Wornick Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes – February 20, 2014
Tuesday, March 18, 2014 at 9:41PM Attendees: Roger Feigelson, Nicole Haire, Peter Schaffer, Carrie Ridge, Yoav Boaz, Mark Ezersky, Karen Wolff, Ken Meyer, Anne Steirman, Michele Stafford, Lisa Wachtell, Jeremy Verba, Lara Druyan, Shawn Becker, Michael Berger, Shaun Steingold, Karen Alexander, Barbara Gereboff, Fred Weiner, Caren Neydavoud and Rabbi Corey Helfand
D’Var Torah: – Shaun Steingold presented for Amy Sosnick
This week’s Parshat: Vayakhel
Primary message is: It’s not what you do, it’s how you do it.
Vayakhel: Meaning is to assemble/to gather.
In a nutshell. Moses gathers the Jewish people together and explains that they shall work on the 6th day, and on the 7th day they shall rest. And that anyone who works will be put to death.
The Parshat also goes into detail how the Mishkan is to be built. Which materials they need and what goes where.
Interestingly enough, these 2 words (assemble and gather) mean the same. When one is to assemble or to gather, it means that there are several things that are being put together.
Shabbat. Shabbat is to gather our souls spiritually. It is to reflect on the past and on the future.
Building the Mishkan. This has been said several times in the Torah. In this Parshat, the Princes pledge to give after everyone else has given. They pledge to give whatever is needed at the end. In the meantime, the Jewish people brought their goods; gold, silver and whatever else. They brought so much that Moses had to ask them to stop bringing.
Shaun asked that we reflect and come together on this. Can we even imagine saying to our community, the Ronald C. Wornick Jewish Day School needs dollars to make our school an incredible school where we are sure that our kids will get the best education? And, everyone, I mean everyone, moms, dads, kids, teachers, grandparents, friends, start dropping off the dollars. Can we even imagine collecting donations to the point where we have to tell everyone that we have enough?
This reminded Amy when her daughter was in Kindergarten and there was the Chanukah party or Passover. There was a list of what was needed to have a successful party, i.e. latkes, apple sauce, sour cream, dreidles, menorah, and candles. Amy recalled telling her daughter at first, the other families can participate. After getting ‘the look’ from her daughter, she then said, let’s wait and whatever they do not get, we will bring in. Amy still got ‘the look’.
Amy now understood that with the Princes, it wasn’t the same thing. They pledged, but in a way, it would it have been better, since they were considered the leaders, if they started with the donations. A donation, small or large was not the importance. It was more important that everyone participated. By the simple fact that everyone brought something to see that the Mishkan was going to get built, brought the community even tighter.
Our board. Are we like the Princes? Are we the examples of the school? Are we sending a clear message to our community of the direction we want to go and what we need to get there?
Most definitely these are questions we all need to ponder.
Minutes: - Carrie
Michael Berger motioned. Ken Meyer seconded. Minutes unanimously approved.
Updated Slate: - Roger
Ken Meyer has graciously stepped up to accept the role of Board Treasurer. His role is going to help with communication, assist Fred and the staff. The Board’s primary focus needs to be to determine what the consequences will be if we don’t raise the necessary funds.
Motion to add Ken Meyer to the slate as Treasurer unanimously approved.
Development Update: Lara Druyan presented
We were under $7,000 in sponsorships, but we went over our number in individual donors. FYM raised almost $100,000!
Debrief on FYM will be at the next Board Meeting.
We are within $60,000 of our development budget for the year. Still expecting the $30,000 Ron Wornick gift to get us within reach of our goal.
FYM’s next chair is Katie Wolff.
FYM should always be in Development, not as a stand-alone.
Admissions Update: Karen Alexander presented
Numbers look good. Have 41 applications so far. Very busy with tours, especially the non-K families.
There is already one acceptance on the books.
Acceptance letters for sibling families will go out 2/26. Everyone else is March 13th.
Karen doesn’t have a conversion number in her head.
If people go to public school, we won’t know until May that they are leaving.
Middle Schoolers, we do know, because we get requests for transcripts/transfer information.
Penalties have not been affective in the past.
Transitional K numbers: Barbara Gereboff and Karen Alexander
There is a long process of licensing for TK. Application is nearly done. Still talking to the TK families and are still accepting them into Kindergarten as a 2-year process. There are few people that need TK because of the way the dates fall. There is a 3-month window from 9/1 – 12/1, which doesn’t warrant a large market.
3-4 families have approached Karen that are dying to get their kids in. They don’t want another year of preschool. They need all day. They LOVE Wornick! The understanding with the parents is that it is a 2-year program and that children stay in the same class for the 2 years.
Karen wants to build a class.
Karen is not ready to advertise the program yet. She wants to start with 5-6 families. She has got 5 already.
Started with 210 at the beginning of the school year and 7 students have come in since the beginning of the year.
We don’t have benchmarks from last year, but we will have that data for next year.
Karen is guessing that 38 out of the 41 applications will be accepted.
The board will know how many people will be accepted by March.
Biggest feeder is still the PJCC.
Karen has 6 applications from preschools that we have never had before; we have no prior relationships with them.
Finance Update: Presented by Fred Weiner
Fred posted 2nd quarter results.
Gifts, grants and fundraising is better than what the report is showing because it is just through 12/13.
We are on track given the report from Lara.
Tuition is on or may exceed the budget based on Karen’s report.
Fees will come in throughout the year, primarily the upcoming Israel trip and other fees that will be coming later.
We will be on or exceed the revenue budget which would be a monumental success. This would help us a lot with managing expenses which are under budget at this time. There are some small risk areas which will be managed. We’ve had additional development costs. We are also 10 years in the buildings in the school and on the campus.
There were modest improvements made i.e. the office for Dan Finkel.
Positive surplus anticipated by the end of the fiscal year.
Lara: Is health care costs for the staff impacting the budget? Fred will be looking at that in the spring and expects an increase. Kaiser bases their costs on history and composition of staff.
Capital improvements – anything new needs to come out of the organizations. Asset replacement comes out of a fund at the campus level.
Campus board meets on Monday to approve carpet replacement in the school. It will be done over Passover break.
HOS Report: Presented by Barbara Gereboff
Maybe there should be a 10-year celebration for the school. Barbara spoke with Deborah Pinsky about this.
Academic plans for next year:
We piloted our own critical thinking assessments. We are going to do this for our 8th grade in the spring. Group that puts this out is College for Readiness assessments. Tests students on 21st century critical thinking. Students are given a 90-minute block and write a coherent essay.
PEP: continuing to refine the PEP. Does it reflect the goals we have?
Hebrew at the Center: joining with groups in Boston and Los Angeles – Barbara spent time with founder of this program at RAVSAK. Second language learning specifically designed for day schools. Not books. Looking at the 4 skills for 2nd language learners. What proficiencies do we want for students preparing to leave the school?
There will be a team of trainers working with the staff for 2 years, from Boston.
Completing curriculum mapping is another goal in the academics.
Visited by a Foundation in New York. Their mission is to support Jewish day schools to be where they need to be with STEM. They purchase science needs/equipment/supplies and provide training.
Jed Camp – people are doing pop-up conferences. Takes place on Sunday vs. Saturday. We are hosting a Jed Camp.
RAVSAK conference is for trustees and day school administration. Barbara felt badly that there were no board trustees in attendance. Every independent school had representation with them, at least 10 each.
CAIS, also had representation from other day schools, but not ours.
Role of a board member and role of the head of school is changing. Barbara would like to have a board session around this, possibly in May.
Cultivating board members should be happening all year long by a committee of trustees as well as addressing if the board mix is correct, what the board’s needs are, and if there are any board members that need to come off the board.
Attrition report: Barbara posted her milestones.
Lara was disturbed by people being just as happy with a free choice vs. Wornick. Lisa’s hope is we won’t see comments like this in the future.
Caren had a similar conversation with a family whose kid left after K at Wornick and is having a positive experience in a public school 1st grade, but if we dig deeper, we find that they are missing the Wornick community.
Michael commented that 14 is a small sample size.
Roger read Joelle’s comments.
Shawn: Disturbing is the persistence of bullying
We now have a clear definition of what bullying is. There is varying perceptions of what bullying is. Michele is spearheading a new behavioral policy. Michele said the policy that is currently in place is way too general and vague. She said her subcommittee will have one more follow up meeting regarding this topic. The new behavioral policy will be more specific and will therefore make it more enforceable. Having a policy is one thing, enforcing it uniformly is another. Michele wants to make sure everyone gets the new policy.
Ken: a lot of things do seem to happen on the playground. He was looking for an adult. Saw peacemakers.
Karen: More than a 20-minute recess is much too long, she feels.
Barbara: there are many activities going on during recess
One child left because Wornick asked the child to. This family was also interviewed and asked why they left. Perhaps they shouldn’t have been included with the others because it is different when a child is asked to leave vs. when a family decides to leave on their own volition.
Lara expressed concern that she heard from another parent first before she was contacted by her child’s teacher that her child was hurt.
Karen: It needs to be ok that we don’t admit everybody. We have to be willing to shrink a little bit.
Attrition – more females than males are leaving
Strategic Differentiation: Presented by Joelle via Roger
We want to do a broader needs assessment instead of being in a vacuum.
Good and Welfare:
Fran Eastman sent a note thanking the board for the chicken soup care package.
Roger asked if he sent out a strategic plan email, and the board said he did not.
Barbara shared her inspiration of the Evan Engler Bar Mitzvah and his D’var Torah. (From Heshel)
We teach kids how to critique each other, we empower our kids as well.
We use Heshel’s language for critiquing.
Executive Session:
Roger has been the Board Rep with Barbara.
Strategic plan is supposed to update every year. We started falling out of sync because different sections need to be updated at different times. Roger has worked out a schedule now. June is when it is next supposed to be updated.
Shaun suggested that we keep a calendar, month by month, of what we are going to discuss, for example tuition assistance in May, attrition in March, perhaps, so we all know what to expect in preparing for these types of Board Meetings.
Executive Session adjourned at 9:20 pm.
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