BOD Meeting Minutes-June 9, 2020

BOARD OF DIRECTORS MEETING
Virtual Meeting due to COVID Pandemic
Winston-Salem, NC

Tuesday, June 9, 2020

In Attendance:

Also In Attendance: Robin Hollis, Paige Raper, Mary Siebert, Kathie Fansler, Becky Dickson, Ellen Coble 

AGENDA

• Meeting Called to Order – 5:45pm by Griff Morgan
• Approval of May Minutes – ACTION REQUIRED – Motion to approve made by Margaret Taylor and seconded by Chris Gilmore. All are in favor with no one opposed. Minutes are approved.
• Review of May Financial Results (Brittany) – ACTION REQUIRED – We received PPP funds. Awarded $680,000 total to be used in the fall as well if needed. State revenue is received for the year. We are still owed $300,000 from Forsyth County. PPP helps cover salaries and benefits. We have no significant expenses with school being out. We have a YTD net surplus of $83,000. PPA loan application is formulaic where you note your personnel costs (wages and benefits) and it allows 2.5X that much. Motion to approve made by Brian Cole, seconded by Kevin Nunley. All in favor with no one opposed. May financials are approved.
• Committee Updates –Diversity and Inclusion This committee has not met. – Marketing – Ellen Heck - Yard signs were delivered last weekend to graduating students. No updates on the updated website. It is ready to launch when the time is right. Facilities – Kevin Nunley – Kevin shares the updated drawing for the courtyard expansion. 
• Principal’s Report (Robin) – We are looking at candidates now to fill the fifth-grade teaching position. The state has designed the template of a plan for schools to use when designing the remote learning plan. We will be surveying parents soon. We have waited for guidance from the state so we’re not surveying parents several times for different information. Jumpstart program has been approved. We will have licensed teachers working with students. It would have an online component. It might be permissible for individuals to work with teachers onsite. Funds are not available until July 1 so that would start in July. Funds must be spent by December 30th. Deciding factor may be how many students we can get to participate. Yesterday the governor released the public health toolkit. We were told to expect it to school leaders first, but it was released to everyone yesterday. It defines reopening schools. The state will require us to write 3 plans: A. B, and C. Right now, we don’t know how many parents and staff will be comfortable coming back to the school environment. There are a lot of challenges. ACCESS Grant – we asked for $1.25M and we were suggested for $500,000. It needs to be approved. CARES Grant – We were approved for a $22,000 to spend on educational technology. This might be about a grade level’s worth of laptops and some software. This might help us loan out some of our machines for students if we are in remote learning again. We will need to create a systematic way to identify families that qualify for this.
• Parent Council Updates – Becky Dickson – Children and parents miss their teachers. Parent Council has not met. Becky shared a lot of feedback from parents to the school leadership team.
• Development Update (Ellen Coble) – Update on Capital Campaign – In Feb and March we started a team of parents working to contact other families about donations for the campaign. There was some hesitancy on the part of some donors because of the talk of COVID-19. At this time we have only seen a few donations from this group. It doesn’t feel like a  good time to be making asks of people right now. Much of the donations that are being made right now are going to health-related campaigns. We are hearing that other people are not having good luck securing donations unless there is a critical need (such as health care) or a close relationship already established. Right now we have $194,000 in pledges. We were on the campaign calendar for May 2020, which has passed. The month is not as critical as the year. The committee would expect that we would make requests for funding during this calendar year. There are deadlines coming up in the next weeks to few months. Most funders want to see specifics about the project before the request for funding. Given the information we have right now our requests may not have a positive outcome. One option might be to push the campaign back a few years. We would need to make a new request to be on the campaign calendar. We would need to get in touch for the W-S Foundation immediately. The ACCESS Grant could have been a motivating factor in the full amount. Whitney Jones recommends requesting another calendar date so everyone in the community and at school can recover from the current situation. Griff Morgan also reminds us that we were hoping to work with the school system on a possible building release and that might not be happening right now either. Kevin Nunley asks, “if we move the campaign for a year and half or two years will the money we paid to Whitney Jones be considered or do we need to start over, etc.?” Ellen Coble thinks it would require a new contract with Whitney Jones. Motion to move us on the capital campaign calendar made by Brian Cole with Kelly Emling seconding the motion. All in favor with no one opposed.
• Other Business- Griff Morgan would like Robin Hollis and Paige Raper to share the board’s appreciation with ABS staff for all of their hard work switching to remote learning in the spring. Motion made by Brian Cole and seconded by Margaret Taylor. All in favor with no one opposed. Board meeting on July 14th at 5:45 in order to approve plans that are required due to COVID-19.

Adjournment – 6:45pm Motion to adjourn made by Margaret Taylor and seconded by Tomisha Gladman. The meeting is adjourned.