001Sorry, I missed dinner. [clears throat] >> All right. >> I um >> Dr. Warren, are you in the webinar? >> Is Ryan today Chicago? >> Thank you. Can um Greg, could you please move me over? I'm in the audience if possible. >> Taking off in 30 superintendent. >> Okay, I'm going to go ahead and get us started. Um, I would like to call the business meeting of the Portland Board of Public Education to order. It is Tuesday, October 28th, 2025. We are meeting in a hybrid uh format, but I actually believe all of us are here tonight um minus some student representatives and superintendent Scallan who is traveling back from a conference right now. Um so we may see him online, but I hear the Wi-Fi is pretty rough. Um but uh we have Dr.
002Warren here um who will be uh uh holding it down uh with us. Uh so Dr. Warren if you are ready could you please call the role. Well member Ali Ali >> user Ali >> here. >> Me uh vice chair Bondo >> present. >> Member Briden >> here. >> Member Lena >> present. >> Member no >> here. Member Opraman here. >> Member Sautell >> here. >> Student representative Fitzgerald here. >> Student representative Kuba. Student representative Lee. Student representative O'Brien. Student representative Ziggler. Chair Lentz present. Thank you. Um and now the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance >> to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Portland public schools recognizes the original inhabitants of the
003land on which our city and schools stand. the Wulis Tiguay or Maliset, Mcmmack, Ponobscot, and Pasimquati tribes known collectively as the Wabanaki Confederacy or people of the dawnland. We are honored to have Wabanaki children among our students today. And as a district, we are committed to making the past, present, and future of the Wabanaki peoples visible in our schools and classrooms. And as a reminder of our mission, the Portland Public Schools is responsible for ensuring a challenging, relevant, and joyful education that empowers every learner to make a difference in the world. We build relationships among families, educators, and the community to promote the healthy development and academic achievement of every learner. And our definition of equity in the public schools is that all people are held to high expectations and have access to opportunities that
004are reflective of their individual needs, identities, and experiences. Equity is achieved in Portland public schools when there are no identifiable differences in outcomes and experiences for any population subgroup. And now I would like to open up public comment. Um, let's see. I'm still having some issues with my Zoom. Can anyone on the board see if there's anyone in the audience with a with a hand up on Zoom? >> And if there's anyone in the room that would like to give public comment, you are welcome to come up to the podium and I can go over the guidelines. Does not look like there are any attendees. If my eyes are Is that what you're seeing? Thank you. Thank you. So, I'll give it just another beat. I know we started a couple minutes late, but just
005in case. Okay, I'm going to go ahead and close public comment. Um, >> you want me to send you the link that I have? >> That would be great. Thank you. Um, and I'm going to go ahead and move into my remarks. Um, as I've said many times over the last three and a half years, uh, when times get tough, the strength of our community and our ability to rely on one another will help us get through. Last week, we learned that the regular benefits from the government's SNAP program would not be accessible in November due to the federal government shutdown. SNAP provides critically needed food assistance for over 70,000 low-income families in Maine, including in our own community. Uh, in response to this news, the Foundation for Portland Public Schools launched a fundraising drive
006in order to channel additional resources through our schools um and two partnerships with the Locker Project and Hannerford. Um, as of this afternoon, I'm incredibly uh proud to say that we have received 239 individual donations totaling over $28,000 um that will help make sure that our kids and their families are fed, which is pretty remarkable in 24 hours. So, thank you, Portland, um for showing up in the ways that you are. I'm incredibly grateful to the foundation staff who have built um such a foundation, pun intended, of support for our community that now we're they're able to engage to fill in when needed. If you are a family in need of assistance or know someone else that is looking for help, there's a list of resources and organizations on the Portland Public Schools website. Um,
007this list also contains information on how to contribute to the foundation for Portland public schools in addition to other organizations uh that support families in need. As always um our school counselors and social workers are available to support students and families that may need assistance and identifying other resources. And um tonight actually we have a great team of people from uh the food system here in Maine who will be um from the Cumberland County um food security council who are going to talk about um food in our district and uh what's happening all the great things and the challenges and uh where where their work is at this moment. So we're excited to have that update a little bit later tonight. Um I also just want to um acknowledge that it's the second anniversary of
008the mass shooting in Lewon. um just a couple of days ago. Um and that uh the community continues to to reel for that, reel from that um in Lewon and around the state. The impact was so great. Um and again, just another reminder that under student safety on our website, there's a list of resources about gun safety, um how to um keep your firearms uh protected and locked up, and how to engage in conversations with other families about guns in their house. I just did this last week with a new family that we had a playd date with. It's a little bit awkward, but it feels really good to have the conversation and know um that your child um know that know the environment that your child is going into. Um and uh uh then
009we have a little bit less somber news, which is great. Um that last week was National School Bus Safety Week. Um, and just wanted to thank all of our bus drivers, um, uh, and assistants and everybody in that office that keep our young people safe every day. Um, I also want to just remind the public that it's helpful, uh, you can help keep everyone safe out there in the mornings and in the afternoons as buses are moving through. Just a reminder, it is law that cars stop when a school bus has its red lights flashing, and that includes in school driveways. Um, and just make sure that you're paying attention to those slow zones around schools. It will just help us all continue to be safe. Um, and then just a couple of other um,
010fun updates. Today, many of our high school students participated in a mock election along with students across Maine. Um, this was an opportunity to talk about the importance of voting and to review the referendum items that are on the ballot in uh, on the ballot for next week on November 4th. Um, and this just can serve as your reminder to make sure that you vote next Tuesday before you come to the board meeting. Get it done early in the day. Um, and uh, if that doesn't work, just make sure that you have a voting plan and, uh, ask others to come with you. And then finally, we have two more opportunities to participate in community engagement sessions. Uh, they are both this week and anyone from the community is welcome to come and share the
011things that are on your mind. um including but not limited to anything about the um uh the boundaries work that's happening within the district uh cell phone policy um any anything else that feels important we're there to listen and answer your questions uh so um uh tomorrow night from 6:00 to 7:00 we'll be at the United Way of uh greater Portland um and it's 5 550 Forest A and then uh the day after we'll have a virtual session uh from 6:00 to 7:00 as well. And you can find information about those on our website. And now I'd like to actually turn it over to board member Lena um who uh is going to read a statement or talk a little bit about an experience that she had um with uh some of our Wabanaki learning
012over the course of the last year. So go ahead. Thank you, Chair. In 2001, the state of Maine passed LD291, a law to teach about Maine's Native Americans in schools, but failed to provide guidance or resources to help schools achieve this goal. We are so fortunate in Portland public schools to have invested in developing an authentic Wabanaki studies curriculum and prioritizing professional development for staff to ensure they have the tools to teach the curriculum that honors the Wabanaki people. This would not have been possible without the tireless work of Fiona Hopper, who currently serves at the as the district's social studies and special projects coordinator. Fiona, as well as Portland Public Schools alumni parent Bridgette Neptune, spent years not only researching, but also making personal connections with leaders from Maine's indigenous communities who have served
013as primary sources to create an authentic Wabanaki studies curriculum for our district. I would like to commend our teachers and school administrators for gracefully managing the many topics they are required to teach along with prioritizing time and space to make sure we are not just checking the box of teaching Wabanaki studies but truly taking the time to deliver this authentic curriculum to our students. One of the ways that Portland public schools offers professional development to teachers is through the Ponobscot Nation summer intensive. This program is run by Fiona Hopper and during high school social studies teacher Tyler Jellison who has been instrumental in the development of the course and Wabanaki studies professional development for PPS [clears throat] staff. I was fortunate enough to join the 2025 cohort of educators enrolled in this program. This course
014includes four two-hour sessions of with homework and a 3-day overnight wilderness canoe trip to Sugar Island in the Ponobscot River. The purpose of this trip is for educators to gain real life experience learning from experts in Wabanaki traditions such as music, storytelling, and canoeing, as well as hearing directly from scientists, policy advocates, and storytellers about present-day issues Wabanaki people are facing. This experience for Portland public schools educators is invaluable, and the sentiment from the others enrolled in the course was the same. My biggest takeaways from my involvement in the Ponobscot Nation summer intensive were in Portland, Wabanaki studies is not just a state mandate that we fulfill by checking a box. Connecting with local history as well as current events pertaining to Wabanaki people allows students to authentically engage with place in a real way
015beyond a textbook. Place-based learning is authentic and we must remember the importance of traditional knowledge, culture, and history. We have an incredibly dedicated staff in Portland public schools. The teachers spent many hours reading and writing in preparation for our trip to Sugar Island. They were engaged, interested, inquisitive, and respectful. I'm eternally grateful to Fiona and Tyler for their hard work and dedication to ensuring this curriculum stays alive in Portland public schools, and to all of the Portland public schools teachers who are working every day to teach this curriculum. I am proud of to be part of a district that is a leader in the engagement with Wabanaki studies. This work is important and Portland must continue to make it a priority. We have made a commitment to these communities and it is it is imperative
016that we continue this work so that we do not become another colonial system that breaks promises to indigenous communities. Thank you. >> Thank you board member Lena. And as the mom of a fourth grader who's going to do field work next week, um it's really cool to see it in action. So thank you for um sharing that with us. Um, up next we're going to have uh well, we don't actually have actual superintendent remarks um because we don't have our superintendent here. Um, but we are going to um uh do um I would just call your attention in the agenda to the uh resignations uh and the personnel items that are there. Those are the ones that we do not vote on, but they're there for um uh your information. Um and then we're going
017to move on to committee reports. So, up first, we're going to have a report uh from uh finance personnel and operations, and that is board board um or chair Brighten. Go ahead. >> Thank you, chair. Uh can you hear me? >> Can you try again? Um >> can you hear me? Yes. Super. Thank you. Okay. [clears throat] So, um the update from the finance personnel and operations committee um is reflective of one meeting um uh with all of our committees uh for October there was one meeting instead of two um because of Indigenous People's Day. Um so, uh one uh key item from actually yesterday's meeting was an update on main pers activity. you know, we've heard about this um on several occasions and in several meetings, but we got an update on progress um
018and also some challenges that the team is facing. Um and uh the committee actually moved forward um to the full board uh a staff request for an additional contract for Barry Dunn to be able to continue that work and that will we'll be seeing that as a first read later in this agenda. Um let's see. We also got uh updates on um technology and security improvements. Um which was really heartening to hear about. Um that also prompted a committee vote to move forward to the full board. Um the approval of staff recommendation to address uh one area of potential um uh potential harm. Uh and we will be getting an a first read on that a week from tonight. uh on November 4th. Um and then another uh highlight from yesterday's meeting, we discussed progress
019on a memorandum of understanding between the city and the district um to formalize how um how we interact with each other um in a number of areas. So that is an update from finance personnel and operations. I would welcome any questions. >> Are there any questions uh from the board? All right, that was a really big agenda that you got through yesterday. Um I was lucky enough to join you. Just thank you for moving all of that work forward. Um and look forward to the pieces that are coming to the board. Um up next we have the policy committee board member Lena. Go ahead. >> Thank you, chair. So last night the policy committee approved uh wording changes to three policies and these were to um get into alignment with changes to the to the
020federal law. Um those policies were policy ACA harassment and sexual harassment of students, ACAB, harassment and sexual harassment of school employees and AC non-discrimination equal opportunity and affirmative action. Um before we voted on those, we had a discussion about the harassment and sexual harassment of students and school employees um policies as to whether or not we were going to remove wording around uh anonymous reporting. Um it wouldn't mean that we would no longer require or seek accept anonymous reporting um from students or employees, but as a committee, we decided to leave that language in there. Um, so we did not amend the uh policies beyond the wording changes that were proposed. So that's that was the first thing that we did last night. And then we heard some feedback that Dr. Warren had collected from
021staff uh from building leaders on uh policy GBE, which is staff conduct with students. It's a policy that we are creating as a district. Um, and we Dr. Warren and I are going to meet to uh take those that feedback into consideration to have another revised um proposal to bring to the committee not at our next meeting but the one at the end of November. Um and another thing is that we have updated our proposed calendar. We have been getting um policies that we need to look into and do some wording changes and things like that as we get new information from our lawyers. And so we have updated our calendar. Um at the next Oh, what uh we need the board to do is review and vote on those policies that I just talked
022about, which I think will come next month. Um and then at our next meeting, we're going to be looking at policies around truency, physical restraint and seclusion, public comment, and class size. >> Thank you. Um any questions uh for the policy committee? My only question was to just remind folks what GBEB the policy is. GBE is staff conduct with students. >> Beautiful. So staff have further input on that. They can email or come to the next committee meeting. Is that right? >> Um yes. And I also believe that Dr. Warren will be sending it out to union leadership so that they will have a direct uh communication about that. >> Awesome. Any other questions? All right. Uh, so we can move along to curriculum and student success. Uh, Chair Upperman, go ahead. >> Thank you,
023Chair. It was a very busy meeting last night. Um, and we are thankful for the amount of preparation that was done by the groups, um, which includes the special ed department and the multilingual department and technology. um data and all because we had a lot of information which has gendered many questions which will again be uh brought up at other meetings. Um basic information was that that we have 19.25% of students in the district have an IEP which is a 21% increase since um 2019. And we also provide services to 66 students who are not in Portland public schools but are in private schools in Portland. And these individuals do not have what we call an IEP. Um they have a what is called an individual service plan provided by Portland public schools. Even though
024they are in those schools, they need not be Portland residents. So that was something I did not know and thought um was an interesting piece of information. As far as where the students in Portland schools are, there's a variety of uh 13% in one school all the way to 25% in another school, K through 12. And um we had a explanation of the what is a general education uh self-contained and resource room populations. How the idea is that students in special ed are not to be isolated but are to be part of the major group. uh we have a a breakdown on and on my report of what kinds of disabilities or needs are there. Then we also was brought up the information of whether or not special ed students and jointly multilingual students were
025um there was no any disproportionality. No, the number of multilingual students who in special ed is proportionate to the number of multilingual students in the regular population. The one thing that was of concern is well a good thing that was that the uh greeting gap in these groups in some groups uh improved particularly between um multilingual has and versus non-milingual that particular gap is is smaller for IEPs again the gap is smaller um but unfortunately those that are um economically disadvantaged are having increased gap. So the pressures of the world outside of the schools is uh quite quite difficult uh for these kids. Staffing is a a concern um largely in staffing that meets with the students uh educational technicians are particular but they have various um other professionals um that deal with uh behavioral
026uh occupational therapy and all those the gaps that we had in central team which were critical to um coordinating special led uh programs throughout the district have been filled. So that hopefully as things go it'll become increasingly pro increasing improvement. One of the things that was addressed um has a lot to do with what was brought up last year at the special ed uh conferences and and meeting and that was um how to improve the services that they're there focus on how well trained are staff in their particular area particularly and so the uh special ed uh department is set up a programs for uh developing uh capabilities among in all and also creating and maintaining consistent structures in all specialized programming across the we have a big district things seem to be different all
027over the place. Um the other piece is uh IEP individual um educational programming that is um being st more standardized. So the communication between schools between teachers um improves and a big one is is inc families in the loop uh individually and as a group. So there will be some meetings data is being processed and all. So I I could go I I will I will I still haven't got to multilingual. I said this was an incredible evening. So these are all things I think that people don't realize about um special ed and I think that's really important in multilingual. I really appreciate the fact that the uh department explains what the Lao plan is. That's the bis the uh legal foundation and blueprint for providing English language development services to multilingual learners. This is
028an illegal situation nationally um came up in San Francisco to begin with. Um and from that the when this year is they're spending a good deal of time in design phase to improve programming. The center for applied linguistics is conducting a review of the ESOL and the Spanish immersion programs and we should be hearing from them in February. Uh the team is uh also revitalizing. We several years ago the board passed a uh programming on um a resolution on that all teachers should have some background in ESOL and that is being revised. In fact, some teachers are taking Spanish and Portuguese because of that, which I thought really cool. Um outcomewise, uh there's there's some some good good great improvements in uh multilingual um in some areas, but um not so in it's we're still
029behind in a number of areas in in what we have. The last thing was middle school update on enrollment and I'm not going to say anything on that because I believe we're having some enrollment information presented later on. Um, but it was it was interesting. Thank you. >> Oh my good. I can't wait to watch this recording. >> It's it was >> Thank you for all of those updates and uh thanks to the staff behind that who is pulling all of that together. Um uh really really appreciate it. Uh any questions uh for Chair Upperman? Yes. Uh board member Sautel. Go ahead. Why does Portland public schools provide specialized programs to students from out of Portland who go to private schools here? We are required by federal law. Thank you. >> Anything else? Well, that
030is a great uh bridge to uh public and legislative affairs where we are just learning about how a bill becomes a law every time we meet. Um uh so we've got a couple of updates uh that we are continuing to develop uh our bill tracker which will track the bills um that we are watching uh as the new year comes along in the legislation um uh that we will be taking testim giving testimony or showing up to give testimony on. Um and uh last night we were able to vote on our legislative priorities um to help give us a focus uh on those bills. And those uh areas are going to be uh one curriculum and standard changes uh two human rights and student protections, three school funding, and four school construction. Um and there
031was just conversation about um those those first two particularly seeing uh potentially a federal impact on uh narratives around trans students, LGBTQ students, immigrants, and really wanting to make sure that we're staying on top of any bill uh that might uh be harmful to our students. Um so being prepared to um you know advocate on on behalf of um our community for those that might come up. Um and uh there are two more community sessions uh for feedback which is a little bit of a different topic. I know I mentioned them in my remarks but uh please do uh come out to those. And board members just a reminder um to read the summary of those. It's been linked in our board update that we get uh several times. So just uh check that out.
032Um and then uh board another uh potential action for you to take um is joining some of the staff sess sessions that the superintendent is hosting over the next couple of weeks. Uh you can go and join staff uh just to hear what's on their their mind. Um and then uh finally, so the committee will be um over the next week just researching on the bills that are in our tracker um so that next week we can really start to decide uh potential actions that we'll be taking and that is uh and then also Dr. Valenuela is uh working on a plan uh about how we will engage community uh around advocacy around uh potential bills. Any questions? All right, with that then I'm going to go ahead and move on to the report of
033the secretary. So we have uh the consideration and action to approve the meeting minutes of October 14th, 2025. Are there any corrections to those meeting minutes? All right, I see no no uh corrections. So the minutes are approved as distributed. And uh up next we have our focus of education. So we have the uh Cland County Food Security Council um members of our uh food staff here to do uh some presenting. Um Dr. Warren, do you can you be in charge of slides? >> Okay, come on up, Jim. So thankful y'all are here tonight. >> Thank you. We're very grateful to be here. Um, it's nice to see old friends and expect to make some new friends tonight. Um, thank you for your service to our students and community. Thank you, Chair Lent, for getting
034us here. I know when I reached out to Superintendent Scallin this summer, we are hoping to celebrate some good work that we've been doing together. And tonight, we're feeling a little more somber considering where things stand. We're really grateful to the foundation and all the work that Portland schools is committing to protecting the students and families from hunger and from the trans students. When you talk about the the laws that are out there that um are being considered, there's so much so many vulnerable families and students that are easy targets right now that we need to be really vigilant about protecting. I will um talk to you about a project we began in 2017 at the behest of Superintendent Batano with a parent who um had been we'd been talking for years about food insecurity
035in Portland schools and uh her name was Heather Macintosh. She had a second grader at Riky Elementary and she said, "I spoke to the superintendent and he agrees food security needs to be addressed in Portland public schools." So we began meeting that summer uh beginning brought people together to um from a variety of areas to talk about a holistic approach to addressing food security in Portland public schools. Um it was at the moment when Rod Adams was transitioning out as food service director. Um but superintendent immediately assigned the new food service director Jane Mclugas to work with us. Um as you can see our mission is pretty straightforward. Um it's to build food security in our schools and to um and our belief and our vision is that all students have a right to nutritious
036culturally appropriate food that allows them to attain their full potential which I think is very much in alignment with what you folks around the table believe. Um, you know, I instructed my team that we had an ethic when we went to work with educators that because my wife was an educator in Portland schools for more than 30 years. So, in working with educators, we weren't going to ask people to do more. We couldn't ask teachers, we couldn't ask custodians, we couldn't ask edex, couldn't ask music teachers to do more. we had to create space for them to align with our mission if we wanted them to help and or and bring resources to the table or add capacity from our team. So that was the ethic that we continue to uh hold as we do
037this work. I know how hard everyone in schools works. They're underpaid. They're overworked and they really want the best for their students. So they're going to make space to do that when they have the opportunity. There's a little bit of history up there. I think the thing I want to call out in that history is the really innovative approach we took. We looked at the whole school food system. When you look at the bottom, the first uh row in the bottom, we had five action groups that we mobilized. After we did an assessment, we spent a year doing an assessment with some really great researchers and um formed five action groups. A big focus obviously is school nutrition and cafeteria and meals that are provided. But we also looked at um charitable food in schools.
038And at that time there was an emergence of pantries and we were analyzing where there were gaps in that system. Makes me sad we have to have pantries in schools but it's that's where we are today. Um we were looked at nutrition education, who was bringing external resources and what the curriculum was that kids were learning in schools. Uh how about how to nourish themselves. Um we were looking at the garden programs, great partner in cultivating community who just done a lot of work with the schools creating gardens and um educating students about those gardens and where their food comes from. And um we also looked at what we called sustainable practices and that included everything like at Royal Elementary when they wanted to replace their plastic forks with metal forks and we did a
039pilot project to do that or how do we handle food waste and how do we get custodians on board to support that and support them um so we can help students know what to do with leftover food. So um I love the way you're advancing these slides. You're doing a great job. anticipate. I'm going to read your mind. >> And when you look at this slide, this really fills my heart. The great partners that we brought to the table, that we've convened, that we brought together. You can see um got a great team ready to present today, too. We got our food corps member Sam and Zoe has been leading this project for a number of years. Zoe Gratzky is our food system uh man program manager. We also have Katherine Sergeant in the audience
040here. She's going to speak about the really important work the locker project does. Tyler isn't scheduled to present the food service director, but he's here to answer questions. I got to call a few people who've really contributed. Andy has done a great job uh developing resources for this project. I know one thing that uh Superintendent Batano said was we need to create a food fund as part of the foundation and obviously you heard today about the kind of funds that can be raised with that tool and how important it's going to be for families. Grace Valenzuela. Dr. Valenuela is always there to open a door for us whenever we need access information. Dr. Ahmed has been great supporting us first during and now we can call him whenever we need to to get things done.
041Um, looking at my notes, see if I left anything out. I think it's important also to note that this was a foundation for work that's expanded beyond Portland. So, we now partner with West and South Portland in coalition as well. So, we're have those connections beyond just Portland, but Portland, we really were able to pilot some things and be creative and do some do some innovative work that that led led to that. I'm probably going to get up at the end and talk a little bit about our farm to school grant that we're working on. Maybe Zoe's going to touch on that. We're excited. It was great to hear about the work done with the Wabanaki curriculum. We have a um James Beard award-winning chef who wants to work with Portland schools. We're trying to
042raise the money to bring him onto a contract to do that work. um Wabanaki chef and connecting the indigenous foods with the curriculum would be so powerful. We're excited about that opportunity. Um but yeah, just thank you all for all you're doing and I'm going to turn over to Sam right now who is one of three great food courts members were fortunate to have serving with us. >> Hi. Um, my name is Sam and I'm the um, FoodCore school nutrition specialist for Portland Food Service. Um, for those of you that don't know, FoodCore is a national organization that places people in schools and nutrition departments across the country to help them with their goals. Um, there's two positions at my level. There's garden educators and school nutrition specialists. Um, as Jim mentioned, um, um, Portland
043public schools had garden educators for many, many years that were housed at Cultivating Community and they help build gardens and do cooking classes and things like that. Um, my role is working more closely with the nutrition department uh, with a focus on student feedback for school meals. Um, so that looks like conducting taste tests of new menu items, um, doing surveys with students, um, organizing advisory committees and things like that. Um, I support in other ways with like writing grants and, um, doing social media, things like that. Yeah, he's always my supervisor. Um, hi, I'm Zoe Grdsky. I'm the school food systems manager at Cumberland County Food Security Council. Um, and I'm so lucky I've gotten to work with Portland Public Schools for the last four years. Um, and it's just been amazing to see
044this work grow and change. Um, and Sarah, you can go to the next slide. Thanks. Um, so I'm going to talk a little bit about some of the programs we work on, specifically federal nutrition programs, um, with Tyler's great team in the food service department. Um, but I just wanted to put this up here, the cost of a lunch tray to sort of see when we're talking about school nutrition. Um, all the pieces, you all know all the pieces that go into um, making it possible and, you know, the small amount that um, the school nutrition department is working with. So, they're able to do some really amazing work. um having to consider all of these costs um and what they're working with. So, go to the next slide. Oh, think things moved around. That's
045okay. Um okay, so I'm not going to start with talking about federal nutrition. I'll start here. That's great. Um so, yeah, so I want to talk a bit about a program, the food fund, which Jim mentioned and I think Andy's talked about that we run in collaboration with the foundation for Portland public schools. Um we just completed distributing our um October 2025 grant cycle where we distributed $10,000 um to nine projects across Portland public schools um working on building food security in those five areas that Jim mentioned. Um so if you want to look at the specific projects that were funded, they're on our food fields learning website. Um but there was really a range. It was about school gardens um in classrooms at Daring and Lincoln. Um culturally appropriate food pantries at the Head
046Start and at Lyman Moore. Um culinary skills at Casco Bay and Dearing. Culturally relevant school meals with the Hal School Meals Network. Um so it was really a range of projects. Um and that is just part of the $67,000 that we've distributed through this fund since 2019. Um, and Andy and her team are doing really amazing work as we're heading into this month of um, SNAP cutbacks and people losing a lot of access to critical resources to make sure there's really those emergency supports available through the food fund for social workers to support um, their students and families that they work with. So, yeah, really grateful to be able to work on this project and to be able to support teachers who have amazing ideas make those ideas come true around food security. All right.
047So, now I'm going to talk about the federal nutrition programs. Um, I was here a few months ago with um the outgoing food service director, Jen, and Kada Ahmed, who's the director on the Hal School Meals Network. So, um, I'll just give you all a bit of an update since I know you've heard about this project before. Um, but yeah, the Hal School Meals Network is a project that we run with Food for All Services, which is Kada Ahmed's organization, um, in Portland, South Portland, and Westbrook. It was really born out of work that we were doing here in Portland around culturally important menu developments um to ensure that all students in those school districts have equitable access to Maine's universal school meals, especially now as we're heading into this time where folks are losing
048their access to those resources um to get food. We're looking at how can we expand who's able to access universal school meals. Um, and so we're really proud that since April, all Portland public schools have had a daily halal option on the lunch line. Um, and summer meals also had halal options. So that was new this summer. Um, and all students are welcome to enjoy the halal meals. I'll show you the menu in a little bit. Um, and they're all produced by a trained staff at the central kitchen. Um, even if students don't choose the halal meals, but they're looking for maybe a similar option, there's no pork or pork products served in any Portland public schools. So, that means a lot of students feel comfortable choosing other options. So, expanding that access um and
049to make sure that um these meals are what students and families are looking for, we've engaged in a lot of community feedback um and student engagement. So, Sam's been really critical in making that happen. Um right now we have monthly halal quality management team meetings at Daring and Portland High School uh where we go in and we meet with the students and they can tell us what they think of the meals. Next month um Tyler's going to be bringing samples of the halal meals for the students to try and give us feedback on tell us what they like, what they don't like. Um they do promotion and you know we're going to be making some videos and posters. Um they're really you know they're the customers so making sure that we're hearing their voices. Um
050and then you know engaging in events like parent universities um back to school events that we've presented at um to make sure that we're there. The community knows they can give us their feedback. We want to know what they want from this program. Um so on the board I just have the menu right now. It's a weekly rotating menu just to make sure that you know we have those options solidly down. The preparation is always guaranteed halal. Um, so there's a beef and bean burrito, a veggie burger, which is also sometimes a kelp burger, crispy tofu and rice, teriyaki chicken and rice, um, and chickpea curry with rice. And then there's always, uh, hummus and sun butter sandwiches available. So many options for students. Um, and we're definitely working with Tyler to expand those options.
051He's a chef. If you've never tried his food, it's quite excellent. Um, so working on expanding those options. Um but making sure that we just always have that consistent option available for students so they know it's there. It's on the lunch line. Um when we go in and ask students if they know about the halomials, they all know where to find them. They know where the sign is. So um yeah, making sure that we just have that education piece down and there's consistent options available. Um and what makes our program really unique, which you've already heard a little bit about through our past presentations, is the third party certification. Um, so when we started talking to families about what they wanted from a halal meals program, we heard that having it third-party certified um, was
052one of the most important pieces to be able to actually guarantee um, that we know the ingredients are halal. The preparation procedures, ensure no crosscontamination, the serving line we've looked at um, and so we work with the Islamic Food and Nutrition Council of America. Um, and they actually contract with Kada. So, she's our local on the ground rep um to develop that halal flow. We're in every single kitchen um looking at how they're serving meals. We're working with Tyler in central kitchen on how he's doing his production. Um Ivanka reviews every single ingredient that is going into a halal meal. Um we're doing annual trainings with food service staff. Um going into the kitchens if they have questions, going to talk with school staff if they have questions, um and then providing audits and halal
053certificates for the facilities. So, it's really quite a um intensive process to make sure that we can guarantee these meals are halal. All right. And then another project that we're really excited about is the Portland Farm to School team. So, bringing all of these incredible pieces that are going on um in these different areas of food security kind of into one place. So, um Luke Truman, who's here tonight, um had the great idea to gather a group together to go to the um main pharmacy to school institute, which is a year-long program that about three to four school districts get to participate in every year. This year, Portland is one of those school districts. Um and so, we had the great opportunity to go in July um to their academy program at the ecology school
054in SACO. spent three days learning about all sorts of incredible farm-toschool work and program ideas and talking as a team. So you can see up there on the top is our like mission statement as a farm and seed to school team. Um and so we talked about what our goals were and specifically this team is um Longfellow Lincoln and Daring um in addition to many community partners such as us at Cumberland County Food Security Council, Food Corps, USM Colombian Street Food, Cultivating Community. It's really quite a um a big team. It's really exciting. Um and so we talked for a while about like what are our goals for these school three schools and then also what would it look like to really um you know make this happen in these three schools and then really
055implement it districtwide embed these programs that we're working on um in a way that there's you know real investment and a model for how to do this in the rest of the district. So on the next slide I have some examples um of what we're working on uh including increasing local procurement in the cafeteria building partnerships with local producers for the cafeteria. So regularly right now um empanadas from my east Colombian street food are on the menu they're awesome I would highly recommend going to eat them at school lunch. Um, and so how can we build other uh partnerships with local producers, increasing student engagement through the work Sam is doing. Um, but also partnering with uh, you know, Portland Public Health with their former SNAP education program. Um, expanding school gardens for the cafeteria
056and the classroom. Can we grow food in the school gardens that Tyler can use that can go into the school meals or that teachers can use um, to do culinary education? How can we reduce food waste and do composting? So looking at bringing in USM students to work with high schoolers on implementing composting in the um some of the high schools and then really building community partnerships all across the district that these farm-to-school activities um that we love and care about are really just embedded in the work that we do. Anything you all want to add about that team or the the institute paid for by foundation. >> Yes, thank you. Foundation for Portland public schools. Uh so the institute the academy that we went to over the summer um and the institute it's a
057program that has a cost associated with it. And so the foundation for Portland public schools covered that cost for the Portland team to be able to participate in the program. So it is a year-long program um that you know we'll go through and we have some coaching from the main farm and see to school network um and then we really hope to you know make these programs sustainable and continue the work of this team beyond just one year. >> Um just some fun things that this team has already been doing. Cameron, who's the sustainability teacher at Lincoln, and Tracy, who's the alted teacher at Daring, did um apple cider pressing with their classes and got donations from local orchards. Um Tyler got um hake and served local hake from fisherman feeding mayors program. Um Kristen
058and Tracy obliged for a food fund to get a cooking card and um Cameron and I um collaborated on a lesson about kelp um because we're serving kelp burgers on the menu right now in his class. So >> yeah. All right. Well, thank you for hearing about those programs and Catherine, I'll pass it over to you to talk about project. Thank you, Zoe, and thank you all for um having me here this evening. I wanted to give a little bit of an overview about the locker project and what we're we've been up to. I want to start just a bit of review for folks who might not be familiar with what we do. We actually the organization started more than a decade ago at East End Community School. There was a parent volunteering in a
059kindergarten class who saw that some of the kids were coming in um without a snack and just sitting during snack time waiting for their classmates to finish. And so she began to bring in snacks for that classroom and pretty soon she was bringing in snacks for lots of classrooms and it grew into a small school pantry in the nurse's office. Um it was the Locker Project formed as a nonprofit in 2014 and um spread into uh South Portland and Westbrook. Pretty soon there were about 20 school pantries. Um in 2017 we started doing fresh food. So rescuing fresh food from supermarkets and bringing that um right to schools and setting up free fresh food tables. Um almost doubled in size in early 2020 for reasons I'm sure you'd understand. Um and so we've continued to
060grow and evolve in response to changes in community need and feedback. Um the the slide is kind of a snapshot of last year. Um, we have several different models where we um that we use to distribute food. You can see the numbers on um purple bags and green bags, more than um let's see, almost 6,000 purple bags, more than 8,000 green bags. And those are mostly go home with elementary school students. You might have seen if you're at a elementary school building, our bands pull up with banana boxes. And um so we we are at most of those schools every week. Um, I just looked to see what the numbers were this year. We're serving 120 families at Riky with those bags every week. Right now, 90 at East End, Talbot, and Ocean Ever around
06140. Um, and then we also have fresh food events at the middle schools and high schools, which is a better model for older kids. Um, they get to choose the kinds of things they want to take home. We also have school pantries in those schools. Um, family boxes we provide to case managers. often that's for families where the kids are too young, you know, that that are preschool or younger um and they take them they do home delivery with those. So we we partner with a number of agencies to provide those. So we're getting the food out to Portland families in a number of ways. Um you can see on the right um it's more than a thousand children. Um it's a little tough to gauge exactly the count in the middle schools and high
062schools because we don't know how much overlap there is week to week. We don't want to set up any sort of identification to create a barrier. So, we just are content with not know exactly what the numbers are, but that's my best guess. Um, last year it was about 260,000 pounds of food that was shared with Portland families, which is a little less than half of our total. So, Portland does make up about half of our total programming and about half of our costs as well. Um, this year our I need to raise $680,000 for the programs that we have planned for this fiscal year. um which goes through June 30th. And then finally, that um box in the middle gives you an idea of how we're funded. Um I apply for more than 50
063grant up grants a year. And then we've been trying to grow our individual and um business donations to um try to make our funding streams a little more reliable. Um as you can imagine, right now is a pretty crazy time. We've had a lot of offers of assistance. You know, lots of food drives are going on. Um, but we've also had steady calls for people kind of panicking where they're going to get food and what's going to happen. Um, so I'm certainly hopeful that there's a positive resolution to this situation. But even even before this happened, we we needed help and we needed more resources because um hunger has not gone away. Um it seems to just be creeping up and up as you know prices rise and so forth. So, um, you know, it's
064it's really we rely on district staff to help us do this. So, I want to give a giant shout out to the social workers, um, or other school staff in each building who are the ones that are showing up at the door when we arrive with the van full of boxes and and actually help us get the food to the kids and home to the family. So, super appreciative of the support of the district and everybody who plays a part in helping us get this done. Thank you. somber note to end on and um it's important to acknowledge the reality we're here for questions about anything we presented or um yeah >> beautiful I bet I bet you're going to get some um vice chair Bondo go ahead yes thank you chair so uh thank
065you so much I'm so glad to see you Uh I have two comments and four questions. So how you want me to proceed? You want me to get all the four questions so you can answer one by one? >> Sure. >> Okay. [laughter] So I will go with my comments first. Uh uh and and I'm so grateful because uh I like the two aspects of the the presentation. The first is just the coalition aspect and we have be uh outside of the Portland. So it's not only Portland now. So we are covering different areas with the local project as well because I always believed that the the food security is not about privilege it's about the human rights and I think our kids and student they really deserve to be to be fed and then
066having the nutrition so they can be able to to access and have those [clears throat] opportunity to grow academically. And secondly, the really thing that I really appreciate about the project is about the proactivism and the pragmatism that we building now by building emergency provision with those circumstances right now. So our kids who are relying on those program they can be fed and they can access some of those uh those nutrition needs for them to grow. So those are my two comment really appreciate what you all of you are doing. for my question. My two question is mostly on the datas and the feedback mechanism just hurt when I see the need and the choice of the food and pref preferences of the the the kids around the district. So I'm just wonder how we
067gathering those informations >> to try to find the the right choice for the for the kids for the food for the kids. How we get those information because I heard you mention about survey. How do you get everything by survey or you getting sometime by conversation or if it's so how you do with the multilingual families? This is no one. >> Yeah, that's a great question. So, um we use a few different methods of feedback and Sam and Tyler feel free to chime in on that also. So, some of it is from surveys. Um we've had two high school internship programs um where we've taught the students about surveying and about school meals and then they've surveyed um over 800 Portland students and families on their school food needs and preferences. So we've learned a
068lot through those surveys. Um we've also learned a lot through hosting. We've had a few focus groups with students and families that we've had interpreters at. Um and we also make sure that we're coming to school events. So, for instance, we were at the um multilingual back to school event in Portland um in I think that was in September. Um and so we were able to talk with uh families, those parents only um through interpretation to make sure that we're reaching multilingual parents. We got a lot of feedback about specifically the hal meals, what uh parents want to see. Sam is in the cafeteria almost every day talking to students um through our halal quality management teams. We're asking them what foods they want. So, um, yeah, it's kind of a balance I think that
069Tyler has to work with of gathering that input and then what the department is able to put onto the TR. I don't know if you two want to add. >> Hello, Lord. Um, yeah. So, I guess I just want to say, you know, over this past, you know, three months that I've held this role as interr, you know, new perspective of what this role is embodying, but then also from the past previous two years of my other roles, I think now more than ever, really making sure that I'm using the tools of these community partners to help guide what we are wanting to do as a mission. Um, I think without, you know, having Zoe and Sam being able to conduct these and being able to have, um, support is just like a huge part
070of what Portland has to offer. Um, I think it goes to show on, uh, Chair Bondo's, uh, comments on like how this is more than just Portland itself and really just trying to think of this as like a bigger, larger holistical issue. Um, and then also understanding that in Portland we have a very interesting dynamic between we have 16 locations. We have about four different serving styles within those schools and making sure that they fit throughout um and making sure that all of our students are, you know, having the same choice throughout all the schools is really important for us. >> Great. Thank you so much. I love that. So my second one is on the the cultural initiative I mean the the halamit do we have any specific indicator how you measure the success
071of the initiative? Well, having all the schools certified, right, will be um so that we have halal meals. >> Do you want to speak? You guys can speak to that. >> Yeah. So, I can definitely speak on that. Um when I started about two years ago, um our overall scratch made preparations were just around 5 to 8%. This previous year, we've gone all the way up to around 21% of speed scratch. A lot of those are being culturally relevant meals. Um I think it just kind of comes by nature um when we are producing these meals and it could be as simple as making correct sofredo making uh for rice or uh making jolaf pure puree for the rice. Um so it's just little things like that. Um but really making sure that we're hitting
072all different cultures, not focusing on just one. making sure that we're, you know, reaching Polynesian food and we're also reaching, you know, West African and trying to balance those between all of the menus, um, is kind of the fun part about this, uh, field for sure. Um, but then making sure kind of also what Jim spoke on as well. Um, you know, understanding where we stand as a department and trying to make it work within our existing parameters that we do have to face. um and trying to you know have our teams all come uh um together while producing these meals is really important for us. >> Right. Thank you. So my third question is about I see kids are enjoying food but I love the the waste food I think the waste part the
073the food waste I think we mentioned about the compost and everything the student from USM so I'm just wondering I was wondering to understand how do you see your food wastes before that new initiative and compared to now >> it takes constant attention to maintain um not wasting food. So, someone's got to be there to kind of we set up some systems which were effective. Um and we had people focusing on them at different schools. But what we've learned is that they need to be sustained. There needs to be champions in the schools, someone who's going to be paying attention to it, whether it's custodian, sometimes it's someone who cares about the environment, teacher who cares about the environment. So, it's it's a tricky thing to sustain. Um, do you have any thoughts? Any additional
074thoughts? Okay. >> Um, so I am Luke Truman. I uh am a parent of students in in the Portland schools and am on the garden committee or one of co-chair of the garden committee at Longfellow Elementary, but also an employee at the University of Southern Maine. And I am working closely with a with the honors and um ESP environmental science and policy um instructors or um that that group to um get University of Southern Maine students into the Portland schools and working with um funding from the main economic improvement fund to actually pay for internships or service learning internships for students to USM students to get into the Portland schools to do project work and then also um build in that that consistency. And so we have um last year we had a a student
075that reported to me that was in a bunch of schools getting a getting kind of a lay of the land currently when it comes to the food waste programs and who has composting, who has who has uh shared tables and and how successful are those programs. Um we have a plan right now to have to have up to six interns um each working 10 hours a week um for the spring 2026 semester. And the plan is to continue that semester after semester. And so these six will be focused um in alignment with with the project the pharmacy school institute project. So they'll be focused at at uh Daring High School Longfellow Elementary in Lincoln Middle and then we're going to we're going to take the the systems that are built in there and then kind
076of feed that across the district. But there there are some schools that are doing a great job that have the right people in place. Um but as Jim mentioned, >> you're really relying on a champion instead of it being really systemic. And so >> you know what we want to what we want to do if if we are successful in the long term, it's going to just be built into the program and then people can come and go and the the programs will subsist. And so that's that's our number one goal. And our number one goal is to or another another priority is to really get it right at the the schools that we're going to be working in in spring semester and then expand that model out so that we can we can really
077focus district wide. >> Thank you so much there. That's a great project. So my last question is on the local project. I am a fan on that project for years and uh I just want to understand how diverse is the distribution to families and uh if we have any hardship or challenges to find some cultural appropriate food for the families and then also uh if we have a a a system where family can can be help communicate to know exactly the value of that locker project. >> So, we've done a couple of things lately to to make this a little easier. One, we um launched a new website in August that does have translation built in it. So, all you know, it's a number of languages. It's much easier to figure out what's going on
078um with our new website. Um, I would say in in every case the best thing to do is for the family to talk to the social worker because it really depends on the school what the models we have going on. And then we also have sort of some things that we can customize. If um the you know the program that we have there doesn't work for them, we can we can figure out if what we call family boxes. We do um purchase uh culturally important items like different oils um and flowers and things like that that people are looking for and then try to direct them you know to the right schools or the right pantries the right you know so we we we do work on that quite a bit but it all comes
079through communication with the social worker at every school. >> Okay. Right. Thank you. I just want to say thank you so much for what you do. I really appreciate you and your passion and your support for the family. So >> appreciate it. >> Thank you so much for the presentation. Thank you, chair. >> Thank you. >> Other questions from the board? Board member Ali. Ali, go ahead. >> Hello. Uh, just a quick question. Um, I was at I think I was at one of these schools over here, elementary school, and um, I'm sorry, there's a lot of schools. Why y'all laughing at me? Um and uh I I was serving with um a representative, a senator that um came to to visit and I saw uh the burrito uh that was halal. Um I was
080I was it was really interesting and I just wanted to know if it was like is it is that specifically made here in Maine or is it like shipped in from >> I think I have the answer. >> Yeah. So that product we are purchasing um it's called it's from Midamar. It is probably the national leader in producing halal meals across the nation. Um I want to say they're out of Chicago. Um we're getting them through a distributor. Um and again we've worked very closely with that. They've also been fully um audited by our Aanka. So again it's something that we are just sourcing. Um and then we are also providing when you see the popcorn chicken, it is also a Miniar pro product as well. >> Okay. Okay. Okay. Awesome. No, thank you. I
081saw I saw um that I was interested in in figuring that out. But you guys are doing great and um I really appreciate all the work you guys doing, all the um you know, pre-checks, the the investigative uh like all just making sure everything is right. So, I really appreciate that. Go ahead, Marilina. >> I'm just gonna add something in really quickly, which is you're just asking about Maine products. One thing that is really exciting is that there is now a halal chicken slaughter house in Maine. Um, so we're looking into getting local halal chicken. So, that is really exciting. Sorry if I'm speaking too soon. >> Can I have just quick followup? So, um I know that legally they I don't know if you guys knew I mean you probably do, but legally they
082passed um lab grown chicken that to be a be able to be um labeled chicken, right? You guys did you guys hear about that federally? So, anyways, they they did that and um I seen like factories of like the chickens that that just did not really come out of another chicken, right? So, it was creepy. Um and I saw I'm just guys >> listen. So, no, no, no. Um, and uh, you know, so I I just really appreciate what you just said because you know, obviously that can't be halal meat because we have to like it has to be a live chicken and be slaughtered, you know, got to pray over and stuff. So yeah. Well, that's it. Thank you. >> Yeah, working on more more local. >> Beautiful. >> Working with local farmers to
083grow more chickens that can be slaughtered at that process in place. There's a lot of Muslims that work at um that slaughter facility as well. And we're working with Tyler on some ideas about how we take some of the raw product and make it into plate items that can be served in schools and he wants to be a leader on that. So we're looking at some equipment that will enable us to do that both with chicken and with fish. So >> beautifulina. >> Yes, thank you. I had a question about the school gardens. Um I know that all of the school gardens sort of are managed differently. So, I'm curious about the vision of using the gardens for um cafeteria food if there might be a more centralized like process in terms of you know
084we want to grow these vegetables over at row and this over here so that we can actually harvest it and bring it to central kitchen or sort of an open-ended question but >> yeah um [clears throat] cultivating community has been kind of the lead partner in um both managing the gardens as well as building new gardens and educating students about what comes out of those gardens. They don't really have like a production strategy where they can grow enough food to actually even have enough potatoes for one day to you know have have that be a side dish but I know there has been some integration of some of the garden grown food at different times featured and brought up. You going to say something about >> I think I yeah come on up. I guess
085my my followup is I think not all of the gardens are being managed by cultivating community. I'm pretty familiar with row school. my kids go there and they have a they're forming a new greening committee so there's energy there but I don't know that they're connected with cultivating community so I'm wondering about that >> I mean you're absolutely right it's a total hodge podge um the consistency is that cultivating community is involved in some way shape or form um you know we've we've been exploring a bunch of different opportunities or options and then thinking of you know longfellow daring and Lincoln even being able to um grow what can be served on site at one of those schools. Um, and then figuring out how to how to best optimize the space during the summer, the
086primary growing season, and how to how to get food grown in those spaces and to the community, whether it be in a school or, you know, there we we are in a unique situation in this in this city where we do have neighborhood schools. And so how we can kind of make sure that the schools are connected to the neighborhood during those summer months. And um really, you know, one issue that we have in this in this city is is a shortage in of community garden space, right? So how can we how can we connect those dots? Um I don't think that I don't think it's realistic to look at it as kind of production, right? I think it's more more figuring out how to really optimize what we have and then and then ideally
087get more school crossover and get more people from the community engaged in the school gardens rather than our like you know twice a year garden events like how can we make that a more regular thing? So, we've got a lot of work to do citywide, but um I think that I think that that's I guess the the higher priority and then figuring out um figuring out those like what the specific things are that are grown kind of secondary. But we were able to last fall, for example, grow a bunch of of late fall um greens in the Longfellow garden that that we then harvested and prepared at at Lincoln or in the Lincoln kitchen and then brought back to Longfellow to serve in the salad bar. Um so [clears throat] for the kids to be
088able to like connect them their work to a meal that they're eating, like that's a success. It would be great to have that be a much more regular thing. >> Yeah, >> that's a really good observation. And you're right, school gardens function better when there's more local ownership of the school community right there. I mean, cultivating community kind of make sure they are all kind of functioning, but they have different amounts of investment depending on who's on the ground at the different schools, too. >> Other questions from the board? Um, I just have a couple of questions. Um, in my day job, I get to work with a lot of sectors, uh, across the state. And I just have such a special place in my heart for the food system and people that work in
089the food system here in Maine because you're just such great collaborators and you're really strength-based and, you know, just so many of you work in the same space and and make solutions that work for the problems in front of us. And I'm just incredibly grateful um that we get to experience that in this district. Um and just a couple of uh question. Do we work with the marinara project or harvesting good here in this district? >> Yeah. Well, I mean they have Ron Adams developed the Marinara project. His recipe resides still with Portland schools. So actually Portland schools buys all the ingredients from actually Somali band to community farms liberation farm and so Portland does that themselves. Right. >> I'm correct in that. And um harvesting good, that's the broccoli project. >> Yeah, the harvesting
090good. We do purchase it. Um we don't really run uh frozen broccoli that much because of just the logistically on like how we're serving. We generally do a lot of uh raw broccoli in our salad bars. Um so there's times that we'll use it, but the majority of it um is just raw fresh broccoli. >> No, that's fine. Just um curious about that. And I just want to thank our legislators who uh approved universal uh access to meals. Again, I just am so grateful that they made that decision. I see the impact on my family and just the impact on school culture around there's not shame in getting food if you need it and I just think that it's uh absolutely tremendous. So uh thank you for that. And can you please tell me a
091little bit more about the kelp burger and like how how does that get how does that land in the elementary schools? I'm curious. >> Well, yeah. So, the Kelber is developed by Andrew Wilkinson. He is out of uh North Coast, which is um a company out of Boston. He was previously a chef. And what he is doing is he is getting all of the kelp out of Casco Bay. Um it is a large farm um out of Scarboro and what is very convenient for us it is um ifa approved product. Um so for us it kind of goes twofold. It's a local product that we're being able to use. It's a sustainable product um that you know kelp is the easiest growing product in all of basically all of the ocean. And then also too,
092uh, were able to serve it as a vegan and halal option. Um, so it's kind of just this all-encompassing thing. And I think truthfully, once you eat it, you don't really taste kelp. Um, and I think if you were to taste test it side by side, you know, it's one of those that, you know, if you're really seeking it out, you would probably find the nuances. Um, >> oh my gosh, I'm so excited about this. >> Yeah, we have them available every day or every Monday or Tuesday on the meals. >> I'm all right. Awesome. Thank you. Yeah, board member Ali Elli. >> Yeah, one last comment. So, I'm I'm really into food, right? So, I'm alkaline based. I got my stuff right here. So, this is SEMOS. Um, but like kelp is actually like
093I think it's number one um when it comes to mineral based all of all plants when it comes to like uh the sea vegetables and then seamoss is number two. So, I know people hear about seaos a lot, but kelp is is tough. It's high in iodine. So, thank you all. >> Just what a great example of uh meeting challenges with unique um and awesome solutions that benefit so many people. So, just uh thank you. Thank you. Thank you for all of your work, for coming here tonight to share, and for all you do for our students. I know it's hard right now, but we got your back as much as we can. >> Thank you. And we couldn't do it without your support. So, thank you for investing in this work and letting us
094lead. >> Thank you. Yeah, feels good to have some good news. Thank you everyone. Um, all right. And now we're going to move into enrollment. Dr. Warren, is that you? Do you want to give context? Who's presenting for that? That is Haley Drienson, who's just coming up. Hello. I'm gonna share my slides here. Awesome. Good evening everyone. Um it's a tough act to follow. I'm just here with data. Um not here to talk about food, but um it was tasty to listen to. Um so uh this this evening I'll really be um providing just kind of a high-level overview of our enrollment data um as a snapshot in time but also looking at trends over time um and providing some breakdowns about our current enrollments across our different schools. Um so this is you know
095a question I get a lot um as far as um you know how many students are in our school. So, I hope that this context is helpful for folks about um who we're serving and where. So, um the first thing I want to name is that enrollment data is one of the most uh everchanging data points that we're trying to pin down because um students are often moving in and out of our schools both between buildings and in our district. So, to give people a single enrollment count number can be challenging. Um, so what the data team's preferred method for reporting on enrollment numbers are our October one counts. This is a count that we provide to the state that does ultimately impact the funding we receive. And so um even though October 1st has
096passed, um, believe it or not, we have not officially certified that number. So there's a big caveat on all the numbers I'm presenting tonight, which is we are in the final stretch of cleaning up all of our enrollment numbers. um and making sure that they are uh fully accurate and they'll be certified later this week. But I believe that the numbers I'll be sharing tonight are pretty close to accurate. Um but if you see in future presentations that some of the ends have changed by a few, that is why we we keep sort of tweaking right up until the last minute to make sure that we have the most accurate data possible. Um, as far as the enrollment trends that I'll be presenting, um, we'll be looking back to the 201718 school year, um, and
097that's just based on the data that's sort of readily available as the state certified data in NEO, which is the state's data system. Um, so with that, uh, um, just to kind of give us a little bit of context about sort of total enrollment counts over time. So, um it may not be a surprise to uh many of you to hear that sort of national and state trends over time have shown declines in enrollment in public schools. Um what's interesting about Portland public schools um sort of uh bucking the trend is that uh PPS did see a modest rebound in enrollment in the 23 24 school year. um as in contrast to many school districts that continued to see the decline after the pandemic hit. So kind of an interesting trend in our data. But
098I will say that our current enrollment uh counts we we do see a decline this year after sort of that rebound that we had seen in the 23 24 and 24 25 school years. And so when we look over the last nine years, the overall percent change um is uh just shy of a 7% change over time. So again, we do sort of follow a national and state trend um but did have kind of an interesting uh blip in our uh trend line um in in the past couple of years. So um obviously as we start to disagregate our data it helps us to understand sort of what may be driving different trends. Now it's important to note that um you know we can't necessarily uh attribute sort of causation to our trend lines um
099but it it does give us uh an interesting um piece of information to observe and notice and think about how it might impact our resource allocation. Um but so one thing as we look at our enrollment trends um disagregating to look at student subgroups when we look specifically at multilingual student enrollment trends over time we do see an interesting trend here where there was a a noticeable increase in multilingual student enrollment in the 23 24 school year. Um and so that when we think about sort of that blip in the sort of trend line, the the rise in the trend line, um it does appear that that may have been partly driven by an influx of multilingual students coming into PPS in the 23 24 school year. And so then kind of following that line
100to to present day um as we've seen a slight decline in multilingual students enrolled um the overall enrollment count has also declined. Um so when we then uh look at other student subgroups so you'll notice my um the red line is uh economically disadvantaged students and there is no dot on the trend line for this particular metric. This is one of our most complex uh data metrics to construct because it requires multiple sources of data and so my team was was plugging away today but um they didn't feel confident in presenting a number um because it requires multiple uh sources of information to construct. So we will not have that that economically disadvantaged count for today. But you can see in looking at that trend over time, we have in the last couple of years
101seen um an increase in the number of economically disadvantaged students. Um and then of course as we look um we have the multilingual um group that's represented on this chart overall as well as we look at uh special education students students with IEPs where actually that trend line um has been relatively steady with a slight uptick um even in the current uh school year. Um the other thing that we can look at obviously we can look at sort of overall enrollments and the different subgroups we're serving. Um and we can also look at enrollment trends broken down by gradeb band. Now obviously these you'll see um differing numbers. These are all counts um that that we see. And so different schools the elementary schools are tend to be much smaller. Um and so hence why
102there's sort of this stacking effect going on. But you can see from looking at this these trend lines um of course that uh we see relatively flat trends. Although um what is kind of interesting in um in this trend line is that we see our middle school grade bands showing sort of a steady decline in recent years. Um and again uh what is I guess perhaps interesting but not surprising knowing what we know about overall enrollment counts is again the 23 24 school year seeing increases um in enrollment in elementary and high school. Okay. So, this chart um this one you might have to uh download the slides and really look carefully. There's a lot to fit on there. And I even had to um uh exclude Peaks and Cliff because um because the the
103gap between the the sizes of the buildings made it too hard to read the chart. But what I am hoping you can take from this very busy chart um as we look at sort of enrollment trends uh across our elementary schools is that we actually have had a fair amount of sort of variability um in terms of total enrollments in our elementary schools. Um and that it's not you know there's not a clear trend that's happening in elementary overall and that it's actually individual schools that are seeing different peaks and valleys at different points in time. So whereas for example we see um Longfellow and Ocean and Talbot seeing some declining enrollments over time um places like Row uh in particular and Reichy have seen increases. We have some schools that have certain a one-year
104kind of influx. And so I think that um some of these could be driven just by uh shifting, you know, uh enrollment counts driven by students who live in the neighborhood, but it also could be um you know, related to uh uh different political pieces. You know, this is looking at over time. So um obviously as Portland has changed, enrollments change, and so you kind of see that um manifest here. And so we don't have a clear driver for this variation. um that the story of enrollment may be tied to the specific individual school and what was happening in that neighborhood at that time. Um when we look at our middle school enrollment trends, this is a sort of interesting one and um the curriculum committee sort of dug into this one more deeply and
105I have an appendix at the end of this deck if if people really want to dig into this particular trend. Um but what is interesting when we look at the middle school um enrollment trend is overall um enrollments of course declining substantially over the last nine years. But I think what really jumped out to um folks in the committee and um those who have looked at these slides is just seeing the decline um in particular at Lincoln Middle School. Um and so part of the sort of committee's investigation was really trying to understand the why behind that. And so, you know, again, we can't necessarily causally, but um noticing a trend that for example, um Lincoln has a lower rate of multilingual students enrolled. It just has a different demographic breakdown. And so, um, as
106the, uh, the, um, enrollment trends of increasing trends were appearing to be driven primarily by an increase in multilingual students, the logic follows that Lincoln Middle School would not necessarily see the same bump in enrollment as the other middle schools. And then uh lastly, when we look at our high school enrollment trends, um we look across sort of the bottom of the chart here and we see that Casco Bay has had quite steady uh enrollment trends over time, which is logical given the nature of the the lottery system and sort of the cap on enrollment that's set by that. Um but we do see some interesting trends here um in terms of uh changes in during and Portland um and seeing different uh trends going up and down um over time. Um and so kind
107of an interesting thing to see that sort of uh flip-flop of of trend lines happening over time. Um and so the other thing as I mentioned that you know enrollment counts do impact our funding and what is challenging when we talk about enrollment numbers and and how it's impacting our funding is that you know we're [snorts] doing these projections about um resources needed based on projected enrollments. And so, um, in comparing the October 1st enrollment counts with what was originally projected for each of the schools, we see overall um that we projected a greater number of students in almost all of our schools than actually enrolled. The problem is that um over the course of the year, we will probably see this many students come through our doors. Right? we have a a modest churn
108rate in our district of many students moving in and out and so um obviously it's a challenge knowing that the October 1 count is sort of when we get our counts our official count um but we tend uh to serve many more students than necessarily get captured in that count. So I I sort of caution to say that while these projections obviously do show that we sort of overshot in our projections, I do think um over the course of the year, the number of total students served by PPS um will will be much greater than the enrollment counts on October 1st. And so um that's that's kind of a an overview. Um does anyone have questions? Uh uh sorry, let me go down to board member Brighten and then we'll move up. Go ahead. >>
109Thank you, chair. Um thank you so much. Uh I love data, so this is great. Um I have a question. So you were talking about the decline particularly at Lincoln and um and feeling as though it's tough to say why um you know certain numbers are showing the way they are. Um I noticed in the appendix there's a chart about um where kids went. So they left us and they went someplace else. I'm curious whe because that chart doesn't have it by school. Is is that data available to disagregate? Like could we look at the Lincoln numbers in terms of where those kids went? We could. So we start getting into very small ends. Yeah. >> Is a challenge. Um but yeah, so for anyone who hasn't perused the appendix, which appreciate you um for
110enjoying that additional content. So one of the things that is noteworthy is that when we look at the exit codes attached to students when they leave the district we have state required exit codes that we attach to the student. The most common reason a student exits our district is to go to another school district in Maine. So um so in terms of thinking about you know like you could hypothesize um why is that? Well, you know, maybe it's that families can't afford to live in Portland and so they're moving elsewhere um and and they're seeking housing in a place that um is more affordable. And so obviously we don't know definitively. It's not causal, but um that certainly is I think a helpful piece of information. Um but then when we start getting into some
111of the additional exit codes that we have access to, things like whether or not they went to a private school, a charter school, or homeschooling, we it's actually quite small in terms of the ends. Um and so we probably could disagree but we may not be able to present publicly because we do have to suppress um ends less than five. >> Yeah. Okay. All right. So I Yeah. Because I noticed that in the appendix slide the departures to private school if you're looking at fourth through 8th it's it it like it spikes at fifth and eighth which makes sense to me. if you're, you know, if you're a family and you are moving from elementary school to middle school or middle school school to high school, that would be when you would make a decision
112like that. Um, so I just that got the curiosity gears going in my brain when you were talking about the Lincoln numbers and not being able to say why. Um, >> yeah. No, I think that it's a really interesting question. And I think the thing that I caution which it makes it hard, right, this like distinction between causal versus just a trend data because I do think when you look at the um demographic uh breakdown of Lincoln, part of the enrollment decline may just be inherent with the shift in the population that is that it is serving. And therefore, you know, when we look at um non-multilingual students declining over time, um that that may actually just be mirroring the district's trend rather than anything specific to look at >> those spikes might be more
113prevalent at Moore or King or what, >> right? Who knows? >> But certainly, I think we this is data we've been having some fun with in the curriculum committee, so we might be able to dig in a little deeper. >> Watch the meeting. Yeah, >> I Yeah, [laughter] you should. Absolutely. We're the most exciting group. Um I think we look we you got Nikki on it who's asking all these good questions. The thing about the um the one about linking going down and but if you look at multilingual it goes up dramatically at King. So if there is a switch that's one place it might be. >> All right. >> Thank you so much. Thank you chair >> board member Ali Ali. >> Yeah. Yeah. I just wanted to ask um so is Portland's population
114itself growing >> as of right now for the past few years? >> The city of Portland? >> Yeah, city of Portland. >> I actually don't know. >> Yeah, because I think it would just be interesting to um look at because uh uh if that kind of aligns with the um the the lack of enrollment. Yeah, I mean I do know overall nationwide enrollments in public schools are declining across the country and in Maine it's at a higher rate than the national trend, but I don't know. I guess people are having fewer kids. I mean, I think >> I just got off the phone earlier literally pulling in here talking about somebody that went from public school to homeschooling in Maine. But um I don't Yeah, I just it's it's a just an interesting trend. And
115I just want to know if if our population is growing and then our school population is going down, right? So then that would be something that to to kind of look at, but thank you. >> Great question. I'm over here googling as fast as I can, but I can't get to it. Um, uh, no. Yes, Vice Chair Bondo, go ahead. >> Yeah, thank you so much. And I think I just going to go back to my question yesterday evening. Uh, maybe it's too early to answer. So I just I remember I want to know if the dropout or tri was be can be considered to be one of the exit code or or we have a less percentage to be considered one of those access to the decline of the the enrollment. >> Yeah I
116no I I have that as a note for my team to investigate. As far as, you know, a dropout goes, I will say sort of the the numbers of dropouts that we're seeing in the middle school in general are much lower. Um, but uh I believe it it just depends. We sometimes have to retroactively recode students once we figure out where they've gone. If we um if we don't know, then I think uh they're coded in a certain way. So it it does get a little bit complicated in the weeds, but um yeah, we can can continue to sort of investigate that question because I think it's an interesting one. >> Thank you so much. >> Yeah, thank you. >> Board member Brighton, go ahead. >> Um thank you, Chair. I actually just had a
117followup um to board member Ali's question. Um and so because I think that's so interesting in terms of in Portland is the number of people static going up going down and also the number of school-aged children. And my question is whether the demographer that's supporting the boundaries committee might be able to get that information. >> Well, we have it already. Um, we're looking at it uh as part of the boundaries plan. The percentage of school age children is expected to stay flat and potentially decrease over the next 5 to 10 years. Um, my my top level Google tells me the population is going up in Portland. Um, just like very small margins. Um but the we do know for sure that uh school age children is flat or decreasing. >> And could you could you
118explain is there a reason why? >> Is there a reason why? Because people have are having less children and Portland is an expensive place to live. Uh so those are the primary uh reasons. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. No, great questions. Um, uh, Haley, that was just like such a great presentation and I the the ways that you are now able to manipulate data because we have multi-year data. It's it's just like yes, like I'm just so excited to see what we can do with this as we continue to move um this to other places. Yes, board member Brighton, >> I am so sorry. [laughter] Um uh I just wanted to um uh board chair Lince what you were talking about just now reminded me thank you so much for doing the shapes so that
119people who can't see color and distinguish thank you so much I really think that's really valuable and um thoughtful. So thank you team data. Thank you. >> Y thank you. >> Um uh yeah I think we're I think we're done. Is that right? Sorry. Everybody's a little punchy tonight, aren't we? It's what happens when the superintendent's not here. Um, uh, thank you, Haley. Really appreciate it. And thanks to your team as well. Okay. Um, is there anything else, Dr. Warren, that you wanted to uh add on to that or um, you ready to to move along to executive session? I'm sorry, new business. >> Yes, new business. >> Beautiful. Um so tonight, um as alluded to by the finance committee, we have our first read of a consideration and action to approve a Barry Dunn
120contract. Uh since Superintendent is not here tonight, um we're going to wait to have him speak on it next uh week, but it will just be um uh a contract for the board to approve about ongoing work with Barry Dunn uh to uh hopefully remedy uh the main purse situation. Um so we don't have any comments or questions on that. Um so then I would be um making a motion uh for the consideration and action to enter into executive session pursuant to 1 MRSA uh and uh sorry 1 MRSA 4056D to discuss benefit association of school employees um our base unit and the Portland Administrators uh negotiations. Is there a second? Thank you, board member Brighten. All those in favor? Beautiful. Um, so we will move into executive session. Please take 10 minutes uh as
121a break and we'll see you at 7:56. >> We do. Makes me happy. >> Yeah. Okay. >> So, they had they had their first meeting a week or so ago. >> That >> it was I don't think >> they leave the yoga here. Come back. favor. I >> uh so I'd be making a motion to adjurnn. Is there a second? Thank you, board member. No. Um all those in favor? Thank you. We are adjourned at 9:15.