001Good evening everyone and welcome to the SACO school board meeting for April 30th at 5:05. I'd like to call this meeting to order. Would you please join me for the pledge of allegiance? would just like to make note that we do have school board member Truman and school board member Johnston who have been excused um for the evening and school board member Prebble is on her way. Hopefully she will make it uh with some traffic. Okay. Item number three tonight is the approval of the school board minutes stated for April 9th, 2025. Is there a motion? Madame Mayor, school board member Richards, I move we approve the school board meeting minutes dated April 9th, uh, 2025. Great. Thank you. Is there a second? Second. School board member Waroff. All right. Any discussion or comments uh
002regarding the minutes? No. Just remember we only have four. So, we do have a quorum. So, oh, we have we have four, but I'm saying that these motions, the future motions that I guess we got to be on our on our toes a little bit. So, the normal people who like to make the motions are not here. I'm going to walk this way every time. So, these usually go to Sarah. So, yes. Okay, great. Uh, all right. Roll call vote. Schoolboard member Waroff, yes. School board member Richards, yes. School board member Roach, yes. And school board member KD, yes. Motion passes 40. And as long as I get my numbers correct as well. Okay. Item number four tonight, there are no adjustments to the agenda. Item number five, there are no correspondents. Item number six
003is public session. If there are any members of the public wishing to speak, please step forward, state your name and address for the record, and you will have three minutes to address the school board. Okay. Not seeing anyone seeking recognition. Item number seven is the superintendence report. Superintendent Ray. All right. Well, welcome back everybody uh from a week of school vacation. Um it's also a awful nice that when you come back and you see warm weather, you can get kids outside um and hopefully the fields dry so they don't bring mud into the school on everything. U you're always feeling better about things. Um couple of different uh kind of announcements is our Bifford and SACO rising uh multicultural event will be held on Monday May 12th from 5 to 7:00 at the middle school
004in Bifford. Uh this event is designed to strengthen connections between our schools and the families of our ML learners and new manners. Um so that's always a well attended event uh that brings our communities together. And then uh also just kind of what we would call beyond the buzzword uh a forum on bullying, behavior, and belonging. Uh we'll be hosting a parent forum on Tuesday, May 13th from 5 to 6:00 p.m. at Sako Middle School to focus on concerns uh surround our bullying behavior and belonging in schools. um trying to bring everybody together knowing that our students uh face a society that's much different today uh and that we deal with the digital landscape in all of those police uh uh spaces for kids uh and how uh we work to address these in the
005prek through 8 schools and what supports are available for uh students and families. uh child care will be available at this event. Uh so if people need that um and so kind of having uh 14 days away from uh not a lot of school uh I don't have that much of an update tonight. Great. Thank you. Any questions or comments for the superintendent? I have a question. Who's presenting the bullying behavior? It's a collaborative effort between myself and all of the building principles and it will be a little bit more of a forum. It's not intended to just be a sit and get. It's kind of a combination of some information and then an opportunity to share, collaborate, and brainstorm with folks who attend. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? Okay, moving on to item
006eight. That is the chair's report and uh chair Prebble is not here yet, so we will bypass that. Item number nine, there are no staff reports. Item 10 is the board subcommittee minutes and uh meetings. Item A is the policy and personnel committee. Minutes are attached and the next meeting is May 19th at 5:30 p.m. Item B is the finance and infrastructure committee agenda. The next meeting is 5:28 at 4:30 p.m. and item C is the curriculum committee. Uh, and the next meeting is 519 at 4:30 p.m. There is no old business this evening. Moving on to item 12. Schoolboard member Roach. Apologize. Under under section 10 here. Um, just going forward. Uh Jeremy, can we have this agenda comes out over the weekend like we had our finance meeting today? Yep. On 4:30. Can
007we can we word that in in this section to say the agenda meeting the meeting was today and then if we wanted the option to update a little bit from today, we'd have it. Um I just think that I I don't know. I'm I'm speaking for myself a little bit. I'm a veteran of other boards, but um you know, I get a little confused myself about this and I don't know if the new board members, you know, when they see like, well, we're having a meeting actually today, but the agenda said the next meeting's, you know, ahead. Okay. Just just a point. Yeah. Thanks. Sure. Okay. Moving on to item 12 that is new business. Item A is new hires. There is a packet in a motion, a memo in your packet. Is there a
008motion? School board member Roach. All right, bear with me. Here we go. Um, I move we approve the nomination of Brock Major, SMS school nurse and Shayen Dryulture, school psychologists, and issue a contract for the 2526 school year. Great. Thank you. Motion has been made by schoolboard member Roach. Is there a second? Second. Second. School board member KD. Any discussion on the item? Okay. Roll call vote. School board member Waroff. Yes. School board member Richards? Yes. School board member Roach? Yes. And school board member KD? Yes. Motion passes 40. Okay. There are no resignations this evening. And item C is the building update. Okay. Uh just a brief building update is that uh we had talked about at finance committee that um one of the things we've been able to start doing is repaying um
009the school department and we will next repay the city for any of the purchases of land andor expenses that we incurred prior to uh receiving the bond anticipation note. So we'll be able to start moving that process forward. Um, as you know, the land has been cleared over there and there's still trees to be hauled off. And we're hoping that as soon as that happens, and if we can stay away from a lot of rain, we'll have an opportunity to kind of have, I don't want to say open house, but an opportunity for people to view the property, you know, and see the pieces and elements um that will be moving forward. And then finally, Megan and I uh with Oakpoint have been having some discussions about what impact any of different uh tariffs andor
010pricing would impact the project. Uh so we're just trying to plan ahead now to think about uh you know if there's any kind of value engineering or design changes that would maybe need to be made now versus later in anticipation of that. Um but still a little bit uh preliminary at this time. Okay, great. Thank you. Any questions or comments for the superintendent? Okay, not seeing any. Moving on to item D, and that is the budget information with the budget final budget recommendations. Okay, so it seems like it's been a while since we have um worked on all of these pieces. Um, and based off the last meeting, uh, we know that we had, uh, had some comments about trying to make sure that we didn't eliminate any positions, that we still plan for things.
011Um, Kevin had talked about, uh, with the uncertainty in the hotel, um, that maybe at this point in time, we just use some money for carryover, uh, from our our carryover funds and hold those positions, um, which we had talked about. And so when we started looking at those pieces, uh I have updated the fund balance and capital projects where basically um for FY26 uh we had originally had uh 450,000 in carryover funds coming out. Um we would use 117 um additional uh dollars 117,000 additional dollars based off the insurance increase. we would take $140 um,000 out of fund balance and place that into a contingency fund and only hire those positions if needed uh based off what we know. So that money would be there. Um, so that when we go through all of
012these pieces for um, capital improvements, audio enhancement, some cabling, we still would have about $1.7 million left in our fund balance. Uh, with many of these being one-time expenses so that it's not a perpetual uh, situation. Um, and that we really have also seen a great deal of change in the Medicaid money coming in. Uh, at the end of April, we build for over $800,000 and we've received uh 673,000 of that. And just part of that's just part of the delay process. So, we're well over the anticipation there. And I have increased um that amount of expected revenue for next year. um with this budget and with these um kind of uses of fund balance that we talked about last time, we will still come in with the city um at a 1.1% increase combined.
013Um, I think that was the goal that we wanted to try to even when we got the bad news about insurance, we still wanted to figure out a way to work within that. And I think that we've done that by using um carryover and Medicaid uh main care revenue. So, I feel really good about this budget. I don't think that it um sets us up at all for anything in the future in a negative way. I feel strong as we talked about in finance committee about fund balance moving uh towards the future. Um I know that we've talked about this um you know throughout the winter and now and I'm pretty proud of the work that people did in the district to put this together um and it came together in a good way. I'd
014take any questions I have from school committee because I know Kevin's going to have some. He's already got his hand on it questions. school board member Roach. All right. I'm speaking for Sarah and Beth, too. Okay. And Jen, so uh I won't use all that time. Um All right. Just a couple clarifications. Um in the memo, you say 450 for fiscal year 28. Is that a typo? Would that be 26? Where does that um under fund balance and capital projects? Yeah, that's a typo. Okay. All right. So, that's that's fine. Um and then um in the chart you say starting fund balance 2778. Is that starting your your estimate or as it is right this second or at the your estimate at the end of the year? Right this second. Right this second. Okay. And
015then from our finance committee meeting, um you um well you just you touched on it here too that um you know uh what we owe for school construction is coming back before the year end for 1.2 million but we didn't discuss is there a specific amounts we owe back the city for the property that would reduce that? No. So that's a separate line and that was uh Zach that was about 1.1 million on the propert 1 million61,000ish or something like that and and what the city had in that agreement they had paid approximately $1.5 million for the property sold a couple of lots. the state would only allow us the one million dollars that they would reimburse and the city covered the rest of that because it has to be a city-owned property in order
016for us to get the million dollars uh on that piece. So, they will get their million dollars back and that's in the regular budget uh revenue expense that will come that will come out of it won't come out of the school budget. That will come out of the bond anticipation note. The note the note part of it. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry. Not the not our expenses, revenues. Correct. Yeah. Okay. That's Yeah, that's it from my side. I can believe it. Anyone else with any questions or comments? And just so that the school board knows, um, our next meeting on May 5th is a review of the combined budget and May 12th is the approval. Okay, moving on to item E, uh, the ESA memo. Is there an update on that or just recognition of the
017memo? I I I've got to have a vote. Oh, okay. Yeah, I've got to go back and we got Sorry, that was my final question. Um, yeah, what um what submission of this memo or how how what would you want to vote the chart itself? You would be voting on the expense in revenue to push forward to the city council. School board member Roach, would you like to make a motion? Well, just one question again. Um, on the 4.69 in that version, um, well, yeah, some accounts changed within there, but it's just not it's not spelled out in that chart necessarily, correct? Like the old and then the new. We're just saying the the motion is we're submitting this revenue expense budget dated correct. Yeah. Okay. All right. Here I go. Um, I move to
018uh submit the um revised uh superintendent uh our revenue and expense uh budget um accounting for changes such as the the uh health insurance and and some capital projects. Second. Okay. Okay. Motion has been made by schoolboard member Roach, second by schoolboard member Prebbleville. Any additional questions or comments? I I just think it goes without saying, it's in the memo that the tax rate proposal is still the same. It's just not in the motion. Okay. Okay. Great. Uh, roll call vote. Schoolboard member Waroff, yes. School board member Prevo, yes. School board member Richards, yes. School board member Roach, yes. And school board member KD, yes. All right, motion passes 5-0. Okay, now moving on to item E and that is the EA memo. Is there an update for that? Meg, sorry you coming up. Yeah,
019that memo is in there. Um, traditionally at this time of the year, we have a prelimin preliminary allocation from Maine that it kind of explains what they think the title funding will be from the federal government, which is dispersed to Maine and then dispersed to school districts. Um Maine does not have those numbers yet. So we're hoping that those come out shortly, but we did want to provide the public notice that we do have a form that's available at all times on our website for folks to provide any input on how those ESA funds are spent. We have comprehensive needs assessments done at each of the schools to identify areas for spending and um those plans as they are completed through the end of the school year will be posted on the website. So this
020is just kind of a notification that that process is upcoming and that we do have access on our website for any feedback regarding those items. Okay, great. Thank you. Any questions or comments? Okay, not seeing any. Moving on to item F. School board member Johnston is not available tonight. So, who is first reading of the policies? Oh, I love how everybody nominates me. Okay. Um, punishment. Punishment. Madame Mayor, can I make a motion? Yes, please. All right. I move we approve the first reading of AC non-discrimination and equal opportunity and affirmative action. ACA harassment and sexual harassment of students ACA-R student discrimination and harassment oh I'm sorry I'm trying to get the rest of it in [Music] title nine sexual harassment if I read that right. Um, sorry. ACAB, harassment, sexual harassment of school employees.
021ACAB-R employee discrimination and harassment of title 9 sexual I'm assuming that's harassment. I'm trying to open it. Sexual discrimination. KBH advertising in schools. KI visitors to the schools. KI-R administrative procedures for visitors to schools. Ike promotion retention and acceleration of students. and ILA student assessment local assessment system. Good job. Very well. All right. Motion has been made by school board member Prebble. Is there a second? Second. Me. Was that me? All right. Thank you. Uh, school board member Kar. Any questions or comments regarding the policies? 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. Yes. And school board member KD. Yes. All right. Motion passes 5-0. Okay. Now takes us to item 13 and that is other information.
022Any school board members have any information they would like to share. Okay. Item 14. There is no executive session this evening. And item 15 is adjournment. Is there a motion to adjurnn? Some moved. Second. Motion made by school board member Richards. 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. Sunshine Daydream. Yes. And school board member KD. Yes. Motion passes 50 to adjourn at 5:26. Thank you everyone. Enjoy the rest of the beautiful day. It's going to rain this weekend. Warren.