Present: Don Weinkauf (chairing), Pat Hamilton, Tracey Hamilton, Cecilia McCord, Ruth Milner, Mary Nutt, Pete Whiteis, Russell Wrenn
Absent: Jim Shepherd, Delilah Walsh

Tonight's humble scribe: Ruth Milner

1. Pete Whiteis summarized an informal discussion he had with an aide for NM State Senator Jerry Ortiz y Pino, who has a strong interest in "green" school buildings, and in charter schools as well. Although CVCS is not in his district, there was some feeling that he might be willing to help advocate for funds for our flagship building; the aide asked for a letter with information on our plans. As with the legislative committees, we will need a brief document that concisely summarizes our goals. It was suggested that the current one-page executive summary that Don and Cecilia have worked on could be modified fairly easily to target E Pod specifically. For the purposes of circulating to state departments, it should also be trimmed a bit to allow more whitespace for readability, and attached to the site plan drawing. Ruth offered to rework the document, and Pete will shape it into a letter to send to Senator Ortiz y Pino's office. Russell gave a tip to check the Iowa Public Television Web site for quotes from Bill Richardson during a recent interview with them where he discussed "green" schools.



2. Legislative Committee schedules: no recent update (Delilah absent).



3. Don mentioned that Louise Martinez (Bureau Chief, NM Energy Conservation and Management Division and disburser of Land, Wildlife and Clean Energy funds) will be visiting his department at NMT this Thursday for an unrelated purpose, and he will try to have her visit the CVCS campus briefly.  Cecilia has previously spoken to Louise, so she is generally aware of our plans. He asked for volunteers to accompany the tour.



4. Fundraising update: Pat reported on a few key points that will be included in the document she is preparing for CVCS along with grant-writing boilerplate. This included a US Dept of Education program to provide a loan for the "down payment" portion of a conventional loan. These are available once you have approval for the primary loan, and once all of that is in place, we may be able to get a grant for construction oversight services.
      Don had the idea of "selling" bales, analogous to fundraising campaigns where organizations "sell" bricks; i.e. in exchange for a donation, the donors get their names on a plaque somewhere at the new school. A building like E Pod would need about 1500 bales, and Don was thinking of $100 per bale. This was hailed as an excellent idea, though we would first have to be certain that PSFA will approve a strawbale building, and the timing would have to be right so that people who donate money are not left wondering what's happening with the project for months afterward. Mary Nutt said she would ask PSFA for a firmer opinion on this when she calls them in a couple of days.
      We are not currently using the full potential of the lease reimbursement money, as our total lease costs are lower than the per-pupil limit provides. With a conservative enrollment estimate of 150, the current $700 allowance would give us more than $100K/year to put toward leasing modulars if the foundation obtained a loan and built them. (Similarly, if our enrollment stays high, even a reduction in the allowance would still give us about this much.)



5. In order to proceed with promoting our plans, particularly within government, we need additional materials. Don asked for comments on what we could ask someone like Kent Beierle to create for us, and we agreed on the following list, in order of priority:
   
   1. An architect's/artist's visual rendering of E Pod, style to reflect NM culture with a pitched roof and some surrounding landscaping;
   2. A conceptual design for a "green" modular classroom pod, with "green" features identified;
   3. A revised site plan which incorporates the above designs.
   
   We are limited to about $10,000 for this purpose, so we'd have to see how far through this list they could get.



6. Next meeting: Back to the usual schedule of second & fourth Mondays, so Monday June 11 at 7pm. We would like to have a tour of the McCords' strawbale house; Cecilia suggested Monday June 4. This would not be a committee meeting per se.