Alpine CC Board Minutes
6:00 pm Wednesday, February 17th, 2021 on Zoom
Present: Joyce Long, Dorothy Brinckerhoff, Roger Irvin, Rachelle Payne, Melissa Meyer, John Scott
Absent: Kristen Norris
1. Discuss & approve minutes of the previous meeting
Approved.
2. Review board email votes since last meeting
None.
3. Prioritize Agenda
4. Financial Report
Total donations from the year-end letter were $5,415, a great response in this year of unusual finances.
We had an unusually large propane bill, for a second fill around 1/21 (after a fill at the beginning of January). Jeanne Anne noticed that someone had left the thermostat up in the day(s) before the Cemetery board mtg (bldg. was warm). Joyce found the school days schedule still running on one day (but can’t remember exactly which day). Out leading theory is that someone left it up early in January. Joyce has reprogrammed the schedule so that all times are scheduled for 58 degrees. Dorothy will ask Montgomery Heating for a recommendation of a thermostat that can accept temporary overrides, and then revert back to its regular schedule. Joyce noticed that the display is advertising a low battery condition. John will check on it this weekend.
Board reviewed the financial reports for January and accepted them.
5. Preschool Report
Joyce reported that she talked to Kristen, our teacher & director. Kristen has decided she is not able to come back (resignation letter pending). Sarah, our assistant teacher, is unable to come back before autumn, and may not be available then. If Sarah does come back, she would not be comfortable leading the program. We will need to recruit a new teacher, and need to update the job description before we publicly recruit.
Dorothy has sent the most recent draft of job description to the board for notes about updates.
Melissa has been trying to connect with Lynnette at the LBCC early childhood program.
Melissa reported that she has also had an hour-long conversation with Cathy Voss, preschool teacher in West Linn and leader in PCPO. Voss’s preschool returned to in-person instruction in October 2020.
Facts about how they are proceeding (and believe their program to be in compliance):
- They have a different parent volunteer each day (and one per day).
- They use an app named Jovial for hands-free check-in.
- Thay are running classes with six 4-yr-olds.
- They had to expand from 3hr to 4hrs per day because of the overhead of hygiene.
- They have 2 bins for each kid, one with art supplies, another for outdoor toys. Also a group of shared toys that get sanitized each day.
- They leave windows open around 2 inches, with fans to keep air circulating.
- They have left the choice about whether the children wear masks at preschool to the parents. Most kids have been wearing masks, but one can’t.
- They have at-school rain gear (pants, boots) for outside play for each child. They are playing outside more of the time each day, and more regularly than they were before COVID.
Advice:
- Communicate with parents to build trust and confidence in operating plan.
- She recommends starting in spring with a small group, then expand next fall if we’ve built comfort and confidence.
Their regular parent volunteers have been judged eligible for vaccination as education volunteers, and their parents have all had the 1st dose.
Ms Voss is willing to do a Zoom consultation with us.
The board agreed that enough has changed about our situation that it’s appropriate time to send a next letter to the parents.
The board discussed what we need in place to file the application for “emergency child care program”, with particular attention to the space that prompts for the names of staffers. We could start filing by listing directors as the staff, then add the teacher after we recruit one. Dorothy and Melissa did on-the-fly research into requirements & procedure for filing. Dorothy says that Kristen did initiate an application a few months ago, and Dorothy has already received a response from the State about the application being incomplete.
The board discussed the possibility of recruiting for a limited-term position (spring-summer) with potential for then inviting the short-term teacher to apply for a full-year position for the fall.
Melissa will start the revision of the job description.
Dorothy will start the application, and start drafting the letter to the parents.
7. 2021 PCPO Early Childhood Conference (remote, March 4-18)
Melissa and Joyce led a discussion about the annual PCPO conference. The announced agenda shows that most session topics are aimed at practitioners. With no teacher for now, we have no one who would be appropriate to send.
8. New Business
Dorothy received an email from a representative of the Oregon Association of Water Utilities. They want to rent our Center to do in-person training sessions, starting in April. They say they may have max attendance that may exceed current OHA guidelines. We reviewed what we know about the current guidelines for in-person gatherings and the relationship the guidelines set related to Fire Marshal room capacity ratings. If we start up preschool for the spring, the days they are interested in might conflict with preschool. Dorothy agreed to respond to the OAWU with our concerns.
9. Proposed agenda for March
Preschool teacher recruiting
Preschool reopening
10. Schedule
Board meeting 3/17