The board of Audubon Charter School met Oct. 15. Four school staff members were present, plus an auditor and a reporter for The Lens.

The good news was very good indeed. The school performance score, recently released,  stands at 120.3, up from 114.1. This earned Audubon an A-plus state ranking for the past year. The “plus” alongside the A-grade reflected growth. School officials had been advised that they needed to grow 2 points and more than tripled that number.

Performance on standardized Leap and iLeap tests comprises 90 percent of the score, with five percent based on attendance and five percent on a school’s drop-out rate. Audubon is listed on the state’s honor roll for 2011, ranks fourth in the district and within the top seven percent of  schools statewide.

The Rev. Cornelius Tilton, board chairman, commented:

“People assume we are doing this with only the cream of the crop. Here at Audubon we work with all students at all academic levels and for us they become the best and the brightest.”

The school’s move to temporary quarters in Gentilly has been set for Dec. 26-29, requiring the following adjustments to the school calendar: There will be no school on Dec. 19 and 20 and the post-holiday date for the resumption of classes, in Gentilly, has been pushed back from Jan. 4 to Jan. 9.

In other developments, a community meeting with school officials has been scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 1, at 6:30 p.m., to discuss zoning and traffic flow while the Broadway campus is under renovation.

On Dec. 13, the school’s French immersion program will be inspected as part of an accreditation process.

Three teachers are being trained to administer the DELF, a French proficiency test equivalent to the TOEFL exam.

The board has recently ordered High Bar software to keep track of committee work and regularize meeting minutes. Since its inauguration after Hurricane Katrina, Audubon’s board has been dealing with crises such as charter renewal and the like. Now it’s time to build a more proactive approach to oversight, board members said.

The school’s audit report through June 30, 2011, was positive – the seventh good audit in a row,  Tilton noted. No deficiencies or compliance issues were identified, the audit says.