Welcome and Call to Order

The meeting will be called to the order by Board Chair Karen Womack at 6:42

Approval of the Agenda

The Agenda was approved with the following change; table the approval of the December meeting minutes until the February meeting

Officially invite new candidate to officially join the SLAM Board of Directors

Mural Progress

Ms. Atiya did the sketching before we left for winter break. Today she did the outline and next week the children will help her paint and we will promote this on social media and the website. She is also offering us marketing opportunities with her 15,000 followers. She is also working on our mascot (the Nobles). I chose to change from the Panters to the Nobles because its completely unique and different from anything anybody else has. She is also building a story behind the character based on what I have communicated to her.

Announcements

The Meeting was Adjourned

The meeting adjourned at approximately 3:01 am

Superintendent's Update

The Superintendent provide's updates on the status of the School District

1. Congratulations to Principal Addison, faculty and staff for a great opening of SLAM's new home.
2. Crunch Time - we heard the families loud and clear when they said they did not want their students to fall behind academically due to the transition. With that said we have built in additional period of intervention school wide. We built the school master schedule now so that each student should be on iReady on the program part for a specific amount of time per week. This will help to close the achievement gap and that is what the intervention time periods will be about. Principal Addison has built the master schedule to achieve this. iReady will be used to progress monitor and measure growth.
3. We have support from the SLAM Foundation and we will be sending reading and math coaches to assist SLAM Atlanta. They have already had 2 zoom meetings with me and Ms. Addison to discuss the data that we see during he mid term diagnostics. On Tuesday of next week we will have an in person PD to go over the procedures and how to implement this part of he iReady program to bridge the achievement gap. This team will assist the faculty with assistance on the delivery of instruction and will also assist Ms. Addison with reporting and tracking of data during these interventions.

Principal Report

Huge THANK YOU and appreciation shout out to our teachers and support staff. We had a good opening. Shout out to our amazing parents who showed up with overwhelming support for supporting student meals.

The student data is being shown by Ms. Addison via her screen. iRead data results

iReady diagnostics data 1st test with 98% of the students testing.

Reading

Tier III 39% down to 36%

Tier II 52% down 42%

Tier I 9% up to 22%

Math

Tier III 45% up to 50%

Tier II 50% down to 44%

Tier I 5% up to 6%

We are expecting to see significant growth from January - April because our students want to learn and grow. Our parent conferences are going well. The relationships between parents and teachers are being developed well due to the constant interaction and communication.

I am very proud of the faculty and staff as well as our parents for their resilience. We have a number of events coming up that will be fundraisers:

Car Show in the parking lot

Beats and Books Conference

Art Show in April sponsored by Mr. Fulton. Artists will showcase their work and donate a portion of their proceeds to the school.

STEM Fair and Open House will be this coming Thursday.

@Altrenesha Ervin where can people send money, donations?

@Addison anyone can donate to SLAM on the website under the contact us tab

Academica Update

As Superintendent Tamargo stated we are fully in the building. I hope the students and employees are enjoying their new space and that they will take a lot of pride in their new home.

On December 16, 2021 we received the Certificate of Occupancy. One day after the December Board meeting.

Food Permit - On December 28, 2021 I met with the Fulton County Department of Health Officer. We didn't pass because of an issue with the color of the paint on the wall in the serving area, a lack of hot water and a lack of plexiglass on the open sides of the hot and cold serving stations. She came back on January 6, 2022 to reinspect the building in order to give us another chance to fix the things that needed to be in place. She gave us a longer time to paint the wall. We received our permit on January 6 because the hot water, plexiglass was fixed. The repainting on the wall was done over the weekend. I sent her a picture as proof that the wall had been repainted to the correct shade and she cleared us fully and completely.

I want to piggyback off the statement Ms. Addison made regarding the outpouring of the food donations from the families because until we received our permit we were not allowed to serve meals. Students were asked to bring their own breakfast and lunch and those who did not were provided breakfast and lunch from the donated food. I proud that there is the attitude at SLAM of no child left behind and no child left without. We don't rest until every child has what they need.

On December 6 it was confirmed by Fulton County Courts that our replatt four our new address was fully approved and recorded officially on the books. Our new address is 3183 Greenbriar Parkway SW, Atlanta, GA 30331.

The next largest project that we have is the completion of the playground. We met with the playground company and they will provide the plans that Mr. Mapp will submit to permitting. During this process we ran into an issue. We found that there is an electrical easement that runs down through the middle of the parking lot. In order to have our permits approved, the playground company had to flip the design. Originally the playground portion was supposed to be on the building side and the basketball courts were supposed to be on the far end of the parking lot. Now the basketball goals will be on the end near the building and the playground will be on the opposite end of the design. We had to make these changes in order to accommodate for the easement and to receive approval for permitting.

@Mammie Grimes - will the playground area be fenced in.

@Angelia Howell - Yes it will be fenced in and there will also be concrete barricades around it also.

SLAM Foundation Update

Updates from the SLAM Foundation - Millie Sanchez

The Accreditation visit is scheduled for February 7 and 8. We have been working with Ms. Addison to identify parents, teachers and students who have been identified in grades 3 and 5 cohort. Training and mini prep session is scheduled for the afternoon of February just to five everyone an idea of what to expect during the interviews in order to make everyone feel more comfortable about the process. We are excited to get through and done with our visit. 10 days after the session is over we will receive a report. Once received I will present the report at the following Board Meeting.

Marketing/Recruitment/Enrollment

@Karen Womack we want to focus the growing of our families since we have now transitioned into our permanent facility. Ms. Addison please provide us with what the marketing plan and strategy is.

@Kessa Addison - Frankie from Academica is running our Google and Instagram. Ad's as planned as soon as we received our CO. Ms. Jackson, our 6th grade teacher met with me to discuss how we will roll out the door hangers around the neighboring communities. We are also using some of our parters to help advertise. The Mall is going to advertise in their newsletter and also will allow us to put up our banner in the food court. Between our Black History Program and the advertising that will be done through and in the Mall that should generate a lot of interest.

Mural update - Atia our mural artist will be marketing for us through her 15,000 followers. We are encouraging parents, partners to tell people about the school and we are also planning to go out into the community with flyers and door hangers so we are hitting from all angles. We had a new student to enroll on today.

I know there was a question at the last Board Meeting about the calling of the former families. I have made all the calls and none of those families will be returning. @Karen Womack Can you tell us what your target number is for enrollment

@Keesa Addison 156 is what the budget is based on but we want to fill the school so my target number is 213 kids.

@Corvis Coleman is there a real plan in place to get to this number? We can say that we want to get to a certain number but what is the actual plan to get us there?

@Keesa Addison we are using our partners. We were not able to fully implement what we had in place.

@Altrenesha Ervin I know we are running ads but are we on TikTok? TikTok is a huge platform that a lot of people use to find businesses, information, etc. Can we give the children a challenge to come up with video content or can we create a video marketing completion between al the classes and we can run those videos on reels to help engage traction?

@Keesa Addison Ms Jackson is working on that already.

@Karen Womack do we run social media ads for other schools in the network.

@Keesa Addison I'm not sure. I only asked Frankie to run them based on how successful I heard that it was form. Harriet Tubman. I heard from Mrs. Howell as well as the Commission that their ads were effective. I admit that it hasn't worked that well for us but I wanted to hit the marketing from all angles.

@Karen Womack How effective are the ad campaigns for the other schools. We need to be familar with our demographics and the best way to reach them. Social media campaigns that offer challenges to help with engagment.

Millie Sanchez - We implemented the Google Ads at many of our SLAM campuses. A lot of it depends on the community. They are most effective in communities that are online and looking for schools. It is not as effective at SLAM Miami because that community don't typically apply online. I would recommend that we get some video footage now that we are in our new facility. We have a generic video that I can send that can be uploaded on the website that basically tells what SLAM is. I can also coordinate with Ms. Addison to come and shoot some new facility footage including testimonials from parents and students. We are starting to do this with SLAM Tampa. This would be something that you guys can use. The grass roots way is the best route but with the pandemic that we are in its harder to reach people. We can set up the video footage capture and fund it for you so that you will have a nice video to be used for marketing. We can plan this sometime in February or March.

@Angelia Howell - Millie I think this is a great idea and the perfect timing to do this. We've been talking about doing a video since we opened SLAM Atlanta and now that we are in our permanent home the timing is perfect. I snoop around periodically at some of the other Atlanta Charter Schools websites and many of them have these type of marketing videos and those that do not have quite a few video testimonials on their sites from parents and students.

@Mamie Grimes - I agree that a video would be nice but we need to consider how we will get this information out into the community. Everyone is not going to go to SLAM's website. Are we using the Open House to invite the community in to come and look at the school? I have been a part of this community for a long time and they need an invitation to come and visit the school.m They will not come to something that they don't know about and everybody is already asking whats going on with the building out a Greenbriar. It would be nice to have some brochures that we can pass out at church, in the neighborhoods and local businesses, etc.

Millie Sanchez - I would suggest setting up opportunities to speak at churches and other local community events to speak and showcase the video and the school.

@Keesa Addison - we are scheduled to go to the YMCA. Hapeville Charter middle is closing and the PTO President contacted me to offer an opportunity to come and speak to their families.

@Angelia Howell - we should reach back out to the Boys and Girls Club that we contacted when we were looking for a place to host our Summer Camp. Her upper management did not approve for us to use the building but the Executive Director wanted to connect with us on some other things. Another avenue that we should tap into is reaching out to the local NPU group that services this area. Before we were allowed to open up in the Church we had to obtain approval from the local NPU. Because this building was already zoned for educational use, we didn't have to go through that process but the NPU is a community based organization where parents, community members and community organizations attend. If you reach out to the president in a timely manner they will give you some space on the agenda to address the members.

@Karen Womack we also need to connect with the sporting leagues(coaches, gyms, teams) because our school has a sports foundation.

Meeting Adjourn

October Financial Reports

Highlights

• Cash Flow is showing a negative cash balance at February month end. Pardes please feel free to call Ana and I to discuss. 
• Total Revenue is $696,947.15 - Reflected on the P&L
• Total Deficit $181,951.80 - Reflected on the P&L
• Total Cash is $54,401.49 - Reflected on the BS (Operating Cash) 
• Total Long Term Liability $213,326.68 - Reflected on the B&S

$38,102.47 - From Building Hope  

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

         $294.85 – Teacher Retirement Payable

Charter Renewal Process

This item was tabled until further discovery and information was available for the Board. Will be discussed at the next Board Meeting.

Public Comment

Mr. Karl Ragland - Have you ever thought about using the same concept that politicians use to promote their campaigns? Students can pass out flyers about SLAM. Car Caravans with students in the parking lot waving with the school parking lots as the ending point. We could have refreshments. A parade is a really nice idea and it promotes community engagement.

Engage the local Preschools. This is what got me and my family to SLAM. If we can engage the pre-school families that need a new school for kindergarten. Plus the pre-school might offer transportation. Once I came and started to see what the school was about I then started spreading the word to other families. We started to quiz other students around us and found that our daughter was more advanced academically. Parents are excited and they have some great ideas about how to continue to grow the school.

@Altrenesha Ervin encouraged the parents and staff to encourage their family members to come and see their work next Thursday. This is a great way to promote engagement.

Angelia Howell - I want to thank Mr.Ragland for supporting the movement of furniture when we were trying to get everything set up. Mr. Ragland came and brought his team to help to set up the furniture. They met me early on a Saturday morning after some of them had worked all night. The job was bigger than the amount of time they had to give but they got us started and that helped a lot. Mr.Ragland is not your average parent, he is extremely involved and very supportive of SLAM Atlanta. Not just here at Greenbriar but when we were over at the church as well. I am very thankful and grateful for his dedication and support and wanted to acknowledge him tonight in front of the Board.