RSU1 Board Meeting, June 15th, 2026

001Thank you. As we wind down our last week here for the school system and yesterday was graduation and it was a really great event and so happy that there was nice enough clouds that it wasn't too hot. That always is. what I pray for. But it was just really great event and just all the staff, faculty, everybody who pulls that together. And I know the kids had a great time and just always very special. And once again, shows what a great community we are lucky enough to live in. So, and with that, we do have a special presentation before we get started on. anything else and then we'll get back to minutes and adjustments. So I'm going to hand it over to Patrick. So this evening we have just a special presentation we'd like to

002start the meeting with. So we have Representative Allison Hepler who's here and we also have Sukhi heard and Sukhi was a long time. I don't know how long, but a select person in Arousik. Come on up, Sukhi, come on up. And both have quite a bit of history with our communities, but also with RSU1 and they would like to make a special presentation to a special person. Thank you. Okay, thank you. So when I first learned that Deb Clark was retiring from here, I thought, what can I do to thank her for not only the years of service to the school, but particularly to a committee that Suki and I were on, an ad hoc committee to develop a new school funding formula. And so what I have doesn't come close. to thanking you for

003the gratitude that I share with her work. We would come up with a new formula for those of you might remember, and she would go off for five minutes and bring back a new. a new form, you know, pages of it. So, so what I could do though, as a legislator is submit a legislative sentiment, recognizing her 45 years of, um, of service to this community. I was going to say, she actually started in West bath and bath. I can't keep track of all the different iterations that all of this system included. So I don't know. Do you want to come along? I think you should. It's not very long. Wow, this wasn't supposed to happen. I know. So legislative sentiments, it's my honor to put these forward, to recognize people in our community. We

004all know that they're special, but they don't. you know the rest of the state doesn't necessarily know that until so we put this in so i'm going to read this state of maine be it known to all that we the members of the senate and house of representatives join in recognizing deborah clark of phippsburg on her retirement as the regional school unit 1 business manager after 45 years of service we extend our congratulations and best wishes and be it order that this official expression of sentiment be sent forthwith on behalf of the 132nd legislature and the people of the state of Maine given this 10th day of April 2026. I wanted to make sure it didn't show up on a calendar and somebody saw it. um and told you um signed by maddie daughtry president

005of the senate derek grant secretary of the senate ryan fecteau speaker of the house robert hunt clerk of the house introduced by myself gratefully and co-sponsored by senator tepler and also representative david sinclair who you may also remember as a member of this committee so thank you so much yeah thank you quite honored Thank you. I don't have much to add to what Allison has said, but I was on that committee, and Deb was a rock. We would have questions, and she would answer. I mean, the committee were wonderful. Part of the team, she was the cog in the wheel. And we're so grateful, and good luck in your retirement. Thank you very much. And clearly, we have never forgotten that. Oh, no. For a long time. Thank you very much. I'm quite honored. i

006didn't expect this tonight and uh it's been a wonderful career and um i just need to say see you later not goodbye right thanks so much thank you thank you um for that that was beautiful um yeah we're gonna miss you dub especially when we try to go into negotiations again. So let's go. But like you said, you're going to be local and you'll get pulled back in, I'm sure. Go ahead. Allison, I just want to share the comment that you made to me via email, which I think is worth repeating, that no offense, Patrick, but Deb was the smartest person in that room during cost sharing. That one will stick with me, but I don't disagree with you. That's true. That's good. Thank you, Allison. Thank you, Suki. It's great to have you both

007here. Okay, so moving forward here. First, we've got the minutes from our last meeting. Can I have any changes or can I have a motion? I move to approve the minutes as written. Okay, all in favor? Great. So a couple of small adjustments to the agenda. We are after 7.1. We're going to have 7.1A. And this is the what? Cube SAT? Yeah. Cube SAT. Sixth grade. Cube SAT. All right. So that's where we'll put that in between that and the literacy assessment results. And then right before good news, 8.1, 8.0A will be our student report. I'm Charlie. Okay. I think is that everything? Great. So with that, I do have a public session is next. Is there anyone here wanted to comment on anything or that's on the agenda today? Everybody's here for presentations. Okay.

008That's fine. Then moving forward, we'll start with the staff reports and we're going to start with 7.1, the code for Maine. I'll hand it over to Patrick. Yeah, Harper, come on up. We've been wanting to have Harper Steenstra come here for a little while to talk about the work that she's done with coding. And some of this work happened maybe or stemmed from her time at Bath Middle School, but most of this she's done on her own, and it's very impressive. So, Harper, without further ado, we appreciate you being here, and we look forward to this. Thank you. Okay. Hello. I'm Harper Steenstra. I'm a sophomore at Morris High School, and I'm also the founder of Code for Me with Ms. Willis. So to, I don't know how, can I click these to switch? So

009while Code for Me is not affiliated with RSU1, I come from RSU1 and we've also had students from RSU1. So we wanted to talk with you about what we're doing, what we can do with RSU1, and how we can support you. So to start, I was introduced to Scratch, which is a coding language in second grade by my librarian. And while that lasted for a week, it's an image-based coding language. It ended shortly after. And then once coding ended after I fell in love with it, a little later in sixth grade, I reestablished my love for coding by attending a Girls Who Code camp. And this is when I realized that I really want to continue coding. I did a little, so I learned Python throughout middle school through online classes and independent studies. These

010were all after the scratch out of RSU1. They were online and independent. And then in my freshman year, I went up to Miss Willis and asked her if we can do a camp for students on the language Python, which I had completed mostly online. So she said yes. So our first camp last year in summer in August, we hosted around 12 to 10 kids, taught them Python, and we had a huge success. Kids wanted more, not only continued camps, but also in their school. So I, throughout my, this year, first semester, I completed Harvard CS50 to learn over 10 coding languages, not just Python, but CSS, SQL, HTML, and a lot more. That way we can make more camps. So this summer, we're going to have three camps. We have our intro to Python, advanced

011Python, and intro to HTML, which, and so. Off of our intro to Python camp, we have our first textbook, which we can pass around as well. This is to not only teach students, but also their teachers. So teachers with no coding backgrounds can teach students just alongside themselves. So this takes them through a five-day curriculum, is in printed version and online versions, which was all created by myself. So here's a visual of the difference between Scratch and Python. There's many other coding languages, but Python is the one that I'm the strongest in, and we have the most curriculum in with two camps. So Scratch is visual-based, and this is meant to teach kids not only algorithms, how they work, but how computers process this code. These come in little blocks that are color-coded, and there's

012automatic visuals. But with Python, this is that transfer of taking something that a lot of teachers can put into their classrooms, which is why it's in a lot of elementary school classrooms, and then turning it into a printing language, which, while it's still English, it's almost treated as an entirely different language. That's why they're hard to learn. So, continuing, please. Thank you. So, Code for Me, we provide three camps currently. These are open to any student in really, everywhere. And we have a form process. And while there is a payment currently, we have scholarship opportunities where students are welcome to fill out a form and camp is free of any costs. We also just recently went to a Department of Education conference where we spoke to students across the state and taught them HTML and

013CSS. After our success with this camp, we created a handbook for teachers to take all of that example code and activities and gave it to a simple handbook that teaches them without any prior experience with neither coding, HTML, CSS. Then, excuse me, thank you, to continue my coding, not only my own personal career or journey, I guess, because I'm learning just alongside my students. I coded our website from scratch. So this has over five coding languages just in it itself. We have on our website, we have newsletters that I send out almost monthly every once in a while. We have our textbooks, our handbooks, and experiences that we've had from our camps to just share and try to get as many students as possible. And if you could continue, please. So. Code for me is

014going to be hard to continue. I understand that I'll graduate in two years and as many kids as we can get to learn coding, it's going to be hard to find a new person to replace myself. So I've started, and this started with a wild idea with Miss Willis, making an app that is, if you're familiar with, a Duolingo style. So this will allow students to go at their own pace learning. I think we have currently five languages that I'm working with, Python, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, and SQL. And all these languages will be on this app that you can continue at your own pace. And as an extra feature, we wanted to create a classroom style where teachers can create a classroom, add students, create lessons graded on there. That way it can be embedded

015into RSU1 or any other school system. So this also will be able to have their progress through challenges, and then it can, you know, assign lessons. So this is something that can directly be in RSU1 for teachers who are interested in having no need to learn any coding languages, but they can teach their students within their classroom settings. And continue, please. So this leads to one of my big messages is... On SCLC, we've talked a lot about banning MacBooks, and I know this is probably a current conversation for you guys. And while I don't want to explain my conclusion on that, I think that technology really does matter. Recently, Maine was ranked 43rd in the technology preparation, and I think that's something to think about. I really think that... While having constant technology surround students

016in school can be unsafe and unequal, it also is good to learn what's going on behind the computer and what's the computer doing, not always just relying on what the computer is and being able to just feed yourself with answers. One thing I've experienced with Chromebooks, which I've been given to by an RSC1, is that they can't handle those complex and advanced coding requirements. For example, SQL is a database-related coding language, which downloads large files and processes a lot of language. I've had to personally get my own computer. Actually, we've gone through like three now to get a MacBook that can handle this coding language. And I want this to be almost available for students who want to go. I'm fortunate enough that I was able to get that computer and be able to take

017technology and coding in the way I want it to go. But that access to technology helps students pursue what they want in coding. So my request for RSU1 in technology is to have... I would love to be, but a student advisor for technology and have a student's voice in what, what not, while every student should be having technology, also making sure those students who want to continue technology in the next step and into careers in college can have technology that is able to support those needs and support that extra level. So thank you very much and that's that's all cool for me. Yes Wow Wow, that's uh, that's fantastic. Carver. Thank you so much. That's really amazing. I think you better stay up there for a minute because People are gonna have lots of compliments

018and questions, but that is phenomenal stuff that you've been so you're actually rising junior, right? That's amazing I'm gonna hand over to the board first this is and who has comments questions Thank you. That was a wonderful presentation. And I grew up having to learn something called boss. And it's amazing that when you learn a language, it sticks with you. And so when I'm trying to figure things out. Sometimes I have to go to a prompt and write it out just so my muscle memory tells me what I'm kind of doing. So I think it's wonderful to add more languages. I was talking with some friends that I had in college, and they told me that every MIT class now is free online. Have you seen any of the course offerings? Yes, I'm familiar with

019those and Stanford's computer science. And what you're doing before is called pseudocode, and it's definitely a mental trick. Oh, it is. Oh, pseudocode. I'm coding. I'm not just old. I'm coding. Okay. Well, I went and looked at some of the MIT classes, and I think there's some great resources there. I hope they can help you at all in terms of what you can do without having to be a huge investment. So thank you for that. Patricia? Harper, where do you see yourself when you graduate? Well, while I don't know where I want to go to college, I know I really want to major in computer science and political science and really be as a policymaker for technology. But I just did a presentation actually for a final tomorrow about this. And I really want to

020be leading, you know, what technology is. consuming, I suppose, where who's who gets access, who should. Anyways, this is related to that. But yes, I definitely want to do computer science, but I also want to be in that policymaking towards what computer science is taking control of. That's fantastic. Katie? I'm curious with everything around AI and AI being able to code, sort of where you see the role of yourself in a few years with AI, because there's obviously a human role in it too, but I'm just curious what you and Ms. Willis have talked about around that issue. Yes, so AI is definitely not only present in computer science, but, you know, making a major role. Part of that presentation that I was doing as a policymaker was just... making policies around AI in tax

021fraud specifically. So it's controlling what AI controls. We've had discussions about AI, especially because it's extremely useful in debugging code, which means to find the error. Because, I mean, when you're reading through thousands and thousands of lines of code, it's hard to find that missing parentheses or semicolon. So I think that AI should only be used once you know how to code. If it does the code for you and it teaches it enough so you don't even know how to code yourself, that's taking away that learning and, you know, the code itself. And I think that's important to think about as we continue to implement AI into our jobs and even students especially. Great. Kurt? The camp idea is really cool and it's really great that you're trying to... spread that to other people. How

022did you make the leap from just having the personal interest to trying to, you know, help others and get other people younger than you excited about it? Sure. Yeah, I really like to sit with ideas and just see myself go. When I started, especially in like fourth to fifth grade, I learned about Google Sites and I could make a website for anything. So while I didn't publish a lot of these ideas, I liked to be able to make like a professional area that I could, you know, publish. And so I started doing that with a Code For Me website. And then I was like, oh, I definitely want to do this. Then I made posters all before even talking to Miss Willis. So I had to talk to her. say it was a draft even

023though I had almost everything printed and made. It was very exciting. So yes. Anyone else? That is fantastic. That's just really great work. And so it sounds like... I'm assuming you're already talking with your teachers about what role you can play as a student to help. And it sounds like from what you were saying, it's not that you think everyone should have a MacBook, but if there were a few MacBooks available, that's what you're looking at. Someone who wants to go that next step. If there are a few computers that could do that, that would be in a designated place or class. When you're doing the camps, how long are the camps? What's the logistics? Is it a week? Is it two weeks? What is it? So our intro to Python camp is five days

024and two hours each day. Each camp kind of changes towards what we want the end goal to be. So our intro to HTML camp is a total of three days and two hours each camp. And then the advanced Python is, again, three days and two hours each camp. We kind of decide based on what the pace is going to be at. The intro to Python is pretty a slower pace, but we also at the end, the last day, we do a presentation day to get students out of their comfort zone and sharing their game or their activity that they made with parents. And we found that to be a big success, not only because the students who are attending these camps can be a little more timid and shy. And we've seen kids just find

025their passion while. presenting to a group that they would not normally do. But for our HTML and advanced Python, we don't have a presentation day. That's why they're a little shorter. But they're all a two-hour set of time, which we found to be very successful because we can have a snack break in between. But there's also enough time that you can get into your coding and not have to stop and go home. And maybe they don't have the iPad that we give them there. They might. So yeah, it gives them enough time. Well, that's really fantastic. We look forward to hearing what your, the teachers and staff, how you're going to implement this and, you know, before you get recruited by a college. So that's really wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing. This is

026very exciting stuff and we look forward to the next steps and, you know, whatever we can do to support, you know, this moving forward. That's fantastic. Thank you. We also have Maine Public, a journalist, is coming to one of our August meetings. Oh, fantastic. So you might see a little more on that later. Oh, that's wonderful. Yeah. congratulations on all that you're doing it's very impressive thank you very much thank you for your time thank you okay you want to take this so next up we have katie willis here with some sixth grade students that are going to explain their cubesat competition you guys want to come on up So these are my sixth grade ELS. We've changed the name of gifted and talented to ELS which is extended learning services because we wanted to

027kind of get away from the label of just GT to really show in how you can extend learning experiences for students who have the motivation and the passion to do so. So this is my sixth grade ELS from BMS. I'll let you start. Hi, my name is Miles. Today I'm going to be presenting one of the biggest projects that we've done all year. It's called the CubeSat. We partnered with USM to build this. Yeah, so basically we 3D printed a huge, not huge, I mean a tiny 10 by 10 by 10 centimeter cube that's weigh less than 300 grams, costs less than $150, and most impressively have to be able to operate in conditions up to 90,000 feet in the air. And this year is us working on it in a 3D printing website called

028Tinkercad. And one of the people that helped us and got us the mechanisms that we needed and the prototypes was Scott Eaton. And he was a professor at the University of Southern Maine. So these are the roles and responsibilities of the group. So Princess was the manager. She like helps. with like everything basically. I was a member, Sawyer was a member, Joby was an advisor, and Miles was an analyst. The responsibilities of our group that we each did was Sawyer worked on the 3DE design and like Tinkercad for the actual like what it looks like and like yeah. Joby had a lot of the ideas of how it was going to work. I worked on the balloon in the final thing. We had the balloon in it, and I was working with the physics on

029it. Miles helped with everything, and Princess helped with the NASA logo that we made on it. So the seed drop challenge is the challenge that we did. There was multiple challenges during the CubeSat. In the seed drop challenge, we had to create a mechanism to eject at least 10 seeds from the CubeSat somewhere during flight. To succeed, we had to have two or less seeds left in the CubeSat when we recovered it. This is the original prototype that we made. Well, actually, no, that is. And this is Joby working on measuring the amount of weight for the actual CubeSat because it had to be a special. given set of weight for it to like go up and a lot of the original designs involved this door would like pop open and the seats would fall

030out but certain mechanisms didn't always work so we had to make a newer model that was a little less technical. The final design was this and we had a lot of little pins stuck to these points on the inside which when the balloon expanded in the atmosphere the pins would pop it and the balloon had all the seeds inside so that when the balloon fell out of the many holes the challenge would be complete even if not always in the best manner. Hi I'm Joby and this is the pre-flight test that we had to take to get our CubeSat registered for the test. We had three main factors. This is the practice drop where we had to simulate it dropping, where we dropped our CubeSat into bubble wrap to see if it would survive. Then

031we had to weigh our CubeSat in and then make sure it was under 300 grams. Then we put our CubeSat in a vacuum chamber to simulate it. So to simulate what it would be like in space. There's a lot of them. We had a flight track issue where the balloon would start in Farmington, go to the coast and pop and then land in the water. So we had to move the flight to Sunday, which this was it, where it came and popped here and came and landed right in a marsh by Owl Box. And this is the takeoff. Hi, my name is Princess, and these are the things that we learned. So first, we learned how to persevere when things got difficult, like us having to change our plan a few days before the launch.

032Next was hardworking. We started working harder to find some other ideas. After that, we shared our thoughts and ideas to each other. And the last one was optimism. When we were nervous about our balloon and the cube that would pop too soon or wouldn't pop at all, we still had courage. Now here are some quotes about failure. If plan A doesn't work, the alphabet has 25 more letters. And you know what's great about hitting rock bottom? There's only one way left to go, and that's up. We chose these codes just in case because we kept on, like, having to restart. And these were here as, like, reminders to keep on going. Okay. So we were the only team out of three that our cubes that worked. Like, we got all the Cs dispersed. That's cool

033video. Uh, anybody have questions for them while we're watching them? How what was the time period? How long did this take? When did you start? Wow, so it was over coming because yeah That's amazing going up into the atmosphere Yeah, that first design had a door the second design Less things to go wrong. Yeah. And the first one we had a lot of mechanics and machines. And the second one, it was just a balloon and pins. Which happened to be on the thing that was going to pop. Yeah, it was going to come up to the balloon. Oh, my gosh. When you originally got this assignment, the balloon was as big as this room? Yeah. When Miss Willis first told you all you would be doing this, what did you think? Is this an annual

034challenge? For USM. For USM? That's fantastic. How much time did you have to, like from the start of the project to, was it a matter of weeks, a couple months? Two months. Some schools are veterans at this, and they do it every year. But they're already accepting it. That's great. Especially because it's the first time and it was successful. That's phenomenal. Congratulations to all of you. That's fantastic. Go ahead, Kurt. That's pretty cool. Does that happen during the day or is it after school? It happens during their class time, which is my wind block. So if other students are interested in participating, is that something they could do? We have printers in their ELS room. So we have two and we have like. just next door so we have a lot of 3d printers and

035that's actually what we do like when we're not working with keeps that i do a lot of 3d printing stuff so you're the university of maine's 3d printed entire actually cool amazing okay well thank you very much that was fantastic you all did a great job presenting did you any comment uh fantastic job presenting not easy to do um itself aside from the fact that the project's fantastic so thanks and i look forward to seeing what you all come up with next thank you great um patrick what do we have next yeah next we're going to move to more staff reports but we have Beth Kayser coming up next to talk about our literacy assessment results. Yeah. Hi, everybody. It's nice to see you. I was thinking about presenting today and I was remembering. couple

036years ago I came to present about you fly data when we first got started it was in our first year soon after and now here we are time flew by and I'm telling you about our updates now and I remember then someone asked me the question I think it was you Kurt I can't remember but someone asked like are you gonna continue to monitor the data to see how things are going and This is the answer to that, I think. Before we get started, though, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about what our staff has been doing. Implementing any new program takes a lot of work. There's a lot of layers to it. And I'm just going to share some quick highlights about some of the things that we've done to make

037this implementation as successful as we can. So just a reminder, when I talk about UFLY, that is a research-based evidence phonics program. And it was developed by Dr. Holly Lane at the University of Florida Learning Institute. That's where UFLY comes from. And when we first were learning about it, we weren't even sure how to say what it was. Like, we weren't even sure how to say it. Like, is it oofle? Like, what do we call it? But it's UFLY. It's intended for kindergarten through second grade classroom instruction and can be used for supplemental instruction within K-2 and for older grade levels. And that's important because we're using it in our classrooms for K-2. Every single classroom is teaching it, but then also our interventionists are teaching it for students who need support. And our special

038ed teachers also have access in training so that it's really connected for students. They're not learning from a different scope and sequence or different language describing the same skills. It's more connected for them. We had a full district implementation for K2 that started in 23-24, which I know many of you know. And then this school year, our second grade is the first class that has had all three years of the UFLY scope and sequence. I had a fun moment at Phippsburg. I was walking by, the door was open, and I heard Sarah Williams, our second grade teacher there, saying to her kids, like, this is a big deal. You guys are the first class to finish UFLY. And I was just kind of smiling, like, yeah, that is a big deal. I'm glad kids are

039noticing that, too. Go ahead. So here's some of the work that we've done. And those of you who know, this is an older picture. So some of this stuff is no longer with us. But one of the things that's been really important is that we train any new staff coming in every year, including interventionists, special ed teachers, and classroom teachers. So everybody is on the same page. Something else that we've done is provided decodable books. Those are books that are aligned with the phonics patterns that we're teaching. So it gives kids another opportunity to read a story that has lots of opportunities to practice what they're learning. And so in our second year, we were able to distribute these to classrooms and intervention rooms and special ed classrooms. And those little post-its. are the lessons

040that they're aligned to. So every classroom got an organized set that they could pull, that teachers could pull out as needed. This is another thing that we did is our occupational therapists are just a wealth of knowledge in terms of handwriting development and fine motor skills. And UFLY became our handwriting curriculum because it teaches letter formation and kids develop at different rates. And at times, teachers and interventionists in special ed want to differentiate and may need support to figure out like, well, what's the best thing to do here? And so one of our occupational therapists, Sheena, met with me, planned a presentation, and then met with our interventionists and shared, you can see that little box there, shared a toolbox for each interventions classroom. And that way interventionists could intervene in the same way that

041like an OT might. which is pretty important when you're developing handwriting skills to have that kind of support for advice. Some other things we did, we in our grade level teams on professional development days, we read UFLY because it's from the University of Florida with Dr. Holly Lane and her team. They're producing research around the implementation and the success of it. And they They published research around the fidelity of the teaching and the impact that has on student learning. So we read that and then we reflected on our own practices using the same kind of checklist that they had used in the study. So that was really helpful. We also, as grade level teams, spent a couple times, we made multiple iterations of a list of strategies that we could use to differentiate. in areas

042that come up as places where kids may need more support. We also, our tech team helped us and we recorded some teachers teaching UFLY lessons and then we watched them as a grade level team and paused it and talked about where we were having problem spots or noticing things that, oh, you know, I hadn't tried that before. This is how I do that. And so we were able to collaborate and reflect on our own practices. Something else we've done, we do an assessment called DIBELS. I know I've come and talked to you guys about that before. And that aligns so well with our instruction in DIBELS because it measures early foundational literacy skills. And that's what we're teaching in UFI. And so we give that three times a year in fall, winter, and spring. And

043after our fall and winter testing windows, we got together as grade level teams as a district. So K-5 and looked at. Each grade level team looked at their own data and came up with celebrations, things that they noticed, and possible next steps based on that. We also learned about and implemented the UFLY portal, which is another, what would you call it? It's not an app, but it is a support that just came out last year, and it helps teachers to analyze their progress monitoring. So Dr. Holly Lane and her team noticed that teachers are really good at giving progress monitoring, at scoring it, but it's the time that it takes to figure out what the next steps are. And so the UFLY portal does that for them. So you can scan in the student data,

044and then it tells you how to group your students. and how to use the UFLY materials to differentiate and to follow up. So we implemented that just this year in the fall. And then we also, I learned from a researcher that I follow, Dr. Matt Burns, who researches interventions and their effectiveness. And he has a protocol for something called repeated reads, which helps students who are accurate, like they can read the words, but they're not automatic. And we need our students to get fluent. We need them to get automatic so that they can free up their working memory to think about comprehension and deeper thinking. So we learned a way to do that as well. And then interventionists and special education teachers had an opportunity, had several opportunities to collaborate with each other around specific

045students that they brought to the table for us to all problem solve or to brainstorm around in terms of progress. And then they also learned how to use the UFLY portal and develop UFLY aligned teaching tools with that resource. So the last professional work I wanted to talk about is one that I just find so exciting and I love. We do voluntary teacher book clubs each year in the spring and teachers get together after school. We meet like between six to eight times and we read an entire book and we talk about it each time we meet. These are the books that we met about in 25-26. And the numbers next to them are how many teachers were involved. And this is a great opportunity to learn in a volunteer, like everybody does it because

046they want to. And the discussions we have are pretty rich. People talk about what stood out to them, what affirmed their thinking, what really questioned their thinking. And then we talk about how we want to apply it in our classroom. And each time we meet, we talk about. Well, what did you try and how did it go? So it's a great learning experience. These are the books we read in 25-26. And then the next slide talks about the books we read the year before. And then the last slide talks about the books we read in our first book clubs in 23-24. All right. So if you move to the next slide, now we're going to move into the data. So that's just a quick explanation of some of the highlights of some of the PD

047that we've done around literacy, mostly talking about UFLY, but also just in general, looking at our data, thinking about our next steps. Now I want to share with you some data. So I'm going to be sharing with you DIBLES data. And like I said, it's given three times a year. It's considered kind of like a gold standard of an assessment because it meets a lot of requirements. It's quick. Often they're one-minute assessments. It's highly researched. It's been researched for decades. And it helps us know how our kids are doing in terms of gaining these very important early foundational skills. We use it for two things. We use it for benchmarking. That means those three times of year we can look and see like, okay, where do students fall in terms of are they below the

048benchmark? Are they well below? Are they at? Are they above? And then we also use it for screening. It helps us know who do we need to look at for a possible need for interventions. So, oops, sorry, can you go back just once? Before we look at the data, I want to make sure you guys know what these colors mean. So we talk about DIBELS data often as colors. We say like, oh, they're in the red or they're in the green. The red means well below benchmark, and that means students will likely benefit from interventions. If we don't do anything, they're probably going to score below the 20th percentile the next time we test them. So we need to do something different to kind of change that trajectory. Yellow means students will likely benefit from

049typical classroom differentiation. So if you think about resources, they will benefit from like what a classroom teacher would do in their classroom, meeting with a small group, giving more opportunities to practice. And then green, and it doesn't have blue, but the above is in blue. We often combine those. Those are students who are benefiting from typical classroom instruction, which we call Tier 1. It means like our classroom instruction is doing its job. Does that make sense? Okay, so now let's look at the data. So this is our DIBLES data from this year. So BOI is beginning of year, EOI is end of year, and then the percentage that I have at the end there is the total of the green and the blue combined. In any RTI system, we want to see a percentage around

05080%. Now, that being said, a lot of people who write about RTI say, you know, that's hard to achieve. It's not often that we see that. But we want to see a percentage around 80% because that means 80% of our students are getting their needs met in the classroom by their classroom teacher. And that means that we have a system that can... adequately provide needs for the other students who need support. That's why we look at that in that way. So if you look at kindergarten, you know, we assume some had had instruction, some hadn't. But at the beginning of the year, 55% were showing, you know, the highest level of risk and that they were going to need something different than basic classroom instruction. But that's also expected. It's kindergarten. It's September. We haven't

051had a chance to instruct them yet. So then if you look at the end of the year. That is a really nice change. We see then 60% of our students are at or above grade level. And then if you look at first grade, one of the things I look at for beginning of year is how ready were they when they came in? Because it kind of reflects what we did in kindergarten too. So look at that beginning of the year, 59% of our kids came in at or above benchmark. And then at the end of the year, 79%. And particularly look at that 7% in the red. That's a lot of work to help students. get out of that red range. And I also meant to mention this is most of our students. So virtually

052all of our students are reflected in this data. Students who have IEPs, students who are in interventions. Even though it's a screening tool, we also use it for benchmarking. So we try to capture as many kids as we can when we do this assessment. And then looking at second grade, we see 69% came in at or above benchmark, and we ended the year with 79%, which is so close to that 80% that we're really striving for. So that's our data from this year for K-2. If you go to the next slide. Like I mentioned, this is our third year of implementing U of I. It's our first time that we have a second grade class that got the benefit of having the kindergarten, first grade, and second grade instruction. And so if we look at

053this, this is basically the same group of students minus any students who moved out or came in. So we see that cohort in 23-24. Then we see them in 24-25. and then we see them this year. So that second grade data is the same data you just saw for second grade, but this is the same group of kids, what they look like in first grade and in kindergarten. Does that make sense in terms of what you're seeing? So again, what's interesting to me is how we see them change over time and basically become more and more ready for classroom instruction as we move through. The next, the last one I didn't want to leave out, three through five. So this is our main through year assessments, our main state assessment that we start in third

054grade. And this is from last year because it takes a while to get our data. certified or like it takes a while from this date and we don't have it from this year yet but if you look we look at the third grade from last year so this group of students had you fly only in second grade and you can see the red is below and the blue is at or above so I didn't separate the below into the well below or below and then right below you can see what the state averages or the state scores are. And you can see the difference for RC1 and for the state. And then you can also see the fourth and fifth, which is important to look at, but also to know that they hadn't had the

055intervention or not the intervention, but the UFlight curriculum. Thank you. So the last thing I just wanted to share our next steps. So we have as part of one of our book groups, actually, the big words book group, we were kind of reflecting on our word work curriculum in grades three through five. And we were reading research about the science of reading. And we were thinking, you know, is our curriculum currently, which is spelling connections, really meeting the needs of what we're reading about? And we weren't, we're not. we're not sure, but we were thinking we wanted to have something that covered more of the layers of word learning. So like morphology, Greek and Latin roots, like those kinds of things that teach us more about words and focus on decoding and spelling or reading

056and spelling. And so lo and behold, we went to look and the UFLY group. has a curriculum coming out in the fall for third through fifth. That's kind of like a continuation of that scope and sequence. It's coming out year by year. So next year, third grade will be available, then fourth the following year, and then fifth. And so we're excited. I asked the third grade teachers about piloting, and most of them wanted to give that a try. So we're going to try that next year. We're also extending our Bridge to Writing program, which we currently have in K-3. We're extending that to four and five. And then we'll continue the work of using data to guide our instructional decisions, working collaboratively to do that and learning from each other. And then continuing to work

057on integrating literacy and content throughout our instructional day because the whole purpose of learning to read is learning to understand. And we want our kids to be able to have many opportunities to do that with real application. I'm happy to take any questions. Well, that's really great. Really comprehensive. Thank you for all that. That's some wonderful results and must feel good when you invest all the time into that and you're like, hey, this really works. Yeah. Who has comments? Katie, did you? So many questions. Okay, so for UFLY, when you are implementing it, are teachers learning both their level and the level behind and the level ahead so they can kind of see the progression? Are teachers in the third grade having access to the second grade curriculums to see how that implements it? Were

058you surprised? And it's three part one, five. There was one of the slides that showed a significant difference from end of year second to beginning year third. I think there was like one place that seemed to drop more than the others. And did you have any kind of theories about that? Thank you. Sure. So the UFLY scope and sequence is actually designed to have a lot of overlap. So where kindergarten ends, first grade picks up and not just for like a week or two, but for like a whole first trimester. And so they recognize that kids need repeated practice with these skills. And so naturally, the first grade teachers know about what kindergarten taught, at least a part of it. And it continues. And then the first year we implemented when we had a grade

059level day, our third grade teachers watched our video of our second grade teacher teaching UFLY. And so they got to see what their kids had. done. We do have UFLY manuals available for them. However, it is a 30, it's a 30 minute class. And so using that, it's more important, I think, to know what's being taught and to know how it's being taught so you can intervene. But we don't have our third grade teachers teaching UFLY. Does that answer that question? In terms of your last question, so those data sources are very different. So DIBLS is looking at screening. When we're looking at at or above, we're looking at kids who are at risk, where the other data is NAWIA data. So it's looking at kids being able to read passages on the screen, being

060able to answer complex questions about it. And so it's actually more of a comprehension. I mean, all those things come into being able to comprehend, but it's measuring different things. And so I am not surprised to see a lower percentage, but I am pleased to see that it is looking higher than our state. And I think it's something that we can continue to, you know, keep monitoring and strive for, especially as we work to build in more comprehension in three through five. Not to build in more, but to look at it more, especially with. the word origins. Once kids shift to like three through five, a big indicator of their success is vocabulary. And this is a program that's really going to support that. I'm knowing, you know, like building curiosity about words, but also

061knowing like, okay, this is a word that I don't know. Don't gloss over it. Like, let's take time to figure it out. Not that our kids are doing that, but this will build that curiosity and that skills even more, build those skills even more. You're welcome. uh katie um yeah thanks for that presentation beth um question about i guess the well two questions one is is the data you know the testing is it backed up by the qualitative uh information from the teachers you know because you know tests aren't necessarily going to prove out everything or account for everything and you're nodding so we can skip to the second question do you want to well i'm happy to talk about that one Yeah, so this is one data point. I'm glad you brought that up

062because it's so important that we look at multiple data points, especially if we're looking at readers who may not be, you know, achieving in a way that we want them to. And so we have other ways to look to a follow-up to this is we give a phonics screener, which is untimed. These are timed. And that tells us like, okay, is this that automaticity issue where kids can do it, but they need more practice? Or could it be processing? Or is it that that was a bad one minute and this is telling us something different? We also, in our Bridge to Writing program, which we were so excited about because it incorporates grammar, teachers, when we were doing shared scoring, talked about how the sentence writing that they're seeing kids do has improved. substantially from

063before. And they think it's attributed to both bridge to writing, but also UFLY because there's dictation that's a part of that every lesson and it's part of the progress monitoring. So kids are writing sentences with feedback a lot, starting in kindergarten. So those are some of the ways that people are seeing other examples of the UFLY success that aren't necessarily DIBLS data. Does that answer your question? Yeah, thank you. Yeah, and then a follow-up is that the data about the state averages, comparisons to the state average you're talking about, was it... about students that have had you fly. You can see that change. Do you know if other districts in the state are using have started using you fly around the same time as us or I don't know about the same time. I know

064there are some that probably are, but I know around us it was coming maybe a little bit after and I will say that you know our ELA committee and. UFLY is considered educative, which I love that word. I learned it when I was learning about UFLY. I'd never used it before. But it's a curriculum that not only is good for kids and incorporates the science of reading, but it also teaches the teachers as they're doing it. And any part of something being educative is really building in all these layers of supports and teaching. So we spent the whole first spring before we implemented learning about the science of learning behind the curriculum. And I think I'm not sure that other districts I don't I don't know what their implementation has looked like in terms of

065that, but the enthusiasm about you fly is. I mean, it's just for someone in my role, it's really exciting because not, you know, when you first start something, there's always going to be people that are like, what is this? You know, like, what are you asking me to do? And then as we saw the success of our students, it really is something that has a lot of strong energy, good, positive energy around it among our teachers. You're welcome. Beth is being far too humble, and she's representing all of our teachers' hard work. But for people, I'm guessing, who don't look at a lot of educational data sets, for us to have in three years have... If you imagine each one of those rows is roughly 100 students, all kinds of students. So we have students

066who are learning English for the first time. We have students with very severe identified disabilities. We have students with various trauma backgrounds. If you imagine each of those rows to be 100 kids and only 7 to 14 of them. are not on grade level, that is truly an extraordinary. And those are students who we do have, even in this point where we're very leanly staffed, there were special educators and interventionists who can help those because of the strong instruction that she sort of launched in all of our classrooms. And so I guess I would just say, you know, the achievement gap. in districts that have higher poverty is something that's spoken about a lot and this is evidence of with good instruction both for teachers and students your background doesn't necessarily have to drive what

067your achievement can be and that 79 is truly extraordinary so I don't think Beth would ever say that, but I'll say it for her. Well, can I just add that like when we look at this data, we get to see the classroom view as we finish. We get to see like a classroom's data as it goes from the fall to the spring and it's a summer review. And that I should have brought one to show you because it is so exciting to see because there's so much that goes into it. My heart was just swelling with so much happiness for our teachers and our interventionists and our special ed teachers because they're the ones doing. all of this work of implementing this with such fidelity and also going back and revisiting again and again for

068kids who aren't making the expected progress. And that's what you see when you see that 7% in the red. It's like that is so much work that went into moving a group along and then looking to see like what else do we need to do here? How can we collaborate? Who can we reach out to? Yeah, it's very exciting to see from year to year. Well, that is phenomenal. Thank you so, so much for that. And I think just to add one more thing, it'll be really neat to be able to look at this spring's NUIA scores just because we'll have another whole year. You can already see they were trending in the right direction, but we'll have a whole other year's worth of all the hard work of all these people, and hopefully it

069will be reflected in July. In July. Yeah. Great. We'll look forward to that update. I would just say tremendous growth by our students and Beth, our teachers, special ed teachers, interventionists, Katie's plan with Beth. You know, one of the best moves we made as a district is having Beth in this role. And I would share that when I just met with a retiree, who I meet with every year when they retire, you know, one person I said, who's a mentor that you look up to? And the person got emotional and said Beth Kayser. And I'll say this, that they said she knows how to support us, but she also knows how to push us to do what we need to do, what's best for kids. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

070We're pumping the presentations at you tonight. So next we're going to shift from good student data to AI. And we have Abby Lukes here and we have Melissa Collins, and they're going to give you a brief presentation. In your packet, you have the guidelines. And we just felt with Dean's help with the committee this year that we felt like this was the way to go instead of a policy because the AI is ever changing, as we all know. And this is something that the tech committee. did a lot of work on looking at other districts, but came up with this draft. And our hope is that you can ask questions tonight. Hopefully I don't need a vote on it, but this is what we plan to use next year with our students and staff. And

071we are kicking off opening day with a keynote speaker and a lot of our professional development next year will be on AI. So thank you for being here. I think we're all set. Patrick just filled in. We'll give you a little background as to how we got there. the tech committee is there's 11 of us on it so this year and we're comprised of staff from all the cross-section of the district so there's elementary middle school high school admin tech staff on it and we had the chance to meet four times in the winter spring and the focus was ai for all of those meetings both learning and then also doing some crafting stuff okay So I wanted to make a disclaimer because I know that this is kind of a hot issue right now.

072Some people are really excited about AI. Some people are terrified. And I am going to get into the survey results because we did do a staff survey. But I just wanted to say that we're proud that RSU1 is always proactive in addressing emerging technologies, as we heard tonight, which I didn't expect to hear such amazing presentations, but that was impressive. We did spend a lot of time, as she said, discussing AI. Dean provided us with a lot of great articles kind of on both. sides of the conversation benefits and concerns and it's important to note that our goal is not to push ai into classrooms but just to create a clear understanding of expectations for students and staff if they choose to use it so i needed to say that should i get into the

073yeah so we've had um like the The February and March meetings were crafting this survey and then looking at the results as a committee. And 75% of the participants were instructional staff. And the survey addressed many concerns, but was also hopeful about its use in education. Some of the concerns included reduced critical thinking, problem solving, academic dishonesty, and reliability of information. And then some people did also get into like... like the environmental impacts and societal concerns. And then on the flip side, the benefits that came out of the survey were personalized learning, differentiation, time-saving and efficiency for teachers, use as a student tool, skill development, and enhancing instruction. Yeah, so once we had an idea of where our staff was, we did decide we should have some guidelines. We weren't going to be policymakers. And

074so we went and we looked at what other districts have already established, both in Maine. We also looked at some other states' works going on in one of the Carolinas. And we decided, first, we wanted short and sweet. We did not want an epically long document, something that people could look at. um a one-pager and it is because there's staff guidelines if you look at the document and then there's also student guidelines and like melissa said this is not something that we're trying to push out to people but just there are concerns so or questions around it so this is something that that people can reference and um And I will say with those survey results, a lot of people who replied, I would say in the majority, they're not really using it yet. So

075that's why we know we need the PD because as Harper, Harper's using it to check the debug her code. So we know it's part of our current existence. And so to give our staff some professional development around it, and Katie had been at a... conference where she heard somebody speak and so that individual has already been lined up for the start of the start of the school year professional development for the 26-27 year and then some professional time will be built in to help our staff And we did, did you mention the developmentally appropriate? We did talk a lot about like what's developmentally appropriate and what ages should be using this. And I mean, we're all in agreement that we're, you know, we're not having kids in elementary school use AI. But I know I

076work in Phippsburg and a lot of the staff that I work with are not comfortable using it. There's a few people in my building that use it often and effectively and we help each other. But there's a few people that didn't realize that our tech or. that Dean, whoever created, purchased the Jarvis, which is like a closed wall garden system that's confidential FERPA compliant. So it's like, you know, we still have a lot to learn as a staff too, of how we can use it. And yeah. So I'm sure people have questions. Yeah, maybe we should. Any questions? That's what we did this year. Just a little bit of work. Yeah, any questions on where we are? Yeah, go ahead, Pat. Did you have AI look this over? Well, this is our work. We did

077take this and put it into AI. And so there's like a very... aesthetically appealing and even shorter document that you could like post, but we didn't really feel like it looked like we'd worked that hard. And there was a lot of, you know, talking about what should be in there. But so we, yes, we did while working on things. And if there's something people wanted to hang in their classroom, there is a poster sized thing that was made by, yeah, an infographic that was beautified. It did consolidate it to just a few things. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Any other questions? No, I mean, I think AI, it's a big issue, right? So I think AI has a lot of positive, and it can be very helpful for educators. But again, there are some concerns about, you

078know, the creative thinking and, you know, copy and pasting, that sort of thing. So you have a heavy lift. Some interesting conversations came up. I can't remember who brought it up. They had a son in college and just she shared with us like how college teachers are using it. Like I think her example was like using it to to prescore a paper before you pass it in to see like what a possible grade might be and how like and then giving you some ideas of how you could edit it before before it's graded. And there was a few things that came up in our discussion that I thought were interesting. just people being creative, like using it to outline. So I don't know. I think if teachers have more of those ideas of how we

079can help students and like creating rubrics ahead of time, like is AI allowed? Yes or no. If it is, how is it allowed? And being very specific about what your expectations are so students know how or if they can use it. And for the student guideline, that is the first thing is check with your teacher too. make sure, what does it say? Seek instructor guidance first. So that's, that's great. So this is, so you're saying this is, we do not need to vote on this. More bringing it to your questions. Yeah. Kind of guidelines. Charlie, I don't know if you, I don't want to put you on the spot, but any thoughts you have on AI just in general or having some guidelines for students and staff, obviously. Yeah, I think it definitely seems like

080a really helpful idea to have those guidelines because I know I've experienced a lot of different student and teacher opinions and beliefs on how it should be used. I have a wide range of teachers. Some tell you that if they see AI even open as a different tab on your computer, that you're going to fail the assignment that you were working on, even if you weren't using it because they're worried about it that much. But others say that they want you to use it as a resource as appropriate. So I think just since it's so new, getting on the same page is a good idea. And there's obviously a lot of students who are using it with not the best practices. But like Harper was talking about, it can be used in good ways too.

081So it's just interesting. Anyone else? Kurt? Thanks for that presentation. What's the plan moving forward, I guess? Is this going to be, how often will you meet to talk about? The evolution of AI, you know, when the next thing drops and everyone's excited. The goal is for the tech committee to continue to meet about four times a year. We had those half days, so the afternoons release time so we could meet. And I think it's how admin is going to allow some slice of PD time. There's also new literacy stuff being launched. So how that can fit in. for the staff. I'm sure it's going to be an ongoing discussion because things are changing all the time. Yeah, go ahead. You know, I'm amazed is that if you have something read, a piece of something

082you've written for just content, it changes your voice. It changes your voice into something that is just not familiar to. I use it to check my grammar sometimes in writing at work, and it takes out every kind of phrase that makes me who I am. And it's just really frustrating that I would like it to be able to just say, you know, do I have subject verb agreement everywhere? And are there like run on sentence or something? But it takes out every tiny, you know, thing that it does. I've been using the same one for six years now, five years now, kind of, and it doesn't like the verb side by each. And side by each is a main phrase. And I was like, I want this to be in here. And I tell it

083to learn it and it doesn't. Maybe I'm doing it wrong. But sometimes if you add a little phrase of something that someone knows about, you soften the whole communication. So I wish there was a way to like have it have a main vocabulary. Just plug that in and say these things are accepted versus not. But thank you for the work. I think it is very important. So it sounds like this will become like an agenda item when you're meeting each time. Yeah, I don't know. So it sounds like, like I said, this will be the agenda item. This is a great beginning to having all of this together. So as Charlie mentioned, we get on the same page in the fall. Thank you, Katie, for getting that speaker coming in. In the fall, that's going

084to be great. It's a good way to kick that off and then get this going and then maintain the discussion. I think that's all we can do as things continue to evolve. thank you very much appreciate it all right one more and next we have a report on the district educational plan and mary moran's here and stacy chabuck i really wish you guys would stop putting us last because it's so boring after every all the good stuff and also i almost feel like we could just thumbs up and leave because tonight showed this is working so congratulations to all of us um no but in all seriousness um Stacey and Eric is going to kind of go over the gist of the update and then if you have questions I'm going to kind of go

085quickly enough and then if you have stuff to share. But wanted to start with we as you guys know have revised the education plan so 2026 to 2030. We had a whole process where we went through mildly archaic in sort of a funny way but it worked where we just kind of went through and as a team just kind of decided which of our action steps still needed to be there. Where were they merging? So it was pretty laborious in a good way. Like it was pretty thorough the way we went through everything. And then majority of the changes or updates. And feel free to chime in. Some of it was semantics, like going from teachers to staff. You know, some of it was those things to make sure it was more inclusive. And then

086we also found that we had multiple action steps and various goals that we could kind of merge or needed to put in the right exact place, which I thought was honestly pretty impressive, considering this is revision two, that those things were obvious enough once we went through it, but along the way, it all made sense. And. The final one that you guys will get will be obviously the finished product, but there were very few action steps that went away. More things were merged, and then some things went from creating to maintaining. So those were the primary things that you'll see if you haven't already. But then I'm just going to pop right into goal one and did a little bit as a team, and then Katie went through a lot because obviously we don't all

087get the K-12 perspective. But for goal one, to ensure the high-quality educators and administrative... excuse me, administrators in each building. Again, I'm not going to go through every bullet, so feel free to ask questions. But maintaining hiring procedures in place. I think the biggest one for this school that's sort of varied is if you look at things to consider, as we talked a lot about really differentiating the PD, especially like everyone's talked about tonight, we have so many new programs and so many different needs and new staff to old staff. And sometimes the data will show one thing in one building or something else in another building. So pushing that forward, I think was gonna honestly help all the educators in this district kind of do better with their own practice. As far as the

088vertical grouping for the things to consider, it's come up quite a bit too that the desire's there. And I know Katie's worked at this a lot is trying to make sure it's an advantageous thing, not doing it just because we want it. And so that hopefully will evolve over time to make more sense. And the mentoring program, that was probably one of the most common things that at every building we saw a need for improving. And as you'll see in this, there's been a lot of work done and kind of step one with those revised thing are proving to be effective. And yet I know it'll still be ongoing and checked in on. So we are maintaining our high quality educators and administrators. And goal two. To develop meaningful and engaging curriculum and sound instructional

089practice. I mean, I think some of it we just saw here tonight and certainly with Beth's presentation. And bringing in, like we talked about, bridge to writing. I can speak for myself, but I know four and five are super psyched for this, especially with the grammar. And then there's just a lot of different changes happening. The middle school changing up the grades, I think from what I understand, there's a lot of positives with that going back to letter grades. The digital mapping, the curriculum mapping, which, you know, it's been in the district for so long as ebbed and flowed, and now it's in a good place, and now it's just maintaining it and kind of keeping it as a living document. Abby and Melissa talked about AI, which fell under here. And then just quickly,

090the last two, the things to consider on these. As you guys know all too well, we're going to have fewer staff in each building. I mean, some more significant than others, but just really being creative in how we can collaborate to ensure we're... adequately meeting needs, not just legally meeting needs. So that would obviously this year in particular, but moving in forward, I'm going to guess that will be ongoing. And then the other with the APP program in the middle school at BMS. I just know from honestly being at these meetings and seeing the high school present, I would say the bulk of us are so excited. Like why wait till high school when there's so much more that could be done sooner? And just hearing of some of the students and the impact it's

091had has been a game changer for so many of these kids. So obviously that continuing. And that's it. Stacey, you're next. For the third goal, to provide safe, respectful, and positive learning environments. So we had some great work done this year with Katie doing some presentations. I can speak to the high school level for community connections and belonging. We had some great professional development related to that. And I know they did also at the middle school level, continuing with Alice training. And I know that's also been at that. elementary level moving up. And then of course the safety and security meetings. And you have a note here for something and I'm not sure exactly what it is, but the consistent curriculum in place for K to eight, I think that's related to the safety training,

092right? Yes. Okay. So continuing with the social-emotional learning, ACEs and trauma training for staff, and that's especially important. I remember doing that several years ago, but as we get new staff, it's important for us to continue doing that development. And then some work for regulated classrooms at the middle school level. And then for goal four, to collaboratively improve community relations, and I think that's something we're always working on. are in a fabulous community, but we're always looking to continue that. Something that I think is pretty special at the high school level is that we've had a lot of extended learning opportunities and some opportunities for students in the JMG program. And so if anybody visited any of our awards nights or even for Bath Tech, a lot of that was highlighted and also goes out

093in the newsletter, which is awesome. And just continuing with the newsletters and depending on which school you're at or which classroom, sometimes it's weekly or bi-weekly, weekly. So those are continuing to happen. And then of course, we have our partnerships with NYC. And moving forward, one of the things that we've sort of talked about the last couple of years, and we haven't really figured out exactly how we would like to do it yet, but is surveying a panel of students who have already come through the school system. We just have to figure out like the logistics of that, but that's definitely on our radar to continue. And then always ongoing conversations about how we continue to involve more people in our community. I'm just going to add two quick things. One, this might sound funny,

094but Judy, when we first started our design team in general, Judy was the woman who Patrick had come in and do the workshops to kind of get us underway. And we just reached out to her again because we're going to trade off the baton and for chair and then just new members. It's the first full cycle of rotating people on and off. And it's kind of like Judy's like the mom and we got mom's thumbs up, but she has shared and probably more with Patrick than the rest of us. That she feels like we're a step ahead in doing things so well. And being in it, you lose that perspective. You see what's bad and what you need to fix. So I think just kudos to us as a district from somebody on the outside

095seeing a lot of other people work. And lastly, I want to take an opportunity on behalf of the teaching staff. Are you sure you're going to retire? Honestly, you guys all know, but. I mean, I think of so many of my own situations with Deb where I was embarrassed because I had to ask her something. And I mean, the knowledge we know, but I would love to be in her head because she is way too kind when there are some stupid things that we do and put her on the spot with. So greatly missed and pray that we see you around, Deb. But any questions? Yeah, that's when you said. BMS is going, they are going to or already back to letter grades, you said? The middle school in general, but Katie can probably speak

096to that. Did that happen already or it's going to happen? It's in the midst. She's spilling the beans early. It's likely. It wasn't announced yet. It might happen. It might happen. Everybody on YouTube. No, I think that's great. I was just wondering, because how does that work with Woolwich? I will present on it at another time when I have it official. But yes, we are moving for both Woolwich and BMS to the zero to 100. That's awesome. Thank you. Glad to hear it. That's all right. Glad to hear it. I don't think you're... Oh, no, it was always that. I'm sorry, but that was always an issue with me. So I picked up on that right away. I'm glad to hear that's the case. That's great. Any questions? Yeah, Kurt. Quick question. I forget, you

097talked regulated classroom training for 6-8. Can you just explain? I still remember when you asked us this before, and I completely bombed my answer. But in fairness, I feel like Katie and Beth might serve it better to answer. Sure. You get all the training. I did. Yeah, I was like, you have the expert here. I mean, I could do okay. Just quickly say what it is. It is. A, well, it's a book that we trained in and it's a train the trainer. So I went to a train the trainer. Many of our staff have gone and learned over two days how to incorporate these small moments into your classroom that help access co-regulation. So it's like access. It's like doing what would help yourself to regulate, but it's also helping the students in your classroom.

098And so there's lots of cool things. Like, for example, one that I think of that I've seen used quite a bit is like younger elementary school kids might start a math lesson. You know, they may have been sitting for a while. It's time to do something different. And they may go back to back with a partner and turn around and show, you know, a number on their hand and the other partner showing a number. And then they quickly try to figure out, like, what's the total? What's the sum of that? And then they flip back around and they do it again. And you do this for just like 30 seconds as a way to like build a social connection, build a quick movement, and then kids are more regulated and ready to learn. And there's

099four different types of activities. Some settle, like calm. Some activate. Some connect. And then what's the other one? I can't remember the fourth one because I'm on the spot. They're essentially all to get the brain ready for learning. Is that what we used to call brain gym? That would be one thing you might do as an activity. Yeah. But I won't forget it, Kirk, because you asked me that before and I laughed and I thought of like five things I should have said. Okay, great. Any other questions? All right. Thank you so much for being here and for your patience. Thanks. Okay. I'm going to move right on to our student report. Charlie, the lone student rep for... Yes, so since graduation was Sunday, the other Charlies officially graduated, but the ceremony was really nice.

100Seven students from the graduating class gave speeches, six students performed landslide by Fleetwood Mac together, and then an indigenous group, not students, only one student out of the group, but they performed a drum circle before the procession, which was a really neat touch. For non-seniors, all the other grades had finals starting today. and those will continue until Thursday which is the last day of school for us which is the makeup day so most people don't have to go and as the end of the year comes it's a lot of preparation for the next year and so both SCLC and class officer elections have been held and for those of you who know her Willow Halpin will be our senior class president And spring sports are all done. Impressive playoff performances from baseball, boys lacrosse, and

101a lot of the track and field team did well at the state meet. And then spring sports night was last week, which Mr. Pelletier was able to keep under an hour and a half, which was very nice. And academic awards was held a little bit before that at the end of May. So that's all I have. Fantastic. Thank you. Thank you Charlie. Just a couple other things. Adult ed graduation was held last week and we had 50 students. I think the most we've had that completed the high set and received their diploma last week. This was an Eric's report and I think sometimes it gets overlooked, so I just wanted to mention it, but the seal of bi literacy. You know, it's awarded by the Maine Department of Education to honor students who demonstrate proficiency

102in listening, speaking, reading, and writing in a world language other than English. And students qualify by achieving proficiency on a state-approved assessment. And they receive both a special seal affixed to the diploma and official notation on their transcript. And we had 13 students pass this exam, and 12 of these did so in Spanish and one in Russian. So just something that is just, I think it gets overlooked. I'm not sure why, but our school and our instructors have really made this a priority and given the students an opportunity. And then lastly, scholarship night. last week and we have over 100 scholarships awarded, 350,000 in awards for this graduating class from the Alumni Association and then other awards from outside organizations brings that total over to a million dollars of awards that were given to that

103senior class that just graduated, which doesn't happen in very many places. So thank you to the Alumni Association and all those other groups that they provide opportunities for our students. I don't know if they've done this before, but I just noticed it, is that a lot of the lawns had the Morse High graduation for all the people in the family. And I saw a couple of lawns in Willowich that had grandparents, parents, and kids. And it's just struck me how important and unique it is to have a school and have an experience that you could pass down from someone who might have used. a manual typewriter in morse to using an electric typewriter morse to using the tiniest lightest piece of technology i don't know why i just thought of that but it's just it's

104just an amazing thing that morse gives that connection to families and communities and not to say anything but the wonderful you know alumni association is so just thank you to all of them great anything else okay um deb That's it. Last one. Last one. Last one. Wow. So I certainly appreciate all the recognition and, oh, don't do that. Too late. In kind words. It's been a great career, and you've all been wonderful, and I certainly appreciate that. So I'll just be real quick because we've had lots of. participation tonight. So for May, the end of May, we're at, we've spent about $39 million out of $45 million. Unfortunately, I do not expect to have much of a balance on the expense side, but I did look at the revenue today, and I think we should

105have about $200,000 more than what we had budgeted, Jen, $133,000 more in tuition. because Kim's done all the invoices for tuition at this point. So that will help. But once again, next year when you start your budget process, then your beginning balance, you're going to have to definitely take a hard look at that. That's really it. It's been great. Thanks so much. Thank you, Deb. It's been phenomenal. We appreciate everything. everything that you've done thank you all right all right um new business the uh 10.1 municipal advisor agreement Yeah, I put something in your email and Dick Rannigan is here from Northeast Municipal Advisors tonight. And, you know, Deb's here to answer any questions that you had. And this is really, as you know, we're going out to build a new elementary school in Bath.

106And we used Dick and his services when we did this school here. And really, it's about, you know, does the school district go with the main municipal bond bank? to fund this debt or RSU issued debt using a municipal advisor. And that one page sheet that you have, I think really describes the biggest differences on this. And it's, you know, I don't know if you have questions about it, but again, generally. municipalities and school districts are using a municipal advisor not going through the bond bank for costs but also for flexibility you can see on here and also we did have to go out i think it was two bands and a bond last time in this project and so a ban is temporary financing and we needed that and so you have that much

107more flexibility when you go with um without the municipal bond bank so dev and i would recommend to the board to um proceed with northeast municipal advisors again but just wanted to bring it to you tonight to see if you had questions that that we can answer for you any questions you have again just remind you that this is a state supported project but that this money you know we have to go through this process with the state um so i'll stop there and see what questions people have any questions yeah So from that first page, the RSU versus the bond bank, one is a built-in interest rate and the other one is typically paid out of the issuance proceeds. What interest rate is that? Is that based on a fixed interest rate? um as

108part my name is dick rand again i think i'm president of northeast municipal advisors as part of issuing debt for the school project you also in there have several line items any number of items just like construction it's architectural fees legal fees permitting my fee, those are all inc cost. So if we were to go million dollars for the d fees are all paid out of goes to the construction, with not that's different than the bond bank what the bond bank does is when they go out and sell the bonds and let's say they sold them at four percent they will turn around and add five to ten basis points to that rate okay charging you 405 to 410 and they take that and that covers their fees because they don't operate for nothing either

109okay so it's how it's just how you write the check Okay. And how that interest compounds and how that basis point impacts, I guess, the long term. Who pays your fee? We do? Yes. And is that part of the school funding cost, Patrick? Yes. Okay. Is the refinance option, is there a difference in what is required in refinance between the bond and the RSU issue if we decide to refinance after 10 years? Very good question. The bond bank, when you issue through them, they then control the process. Typically, there's a call feature, meaning you get an opportunity to refinance the bonds if it makes financial sense to do so, i.e. rates go down, at 10 years. The bond bank makes that decision whether they're going to refinance or not. Many issuers want to have at

110least 3% worth of savings before they refinance because of the time and effort involved. Here, we control that. We don't have to worry about whether they're going to refinance them or not. Case in point here, we refinanced two of the issues that we did. We've done now three bond issues and band issues and two refundings, which are refinancings. So we saw the opportunity to drop the rate actually before the 10-year call period. And so we continually work with Deb and with Patrick to make sure that the debt that's out there is at the lowest possible interest rate. The bond bank, you don't have a say so in that. They make that decision. Here, we make the decision. Okay. Item three, terms of engagement. This says we have to sign this contract by June 30, like

111in the next five days or something? It's based upon the effective date. So when it's signed, it would be effective. Oh, okay. Is the... There's an item here, item seven, attending meetings of the client's governing body as requested. Does any of that extend to like if we want to like make a presentation to the municipalities and select boards? Absolutely. Is that part of, that's not considered? I remember back when we were doing this building as well as previous ones, I'd meet with the building committee periodically once, twice, three times, but also community meetings absolutely are included. Okay. And that's not going to be another $250 an hour. No, there is not. That hourly rate is anything that would be outside of a bond issue, which is very, very little. If Deb were to call me

112and say, I want you to help me on my investment policy, that would be based on hourly rate. But anything to do with the bond issue, whether it be meetings, there's unlimited. There's no travel. There's no expenses to the IRS. And can you just remind me, how many have we done with you already? Six total. It was five total, three issues and two refundings. So five times we've gone to the market since 2011. Thank you. Any other questions? Okay. We appreciate you being here and, you know, giving us some more detail and, you know, working with you. So what we have is an action item. So may I have a motion if there aren't any other questions? Sure. I move to approve the Northeast Municipal Advisors LLC to serve as the municipal advisor to RSU1

113for the new Bath Elementary School project. Thank you. May I have a second? Okay. Any further discussion? Okay, then all in favor? Okay. Thank you very much. We look forward to working with you again. Thank you for being here tonight. Awesome. All right. This is moving ahead. Now we are at a second reading of board policies. I'm just going to read through them for the record, and then if we can take them, unless there are questions all at once, if everyone's okay with that. So we have JLFR reporting. Child abuse and neglect, administrative procedure, JFLA, child sexual abuse prevention response, GCGA, substitute teachers and educational specialists, GCK, professional staff assignment and transfers, BCC nepotism, JICJ, cell phone and other personal electronic devices in schools. That's it, right? If there are any questions on any of

114these, if not, may I have a motion for passage? I was just wondering about the cell phone, the JICJ. Yeah. Was that, is it basically what we started with when we were, I guess, did it develop from the beginning of the? the cell phone ban, like what they developed when we first voted to. Yeah, I mean, we made changes when two years ago we made changes for us locally. But then now that the state has the state rule, they made school management. Yeah, main school management put that out. And so we thought it, Katie reviewed it, I reviewed it. We thought it made sense. We did leave a couple, you know, small things in there that we had. But for the most part, it's what all schools in Maine are going to have to adopt.

115I see. I make a motion to approve all policies as written. Thank you. Second. Second by Patty. All right. All those in favor? Okay, that passes. That is done. Then hand it over to you for some personnel items. One resignation, Jamie DuPlecy has resigned and she's a school counselor at Bath Middle School. Sorry to see her go, but she's staying home with her child, which we certainly understand. So I'd like to thank her for four years of service to the district. And then we have... two nominations first one is shannon ells i'd like to nominate her for the commercial arts instructor here at bath tech she brings private experience but she also brings she was a special ed teacher in the area and the second one is chris christina malazzo and she is a nominate

116her for special education teacher here at morse and for the last 20 years she's been in that role at lisbon high school Okay, great. I move to approve the nominations. Okay, second by Patty. Any other questions? Okay, all in favor? And that passes. We've got the next one is approved superintendent's contract for the 2026-2027 school year. That's an action item. We discussed all this previously, so I think everyone's aware of the details. And go for it. Yes, I make a motion to approve the superintendent's contract for the 2026-2027 school year pursuant to the terms discussed in executive session on June 8th, 2026. Okay. Any questions? All in favor? And we thank you, Patrick, once again for all your hard work and happy to continue that contract. It's just because Deb's leaving, you can't go. All

117right. Now we have the 10.6 approved computation of declaration of votes of the June 9th, 2026 budget referendum. you want to address with that do we need to do anything specific yeah we just have a need to have a motion it really is just you verifying i gave you a hard copy tonight you know the official results from the um from the meeting and then at the end of the meeting we'll do 10.7 which is verifying the town assessments and have you signed a document so can i make a motion yeah um i make a motion to approve the computations of the declaration of votes of the june 9th 2026 budget referendum do every every year uh rachel just to uh authorize superintendent to hire staff over the summer on the board's behalf we have

118a motion you move second okay all in favor great kim how many professional openings five to ten okay and i tried once we get kind of a group i you know i usually send you that uh employment form so you can see if you have any questions you can you know reach out to me so Fantastic. Board goals reflection? Jennifer? I think we did a good job. We met goal three and goal four this evening. Thank you for that. And so then next meeting date. So we're back here in just over a week on the 24th, correct? 6 p.m. And then... Yeah, it might be in that other room. And then we always do take July off. So unless there's some reason you need to call us in, the one after that will be on

119August 24th. May I have a motion to adjourn? I make a motion to adjourn. Second. All in favor? We are adjourned. Thank you all very much.