March 26 School Board Meeting

001e e e what is what oh I thought good evening everyone going to call the March 26th school board meeting to order at 7 p.m if everyone could please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance roll call Joshua Allard Melissa bacon here Carmen Bari here Suzanne Bower mark cardano Elizabeth Day Michelle feletti Anastasia Ferguson here Eric Garrison jod Lane here Jennifer Mayo excused Amy morison Wes finny here Adam tangway Angela tardiff Judith vasel Walker Vivian we have a quum with 15 directors present are there any adjustments to the agenda this evening no adjustments can I get a motion to approve the consent agenda there any discussion uh so we have a motion and a second to approve the consent agenda all in favor opposed motion carries next up uh looking for approval of the minutes from

002March 12th we have a motion and a second to approve the minutes are there any comments questions Corrections on the minutes all in favor motion carries public comment do we have any public comment this evening next up we'll move on to the board chair report and we're going to start off with recognitions and celebrations so I think first up is principal thorlo all right good evening everyone so it's uh it's my honor to recognize a student here tonight who has done some incredible things outside of the walls of massic high school um specifically with the 4 program um which is a is a wonderful wonderful opportunity for students who are involved in agricultural agriculture excuse me in animal husbandry among other things um what I think is so impressive about this particular student and what

003they're doing off- campus is how they brought their interest on campus and started the first chapter of the Future Farmers of America for MHS um so really honoring this student in a couple of different ways so uh it's my uh honor and privilege to recognize for winning the state 4 Derry quizbowl as the senior high individual in the fall of 2025 uh sorry um sorry and will be competing at the eastern states Exposition in the fall of 2025 is senior and FFA chapter president Isel [Applause] GT and there are some other High School um recognitions that will be given by Dr McKinnon and I'm going to head back to our eighth grade step up so thank you evening my name is Emily McKinnon recently graduated with my doctorate thank you to Dr Marquee who has

004served on my committee by the way um I I am here to present two awards at the high school level and then several awards at our Middle School level for some fabulous essays that have been written in the recent past so I'd like to start by recognizing Walker viven for his National History Day essay which has moved on to the state competition and that was entitled working for a fair and just future the imbalance of Rights and responsibilities between the working class and business owners during the first Industrial Revolution Walker won't you please come up and accept this award I'm gonna have you hold right here shall I do a bunch of awards at the same time so in addition to this award for Walker who we've got here I have also from The National

005Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution this is a first place prize for Walker's essay on he was uh to pick any War battle or Revolutionary War person so this is for your essay on Deborah Samson this is a prize as well as a silver medal and a certificate welcome thank you offer for that same essay competition but with the sons of the American Revolution um it's it's not the same essay competition I apologize it's the same topic choose any Revolutionary War battle or person and placing in the sons of the American Revolution first place moving on to Nationals with an all expense paid trip where she will read her essay is Brielle denmore sophomore at the high school [Applause] congratulations well done and we have a number of essays that were written at

006the middle school um we offer Extended Learning opportunities uh to any student that would like to participate so these are shared through a Google Classroom uh Mrs wardwell will go into the language arts classrooms and offer these opportunities to any student that might like to participate so with that I would like to recognize um the Rebecca Emory chapter out of Kenny buunk um is the Daughters of the American Revolution and placing first we we have Miss Sabrina CIA from grade seven so [Applause] Sabrina and also for the Rebecca Emery chapter I apologize not the Rebeca Emory chapter this is for the Sanford Amvets and the sford AmVets offered an essay contest called what does flag protection mean to me so the students that placed in this competition researched care of the flag and so forth

007so in second place again we have Sabrina CIA and in first place was Annabelle Doyle and at the high school we had Walker Vivien who also placed so what does flag protection mean to me come on up Annabelle Sabrina and Walker [Applause] subina all right and there we go yes all right here we are now the Fleet Reserve Association offers an essay contest called americanism the americanism essay contests and that topic was what does service in our country mean to me and placing second was Sabrina CIA and first was Annabelle Doyle so here we are [Applause] all right [Applause] and I have one student that is not here who I'd like to recognize this award was for the Elks drug awareness um essay contest this student won at the state level the topic was throw

008away drugs not your future and that would go to Luca storman who is an eighth grader at the middle school so Luca's probably at the Step Up night so thank [Applause] you and my neglect Walker you have so many here I neglected to give you the americanism essay contest um certificates so I'll have you come over one more time so [Applause] yes scho for the Sanford ni thank you all right thank [Applause] you I simply want to say congratulations to our recognized students tonight uh it's always a pleasure to see kids excelling and uh putting themselves out there in in these competitions so so great work um you all have a lot to uh aspire to with Walker here thankfully he's not going to be competing against you guys for very long so um congratulations

009at this time you're you're welcome to head out or you're welcome to stay and and enjoy the rest of our meeting um I know what I might do if I were in your shoes congratulations again thanks for coming in [Applause] they'll stay for your report they want to hear your report yeah it's always a good one so um all right so for my board chair report this evening I have quite a bit um for you so I first want to recognize um a couple of school board members that are celebrating anniversaries on the board this month so as of uh March of 2024 Eric Garrison has been on the board for one year and Mark cardano has been on the board for three years so [Applause] congratulations um I want to take a moment to

010thank Joshua Allard this is his last board meeting with us he didn't run for rec uh reelection in chapley so he's finishing out his tenure on the board and if you know anyone from chapley um but thank you so much for Josh we've uh We've enjoyed having you on the board so and you know if you change your mind there's still an opening so um also I want to welcome Carmen barski she's the new rep from limr who was sworn in last week she went through New School Board member orientation with Dr Marquee and I yesterday so welcome we're very happy to have you here [Applause] here um uh I want to remind everyone the budget review session that was scheduled for Monday that was rescheduled to next Monday because of the weather so next

011Monday March 31st at 6:30 right here in the East Building training room I would encourage you all to attend to get a full review of the budget um all right and then I wanted to do a recap of the board Workshop that was held on March 17th I um the board members that were able to make it there I let them know that I would provide a detailed recap this evening during my board chair report um for anyone that wasn't able to attend whether it be board members or the public so I typed it out so that I could get right through it very quickly so so the Schoolboard workshop on 317 so we began our discussion on the report that school psychology reports SPS completed which analy Iz policies implementation and practice in regards

012to student well-being in rsu57 with a focus on the high school and the middle school um it was a lengthy conversation a lot of insightful questions um but the report contains a lot of information so we weren't able to cover everything in that one night um but I wanted to recap for anyone who doesn't know the process newer board members or anyone in the public in April of 2024 the school board voted to retain an independent third party to review rsu57 policies procedures and response to purported student misconduct and supports that are in place to assist students wellbeing so SPS was commissioned in June 2024 to begin this process over the summer they started reviewing policies and meeting with school board members and District administration in the fall they expanded that to include student and

013staff focus groups as well as building Administration um and then a draft of the report was completed mid December and the next step was determining how to get that draft report um finalized and share it with the share it with the community so um one question that was asked at the workshop and that I want to emphasize tonight is that the final report is very similar to the initial draft um we made some policy Corrections um clarified some review of the policies against the msma samples and made some adjustments throughout to ensure that the final report was accessible to the community and was able to be read and understood um not just by Educators so that was there was a little fine-tuning with the language so I took extensive notes during the workshop so I

014want to summarize some points of discussion um that we had during the workshop so clarification on what restorative justice is um so a recognition of harm being done versus a discipline model um there was some reporting regarding um discipline of students that was incorrect suspensions and expulsions so we're going to look to correct or get the correct data for that um Dr Marquee spoke to us about that at the workshop we talked about the youth truth survey how our seven schools participate only 12 other schools in all of New England participate and there's only a total of 176 rural schools that participate in that survey so um we talked about potentially looking into a replacement for youth truth that works better for us um what are our needs as far as count counselors go we

015talked about um expanding the student rep position to be a real ear to the ground and talking about the climate at the high school um and the Middle School um the board expressed a desire to get a report from the culture and accountability coach at the high school what does a typ typical day look like for them we discussed uh no contact contracts and the duration of those so usually it lasts for the school year unless everyone um resolves it and it's that no contact contract um is enforceable at school and during school events um we talked about the elementary school impact and um what the elementary school administration would have for feedback where this was focused on the high school and the middle school and potentially what um they would have to add to

016that um current behaviors regarding social media and the political climate um but it I've lost my place oh but but it came out that there really is a lot of good in the report so um and a lot of it was there was nothing shocking but staff are welcoming it's a warm climate um a lot of the things that were brought up in the report were already being worked on before the report was released um and then [Music] um s right there's a lot on here that um we talked about mainstream media encouraging communication and then we talked about whether we should consider redoing this in a couple years um and one of the costs or one of the questions around that was what was the final cost of the analysis uh so I spoke

017with Mr Walsh and the final cost was $8,000 for them to do um the focus groups and policy review and and come up with the final report so um I think it's definitely something that we could should consider so in by the end we really determined that we need to do another Workshop because the the administration we needed to give them more time to review it and dig in we'd like to get um some feedback from our school counselors and social workers on what's in the report so I'm looking to schedule that for the beginning of May I don't have a date yet um but I wanted to let you all know for anyone who couldn't be there that um we're looking to do another Workshop to really dig into this and and involve Administration

018once they get a a chance to review it as well so um so any questions comments feedback you guys have all had the report for another week and a half um there's a lot a lot a lot in it but um but it's a good conversation starter and we can start making some plans around the information that they provided if there's no questions that's all I have I'll turn things over to Dr Marquee for the superintendent report well first congratulations Walker for all the recognitions um it's it's uh what's what I found interesting is the fact that you're always at each meeting sharing all these successes and celebrations of our school throughout each of our buildings and uh you have a mountain load of uh Rec nitions and you've kept those under uh lock and

019key so congratulations so um so Walker if you could give your report at this time yes okay so uh this report was slightly longer so I'll try to keep it brief um the high school hosted a red Red Cross blood drive on Wednesday March 19th teachers and students were able to donate blood and the account uh event was run by the student council on March 21st a Friday the National Honor Society hosted a winter Blues bash where there were fun events throughout the school uh the high school ran an early release day schedule and then the last couple hours of the day were devoted for fun activities for students and staff the junior class at the high school is hosting a prom calendar fundraiser there were donations collected from businesses and now there's a calendar

020with prizes and raffle drawings each day the junior class sold these to people throughout the community and currently the Raffles are being held each day the high school is hosting its second annual March Madness dodgeball tournament this year the senior class is hosting the event and there are eight player teams that play standard gym class dodgeball rules and a bracket tournament to try to see who comes out on top last year the all staff team which included thorow and many others at the high school made it to the final but did lose so they they came close yeah yeah thorough actually sad over at the um which I'll talk about in a minute the step of night they're still stinging from that loss but we're hoping they can recover um the uh we had recognition

021for this at the last board meeting but the girls wrestling team on the class a state championship and performed very well there uh the spring Sports season is beginning soon there were uh some meetings at the high school and all registrations are due soon before practices start there were 38 students from the high school and the middle school selected to participate at the American coral Directors Association Festival that will be held at March 29th at massic Middle School there is a March Madness Penny War to benefit the York County shelter there was a seventh grade climate change solution Summit that occurred on Friday March 14th and seventh graders who had worked on creating models and climate change solutions for the last couple of months were able to share their findings and their research with the

022community in this open house style event at Waterboro Elementary there have been multiple exciting events kindergarteners have been able to learn about animals from Sparks Arc where and they were able to witness live animals in a presentation third graders took a trip to a maple syrup Farm in Hyrum they want to decorate their own sat buckets and first graders that went to Alfred Elementary to learn about animals and they saw a tarantula a snake a skunk a GI toad a giant rabbit and an alligator and all of these events were shared grade level experiences where students in the same grade at different schools are able to experience the event together there have been a lot of these occurring throughout the district and they align with a strategic plan so I'll talk more about the beginning

023of the high school transition in a second but I think that these trips can really ease another transition that's often challenging transitioning into Middle School one of the many benefits of these is that students ra make connections during these trips so they have a few more friendly and recognizable faces when they do go to the Middle School from the elementary school they know some people outside of their school and having more interaction between students on these trips can further this and right now at the high school as I mentioned earlier there is a step of night happening for eighth graders so the fifth graders at waterborough hosted a fundraiser for their end of year activities and they collected money to determine which administrator would receive a a pie in the face and I feel bad

024for whoever won or lost that race depending on how you look at it at lion Elementary there was a VIP breakfast with students and families and a principal readalong Alfred had a schoolwide readathon during reada Across America week and students were able to surpass the principal's challenge of 19,000 minutes by reading over 26,000 minutes in Just 4 days they'll now be voting on a challenge for the principals to compete past tasks have included kissing a pig being made into an ice cream sunde getting slimed and eating bugs so we'll see how uh how harsh they decide to be this year uh staff at Alfred Elementary have worked hard to put together report cards and prepare for meetings their annual one school one book event is coming up where the entire school is able to read

025one book and have fun literacy events for it the lobby has been hinting at that book which will be revealed soon the Lyman Elementary has been focusing on its theme of be a reader during read Across America week they've had a lot of reading focused activities there and they'll have a stem-based family night upcoming on March 17th shapley Memorial School will hold a Mustang Monday where students and staff will dress in their favorite or did dress in their favorite Mustang GE they've issued reading logs and are hoping to reach their goal of reading 5,000 minutes by the end of March students there travel to Lyman Elementary to see us Sparks Arc presentation on Friday March 21st second trimester progress reports and WEA reports and RTO plans will go home for parents to review and they'll

026be hosting a dress as your favorite book character day there are also reading events that have been occurring throughout the month the kindergarten registration process is open uh birth certificate immuniz immunization records and proof of residency are required to register and students already in prek don't will be automatically enrolled and there have been many exciting events happening as I said there's more detail in the report and a lot of students at the elementary level were able to learn about um the maple syrup process and this gave them a new appreciation and perspective if they participated on Main Maple Sunday weekend this past Sunday and I also just wanted to say that I've had a chance to review the uh the report and I'm happy to share some of my thoughts at it at a later

027date when we can go more in depth like another board Workshop uh and that concludes the student representative report thank you Walker you're amazing that was U another fantastic report any questions uh for Walker based on his report just one I promise never to put you on the spot but the history the history teacher me just can't what Drew you to Deborah um Samson that's such an interesting individual yeah yeah I um I I like to uh kind of choose people for these essay contests that aren't as well known like last year um for the same essay contest I chose Nancy Hart who was a person that I really thought embodied the American Spirit um in The Patriot cause without being you know on the battlefield or a general and I thought Deborah Samson even

028though she did go on the battlefield she dressed up as a man to be able to fight I thought it was kind of a similar case uh someone that you know isn't as commonly known and associated with the revolution but still you know gave a 100% to our cause for Independence good for you good thank you Walker I could listen to you all day um and uh you know I I I kind of swell with pride knowing that that you're here you know you're I don't say it lightly when I when I say you're so much brighter than I'd ever think of being so so uh nice work my friend um want to share with the board that um the state legislature is uh very very busy right now um I believe there when all

029is said and done they'll be pouring over upwards of 2400 bills many of those will have impacts on schools um been working very closely with uh uh main School management as well as other superintendant I drafted a letter in response to a um a law that I um was part of a subcommittee on around superintendent agreement so it's a really busy time that we're keeping a good eye on because many of these uh laws though well- intended do have a trickle down effect on taxpayers and school operations and um for that um no good deed left unpunished right sometimes those things really create some additional challenges and sometimes some great opportunities for our districts so just trying to keep mindful of those um in February we had that site visit from the state around School

030construction just wanted to give you an update um tomorrow um Mr Brooks and uh Mr Walsh and myself will be um talking a little bit further in Dr Doyle um about submitting um a revision we have until April 1 to submit that and we're just pulling together some final information about um about topics that could help uh enhance our application and hope to have that uh completed um tomorrow or Friday um also want to share that um following the uh anytime we have a situation where um there could be a dangerous um impact on students staff the community um we tend to try to debrief those things and uh between working closely with EMA as well as um First Responders from water um water burough fire department and rescue uh we we've done um a

031couple different um roundtables or tabletop activities related to uh the propane leak that we had at the high school on March 7th also want to share and and Walker Walker touched upon it um on the uh 14th I believe it was I had the Good Fortune of attending the um climate Summit with our seventh graders um uh there were a lot of adults there but um please don't ever feel offended if you see me at a school event that kids are doing things and that I don't talk with you I tend to spend all the time talking with kids and then I slip out a side door uh because I try to take as much time as I can and then have to get to something else so um I know that there were a

032lot of people attending that also want to share last Friday I had the Good Fortune of attending um the recognition uh celebration ceremony at York at the York County Sheriff's Department for um the jail as well as for um uh the Sheriff's Office and um want to share that um our SRO dep U sheriff or Deputy cmer um was instrumental in working with our adult dead program and the York County Sheriff's to um develop a uh citizens um police academy and um at that event uh 22 individuals were recognized for completing um the program under the direction of our SRO and uh it was very very well received by the sheriff's office um uh Sheriff King was was really complimentary it was nice to uh uh see a a former board member John Flagler who

033was uh participated in the event and Suzanne was also uh attended that event it was far larger than I what I was anticipating um we continue to move forward with all sorts of initiatives um in the District you're going to hear some information tonight about some of our data and we're obviously in the throws of budget development like everyone else um but really pleased with the the work and attending with several board members tonight between finance and and tonight's board meeting trying to zip through the high school event and it was really really pretty cool seeing kids excited about um the clubs and groups that they were uh participating in and sharing information with our Rising um eighth graders into ninth grade so um I appreciate the fact when I issued the challenge to zip

034over there quickly and zip back that folks uh took me up on that challenge so thank you all very much that concludes my report thank you any questions for Dr Marie all right uh next up standing committees Finance building and maintenance Wes I'm not going to go into a lot of detail on the budget because our finance director Colin Walsh will be making a presentation tonight but just briefly uh we met on the 19th and the 26 and the topic of discussion as again the leech field and chapley rfps go out Friday and a do back on the 16th um the uh uh Finance director and his team are still meeting on the modula that project is still ongoing and there are still a few issues left um the other issue uh uh last week

035uh Colin locked in uh fuel prices he consulted with uh Dr M and Doyle and uh reached out to me the finance committee uh had given him authorization if they got to a certain point to lock him in and he did he can explain what those are at some point if you have questions um that's my brief report because there's so much more to come thank you any questions for Wes great next up curriculum anastesia we have not met since the last board meeting our next meeting is April 8th at 6m questions on curriculum uh Human Resources Anastasia we have not met We are continuing with negotiations with the teachers union and our next meeting is April 17th at 6: p.m. okay uh next up policy uh has not met since the last board meeting

036we're meeting next uh next Tuesday April 1st at 6 PM any questions on policy PR Tech Suzanne meet last week on Tuesday uh um March 18th at 6m and um we um the updates from that on the technology side is um the uh team got the Civil Rights report completed and sent in um the eate project of the firewalls I believe between here and the Middle School um has been completed um they have put an um eate RFP bid out for the 25 6 school year and um this tentative work um they're hoping to work on Alfred Elementary School for that EAP project and um for uh the technology side of Transportation they're working with um the the transportation director Richie Newton as they are trying a a new software it package and they um

037um they're going to be running or have been running the two systems side by side to see if this new one would be um the right one to go with so um the online as mentioned in the student report the online registration portal is open for the next school year and um next the next um technology public relations meeting we are going to be reviewing um the some different website templates that would somewhat change the look and feel of the website so um in case you you like things like that feel free to come to that next April meeting and um for uh the public relations um we had a discussion about um the spring Community forum and um that will be occurring on May 13th at 6:00 um and let's see um we are

038looking to focus on the Strate um different parts of the Strategic plan we're going to be flushing out the agenda a little bit better at our April meeting and um we are really hoping you know for Community feedback um at that uh Community Forum so stay tuned for that again that that will be occurring May 13th and our next meeting is in April and I don't have a date for that it's on T third Tuesday April 15 17th no April 15 6:m it's a Tuesday so yeah so that's a yeah quite a bit so that's the completion of my report all right thanks Suzanne any questions for Suzanne uh transportation wasn't able to be here but I think Michelle has the report thank you if you push a there we go okay Transportation met this

039past Tuesday and um for the budget update were three4 of the way through the fiscal year salaries and benefits are in line and might be up in sub pay van and Bus Repair are in line outside repairs are looking good fuel is looking good budget is doing well gave the go ahead to start to lock and F prices for the next two years G is$ 269 increased gallons for contract due to District Vehicles F usage diesel $32 director update staff is still hanging on one driver is out with an injury lost a driver due to return to a job bus monitors we have three full-time and two part-time mechanic is doing well bus fleet is doing well there's some issues with the two 2025 buses dealer has been supportive van Fleet is running fine working

040how to move forward with Van sizes and replacement cycle bus right app will start soon some parents will be getting the app to give it a try and give feedback on to the transportation department looking for more efficiency to communicate with parents and legal Guardians looking at new software for maintenance and parts CDL Class didn't have a lot of outside interest um had some inside interest we had a Security executive session at 6:16 and our next meeting is May 27th at 6: pm thank you any questions on Transportation all right thanks everyone uh old business we have none new business we will start off with a review of the fiscal 2025 2026 working budget Mr Walsh good evening folks as the packet is going around I'll just start um as Jody said the budget review

041session for the public um is Monday night at 6:30 in this room um in the East training room for those who are watching on television um we will go through a whole process the first part of the presentation we talk about about um the budget process which is going to be a similar to what was gone through in December with the full board so I won't be doing that tonight and then the second part will be going through the budget detail as far as where the budget stands in the budget process um and where we're going from here so for you for this evening the finance committee I want to thank them they've done a lot of work in the past three month months they started in early January to get to where we are

042tonight there are still a few areas in the budget that are still unknowns um one of those areas is negotiations with the Teachers Association which will not be resolved before you vote on the budget on April 9th as a school board um as with most districts there's a placeholder for that within the budget which is what school districts do in that case and we are no different another big item is going to be health insurance we still do not have a final rate and I'll talk in just a minute about what the finance committee approved tonight that is not part of this report um and I'll explain what the adjustment will be the process from here once I review this this evening is the public session as I said will be Monday night next Wednesday

043finance committee will meet again they will listen to the public input they'll make any last revisions they will also meet on April 9th finalize the budget to bring it out of committee to you as a school board for a vote on April 9th at your next meeting tonight I've given you a pretty much an abbreviated packet of what the finance committee does in their minutes there is a lot of detail over the past three months that certainly you're welcome to and is online so I'm going to start with expenditures which is the first page these articles that you you see articles 1 through 11 are the required cost center articles that become part of the budget meeting in may you have a copy do you need one okay no I just saw confusion I just

044want to make sure everyone had one um so the 11 cost center articles are what happens at the budget meeting and is voted on by the public it is what the school board moves forward to make sure that each cost center in accordance with state regulations is fulfilled and that's what you see on the first page you see a fiveyear historical Trend you see the current working budget and working budget means that is a budget that has been continued to be worked on since early January through today and it becomes a proposed budget once the school board votes on it on April 9th within each of these areas there's a lot of work that goes into developing this and it looks like it's one sheet of paper and numbers but the work that goes behind

045this really is important and significant and it starts with administrators and it goes all the way to the finance committee and all of the details that go into that about three4 of our school budget is Staffing and benefits and the administrative team Dr Marquee Dr Doyle myself and the entire team has spent a lot of hours this year and really looking at ways to create as much efficiency as we can in Staffing and how that can positively impact students and staff um Dr Marquee has talked about that in finance committee quite a bit and that has been a focus this year and it needed to be a focus not just for our school but for a lot of schools um with tight budgets the overall increase in expenditures in this working budget currently is at

0465.19% um if you really think about what's happened with fuel prices operational prices labor prices and we'll talk in a minute about um health insurance um it took a lot of work for it to get down to that level what you don't see here is over $1.5 million of reductions from the original budget that the finance committee first saw and then had to work um through committee and provide direction to Dr Marquee myself and Dr Doyle on how to um get to a budget that's meeting the needs of students and staff but also meeting um the needs of the taxpayers and balancing that and the finance committee and we believe that this is on the right track to do that the next page is the revenue so the first page is where does the money

047go and how does it get spent the second page is where does the money come from in order to do that and over 90% of our school budget is made up of local taxes and state subsidy I'll talk in a second about struggles with State subsidy but you can see here that state subsidy did go up about $800,000 which was very helpful but taxation is also going up and you can see there in this current working budget it's 5.75% I'll talk in a second about changes that the committee made um tonight that will affect that a little bit the Third age is adult education adult education is here because adult education much like the general operating fund of the district is made up of State subsidy it's made up of local tax assessments other revenues

048and use of fund balance same categories much smaller dollar amounts but the same philosophy those two areas the general operations and the adult data what create taxation to the taxpayers the third page is in this working budget is the current working budget before tonight before finance committee met of where we stood finance committee had a very significant discussion tonight and gave direction to myself and Dr Marquee on how to move forward because we have built in an estimate of health insurance we still do not have health insurance numbers and probably won't for we don't know how long hopefully another week at most but we don't know that so we've had to try to estimate as best we can through this process from what we're hearing currently even though the health insurance provider hasn't provided actual

049numbers we have some real skepticism in the estimates we put in there I've been very upfront and I will be tonight the current budget that we have that you see right in front of you is a 12% increase in health insurance based B upon our loss ratios and based upon what we're hearing finance committee approved increasing that from 12% to 16% increase tonight that will create an increase of $300,000 approximately to the overall budget in order to meet that need finance committee M gave Direction on taking another 200,000 of fund balance and increasing that use of fund balance on the revenue page from 3 million to 3.2 million million and increasing taxation to another $100,000 that will move the overall tax impact from what you see here at 5.77% to a little over 6% um

050once we have final numbers for health insurance we hopefully it decreases from that 16% if it does then we'll reverse that cycle we'll take the actual and then we'll reduce Taxation and we'll reduce Sho a fund balance to the extent that that increase if it's more then finance will have to face that again but we think that 16% hopefully is going to get us a lot closer than the current 12% that's in this budget that you have in front of you right now the next Pages really are about and I'm just going to concentrate for a second on why they're here the first page is enrollment and you can see the graph of what enrollment has done from F fiscal year 20 8 which is what FY stands for so our fiscal year runs from

051July to June so when it says fiscal year 08 it means the fiscal year ending June 30 of 2008 and subsequent June 30 year ends and this trend is pretty clear you can see where covid was that's pretty clear in the dip in fiscal 21 you can see the restoration pretty much of enrollment and you can see where enrollment stands right now this is all data that is from what we call the Ed 279 or this annual state subsidy report that every school district receives it is public information it is on the department of Ed's website and this is where the enrollment numbers come from those numbers come from us and we do a lot of work internally to ensure the accuracy of those enrollment figures why because it affects State subsidy it's really important

052that that be accurate the next page is the increase in valuation for each town I have not skewed this I have tried to make this go from a one and a half or 2% increase in fiscal 20 to over a 14% increase in fiscal 26 you can see just by visual context what enrollment has done and you can see what valuation has done specifically in the past five years why is that important for two reasons valuation impacts the state subsidy the state in very simplistic terms says if your enrollment is flat and town valuations are high or increasing then towns can afford to pay more and the state pays less in state subsidy I won't get into the philosophic of whether you agree with that you disagree with that that is the law that is

053how the subsidy formula Works in Main we can't change enrollment much we can report it accurately we can do what we can do to build a culture for our school district but at the end of the day parents and Guardians bring their students or they don't bring their students and choose other Alternatives we hope they choose here because we have good programs to support their education valuation we cannot control this is determined by housing sales new home developments so when you see an increase of let's say 6% in taxation that is the increase we are assessing to local communities you can see from here that is being spread over a wider tax base than it was five years ago why because valuations are increasing so that does not mean that every homeowner is going to

054get a 6% increase granted a 6% increase some towns are going to be above 6% and some towns in our district will be below 6% because that's the average for the overall assessment those are things that finance committee looks at very very carefully when it's making budget decisions the next page is State subsidy and you've seen a trend analysis on enrollment you've seen a trend analysis on Town valuations and those are two very key ingredients in what determines how much subsidy our school district receives from the state and you can see that it has increased but not by much and you can see some years especially fiscal 22 to fiscal 25 or it's fairly flat and what does that mean that means that local taxpayers have to pick up a larger portion or percentage of

055that Revenue page of what it costs for Revenue to come in to pay the bills you will hear on Monday night from me that about 15 or 18 years ago our total revenue that you see on your Revenue page was comprised of State subsidy of over 40% you will see that next year or this past year is 31% and it doesn't sound like a lot okay so it decreased 14% 14% of a $55 million budget is a lot of money and at the same time we're spending less per pupil in total Education costs by the state average by $2,500 per pupil so it's not that we're spending a lot it's that the revenue source of how we receive that if it's not coming from the state it has to come from local taxpayers this next

056page is exactly what I just went over you can see since fiscal 2014 to currently what the state average is and what our is per pupil cost every industry has various data and points of data that it reflects on in education it's how how much is spent per pupil that is a data point and you can see what the trend is over the past 10 years and I don't think there's one year there that we were over the state average and in many years we're significantly under the state average so what does that say says we're not spending the same as the state average even though we're a very spread out District so we're conservative on expenditures but we're also trying to balance the educational needs at that same time with the impact to the

057taxpayers I hope for tonight this gives you an overview of where the finance committee's work has gone in the past three months um I will provide much more detail on Monday night about the process but again you heard a lot of that process at my presentation in December and it is still up on the website I have kept all of fiscal 25's budget the current year that we developed a year ago is still on the website everything is up there I have not taken one thing down and I have added all the things in the development of this fiscal 26 budget and we will continue to add there and it's important that we do that because it's important that you a school board members and that the public has an ability to see the work

058that the finance committee has done in putting together a budget that meets both of those needs of staff and students and the community thank you I'm going to jump in with one clarification just because um and I apologize for doing this NOP go when you look at the um the sheet that says total valuation total percent increase it's it might seem a little confusing because it starts out at zero and goes up to 14.5 um I think what we might want to rethink how we present that because um from fy20 to FY 26 the total aggregate change in valuation it's hard to tell by this is actually 62.3 eight% so if a house was value so we literally have gone from 2498 billion dollar of valuation to 4.1 nearly nearly 4.1 in valuation so um

059that pace is really rapid to go over fy20 to fy2 six um one two three four five six essentially six budget Cycles to have a 62% increase in valuation with a relatively slight decline in enrollment as he shared what they're saying is this should be borne on the part of taxpayers that's actually happening throughout Southern Maine and Coastal communities and um essentially some some skewing of say um north of the turnpike or the interstate oceans side has always been pretty high now folks are moving outward above that line just think about going up the state of Maine and it's kind of Crossing that line and valuation are jumping okay so we might want to rethink how we do that I hope you don't mind me sharing that because it it's 14.5% just this year alone

060that's why it jumped out at me and to Steve's point if you think of it as cumulative right because the first year increase of four or 5% doesn't seem like a lot but you get a 4% increase and then you add a 7% increase on the 4% and then you add a 9% on the seven and the four and then you add a 10 or 11 on all four of those and then the 14 and a half it's compounding right it's just like an investment or your bank account and the interest the more interest you earn in a year and then it increases it compounds and that's where you get growth it does the same with valuation first thing I want to thank the finance committee colum working really hard to get this done I

061know we're in the middle of budget season in my town and this is going to be really helpful to have to work with um there's years past we haven't had the data in time and it's been hard to figure our numbers too second of all I assume it's the same thing um that will be addressed at the meeting on Monday that it's inflation that some things you can't control correct that the numers go up on there are and um you'll see in various things that we put out and you'll see it on last year's 75% of what we have is Staffing it's salaries and benefits most of that Staffing is through collective bargaining agreement so those collective bargaining agreements between the board and the various associations have determined what salaries and benefits will be we're

062also at the mercy of the health insurance provider as to what our rates will increase sure we can do health clinics we do healthy work environments just like any employer does but it's really about that health insurance rate you're kind of at the mercy the unfortunate part that we have that I don't think communities really understand is this is always the last piece that we're waiting on and we don't have a choice when that organization that we get insurance from is part of the collective bargaining agreements that's where we get it from and it's always the first of April and it's always the last item that goes into the budget and in a year where we're expecting some significant increases that makes it that much more difficult can can I add another comment to that

063um though salaries are and benefits are 75% um much of that other stuff really you're kind of locked in you need to have a bus replacement cycle because everything has a life a life expectancy right you need to actually be able to heat our buildings have lights on run our photoc copers have our software that manages so there are so many things so discretionary funds what people typically think of as true non- labor I don't have a Colin can I'm sure pull this up pretty quickly but I believe it would likely be in the two to four% of the budget and those would be things like um replaceable U math journals and pens and photocopying there's not a lot so that's why we have to look at um all aspects of how we program how

064we look at the Strategic plan there will be some adjustments that I think provide some efficiencies um really we do have to look at all aspects um and we're really lean pretty much across the board statistically um our school administration because people look at that as well because we've looked at every single area uh we're well below the state average our systems admin is among the lowest actually of over 200 districts in the main statistically we're under the bottom five um and that's all reported in the D OE website um transportation costs are far more expensive in this District than in most just because essentially we're driving across the country and back every day with our our vans and buses when you're doing 1.3 million miles right so there are aspects of our programming that

065are very very expensive um but the alternative is is also expensive where things are expensive is operating small elementary schools but on the flip side what's the value of everyone knowing every kid so this there's good there's take uh good and bad in every decision we make and I I think that the finance committee our Administration our staff that have been involved obviously Mr Walsh um we're trying to navigate a lot of different things with an unknown future um as you watch the news each night so we really appreciate your support and uh we don't look at this work lightly obviously I'm biased right in my seat but honestly I I believe we don't look at it lightly um actually just Colin it's something I should remember from before understand but I I've kind of

066forgotten the um speaking of Uncertain Futures uh the is there in say the sub state subsid or somewhere else embedded um things like Title 9 from federal level or where would that fit into this so federal grants kind of fall all outside of what's in the general fund right now so when we're talking about Title One title two Title 5 grants we're talking about local entitlement grants those are the major grants that most school districts receive um for title funding which do Doyle overseas a lot of and then local entitlement funds which are special education that Mr oconor overseas so those areas um without that funding yes there's an impact on how schools operate including ours right now what we're being told and what we're understanding is that um those funds are safe for fiscal

06726 and that's what we're operating under um the other Title Nine part um Dr Doyle oversees Title 9 there isn't so much specific Grant funds for Title 9 it's being compliant with Title Nine but the total funds that we received from all those sources as shared uh two meetings ago maybe is about $3 million so who knows about the future but we are been told that we've also been told um Dr dorel and I were at a meeting last Friday with uh all of the York and uh Cumberland County superintendants and the two associate um commissioners of Education were present and they shared that currently with the banial budget that's been passed there wouldn't be an impact on state subsidy I still question that um in especially in year two if there's a significant drop

068in um Revenue achieved through tourism and commerce with Canada which is heavily um supportive to the state for um Building Supplies as well as um really across all sector sectors um maple syrup is actually a huge one I didn't even realize that until last night's news uh where they are uh produced more uh syrup um from Maine through Canada than produced in Maine realize that so we're keeping a close eye on all of those things and I'll add to that the other part of why I spent time on enrollment and town valuations in the state subsidy formula with you tonight is until that state subsidy formula changes I don't for see significant changes and the trends that we're seeing with either enrollment or valuation so what does that translate to in English it means that

069the trend you're seeing in state subsidy in that Grid in that line chart it's probably going to remain fairly flat we may have some small increases but really it's going to be the majority of future budgets past fiscal 26 even are going to be under the current subsidy formula mostly attributable to local taxation that's the reality under the current subsidy formula so that makes the work we do behind this in setting the plate and the Strategic plan that much more important not just for fiscal 26 but also for future years um this questions for maybe youin or Administration as enrollment does drop does the school have plans in place to you know if you don't have enough kids for certain classes do you do you lose that teacher or you know does that cut into

070the budget to you know we we um that that was brought up during uh budget development we do look really closely at enrollment it's really challenging to balance budgets with small elementary schools that's one reality so if you have 25 kids and say a kindergarten classroom you divide it do you do a K1 and divide out between three teachers instead of two or instead of four between the two grades so we we do a lot of that we uh case in point would be shaily we had such Ro uh fluctuations in enrollment the only way to actually create consistent programming was to look at a a multi-age model where there are three teachers spread between two grade levels um so they have nine classrooms plus a prek classroom what we have talked about also at

071Finance would be um um I don't think that's currently a a strong appetite to close schools and to consolidate there's no question that financially and programmatically um there would be benefits and I I'll take the risk and share that because you can actually um maintain Staffing at a more accurate and um consistent Manner and you would uh reduce operational costs and overhead building Heating and all those sorts of things and things such has um multiple administrators multiple nurses multiple guidance counselors that are currently supporting small schools that said there's a lot of value in your local school so I'm not suggesting one is better than the other what we will want to do though when you're talking about space and things like that we do have a few towns that are growing While others are

072declining and that creates other issues most notably space in for instruction so we've talked about the fact that before we would ever start to go down the road of a portable at a school we likely would want to have the conversation and the analysis and I um about the fact that enrollment has declined considerably in some schools that were designed for much larger student populations a case in point would be the middle school do we move fifth grade like a lot of schools have done to the middle school so that we don't have additional costs else elsewhere and then look at some savings that would be achieved through that I would think that um the board will likely need to Grapple with that for um the fall of 26 as soon as the fall of

07326 as a as a potential don't get folks all worried over there I'm just saying that we actually have to do that um there's only so many levers we can play but um that's something that um folks should be aware of anyway it's not all that uncommon to look at how we structure and support kids and staff and our taxpayers um this was just a quick like CL clarifying question that involves enrollment um do we know why our enrollment is going down is it because there are less students in the district or is it because more students are leaving to go to other schools Andor are homeschooled do we have that information both there are um we as a society more folks are looking at homeschooling there are some folks that ask for superintendent agreements

074and there are individuals that like choice and would like their students um through a parentally placed situation so those are three big levers um superintendent agreements um that's not the biggest part homeschool schooling is a is a large part parochial schools are are very common and fewer kids so if you're in the central office conference room back in uh around 2000 I don't remember the exact dates but essentially there were upwards of 3,800 students K to 12 in this District we now have prek so essentially the three of us are sitting here 20 years ago today only two of us are sitting here out of the three statistically speaking and that's not uncommon in 1975 there were um over 250,000 students in the state of Maine 3K was not on the radar and there wasn't

075and very few schools had kindergarten wasn't compulsory so and that makes up essentially 15% of the total and right now we're at I believe we might have dipped under 170,000 so we added two grades and we've lost 80,000 students of Main and having said that back to Steve's point there are some schools that are going to see Elementary based schools that are going to see increasing numbers While others are seeing decreasing numbers back to Josh's question that then creates the work that we do behind the scenes of how many teachers do we do split grade levels what's where do we put more students if that school is out of space so that's a lot of the work that is in front of us there's a lot ofet right here anything else any other questions thank

076you Mr Walsh thank you thank you all right next up we have a couple policies up for removal so to remind you all um at our last meeting we went for a first read of policy ACAA and ACA A- R1 um because there was um the Title Nine rules had reverted back to the 2020 rules so those changes um went through a first read at our last meeting and went through a second read in the consent agenda of tonight's meeting so now that they've gone through that second read we can we can then remove the two other policies that were added um after the after the title 9 change in 2024 that now need to go back to the 2020 if that makes sense so if I can get a motion to remove those policies

077have a motion and a second to remove them is there any discussion all in favor opposed motion carries Katie will update those thank you and next up student data presentation Dr Doyle good evening everyone I feel like it's a little bit of punishment I'll open to say that I have to go after Colin because he has such amazing command of numbers and is so articulate so I hope that you'll bear with me through the process of compiling what is an enormous amount of data um in order to bring you something that's meaningful and hopefully answer some of the questions that you've had that I've heard over the course of this year some of the things that I have heard the board is hoping to see in the spirit of the Strategic plan is a sense

078of student achievement at a really high level I think that's the umbrella that serves to inform the work we do in the Strategic plan you will notice that um in your backup you have the slides that I'll be presenting from if it's helpful to take a peek and I apologize in advance some of the text is actually really tiny um but the reality is that what we're trying to do is look districtwide at a lot of data and be able to give you something that's digestible what I'll ask in the interest of time is um unless there are sort of brief clarifying questions that you hold the questions and feedback until the end so that we can move through a lot of this and certainly I'll be happy to do that um there may also

079be aspects of the data that we'll have to revisit because there's a lot that's behind it and so it's really easy to look at some of these numbers and immediately have a whole bunch of questions that I might not be able to answer for you tonight on the spot so full disclosure that's sort of where we're at if you flip through the materials if you're doing a pre I don't necessarily suggest it but what you'll see as an overview that I want to present tonight is some of the hard quantitative data so some of the numbers that really speak clearly to our student achievement and then we'll talk a little bit about um some of the Strategic data points that I noticed there were really concrete performance indicators that were outlined in the Strategic plan

080and they were just kind of areas of interest that I think really speak to more of a breadth of our Academic Program Beyond standardized testing and then lastly we'll talk a little bit about um some of the areas places you can go to the state database for some comparative data that's one of the things that I've heard from members of the board is folks are really interested to know how to we rank schools to schools um districts to districts and then how does that measure up against Statewide data and lastly I'll talk a little bit about my favorite kind of data which is qualitative data that doesn't Focus so much on the numbers so that's a little bit of a preview as to what I'm hoping to go over tonight we'll start at a really

081high level with some of the one of the easiest charts that we'll look at and then it gets complex from there so the very first slide that you're looking at is the English language arts are ranking as an overall District against the Statewide average and most of the schools in York County so you'll notice that the Statewide average for performance this is all of the students that are tested districtwide at all age levels all grade levels that are tested the Statewide average is 65.4 for achievement and RSU comes in just below that at 64.1 so we're about Midway in York County the next slide shows the same information for math so again we're just below the state average with a a ranking of 46.2 and the Statewide average coming in at 47.2 for math all

082the way up through all of our grade levels that's the districtwide average the next slide shows our math nwaa scores you'll notice that I've provided you with two data points so the blue represents the spring 2022 23 Administration and then the red represents 2324 we haven't yet had the spring Administration the nwaa testing window opens up on April 14th and runs through May 30th we usually have a little bit of a delay before we receive the scores for that ideally I'd like to give you something that's like a fiveyear trend of data but unfortunately one of the things that we face one of the challenges we face as Educators when we use this data is that the needle is always moving and what they're doing at the state level is kind of always changing in

083fact this year the state is undergoing an RFP to look at the assessments again and as I understand it it's been delayed um because they're looking at determining whether or not the current assessment is meeting the state's needs so what that means in schools some of you may remember you know there was a time where we had um the mea as a standalone test we moved to Smarter Balance we've used the SAT at times at the secondary level and then um we've we've come back to nwaa and the state has looked for specific products that they've refined through time the nwaa you're looking at two years of data that are comparable um the the Norms were changed the reference point was changed in the in the two years prior so to look back that far

084really wouldn't be comparable data so that's really why you only have the range you do my hope with this and and future data because we're really only looking at two years my hope is that this gives us sort of a springboard so that next year we can look back and have a third data point to compare assuming we're allowed to continue with the same assessment and that assessment remains consistent we'll be able to build on this data and look back I know that members of the board have said before you know when we've asked what kind of data are you looking for specifically a lot of times folks are like we just want the data points that show us we're doing better pick the data points you think are most relevant have us look back

085on what those are and hopefully we would see growth for our students and so we're we're in a tricky spot in terms of what's available to us but this should give you a two-year Trend as it is so when we look at this this chart for Math and we you'll notice this is broken down by grade levels so this is the percent of students our students here in the district that are at or above State expectations these are the math numbers um it's not uncommon to see the next jump I'm switch to reading Shane if you don't mind you'll notice a pretty marked increase just overall if you look at the visual that's not uncommon many schools throughout the state um have a a band of math scores that is lower than the reading scores

086that's pretty typical no matter where you go so those are the breakdowns for grade levels for that if we move into slide six this chart is showing something a little bit different so if we look at this is districtwide math and so you'll see the grades broken down on the bottom this shows a span of five years one of the things that's really challenging when you look at this data is sometimes we want to look at the data and say how do our students do in grade two every single year if I'm a grade two teacher I care a lot about how students do in grade two and if I'm an elementary principal in the district then I care a lot about my K through through five students and how they do so I want

087to look at those numbers every single year that's one way to look at the data that's what we're looking at here another way you could look at the data is to say that you want to look at a cohort of students so you might want to say how does a group of students perform at the kindergarten level and then when they're in first grade level and then when they're in second grade level and follow that cohort that's not what we're looking at here however there are some insights you can gain from this so this is a lot of information on a chart and I hope you can follow along with me and then I'm clear enough to be able to describe what you're looking at if you look at um the numbers for grade one

088the first three columns blue red and purple represent um one I take that back excuse me the first two the blue and the red represent a fall score and a spring score for the same group of students so that first one the red and blue shows you grade one students at that point in time in the 2223 year represent the blue and red performance if you wanted to track that cohort of students you'd need to move into purple and green of grade two that's how you would look at cohort data so in grade one our first graders and then as they move up to grade two you see their performance represented in purple and green and then in grade three it would be that last orange column does that make sense to folks so those

089are the districtwide math scores this is um this data represents the number of students who met their growth projection so when they take the nwaa the NWA is able to predict how do we expect the student is going to grow at an average school those scores should be roughly 50% so we have a few values as you notice that do rise above that but our goal would be to increase those growth projection numbers Beyond 50% would be above average the next slide depicts the same information for reading and again if you wanted to make those jumps to be able to follow a cohort through you could do that recognizing you're looking at two and a half years worth of data here so we shift gears a little bit we'll move into slide eight which is

090a different assessment that we use this is the districtwide ISL this dat is presented a little bit differently this you can think think of in terms of achievement so we talked about growth in the last slides this one you can think of in terms of achievement as compared to overall Norms I EXL data is a huge sample set so for example the 22 to 23 Academic Year 734 th000 students from 20 uh sorry 2690 schools in the US are this sample set so when we look at this Norm data a large sample set gives us a good degree of confidence that we're at that Norms that are um really helpful to us to determine so again this is broken down in our grade levels k through eight if you look at the numbers here the

091columns that are represented in year one this one includes winter administrations so in this case if we wanted to follow a cohort we'd look at blue red and purple that would be our kindergarteners and if we wanted to follow that same cohort we jump them into grade one and look at green and orange to follow that cohort of students through so you can look overall at how the grade levels perform and then you could follow those cohorts as they move through the time period of data that we have slide nine is the same setup up for math for our districtwide performance one of the things that I found really interesting as I looked at this is the leaps often times that we see in that spring chunk of time and with some more time we

092could certainly dig into a lot of the questions that are underlying there um that was a really a really interesting takeaway to me as I viewed this data so we'll shift gears again we focused a lot there's a lot more standardized testing that occurs at the elementary level at the lower grade levels um but one of the pieces of information that I think is really helpful especially when we move into secondary level is considering um course failers and so obviously we'd like those bars to be non-existent but we know the realities the challenges that students face as they move into that secondary level education the data that you're looking at here are the course failures by semester so again we are only halfway through this school year but we do have semester one data represented

093and then you have two years beyond that looking back one of the things that I want to point out to you is that the 2425 semester 1 data overall looks higher than the previous years and one of the considerations that you need to know is that this is a raw count so one of the things that changed this year was the schedule and so students in the previous two years had the opportunity to take five or six classes on average now they have the opportunity to take six to eight so you can look at that as more opportunity for failure or more opportunity for Success right but overall there are more data points to consider in that set if you calculate this out proportionately about a 20% increase in that it it tracks about right

094so on the chart it looks a little bit higher but it tracks pretty consistently so we see over the past um five semesters that the failure rate data is pretty consistent you could choose to follow groups through and again you'd have to jump from color to color in these colum s if you wanted to say the freshmen who were freshman in 22 23 you would look at their semester one in blue semester that next column they would stay blue but then as they move into 23 24 in that Center chart that same group of kids is represented by red in the third and fourth overall columns and then they are represented in purple in the last column for semester one if you're tracking a cohort the other piece that I'll share is this is not

095number of students who failed this is number of sections failed what she shared about that is there could be say a student that is failing say five courses so out of that last right-and column where it says I think 127 five of those could be one student as an example um yeah it's not my number yep so we'll shift gears to a really a excuse me much more tailored kind of data set that I think is is a little bit more digestible because we're looking at something a lot tighter in terms of our scope I have a couple of slides to share with you some what I think are some interesting updates like I said before some of the performance indicators in the Strategic plan and I think it's it's important we want to look

096at that raw test data but we also want to consider that achievement is so much more than just achievement on standard tests and so how are we serving students as it relates to some of these areas these were points that we could actually pull to have some baseline data again I think this will be really helpful to us in years two and three as we move through but those of you who've had some of those conversations about spring Community forum and what we might be able to present here's another data point that I think would be really helpful to us in that conversation um strategic plan goal 1.2 talks about increasing um Extended Learning opportunities and 3 one is focused on our district and Community connections Partnerships that we have with businesses and organizations and

097whatnot so this some of this data speaks to that so if you look at overall our dual enrollment our school to work and our independent study largely the elos those numbers have actually decreased over time and one of the interesting pieces when we pulled into this and I talked with um MHS staff about that one of the reasons for this is actually we've expanded the opportunities for blocks within the school day so many of those opportunities that students were seeking previously where those numbers are high might be because there was something missing in their ability to take a class and a schedule maybe their schedule was too tight and they were maxed out so they sought an ELO or an apprenticeship as another means of you know uh pursuing that learning so those numbers have

098dropped for us the other number that you'll notice that's dropped a bit is online courses and I would say the same would be true for that as well we also have changed software providers for that so the offerings are are a little bit different for students and that's part of that shift as well um some of the classes I should add some of the additional classes that students have been able to get into that they weren't previously able to do usually those courses are things in like the Arts and Technology so it's really about program enhancement for students that they're having more in-person opportunities to do that in regular classes one of the things that I think the board will probably like to see is our srtc enrollment is up I know that's always a

099fan favorite in the group and um it's really tough those are really competitive programs but I also think that that speaks to our students and and the things that they're doing in srtc and the competitiveness that our students bring to that we this year have our highest enrollment over the range of dates at 130 students enrolled in srtc and one at bford Regional Center of Technology at this time there's also an easier one that feels a little bit more comfortable for me there's a lot of words on this page which is nice in the next slide we can look at goal 3.3 which is was to increase the Civics course offerings and you'll notice in 2223 and 23 24 school years that we have four offerings available to students in 2425 we've brought in that

100by adding an additional course and then in 20526 there's the addition of another course in the program of studies bringing us to six offerings there are also classes world history and US History have Civic components in them as well so that's a positive positive trend in terms of our strategic planned another data point that I think is fantastic to share goal 3.3 also talks about the service that's being done within our six communities and so at this point this year alone there's been over 7,800 hours of service to our six communities which I think is really really impressive much of that work that happens directly in the communities we have to think a little differently you're looking at only today this year's data point to date um part of the performance indicators there's a lot

101of specific language in that we haven't always tracked that data in that way so the high school is changing the way that they're tracking that data so that we can be able to report on this as we move forward because we want the specific service within the community that service includes things like teacher aids blocks offered at the high school where um students can volunteer to support teachers in the classroom it also includes things like athletic volunteers and our National Honor Society volunteers so for example tonight students that were hosting tours would earn volunteer service hours that would be an example of service that's um served in the community really impressive and I applaud students many of our students are really busy with lots of things whether it's activities for school-based or jobs or family

102responsibilities so the fact that they can serve this much um community service is really an impressive thing and obviously we would hope to see that grow as time moves on and hope to have more breaths and more hours served in each of the communities right now we're a little bit disproportionate so we'd like to see that improve as well the next slide I just wanted to give you a quick preview I talked a little bit um mentioned in my introduction that there is a state database that is available to everyone it's on the main.go website it's accessible really easily with no passwords or anything like that the QR code with a little dinosaur is something you can scan with your phone's camera if you're interested that will bring you to the link when I tested

103the QR code I will I'll admit full disclosure the state of Main's website can be very very slow so in this particular database there's a lot of data available to you but it can be really slow frustratingly so so get yourself a cup of coffee on a Sunday morning and settle in because you'll need some time to to get what you're looking for but it is a lot of really rich data so on the screen that you're looking at now we're on the sheet you'll notice in Orange there's a little tab there and you you probably can't read it on the on the slide those three squares that are there represent Statewide data districtwide data and schoolwide data so my first click when I arrive on that is to be able to say what level

104am I looking at oftentimes for me it's a school but I'll choose the year and then the school and you'll notice that the drop down that Center longish rectangle in that in that navy blue band that will allow you to select the schools and then once you're at the school level the page doesn't really update as you're doing it but as you click through those menus you'll see the white areas that are are there the white areas you probably can't read so I've listed them there for you in bullets so those are the items that are available to you there so you can look at things like our student demographics our P per pupil spending you could look at that and say how do we stack up how do we stack up against other districts

105other schools you can look at metrics surrounding the teacher certification and qualifications that's another area that the board is interested in you could poke around in there if that's a particular passion you have and so on and so forth with all the data points that are listed there the next slide I've just given you a preview of what that looks like so slide 15 is the RSU 57 if you were to click I didn't do it because it's frustratingly slow alive but if you were to click on the district level scope and then select the snapshot this is the kind of data that it gives you so you see the grade span the total enrollment again districtwide you probably know these things or you're familiar but if you were comparing District to District you could

106do that you'll notice on the right hand side there's an option to click more and expand upon that data so if you were to look at State assessment data you'd be able to see metrics like slide 16 thank you Shane you'd be able to look at um how we Stack Up in terms of performance you could look at some of how the other schools do in the districts and get into more detail in terms of their achievement based on some of the numbers that we've looked at tonight we can skip to 18 so I wanted to talk a little bit just briefly on quantitative versus versus qualitative data when we think about quantitative data those are things that are numerical in nature so those are numbers we can look at similar to the scores that

107we looked at tonight you have a high degree of measurability you can look at this data point at one point in time when we come back in the spring you can look back at it a second point in time and those are things that just aren't going to change if the data is good we get the number we Compare the numbers it is what it is it has a story to tell so we look at that in schools we think about that in terms of test scores we think about our attendance data we think about maybe a survey result that we would provide to students we'll look at youth Tru youth Truth For example that's one of the data points we had considered one of the things that's really interesting as I reviewed the data

108that's available I started trying to think about the ways that our Educators use data so for example those of you who are on curriculum might remember the conversations about mtssa and the way that we move through our interventions when I pulled we have a data wall that we use we've talked a little bit in some of the groups about migrating our data walls to to Synergy to be able to have all of our data in one place that might ring a bell for some of you when I look at the existing data walls for a fifth grader at one of our elementary schools what was really surprising to me is that if an educator lands on that page they can see the historical data that data on that one one spreadsheet went for 62 columns

109so a data point that tracks that students achievement over time things like the NWA scores we saw the EXL data that we saw all of the different data points Running Records their ftis and panel scores all of the achievement that they're doing that Stacks up you're looking back you can look at 62 data points great that's awesome right more data but the reality is it's not always better really what's going to inform us about the best next state next steps to take for a student is where are they now maybe it's helpful to know how far they've come but where are they now what data can we put together that's really going to inform the next step because the amount of data that we have available to us is extremely overwhelming so the quantitative data

110that's an important piece for us to talk about qualitative data is focused on things that are descriptive it's non-numerical data it's an insight to a student's experience and in a school type environment what that looks like for us is observations was a student doing in a classroom learning about the teaching methods thinking about the different ways that we're going to try and improve the quantitative data um we also would look at things like surveys but I think you can appreciate that there's a lot to be gained from both methods of using data in schools thinking about the students achievement I know as a parent when I think about my child at a district level we have a different responsibility right we want to see a achievement track I know as a parent when I look

111at my child I want to know a couple of things I want to know are they reading on grade level are they able to function with numbers the way that I would expect them to on grade level I kind of want to know how they stack up against their peers we don't always have insight to that that's always a curiosity and teachers are really good at saying we're here to talk about your child and that's important right um but we all kind of generally want to have a sense that they're doing okay that they're making gains that a year spent in the classroom doing the things that we do performing lessons their work with teachers is that they're they're growing as a result of that we also want to know what is their experience like

112is it comfortable to be in their classroom how are they fitting in how are they interacting with their peers do they have the supports that they need and so those are some of the things that we maintain so it's easy for us to look at quantitative data I think we can always do better on both fronts but I also want to bring to the four that the fact that our students experience is a really important part of this too because in reality it's the experience that's going to allow them to achieve when it comes to the numbers so one of the things that I wanted to share I think I've referenced this on a couple of occasions um Shane if you could move to the next slide I've referenced a couple of times in in

113some of the conversations we've had whether it's committee or at the board level forgive me I can't recall they all seem to blend together we've had some really fantastic work that's happened presentations that's happened to our curriculum committee over the course of the year one of the things that the board expressed curiosity about at the beginning of the year was hearing about the progress that had been made at Mass music middle school for example what has been the experience of the students what's their feedback what's their day like in a class in some of these new classes that we're trying we also had some great presentations at the elementary level that talked about our mtssa and our mtssb protocols as well as our shared experiences and what I want to do I know I've mentioned

114it I want to give you a teaser and I hope you'll indulge me I won't have you sit through a whole video but what I'd like to do is just do five minutes of the MMS course overview so that you can hear a little bit of qualitative data the link that's there is a folder that has access to these videos and more I just want you to look at five minutes if you would we'll view that and um just take a peek to listen to what the students have to say about three of the new courses that they've had at MMS thank you Shane they're saying a lot of really good things right now Shane I'm not sure if you know we don't have sound e they're so great and it's so it's so great

115to hear from the kids point of view all right it's getting late we'll skip it but only with the condition that you promised me you'll look at that QR code because it really we'd be remiss if we didn't consider it in truth I think those of you who saw it in curriculum um it really is amazing so the students talk about their experience in interdisciplinary studies you also get to hear a little tidbits of the teachers experience and one of the things that I think is really neat and some of the curriculum committee members talked about as well is how cool it is to see some teachers Reinventing them we have some veteran teachers who really took the initiative to do that and you can almost get a sense of their Renewed Energy as you

116watch the video as well so that'll be your homework I appreciate it um the last slide that I have is just a little bit of an overview so with all of this data what's next you saw the tiniest fraction of a sliver of what we have available to us and it's really hard to even compile it and say how do we sift through and determine what's most meaningful and so tonight we really wanted to focus on what at the district level we've been focusing on which is growth that's the big piece for us is saying what are our students doing we at a school level or at an administrative level you probably know we can spin data however we want many places do that in fact they might show you what's going to make them

117look really good our data isn't the most glowing um but I think it is an accurate representation of what we're doing and I like to think of those things as opportunities for us to be able to roll up our sleeves that does take time it's going to be time before you see the needle moved um because there's a lot of moving parts that are beyond the things we do in academics and so that's just one of the pieces that I wanted to bring forward as perspective but the goal for us the the things that we're doing in our work with students and with teachers and plc's is really focused on that growth number and moving and we're grateful to have the Strategic plan because it does give us a focus and a place to look

118and a place to move in what feels like a really insurmountable task our upcoming work at the elementary levels will focus on um our instructional support network making sure that we're making the most of that because we know that's part of what moves the the needle those students with interventions that's part of what um moves the needle for us in this area for the data we're looking at we also will focus on goal writing so some of our professional development that's up and coming will be f focused on writing good goals that get exactly to what we want to do for our students we are also working as I mentioned before on migrating the data walls to Synergy for consistency I think one of the one of the challenges that we faced is in that

119process of building that information system and wanting to get good data outputs we have to make sure that the data that's going in is good that it's consistent that teachers and and administrators are reporting consistently so that's one of the the um efforts that we're undergoing at this point in time we also hope in the next couple of years once we wrap that up that we're going to do an overhaul of the elementary level report cards to make that more manageable for families to have a better sense of how their students are doing Massabesic Middle School will continue to develop its curriculum they're in a stage where they really had an opportunity to dip their toe into those new initiatives and they're looking on of course continuing to refine that they are also talking about

120the opportunity they're hoping to bring some Choice especially for the eighth grade level that's something that I think is really exciting as a high school person primarily um with my background I know that that is a great opportunity to prepare students for that leap at the um freshman level as they engage in in their High School um it also helps with engagement at that level we start to see a little bit of a dip there and so I think that's something that can really hook them we know that engagement is going to bring us greater achievement MHS will benefit from the same ongoing Course Review you saw some of those new additions in the Civics pieces they're always looking at new ways to engage students in Choice classes this will um one of the other

121pieces that we're doing as well is looking at a change to our grading and Reporting structures we've talked about before at the board level and at curriculum level hoping to have more updates on that progress soon this work will hopefully clarify from a philosophical point of view what's expected of students but also more clearly communicate their achievement in the classroom which like we said at the secondary level so much of that work is happening in their grading um I do know often times um Mark I'm trying anticipate one of your questions you're always so great about asking he already has his hand up I know he's got a page full so I'm hoping I can knock one off right now um you know the things that we need is what you're already doing it's more

122of it it's a continued support for our programming um it's amazing to have the guidance that the Strategic plan provides but you are really champions for us for the things that we're doing and that's something we're really grateful for like I said before the progress is going to take time we are considering the movement of our student achievement as a point of urgency it's something that we really are a driving force our professional development and our conversations with teachers are focused on that but it will take time to be able to see that data um improve and then of course just broadly understanding the changing roles School schools play in society things have changed in 10 years in 15 years looking back some of our veteran teachers who've been here for 20 or 30 years

123have seen some pretty significant changes in terms of what's asked of them in the class classroom so we're moving the needle on achievement and we're also mindful more mindful than ever that part of our role is also in supporting students so it's a blend so I appreciate the support of the board um I feel really fortunate to work in a district that has such amazingly engaged professionals the work that we see day in and day out in the classroom is really a testament to the love and deot devotion frankly that some of our employees all of our employees um put into their work when they show off each and every day so there is a big picture behind it I know you're all supportive of it but I wanted to give that overall context because

124I really do think we can look at numbers all day long and really hope for an extra percentage point or two but of course there are little faces that are behind those numbers that we're working with too and a lot of really dedicated staff so grateful for that I know um you may have questions and I'm happy to entertain those answer what I can and follow up on the things that I cannot all righty Mark so first thank you very very comprehensive and I do appreciate the effort of all of our staff uh every principal that came talked about climate and culture and by their own words they've got that down it's nailed um our schools are are fun places to be in um tonight you could see that at the high school um I

125think anyone who goes into any of our schools will see that energy and love and all of it so climate and culture is working the the numbers are not um these are not great numbers anywhere uh whether we look year-over-year or at a cohort I I don't see the gains that we would hope to see we can factor out I think to some degree covid because we're looking now at 23 24 and now 24 25 numbers and as I look at them uh in many instances they're actually going down rather than up and I did hear you you know your the sense of alarm that you have in that my understanding from all the elementary schools was the same ele uh Elementary goal which was to bring our growth uh projected growth rates up uh

126to 50% in both math and reading is that correct for each every single Elementary School made the exact same goal and as I look at these we have a long way to go to accomplish that so it's it's March and I'm concerned that we're we are going to have a real hard time reaching those those goals for this school year um and so I I there's definitely a question in all of this and it I think it just has to do with what if the climate and culture is good if kids like being in our schools if our staff and our administrators yummy up our kids and the most obvious question as a parent as a school board member as a teacher would be why aren't why AR they not achieving better on this quantitative

127uh data yeah great question worthy question opportunity for growth for sure you heard the presentations for goal setting at the beginning of the year and I agree with you I think those are extremely ambitious goals for us that we're unlikely to meet over the course of the year that being said it's not not as though we won't make progress toward that and I think that's a piece of what we're looking at this year our admin Min istrators have worked hard with teachers to be able to unpack what do the numbers actually mean and I think that process is what's going to get us there I don't think we'll make the kind of leaps that we need to see that you or I want to see or that the community wants to see for the schools

128um well in fact I'm seeing some backsliding which really concerns me yep agreed okay y um I think we are in complete agreement I think the way in which the data is now being being analyzed will allow us to have some very directed conversation analyze what's working and truly analyze what's not working and some of it's about support some of it's about expectations some of about um really preparing kids for Success when they take an assessment I know for very well that some people take it extremely seriously students and staff and some might not but I believe now it's a call to urgency I also believe that some of the ways in which data was reported in the past would not have been the way that I would have reported it I'm not passing judgment

129but I guess I sort of am because it was really about growth but it doesn't actually mean um meeting growth targets so there I think in some cases there might have been some inflated data um and I think was not ill intended but I think it was a way of saying hey kids are making growth but that doesn't mean that they're making satisfactory growth I think that uh this the data in many areas is alarming I also believe that the morale and the culture and the climate there's a lag time between improving that I can I believe personally that the feel of students and the feel of Staff might be different today than it was today than it was a year ago or two years ago I think we're moving in that direction success Builds

130on success but the results are very concerning um some of these results also can't um I think there are some bits and pieces that we didn't have adequate time to add to it because even as a State there are certain elements of this data that look really awful but they're actually similar to the state averages and particularly if you look at say high school math where our results were quite concerning on maybe page eight I'm just guessing as right around there very concerning for middle school high school scores that are actually pretty consistent with the state but that does not mean it's acceptable ideally for growth measures I'm sorry to jump on this no please um with growth measures so statistically um 50% of all kids meet growth targets a low performing school so if

131you really want to look at it closely if you want to look at grade levels if you want to statistically a low performing outcome is at the 25th percentile of meeting growth targets that is kind of the the standard that we look at so if you see anything below the 25th percentile that's really concerning if you see something at 50th that's where we want to be but really we want to be at the 60th right um I've worked in places where my goals were always the 70 75th some days some years I met it some years I didn't statistically a high performing school would be growth targets of 75% of students meeting it and essentially to meet your growth targets just so you guys understand what it means if all of us in the room

132are fourth graders we take the test okay we take it on say September 1st and then we take the test again on say May 1 we all come back together and essentially we race against each other again and some folks are going to come in first some folks are going to come in last and what but we all had the same score in that first day right so say there's a group just like us we compare just like us we're not comparing a kid that scores extremely high to another student who doesn't it's how do we grow in relation to kids that are very similar to us make sense so it'd be like if we had Olympic Runners they're competing against Olympic Runners that are similar to them and then we have the weekend 5K

133person who right where we go where we initially test and then we compete with that group okay so we want to make sure that we're showing progress and it's about training and it's about really um what the expectations are and uh it's not that we're teaching to the test but we have to prepare kids for a test because that's how we get measured most importantly and if there are teachers listening I think this is one of the most important things that that um I conveyed at a a staff meeting um was not Everyone likes tests but the reality is it is the bench bar Benchmark by which we will be assessed in the eyes of others how our students will be assessed in the eyes of others and how our community and our parents are

134assessed in the eyes of others so if we're if we have to take it anyway why wouldn't we want to do our very best and I think that you will see a drastic change because when I if if there are groups or schools or at that 25th it doesn't mean that they don't want to do well but now there's a call of urgency I think we have great people that want to do well and um it's simply about setting kids up for success to show their very best so to finish my question instructionally it feels like something has to change agreed okay thank you I'm gonna I think it's instructionally is one component there are several silos that we have to fill up so there's the instructional component there's the expectation component right you know

135it's like with any of you in your line of work if you're told to go in and do your very best and show what you know I'm not suggesting that we don't do that but I think there's room for improvement on that so it's the instructional uh practice it's actually looking at data to see where there are relative strengths where there are relative outliers in either direction that we can draw upon it really we do have to do a lot of that work and it's about how do we um prepare our principles to talk about it our instructional staff because everyone wants to do well now it's really looking to see how we can achieve that I appreciate your questions yeah I'll build off of a little bit what Mark said this is the exact

136kind of data that I was looking for being here you know this was a great presentation um yeah the numbers weren't great but I think that's what makes the presentation so great is we see now where like you said it's the environment's great sports are doing great things are growing um but we are seeing a rise in you know people seeking alternatives to bring their kids and then when we see these kind of data points there is something missing to this that's from a teaching aspect you know and I've you know kind of made the suggestion before if we could figure out a way where you could interview uh survey the kids after every time they have a teacher or semester I think you'd really get a good Insight of what teachers are connecting with

137their kids and making the impact and maybe where there's room for improvement you know because schools doing everything they can Administration wise and kids are happy so why aren't they learning you know that's and I think it's also a function to put both of your points to showing their learning so as Dr Marquee mentioned and there's also that piece of a sense of Pride why am I doing what I'm doing one of the more challenging scenarios that I faced as a high school administrator is you know facil facilitating NWA makeups students might get wind that we're taking our nwas well I don't really feel like being there on that day so we pull them all together in a large room and we say all right we're GNA you know take the test now the tone

138what's presented to the the students in the room about what that means right that I have to do this chore well it's really an opportunity for you to show what you know and by the way when we look at NWA data that informs your placement it tells your teachers the areas to focus their EXL data all those diagnostic pieces if they're used well if we're paying attention to the data if we have the focus that we've committed to in this school year then we can actually use data that's meaningful but if you don't show up for test day or you don't have a Charged laptop to take the test you didn't eat breakfast you don't really care there's a sloth photo that pops up on a proctor screen when the students are taking the nwaa

139that tells them to slow down that you have a student who's a rapid guesser and it freezes the tests for students so that they can't move on you haven't asked me about the rapid guessing rates but that would be a really interesting data point to look at and how that changes over time and you know I sort of say that in just but the reality is that is what is informing the data you're looking at I know when I took the SAT as a junior in high school I forgot my calculator and I sat in a building that had rainwater that was Dripping on my arm my performance wasn't so hot that day if you scale that up to 30 in the room that can have an impact one of the other pieces that I

140would talk with my teachers about is the use of academic language so we could talk about narrative writing we could talk about expository writing but if the test uses one vocabulary term I've never seen before and I don't make the connection that those are the same things I don't perform the same way and it's really not a function of my ability for that particular skill set but rather my awareness of what that language looks like and there's the big piece which you're absolutely right about it's the attention to the instruction so there's also those pieces of what can we do with the data how does it inform what we do you know how does that inform our perspective on whether or not a curriculum pilot for example is working so it is multifaceted but it

141speaks to those pieces you can have the culture right but we want to get students in a position that they want to work for their teachers for themselves for their teachers for their school to represent the community as well it is it's a big undertaking but we we share that perspective that it's we're not satisfied by any means in fact far from it just to that point um and I'm not I'm not suggesting that you're trying to make an excuse for the numbers no I I don't feel that way at all I think you guys have been incredibly honest but all schools suffer from the exact same things you described unmotivated kids kids who forgot their calculator Etc so uh it isn't like Massabesic is unique in that regard so I think the point I'm

142trying to make is the numbers are still comparable because you know right down the road in Bonnie Eagle I'm sure there are kids you know just like ours sure yeah so thank you sure any other questions um I'm assuming that this slideshow will get put in with the minute so we can look at it full size so that'll uh that may prompt some other questions so thank you Dr doy thanks everyone appreciate it all right everyone we don't have an executive session this evening so calendar and announcements are at the bottom of your agenda the next board meeting is April 9th reminder of the budget review session uh next Monday at 6:30 and please come see me after adjournment we are adjourned at I don't know 9:05 pm