Minutes of Meeting Conducted April 27, 2010
Friday, May 7, 2010 at 4:28PM Trustee Meeting #9 of 2009-2010 School Year
Trustees Attending Meeting: Maury Alcheck, Joelle Kaufman, Josh Smith, Jodi Chall, Sharon Blau Hartley, Aliya Gordon, Paul Lipman, Fran Lent, Madeline Benson, Don Newman, Kathryn Karp, Alisa Spivak, Irwin Bear, Rabbi Dennis Eisner, Mark Abelson, and Gina Rosenfeld.
RCWJDS Staff Attending Meeting: Susan Weintrob and Barbara Gereboff.
Guests Attending Meeting: Lily Avida
Meeting Minutes:
Alisa Spivak delivered the D’var Torah.
Joelle announced that she would like to conduct the board retreat as early as possible and that she would be circulating potential dates to everyone.
Joelle announced that the first board meeting next year will be on Thursday, September 16, 2010.
A motion to approve the consent agenda was seconded and unanimously approved.
A motion to approve asking Rabbi Dan Feder to join the Board was seconded and unanimously approved.
Barbara Gereboff announced that the School was designating a teacher to be focused on special needs education. She also announced that the School was going to hire a teacher to focus on education for gifted students.
Barbara gave an update re: enrollment as of today:
- 99 contracts have been executed and returned;
- 73 contracts are “pending” but expected to be returned;
- 31 contracts are “pending” and involve tuition assistance issues;
- 13 students have yet to make their intentions known; and
- 17 students are not returning.
Barbara said that, net-net, she is expecting the school to have an enrollment of approximately 216 students next year, but that figure is subject to change.
Madeline gave an update about the budget: the latest projections indicate that the budget this year is approximately $30,000 worse than projected.
A motion to pay off a note payable to the North Peninsula Campus in the amount of $59,000 was seconded and approved unanimously.
A motion to approve the 2010-2011 budget based upon an enrollment of 217 students was seconded and approved unanimously.
Joelle asked each Trustee to identify at least one (1) person for Deena to talk to about supporting the School.
Joelle led a lively and animated discussion about whether or not to include a member of the faculty on the Board. No conclusion was reached.
Joelle led a discussion about Wornick’s 25th anniversary year (2010-2011). Several interesting ideas were discussed.
A motion to transfer all School credit cards from Susan to Barbara was seconded and approved unanimously.
Several Trustees thanks Susan for her service to the School (this being her last Board meeting). Susan expressed her gratitude and wished the school well.
The Board then met in Executive Session and all non-trustees left the meeting. Joelle led the discussion. Questions were asked and discussion ensued.
The meeting adjourned at 9:14PM.
Respectfully submitted,
Josh Smith
RCWJDS Board Secretary 2009-2010
May 7, 2010
minutes 
Reader Comments (1)
A couple of changes/requests:
After we voted on the budget, there was discussion about "living within our means" and why our instructional budget is as high or higher than when we had 30+ more children enrolled.The costs were attributed to dedicated middle school teachers, special education teachers, and regular salary increases. The Board did approve the budget but agreed that we would have to consider how to address this cost escalation in the strategic planning process and possibly make some trade-offs so that our costs align with our enrollment.
I'm not clear that we didn't reach a conclusion on the teacher discussion. I recall that we asked Barbara to investigate the School Site Committee concept and the teacher presenting a mission moment at every Board meeting. I also recall that the consensus (this may be selective memory) was that a teacher should NOT be on the Board of Trustees as an observer or voting member.