001School Board member peski yes School Board member Preble yes School Board member Richard yes School Board member Le Fortune yes School Board member Massie yes Schoolboard member Truman yes and School Board member Johnston that is 60 with one abstention uh that brings us to item four of the agenda any adjustments to the agenda this evening see no adjustments item five any correspondence at this time seeing no correspondents moving on to item six public session at the moment if there's anyone who would like to come up and speak before the school board please come forward and be heard please state your name and address for the record and please keep your comments to three minutes again please come forward and be heard am I allowed to take this off mayor okay could you please hand out
002the document that I gave you barara Coleman 386 buckton Road Saka Main de mayor school chair school board and the public there are three items that I'll be speaking about in this one statement management 101 policies and procedures and safety concerns may have um the school board and the administrator have been handed policy k1- R in an email provided which is a statement from the fire marshal with additional comments added for individuals at home the policy K1 is on the School Board website as for the email I will ask the school staff to post on the Facebook page redacted our portions of the email to protect the knowledge of individuals management 101 is basic this appear does not represent an employee in a group setting especially when students are present recently an employee at one
003of the schools was paraded in front of the staff because the individual was performing one of the tasks of their opposition requesting the signing in of a visitor to that school k1r states non-employees of the unit must sign in and out there is a reference to school unit it is not paralized meaning all schools in the district are a unit I am reading this policy to mean young ffield burns and S Middle School each are their own unit there's no differentiation on whether you are the president of the United States are the parent attending a meeting that has an infant with them sadly the individual was the Super superintendent of the school Jeremy raay being asked to sign in and yes I am calling in out front of everyone but remember I'm not his Superior
004the Su board members sitting at the das's are he is supposed to represent the school dep socle school department with the dignity and decorum one expects of a person in this position the login and sign in sheets are an important process if there is an emergency at the school there could be a fire and active shooter Etc you will find attached the Fire Marshall statement that makes mention in his email of a log of an individ logs for individuals schools these sign in sheets teachers attendance books Etc are one of the first items staff gather when exiting the building and with um with their students this allows each teacher or support staff to see if there remains anyone in the building additionally in the world of cobbert it is even more more important to know
005the individuals visiting the building tracing and outbreaks do not sound like fun but are made easier if one has the if the person has signed in I ask the school board to review the tape if one exists of the occurrence if the information commuted to me is true the employee deserves an apology from the superintendent and a thank you for the school board for performing the respective duties accordingly and by the way we are not bit effort thank you Susan newer Wildwood Drive for 30 years mayor Doyle intern superintendent Ray and Schoolboard members several items of concern have come to my attention since the last meeting on September 22nd at 5:00 several community members have reached out to me with the following concerns first inconsistent meeting times the 5:00 time is inconvenient for many it
006doesn't encourage citizen involvement by contrast the council meets regularly at 6:30 on Mondays when I stopped by 90 Beach Street and asked about a meeting schedule the receptionist told me that the times would flip-flop without a regular pattern this is a grave concern to taxpayers who wish to be informed whether or not they have children in school second at the last meeting it was very difficult to hear certain individuals people are here and at home and they want to hear what you have to say please adjust your microphones accordingly thank you third I was told that the building at 90 Beach Street will remain the location of the central office for Sako schools I asked if there would be specific time times when administrators would be there once again the person in reception that day
007said that both interim superintendent Ry and the assistant superintendent would have offices in the building however they would both be back and forth to bford with no reliable schedule how to concern citizens know where to find them and what is at 90 Beach Street now fourth many citizens in the community Express concerned about the abbreviated UA classes which are short changing the students of Sako when they really need them after a year and a half of remote classes these are more important than ever I am well aware of the situation with bus driver shortages it's not only a problem here but awide as we see on the news daily a more thoughtful collaborative solution for the benefit and well-being of the students is certainly preferable finally the budget the group which was hired under the
008platform of saving Sako taxpayers money seems to be having quite the opposite effect highly salaried employees Drive lease vehicles while teachers are spending their own money on classroom supplies this is a costly mistake which never should have occurred do these individuals with lease Vehicles reimburse the city for personal mileage use please show me how this Arrangement is a cost saving measure these concerns Raised To Me by community members are the points I am mentioning to you this evening they are precisely why Sako staff students and families deserve leadership that can give undivided attention to make good decisions on teaching and learning for sako's future thank you thank you any other folks like to speak to the school board please come forward and be heard see nobody seeking recognition moving on to item uh seven superintendent's
009report superintendent Ray couple of items for tonight uh first of all nwaa testing has started in our schools uh and our students have been participating in those that is the NWA is replacing the state mea test so it's used every single uh by every single student in the state employee P pool testing the school committee take took a big step several weeks ago in requiring employees to be vaccinated or in pool testing and at this point in time we are I believe we're looking at two employees that we are trying to make sure that they're in compliance on so great job Sako on that pool testing for students is in the second week of having this uh kind of go off and I'd say I'm very proud of the nurses and the pool nurses and
010the staff because it has going off without a hitch uh in our nurses will report on that in a in a few moments vaccine update so we are working with main Health in this area to provide vaccines for students uh 5 through 11 for parents who want those and those it appears that on October 26 there will be a the meeting of the FDA to see if that if they're going to allow the fiser vaccine we anticipate if that's approved that we would have the first couple of weeks in November that we would have testing I mean vaccination clinics available uh for students now it seems like what they're going to do is they're going to start with some Regional um clinics out there and then maybe at some point get to the smaller schools
011but it looks like they're going to put all their resource into Regional clinics homeless Grant we uh we're lucky enough to combine with Sako Dayton and bitterford and receive an additional $33,000 a day from the state to put towards homeless youth um this has very wide variety of ways to use it we can put food on the table for families and if they need it help with rent assistance so another great uh addition hiring hiring is something that is challenging you drive down through every single uh Corridor in the city and you probably see Help Wanted signs if you look on um some of the electronic boards around town you'll get to see a situation where uh it says Sako school department looking for hiring or bford Sako Dayton looking for bus drivers or Ed
012teex or whatever that is um and so we're trying to use as many different platforms as we can to get hiring out there cuz it's just tough you look in an applicant pool you might have zero or one if you're lucky you have have one um we're also looking at seeing how we can get out on Saturdays um to uh the recck department soccer fields so we can have some boost there um Sako is having some a fall festival there uh We've also have the bill big billboard at water House Field we'll put a hiring up sign up so that we can just promote promote promote that we're looking for employees we've also been working with um USM and un to figure out how we can be on the list to have guaranteed placement for
013subs for students who would be um kind of involved in work study because they take a work study job but they need to make sure that they have committed days uh and so we're going to take that process forward because we just we don't have even close to nearly enough Subs that are available uh to fill the jobs that are there school construction update October 20th at 6:30 p.m. we will have a public meeting to talk about what the state process looks like that will be at Burns School in the cafeteria on zoom in that situation um we will be working with oakpoint that night and oako will be able to give that outline so that people can ask questions to say hey I heard this is this really what happens in the state funding
014process like you need to have 20 acres of land is what they're looking for so that should be a good opportunity for the public to put that out there we have met three times since uh July with the doe uh we've had four site in inventory meetings and we've developed uh a draft which needs to be approved by the department of a ranking Matrix so that you can understand like okay what are the things that you're looking for if you have to select a new site in addition uh last night we also had a program committee and in the program committee uh that's we'll be putting out all the ideas of all the different grade levels that you can kind of think of that will go into this building and I think that our list
015is at 10 to 12 right now Meg okay and so those uh will continue to meet we'll get started with a public session um next Wednesday night 6:30 Burn School uh so that you can ask questions about that just a couple of things that want to mention about Transportation schedule is that it is starting to improve I know that our prek situation is starting to get much better uh with hiring um it's unfortunate that we have to shorten a little bit of the day at burn school but we can't get kids around we can't have a pattern that's set up where you run Transportation through one part of the city and back through the other piece the other piece that I would address about um just because it was mentioned is that a reminder that
016we did approve lease Vehicles here for the school department on a deal with efficiency main for a total cost of $400 and the reason that we would have employees drive those is because we pay mileage at 56 cents and over a three-year period $400 there's a great buy if we take that to Augusta four times paid for the vehicle thank you thank you superintendent Ray any questions for superintendent Ray no questions Mr Mayor I have a quick question board member um do you have any information on the homeless rates have they gotten worse gotten better throughout the school year so right now between the three cities we are upwards of a 100 uh about 30 or 40 kids we're looking at in Sako at little lower than that in Sako right now um usually that
017October one tends to pick up on things uh when you know there starts to be some of those uh seasonal rentals open up and kids can go from Community to community and would be classified as homeless in a winter rental but um you know it's great that we have some Partnerships and some grant funding to help families on that okay thank you any further questions Schoolboard member peski thank you Mr Mayor superintendent Ray could you clarify what you were saying about staff and vaccinations were you saying that only two are not vaccinated or only two are unknown so we have a situation where we have uh employeers are either vaccinated or test and we just have two two individuals at this time that we're working on completing on the paperwork of whether they're going to
018be in the vaccination status or test status so we're down to just two employees that we have to figure out everybody else has complied it's outstanding you any further questions okay moving on to item seven the or excuse me item eight the chair's report Cher of Fortune I have nothing thank you uh brings us to item nine staff reports are no staff reports superintendent Ray no staff reports uh item 10 board subcommittee meeting minutes there are no meeting minutes to review brings us to item 11 old business there is no old business before the school board brings us to item 12 which is new business item a new hires is there a motion Mr Mayor School Board member Truman I move we approve the nomination of Jessica Howard Sako Middle School teacher and issue a
019teacher contract for the 2122 school year motion has been made by school board member Truman is is there a second second second by School Board member prebel any discussion roll call vote School Board member peski yes School Board member prebble yes School Board member Richard yes School Board member Le Fortune yes School Board member Massie School Board member Truman yes School Board member Johnston yes motion passes 70 brings us to Item B of new business that is a first and second reading of policy policy acaf workplace bullying is there a motion Mr Mayor School Board member Johnston I move we approve the first and second reading of policy acaf workplace bullying motion has been made by school board member Johnston is there a second second second by School Board member I think it was jef
020we'll give it to school board member Richard any discussion Mr Mayor School Board member Johnston I think it would be good to try and give a little background here and I'm going to ask uh the superintendent to correct me or add anything um I had I I'd like to remind the board that and I don't know how loud I am but I want to remind the board that we uh recently a few months ago um voted to hire the msma to um do a thorough inventory of our policies which as far as I know and I would ask if I'm wrong um that hasn't yet been completed is that correct thank you um so we nevertheless things keep happening during that period of time the the policy the Strategic SL policy committee has not really
021met in that interim but I see now that I have helped to for explanation um I had asked Mr indor to give me sort of a background on this and I'm sure he can explain it much better than myself so uh thanks Beth uh for new board members I'm Chris andorf I work for the southern main administrative collaborative um so as Beth mentioned since the RSU dissolved the school committee has been working diligently to update many of its Legacy policies but the legislature has been very active this year uh out of this session emerged 28 separate bills from the standing committee on education and cultural Affairs that impacts schools and those fall into basically one of seven buckets student health discipline and safety special education School employment contracts collective bargaining negotiation School Finance retirement and
022freedom of access um so as Beth mentioned the msma has been contracted um I think we contracted with them effective July 28th to do a comprehensive policy audit of sako's policies to look at what are out of date out of compliance with the statute or Rules promulgated by it what's missing that's required by the state what's recommended but not yet adopted by this board and then to also consider those new laws and develop uh policies based on those so we'll be bringing two to this board directly one on restraint and seclusion which isn't quite ready because the our attorneys uh the the Department of Education and Main School management aren't quite in agreement yet on how that statute should be interpreted but the second as Beth mentioned is this policy on uh work Place bullying
023uh the statute that underg guards this policy is LD 880 which was passed this session and becomes effective on October 18 so it wasn't until about three weeks ago that we received this sample policy from our attorneys which is why we're bringing it to you in this fashion otherwise we'd run it through our standard process of having this uh evaluated and Wordsmith and and sort of finessed by strategic but this quite simply folks is copied and pasted verbatim from the statute and there isn't really a lot of negotiation here so that's why we bring this to you in this manner is that does that help Beth is that I think it does I mean you had communicated with me by email so I have some more you know visual to this than the rest of
024the board probably does but excuse me but basically we have to do it we have to do it soon um and I think that it's if you if the board looks at or anyone else looks at the cross reference references this is a polic we have some we have policies already in the books that are very similar but as you explained it I believe to me um Chris it's this is a more comprehensive policy and clearly very specific to anyone involved with bullying any employee so I think this is a timely thing for us to go ahead and pass tonight thank you just board member L Fortune just a quick clarifying question so in an instance like this typically the the language that we're given is fixed and that we we don't have the Liberty
025to modify it it's essentially we get something based on what was in the statute or however they've drafted the policy at the state and we the the job at this point is to take that as is and adopt it because we're required to by law yeah Kevin I believe that if our attorney was here they would say this is boilerplate we have vetted this we believe that this board ought adopt this as written um sometimes the board will add some additional language or some additional local guidance but in this case I would strongly encourage this board to adopt it as written uh there isn't a lot of wiggle room it's statutory there is a nice list of what harassment isn't what workplace bullying isn't so there are a lot of protections that are afforded for
026employees in this language but there's also some language that protects supervisors program directors and principles as well a followup question to that so the some of the other policies that Beth alluded to I seem to recall in the past that they made reference to um in terms of the reporting process that you would report through the affirmative action officer and that's not in this one is that ultimately the path that we'll likely go with some of these others is to remove that or is there going to be a situation where that would be the reporting path for certain things but not this yeah probably not appropriate here this would really be a human resources or superintendent of schools reporting mechanism Kevin thank you any further discussion questions School Board member Johnson I just want to
027thank Mr indor for coming and explaining that to us it is a little complicated and sort of a sudden thing for the board to I mean to um digest the information so thank you and I do expect our audit to be completed by the end of this month uh there what there is one lead principal investigator for msma who sort of organizes this work and she's been very very ill um and she's missed quite a bit of time and so she is acknowledging and and sending her apologies to the board that she's running a little bit behind she's been sending me some stuff peace meal but Beth and I talked about the possibility of entertaining it as a slate rather than going through uh 80 some OD policies in a very peacee fashion I don't
028think that that would be helpful to this board so we'll have an update next meeting I think and Chris it sounds like it's going to be a pretty extensive review that we're going to need to do yeah wholesale review of the manual um the board has done a lot of great work and has a lot of wonderful policy language and we're not going to throw the baby out with the bath water but there are some missing required policies and we have an activist legislature who takes a great interest in education sometimes that's good sometimes that's not so good but nevertheless it does an effect on this board's policies thank you thank you any further discussion just one um one minor thing I think we should we don't I don't think we need question I think
029we would probably benefit from getting the policy um committee meetings back on the calendar and it sounds like it might behoove us to have them more frequently than you know the once a month once a quarter that we've done in the past okay roll call vote School Board member peski yes School Board member prebble yes School Board member Richard yes School Board member Le Fortune yes School Board member Massie yes School Board member Truman yes School Board member Johnson yes motion passes 70 that brings us to item C A Comm community meeting on state approved construction project superintendent Ray I believe you covered this before but it's also in the packet for school board members do you want to go over that uh again I think we've covered that piece before but it's just information
030for the community and for the school uh for the public uh and the school committee members so that we don't miss that important meeting I I don't know that I said that it was going to be on we were going to use the zoom platform which again will allow people to be in webinar fashion so if you have a question from home you'll have the ability to turn your mic on turn your camera on ask the question and get uh oako or a member of the committee or myself to answer that thank you superintendent Ray and that meeting is uh October 20th 2021 at 6:30 p.m. brings us to item D which is a covid-19 update there are two bullet points federally mandated update on back to school health guidance and pooled testing data superintendent
031Ray so the first piece is part of the Essa requirements and some of federal funds is that uh from time to time throughout the year we will have to give an update of when and if any of our policies within the district whether it be around masking back to five school closures and continue to update people uh as you can see from the memo this is pretty much talking about the things that we have in place around CDC guidance masking our open reopening plan pool testing so that parents can still you know notify them you can still sign up uh and that we will be working on vaccination clinics in addition to that um I invited two of our nurses here tonight to give us a little uh bit of a rundown of how things
032are going healthwise and with pool testing and I would like to ask Deb and Jeet and Jess to please come up and introduce themselves and speak to the board good evening I'm Deb Mia I'm the school nurse for CK burn school I'm also the pool testing coordinator the person that kind of got it all going here in Sako whether that's a good thing or bad but we're pretty proud of it um I want to thank you for inviting us tonight and Jess hi I'm Jess more again the school nurse at Sako PR fairfields I just want to start by saying that we are really happy with the way that this school year has started um all of the hard work that went on over the summer to um maintain that make sure that we were
033able to maintain that three-foot distancing to make sure that classrooms could accommodate our all of our kids five days a week um our Universal masking our use of hand sanitizers um you know maximizing our outside space um is really doing wonders in the school we're really happy with the numbers that and I understand that you were provided with some of of those numbers um ahead of time um our numbers are much less than last year at this time even though across the state our numbers are far higher um I believe last year at this time we were shocked with numbers of in the hundreds um like 126 a week and now we're looking at anywhere from six to 900 a week so we're happy that our schools are safe and that we're doing a great
034job I want to put a shout out to our custodial staff because they are doing doing an amazing job of keeping our schools clean and and safe for our kiddos and to the parents um our parents in this District are doing also an amazing job of screening their kids in the morning not sending them to school when they're sick and communicating with us so that um we can follow up um if a kiddo is sick so I think all of these strategies are really helping us to keep our numbers down and keeping our kids in school five days a week and we're seeing that the kids are happy with with that you know process as well um pool testing started October 4th um there was a lot of work that went on behind the scenes
035to get that to happen um our communication teams our data Stacy Nast um our data amazing person um really helped us a lot we partner with a company called concentric and that company um provides us with the testing supplies and does the lab work um we have a company lab Logistics that picks up our samples um there's a lot of moving parts that happen with pool testing um we hired a couple of amazing staff members um through smack that are managing it under me and we have 11 very eager awesome USM students that are uh hitting the ground running and helping us um with pool testing as well as in the schools um helping us with other health issues as well um I have to say we've only had one as of 6 o'cl tonight
036um one positive pool and we are running 120 pools across the district um just here in Sako um so I'm really excited about that um that we've only had one person individual test positive um and this is week number two so that um gives us um and currently we have 925 um students participating and almost 300 staff members and people as um Jeremy said we have people that are signing up every day so we have more than 50% um participation at this point and creeping up on on more than 60 so we're very excited about those numbers um so thank you for allowing us Jess is going to talk a little bit more about covid and if you have any questions about the process like dub said I think the pool testing the students uh
037did amazing that last week and this week they uh were great at taking on that new role of coming in the classroom doing the swab uh making sure they were washing their hands or hand sanitizing before they did that the teachers were great uh they were amazing at helping us navigate that new role that we're all playing um so I just wanted to mention that that the the students and the staff were were fantastic uh our numbers are going better this week uh we have had uh couple bumps in the road um but our for the most part uh with pool testing it has enabled us to keep students in the classroom so with that um we have had uh identified cases uh with pool testing we were able to out of a classroom of
03816 uh eight students or I'm sorry five students were identified needing to actually do quarantine for 10 days and be out of the classroom versus the rest of the students were able to stay in the classroom which was fantastic um so I think that pool testing is working we are seeing the results and benefits of that which is students being in the classroom five days a week thank you very much it's all great great information any questions from the school board I just wanted to make a comment School Board member Truman I just wanted to say thank you for doing this and making it painless if you will I I signed my kids up and they were a little mythed with me and um the sticker really helped the giant heart-shaped sticker was like a
039huge hit so and he said it my youngest was like it wasn't it didn't hurt at all I was like no kidding so just thank you for making it a fun experience and making them want to keep doing it I guess so thanks Schoolboard member of Fortune that's that's essentially what I was going to say minus the part about the kids um was just to say thank you for for all the work that you put into this it's definitely definitely starting to show some de did a great job organizing and orchestrating it because it was a huge undertaking so well the efforts I think what one of the things that's important for people to understand is that our nurses this year last year the rules that came out from the doe were very black and
040white like you did this you got this this happened you did this and now there are just several layers of exceptions and gray areas that whether you're vaccinated where you're in pool tested where you were in The Mask is it school sponsored is it not um and the nurses do a great job filtering through that piece I think we communicate email text whatever you know quite often but one of the challenges that we you know I want to to mention and and and explain to people that is sometimes hard for us to think about is that different School departments have different sets of ways that they do things and when you think about the confusion that can happen for parents is difficult and I give this example bford and Sako both have football for kids
041in the Middle School level in bitterford that is run by the school department paid for by the school department we know here in in Sako that is run by Junior Trojan both play in the same exact league and both kids participate in pool testing yet if there was an issue biord because it's paid for by the school department would not have to quarantine from an after school activity and because Junior Trojans is not a school department situation with pool testing you'd have to quarantine so our nurse are on the front line and I I use that as an example because people would say hm that's interesting how does that make sense and our nurses are on the front line trying to explain those pieces to parents every single day and that's just an example of
042one of many things that they have to do and so I think we're really advocating to think about the processes the Sops and how that we can make this clearer and as um vaccines become more available that will help us Mass have been a tremendous help and out of the pool testing but because I think that as a parent the hardest thing to do is to receive the call to say oh by the way your kids got to be home for the next 10 days and that creates greater disruption they're just settling into school and then they're gone again um so kudos to all of our School nurses uh doing a great job thank you I did just want to say also parents can sign up at any point and if there's any question about
043signing up for pool testing just contact your school nurse and we can walk you through the process thank you very much that brings us to item e student enrollment counts prek through 12 9 through 12 special education cost superintendent Ray just a second while this opens up okay this is just an on the first part is an updated enrollment of where we are prek through 8th with 188 students um and again couple of situations we have 14 new uh students and families who chose to home school this year so our enrollments down a little bit than what we would like it from a couple of years ago um but again uh in the covid related times it's difficult to figure out all the reasons why families have either in school out of school uh also
044with the amount of property sales over the course of the summertime especially in Sako house stays on the market for about two hours uh and whether those are a situation where those have kids or not you know that's hard that's that's hard for us to gauge that piece when we look at our enrollment for th th and academy uh at this point in time the number is 893 um in the budgeting process uh that we have uh for ta Jason it was 931 that we budgeted for so I provided an estimate obviously we don't get the tuition true tuition costs until about December January when those come in and you can see what the tuition cost would be the increase the IVF the total um students who are on superintendence agreements and the state subsidy
045that we would get for that that would be dollar for dollar and so we at this point in time would estimate that we have a fair amount remaining uh in that line that could be encumbered um and held for a next budget cycle or actually two budget Cycles any questions on enrollment I have a quick question these are numbers as of right now is there any likelihood that they're going to fluctuate prior to when they when the count that we send into the state no no that's pretty much what it is we will have like some of the demographics piece that we still can lock in like free and reduced lunch rates but we're we're pretty solid right now any further questions okay moving on to item 13 of the agenda other information any other
046information this evening seeing none moving on uh item 14 there is no executive session that brings us to item 15 is there a motion to adjourn so moved School Board member Truman is there a second second second by school member L Fortune uh any discussion roll call vote Schoolboard member peski yes School Board member prebble yes School Board member Richard yes School Board member L Fortune yes School Board member Massie yes School Board member Truman yes School Board member Johnson yes motion passes 70 to adjourn at 7:43 p.m. I have a wonderful evening everyone on that bullying e