December GRS Board Updates

DECEMBER

Your GRS School Board has been hard at work, and we would love to share some updates! A friendly reminder that all meetings are accessible on the GRS Public Calendar, and we are actively seeking community members to join and support committee work! Here are the highlights of November and upcoming Board and Committee work:

  • The School Board’s November Agenda included accepting updates to GRS’s Safe Return to School, a review and approval of both GRS’s 2021 Financial Audit and changed Enrollment Targets, and a detailed Head of School report. Next meeting: Monday, December  13th at 4:30pm. Email: executive@greatriverschool.org.

  • NEW! Working Group for Finance Equity Audit: Help/Input Needed
    Are you passionate about equity?  Do you want to see what we are spending money on? Do you want to guide the future of GRS?  Then we have a great opportunity for you! The Finance Committee is hoping to do a line item analysis of the budget and spending in order to help shape and guide future budgets. Our focus is to look through the budget with a mission and equity lens.  The first step for this project is to figure out what the criteria and rubric are for measuring equity with our current budget and spending. In other words, how can we label and sort agenda items so we can know if what we are looking at is equitable spending or not?  We will be having a working session on Wednesday, January 5th at 4:00pm at this zoom link or in Crow Wing Classroom. Please join us!

  • The Finance Committee is happy to report that a wide variety of Great River School employees and board members, guided by Micheal Flood, worked together to create an additional Covid related PTO support fund to support staff in this challenging year.  The document has been finalized and is being brought to the board. It can be found here.  Many thanks to those of you who came and brought a sense of possibility, questions, and a willingness to hear multiple perspectives and create something. The committee is actively seeking more members to support the work of our Finance Committee Action Plan. Next meeting: Tuesday, December 14th at 4:15pm. Email: resources@greatriverschool.org.

  • The BIPOC Caregiver Committee has been meeting monthly on the first Thursday of each month. The focus of conversations in the last few meetings has been centered around what events and opportunities have been created for BIPOC students at each program level. The group asked and gained clarity about funding for BIPOC events. The results of the discussion were funds are available for BIPOC events. The next step is writing up proposals for events and starting with planning.

    Our next meeting is Thursday, January 6th at 7:45pm.. Want to join the BIPOC Caregiver Committee? Email Anu (adean@greatriverschool.org) or Cassie (curbano@greatriverschool.org) to get connected!

  •  The Student Experience Committee discussed teacher evaluation across levels; program directors presented current plans for cycles of formal and informal evaluation. We also heard from members of the GRS Nutrition department about recent changes, and talked about revitalizing the rubric for assessing the program's health. In our December meeting, we will be discussing funding for equity programming, institutional responses to racism in the GRS community, and measures of academic achievement. If you are interested in serving on our committee and Action Plan, please attend our next meeting! Next meeting: Thursday, December 9th at 4:00pm. Email: sec@greatriverschool.org.

  • The Policy Working Group is actively seeking more members. Contact faculty member, Sarah Hansen (shansen@greatriverschool.org), parent member, Mike Hang (mhang@greatriverschool.org), or policy@greatriverschool.org in order to learn more. Next meeting: Wednesday, December 15th at 4:30pm.