CHARTER SCHOOL REVIEW COMMITTEE

200 E. Wells Street City of Milwaukee Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53202 Meeting Minutes CHARTER SCHOOL REVIEW COMMITTEE KEVIN INGRAM, CHAIR Joyce Mallory, Vice-Chair Ruben Burgos, Naryan David Leazer, Desiree Pointer-Mace, Raynetta Hill and Aycha Sawa Staff Assistant: Linda Elmer, (414) 286-2231 Fax: 286-3456, lelmer@milwaukee.gov Gayle Peay, 288-1540 Thursday, April 16, 2020 5:00 PM City Hall, Room 301-A This meeting is being conducted via teleconference. If you wish to participate or hear the meeting, please call 414-286-6120 (or x6120 from City extensions) and use the passcode 6120. Meeting convened: 5:04 P.M. 1. Roll Call. Members present: Ruben Burgos , Raynetta Hill, Kevin Burgos, Glenn Steinbrecher, Desiree Pointer-Mace, Naryan David Leazer and Joyce Mallory Also present: Janice Ereth and Susan Gramling - Children's Research Center and Gayle Peay, staff to CSRC. 2. Review and approval of the minutes of the February 6th meeting. Ms. Pointer-Mace noted that the spelling of "Ereth" under file 190981 needed to be corrected. Ms. Pointer-Mace moved, seconded by Mr. Burgos, for approval of the minutes, as amended. There were no objections. 3. 190980 Communication relating to the 2019-21 activities of Milwaukee Math and Science Academy. Sponsors: THE CHAIR Alper Akyurek - Prinicipal of MMSA Crystal Gilmeier - Assistant Prinicipal of Academics, MMSA Christopher Astria - MAESTRO Education Group Mr. Akyurek said that the school approached MAESTRO. Mr. Astria said MAESTRO provides services for charter schools and he was a charter school principal for many years and started MAESTRO to give back to the community and to serve as an education partner. MAESTRO staff has collectively over 45 years of charter school experience, particularly in urban schools. Mr. Astria is working on a plan to ensure that the school has a viable curriculum to ensure that the students are performing well City of Milwaukee Page 1 CHARTER SCHOOL REVIEW Meeting Minutes April 16, 2020 COMMITTEE and do well on state tests. MAESTRO will also provide support on human resource issues. Ms. Pointer-Mace feels strongly that the faculty needs to be retained so students feel supported. Ms. Pointer-Mace wants to get details on the math selection process and what MAESTRO wants to see. Ms. Gilmeier said MAESTRO hasn't been on board long and they were prepping for the Forward exam and they want to focus on what MAESTRO has had success with in terms of a math curriculum. She will rely on the experience of Mr. Astria to get to the conceptual understanding of math as well as attaining basic skills. Mr. Astria was waiting for the contract to be finalized and then he was going to go to the classroom and observe the teachers to make sure the instruction is at the level where the students are. He said that many of the teachers are dedicated and have been there 5-6 years and he wants to see if the students are being challenged. Ms. Pointer-Mace said the building has closed, but hopefully the learning hasn't stopped. Ms. Mallory asked about professional staff development in relation to delivering curriculum, particularly in k4 to up to grade 3, to develop and maintain enthusiasm and the belief that they can do math. Ms. Mallory thinks that how African American children do well in math needs to be looked at. Mr. Steinbrecher said the fee will be 10% of the per-capita revenue received by the school and he asked if that included grant or fundraising revenue. The fee will be solely based on the state funding, not other revenue sources.This is exactly the same contract the school had signed with Concept Schools for its management. MAESTRO was started fairly recently so it doesn't have a track record yet to report on its success in turning around schools, although its staff were principals of very successful charter schools in Chicago and they fully understand what the schools face daily. Ms. Gilmeier has found the support of Mr. Astria very helpful, as well as those of his staff. She feels like she gets more support than she did with Concept Schools and they have a good working relationship already. Ms. Gilmeier said learning packets were created by teachers for the students and they also just created online learning programs and teachers can track their data on individual students and the software also reviews what questions the students got wrong. Students have been using that software all year, so they are familiar with it. There is also a reading program and teachers can assign either specific books to be read based upon individual children or reading for an entire class. The software can be accessed by a cell phone and students can also track their own data and are told what score needs to be attained before moving on to the next level. Mr. Akyurek said that weekly staff meetings are held virtually and every staff member will call a group of families weekly to find out how they are doing and if they have the needed technology at home. If technology is needed, it is delivered to the family and they also refer the families to Spectrum for free high-speed Internet access for two months. MMSA also makes meals available to the families every week day; families can pick up the meals daily or for the week and they have also started delivering meals for the past two weeks. They are also touching base with their special education students and services are still being provided weekly and they are being provided more specialized attention. They send out many more messages now to parents than they had done when they were physically teaching. Mr. Carl Cera, ML Tharp, said that the school is projecting to break even financially this year and has an enrollment goal of adding 31 students next year and if they attain that, they will be able to build their budget surplus up again. Mr. Cera would like to see projections for different levels of enrollment, such as maintaining, half of the projected increase and the full projected increase. Mr. Akyurek said there is a lot of uncertainty due to COVID-19, but they will start working on enrollment for next year and hopefully they will reach their goals for next year. Ms. Mallory said it appears that the school is trying to reach and support its students. She would like to see a detailed curriculum that has an emphasis on how they are City of Milwaukee Page 2 CHARTER SCHOOL REVIEW Meeting Minutes April 16, 2020 COMMITTEE going to improve academic performance across the board. Ms. Mallory would like to see something from the school that proves they will be viable moving forward. Ms. Gilmeier said on the first day of school, about 90% of their kids are in place and about 10% in play. Ms. Mallory wants to see a developmental curriculum from k4 through 8th grades so she can have confidence that students will get what they need. Mr. Astria worked with about 30 students and he found them hungry to be taken to the higher level with critical thinking skills - a lot of them are doing rote memorization rather than multi-step problems. Mr. Leazer said that all of this instruction time has been lost and there isn't much CSRC can do, besides monitor as there are too many unknowns. Ms. Mallory does not disagree, but wants MMSA to start thinking ahead and this is an opportunity for administration to think about what the "new normal" will be. Mr. Burgos would like a written 30-day update on what activities are going on even under these conditions. Chair Ingram will work with Ms. Peay on that. 4. 190981 Communication relating to administrative matters of the Charter School Review Committee for the 2019-2021 school years. Sponsors: THE CHAIR Ms. Susan Gramling said that CRC has been monitoring what has been going on with DPI and testing and today Gov. Evers directed that schools will remain closed for the remainder of the 2019-20 school year. The recommendations are contained in the file (6 bullet points). CRC will still do reports for each school. The schools will submit attendance and suspension rates prior to their closure date and CRC will send paper surveys to parents and do two follow-up phone calls to those who fail to respond. CRC will interview board members by phone, but won't be able to interview students or teachers, but will interview school leadership. Ms. Janice Ereth said it is important for CSRC to remember that will be no local measures or standardized assessment available for spring, so looking at year-to-year improvement won't be available. This will obviously impact the next year as well for year-to-year comparison. CRC will work with Ms. Peay to disseminate the new score card reporting requirements. Ms. Peay will put out on the website what schools are doing during this shut-down. Ms. Mallory moved, seconded by Ms. Pointer-Mace, to accept the CRC memorandum. There were no objections. Meeting adjourned: 6:26 P.M. Linda M. Elmer Staff Assistant City of Milwaukee Page 3