Nov 8, 2024 | J-KOA November 2024 BOD Meeting

Attendees: Koya, Toni, Kayla, Andrea, Eric, Oscar, Amy, Ana

Excused: Alexis

Meeting Notes

• Ice breaker

  • Which moments with J-KOA are you most grateful to have experienced?

    • Koya: Conversation with Francisco, which he called J-KOA goated

    • Oscar: Everytime we do the DNA extraction and the kids’ reactions

    • Eric: Being able to meet parents/grandparents of the students we work with and seeing that they’re supported

    • Toni: Being part of this group (literally would not have met anyone here were it not for J-KOA and Koya inviting me on board

    • Amy: Getting to know and meet everyone; working with the kids

    • Kayla: Getting to know each person along side our students when they give presentations about their journey

    • Andrea: Meeting everyone! Board feels like a safe space, seeing support of Koya’s family when Andrea first met Koya

  • YAY PAMILYA!!! <3

  • Welcome to the meeting, Ana (:

• TEKS Updates and Requests

  • 2-3 weeks into TEKS at AST and Boston P-8

  • 10-12 students per school and plenty of mentors to help

  • Eric has a list of materials

  • Crawfish/crawdads needed? Eric to talk to Mckenna 

  • Boston P-8 is a week behind AST so be aware when filing supply needs!!

• Updates from President

  • Andrea committing to starting a J-KOA branch in the Bay Area

    • Reached out to a program manager at the Department of Energy (Davna Kipnis)

    • Goal is to reach students but also the community in general

  • CUPS Collaboration Proposal

    • Partner and mentor 60-80 of their students that they’re bringing to the Science Fair next year

    • Offering $3,000 of funds to use at our discretion to help (demos, supplies, mentor compensation, etc.)

  • Lotus School

• Updates from DMRESF Director

  • Recieved notice that an anonymous donation came in for J-KOA for $5,000!!

    • Good opportunity to put that money towards establishing J-KOA as a nonprofit

      • Treasurer responsibility to go up with developing a new budget

      • Things to factor in: Lawyer costs and CPA Costs

    • Effectively, we can use that money towards science fair project supplies, tabling materials, demonstration

• Manuscript assignments

  • With the number of students we have, we won’t be able to publish it yet so publishing will be tabled until next year.

  • However, if we do the CUPS collaboration, we will be able to have enough students to collect enough data

  • Interested writers: Toni, Oscar

  • All those interested in contributing to the publication, email Mckenna

  • Ana can help with IRB Stuff

• Non-profit planning

  • When we move forward with this process, Koya will be doing a majority of the heavy lifting

  • Can start receiving donations even if we are not fully a 503c but only after the paperwork has been filed

• Lotus School for Excellence

  • Students represent 32 different spoken languages

  • Planning on bringing 42 students to the science fair

  • One-touch mentorship: one session before Thanksgiving, one between Thanksgiving and Winter Break

  • Essentially an Outreach event but with added “I’m a scientist. What questions do you have with your science fair project?”

  • Likely presentation set up:

    • Who is J-KOA

    • What a Scientist Looks Like (Individual stories from our volunteers)

    • (Maybe) Demos?

    • Answering questions about the Science Fair

  • If we have the bandwidth, we would want to pull volunteers from outside the TEKS Mentorship Program mentors since they are already pretty busy

  • Andrea is willing to help in her capacity being out of state!