In attendance: CHP Board Members & Parents

• Call to Session: 7:05-Carolyn
• Introduction of Parents to one another
• Presidents Report: (Carolyn)

o Introduction of CHP Board
o Brief Status Update: Historically, we have been a parent run co-op but that has started to change over the past four years as we have grown. Responsibilities that formerly were fulfilled by Board members need to be passed to paid employees. Janie has been promoted to operations manager and we have added a part time administrative assistant to help us further this transition. We have also extended the board terms to three years to take ensure continuity of operations that has been missing in years past. We have never had a school wide election process.
o Budget: CHP has only had a proper Budget and an accountant to assist with the budgeting process for a couple of years.  Carolyn reviewed highlights of this years budget that was presented to parents in attendance for review.
o Tuition Increase Update: Last years substantial tuition increase was due to many factors but primarily due to the fact that the school had not sufficiently raised tuition in recent years to cover the increasing costs of a growing school and was therefore was running a deficit. This was due in large part to the fact that there wasn’t an accountant contributing and guiding the school in the complicated budgeting process. CHP now has this in place. With the tuition increase, we are now “paying” our teachers for June School (June was added to the school calendar for the first time last year without properly compensating teachers), increased cleaning services, reduced fundraising for items such as graduation, created a budget for community support activities, and started a contingency fund to prevent the school from future unexpected financial hardship.

o School Communications:One of the pieces of feedback gleaned from last years parent survey was that parents want more transparency into the classroom. Carolyn presented the following ways in which the school provides insight into the time your child’s spends at CHP

• Weekly News & Views
• This Week at CHP (RSS Feeds)
• Website Updates
• Yahoo Group
•  Mail Clips 
• Open Door Policy/Conferences on Request
• Curriculum Nights
• Twice yearly Assessments
•  Teacher in foyer at Pick-up
• Open Parent Board Meetings

o Coop & Small Committees: Our school is changing and therefore the parent jobs need to be changed. We are developing committees to act as focus groups to study how to adjust to these changes in order to meet the needs of the school and families.  Carolyn presented the following and asked that any interested parent contact her.

• CHP Small Committees:  The goal of these committees is to support the work of the current executive board to help execute short and long term goals for the year.  Each committee will be made up of at least two board members and an equal number of interested parents from the school.  The goal is to provide interested families a voice and a view into the operations of our school and cultivate future board members.  All committee recommendations will need to be approved by the board.

Potential Committees:

• Parent Job Committee:  This committee will take an in-depth look at our current parent jobs and provide recommendations for improvements.  They will provide suggestions on additions to the current list as well as removing anything that is unnecessary.  They will try to find jobs that utilize the talents of our families and support the mission of a cooperative school environment.  They will work to address inequalities in workload between jobs by adding or subtracting duties.  Committee will also provide recommendations on potential penalties for incomplete parent jobs.

Goals:

1. Look at current job list and provide recommendations on additions and deletions
2. Determine number of hours per job and try to balance number of hours among jobs
3. Try to make best use of current talents within the school
4. Brainstorm potential ways to encourage participation and discourage incomplete duties

Please note: Families are to act in support of school and its staff so any job duties will not involve curriculum or teaching.

Short & Long Term Goals Development Committee
As part of our NAEYC certification as well as to support the mission of Cobble Hill Playschool, this committee will assist in putting together an official plan of short and long term goals for the school.  This committee would kick off the process by brainstorming with administration, staff and families to create a vision for the school to give us a path for the future as we grow and change. 
Goals & Objectives:

1. Research other cooperative preschools for ideas
2. Meet with teachers, administration, and families  through emails, in-person meetings, surveys, etc. to find common ground
3. Flesh out goals and create a plan and timeline for execution for recommendation to board

Executive Board & Steering Committee Formation
The current board is considering forming an executive board that would meet 3 times per year made up of former CHP parents, community leaders, etc that would provide a historical memory and act in an advisory capacity for the school as we move forward.  The current board would morph into a steering committee that would perform the tasks of the current board.  This committee will work advise on creating this new board and committee.  The committee will be responsible for finding interested persons to serve on the Executive Board as well as help to find interested persons to fill vacant positions for the 2012-13 school year for the newly formed steering committee.  As part of this process, they will oversee revision of our current outdated board bylaws. They will also create a detailed written description of the steering committee’s role and function within the school.
Goals & Objectives

1. Create new executive board
2. Rework current board to become a steering board/committee by evaluating all positions
3. Rewrite & update bylaws
4. Write detailed written description of role of both new executive board & steering board
5. Assist in filling empty positions for next school year

• Website & Marketing: (Lisa)
o We re-launched our website this year to make it better than ever with particular attention to feedback received from the parent body via the parent survey.

• Fundraising Report: (Heather)
o Fall Auction Update: Reminder: Fall Auction is upcoming at Diety Lounge.  Our fundraising goal for this year is to avoid constant fundraising (a complaint on the parent survey) and we have added line items to our budget to avoid this.

• Cooperative Oversight: (Allison)
o For the first time this year, parents have been given the opportunity to accept or decline jobs assigned to them. If a parent does not want to accept a job, a new position will be offered to them that better suits their needs. This policy will hopefully contribute to better parent job satisfaction. 

• Meeting Adjourned:  8:30

Please save the date for the Cobble Hill Playschool Open Parent Meeting: Tuesday, October 25, 2011 @ 7pm at the school

As a Board, we strive to build a stronger foundation for our school and our community but we need your support, input and expertise to do so. We ask that you please take advantage of this opportunity to meet with the Board and learn about the issues that are affecting our school as well the goals we strive to achieve during the course of this year. Please note this is a Parent-Only Meeting; there will be no Administrative staff or Teachers present.    

Also, for the first time, we are putting together small committees that will help move forward some of the agenda of the CHP Executive board with the input of any interested families.  Below, please find a quick overview -- see the attachment for full descriptions and goals of each committee.

Parent Job Committee:  This committee will take an in-depth look at our current parent jobs and provide recommendations for improvements.  

Short & Long Term Goals Development Committee:  As part of our NAEYC certification as well as to support the mission of Cobble Hill Playschool, this committee will assist in putting together an official plan of short and long term goals for the school.  

Executive Board & Steering Committee Formation:  We are considering forming an executive board that would meet 3 times per year made up of former CHP parents, community leaders, etc that would provide a historical memory and act in an advisory capacity for the school as we move forward.  The current board would morph into a steering committee that would perform the tasks of the current board.

We will have more discussion at our meeting about these committees.  Please let me know either by email or by attending the meeting if you are interested in joining any of these committees.

Finally, please let me know if you are interested in contributing any agenda items for us to discuss at the meeting by emailing Carolyn Pravda at carolynanne@earthlink.net.

Thanks!  

Carolyn Pravda

Hi CHP Families!

With summer in full swing, we wanted to welcome you to the school and send out a few updates.  First, I will be assuming the role of Board President for the 2011-2012 school year.  My goals for next year include continuing to have open communication between parents and the board, strengthening our school as a cooperative & revamping the parent jobs, and developing both short and long term goals for the school.  Please feel free to reach out to me at any time with questions, comments, complaints, etc.  My email is carolynanne@earthlink.net and my cell is 917-561-7279. 

We also have some exciting staff changes for next year.  As of July 1, Janie Greene has taken on a new position for the school: Operations Manager.  As Operations Manager, Janie will continue doing much of the administrative tasks she has done in the past including admissions, staff & child records, and school communications.  In addition, she assumes more control of the financial aspects of the school as well as expanded human resources responsibilities.  In the past, much of the financial operations of the school have been handled through our volunteer parent board.  We hope that by moving these operations inside the school’s administration that the school will operate more efficiently, allowing us to set up short and long term goals for the school.  Specifically, for those of you who experienced the tuition increases that have taken place in recent years, this means financial planning and budgeting will be done in a more efficient manner.  The board will continue to approve all budgets and financial decisions, but we should experience more continuity and structure in our planning going forward.  In order for Janie to take on this larger role, the school conducted a thorough hiring process for a part-time administrative assistant.  Stacey Foote will be joining the school in the fall.  Stacey is a Bococa parent, and we are very excited to have her on board!  As always, Carol Troha will be available as Director of CHP to answer any questions regarding your child’s education.  She maintains an open door policy and welcomes parents to speak with her at any time.

Please keep your eyes out over the summer for information on parent jobs.  By moving the admissions paper work deadline up this spring, we are hoping to get a jump on assigning parents jobs for the coming school year.  We will get each family information over the summer with details on their job.  Please make sure to look this over carefully and get back to us with your acceptance (or any updates about new baby due dates, big vacations to Europe, etc).

Also, please save the date Saturday, September 10 in the morning for a Back to School Picnic.  More details to follow.

Next, if you haven’t already done so, please sign up for our Yahoo group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/chpfamilies/.  We hope this group will help you get to know each other, set up play dates, pass along used clothes & books – and find ways to work together & support our cooperative preschool.  Visit the link above to request to join or send an email to chpfamilies-subscribe@yahoogroups.com to subscribe.  Once you are a member, you can send posts to the group at the email chpfamilies@yahoogroups.com. 

Finally, I want to introduce our new board:
Heather Cross – Director of Fundraising, Connie Cuff – Treasurer, Lisa Hinshaw – Director of Marketing & Website, Allison Leale – Director of Cooperative Oversight, Lesley May – Teacher Liaison, Libby Mayward – Secretary, Carolyn Pravda – President and Katie Walton – Past President.  We look forward to working with all of you on helping to make our preschool a wonderful place for our children!

Thanks!
Carolyn Pravda