001Good evening everyone and welcome to the Sako School Board meeting for Wednesday, July 9th at 7 p.m. I'd like to call the meeting to order and make recognition of all school board members present with the exception of school board member KDR and Superintendent Ray. We do have Assistant Superintendent Parker with us this evening. And would you please join me for the pledge of allegiance? Thank [clears throat] you everyone. Okay, moving on to item number three that is the approval of the schoolboard meeting minutes dated for June 11th, 2025. Is there a motion? >> Madame Mayor, >> school board member Truman. >> I move we approve the school board meeting minutes dated June 11th, 2025. >> Thank you. There is a motion made by school board member Truman. Is there a second? >> Second by school
002board member Roach. Any discussion on the item? >> Whoa, whoa, whoa. First, I don't have a name tag, so I'm not officially here right now, but that was Jeff. That was Jeff. That was Jeff. >> You do have a name tag. It's just on the front. >> Oh, it is. >> It's been moved. >> Oh, it's been moved. Okay. [laughter] >> All right. >> And you and Jeff are going to have to change your voices today. So, >> yeah. >> And you two need to change your voices because you always sound very similar. >> Hey, Jeff. >> All right. School board member Richards. >> It's schoolboardation. Come on. [laughter] All right. Is any discussion on the minutes? Okay, not seeing anyone. Roll call vote. School board member Waroff, >> yes. >> School board member Prebble,
003>> yes. >> School board member Richards, >> yes. >> School board member Roach, >> yes. >> School board member Truman, >> yes. >> And school board member Johnston, >> yes. >> Motion passes 6. >> Okay. Item number four this evening, there are no adjustments to the agenda. Item number five, there are no correspondents. Item number six is public session. If there is anyone wishing to speak, please step to the podium, state your name and address for the record, and you will have three minutes to address the school board. Hey, not seeing anyone wishing to speak. Moving on to item number seven and that is the superintendence report. Assistant superintendent Park Parker, >> say that fast. >> Thank you. I'm excited to be here tonight in lie of Superintendent Ray. He is in DC right now
004working on behalf of our schools and students. Some of the things that he's working with legislators on are the release of title funds, which we will talk a little bit more about further along in the meeting. uh appreciation to the House and Senate for passing the Social Security bill which will allow teachers to collect Social Security and mainstate retirement if they have put into both of those systems. explaining the impact of cutting SNAP benefits to families and students and the impacts that that will have on schools and education and also the importance of vocational funding in the kind of pull to bring manufacturing back to the United States to try to ensure that there's vocational funding to match that. Uh secondly, I'd like to give a huge thanks to our custodians and maintenance crew, especially
005uh leaders Don and Andrew who are really hard at work. If you go into any of our buildings, I was feeling a little bit jealous in the middle school thinking if somebody took my house apart like that and was doing the level of cleaning that they are working on, especially in on these hotter days, it it's a lot of work and it really makes a difference when our students come back to school to have that deep cleaning done. In the communications realm, we have our new website which will also have access to a mobile app and that will go live on July 18th. Everyone will still navigate to the same URL, but you might see some different uh navigation tools and integrations through that. We're looking forward to that being a big upgrade. We will
006also be launching Reach My Teach and have done so already at CK Burns as a pilot this spring and through our summer school. Again, we don't anticipate that families will see a whole lot of change to that, but it's a back-end platform. In the in the past, we had used talking points, and that's how you get those text messages that kind of look like they're coming directly from teacher, principal, nurse, and we are going to be training all staff on that during opening days. Then we have our first superintendence newsletter that will go out in mid August. Lots of professional development happening this summer. One of the most exciting ones is our language arts team, which is launching a pilot of core knowledge language arts curriculum. We'll have two teachers per grade level piloting those
007resources this fall and school year. That's a whole language program that focuses on knowledge building and phonics and phenemic awareness and integrates all of those. One of the flags that our team noted is that we have kind of pillars of handwriting instruction, phenemic awareness, phonics, reading, writing, and they're kind of each in their own departments. And we're hopeful that this pilot, if it serves what it is saying it will, will provide a little bit more of an integrated instructional component that will allow those pieces to work together. We will also have staff members looking at K for me and first for me which are mainstate curriculums for kindergarten and first grade. Those don't cover a phonics component but we want to make sure that we're looking forward to our new schools. Our prek uses prek
008for me which is the main state curriculum and wanting to see if that might be an appropriate integration up through K and first. Also in the way of professional development, we had three days of multilingual learner professional development delivered by a professor from Arizona State University. We had 26 additional staff members trained in building assets reducing risks. That's the bar model that we've heard about before at Sako Middle School. Response to intervention and math teams have met to plan professional development for staff over the course of this school year. And lastly, we had 12 teachers complete an intensive 27hour professional development around literacy best practices. And as a result of their participation, we will get $10,000 worth of grant funds to purchase teacher and student materials related to literacy. And that was the kind of
009tradeoff of what we got for their participation in addition to that increased knowledge. So that's a a huge win for us. Still coming this summer, we will have training for staff on our student data platform, Linkit, a middle school training around our new social studies curriculum through TCI, which is the teachers curriculum institute, and the conclusion of an executive functioning book study in the summer. We always talk about and are excited about hiring. We still have over a dozen edtech openings. Our principles are working with HR to plan some events, maybe even a Tik Tok campaign, I heard. Uh, and trying to figure out some creative ways to partner with other businesses that may no longer need employees once the school year starts, doing interviews on site at some of those locations so that we
010can get the most qualified people filling those positions. We also still have four teaching positions open. those interview processes are underway and I would like to really thank our teaching staff members that take time over the summer to come in and participate on those committees because we really need that diverse set of eyes on candidates for those positions. And just if you know any candidates, we still have openings in our STEM at 35. We have a music K2 position, a math interventionist at K2, and a special education teaching position at the middle school. As I said, we do have a lot of qualified applicants for all of those, but we can never have too many qualified applicants. So, if you know anyone who's looking, definitely send them our way. We have continued planning going on
011to welcome new and returning staff. Our leadership retreat will take place on August 12th. We'll have new staff orientation on August 19th and 20th, returning staff orientation on August 21st and 25th, and then our assessment day, which is scheduled for August 26th. Unfortunately, with only one assessment day, we can't accommodate every single student coming in to get some of those preassessments, but it does provide us an opportunity to meet with many parents and students prior to the opening of school so that we can get a sense of where students are without starting their school year with those assessments. So, we're grateful for that in our calendars. And then we will welcome families back with open houses at CK Burns on the 21st, Young and Fairfield on the 25th, and Saco Middle on the 26th with
012school starting on the 27th for most students with the exception of kindergarten that will begin on September 2nd and preK which will start on September 4th. And that's all I have. Great. Thank you very much. Any questions or comments? School board member Roach. >> All right, Meg, not to put you on the spot, but um there isn't a school construction update on the agenda and you mentioned um some bills that passed. Um so the big beautiful bill at the federal government level um you know is is getting rid of the energy tax credits. Um, however, and I I'd love I'd really want this to be on our next agenda item. Um, I believe the geothermal can be um started or the if the construction project starts this calendar year, that would expire at the end
013of the year, I believe, and then the end of next year would be or maybe 27. um is the solar part of that which would not of course happen until but if we start the construction in 26 or something I think I have it wrong but but there's more time for the solar but I want to make sure that if we start it this year we are going to still qualify for those credits by the time the school is complete in 2028. >> Yeah. So right now with even with the big beautiful bill, we should be in good shape to get everything done within the timelines both for the geothermal and for the solar and we are working with Oakpoint and another I think it's competitive energy solutions if I'm remembering the name of the
014organization correctly, but they essentially hold our hand through the bid writing process all the way through to the tax credit refund in order to make sure that every te is crossed and I is dotted. They are the experts in all of that legislation and then in making sure that our project is compliant with everything so that we don't miss any steps and they're financially bound through the contract to incentivize to make sure that that happens. So, I think we're in good shape despite the changes to not extending that beyond the timeline that maybe some of us would have liked for a longer term solution elsewhere. >> Well, I think it did avert the worst case scenario where it was going to be 60 days after the bill signing. So, that would be September 4th, >>
015right? >> So, a shovel literally would have to go on the ground in August, >> but that got delayed at least. Yes. >> Okay. >> Thank you. Anyone else? >> Okay. Okay, not seeing anyone. Moving on to item eight, that is the chair's report. School board chair Prebble, >> I have nothing new to report this evening. Thank you. >> Thank you. Item nine, there are no staff reports. Item 10 is the board subcommittee minutes. The policy and personnel committee. Uh they met this afternoon at 5:30. Item B is the finance and infrastructure committee meeting. The next meeting is August 27th at 4:30. And item C is the curriculum committee minutes. attached. And the next meeting is July 28th at 4:30. Item 11, there is no old business this evening. Item 12, under new business. Item
016A, new hires. There is a memo in your packet, but there is no motion needed this evening. Item B is the resignations. Is there a motion? Madam Mayor, >> school board member Truman, >> I move we accept the resignation of Nicole Walton, CK Burns, math interventionist, and Sarah Rex, young and Fairfield music teacher, effective immediately. >> Thank you. There has been a motion made. Is there a second? >> Second. >> School board member Johnston. >> Any discussion or comment on this item? >> Okay, roll call vote. School board member Waroff, >> yes. >> School board member Prebble, >> yes. >> School board member Richards, >> yes. School board member Roach. >> Yes. >> School board member Truman and school board member Johnston. >> Yes. >> Motion passes 6. >> Sorry, I did say yes. I
017just didn't hit the button. Pass. >> I'm sorry. >> I did hit the I did say yes, but I didn't. >> Okay. Item C is a building update. >> Thank you. So, we have now shared the SP full specification package with the Department of Education, and we're continuing to work back and forth with them to make sure that those revised specifications meet everything that the DOE wants to make sure that we have as well as everything that needs to go in the bid package. A lot of those discussions have been around really clearly delineating which parts of the package are locally funded and which parts of the package are funded by the DOE all the way down to which playground equipment would be purchased by each. And part of the reason why we need to
018be uh really mindful or careful of that is to make sure that if the pricing changes are impacted by tariffs or material price changes that we know exactly what we would cut first or what we wouldn't include so that we can stick to the original budget within that. as an example, like one of the things that we talked about potentially looking at removing is the bridge, but we can't remove the bridge on that pedestrian way to the eastern trail because even though that's a pretty big expense, the Department of Transportation approved that plan with that bridge in lie of building and extending a sidewalk on Milbrook. So we can't there are some things that even though they seem like an easy lift to cut a big amount of money in the event that we would
019have to it would incur other costs. So we're really trying to be mindful about looking ahead and seeing which things are local and DOE so that we know if those local some of those local pieces come up as higher expenditures we know which ones we could cut and add later. As an example, though you all know I'm a huge proponent of a diverse and exciting playground, adding a set of swings a year after the end of the project is more feasible than adding a wall or moving a wall. So just really thinking about those things that could be changed, materials that could be exchanged to kind of change the cost in the event that we have higher expenses than we anticipated. And that was at the request of the DOE to really be sure that
020we had clarity on that so that we could move the project forward regardless of what pricing looks like. We're also um hoping to have that bid package fully ready to go out before the end of the summer. We're looking at the review and selection of specific finishes. Um, Don, Andrew, and Mike have been really critical in that. Really taking a close eye at what we have in city facilities, what we have in other schools, and making sure that as we look at some of those things, even all the way down to toilet paper dispensers. That we're doing that in a way that we have parts that are easy to replace across multiple locations and not just necessarily getting the that is on the front page, but really being thoughtful about break fix issues, supplies so
021that we're buying the same kind of toilet paper rolls in multiple places and not having to order different things in different locations. And um April, Wendy, and our other administrators are also helping to lead an internal transition planning vision team that's really helping us to fine-tune what things we need to communicate with staff or what things when we need to get staff involved in different components. And that um team met once already and we'll meet again this summer to kind of continue to lead the way in terms of staff transition to that new building. Great. Thank you. Any questions or comments? Okay. Not seeing any. All righty. Moving on to item D. That is the appointment of Ben Fog, the assistant princ principal at SMS. Is there a motion? >> Madame Mayor, >> school board
022member Truman. >> I move we approve the nomination of Ben Fog as the assistant principal of Sak Middle School and issue a contract for the 2526 school year. >> Thank you. Motion has been made. Is there a second? >> Second. Second by school board member Johnston. Any discussion or comment on this item? >> Madame Mayor. >> Yes. Thank you. >> I would just like to share that we are incredibly excited to have Mr. Fog join us. He's a creative educator. He has a variety of experience at middle school. I'm proud to have called him a colleague for several years while I was at middle school of the Kenny Bunks. And I can assure you from firsthand experience that there are some very disappointed eighth graders in the town of Kennybunk that we're looking forward to
023being in his class next year. And I think um after the motion, if you'll allow it, I think Mr. Fog would like to say a few words. >> All right. Anyone else? Okay, roll call vote. School board member Waroff, >> yes. >> School board member Premble, >> yes. >> School board member Richards, >> yes. >> School board member Roach, >> yes. School board member Truman. >> Yes. >> And school board member Johnston. >> Yes. >> Motion passes 6. Congratulations. [applause] >> And welcome. >> Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Um so I grew up in this area. I actually graduated from Bifford High School uh about 25 or so years ago. And so I I'm very very grateful for this opportunity. I feel very deeply connected to this community. It's been really neat
024looking through the uh soccer middle school yearbook because I see a lot of names and last names of uh you know names that I names that I recognize, people that I've gone to school with. And so I really sincerely look forward to working with the students in the community uh you know connecting with and reconnecting with parents, working with community members, um getting to know new staff members, working with the really supportive administrative team. So, thank you so much for the opportunity and I look and I really look forward to working uh with the students and the staff in SACO. Thank you. >> Thank you. Thank you very much. >> All righty. Moving on to item E that is an updated essay memo. So, from good news to not so good news. [laughter] the um
025four titles which I came to you a couple of board meetings ago and gave a general overview of. We had gotten our title one allocation preliminary allocation. Then we were given our title four preliminary allocation and told to just hold on until we get the title two and title three preliminary allocations. Since that time and the passage of the big beautiful bill there they have rescended all titles. So the title four funds that they had preliminary preliminarily allocated have now been rescended. Title one funds are the only titles that are still in there right now. They are anticipating that they will release those allocations in the fall. However, the state application is due August 1st. So, we have a meeting set up with our ESA representative from the main department of education to try to
026understand exactly what that means for us because we were told before the most recent rescending that we would need to fill out the application as if all of the funds were going to be there that were there last year. That doesn't necessarily feel like a really good place to expend our efforts if they haven't been allocated yet. So, we're going to kind of consult with the DOE on that and see how far they truly want us to go or get a sense of uh if they have any confidence interval around that. Uh right now, what that means for us is that we were allocated in FY25 a total of $574,000 and change. And right now in our title one allocation we have 412,965. So that's a difference of about 161,24 though the full 412 plus
027change is all in title one which means that we can only expend those funds at Fairfield and CK Burns as those are only title one schools. Um just a brief overview of what those cuts might mean. The staffing cuts that are paid the staff that is paid for out of that 161,000. Some of those staff members we will be able to move into title one funding. Others we would be able to absorb locally and then a lot of the other funds are around professional development and paying for outside facilitators to do that work. So, we'd be looking to do that work internally andor back off of some of that in the next year, as well as uh some other resources that we'll kind of have to either pinch hit through the local budget if there
028are other things that wouldn't be as important in the local budget or determine that we wouldn't spend those funds on those specific resources. Also a reminder of that funds of those funds that we're not getting right now that 161,000 Thornton Academy gets allocated approximately 39% of those. So we are not personally for our prek8 students at a loss of that full 161. >> Thank you. Any questions or comments? School board member Roach. So, we're definitely getting the 412,000. >> I don't say definite until they pay back the invoice that we build them for, but I'm reasonably certain. >> Okay. And then in titles two and three, I think my memory served me. We weren't expecting that much in those two. >> Let me get the exact numbers for you. So in the past we have
029had it's about 60,000 that we get in. So last year we got in title two 116,000 in title three 30,000 and in title four 38,000. So it's title two that's the biggest after that. >> But that was last year's number. I thought that this was going to be the last year of ESSA funds and they were declining at the last amounts. >> The ESSA funds are the ones that are going away. Those are all the COVID funds. The ESA funds are the four titles that have been in existence for many years. And >> I got Yep. Thanks. Sorry about that. No problem. Okay. Anyone else? Okay. Not seeing anyone. Moving on to item F. That is the PG&E, the professional growth and evaluation. Is there a motion? School board member Johnston? >> Thank you. I
030move we approve the 2526 SACO school department professional growth and evaluation system handbook for teachers, educational technicians, and administrators. Thank you. Motion has been made. Is there a second? >> Second by school board member Truman. Any discussion or comment on this item? >> Hey, not school board member Johnston. >> Yes. Um, as somebody who's been on this um committee for a while. I would just like to say that I think that we tried we have been trying to make things clearer for everyone to understand um and also simplify to some extent and still cover what we need to do in the process. But Meg, if you want to add to that, I would I'm sure you wouldn't have something more coherent to say than me. The only thing that I'll add is that the only
031change to the document from last year to the version that you're voting on now is that the team on page 13 added some changes to the rubric so that as teachers are writing their goals for reertification. We're hopeful that they can write only one goal that will apply both to their professional growth plan and their reertification plan. And the rubric now allows kind of a crosswalk of the standards that we have for reertification and the standards that we have for evaluation which are just ever so slightly different. But we recognize that especially our new teachers have to spend a lot of time with those goals and we're hoping that this will streamline that process. >> Thank you, Meg. >> Anyone else? Okay, moving on to item G. That is summer school update. >> I think
032we have to vote on that. >> I'm sorry. >> We have to vote. >> Oh, I'm sorry. Thank you. >> All right. Anyone else? >> School uh roll call vote. School board member Waroff? >> Yes. >> School board member Prebble? >> Yes. >> School board member Richards? >> Yes. >> School board member Roach? >> Yes. >> School board member Truman? Yes. >> And school board member Johnston? >> Yes. >> Motion passes 6. >> Okay. Now moving on to item G and that is a summer school update. >> Thank you. So we started our full launch this week with some students starting last week for summer school. Everything is running very smoothly. We have 172 students enrolled with 57 in our special education extended school year and 115 regular education students. We are partnering with learning
033works for regular ed which means that students are kind of working through a tutoring model for part of the day in really small groups of two to three to four students and then in the other portion of their day they're doing hands-on literacy and numeracy rich sort of things but more steam STEM related activities that um they do with learning work staff members and then we have hired our staff to provide that kind of tutoring. Our upper grade levels that aren't served by learning works, we have those teachers really focusing on more of a STEM model and focusing on engagement with students at the incoming fourth and fifth grade level because we've found in the past that attendance is one of the biggest challenges with students as they get older in summer school. We want
034to make sure that what we're doing in summer school for those kiddos is both highly engaging and also academically rigorous. So, we're kind of trying to um work through that. And then one other piece that we've changed this year is a really specific pre and post assessment for students in the summer school that was designed by summer school staff. In the past, we've used NWA data from the spring and comparing it to fall scores, but that can become really tricky both because there's a lot of time in between the administration of those and when summer school functions and also because we don't really have a good control group of kids that we would have put in summer school that don't go into summer school. And so we feel like these pre and post assessments within
035the summer school time window are going to give us a much better sense of how effective our model is at increasing those skills for students that were identified. Huge thanks to Abby Tras and Matt Thabarge who run those programs in the summer and are um very adept at both the organization behind the scenes and the logistics even during a a pretty impressive thunderstorm right at dismissal yesterday. So huge thanks to those folks. >> Thank you. Any questions or comments? School board member Johnston. Meg, could I just ask you to repeat the enrollment, the student enrollment in this summer program? >> Absolutely. We have 172 students total and that's 57 in our extended school year program, which is a required program through special education and a student's IEP. and then 115 students served through our other
036program. Which also, just to be clear, there can be students in the non-extended school year program that do have an IEP. However, extended school year might not be a required part of their IEP. It's that it would be considered part of the same time that they're in a regular education classroom. Thank you. Hey, anyone else? Okay, moving on to item H and that is the second reading of the policies. Is there a motion? >> School board member Johnston. >> Thank you. Um, I move we approve the second reading of policies JLCB, IM immunization of students, KBF, parent involvement and title one policy, KBF-E title one parent involvement procedures, KF community use of school facilities and KI-E agreement for classroom observations. >> Thank you. Motion has been made. Is there a second? >> Second by school
037board member Truman. Any comment or discussion on those policies? >> School board member Roach. Um, all right. On immunization, um, have you seen an uptick in the last year of people trying to fight the policy or not? I wouldn't say there's been any uptick for SACO in particular. We generally have maybe a couple of families in every school that nurses are working with really closely and then the the law requires us to withhold school enrollment if there's not compliance after that point. >> Okay. Um then on Uh the classroom observ observations is that for um it said it to write the name organization you would go in but does that imply like if you have if you're part of a valid organization that wants to witness a class that they just need to sign this
038agreement. >> So we have a separate agreement for anyone who's just visiting the schools. Generally, the agreement for classroom observations is one of two requests. One would be a parent requesting that wouldn't have an organization that they're part of that wants to see something about how their child is behaving in a classroom. The second one is generally an outside professional that is working with the family whether that be a counselor or speech pathologist that is requesting to observe the child in a school setting and that would be the area in which the organization would come into play like that they're with Maine Health or they're with SLP services of Maine etc. so that we would know their affiliation professionally. Then on the um use of school facilities, I I just no change in the policy
039I'm I'm looking for, but I I just would like to see that promoted to especially on the on the youth sports side of things is that put that policy out to the organizations just to know that it is equal for everybody and everyone got the same communication from the schools and then it's up to the organization to come in and ask for the space. Uh but just maybe some sort of you know we know who the organizations are in the in in so I would just try to get that out you know before the school year. Thanks. >> Thank you. Anyone else? >> Okay. Not seeing any roll call vote. School board member Waroff. >> Yes. >> School board member Prebble. >> Yes. >> School board member Richards. Yes. >> School board member Roach. >>
040Yes. >> School board member Truman. >> Yes. >> And school board member Johnston. >> Yes. >> Motion passes 6. >> Okay. Moving on to item 13. There is no other information this evening unless and there any school board members have something they wish to share. Okay. Item 14. There is no executive session. And item 15 is adjournment. Is there a motion to adjurnn? >> So moved. >> Second. >> I'm sorry. Who is first? School board member Truman. >> Second by school board member Prebble. Roll call vote. School board member Waroff. >> Yes. >> School board member Prebble. >> Yes. >> School board member Richards. >> Yes. >> School board member Roach. >> Sons So Hut. Cloud Solo. >> Yes. >> School board member Truman. >> Yes. >> And school board member Johnston. >> Yes. >>
041Motion to adjourn at 7:37 passes 6. Thank you everyone and have a good night.