001e e e on the council side unless it's emergency we don't do adjust well mostly e good evening like to call this meeting to order of the Saka school board for November 23rd 2021 Tuesday at 5:00 p.m. the record reflect that all the school board members are present with the exception of school board member one Mr pesi has uh been excused for this evening with that i' like to invite all of you to join us in the Pledge of Allegiance thank you very much brings us to item three of the agenda approval of school board meeting minutes dated November 10 2021 is there a motion to approve the minutes Mr Mayor School Board member Johnston I move we approve the school board meeting minutes dated November 10th 2021 second seconded by School Board member Preble
002any discussion on the minutes roll call vote on the minutes School Board m member Preble 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 Johnston yes motion passes 60 uh brings us to item four any adjustments to the agenda seeing no adjustments to the agenda moves on to item five a couple of things under correspondents uh first off we'd like to congratulate the Thor Academy football team uh for not only going undefeated in the season but also becoming class a state champions so a big round of applause for the Thorton Academy football [Applause] team uh on much Saturn news it uh it's with unfortunate that I have to present this but uh Schoolboard member previous School Board member Ard
003have passed away uh over the weekend and the funeral services uh will be uh Cody Funeral Home on Monday the 29th from 4: to 8:00 p.m. and then uh the service the mass will be at St Joseph's in bitterford at 11:00 on Tuesday the 30th uh so at this time I would like to ask everyone to uh let's have a moment of silence for AR tardiff thank you very much that is all I have for correspondence is there any other correspondents at this time Schoolboard member Truman is that pen okay I thought your pen was up you were single and mether you wanted to speak all right no other correspondence that brings us to item six of the agenda public session if there's members of the public that would like to address the school board
004please come forward and be heard there are no members of the public wishing to speak to the school board moving on to item seven superintendent's report superintendent Ray okay good evening um in the superintendent report on a there is a strategy to hire ATT track attract hire and retain employees that uh Mr endorf will be given an update during the uh new business Port portion of the agenda um one of the Pieces Just to kind of echo on mayor Doyle is that that uh we lost art this week and uh I got to know art a little bit over the last seven months and knew him beforehand and uh you were a spirited individual who uh what I appreciated about him is you always knew where you stood with art um and he had a
005deep caring for uh this community and you know few weeks ago Kevin and I had the opportunity to take over his uh school committee retirement chair which he was uh really uh appreciative of and got to spend a little bit of time with him and his family so uh my condolences to Arts family uh as he will be missed um yesterday we had a combined building committee site inventory committee and programs committee and we're in the final kind of phases of wrapping up some recommendations that we'll be able to put out to look at the four to five different options that the community will be able to uh weigh in on very soon of what grade level configurations would be the next step for us is that all the different configurations that are available for
006us to kind of talk about debate uh of what's best for the community will require possibly differ size sites uh or ways to look at things so the next part of the project will be taking the recommendations from the program committee lining them up with the site selection committee to say hey if you did this you would need this much land X Y and Z and this one could be different so that we can have a great comparison out there over the next couple of weeks um oako will be working on really identifying what would be local Andor State costs and making it very clear that whatever Choice the community makes we are fully aware of what is left to deal with um so whatever decision is made we need to know what decisions could
007then or problems or challenges could come up in the future so that there's uh Clarity around uh any of the decisions and what's best for this community so feeling pretty good about how the uh building project is moving forward I think we're making uh some good Headway and we will probably I would say right after the holidays have another one of those uh Community meetings to start talking about options want to thank uh building staff Karen chassis um the nurses in Sako and in bitterford and our principals and uh Our Community Partners who put on um five vaccination clinics in the last two weeks uh we had one at uh here in Sako at the Parkson Rex and we had one at Fairfield school and they were busy um and we were able to uh
008do well over 900 vaccinations uh between the three communities uh which is a great step in the right direction for us um we've been told by the Department of Education to expect a change after the holidays and into the new years's in the SOP of how we return to school that they will be looking to see about vaccination rates in each Community uh and in each County and try to make some decisions about what an offramp might look like and then finally just uh a shout out to our staff thank them for their hard work uh as we start to go through um and move into the holiday season and we start our Thanksgiving break and without them without the efforts that they put in each and every day uh we wouldn't have our kids
009back in school and we wouldn't be as successful as we are right now so thank you to the staff for everything that they do questions any questions for superintendent Ray I don't have a question but I just wanted to say that the vaccination clinic over at Fairfield was a big hit uh for my kids like couldn't get them to leave so all the uh fun little activities that they had was super fun and it was good to see all their classmates there too so thank you thanks for arranging that any further questions comments moving on to item eight the chair's report chair of Fortune yes I have just a a brief update so this past week um myself Beth Johnston and Jen prell met with um representatives from bford to talk through um just the
010the current Arrangement that we have um in our superintendent contract right now to just explore challenges and um things that uh you know basically things that are going well the next step at this point is really kind of in the um the hands of the bitterford school board who will be meeting um this evening correct is that correct Jeremy yeah they will be meeting this evening to discuss the the arrangement from their own perspective they're going to be doing that um in an executive session so just to reiterate how the contract itself works that we're only one of a couple parties the way that this process could could go is that the other parties decide that this is not working from their perspective and decide that yeah they they just will not have any interest
011in extending if that is the path that we go on so we really in a position now where we have to see what ultimately comes from that um I'm anticipating that depending upon um the timing um over the next you know week or so given the holidays that we will probably come back together again and meet with them to find out where they are at um and then that will feed into us having our own executive session uh for the board to discuss our perspective on on matters to see where we go from there that's really I have this evening does anyone have any questions any questions for chair of Fortune no questions I misstate anything from the members that were there or miss something critical moving on to item nine staff reports there are
012no staff reports at this time is that correct superintendent Ray that brings us to item 10 there are no board subcommittee meeting minutes brings us to item 11 old business there is no old business uh therefore we are at item 12 new business we have item a new hires superintendent Ray on the agenda I have some appointments uh that require no action we just we it's a notification of um the hiring of edex and replacement there's no action on those positions any questions from the board on the new hire positions there is no action moving on to Item B resignations there's a list of resignations in the packet correct any questions from the board on res ations for superintendent Ray moving on to item C which is a CO update superintendent Ray will you be
013providing the co update yes um so in your uh packet like in the other month is just trying to give you the week by- week breakdown of close contacts positive T uh cases and positive pools that have occurred uh over time you can see that um at this point in the year we've had 60 uh positive cases with 15 of those positive cases coming from positive pools um one of the pieces that you know as you look at 770 close contacts because of the different layers that we have from masking to pool testing it really allows us to keep our kids in school most of the time uh we have seen a a recent uptick lately in uh the amount of positive pool which would correspond with the rest of York County and the state
014of Maine uh that we just want to encourage people to be as safe as we can over the holiday uh time and and you know hopefully when we come back uh pool testing will be a little bit different the first week when we come back because there was no pool testing this week uh based off direction from the main Department of Education and that when we return to school because it's the first week that pool testing uh would occur if you were part of the pool testing on a regular basis and let's say that myself I was in a positive pool the way that I would stay in school that week of being part of that pool is I would need to receive in a positive pool two negative B next now test until that
015cycle is reestablished again where pool testing is is up and running on a consistent basis so we'll see a little bit of change next week um but overall still uh very fortunate to have our kids in school as much as we have been any questions from the board on the co update okay moving on to item D which is athletic guidance we have three three bullets under item D and that is a guidance from MPA m mssa and M AAA also York County Guidance and Saka school department requirements superintendent Ray so we're a little different here in Sako where our only athletic concerns are really at the middle school level um as we're fortunate enough to have those stiens back and we're fortunate enough to to keep kids um having the ability to participate and
016that's the big piece right now is as we look at uh our student body knowing that they need Outlets to participate in in a safe way and one of the challenges over the course of the last several months as we move into the winter season is to try to come up with uh measures that are safe for everybody and make sense and I have uh provided the two um kind of groups that have been meeting on this one being the main main principles Association which governs High School athletics and saying how do what we do how does that fit into what uh we would do at Saku middle school and really a lot of what they are following is what we follow every single day in school we recommend that people mask and we recommend
017that there's pool testing uh and those are the the big elements uh of the requirements and so what I'm asking for tonight is for us to look at our own school department requirements and one of the pieces that is the big challeng is that the mpa obviously is recommending masking and recommending highly that athletes are involved in pool testing and what I would like us to do tonight is uh vote on guidance that we would require either our athletes to be vaccinated or to participate in pooled testing some of the challenges that exist um um for our coaches athletic directors principes and School nurses is that when it goes to a situation where we are contact tracing for an athletic team let's say you're having to call that parent in a short season and say
018oh by the way your child can't participate and it's going to miss four ball games and that rolls out the other pieces that if they're a close contact in school and they're not participating in in testing the mask keeps you in the classroom but the Mask doesn't apply to after school activities and so you see more kids in a short season missing out on participation another challenge that we have and this isn't so much with middle school athletes but it could apply to our Middle School track program and swim programs later this winter is that places like for the swim program University of New England have a vaccination requirement or a testing requirement and so for a school nurse on top of everything they're doing or the athletic director or principes to now say Oh
019wait we're going to this site on Thursday and I've got to make sure that all of the kids who are not vaccinated receive re a BX now test so that they can participate some facilities will not accept the BX now test and will only take a PCR test we do not have the capacity to manage this outside of what we're doing every single day and all we really want is for our students to be able to participate every single day so I talked with the athletic director um today and we we have a very high number of our students like 78 80% of our students are either in the vaccinated or pool testing status we would communicate with those families based off how you vote tonight and we would be giving them until December 1st
020to sign up for pool testing giving them some time so they can look at those considerations and ask that they be uh in the pool starting the week of December 13th um I just don't see how um our nurses or athletic directors or Administration especially when we come to the track uh piece and knowing that uh the city of Portland and some of their buildings have many different requirements I just don't see how we take a hundred kids that may be on a track team and on the Friday before test 25 of them if they're not part of that and possibly be able to manage that communicate to the parents because the worst piece that's going to happen is that you're going to you're going to be communicating to parents on a Friday saying oh
021I'm sorry we didn't get a testing you missed a day whatever uh because the school's going to be responsible for showing that t us and this is I think the only way that we can possibly try to stay above and keep our kids safe and that's all we want is to make sure that kids can participate and be safe so I entertain any questions question questions from the board board you did receive this in your packet it's a headline Sako school department winter sports guidelines is that the document that you would like the school board to vote on tonight superintendent Ray that is correct is there a motion to approve the Sako school department requirements for winter sports guidelines Mr Mayor School Board member L Fortune I move that we approve the request to require
022pool testing for our student athletes second motions been made by school board member La forun second by School Board member Truman any discussion Mr Mayor School Board forun I don't necessarily have a a question it's more of just a clarifying point so using the UN example one of the things that was described in this document was that the expectation of uh for example a visiting team somewhere else is that the most stringent rules are the ones that are in force so that could be un it could be um students participating in a game at another school that has already adopted a policy like this um just that's a accurate statement so the when we talk about the most stringent we would be talking about Mass we would be talking about the vaccination requirements that sometimes
023some of the facilities have um I think that's where that would stop for us would be the masking is we would 100% be masking uh superintendents throughout uh York County have been on the same page that um really the conversation is about schools that are choosing to possibly not wear The Mask during competition um and I would also preface this that there are things especially around like track and wrestling which we don't have a lot that we deal with that are changing day-to- day of like what is going to be the recommendation for a mask for a kid who's participating in the mile or the two mile um but the masking piece would be that the student athlete piece for the requirements of pool testing would be a local only because I don't we wouldn't
024have the ability to manage other schools coming to us without the pool testing and one of the challenges is that not all districts are doing pool testing at all and even though some of them have asked to do pool testing there's the contract with the state because there's not enough Supply they're not enrolling other districts even who have asked because they can't the contract can't meet the capacity so um the compliance would be around those out side facilities or anybody who has that mass mandate that anyone who came here would be participating in that right I so I guess my my point is really that we we don't have a lot of control over um visiting teams on in our facilities but this this approach of requiring pool testing for our own athletes is a
025way of smoothing the path for our own kids to be able to participate correct and I think that's that's the pieces that you know the the rules for the Expo I believe is where we run the middle school is at the Expo for the track I don't we don't know what those have changed a little bit and several of the Portland facilities have different rules right now and I I find it difficult for parents and for kids to get that phone call on a you know Thursday or Friday and say oh by the way the rules here just changed I'm sorry but we know that most facilities are accepting pool testing as a test that would get them out of that um you know it's like if you want to go to you know if
026you want to go to the Celtics tomorrow night you have to be able to show a negative test or a vaccination card um and I think that's hard for our families to react to If we don't have a program in place that can consistently monitor that uh and do that because I think we talked earlier that if we didn't have that program in place we can't just expect that a family can go to the store and pick up a buy next now test because sometimes they're not there and then how does a school take that b next now test that was done at home and provide that as the responsibility and proof that somebody is negative that's just not something that we can manage uh and so this is why we believe this pool testing
027is the best option for our athletes to avoid those situations any further questions from the board roll call vote on the motion School Board member prebble yes School Board member Richard yes School Board member Le Fortune yes Schoolboard member Massie yes Schoolboard member Truman yes and Schoolboard member Johnston yes motion passes 60 brings us to item e which is a hiring update by Chris endorf and Shelley k good evening um Shel still over at 90 Beach Street orienting a new staff person and so I told her that I could take the report for this evening and feel any questions that the board might have um so I direct you to the memo that's in your packet uh but I just want to reiterate to this board and and to the public that for several months
028we've talked about the challenging uh job market in York County in Maine and in the nation uh we have uh confounding uh sort of Nexus of low unemployment High underemployment uh so-called uh covid stay-at homes we have inflationary pressures on wages and we have schools cannibalizing other schools you may have seen that some schools in Cumberland County recently have offered incentives for bus drivers for example for up to $3,000 to sign on and that certainly has uh some negative consequences Downstream for other School departments who are trying to retain their employees um the so school department in the last six months has tried several low or no cost strategies to appeal to uh workers sometimes we can't always compete on the issues of wage so we've really tried to message about the value of working
029with school in schools the lifestyle the calendar the mission driven sort of nature of the work and we've had a lot of success quite frankly but we're still short and key areas um schools have really been kind of fortunate businesses invest between a third and 50% of the average professionals first year salary in recruitment retention and training and traditionally for hourly employees it's closer to somewhere in the range of 5 to 15% and we functionally invest zero really outside of a little bit of overhead and we've been able to get away with that quite frankly because employees have traditionally come to us but we're really in a position where we now need to go to employees and be more aggressive and thoughtful about how we recruit attract and retain our employees uh on page two
030of the memo that's in your packet I enumerated the areas of greatest need within the soc school department and I'd highlight those again for the listening public they include in descending order substitute teachers substitute Nurses Educational technicians full and part-time bus and van drivers teaching Specialists for particular content areas and Fuller uh part-time custodial staff and lastly Food Service workers so what we've done especially this fall we saw the mayor for example at the uh s um downtown Harvest Festival we've had job fairs we've uh made an online push into some new platforms we've done some more active recruitment through direct marketing we've offered training and some waivers we've simplified our application process and we've increased this board has increased the rates of pay for certain substitute positions but last week uh Shelly Cain from
031the HR department and I met with the superintendent to propose a more comprehensive package that the bford Sako and Dayton schools would join into together and share the cost proportionally again one when we do things as a Consortium we tend to get more bang for our buck and so we've put together a comprehensive package for the superintendent that would basically revolve around the creation of a 15-second TV commercial and we're going to generate this commercial I call it a TV commercial it's not going to be aired on TV uh more about which in just a second we've engaged Eng a local um business in Kenny buunk that we've uh used before and we already have a lot of sort of b-roll in the can and we're just going to get a couple more shots of
032custodial workers and and and bus drivers put together a 15sec spot and it's going to run for one month in targeted platforms it'll be pushed and promoted through the three major social media platforms and we also have engaged um Hurst Communications which will push it through certain streaming services including Hulu in Amazon Prime so when you go to start up that that um sponsored program on a streaming service if you live in a certain zip code catchment area and you've also Googled certain terms that we identify like School driver substitute Soco then you will receive a targeted ad and that's for you and only you sitting in your living room so rather than do for example a 9-second hit on Main public radio which cost thousands of dollars and touches kider to Fort County we
033can really narrow it down to zip code interest Search terms and all that sort of thing through a very complicated process that I don't pretend to understand that involves things called pixels and cookies and regenerated and retargeted advertising and all that sort of stuff uh we'd also get uh promotional presence on wmtw's homepage we would get banner ads on the Weather Channel app and The Weather Channel homepage for a designated period of time uh as well as some of those retargeted ads that I discussed you'll also be noticing some pretty goodlooking 4ot by 8ft banners that'll be going up across the city in prominent locations including the tennis courts at Young School on Beach Street at the Fairfield fence and we've asked the soak little league for permission to use their Stockade Fence you know
034they have Christmas tree sales on Industrial Park and anyone who's been on industrial park at 8:00 a.m. or 5:00 p.m knows that that's a good spot to catch some eye eyeballs that aren't currently looking at the road because that tends to turn into a parking lot um we've also created a website shortcut that Direct candidates directly to our hiring platform and um we also have website integration across all platforms and all schools to try and put together a package to um continue not only to fill any vacancies that we have but also if we have the opportunity to build a little bit of a bench because as you can see from this this uh meeting's resignation last meeting's resignations we do have some churn as any organization of our size does and it's important that
035we have some folks kind of waiting in the wings so that uh we don't miss a beat for our kids programming please don't ask me to explain pixels cookies and retargeted ads but I'm happy to explain any other part of this memo that the board uh might have interest in any questions for Mr endorf no questions thank you very much thank you that uh completes the new business for this evening brings us to item 13 is there any other information no other information for this evening there is no executive session 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 Board member L Fortune any discussion roll call vote to adjourn School Board member Preble yes School Board member Richard
036yes School Board member Le Fortune yes School Board member Massie yes Schoolboard member Truman yes Schoolboard member Johnston yes motion passes 60 to adjourn at 5:32 p.m. have a wonderful evening everyone and have a Happy Thanksgiving