Approval of Agenda

So that there is agreement between board members on the agenda, and the amount of time spent on the meeting, the board shall vote to approve an agenda for the meeting. To the best of its ability, it will follow that agenda, and allow for the chair to move the board through the agenda as specified.

Welcome and Call to Order

The meeting will be called to the order Chair Karen Womack at 6:36 pm

October Meeting Minutes Approval

Approval of the previous months Board Meeting Minutes

Public Comment

Joy McClendon. parent of Sarah, Kindergarten and James, 2nd grader.

I found it very harsh for a 5-year old child to be suspended from school for a mask violation. Apparently Sarah had 3 violations, I was only aware of 2 of them. When the 3rd violation happened Ms. Walker informed me that Sarah was being suspended because she had been written up by her teacher, Ms. Dames. I thought that this action was very cold and quite strong to put a child out of school for a whole week. How can you expect every single kindergarten child to wear t heir masks properly. We have withdrawn Sarah because of this action. My son, James who is a 2nd grader will still remain at SLAM for the time being.

Ebony Dames - Kindergarten Teacher

Safety of the school and the scholars is always on my mind and very important to me. It is very difficult for the kinder students to wear their masks all day. I see this and acknowledge it every day. My larger concern is and I piggyback off what I said at the last Board Meeting, the Coronavirus is indeed detrimental especially for people of color. The learning curve in trying to teach students virtually is real, however safety is bar none and that is always in the forefront of my mind. If we add anymore students to our environment the risks go even higher.

Shaurie Walker - Business Manager, Nurse, Behavior Specialist, Bookkeeper

As far as the statement made about masks violations, I am doing my job and the expectation that has been set for me by the Leader of our school. There is nothing malicious intended. The younger children have the most difficulty and have to be reminded more because they do not connect the dots to the importance to safety. Re-opening with additional scholars would cause more safety ramifications. We are doing the best that we can but we are still facing challenges with students having issues with not wearing masks as well as not social distancing themselves during the day. Flu season is approaching very soon and as a healthcare professional, during this time of year we see a very high spike in respiratory cases during this time. Fulton county is the other system that opened for in person class and they are closing schools every week due to COVID cases. I do not want to see SLAM in the headlines for the same reasons. Our babies are treasures and they deserve to be taken care of. The re-opening goals should be on facts, cases and safety all together.

Tatiana Scoot - Special Education

Because I work in Special Education Support, I see more than most. We should ensure that we keep capacity at 50% of our student population until the data shows us that it is safe to move forward to the next phase.

Superintendent's Update

During my visit I met with all faculty and staff members. It was great to see the behavior problems that were present last year were pretty much not in existence any more. We are getting all required sign offs done. Sometimes we are working well into the night on these reports. Its great to be back on the ground in Atlanta and I am looking forward to our Data Chats tomorrow.

School Leader Report

FY21 funding, we are expecting an additional $120,229.69 in funding than initially projected due to implementing an Early Intervention Program that allows higher funding weights for this specific category.

STUDENT SUPPORT

Early Intervention Program: iReady Progress Monitoring Assessments are being conducted the week of November 2. They will be conducted every 30 days. There will be one more before we break in December. Upon returning in January, we will take Diagnostic 2.

Special Education: Two scholars were tested. One scholar had eligibility meeting and mom wants to move forward with IEP. The other scholar we just received the report back so an eligibility meeting will be set up within the next week. We now have 10 students that qualify under IDEA, one pending eligibility. Services are being offered to all students. One scholar is having attendance issues so we are working with families to get them in class so that they can receive their services

Grades Quarter 1: report cards went out the week of October 26th . There were areas that both SLAM, students, and parents need to improve upon. I hosted two parent calls to discuss quarter 1 grades, the gradebook, and an opportunity to approve quarter 1 grades. H

ENROLLMENT: Kinder – 18 1 st – 14 2 nd – 14 3 rd – 19 4 th – 14 5 th – 13 Total: 92 (1 new student since last board meeting, 1 potential enrollee in grade 1).

RECRUITMENT/MARKETING Mr. Fulton confirmed that approximately 4,500 marketing post cards will be mailed week of November 2. There is a 5-7 day in home delivery time frame so we anticipate to see some traction by mid-month.

SCHOOL FINANCE Federal Programs: Title I, IDEA and Pre-School Budgets still pending approval CLIP was resubmitted to the state with recommendations surrounding Professional Development of and Title I budgets to Alina

Monthly Financial Reports

Highlights

• Total Revenue is $284,882.80 - Reflected on the P&L
• Total Deficit $29,658.70 - Reflected on the P&L
• Total Cash is $316,455.45 - Reflected on the BS ( Operating Cash) 
• Total Long Term Liability $535,584.64 - Reflected on the B&S

$221,618.16 - From Building Hope  

$174,929.36 - From SLAM Foundation (Reclassified from RC Grant to Loan at year end) 

                            $1,509.15 – Teacher Retirement Payable 

                            $15,552 – Pension

                            $121,200 – PPP Loan

@Pardes Sulaiman the Budget forecast that is attached does not tie back to the actuals numbers. They both show a deficit of $22,759

@Ana Martinez, I printed off the documents prior to flying out and I an unaware of any updates that may have been made. @Alina Chester, Actually I asked Brittany to make some edits to the information that was originally that could have changed the numbers slightly. I will have her to check it and see what the impact was to the numbers that were originally submitted.

Uniform Policy Update

504 Policy Update

Professional Qualifications Policy

Approve the updated 20-21 Professional Qualifications Policy

Federal Programs Handbook Approval

SLAM Financial Audit Update

The Audit was submitted on time and it was a clean audit.

@Pardes Sulaiman when reviewing I did run across a finding. @Ana Martinez, Yes there was a finding with QBE. Last year we were told not to book the QBE accrual but this year the auditors point it out as a finding. We have now added this to our year end process to ensure that we book the accrual for the upcoming year.

@Pardes Sulaiman Thank you Ana. It is important to make sure that we add the accrual to the process so that it doesn't look like we are being negiligent.

Academica Update

Most of you know that we are exploring a property that is about a mile away from the current location. The property is much larger than we were looking for but the Landlord is willing to talk to us and see how we can potentially make something work that would be a win win for everybody.

@Alex Tamargo the space definitely lends to a great K-8 and even maybe even a highschool. There is even extra land that will allow us to grow. It is a win win because there is housing all around the property that would provide access to additional students.

@Pardes Sulaiman - It definitely has potential for excellent Marketing of the school. It is a great location off the high way and it very close to Mechanicsville. Hopefully we can make the numbers work and be able to secure this location.

Open Board Seats

@Altrenesha Ervin we decided that we needed to add some additional members to our Board and Mr. Henry Burkes is very interested in what we are doing and so I sent his name over as a recommendation for a seat.

Mr. Burkes, I am a firefighter and would love the opportunity to assist SLAM with Marketing. I am very interested in our youth and being able to work with them. As a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity it it our mission to work with youth in our communities. I definitely will be able to assist the school with Marketing. Mr. Burkes has scheduled a tour of the current school facility.

Facilities Update

@Tiffany Russell I sent over the information requested by Shiloh to Deacon Chambler asking for atleast a 3-year lease extension. There hasn't been an acknowledgement yet of what I sent. I sent a message today to ask for a follow up on whether or not our ask will be considered and as of now, I haven't received a response.

Announcements

STATE & STATE CHARTER SCHOOL COMMISSION ACCOUNTABILITY FY21 Monitoring Visit Scheduled for November 17, 2020 at 1:00 p.m.

Adjourn Meeting

The Meeting was Adjourned

The meeting adjourned at approximately 7:58 pm