001Good evening everyone. I'm going to call the April 30th special meeting to order at 6:02 p.m. If we could all please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Roll call. Melissa Bacon here. Carmen Barski here. Suzanne Bower. Mark Cardisano here. Elizabeth Day here. Michelle Felicetti excused. Anastasia Ferguson here. Eric Garrison. Jodie Lane here. Thomas Lee. Jennifer May. Amy Morrison. Wesfinny here. Adam Tangway. Angela Tardiff excused. Judith Vel. Walker Vivian here. We have a quorum with 10 directors present. Are there any adjustments to the agenda this evening? No. Amy, we have a quorum with 11 directors present. Uh consent agenda. Can I get a motion to approve the consent agenda? Who was a second? Beth Jen. All right. We have a motion and a second to approve. Any discussion? All in favor? Motion carries. Approval of the
002minutes from April 9th, 2025. We have a motion to a motion and a second to approve the April 9th minutes. Are there any comments, questions, corrections on those minutes? All in favor? Public comment. Do we have public comment this evening? Just a couple things for you this evening for my board chair report. I'll be very brief. Um, a reminder, superintendent evaluations. If you can get those to me ASAP, that would be great. A reminder of the public budget meeting, that's May 6th at 7 p.m. at the middle school. Um, and then a community forum on May 13th at 6 p.m. right here in the East Building training room. That's all I have. So, I will turn it over to Dr. Marquee for the superintendent's report. Uh, yeah. And I don't believe you have a report
003this evening. Good. Um, I know if we had asked Walker to have one, he would have pulled one together, but we really haven't had much school because of break. Um, speaking of break, I hope that you all and our staff had a nice uh break from meetings and for those folks from their from their jobs for a week. Um I would like to uh publicly thank Katie Dupi. Uh Katie has worked with us for better part of three years. Um and really was uh tremendous uh in her efforts in supporting the board, myself and the school district. And she led many new initiatives for staff recognition and our opening activities with staff. Um Katie is going to be moving on. I'm not sure. I never told her that I was going to share anything this
004night uh tonight. So, I'm not sure if she'd want to share anything with you all. She's more than welcome to, but really want to express our sincere appreciation and gratitude for all of your efforts here over the last uh three years. Um I hope you don't mind me sharing this. Katie was given an opportunity uh that really was exciting for her that um really broadens her skill set on really kind of a national level. So, um it wasn't uh uh something that we were really envisioning her bolting on us, but really an opportunity that she couldn't refuse. So, thanks again. Um celebration today, uh you might have heard it at the last meeting, but today is Mark's birthday. So, happy birthday, Mark. He's 52. So you're looking spry. Um I want to share that um
005there there's information out about budget and I think we've really tried um to share globally about budget development and and it's always a little disappointing if if information is taken out of context or or things. Um I share that because I don't respond to Facebook. um I messages and such, but there's information out there that's not accurate and I wanted to bring it forth and if folks are watching from home, but um we don't hire assistants to assistants. We are hiring an assistant because Katie's leaving. That's not a new position. We've had really difficult conversations about budget development. We um as you all know, but I'm going to say it in case anyone's listening at home, we reduced 24 positions. We did add four positions, so it's a net reduction of FTE equivalence of 20.
006There is relatively flat enrollment. Um but um I want to be really clear, we're not increasing full-time equivalence. And in many ways, even in special education, we're adding an administrator because the functions of the work really require that. And there's some added benefit with a year-round employee as well. We achieve that by adding an extra special ed teacher and the assistant special ed director while reducing four pseudo administrative positions in those coordinators that we've talked about. I share that because um folks may at times think that school districts are heavy on administration. I would put our administrative expenditures up against any district systems administration. We are um in the bottom 5% of school districts and in the really bottom 1% of large districts in systems administration as reported by the main department of education. Um
007vastly lower than um York and Cumberland County, but vastly lower than the state averages as well. Um, I believe there's only one comparable district that's even remotely close as far as systems admin. As far as school administration, we're still well below the state average and that includes running small elementary schools. So, SIS uh school administration includes principles, assistant principles, and office staff. So, we're at drastically below and we have um three really small um really four fairly small elementary schools. That in itself typically increases s uh school administrative costs. So, in even in light of that, we are vastly lower in school administration. That's one of the warrant articles. um vastly lower than the averages for York and Cumberland County and also lower than the state averages. I share that because it might look as
008though a line might be heavy and as we've talked previously um systems administration and school administration look like they were increased a little bit but that's because of some realignments in positions and also some realignments around moving away from like ESSER funds and COVID related funds for example um Katie's position had been funded during that shift through COVID funds. So, that's going to have an impact. Um, but again, we're and I'm not trying to be self-s serving in my response to that, but if if folks really were um wanted to take some time, I would gladly, and there have been two towns where I've spent a time sending them information um but have not yet received a response about actually meeting in person to go through the budget. Um, so I I share that because
009you might be hearing things and um it's really critical that board members are present and supportive. Um, we're we're really trying to provide a a product where we're aligning with the strategic plan. We're looking at the the impact on taxpayers. We do know that there's a a lot of construction that's happening. So even though the overall um impact on taxation goes up by 5.77, that won't be the realized impact because there's new construction as you drive around and there's also new lot subdivision and those sorts of things. And when you couple that with drastic increases in valuation, all of our towns have experienced significant increases over the last six um years. valuations have gone up 64% I believe. Um in the past year um all of our towns have had drastic increases in valuation um
010with one town actually having nearly a 17% increase in valuation year-over-year in all towns um increasing by more than 10% year-over-year. As a result of that, our subsidy does not keep pace with the cost and the inflation. Um, and the state though they increased our subsidy slightly, they did not increase it in relation to um, inflation and that's partially due to our drastically um, escalating valuations. So, we tried to do our very best to bring forward and I and I think the finance committee did a really nice job and um and there was some question about are we cutting too deeply. Um I I don't think we cut too deeply, but I think further cuts if the budget were to fail could be significant on instruction. And um uh I believe our district and I've
011talked to all of our administrators, it's really about trying to communicate with um employees and families about the importance of coming out to vote regardless of whether they support the school budget or not. That's really the the essence of democracy is encouraging folks to vote. And um and I and I fear sometimes a little bit of misinformation um can do a great deal of harm. And uh and I really applaud the board and I applaud our educators, our administrators, and our supportive communities for understanding that these are challenging times and we're trying to navigate them to the best of our ability. I want to share two additional things and then I'll uh stop speaking for tonight. Um, the line school principal position has been posted. We'll be working on developing a committee. Um, I've had
012some interest already expressed. So, if I haven't communicated with you, um, don't feel any obligation to let me know you're interested because there are board members that are already interested who have reached out. So, I want to make sure that that we could kind of proceed accordingly. Um, and then we'll also be, it's awkward to say in front of her, um, we've been collecting applications. The the timeline was pretty short. Um, so we'll, we'll be a little while without um, uh, an admin assistant in in Katie's position, but we'll be um interviewing hopefully next week. Um, so we could actually secure somebody within the next few weeks. Uh, they likely will have to give a notice wherever they currently uh, work. Um, that's all I have. When we get on to new business, I'm probably
013going to turn that information over to um, Dr. Doyle to share some information related to an action item. Okay, any questions? Again, thank you for your collective support. All right, next up is standing committees. I'm not even sure if we've met, but um if you can at least give um the date of your next meeting since we've had a bit of a break to remind everyone. So, finance, building, and maintenance. Wes. Yes. U budget meeting 700 p.m. at Massabesc Middle School on May 6. That's 700 p.m. Massabes Middle School May 6. Our next finance committee meeting is here in this uh building on May 14th at 6 pm. Thank you. Curriculum Anastasia. Um our next meeting is May 13th followed by the community forum preceded. Preceded. No. Yes. All right. I said that backwards. Yes.
014Flip that. The form is at 6 p.m. and our meeting is at 7. HR um we met two weeks ago. We didn't have much of an agenda. Um we had an executive session, but our next meeting is May 7. Nope, we do not have a meeting in May. Um following up on the HR, I'll have scholarship applications to you. So, I'm going to send those out via email tomorrow. Um, the HR committee narrowed down the scholarship applicants, so I'll send the finalist to you tomorrow via email. If you can make your top two selections before the May 14th meeting, we'll make that decision at the May 14th meeting as to who's going to get the scholarships. Uh, policy has not met since our last meeting. We're meeting next Tuesday, May 6th, at the middle school
015prior to the budget meeting at 6 PM. Uh, PR Techch has has not met. No. May 20th. May 20th is the next meeting for PR Techch. Transportation. Jen, did you guys meet? May 27th for transportation. Great. Old business, we have none. New business. We do have a nomination for a new director of curriculum. I'll turn things over to Dr. Doyle. She can talk a little bit more about that. Hi everyone. Thanks so much. I'd like to just give you a brief overview of our search process and a little bit of information on our candidates. Um, so the candidate that we have up for nomination this evening is Tiffany Twitchell, who uh most recently has filled the position of literacy specialist at York Middle School and has worked for the York School Department, I believe, for
016the past nine or so years. Um, she also had spent some time in Orino prior to that. um and also at um RSU26. She is a PhD candidate in the educational leadership and policy program at the University of Southern Maine. Um she has come to us with um very strong background experience and credentials and is well recommended. Our committee um consisted of a pre-screen of applicants. We had many and we were fortunate to have a a very large pool which was fantastic. a lot of interest. I think always speaks to the efforts and the progress that we're making as a district to be able to draw candidates. And so we were really fortunate in that regard. Um we interviewed a total of three candidates. Um and ultimate ultimately we're pleased to bring Tiffany forward uh
017unanimously as a group. U Mark go ahead. Um if she is, is she here tonight? Uh she's not with us this evening. I believe she has a commitment. Doctorate class. They meet on Wednesdays. Is there a chance we could meet her upcoming board meeting? Yeah, absolutely. Okay, thank you. Y she she was uh asked that she really needed to attend. Sorry. Um she would have attended if required, but I didn't want her to miss her class time for her her program. Um we have another we actually have another staff member in the district who's part of that doctoral program who's also an administrator. Um, so they're they could be watching this from the meeting right now if they're there. I just like Yeah. Yeah. She's great. Absolutely. All right. So, uh, do we have a
018motion to accept that nomination? So, we have a motion and a second to accept the nomination for Tiffany Twitchell, director of curriculum and instruction. Is there any discussion? All in favor? That motion carries. We don't have an executive session this evening. Uh calendar and announcements at the bottom of your agenda. If there's nothing else, I'm going to adjourn the meeting at 6:20