Board of Trustees Meeting
The School Council from Rockwell High School held a meeting on:
Date: Thursday October 25, 2007
Time: 8:00 pm.
Place: The Ranches Academy
7789 Tawny Owl Circle
The following directors, constituting a quorum of the full board were present:
Redge Hudson
Suzanne Burdick
Julie McNair
Angie Rasmussen
Jenny Foss
Jenn Maroney
Mary Lifferth
Others in attendance:
Jennifer Rawlings
Rita Bowers
Christine Ishmael
Brandi Johnson
Jen Morrison
Jen Card
Virginia Bowser
Connie Williams
Bobby Colson
Tara Meyer
Branden Shunn
Brenda Park
Tausha Petersen
Jeree Thurman
Stephanie Colson
Adrienne Burdette
The chair called the meeting to order and opened the session:
Motion was made to adopt the following agenda for the meeting:
1. Approval of Minutes
2. Approval of Agenda (agenda is attached.)
3. Open comment by the public
Discussion held during Open session
Curriculum update: ideas: Ednet- kids take classes for high school and college credit through video-conferencing with professors. It is Interactive. Cons: we don’t know fee schedule, don’t understand how you could do a science lab, does the fee apply to each student or to the school as a whole? Committee looking into electronic High School, AP and Ednet. We need to make sure our building is fitted for the projectors, wiring for microphones etc. Committee is having a difficult time working out the AP program because we don’t have a syllabi or teachers yet. We can offer more variety in classes if we use ed-net. Every ed-net class needs a ‘tutor’. Who hires them? Rockwell or college? These are questions Brenda Park posed. They will work on finding the answers. Committee is asking for specific and focus from the board. Jen Maroney emailed top charter schools to committee so they could look over their curriculum. No feasible way to institute IB right now.
Bobby Colson reported:
Financing closed last week
Dirt will turn on Tuesday of this next week
Jim Hyde, the project manager, feels confident they will be done in time for school to start in a timely manner.
Hogan is 90% finished on bid
Site work has cost more than $500,000 more than originally thought because they did find some unstable dirt.
We can not afford change orders as it will cost us time and money.
Bobby assures us that we will have ample electrical in building (to avoid brown outs and outages)
Right not it is not financially an option to have the elevated track but building will have internal structure so we can add it at a later time.
Lease agreement-current financiers don’t like term ‘cost plus’ they are changing some wording and calling it a capitalization rate. We should have lease agreement within next several weeks.
What financiers want:
A director hired ASAP
Regular updates and correspondence on what the board is doing to promote and organize the school. We will email bobby our committee updates so he can forward them to the financier.
Redge: Spoke with Marlies Burns and she says we can do a change rule to get our charter changed to include the 7/8th graders. We will know if that is approved by the end of December. Articulation agreement is still up in the air.
Redge went to star training:
Has a list of grant websites
Found out that state revolving loan is still available for a 1.76% interest rate.
We will know by November 9th what money we are awarded for the implementation grant.
Fundraising committee getting together tomorrow to put together their battle plan. Suzanne has already talked with the Utah Flash about doing a beginning of the year fundraiser.
Chrisitne Ishmael will post director job description to the state sites if we email it to her. Tausha Peterson commented that public library’s often have grant sections we can search grant options for free instead of subscribing to a service.
Starting November 13, our ad will start playing at Cinemark American Fork 7 days a week.
Executive policies: well under way. Committee is meeting together.
Fundraising committee: getting together tomorrow to put together their battle plan. Suzanne has already talked with the Utah Flash about doing a beginning of the year fundraiser.
Grants: Suzanne took Redge’s and Tausha information regarding where to find grant options. She also asked founding families who were there that if they know anyone who was interested in being on that committee to contact her.
Teacher/Student Policies: Same committee members as executive policies. After they are done with their policies, board needs to spend several hours reviewing the policies.
Library: Has chosen Follet Destiny System program. This will allow both Ranches and Rockwell to talk to each other. We are buying 20,000$ in books initially. That will be 3.5 books per student. Adrienne is looking into a DVD library . We will find out decision on Hamburger Helper grant on November 15.
State reporting: Virginia Bowser is chair, will give master reporting schedule to Bobby and Hogan.
Technology: Working with Rob McNair to see if CISCO will donate. We can also get discounts with Dell and Mac.
Enrollment: 12 open houses are scheduled for various locations. Two board members plus three committee member will be at each presentation. We have 99 students currently applying for admission.
Sports/Extra Curricular committee: We will submit application next week to UHSAA. We are finalizing our application.
Accreditation: Julie faxed application to Northwest last Friday and paid the $100.00 fee. We won’t do anything more until our building is occupied. Contact person at the state is Georgia Loutensock.
Founding families: Several families came and expressed a desire to help Rockwell. Projected enrollment of founding family’s students still allows room for us to allow families.
Motion:
Motion made to add: Connie Williams, Jen Morrison, Brandi and Dorian Johnson, Tausha Petersen, Mandee Dean, Mary Ackermann, Christine and Gary Ishmael, Jerry Thurman and Robin Macey as founding families. Motion approved unanimously.
Motion:
Motion made to cap founding families at 55. Motion passed unanimously.
Julie will contact Hazard family to see if they are still interested in being a founding family.
Please email me if you would like to add anything to the next meeting agenda. Thanks. –Julie McNair
Next meeting scheduled for November 8, 2007 at 7:00 pm at The Ranches Academy.
Please call Julie McNair 331-5229 if you want to add anything to the agenda.