Franklin Academy



FRANKLIN ACADEMY BOARD MEETING MINUTES DATE: November 09, 2020 TIME: 5:00 LOCATION: Board meeting – via “ZOOM” BOARD MEMBERS PRESENT: Bob Luddy Rick Eddins Al Merritt Bill Francis Judy Nunnenkamp Call to orderThe Meeting was called to order at 5:00 pm. The board reviewed the minutes and there were no questions. Al Merritt motioned that they be approved with Judy Nunnenkamp seconded the motion. Minutes were approved unanimously. Agenda itemsHybrid School Model Updates K-8 – Denise KentWe are continuing the Virtual Academy and the In-Person Learning Hybrid Model having the students come two days per week based on last name cohort. Covid-19 cases in school and quarantining for this quarter only, were as follows; quarantined 26 students and 4 staff members for 14 days. Of those 30 cases we have had 3 positive cases. None have had school spread and we have not had to quarantine any classes. MaryJo Birschbach and myself have been able to get very good information from the Health Department regarding guidelines. Currently, in K-8, 75% of our students are in school on a daily basis. We are getting ready for our Open House and recruitment season beginning December 1st. We recognize that we do not want to open the school up for people coming in to our buildings and possibly tracking germs, and accommodating large groups on campuses. For this reason, this year we will have a completely virtual platform. Live open houses via ZOOM on the evenings in December and January as usual. Presentations will be recorded along with school virtual tour and will be available on our website. Applications are accepted via in-person, by mail, e-mail, or fax. We will also be installing secure boxes outside of each office for applications to be dropped off at any time without needing to enter the building or staff needing to be on campus. Questions:Bob Luddy: Any changes anticipated for Q3?Denise Kent: We will probably continue the hybrid (Plan B) based on the current numbers expected. I believe that come third quarter, we should have less students on the Virtual Academy. We went from about 47% of our students K-8 first quarter to 25% virtual. Bob Luddy: What is the impact to students to stay at grade level?Denise Kent: Our K-8 administrators and at our high school have been conducting observations and interestingly enough, have found that our students are more reserved and a little standoffish. They just seem cautious. We need to consider that these students are going home and parents may be very nervous or maybe it’s the mask and social stigma of the pandemic that is affecting them. Hybrid School Model High School – MaryJo BirschbachFor high school, we have had over quarter 1 & 2 a total of 6 Covid cases. Of those 6 cases, 3 cases were completely virtual. Given the guidelines of Plan B, we have been very fortunate not to have exposures to other students and staff. We have not had to quarantine classes or teachers beyond our first initial case. We are currently at approximately, 50% in person/virtual. Largely, at the high school this is due to conducting in-synchronous classes. Whether our students are in-person or virtual, they are dialing into a live classroom and participating in class every day for every period. I believe that our virtual academy has a higher number of students based on the fact that they know they have access to synchronous classes and know that they are still getting that support in the higher levels as they would in-person. This has worked remarkably well for us. I give full credit to our teaching staff. They have done a tremendous job of balancing a virtual classroom and an in-person classroom simultaneously. Both Brian and I have found during observations that the resources being used and how they have adapted so quickly to make sure their students are engaged is phenomenal. KUDOS to our staff for sure!Open House for the high school will look very similar to the K-8. We will have a live presentation with question and answer sessions as well. Each of our departments will be putting together quick overview videos for parents and students to access. Our Media and Graphic students will also be involved in putting these videos together to provide a thorough summary of the classes offered.Questions:Judy Nunnenkamp: Back to Bob’s question on performance; Do you think this will affect student performance?MaryJo Birschbach: For high school, we are trying to balance pacing and making sure that students are getting all the content is our biggest challenge. Having the synchronous classes is helpful. For our higher-level classes and AP classes, we have been creating more opportunities for them to meet and review and also working with our struggling learners to provide them with more support and remediation and more direct assistance with their teachers, has made a difference. Denise Kent: We are seeing some slippage K-8. Looking at Beginning of Grade (BOG) scores for 3rd grade were markedly lower than last year. For one, it could be the dynamics of the group. However, I really believe that learning ceased since March 16 per Gov. Cooper’s orders. What was provided from March 16th to the end of the school year (although our school did a great job) was not the same as in-person. Along with that, K-8 can not provide live classes. The children need the repetition that the videos provide. We also provided a remediation program for our K-5 over track out for students that were identified as being below grade level which were 276 of our students. We had 125 that said they would attend. Unfortunately, attendance was very minute. So, I think we will see slippage. Luckily, with our Reading Mastery and our Saxon Math, especially K-5, it’s a cylindrical curriculum, so there is constant review. But I don’t think we are going to start filling the gaps or stopping the slippage until things go back to full in-person learning. Bob Luddy: Both for Denise and MaryJo, Can you make an evaluation at the end of this quarter and send brief comments to the board so they have a fair idea of how we are doing?Denise Kent: We do iReady testing which is a diagnostic test for Math and Reading K-8. We administer it three times per year; beginning of year, then middle of year and lastly, end of year. It is offered to both, in-person and virtual students. So, we should have some good data points to share. MaryJo Birschbach: We can also look at class data at high school to see comparatively how we are pacing and where are students are performing in comparison to last year. . AdjournmentNo further questions – Meeting adjourned at 5:14pm ................
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