnne Reese to approve minutes of June 19, 2012. Motion carried.

POLICIES AND PROCEDURES

At the June board meetingan amendment to the enrollment policy was tabled as further discussion was requested.

After a lengthy discussion, it was decided to again table the amendmentuntil Vicki Mori has a chance to contact Marlies Burns, USOE to find out if In-Home has the right to remove the child out of the program if the parent/child has had a “no show” three times.

STAFF—Vicki Mori

  • Kristi Aoyagi, first grade teacher was welcomed to the meeting. She taught 13 years in a Catholic School of which the past five years were part time. Guadalupe School was fortunate to hire her when she decided to go full time as St. Ann’s did not have a full-time position available.
  • Teacher staff will share as teacher representative to the charter board meetings.
  • Ernie Nix was introduced as the new principal. Vicki Mori was very excited when she received his resume and interest in the principal position. He and Vicki have had interaction for the last 20 years. When Vicki was at Neighborhood House, she was involved in the community member programMr. Nix put together to help the kids at Glendale. He has been on the west side for 24 years. He knows Glendale, Jackson, and Northwest. These are schools where 80%-85% of Guadalupe kids will attend school. He has helped build schools and helped turn around Glendale. Started and built Excelsior Charter School in Toole.
  • Hired two teachers: Paul Mulder, fourth grade, and Dave Henson, third grade.
  • Carly Vance, kindergarten teacher, had her baby in July and will return October 1st.
  • Second grade teacher, Heather Krumpols, has resigned but is willing to stay until her replacement has been hired.
  • Mr. Nix opened the second grade position in-house first because he believes there is a lot of good talent in the paraprofessional pool. There are four in-house applicants applying for the job. His first number one responsibility besides keeping everybody safe in school is to find the best possible people to teach.
  • Vicki is looking for a physical education person.She has placed requests at the University of Utah and Westminster College as well asthe Bennion Center.
  • KristiAoyagi stated there is a culture change with the new faculty. It’s gone from Miss Summer, Miss Carly to last names, i.e., Mrs. Aoyagi, Mr. Mulder, etc. Everybody is adjusting, trying to figure out what’s going on. She has high expectations for herstudents.
  • Volunteer opportunities are always available at the school.
  • Dr. Withers, superintendent of SLCSD, contactedVicki to let her know that SLCSD can no longer service charter schools for speech therapy. Lisa, last year’s speech therapist, recommended a retired speech therapist Dru Clark. She will work once a week with our students.

CHARTER BOARD MINUTES: September 25, 2012 Page 2

SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT PLAN—Ernie Nix

(Please refer to “Strategic Improvement Plan/Draft” and “Guadalupe School Educator Assessment Program 2012-13.”)

Ernie Nix presented details of our strategic improvement plan which rests upon four pillars: Mission, Vision, Values, and Goals.

  • Mission statement answers the fundamental question as to why the school exists--we are here to teach.
  • Next pillar is vision: Ideal future—what must we become in order to accomplish our fundamental purpose. It’s our compelling future. It gives us direction.We are going to become a 90-90-90 school.
  • Mr. Nix distributed copies of an article by Douglas Reeves. Reeves has completed quite a few longitudinal studies on highly effective schools in high-risk types of climates. What 90-90-90 stands for: 90% ethnic minority; 90% free and reduced lunch; and 90% of the students have scored proficient on any state assessment that comes down the pike. An additional fourth category: at least 90% of these schools have English-as-a- second-language-only population.

Basic characteristics:

  • Have to do a comprehensive assessment as to where we are--current reality. Look at test scores and assets. We have highly literate kids because the vast majority of our kids speak two languages. They go from English to Spanish in the blink of an eye. And that is a major asset.
  • Met with every fourth grade parent who wants their child to succeed.
  • Set up for success with the additional support from Johanna Hofmeister and GregLewis.Mr. Lewis is an expert when it comes to assessment and peer coaching and reading.
  • Hard-working, dedicated, caring staff that is not satisfied with the status quo.
  • Three character traits that Mr. Nix really looks at in people: (1) love for kids; (2) due diligence and due process and reference checking; and (3) ability to work collaboratively. We want caring people for our children; we want hard working people for our children; we want people that collaborate.

Major assets:

In-Home program, Toddler Beginnings, Preschool 3 and 4, Charter School and a comprehensive adult program. We see our kids from birth. Our compensation package is very good; we are highly competitive; have a strong after-school program; we have a dedicated board of directors that’s willing to help us every inch of the way; and wonderful benefactors.

Performance:

Best organizations are those organizations that are not afraid to confront the brutal facts of reality. Mr. Nix compared Guadalupe’s language and math scores to other schools in the state and to schools with the same demographics. Much work is needed.

The next pillar is values. This is what we are going to do about it. The most effective schools leave nothing to chance. The first thing he asked of the staff was to identify that essential content, the word essential is important, it’s critical for our kids to master before we move them up to the next grade--they have to know.

A next month’s meeting Mr. Nix will present what is called in the education world “a guaranteed and viable curriculum.” Basically, it’s what we teach. The single most important precondition for school improvement is when it is constantly monitored and that’s the principal’s job. Teachers are now going through the state core curriculum and identifying the essential components that our students have got to master. They are communicating that to Mr. Nixwho is putting that in an Excel spreadsheet.

The next step in this process is to assess that guaranteed and viable curriculum.

CHARTER BOARD MINUTES: September 25, 2012 Page 3

SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT PLAN (continued)

Mr. Nix stated, “Clear curriculum choices you’re going to see that in Reese’s article. What that means is the highly effective schools focus on reading, writing and math with the rationale is if the kid can read well, write well, if the kid can do math, then they are going to be a success in science, success in social studies, be a success anywhere in life. The major focus is reading, writing and math. Right now we are focusing in on reading.”

Power Hour is focusing on reading. After the Christmas holiday a major push will be on writing.

Expenditures:

  • Spent $10K to purchase Singapore Math. Singapore Math teaches math in a little bit different way. Singapore introduces a concept concretely, that is, using manipulatives, counting blocks first. Then it goes into a visual pictorial representation before it gets to teaching abstractly.Mr. Nix experienced a lot of good success with Singapore at Excelsior Academy and Greg Lewis in Ogden.
  • Investigations is a supplement toa math curriculum, not a math curriculum. We had to make that expenditure. Of those 5 schools we are dead last. Of the 500 plus elementary schools in the state we are right there at the bottom, unacceptable.
  • Spent $5,500 on getting two electronic screeners that were desperately needed—scholastic reading inventory (SRI) and the scholastic mathematics inventory (SMI). These screeners will give Mr. Nix the ability to assess the whole school in a very short amount of time.

Rigorous climate versus a ruthless climate:

We are creating a rigorous climate not a ruthless climate. There is a difference between the two. A rigorous climate is we are holding people accountable for very exacting standards. Educator assessment program is very highly researched based. It comes from a lady called Charlotte Danielson that has identified what she calls four domains of teaching excellence: planning and preparation, the classroom environment, instruction and professional responsibilities.

After the four domains, Mr. Nix goes through the teacher directions and the due process even though we are an at-will school. To maintain our at-will status we have to go through a certain amount of due process. It’s not as cumbersome as it is in the districts but to protect us legally we have to go through these steps.

Teacher evaluation report:Mr. Nix goes through the collaborative intervention plan. If he had to go down that path with teachers, he gives them an opportunity to improve at the same time legally protecting our school.

Goals and outcomes:

  • Short term CRT goals are based upon our current where we are at in the fourth grade. Looking this year going from 56%to 80% in language arts proficient on the CRTs. Second grade going from 22% to 60% in one year. Long term goal that 60% is going to be up to 90% and that 80% is going to be up to 90%.
  • Reading:Loading the student information into the server and from there Clarissa Flink, reading specialist, is going to start assessing and then the blanks will give Mr. Nix baselines. For example, the % of kindergartners on grade level will increase from 70% to 90% by the end of the year.
  • Current year reading goals and math goals. SRI and SMI will help assess quarterly. Once this initial round of assessment with the SRI and SMI is finished, Mr. Nix will meet with every single teacher. We will go through kid for kid to highlight those kids who are behind and decide what support does he/she need to get to where he/she needs to be? That’s powerful when you start taking a look at individual kids as “there ain’t no kid goin’ to fall through our cracks. I guarantee it. Kids deserve that type of fidelity from our school.”

CHARTER BOARD MINUTES: Page 4

SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT PLAN (continued)

Philosophy

To understand the philosophical foundations of where Mr. Nix is coming from, Mr. Nix asked board members to read Mike Schmoker’s book, “Results Now,” andDouglas Reeves’ “90-90-90.” Those two documents are the blueprints of where we are going. Also, a man by the name of Robert Marzano has done numerous studies on highly effective schools. Mr. Nix is utilizing a lot of his work.

School-wide discipline:

Mr. Nix put together a school-wide discipline policy as there was no policy in place that articulated the suspenseful offenses versus the non-suspenseful offenses. There was no real process. One other component to this policy is a positive school wide incentive program. We are in the process of building upon a “paws” program. School counselors are working on specific skills. As kids demonstrate a specific skill, then a paw will be given that’s climbing up the stairs to a wolf den. Kids love that stuff.

Vicki stated that a meeting was held with Colors of Success yesterday for the After School Program. COS has a great program put together which should help the kids.

Mr. Nix’s basic philosophy on discipline is called the “four f’s:”Firm, Fair, Friendly, andForgiving.

LOTTERY

P0: #1-2K: #1-14

P1: #1-101st: #1-6

P2: #1-142nd: #1-3

P3: #1-193rd: #1-5

P4: #1-18

PK: #1-21

NEXT MONTH’S MEETING—Dave Lamb

  • Next meeting is October 23rd. At some point we may want to revisit our meeting schedule to meet more often once we get good assessment data.
  • Put School Land Trust on agenda for next meeting.
  • Put on agenda for next month’s meeting to discuss and approve the discipline plan.

ADJOURNMENT

Meeting adjourned at 9:00 a.m.

EXECUTIVE SESSION