001e e e Mr Mayor School Board member Richard I move we approve the school board meeting minutes dated December 22nd 2021 202 2021 and January 12 2022 Sarah second second second by School Board member bbel any discussion on the minute no discussion on the minutes roll call votes School Board member Preble yes School Board member Richard yes School Board member Le Fortune yes School Board member Gail yes School Board member Truman yes School Board member Johnston yes minutes pass 60 brings us to item four any adjustments to the agenda this evening no adjustments moving on to item five there is no correspondence listed that brings us to item six public comment if there's any members of the public that would like to address the school board please come forward and be heard seeing nobody seeking
002recognition moving on from public session brings us to item seven superintendent report superintendent Ray good evening uh couple of items for tonight uh on the superintendent's report um some good news uh the Sako school department was awarded a $20,700 grant to support uh supplemental uh education for immigrant youth um so one of the things that we're looking at uh is that we will use a you know a lion share of these funds to pay for elll staff so that we can have a uh elll summer school I'm just going to take the mask off while I speak cuz that one's pretty tough uh to hear through so we'll have a uh we'll be able to offer an elll summer school and we are in the initial parts of seeing how we can plan uh between
003the two communities uh for that elll summer school one to uh keep cost down and expenses down but to also offer a more robust program many times um our our our students are very transient in nature and and can sometimes based um bounce between the communities so we're hoping to build a pretty uh strong core for them um and so that's really exciting more information will come this spring um so good job to um Chris and and the team who are involved in that piece uh our students have started the winter nwaa testing that is something um that is going on in our schools certainly the number of kiddos who have to stay home from school on a giving day has made that a little bit more of a chance Cheng uh in the winter
004Peaks uh in the season but um I you know happy to report that while some of our covid cases have been uh over the last several weeks really peaked off we are starting to see those numbers come down early this week um and so we're going to knock on wood and hope that that is something that will continue um as part of one of the projects that we had with our Esser funds we had looked at uh installing electronic card swipes to our exterior doors in our schools um which is a pretty big project uh we are hoping that that will be fully functional in the next couple of weeks for all of our buildings as far from the hardware side of things the next task is printing about 500 badges uh with pictures and
005ID uh everybody and setting up the schedules for program so that people can enter the the buildings uh using a swipe card over the years uh it's you know Keys come and go and we'll have a situation that would be more secure uh for our students in our in our schools tentatively I would ask you to put on your calendars the date of February 16th and that is a night that we're hoping to have uh second public forum for uh School Construction as I had mentioned to you guys we're still waiting on a report on the projection of students over time which is a big piece to this um but we're hoping that on that night we can begin talking about uh dist dis uh about the possibilities for certain Parcels of land uh in
006and around the city that might be zones that we can consider and then what some of those configurations um that the committee has talked about so put the 16th at 6:00 on your calendar uh as a tentative date budget process uh Jason and I have started uh reviewing the first draft of the budget with principles we've got a few more to finish up I am hopeful that by the end of next week but certainly before next school committee meeting you guys will all have a draft budget with Revenue page um on the front of that in your hands for review uh we're moving along nicely your budget will be Jason I think we're at 500 and some odd Pages uh pretty detailed 564 so you're going to have a lot of lines to look through
007every item will be there Sarah I know you're waiting for that very exciting um but we will have that opportunity to look at that piece and really make some decisions based off what items truly cost uh in a in a more detailed fashion so we're moving ahead uh with that another option um that I would like I would ask each board member to read up on in the finance committee packet um really want to start having the conversation about exploring solar options within our schools of how we purchase our uh electricity uh and there are some programs out there to be part of solar Community uh Community solar Farms which one locks in a rate and yes it is a 20year commitment but each time we have a bad storm in Sako we understand what
008happens to our shore regions and while we can talk about 20 years commitments and that something better may come down the line I would like for us as a board to talk about uh taking action now instead of uh waiting for the next best thing so I want us to consider that piece as we look at solar options we'll bring in uh revision energy to give a presentation about that because you're actually buying a solar credit um what it is on our end one of the the big unknowns for us would be looking at a situation where we know that we will have a new building coming online and so we will need to have uh to make some predictions about what would be the best uh percentage of our current electrical Road uh load
009to uh purchase you know certainly I wouldn't recommend that we would buy a 100% of our current load because we don't know what that would look like but in a situation where we might buy 75 or 80% of that I think we can fully expect that a new expanded building is still going to have um a lot of the same power usage that we currently have today and then finally uh Mr Rodman will start on Monday morning at Sako middle school and Jeff will be on board as the interm principal thank you any questions thank you any questions for superintendent Ray Schoolboard member Gail just a a quick question on the the meeting for February 16th do we have a a location for that yet or is that TBD that's TBD I will probably head
010towards the burns gym again uh as that seemed like a good location last time uh for us to meet and it gives us plenty of space to to spread out um but I need to check with April to make sure that it's available but it should be uh and I liked having that little TV on the wall that seemed to be a a nice added piece for people at home so um and just Mr Mayor maybe we um at when it's appropriate if if it coincides with a city council meeting of an announcement that this is going to be happening as well I at the burns location I thought was terrific and it was a great setup and I thought um you and the the Consultants did a great job in explaining that so looking
011forward to that thank you any further questions for superintendent Ray Mr Mayor I just want to clarify um with the superintendent we are having that um February 16th meeting on Zoom as well for people who aren't able to make it in person yes we'll use the same setup that we did last time having Zoom uh which allows us the ability for people to uh raise their hand if they have a question or a comment uh and have a little bit more interaction uh that way um but I I really hope that the community will take this as an opportunity to attend in person um just a little bit more I find it better for conversation uh you can put those papers in your hand so that when you can really look at the map of
012what some of the possible locations could be have some dialogue around um grade configurations and uh we've got uh some as I said before uh on the site selection side of things Kevin and uh roach and and Don pylon who are really helping you know make some of those connections with possible land owners working together um and then we can lay those possibilities out and start thinking about how we survey our community and um find what we hope will be the best property for us to move this forward while at the same time anticipating that any of those properties could and can be sold between now in our decision-making process which uh makes this project I think uh in Sako one of the tougher ones to have because property can move so quickly and at
013the same time making sure that before we put any possible properties out there that we've had conversations with land owners and you know some people have said no we're just not interested and and that's and that's very fair to us and them beforehand as I wouldn't want someone talking about my property without um some communication first I have one more question too if that's okay um for those that aren't able to come and meet to the in person meeting it for whatever reason are we going to be able to put like the materials like the map and other things like that online ahead of time for the viewing yeah all of that stuff will be on our part of the school construction website any further questions for superintendent Ray see no further questions moving on
014to item eight chair's report chair of Fortune um I don't have any report um however just one quick thing tonight we got our committees underway again um now that we have um a full compliment of Schoolboard members on all of them and I know that there was a little bit of a challenge to have them occur on the same night that's not going to be the norm um this was just ended up being a special Collision that occurred and that will not be the case going forward they will be staggered so it'll be on different evenings so if you're concerned about which meeting you should attend that shouldn't be a concern going forward thank you brings us to item nine staff reports there are no staff reports in the in the packet that brings us
015to board subcommittee meeting minutes there were no minutes in the packet uh brings us to item 11 there is no old business for this evening so we are at item 12 new business and uh up first we have a presentation from Sako steam so please come forward and stand to the podium feel free to unmask if you'd like and uh present your comments to the school board thank you we had sent some slides ahead is it possible to get those onto the screen or or can I connect to my computer and somewh Mike I think you can connect your computer right there it's not obvious to me how Okay Meg I know you know how to do that it may be through a chomecast or I need a yes Magic should happen I apologize it's
016my first time trying to do this it's not there's just no there's no change on those screens I I think you might have to like or like tell it I have a tell it to find a new screen oh I see uh City I can I ter computer I have I apologize for the delay if we can't we just can't and I'll just do that asked me for a password which I didn't have all right Mike is there a remote there that maybe you can change the input on the screen I'm not sure let through other on that and maybe I can figure it out by you want to move us towards towards the bottom of the list can we have a pause for one second will we solve technical difficulties and we'll try to
017come back is that okay that's fair thank you so we will come back to the presentation by Sako Ste Sako steam that brings us to Item B new hires uh there is no there's nothing being asked other than uh to update the board with the new hires in the packet is that correct superintendent Ray that is correct any questions on new hires from the board seeing no questions moving on to item C which is a memorandum in the packet of Staff resignations again no action required by the board any questions on staff resignations um I one question School Board member Truman Jim Jen samard I'm guessing she just moved to a different position from the resignation to the yeah that is correct okay okay that brings us to item d a CO update there's a
018memorandum in the packet uh regarding Co update superintendent Ray so just um like every two weeks I just try to give an update of where we are um the last several weeks were quite challenging for us as a school department uh as we know we had to take a pause uh at our middle school for a week uh because of Staff cases burn school has been hanging in there with staff uh by a thread uh but what has been nice uh at least seems to be that we're trending in a better Direction based off the the number of text messages I get from nurses uh has gone down quite a bit in the last uh say 72 hours uh which is always a positive sign uh in the morning time when iake wake up if
019I don't have a ton of text messages from uh the principes or nurse we know that that things are getting better um so again just want to continue to follow all the safety protocols that are out there for staff uh and for students and family members and to please remind everybody that if you're not feeling well to please stay home contact the school nurse we have uh plenty of tests available to assist families when needed um pool test testing is still going on and uh we'll continue to keep everybody uh updated if there are any changes to uh the SOP or anything else but let's keep our fingers Closs that we're heading in the right direction now thank you superintendent Ray any questions for superintendent Ray no I just want to thank the nurses for
020keeping everybody where they need to be and doing the best they can so and for your phone working properly and taking all those text messages Mr be I have a quick question um superintendent Ray could you elaborate for me if there are families in need of testing materials could you explain that a little further and clarify for me what that would mean and look like for families out in the community yeah so you know our nurses are fantastic with working with our families and certainly we understand that um there's there's pool testing available which so many families take advantage of and work on the follow-up piece of it but you know we've also had situations where kiddos aren't feeling good and our nurses are quickly to work with the family to figure out how A
021tes whether that's off cycle um can occur uh and we just want to continue to do that uh one of the struggles that kind of happened the last couple of weeks and we're feeling like we're getting into a better place is that pool testing uh would require so many binex now tests to be used that we were having a little bit of a trouble like staying ahead of the shipments and the ordering pieces but that seems to be a little bit better of a correction uh we worked with our York County liaison uh with the doe and with the doe um and some of our partners uh throughout the region to make sure that there was enough tests available um and so you know we're hopeful but again we're there to support if need be
022thank you any further questions for the superintendent I would just like to say thank you to all the staff what was interesting is Staff who are vaccinated are participating in pool testing out of 460 approximately 90% are involved in that so thank you very much for that that's a very high number so thank you any further questions that brings us to item e budget update in Ed 279 this this will be fairly quick Mike okay um and then I then having you here Mike you get to hear it a second time which is always good so I'm not going to go into uh full detail of the 279 tonight because that's a discussion that I get a little bit excited about and can spend some time on that and that needs to be part now
023you laugh out there that I get excited about it but it's one of the pieces of the job that I like is to look at the formula that we have but what I wanted to introduce people to tonight um is a copy of the of our state funding formula that I have put boxes highlights and comments around the important sections for you to pay attention to as we work through that we will be spending a lot of time over the next several weeks talking about the budget but what I want to get out uh to the community tonight and to you guys is I really want people to draw their attention to page four of this and the fact that Sako in this budget what what's what's interesting about where we've come in the last
024uh you know 8 to 10 months budgetarily wise is we built a budget based off one set of guidance from the doe last year uh and we put something forward to the city council that we could live with and then uh there was a change in the in in the governor's budget and it became a situation where we received additional subsidy and the school committee and City Council made some good decisions not to use that as Revenue uh in the immediate years and we were able to take that situation and through um the additional subsidy this year we'll be able to pay down the $1 million deficit that we had with the city and just like wipe that away and start fresh which means that we will get to use that additional subsidy this year
025now I was hoping that that number would be the same of 1 point I think it was 1.5 S7 million or something like that that we would get to use that again but valuation of property in Sako continues to rise at a rate greater than the rest of the state Sako is one of 24 communities in the state that grew at 7% property valuation or higher so with the state average being 5% in 142 communities being at 5% or less the additional $30 million in state funding that was put into general purpose Aid swung $35 million to those communities who are under the 5% population growth if you look on the on the State website each January the secretary of state has to now uh they have to update property valuation for the upcoming year
026EPS formula uses a three-year average and so as we think about our expenditures in our budget in this year we must keep an eye on the future of what our next budget's three-year average is so one of the things that we always want to to be really careful about here is when you have Esser funds or you have that high Revenue in a year that you don't throw it all into your budget and then next year it goes away and you say what happened so while last spring this was a great day and everyone you know we got like $1.6 million almost in subsidy we turn to this year and we look at the continued valuation growth in Sako and it results in a $514,000 decrease from subsidy that we got in July as we
027move into the next year and most of that is attributed to the increase in property valuation and so while we could be sitting here saying okay we just lost a half a million dollars in subsidy which that's a big amount that's onethird of what we got last spring in additional because of the decisions that we made to pay down debt and not use that money for additional staff or additional budgeting purposes we essentially have around a million dollar of additional subsidy to put into that budget at the same time we ended the last fiscal year with Jason $280 $290,000 in carryover funds so we will start the budget with a fund Balan piece so when we start with a fund balance we have no deficit and we have subsidy to play with we can look
028at this budget and say okay things might be okay we can get through this but we need to pay attention to a $180 million increase in valuation and as we were talking about in finance committee that the state of Maine had uh two I think it was 205 or $ 203 billion increase in property valuation as a state with close to half of that coming from York in Cumberland County and so if we don't pay attention to the rising values and anybody who's here who has seen their neighbor home sold they've tried to sell their home or tried to purchase a home the rising costs of home prices are going to affect this region and so as we enter the budget season we really have to think about valuation and what that could do to
029us in future years and we'll try to do our best to look at what you know we don't have a crystal ball but we we'll try to do our best to look into a crystal ball and and figure out what we could expect in future years the other piece that is of importance for us is on page two where the doe uh did some favors because a couple of major things have happened uh during the co piece one School departments lost students and number two we're in a situation that again I believe is a really positive for our prek through eight students is they have an opportunity to have a subsidized lunch at school every single day that is crucial 30% of our kiddos are on free and reduced lunge and it levels the playing
030field for all nobody goes through line we're about what code you have to type in and our and our kids are all in the same place but when we look at the 30% they use the highest three-year average because filling out the forms that went with that became a disincentive at the same time they changed the weights on students who are economically disadvantaged from 0.15 to two this is a one-year change that we should continue to lobby for because children who are econ live in an economically disadvantaged situation deserve to have more funding put behind them and so as we look at this piece on the on the formula as that goes back to the possibly the original way in another year student enrollments continue to decrease slightly in valuation price prices increase and we
031know that everything else is going up whether it's in our household or School pack of crayons is going to cost more we really need to be thoughtful about this budget and what the impacts could be in future years as we move forward uh and so I've had a a text with Bill uh spoken with Allan spoken with Ryan fecto um speaker of the house and to think about how as a region in southern Maine we begin to have the conversation that says almost half of the valuation increase is happening here what are we going to do about that so I ask that you look at these 279s I've tried to put some notes on it and then when we come back during the budget process we'll get the line by line go through I can
032answer any questions uh whether that now or at a later date but we can really start diving into um where we are as a community on these pieces thank you superintendent Ray any questions on the Ed 279 numbers uh feel free to look that information over if you have any questions please go ahead and contact superintendent Ray Sako steam are you ready perfect we are ready Mr Mayor superintendent school board I apologize for the technical difficulties I've sat on that side wondering what's going on on this side and now I know the answer so thank you for your patience uh almost every year Sako steam if you can actually say that first slide for one second thank you yeah and thank you for for technically advising so about every year Sako steam tries to come
033to the school board and and tells you about our accomplishments uh for the year the grants we've given away and how we've supported the schools uh with some changes in Sako Steam and some changes in the school board we thought it might be time to just introduce ourselves uh We've also been pretty greatly impacted uh by the covid and the pandemic including tonight where our new president Christina misho had some unexpected difficulties and so I'm pinch presenting uh she'll be here later hopefully tonight or in a future time to introduce herself to you guys for those of you that don't know Sako steam is a 501c3 charitable organization uh designed and dedicated to improving science technology engineering arts and math education in Sako we are an Educational Foundation here to support you the teachers and
034our students now if we could move on please thank you we uh we're originally founded about four years ago now with a a three-part Mission we want to advocate for the schools and resources to the public we get out and say vote Yes on the school budget we say support our schools uh we try to generally serve as as a booster for the things that you and our teachers do in addition we want to connect Community Resources with the schools when teachers have needs or when volunteers have desires to get into the school we try to put those things together and third is probably what we're uh most visible for is is we go out and do direct fundraising in the community raising money and then previously once a year and now on a continuous
035rolling basis we have a call for Grants where teachers can propose projects and if they reach the top of a rubric we send a check to the school and fund that project designed for Innovative small Scale Pilot uh curriculum enhancing projects designed directly by uh teachers we've raised almost $30,000 now and funded 15 projects over the last couple of years thank you we've also uh as you can see have raised that money from from a variety of generous supporters in our community we're we're not alone neither are you the community has really banded together uh to support us in our ability to support you and your te and the teachers if you can move on our first grant was in 2018 uh to fund the Lego robotics program uh that has really blossomed uh we're
036proud of that Miss Traer has done a great job and has now passed that on and if we can go forward you can see a list of of all the projects that we funded uh we had four additional ones that were slated for funding but couldn't continue because of the pandemic so so we're at 15 it should have been 19 uh you can see the projects represent all of our schools a wide variety uh of different types of projects environmental science engineering including some Arts again if we can move forward onto the next one we have managed to fund three grants also this year despite the pandemic uh Miss peler in the fourth grade TK Burns for a spos project which is building kind of a theme now we funded a number of Robotics and
037coding uh projects uh from Early Elementary uh up through the middle school so now there's an emerging multidisiplinary uh curriculum the you know Bridges the different schools we're pretty excited about that uh there's a someday project that again is a multis school curriculum occurring at Young Fairfield and CK Burns I know they have larger aspirations for bigger grants but we've provided some pilot funding to get them started and the Lego robotics continues to expand now into the middle school again we really like that we like when we can connect different levels of schools help provide some Bridge across curricula and and then the students can experience something at an introductory level and then Master it later in their curriculum so we we really appreciate projects like that and are happy to have been part of
038that one more slide I think yeah but this is a challenging year for us we were originally founded um by four members of the community and and pretty soon dwindled down to three parents who were heavily engaged in our school uh the pandemic has put a real challenge we we've uh two of our founding board members have now moved on and we've brought in new board members uh Emily Walters is there and Christina misho had a an Emergency popup and couldn't be here so it's been a real re building year for us as we bring in new leadership and transition and develop new procedures and policies and get everyone up to speed uh covid challenges have have uh really hurt our local businesses have hurt our Workforce have challenged our economy making fundraising a challenge
039it's also hurt our ability to get in and meet with people face to face and and build those connections that's required to fund raise uh and so this year is really a rebuilding year for us we need to reestablish our procedures we need to reestablish our bank balance and we need to figure out how best we can support the schools uh during the pandemic and and however things move forward and so we're kind of coming here both with an offer to help as we always do but also with kind of a request for help uh we need more Volunteers in the community uh we've learned the dangers of having just three or four heavily involved members when transitions occur uh that puts a big hamper on our organization uh so anybody who's watching or who
040contacts you and looking for ways to help the schools we are a way to help the schools uh and we we are looking for help similarly uh anyone watching who's looking for ways to make an impact a financial impact on the community we're a 501c3 it's a fully tax deductible donation and we are happy to work with you uh to maximize the impact and timing uh and we also want to hear from you about how we can best support the schools and what the needs are and uh how we can move forward together in a partnership uh to make the biggest impact on our teachers our students and our education and with that I think the next slide is our contact information yeah uh boards ste.org is a great way to contact us we now
041have an ongo goinging rolling Grant application process so any teachers watching who have an idea for an Innovative curricular project should fill out the application there we will review it quickly and get word back to you and anybody listening who wants to help uh your help is needed and appreciated and I'm happy to answer any questions thank you very much any questions from Mike Mr Mayor SCH board member Truman I don't have a question but I just wanted to say that I didn't realize that the Su days were coming from you guys and I just want to say that it's been a big hit um I know with at least with my kids and their classrooms and it's always a buzz whenever someone's day got picked and uh mine haven't been picked yet I'm just
042saying not yeah but they're like oh my gosh so I I really love that that idea was great and I'm glad that to to know it came from Sako team so thank you yeah so we provided I think just a few thousand dollars of funding to support some of them they they they have much bigger aspirations but but some of them we've helped make possible yeah any further comments questions School Board member of Fortune um I I know that um given time you've probably got other slides to go through and I just would encourage the school board and anyone else who wants to see some of the information that's in your presentation it is linked to the agenda and please spend some time taking a look at it because there's a lot of really really
043good stuff in there yeah thank you for coming again yeah of course there's no more questions yeah our our our president president Christina Sor everyone all right thank you all I really appreciate your time and listening and uh and thank you for supporting our schools and let us know how we can help thank you uh that brings us to item F which is summer programming superintendent Ray assistant superintendent Parker my apologies no thank you very much just wanted to provide a brief update on some of our preliminary planning as superintendent Ry mentioned earlier we do have a title three Grant under immigrant Youth and children that will allow us to begin to think about an elll English learner specific summer programming that we hope will involve a lot of opportunities for increased interaction within the
044community and opportunities for additional language acquisition for those students throughout the course of the summer we're looking for about the same time frame four to five weeks for all of our summer school programs looking at four days a week half days and hoping to be able in addition to the English English learner program we have our extended school year for students who have uh individualized education plans through their special ed programming that have identified goals to reach that include summer programming and then uh offering a program for our regular education students who might benefit from some additional literacy and math skills while of course supporting their ability to connect with peers deepen those relationships and do a little bit of learning outside and inside in a little bit of a different way throughout the course
045of this summer so just wanted to keep everyone posted that those opportunities are in the beginning stages and you can look forward to hearing more from us as we finalize those thank you any questions for assistant superintendent Parker School Board member Gail no question but just a just a quick Kudos and and congratulations to to you and the team for the English Learners Grant I think that's incredible and and great job focusing on on helping those kiddos uh I've just noticed over the you know five months or so a couple of just incredible grants that help help strengthen our uh community so thank you guys for aggressively going after that any other comments questions thank you very much thank you uh that is it for new business it brings us to item 13 other information
046there's nothing in the packet anything further not seeing anything moving to item 14 executive session is there a motion to enter executive session Mr Mayor mayor School Board member of Fortune I move we enter executive session pursuant to one MRSA 4056 labor contract negotiations with possible action second second motion's been made by school board member of Fortune second by School Board member Truman any discussion roll call vote to enter executive session School Board member Archie yes School Board member prel yes School Board member Richard yes School Board member La Fortune yes School Board member Gail yes School Board member Truman yes and School Board member Johnston yes motion passes 70 to enter executive session at 544 executive session will be downstairs in the conference room e e e okay welcome back is there a motion
047to exit executive session so moved School Board member Truman thank you uh and second was School Board member Richard any discussion on exiting executive session roll call vote School Board member Archie yes School Board member trouble yes School Board member Richard yes School Board member of Fortune yes School Board member Gail yes School Board member Truman yes School Board member Johnston yes we're out of executive session 7 to Z at 751 is there a report from executive session no report no report item 15 is there a motion to adjourn so moved second School Board member Truman second by School Board member Johnston any discussion on adjourning Roll Call to adjourn School Board member Archie yes School Board member Preble yes School Board member Richard yes School Board member L Fortune yes School Board member Gail
048yes Schoolboard member Truman yes and School Board member Johnston yes motion passes 70 at 752 have a great evening everyone