Alpine CC Board Minutes
6:00 pm Wednesday, March 17th, 2021 on Zoom
Present: Dorothy Brinckerhoff, Rachelle Payne, Melissa Meyer, John Scott, Joyce Long, Roger Irvin
1. Discuss & approve minutes of the previous meeting
Approved.
2. Review board email votes since last meeting
None.
3. Prioritize Agenda
4. Review and Accept Financial Reports
The Board reviewed the financial reports for February. It was a very quiet month, with the lion’s share of activity from the resale shop. The resale shop had a great month, with over $800 in sales.
5. Recruiting for Preschool Teacher
Melissa reported that we currently have two applicants for the teacher position. She has emailed the resumes to the board. Neither has indicated whether they are applying for a permanent or short-term position. Melissa will communicate to the applicant and let them know that we will be scheduling interviews soon. Melissa needs any notes or questions that we have used in previous recruitment interviews. Joyce will check her files and forward any notes she can find.
We brainstormed with Melissa for other possible places to post our opening. Dorothy will share with Melissa the debit card info to use for paying to post our opening on Craigslist.
We have not had any responses yet from parents to our last communication that invited them to participate in the teacher selection process. Joyce has a need to contact the parents about other details (age of students, degree of interest in Spring-Summer term, etc.), and proposed to use that communication to ask parents for volunteers to participate in the interviews.
6. Planning for Preschool Reopening
Joyce and Melissa have received approval on their background checks for the emergency child care facility registration. That registration is ready to continue forward as soon as we hire a teacher.
We weighed plans for cleaning the facility, whether we want to hire a professional to do regular deep cleans, or rely on parent volunteers to clean thoroughly enough. Consensus was to move forward planning on using parent volunteers to do daily and weekly cleaning.
There is uncertainty about how many students we would have when we reopen. Joyce will be polling the parents to get commitments. Last autumn, we had an intended enrollment of 12 bigs and 3 littles. Our current understanding of OHA/ODE guidelines is that we would be restricted to 10 children at a time when we reopen.
7. Updating the Preschool Parents Handbook
Discussion (Joyce, Melissa). Review for notably outdated content.
Melissa reviewed the current version of the Parents Handbook. She believes that we need to wait until we have a teacher recruited before we can update many of the details. The fluidity of the pandemic landscape implies that it might be better to address this year’s differences in an addendum to the current handbook, rather than a complete revision. Such an addendum needs to include things like drop-offs will be at the door (not inside), and that no non-enrolled children are allowed to accompany parent volunteers into the classroom.
8. Upcoming changes at Alpine Water Company
John reported that the Alpine Water Company is heading toward major changes in the next few months, which will affect ACC. (AWC grew out of current ACC property, its physical plant is still hosted at ACC, it supplies ACC’s water, and John is ACC’s representative on the AWC board.) The individual who has kept the water company running over the last decade is retiring. The AWC board is working to define how the water company can continue to operate. The possibilities categorize down to (a) finding a new employee to take on the role of the retiring staffer, (b) finding a private company who will take on management of the system, or (c) getting Benton County to take on management of the system.
John led a discussion presenting the situation and brainstorming possible ways forward with the Board. Two ideas emerged. There is a new bookkeeping business in the Monroe area that might be solicited to take on management of the system. One of the ACC board members is interested in shadowing the AWC staffer in order to better understand the challenges.
Nicholas Rich bookkeeper. Rachelle would be interested in shadowing Jeanne to know more.
9. New Business
None.
10. Proposed agenda for April
Election of officers
Reopening the preschool
?
11. Schedule
ACC Board 4/14