A total of 149 children have enrolled at Clarksdale Collegiate Public Charter School for the 2018-19 school year, but there are still spots open for first-graders.
Executive director Amanda Johnson gave a breakdown of everything during the Monday, Aug. 13 school board meeting. She said the goal was to have 150 students in its first year. There are currently 42 first-graders, 53 second-graders and 54 kindergarteners. The maximum enrollment number is 180 students.
“So can we enroll kids throughout the year if we have space?” board member Billy Crews asked.
Johnson replied, “If at any time, we have a spot open, we want to make it available to the child that wants to get in. I will continue letting our parents know that we have spots at first grade. We can take the students at any of the grades. They just have to go on the waiting list until we have a spot available.”
Teacher and staff recruitment is still ongoing.
The school recently hired Nikki Hall as its director of operations. She started on July 16.
“She has joined our team and been great in filling a big need in the school,” Johnson said. “I feel confident about operations at the school. We work very well together. She has been a great value add to the school.”
Johnson said the school is still hiring part-time teachers. A PE and music teacher were recently hired.
“It’s not a full-time position so I was not sure about being able to figure out six hours a week, but we do have an experienced PE teacher and a music teacher who is a very experienced musician,” she said.
Crews brought up the issue of finding ways to see if personnel was satisfied with their jobs.
“Is there a report or should there be one going forward relative to personnel?” Crews asked. “I know that was an obvious startup focus and certainly not the focus in terms of applications and various things we’ve measured.”
Johnson replied, “We should be thinking about the attrition of our staff so there will be a goal for year one to make sure we maintain at least X percent of our staff next year. There’s some indicators we could put in place tracking the satisfaction of our teachers and staff.”
Johnson said applications should be open for students and personnel for the 2019-’20 school year around Oct. 1. She will be looking to see if teachers are satisfied and want to return.
“Of course, once we get to the end of the year, we’ll have an attrition number for our staff, but we should have indicators telling us whether they’re going to stay,” she said.
In other business:
n Jeremy Jones, from 4th Sector Solutions Inc., provided a financial report for July, which was approved.
The report said the Mississippi Adequate Education Program base funding was down $4,927 due to a one-month lag on a sales tax remittance portion of MAEP funding. Title I federal entitlement funding had a $167,000 positive variance due to an increase in projected funding from the Mississippi Department of Education. Funds are contingent upon having adequate eligible expenses.
Personnel expenses are projected to be $945,000, but only $919,000 was budgeted. The unfavorable variance is due to an instructional position being hired $9,000 above budget and four newly created part-time positions: a music teacher, an art teacher, parent support staff and an additional bus driver. There was a positive variance in the general and administrative line item from the replacement of the director of operations.
Other than personnel, expenses are expected to be $826,000 as opposed to $823,000, for an unfavorable variance of $3,000. An increase in educational supplies is the cause.
n School board meetings were moved to 5:30 p.m. on the fourth Monday of the month.
n The board approved purchase approval recommendations.
The CEO must approve purchases up to $10,000, the board chair must approve purchases $10,000 to $25,000, the board must approve contracts above $25,000, three competitive bids for purchases above $5,000 are required, and the CEO has a credit card with a limit of no more than $5,000.
