CHARTER SCHOOL REVIEW COMMITTEE

200 E. Wells Street City of Milwaukee Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53202 Meeting Minutes CHARTER SCHOOL REVIEW COMMITTEE KEVIN INGRAM, CHAIR Glenn Steinbrecher, Melinda Scott Krei, Joyce Mallory, Gayle Peay, and Desiree Pointer-Mace CSRC Clerk: Jarett Fields (414) 288-1540 Staff Assistant: Linda Elmer, 286-2231 Fax: 286-3456, lelmer@milwaukee.gov Wednesday, October 28, 2015 5:30 PM City Hall, Room 301-B 1. Roll call and introduction of the newest member, Joyce Mallory. Meeting convened: 5:40 P.M. All members present, except Melinda Scott Krei, who was excused. 2. Review and approval of the minutes of the October 14th meeting. Ms. Pointer-Mace moved, seconded by Mr. Steinbrecher, for approval of the minutes. There were no objections. 3. 150765 Communication relating to the 2015/16 activities of the Darrell Lynn Hines College Preparatory Academy of Excellence. Sponsors: THE CHAIR Susan Gramling, Children's Research Center, said this school is on the northwest side and covers k4-8th grade and is in its 13th year of operation with 263 students. 85% are African American with 11.4% of the students having special needs and 92.4% qualifying for free or reduced lunch. The school met all provisions of its contract. The school also addressed all of the recommendations for improvement and it had intensive staff training with Cambium Learning and it is incredible how the teachers have improved their skills. Monthly the staff meets on a Saturday for a planning day. The school got a "B" and was placed in the "high performing/exemplary" category, which is the highest category that the CSRC has set. The kids that were there all year from first to second grade all passed the reading readiness testing in second grade. The recommendations are to continue to implement the recommendations, with particular attention on increasing the writing scores, monitoring the growth of all students and providing the teachers with more support and continuing education and increasing parent involvement and student return rates. Ms. Gramling's said that the school scores are improving each year and recommends that the regular, annual monitoring and reporting continue Precious Washington - Executive Director Lois Fletcher - Principal Ms. Pointer-Mace asked about the school's plans and goals for the differentiation strategies to meet kids at the point where they are. Ms. Fletcher said the overall long-term goal is to continually raise the goals and change the strategies based upon how the students are doing. A plan is created, data collected on how the students are doing and a new plan created as a result of the data obtained. City of Milwaukee Page 1 CHARTER SCHOOL REVIEW Meeting Minutes October 28, 2015 COMMITTEE The Saturday meetings' motivation for the teachers is the increased progress of their students. The school seeks to look for things it can celebrate, such as a monthly pep rally and there is also a theme every year, with a song, and focus on those things throughout the year. They do want to have more specific conversations with parents. Ms. Washington said that if you can motivate students, then they share that enthusiasm with their parents and the goal this year is to involve parents and extended family more. They are going to start data chats with their parents this year. Mr. Steinbrecher questioned as to why 25% of students have been suspended. Ms. Fletcher said students are suspended if they've been through a long process, which has also involved their parents, unless a danger to themselves or others is involved or bullying is involved. Their rate of suspensions is decreasing. They do go over expectations with students and parents at the beginning of each school year and as the year goes on, there are fewer problems with behavior. Most of the suspensions are the older students. There is also informal mentoring occurring and the teacher knows the suspended student needs to be re-taught and to make up the work they missed. The minimum number of days for a suspension is one and the average is 1-2 days. Returning students and parents can meet with Ms. Fletcher and the importance of being in school is discussed. They do local measures over the course of a year, testing students in September, January and in the spring and set goals for students based on the test results. There is a lot of individual discussion of how to meet the needs of individual students, on a monthly basis, both on Saturday and in the classroom. Students have to take a lot of tests and the school also focuses on teaching students how to handle situations where they don't know what to do. They also don't want to have students feel that any test defines them so they work on empowering students and celebrating what they do. Ms. Pointer-Mace moved, seconded by Ms. Mallory, for approval of the report. There were no objections. 4. 150689 Communication relating to the 2015/16 activities of the Rocketship Southside Community Prep. Sponsors: THE CHAIR Susan Gramling, Children's Research Center, said the school is located at 30th and Cleveland and is in its second year of operation. Currently the school has K4-8th grades with 393 students with 55.5% eligible for free or reduced lunch, but 100% of the students received free lunch. On the first page of the executive summary, under "i", the school met all of the contract requirements (Ms. Gramling will strike "or substantially met") and had a grade of "C" ("promising/good" category). The relative weaknesses are the second grade PALS results, which were low, as were the percentage of kids meeting the writing local measures. The recommendation is to continue the focus on tutoring, writing, response to intervention for the lowest achieving students and to implement a social emotional curriculum. The overall recommendation is to continue to receive regular, annual academic monitoring. Brittany Kinzer - Director of Schools Randy Link, Jr. - Principal Ms. Kinzer said that a number of the teachers are new teachers and that can present an opportunity to the school. The school has a high Hispanic population and Ms. Peay asked how the school supports its English as Second Language (ESL) students. The school provides support for teachers in its instructional strategy to assist students in learning English quicker, as well as increasing literacy skills. The school's mission of high quality instruction does fit with the national Rocketship philosophy. Twenty students were suspended, although on page 12 it implies that the number of suspensions is not available as it's a private matter. The school did say it would track its students and how they are doing and if they return to Milwaukee City of Milwaukee Page 2 CHARTER SCHOOL REVIEW Meeting Minutes October 28, 2015 COMMITTEE - currently it's very easy, but continuing to keep track of them will get harder as the students get older and the class fragments more geographically and in terms of schools attended or employment attained. They hope to do this and will attempt to do so. Mr. Ingram is curious if the national organization will provide resources in tracking these students. Ms. Pointer-Mace thinks is a good goal and thinks there are a lot of people trying to do this and facing the same challenge. The school is focusing on having the children read more this year by tracking book reports, the number of books read per grade level and have the kids explain what is happening in the story and cite more, rather than go off of personal experience only. Ms. Pointer-Mace moved, seconded by Ms. Mallory, to accept the report. There were no objections. 5. 150630 Communication relating to the 2015/16 activities of Milwaukee Math and Science Academy. Sponsors: THE CHAIR The draft of the letter is contained in file 150630 and was drafted by Ms. Gramling. Ms. Gramling summarized the letter for members about what the school needs to accomplish in order to have its probationary status lifted. The CSRC was concerned with the turnover rate of administration and if they can get the basic student data, they can judge how the school is doing and what the staff retention rate is. The draft letter will also include how they are addressing their high suspension rate and professional development involving appropriate behavioral consequences. Ms. Pointer-Mace moved to approve as amended, seconded by Ms. Mallory. There were no objections. 6. 150543 Communication relating to the 2015/16 activities of North Point Lighthouse. Sponsors: THE CHAIR The draft letter is contained in file 150543 and Ms. Gramling summarized the letter and read a specific paragraph to ensure she has the sense of the committee. Ms. Pointer-Mace vacillates between it is more traumatizing for the kids to remain at that school or to close the school mid-year. Ms. Pointer-Mace asked that the data be collected on substitute teachers because she thinks that will point to even higher staff turnover than is being reported. A copy of the letter that is sent to parents notifying them that the school may be closed in January was requested by CSRC that it be given a copy of that letter, with the letter being sent out by November 15th. The CSRC voted to keep the probation/closure issues as one letter, rather than two. Ms. Pointer-Mace moved for sending of the letter as revised, seconded by Ms. Peay. There were no objections. 7. 150544 Communication relating to administrative matters of the Charter School Review Committee. Sponsors: THE CHAIR Mr. Jarett Fields said that in previous years the Common Council has only received 2-3 applications. Mr. Fields reviewed past applications and other applications across the country and said, that as a volunteer committee, he doesn't want to overburden members. This is an attempt to make it easier for board members with the anticipation that there will be more applications coming in the future. The plan is to have the applicant, in 25 pages or less, respond to items 1-12 (a summary for board members that can easily be reviewed). This document is contained in file 150544. City of Milwaukee Page 3 CHARTER SCHOOL REVIEW Meeting Minutes October 28, 2015 COMMITTEE These pages would read more like a narrative rather than a formal document which might not be as daunting to smaller, local applicants. One copy would go to the City Clerk, which is forwarded to Mr. Fields, who reviews it for compliance and then it goes out to members, electronically. The applications are due the first Friday in February. He will also provide a guide that he prepares for members' review. Applications will be reviewed, but no meetings will be scheduled with any applicant until the application has been approved. If approved, there will also be a public hearing and they will complete a full application. Applicants, once approved, will have 12 months to open a school, unless they are applying for umbrellas. He will have review guidelines for the November 12th for members' review. The public wouldn't have input on schools that haven't made it to stage II, although the CSRC can do what it wants - the chair would like to hear input from the community for all applicants, not just those who go on to stage II. Those schools would be rated at a later meeting, rather than at the meeting where the public is heard. Ms. Mallory was concerned both that financial information be verified and that the summary should include how special-need students will be addressed. This will be discussed at the next meeting and public input will also be obtained. Ms. Pointer-Mace moved, seconded by Mr. Steinbrecher, to table this matter until the November 12th meeting. Meeting adjourned: 7:46 P.M. Linda M. Elmer Staff Assistant This meeting can be viewed in its entirety through the City's Legislative Research Center at http://milwaukee.legistar.com/calendar. City of Milwaukee Page 4