Valley Oak Charter School Meeting
June 12, 2007
Attended by: Mike Egan, Colleen Connolly, Bill Storm, Debbie Martin, Tim Huet, Vickie Carr, Marilyn West, Jan Coker
Governance
Finance
Mission/Vision statement overview
Definition of cooperative: “worker co-ops”. “Ownership” = control, not necessarily property rights. One person, one vote; no shareholders. Operations can be traditional with managers, or management can be collective in a town-hall model, under the cooperative structure.
Decision-making structures: Ex: Majority rule, super-majority (2/3, ¾), consensus (absolute or modified). Modified consensus tries to take all stakeholder concerns into account, but final word comes down to a vote if a decision is necessary.
The school could be organized under a 501(c)3 corporation, with a governing board, which could then contract with a Teacher Cooperative to provide the services at the school site. Collective autonomy within the district, with shared guiding principals as the school moving in a collective direction would provide the educational program environment. The teacher cooperative would be responsible for organizing and administering the educational program according to the principles enumerated by the charter.
Documents and possible models of governance will be posted on the website along with meeting notes.
With time constraints and with interest in involving more people in the discussion around the mission and vision statements, it was decided that electronic means would be pursued to make the process more collaborative. Those individuals in the workgroups interested in joining the editing process need to contact Vickie Carr at vcduax@gmail.com. A cooperative document editing process will be set up to facilitate that process.
New federal money is available that moves our timeline up so that we can qualify for startup monies prior to opening in 2008-2009.
July 20-22, finals times to be announced.
None brought forward.
