International Spanish Language Academy

ISLA Board Meeting Minutes

Oct 23^rd, 2007, 7:00 p.m.

ISLA School Building

12007 Excelsior Blvd, Minnetonka, MN

Mission: International Spanish Language Academy (ISLA), a K-6 Spanish immersion community, empowers the whole child by nurturing the development of personal growth, strong character, academic excellence, and global vision.

1. Call to Order

Meeting called to order at 7:08pm

ISLA BOARD MEMBERS PRESENT: 

Melody Brombacher (Board Chair), Rolf Brombacher, Mark Mathison, Sonia Miller-Van Oort, Steve Semler, Kerry Krawczyk-LeMieux, Molly Quinn (Board Secretary),

EX-OFICIO MEMBERS:

Karen Terhaar (Director) Present, Diane Schimelpfenig (Hopkins District) Present

VISITOR(S): Theresa Aleckson (PTO representative)

ISLA BOARD MEMBERS ABSENT: Angie Cabrera, Michael Valley, Jenny Brockman, Lily Johnson

2. Acceptance of Sep 25^th minutes

Sonia moved, to accept, Kerry seconded

Motion carried unanimously

Acceptance of Oct 23^rd agenda

Sonia moved, to accept, Kerry seconded

3. Public Input – 10 minutes

None – no public present

4. Director’s Report – 15 minutes

Recommendation for chain of command

Action Item - Need to establish policy for emergencies (gas leaks, etc.), including a defined chain of command, evacuation plan, communications plan, etc.  Karen will draft a policy for this.  It was suggested that the policy be laminated and published in each classroom so that staff can refer to it in case of emergency.  Evacuation plan is already posted.

Update on school operations

·         Reporting – Karen working to ensure that we are fulfilling all of our various reporting requirements

·         Lunch – a parent is interested in serving as a paid position, hoping to solidify this soon.  If we hire him, it would be subject to a background check.

·         Emily’s reporting for lunch program has become somewhat less cumbersome

·         General school operations, things are going very well, good feedback from conferences last week

Report on Director’s time allocation

·         Planning Grant closeout

-Closeout of planning grant (due end of month)

-Updates to continuation request for next grant

·         Communicating with families interested in the school

·         Curriculum development and Planning

·         Reporting

·         Training on Power School software and preparation for report cards

·         Fairly high degree of variation from day to day in terms of how Karen spends her time

·         Meetings about facility

·         Evaluating personnel issues (determining needs for school care, etc.)

·         Establishing / refining daily processes for general school and before/after care operations

·         Considering adding additional school care staffing for a few hours in the morning

·         Planning for beginning to incorporate IB program

-To formally get the process moving, we will need to submit an application “A”, evaluating whether to begin this process now or whether it makes more sense to wait.

-We budgeted for IB consultant, but Karen is re-evaluating whether we can afford, and whether it makes sense to take this on in the first year.

-We may want to begin implementing the program, but not begin the formal process of becoming “certified” until later.

-If we don’t submit the application now, we may be postponed by one full year (need to confirm with IB).

-The full process of becoming ‘certified/accredited’ typically takes a few years.

-Board discussed, and consensus was that IB is a high priority for the school, and that we should pursue beginning the application process this year.  We are going to need to bring someone on as a consultant for the first few years, so from a budget perspective, it would make more sense to do it now since we have the additional grant revenue that can be used for this purpose for the next two years.

-We will contract out this work for this initial phase, then re-visit.

- Action Item - Rolf will contact Cindy tomorrow about whether we can pay with grant funds for any work that may begin before the implementation grant is awarded.

·         Karen is spending about 1.5 hrs per day on “non-licensed” activities.

5. Update from Jamie Wellik – 10 minutes

·         See facility committee update below

6. PTO Report – 10 minutes

·         Nov 1st fundraiser

-        Admission fee of $10 per family as suggested donation

-        Crafts and various activities

·         Logos – needs to be revisited in context of dress code prohibiting sweatshirts, etc. unless it has school logo

·         Fundraising focus is trying to avoid selling items, but rather, requesting direct donations

·         Working on a strategic vision survey to allow parents to voice their ideas about vision for ISLA.  Will incorporate survey into website.

·         It was mentioned that we needed help for facility committee, and that raised some concern and discussion, the overall message was that if we move again, it would be into our permanent location.

7. Financial Report - 15 minutes
1. Update on close-out of Planning grant & receipt of Implementation 1 grant

                                                              i.      Karen and Josh working on final close-out of planning grant

                                                            ii.      All planning grant funds have been expended, working with MDE on making final adjustments to track all expenses to appropriate line items and UFAR codes.

                                                          iii.      One Final expenditure and performance reports are submitted and approved, we will receive the final $36,000 of “hold-back” funds of the grant.

                                                          iv.      Karen also working on making final updates to ‘continuation request’ for “implementation” grant.  In previous years, there were two separate implementation grants, one for the first year and one for the second year, each for $180,000.  However, MDE has re-structured this so that that they are now issuing only a single implementation grant for a two year period in the amount of $360,000.  We expect to receive formal grant award notice in approximately two weeks.  First payment for the grant will be received shortly after that.

2. Review of new financial statements

                                                              i.      Revised format breaks-out revenue/expenses by general fund, food service, school care, and grant.  Josh working on additional updates to show annual budget amounts and YTD as % of Budget amounts for each line in the report.

                                                            ii.      Received $45,000 payment in October of state start up grant.  Remaining $5000 will be paid after we report on expenditures of the initial $45,000

                                                          iii.      Lease was excluded from the supplied reports for this month, but will be re-incorporated into the reports for next month

8. Review and approval of Employee Handbook - 10 minutes

1. Received suggestions/edits from Mark, Sonya and Karen on a revised draft
2. Mark moved that the board delegate to personnel committee and director the final authority to prepare and implement the employee handbook / personnel policy.
3. Kerry seconded
4. Discussion:  Mark noted this is a “living document”  We are going to want to make additional revisions as time goes by

Motion approved by unanimous vote.

9. Report on Board Governance Training – 10 minutes

1. Report provided by Melody on MACS Board Governance training she attended.
2. Suggested establishing board and board member evaluations.  This could be done by resolution.  It might make sense to do in time for a report to be provided at the annual meeting.  Action Item - Suggested that the task of creating a resolution for this be assigned to the governance committee.
3. Fiduciary Duties Handbook provided to each board member
4. Training was informative and helpful.  We get a reduced rate for training since we are MACS members.
5. Action Item - Suggested that we should have some procedure in place to ensure that all board members are sufficiently trained.
6. Action Item - We need to create some form of board member “on-boarding” including a packet of standard board materials, etc.
7. We should all know our mission, or vision, our finances, etc.
8. Training suggested that a governance board should be focuses on What, why, how much, Management, determines who, when, where, how.
9. Board votes on key items / policies, strategies, monitors accomplishments.  Administration actually implements tasks and makes recommendations.

10. Committee Reports – 40 minutes

1. Governance

                                                              i.      Report provided by Mark

                                                            ii.      Had first standing meeting this evening

                                                          iii.      Reviewing bylaws in terms of compliance and items that the committee might recommend wanting to amend

                                                          iv.      Anticipating upcoming elections, etc

                                                            v.      Melody reported on governance seminar

                                                          vi.      Discussed question of whether committee meetings of the board are subject to open meeting law, and what the consequences would be if it was determined our interpretation is in violation of the open meeting law.  Committee recommends the following plan:

1.      Board take position that open meeting law does not apply to meetings of committees of the board.

2.      Action Item - Governance committee prepare an amended version of the bylaws to clearly reflect our position, which would be voted on for approval at the next board meeting.

3.      Action Item - Governance committee draft and present to the board for approval a policy which states that our position is that although open meeting laws doesn’t apply to committee meetings, our general position will be that standing committee meeting will be open and that meeting schedules will be published, but that committees can close individual meetings at it’s discretion.

Sonia moved that  based on analysis of governance committee regarding charter school and open meeting laws, Sonia moves that board adopt policy that committee meetings need not conduct themselves in accordance with open meetings laws and that the governance committee draft a bylaw amendment to reflect that position.

Molly seconded.

Motion carried unanimously

Mark moved that board direct the governance committee to prepare a draft of an open committee meeting policy and that the essence of the policy would be that:

a)      Committee meetings are not subject to open meeting law

b)      Committee meetings will generally be open

c)      Regular schedule for standing committee meetings will be published

d)      Committees may close committee meetings at their discretion

And that a draft of this policy will be presented to the board for consideration

Sonia seconded

Motion carried unanimously

2. Strategic Planning

                                                              i.      Report provided by Sonia

                                                            ii.      Have not yet had a committee meeting

                                                          iii.      Requesting clarification from the board on what the objectives should be of the strategic planning committee

                                                          iv.      Distributed ISLA Strategic Planning Committee document summarized suggested purpose, scope, process and proposed membership for strategic planning committee.

Action Item:  All committees whose purposes are not specifically defined in the bylaws should create a document similar to that provided for the strategic planning committed outlining committed purpose, scope, objective, members, etc.

3. Facility

                                                              i.      Evaluating ISLA facility needs for the long-term and for next year needs to be a priority

                                                            ii.      Karen met with Jamie, our real estate broker last week

                                                          iii.      Jamie will do much of the “leg work” in terms of finding potential properties for evaluation.

                                                          iv.      Action Item - We need to establish a deadline for when we would request the church to extend the current lease

                                                            v.      We need to ensure that we have other options available because we cannot assume that the current lease will definitely be renewed or that the facility will meet our needs long term in terms of enrollment numbers and other constraints of the current facility

                                                          vi.      Jamie joined the meeting to provide an overview of where we are with the process

1.      We are less of a “risk” now since we are an established school.

2.      The process “should” be easier this time around because we are now established and in an existing building.

3.      Goal is to identify soon (by Thanksgiving?), potential sites that may work for us.  (3-4 options)

4.      We need to pick a date and issue a request to a list of various landlords.  We should  identify our requirements, provide an overview of the terms we need in the lease, and identify an estimate of what we can afford.

5.      Are there opportunities to partner with other schools looking for space that would be viable for us?

6.      Zoning issues need to be taken into consideration.  Hopkins has a fairly challenging zoning policy, so this is an item we need to pay close attention to.

7.      Action Item - May want to consider contacting city council members / candidates to express our needs and request assistance with zoning issues. 

                                                        vii.      Action Item - We need to define scope of facility committee involvement, and then quickly recruit additional committee members. 

Action Item - We need to discuss committee involvement for teachers.

Committees that would most benefit from teacher perspective are:

-Facility

-Communications

-Strategic Planning

-Also, attendance at PTO meetings

4. Finance

No additional items to report on other than what was provided in Finance Report above.

5. Communications

Steve provided the report

Committee met on Oct 17

In Scope

1. Responsible for recruiting new students. (primary responsibility)

2. Responsible for identifying and sponsoring modes of communication about the school. (primary responsibility)

3. Responsible for leading the creation and implementation of the marketing portion of the ISLA strategic plan. (primary responsibility)

4. Responsible for  gathering feedback from parents and staff about how the school is running and providing that to the Board and Executive Director. (secondary responsibility)

Out of Scope:

1. NOT responsible for communicating about issues or decisions that the ISLA PTO initiates (things that the ISLA Board delegates to the PTO might be communicated by this group, or by the PTO, or both, depending on the situation).

2. NOT responsible for fundraising, grant writing, or finding or obtaining sponsors or sources of funding other than students.

3. NOT responsible for communication between the school and parents about student educational activities, events, or progress--the regular educational business of the Executive Director and teachers.

4. NOT responsible for communication about operations or employment conditions and decisions between the Executive Director and the employees of ISLA.

Committee created list of marketing ideas falling into a variety of categories.

Committee has drafted a “press release” to submit to newspapers.

Will be looking for help from not only committee members, but also additional parents and volunteers.

Action Item:  Rolf will create library of materials to make accessible to Board members in the ISLA website.

6. Personnel

                                                              i.      No Report

11. Old Business – 10 minutes

1. Additional funding sources – grants, etc.

                                                              i.      Need to have someone searching for grants that we may be eligible for

12. Other Business – 10 minutes
1. Dress code: 

Steve moved that the dress code be changed to allow sweaters and sweatshirts in the school dress code colors or the colors chosen by the 3^rd and 4^th grade class, with the same logo standard that apply to polo shirts also applying to sweaters and sweatshirts, or with ISLA logos as will be provided later.

Rolf seconded

Motion carried unanimously

Action Item - Sonia will update the dress code per this motion.

2. According to bylaws, we need a chair elect.  Action Item - Governance committed will look into this further.

13. Set next two meeting times – November 27^th, 2007 at 7:00 p.m.

           December 18^th, 2007 at 7:00 p.m.

Motion to Adjourn

            Mark moved, Steve seconded

            Motion carried unanimously

Adjourned at 10:25 p.m.