Notes from the meeting with the Chief Academic Officer of OCDE

I needed a few days to compose this update about the meeting with Jeff Hittenberger, which took place last Friday at 1:30. To the meeting I brought with me Vincentia and Kristi and we came prepared with talking points and sourced numbers. We were there for about an hour, but there was so much to discuss that we didn't get to everything.

It was an open discussion between Jeff and us. He listened and the points we talked about most were:

• Most of CHEP's kids attend The North and West Schools. If they close them then there will be a big drop in enrollment. And once closed we lose the ability to grow because the Tustin area is limited in size vs the much more populated north and west OC.
• We could reduce costs with austerity measures within each site rather than sever cuts to students and staff. (ex. combine locations with similar programs within the same areas and give up rental space currently not being used to reduce rent and maintain a physical presence in North and West OC)
• We missed a bunch of promotion opportunities this year and the largest ones are yet to happen. We need the time promised to us to promote and grow.
• CHEP used to be a growing program. But ten years ago a rule was made that we could no longer promote. That's when the numbers started falling. And while that may have made sense at the time, the rapid growth of charters make it a bad policy today.
• Even though local school districts are making it difficult to transfer to CHEP. That won't stop families from leaving and looking for alternatives. If CHEP isn't available in the area then they will go to charter. This affects all of OCDE not just the local schools. OCDE must do more to manage these schools and push convince them that it's in everyones interests to not only allow transfers to CHEP but promote CHEP as an alternative to Charters thus keeping them in the public school system.
• By their own numbers if we don't do something to change things not only will we loose over half the population of students but within just in a few years CHEP will have shrunk to such small numbers that OCDE may just decide to close it entirely.
• Kristi noticed that he mentioned it wasn't just about money.
• Vincentia noticed that he seemed surprised when we told him how often we take our children to classes at each site (4-5 times a week).
• I noticed that he seemed surprised that we haven't been promoting much thus far this year.

We told him that before the Imaginology event, in two weeks, we need to know if we can promote openly to all of OC or just to Tustin. Then we left him with a copy of our notes that included more ideas which we didn't have time to go over. I only hope he reads through them.