Purdue Polytechnic High School

Opening Items

S.Bess explained the reason for the change of venue was due to a soft lockdown situation at Englewood. All Board action will be made at the next Board meeting. 

Call the Meeting to Order

M.Weber began the meeting at 4:03PM.

Record Attendance and Guests

Approval of Minutes

M.Weber will request a motion to approve the June 9, 2021 and June 22, 2021 Board Meeting Minutes.

Ken requested to strike a duplicate item on June 9th Minutes. 

Finance

S.Bess reported that Tammy has submitted her leave and will no longer be handling our financials after September.

Approve Board Financials and APVR

S.Bess will provide an overview of the Board financials and the APVR. The Board is required to approve both by voice vote. 

S.Bess presented June and July financials. This is the last year of XQ funding. For the month of July, we were better than anticipated. 

Operations

Organizational Changes

S.Bess will discuss organizational changes.

• Lacey Beatty, Principal, South Bend
• Ronni Moore, Principal, North
• Keeanna Warren, Associate Executive Director
• LaShaun Aldridge, Director of HR
• TBD, Director of Finance

S.Bess discussed organizational changes. introduced LaShaun Aldridge, Director of HR. Sharnell Johnson, Director of Finance and Tanisha Adams, Registrar will begin in September. 

School Staffing

Building principals will provide a brief update regarding staffing in their buildings. 

R.Moore shared that North is fully staffed. New ELA and Humanities instructors. 

Enrollment

S.Bess will provide an enrollment overview for each campus.

S.Bess shared Englewood has 626 students currently and some of those students are on track to graduate by 9/30. We anticipate having 590-600 students as our final count. Our charter number is 540 students and we budgeted for 540 students. 

Governance

Charter Amendments

K.Reier will provide an overview of charter amendments for each campus and seek approval. 

• Englewood
  • Virtual option
• North
  • Virtual option
  • Enrollment plan
  • Storefront facility
• South Bend
  • Enrollment plan, including 12th grade

K.Reier discussed charter amendments that were submitted to both OEI and ICSB. For both Englewood and North, we submitted charter amendments that would allow us to provide a fully virtual option for no more than 10 students at each school in order to accommodate situations or circumstances where a student would benefit, generally for health-related reasons, to receive their education fully virtually. For North, we also submitted a charter amendment to adjust North's enrollment and another amendment to indicate that a certain number of students would be served at the storefront on Broad Ripple Ave. We submitted a charter amendment to ICSB for South Bend to appropriately adjust our enrollment and to reflect that 12th grade is included in our grade configuration for the 2021-22 school year.

Assistant School Treasurer

S.Bess will provide an overview of the Assistant School Treasurer. The Board is required to approve a new Assistant School Treasurer by voice vote. 

S.Bess requested that Keeanna be named as Assistant School Treasurer and Sharnell as School Treasurer. 

IPS Innovation Renewal Discussion

S.Bess will discuss IPS Innovation Renewal.

S.Bess shared that Englewood is entering into its 5th year and the Innovation agreement is for 5 years. After this year, the agreement ends. Keeanna and Shatoya will present to IPS Board this evening. We must notify IPS of our intent to renew the Innovation agreement. S.Bess shared we would like to understand IPS's interest in North becoming an Innovation school. Under the Innovation agreement, state funding flows through IPS for Englewood. North gets funding directly from the state. 

Economic Interest and Conflict of Interest

K.Reier will share Economic Interest and Conflict of Interest forms that will need to be completed by each Board member

K.Reier shared that she will be sending each Board member an EICI form. ICSB requires the Board to submit an updated form each year. 

Academic Excellence

Academics Update 

K.Primrose will review current academic performance and ISTEP results.

K.Primrose reported on where we ended the 2020-21 academic year and where we're heading for the 21-22 year. Students are on track to graduation and our schools exceeded both OEI and state goals. This school year, we will be in a position to focus on placing students in internships. 

Summer Start Program

S.Bess will provide a brief update on the Purdue Summer Start Program.

S.Bess shared that this is the second summer where Purdue University has allowed students heading into their senior year to go to campus for 4 weeks and attend classes with incoming freshmen. 20 PPHS seniors participated in the program. Academically, our seniors outperformed last year's group that was there. The students did very well and had a great campus experience and have shared that they want to be ambassadors with this year's juniors. One of the speakers, a Latina student said she "didn't think Purdue was for people who looked like me" but now feels like "Purdue is for everybody." 

South Bend Success Story

L.Beatty will provide a brief success story from South Bend. 

L.Beatty shared that at the end of the 1st week of school, she received an email from a parent stating that "we lost our daughter" diagnosed with anxiety and had a hard time functioning in a classroom. The parents felt they had lost hope and that their daughter wasn't thinking about college or what her future might look like. Parents felt helpless and that they ran out of options. Mom was considering staying home to do homeschool until the parents received a Facebook ad and toured the school. They decided to try PPHS for their daughter and after 1 week, the mom reported that her daughter is completely different and coming home telling her how much she loves school. Feels like she gained her daughter back and she felt like it was the first time a teacher heard her and valued her voice. The mom said, "Your school is changing my daughter's life and put the light back in her eyes." 

Five-Star Contract

S.Bess will discuss a contract with Five-Star. The Board is required to approve the contract by voice vote. 

We have a contract to do infrastructure work regarding technology. We will officially approve this contract at our next meeting. 

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

DEI Statement

K.Warren will provide an update on DEI activities and present a DEI statement for Board approval. 

K.Warren presented a draft DEI statement developed by staff which was then sent to the DEI steering committee for feedback. Through that feedback, G.Bertoline asked to specifically call out racial injustice and T.Reives suggested formatting changes. 

Facilities

North Campus Update

S.Bess will provide an update on the North campus future plans. 

S.Bess reported that Keystone Construction has done the engineering work and the parking garage will support a 2-story addition above it and will start on the design process soon. They will build a new 5-story structure. PPHS will have the first 3 floors and apartments will be added as the top 2 stories. 

Janitorial Contract

S.Bess will briefly discuss the janitorial contract. The Board is required to approve the contract by voice vote. 

S.Bess shared COVID update. We have experienced a number of positive students, but those students have already isolated themselves before coming into the schools. We have adjusted our Pandemic Response Plan in accordance with continually updated CDC guidance. Our biggest challenge is getting our student base to vaccinate. We are working on different approaches to encourage students to get vaccinated. We have held several vaccine clinics that have not been well attended. Our goal is to keep our students face-to-face as much as we can and as long as we can. We've had 8 positive cases and approximately 900 students. There have not been any large objections to mask mandates within our schools because our students want to be in the schools. We are at 90% or higher on staff vaccinations. 

Closing Items

S.Bess provided a shout-out to M.Qunitana for a great story in the IndyStar. 

Next Meeting Date

The next PPHS Board of Directors meeting is scheduled for October 6th at 4pm.

Adjourn Meeting

M.Weber adjourned the meeting at 5:37pm