001and district level administration participate in annual training or with the frequency that it's offered is if less than annually to ensure that claims are investigated fairly and objectively and in response to policy ACA R student discrimination and harassment complaint procedure. The association would like to ask that the policy be clarified to state which option of procedures is going to be used when addressing discrimination. Um right now it reads that there are a variety of ways that a claim could be handled as well as stating how the document is structured. Uh we would like to know how the claims are going to be investigated for clarity on our end. um in case it could impact staff working conditions. Thank you for your consideration of these requests as you decide to approve or not approve these policies
002this evening. Thank you. Thank you. Marshall Archer, one way here in Sako. I uh chair Lefortune school members superintendent. I speak to you to talk about the budget that the superintendent presented to us last week when I saw you from the other side. Um on Friday I had a I had a chance to do a private tour with um the city administrator and he showed me what So Middle School looks like specifically their chairs, their desks and just overall um building just that it it's stressed. It's tired. Um I speak to you typically we've just changed how this council looks at budgets. It used to be we used to make um um why am I drawing a blank on the term? Uh we used to break it down into call centers, cost centers, sorry. Now
003we're ch uh per our charter, we're going to be agreeing on the totality of the budget. So just the total amount. So what I want to do is I want to encourage you um to to take into what I have to say into consideration because I could put it on the back end where I make a amendment to the budget, but when we do this, we just raise the money, but we don't do a line item. Um, this is where I want to uh just present to you all a possible solution. So, I looked at the uh superintendent's budget and give or take it was about a 1.6 million raise. Is that accurate? Okay. Um, if you look at the last four, this will be my fifth budget as a counselor. Uh, if you go
004back, it's been an average of about $3 million request to council with a high of 5 million for one year. So, when I was pleasantly surprised to see 1.6 6 million. Um, as we know, over the next several years, we'll be looking a lot on our prek to uh grade five school system. So, I want to take this opportunity to say it was a great budget. I liked it. Um, I didn't have to look at it with a defensive eye. I got to look at it as asis. Um, in defense as the of the budget, uh, the totality of the city budget, including the school board. So, I would actually like to put forward I like what I see so far based on what was presented. Again, you haven't you haven't discussed it yet. You
005haven't got to it. I thought that this would probably be the best time to imp implement or not implement, but to encourage you to look at it. I would suggest as as the bud budget is is that we add about $200,000 for desk and chairs and also $100,000 for painting. These are estimates provided me by the uh I was going to say city administrator, but we changed seats. Sorry about that, uh Jeremy. Um that's what I'm proposing. So, I hope over the next couple weeks when you're looking at the superintendent's budget, what he's presented, which I think is fair considering some of our past years were significantly higher, that we take this time this year, upcoming year, to kind of focus on Sak Middle School because for the next 5 years, we'll be looking at
006what the prek to 5 looks like. And I'm not here to define that because we don't know. But I do know that our attention will not be on Sak Middle School because we only have so many resources. So, I do thank you for your time and I hope that we hear um some discussions related to meeting some of the needs um of the desk and chairs because when I did this tour legit I um legitimately I was looking to see if I signed any of those desks because I was at that school in 94 95 and 96 and I was truly looking like is my name anywhere around here? That was I'm dating myself now. 20 more than 20 years ago. I'll just say that 25 years ago. Um I definitely think it's time to
007just take this moment until we start getting into the new school system, what it looks like, and just focus on Saka Middle School. That's it. Thank you. Anyone else wishing to address the school board? Okay, seeing none, I'll go ahead and close the public session and that brings us to the superintendent's report. Okay, good evening. Um, several items uh to just update you on tonight. Uh, as you all know, today was a day for us where uh the SOP has changed with an announcement a week ago uh from the main CDC and governor that masks became optional. Um, and I think what while that is an individual choice by everybody that they expressed today, the the good piece about coming in today is that our data has been trending really in the right direction. Um,
008at this point so far this week, we have zero positive pools and we need to knock on wood and hope that that uh continues. Um but today was um you know for some of our kiddos something they experienced something today that they hadn't done in two years or in their career. So let's hope that we continue to use other uh measures of mitigation uh and that we can continue in this positive trend. Um some of the work that we uh tend to look at in the school department is we are always looking at our recruit recruitment and hiring pro practices. Uh and with Chris and uh Meg leading up some work, um we will begin working with uh a company called Inclusion Maine as we look to bring a more diversified applicant pool uh and
009hopefully hirings uh into the school department. Um I think this is a a step as we begin to see a change in our student body and the diversity within our student body, we must also uh match that with our staff. So um we have started the process of working with in uh inclusion main to try to uh recruit and hire um from a greater pool of applicants. Um I also want to put a thanks out to Chris and Meg uh and the team in general uh in uh collaboration with Sako Steam. So, Sako Steam is is as you know, they're a nonprofit here. And one of the things as a school department that would be helpful for us as we move along the way would be developing um some sort of education foundation that's a
010a nonprofit and Sako Steam in this situation serves that purpose very well because there is a lot of funding that's available for us um if we can operate in that realm. And um Chris and the team worked on a John T. Gorman Foundation grant uh that we've put in uh with SACO's team as our sponsor. Um and this has a lot to do uh with addressing uh housing and food insecurity within the community. Uh there's a big need. There's a there's um whether that's funding for additional backpack programs, emergency housing and rental assistance for families and our students who become displaced, uh funding for expanded school uh nutrition services for all SACO students. uh and contracting with our partners at Apex Youth Connections um to look to hire a halftime liaison uh that we're currently
011grant funded for from the state level um to help with uh some of our displaced population. Uh Chris, I know the phone calls are really off the chart right now. Um and as we look at rising costs, inflation, heating, electricity, um we have students who um whose families are really struggling and and we're doing our best to try to, you know, be a support on the school side and funds are limited. But um like the initiative uh that's been put forward by this group as we need to work with you know our partners in Dayton and Bedford and and try to make sure that we're taking care of our kids and we can impact uh families in a positive way when uh times are tough. Um I would also say we're kind of into that
012winter season at the middle school uh where there's cross uh there's indoor track and swimming uh that's occurring in volleyball. Um, and one of our more important events is uh our unified basketball team uh has started at SMS. And I know that we had three games scheduled and we were able to pull some strings and add that fourth game with a cross uh river game uh that will be on March 21st at BMS Bford Middle School. Uh but just seeing the kids out there participating. Uh if you get to go to one athletic v event all year, these are the ones to get to. Um so if you need need a schedule on those uh just great events. Um want a reminder to city council and to school committee that uh I was able to
013go Mr. Archer the other day in tour Sako Middle School, but on March 14th and March 17th at 4 p.m. I'll be available at the school to give others who would like to see a building um a tour. Um I'd also like to uh thank the entire team for their they've started the process of programming for summer school, ELLL summer school, and uh special education summer school. And there's a lot that goes into that piece. Uh we have some available monies through title three to support our ELELLL uh students and we're looking at providing some tutoring. Uh and Chris, correct me if I'm wrong, but that was 6 through 12 we were going to be able to provide some options. Um yeah, so um we have the ability to provide some additional tutoring for those
014students using some grant funding uh from the state through title three funds. Um and then finally tonight we had a site selection um site inventory committee uh and Meg has um some documents for you that we will hand out that were part of that committee will be on the website but really our goal was to break down the available sites and Meg I caught people on the way out and it sounds like we are kind of down to three possibilities. Uh so we'll be scheduling another public hearing uh or a public meeting very soon. Um the reason that it was extremely important for us tonight to get down to a smaller number is because our ability to test for uh vernal pools is in the springtime. And if we only went forward with one site
015and then let's say that site came back in a situation that was no good, we're on the we're waiting for another year. uh and so we can't delay that. So our goal is to um be down to three sites, work with the department uh and try to push to get those all tested this spring so we can continue our work to to narrow those down. Any questions? Looks like no questions. Okay, moving on. That brings us to the chair's report. I don't have a specific report. However, um I know there was a question that I've gotten from a couple school members about when the uh agreement with Bford School Department would be signed. That was awaiting a meeting that the Bford school department was going to have similar to ours. The school board was going
016to have that was similar to ours and I had not heard if that had occurred yet. They did that tonight. Okay. At five o' or 5:30 or so. They voted on that. Right. So, as soon as that um as they finish up, I will get that document signed and we will be officially in that agreement. All right, moving on. Uh there are no staff reports this evening. Uh board subcommittee minutes are noted in the um in the agenda. There's a link to the strategic committee meeting from 29. Um and there's also um mention of a finance committee that's coming up on the 23rd. Moving on to old business, of which there is none. That brings us some new hires with no action. Are there any questions for the superintendent related to those? Okay, moving on
017to resignations. One of those requires a motion. Mr. Sure. I move we accept the resignation of [Music] Adam J sorry uh CK Burns teacher effective at the end of the 202122 school year second. Sarah Truman first. Jen Prebble second. Okay. Any discussion? Okay. Roll call vote. School board member Archie. Yes. School board member Prebble. Yes. School board member Richard. Yes. I vote yes. School board member Gail. Yes. Schoolboard member Truman. Yes. And school board member Johnson. Yes. Motion passes 70. Okay. Next item on the agenda is the CO update. So I mentioned this a little bit in my superintendent's report that uh the numbers are trending in obviously the right direction. Um, we are going to continue to uh put this update in the packet so that we can watch this every couple of weeks
018of new positive cases uh or positive pools. We also throughout our process um will still be sending out uh schoolwide information to families about positive cases uh for the foreseeable future. um until we feel more comfortable of what the changes may how or how the changes may impact us. Thank you. Okay, that brings us to item D which is the budget presentation and overview. Okay, please load on my computer. All right, there it is. Okay. So, um this is a presentation that's here for that is, you know, a little bit bigger of a picture view than what we did the other night um at the school committee uh at the school board uh workshop, but really to walk us through what some of the biggest pieces are that make up the state subsidy and and
019the funding formula uh and how there are certain things that as a school department um we want to pay attention to. So the first piece that you've heard me talk about a little bit this year and and some last year during the budget process is city valuation. And the funding formula component is comp is put together of two parts. Students and your student counts and city valuation. And as we've said several times here, when we look at communities in southern Maine, you have a situation where the growth of property value is outpacing that of the rest of the state. When we did a comparison of looking at the funding that came this year to schools, the governor put an extra $30 million into general purpose aid. Of that $30 million, you had approximately 140 schools
020actually take 36 million of that money towards additional subsidies in their um in their 279. you had like half a dozen communities um kind of just hold steady and those were people who had a valuation in increase of about 6%. They they lost about $1.9 million and then you had approximately 20 schools that were 7% valuation growth that actually lost 10 plus million dollars in subsidy through those communities. Now, one of those was SACO. SACO lost $514,000 of additional state subsidy. And we talked about at the last meeting that last June, everybody was happy because you saw additional state funds coming our way in the tune of about $1.6 million. In Sako's situation, we took about a million of that and all of that money is coming in. We didn't spend it and that's coming
021in and we're going to be at the end of the year because we will be revenue high and we're going to take a million dollars and push it towards paying back that fund balance that we have with the city. So, if we all remember, so we get to wipe that piece out. We took $300,000 of that additional subsidy to come in and paid for what would be the first year of our building study, the work that we're doing now on site selection with the architects. So, we use $300,000 worth of state funds to push into that pot. What's important about that is that when we vote as a community and we approve a school, that money will come back to us for use on whatever the next project is, which leaves a couple of $100,000
022um that will be excess revenue in the budget. So, we had a situation where we didn't really commit that to any said cost that was in the budget that we would have to plan for in another year. As we come to this cycle, six months later, we look at additional revenue, and that's at about the million mark uh from state subsidy from not necessarily last spring's final, but what we were planning the budget on. So, you have a little bit of a cushion there. Would have liked to had the full $1.6 $6 million again, but because of rising valuation in the city and some expenditure pieces because parts of the ED279 are based off expenditures, we lost $514,000. So, we're starting a little bit. In some ways, you're starting behind, but because as a board,
023we didn't spend the other subsidy, we get to apply that to the next budget. When we look at our city's growth on this chart over the last several years, you can see the city starting to to to pick up speed uh steam to a tune of our growth over the last couple of years have been around $164 165 million additionally. So, as our property valuation outpaces the states, the money is going to get spread differently, which means you will continue in southern Maine, coastal communities, and probably anywhere where there's a major lake to see those property values rise. We know that if a house in Saco is put on the market right now, that doesn't last very long anywhere in southern Maine. Now, with rising interest rates for homes, maybe we'll see that cool a
024little bit, but we already know that we enter next budget cycle with more growth than we had this year. As we look at that valuation, you say to yourself, okay, does that it will SACO valuation out outpace the state? And yeah, it's probably going to. We know what housing costs in southern Maine do. So, one of the things that I always like for us to at least look at, and this is like the worst case scenario picture that I paint here, is that if you looked at your data from this year, and then you looked at what your new three-year average and valuation is, and you assume that everything else stayed the same, and Meg, you can hit the ne next slide, you would see that we would be up against up against it again
025for state subsidy reduction in a following year. Now, this is an overblown number because we know that there will be many things in the school department that will change from student population to a rising subsidized pupil cost to other communities t having some growth. This is assuming that nobody else has any growth. And when this happens, um I think what you can predict is that next year when we're sitting at the table, I would be predicting that there would be some subsidy loss if things stay exactly the same. It's also really important to remember that we're living in a in a time where the state is actually funding over 55% education. That hasn't happened before. Um and we also have a situation where we know that there will be a gubernatorial election and things obviously
026can change around elections. So I think we have to be cautious as we think about the future uh and think about what we have for carryover and and all of those pieces to see if we can kind of stem the tide uh a little bit. Next slide that I'd like to go to is I'd like to talk to you a little bit more about where does your funding come from and how do how does this um get made up. And so in the next five pages you kind of have your ED279 your funding formula. Uh and we have some kind of red boxes that I want to walk you through. So the first one is the first page is about building your student EPS rate and that's at the bottom of the page. And what's
027important about that is that this is a situation where the higher the number at the bottom of the page on page one is where you want to be because page two is where factors and multipliers come in. So, because we are on page one, we are a uh school district that essentially manages the preK through 8 population. We're looking at student counts that have a per pupil average about 1,800 19 uh 1,800 kids, give or take. Now, certainly we know that pupil counts based off the last two years and COVID have had some fluctuations as some people chose different alternatives for education over the last couple of years, but we're hopeful that we'll get some of those students back in our schools. But on the other hand, we know that the state of Maine is
028losing uh this year they lost 2500 students just statewide. Um when you look at our enrollment projections that were done five years ago for the first time they or one of the times they looked at young school we're about exactly where they projected us to be. We do have um some of the positive about possible student growth is knowing that you know in SACO on the young school side I think it was 34 Chris number of uh open uh building permits when we did the reopening plan last year. uh and we can look around and we see some housing developments occurring hoping that those have students in them um that would bring them to our schools. When you look down at this next section now you're talking about staff ratios to students. So what the
029state does is they go through each age band um that's there and they set a ratio of staff to students which is for essential programming and services EPS essential. Well, essential is kind of like the floor. Um, meaning that you should have this. And when you look at that red box on the side, if you were meeting the state funding formula, and again, mathematically, we're talking meeting the state funding formula to maximize the amount of subsidy you'd get. When it is a 1.0, that is when they say your ratios exactly meet the uh meet the formula. when it's under that theoretically in the eyes of the mathematical formula they would consider you at a a better staffing ratio than what's recommended. Um there's been I think last year we looked at some data comparing ourselves
030to other um York and Cumberland County school districts and our teaching staff ratios here in in SACO are pretty healthy. Uh when you look down to something like clerical and and school administration, you can't get much closer than you have in those situations if you were saying that you are meeting essential programming and services. If you go down further in this page, what this does is it is this front part by using the student counts, using your staff counts, their salaries are fed into a matrix that spits out a subsidy number. So the data, so the the the DOE says, Jeff, you're a teacher of 20 years with a master's degree. you're worth x amount of dollars and Jen, you may be a thirdyear teacher with no uh master's degree and you have a number
031assigned to you. That piece all adds together, fills into the matrix, and you multiply it by your ratio. Okay? So, we take $7.6 6 million. We multiply it by83 and 6.397 million is a number that we start to build on as we move down the down the page to get to student EPS rate. Now, the third red box on this front page is your regional adjustment. What that says is that different regions of the state are pro are more costly to live in than others. These fluctuate from we're at a 1.09 versus there are places in I believe Washington County that are like a 0.84. So they actually get a negative adjustment on the front page because someone would argue that it could be uh less costly to live there. Now superintendents certainly have that
032argument with each other all all the time about whether this is right or or or not. Um but in our situation this works in our favor and it at the end of the page it creates a situation where you have an EPS student rate which is used as our multiplier for all things page two at the secondary level when they look at our secondary school students that is a state rate because we don't contribute to that matrix because we send our kids um to Thornon academy. When you get to page two, now it does bring in those 9 through 12 students into the equation in the first box, and those are your subsidizable pupil counts. So on this page, it looks at your prek students, it looks at your K8 students, it looks at your
033912 students, and you get a total that is averaged up. That then factors into this next calculation where student count times your student EPS rate creates a dollar amount that you're building towards an operational allocation which is at the bottom of the page. Again, you want these numbers to be as high as possible. Now, two really important factors change for us a little bit this year. And let's look at our disadvantage rates. Disad, as we know, students uh across the state and across the nation receive a subsidizable lunch, which means that all kids have the ability to eat for free at school uh in a public school. And over the last three years, you know, certainly with co come in, this students used to be qualified by filling out a form at the beginning of
034the year. Well, the incentive to fill out that form is kind of not there if everybody, which rightfully so. I'm a firm believer that lunch should be subsidized for all kids. It is a leveler of the playing field. Um, but they used a three-year average in the highest of those this year and a one-time switch at the state level. This is important for us because that number is higher than it probably would be because of the ability to collect forms over the last couple years. This is something that our voice in Augusta as we move forward and you look at the funding formula for the next next year, we have to advocate for keeping this high. And more importantly, the second box on this page is weighted averages. So when your disadvantage rate is at
035about 30%. They look at the number of students in that kind of grad and it and if you look at K through8 disadvantaged if you look at the 30.19% of our 1819 students 514 of them would be in the in a disadvantaged category. Now, the next piece they did is they changed the weight and the money that they put behind our disadvantaged population, which is extremely important because this was that 0.15. And so, you multiply the 0.15 times the $7,794 per elementary student and you get additional funding. This is an area that we have to continue to support uh with our voice in Augusta, our voice on the funding committees because schools should be putting more money behind students who are economically disadvantaged. We know that. We know that is the right thing to do
036and something that we need to continue to advocate for. If those weights change back, as you can see in certain situations throughout here, there's, you know, $1.3 millionish of subsidy that comes in that amount, which would probably take 25% off, which would lower your operating allocation on this page um and hurt you in in future subsidy. Now, we go to page three. And page three is about your ex your kind of subsidized costs based off expenditures. And so you look at gifted and talented education, special education allocation, high cost out of district allocation, your transportation expenses, and then your approved bus leases plus your teacher retirement. And those are all numbers that through the state formula and through expenses they calculate up and they add to your adjusted operating allocation. We go down one more
037section and if you remember last year we were able to get that total in lease added on late in the year. We have that um for five years we're able to get some subsidy back on that. So we applied again. We got another $81,000 sitting in this category, which helps with that lease cost and increases our subsidy. You'll see insured value factor. Insured value factor is the capital component that you pay for students to attend Thornton Academy and you're reimbursed uh at a 5% level. And when all of this adds up from page two and page three, you're looking at a combined allocation of million. As you move to uh page four, you take 35839. You take your valuation which is in section B multiply it by the mill expectation which is what they say
038you must raise for education and they say in saco you must raise $18.3 million. You subtract those two numbers from A and B and you have [Music] 17,443,000 worth of preK through 12 subsidy. Okay, so that's what you're getting from the state. You go one more page back and you know what I did on this one? I put the wrong slide in there. I put the wrong page five slide in there. I apologize for that. I put one of the other districts page five slide on there. Didn't notice that. But what I can tell you is that on that slide, if we go back to number uh page four with 7 uh 17.4 $3 million. On that next page, you get a regional service center allocation and you get about a $110,000ish in the regional
039service center of additional allocation. So, it takes that number up to uh over 7 uh 17.5 million. So, that you know that that's coming from the state. Now, as we look at what our cost drivers, reductions, position changes are as we get to our budget, we know that employee steps and wages are about $581,000. We know that between some of our changes in health insurance plus having a 10% increase in the budget, there's another $559,000 there. So, of this $1.6 6 million increase. 1 million of it is absolutely salary and benefits. Now, will health insurance come in at 10%. I hope not. But when I look at the experience ratings of where we were, it's a little bit on the higher side. Um, typically rates haven't gone up over 8%, but the reason I started
040with 10% this year is because I think you look at the COVID factor and you just don't know what that might do to health insurance rates. That scares me a little bit. And at some point there has to be some impact on on that piece. Maybe it will go down. Maybe we'll have a great year uh and we'll be able to come back and talk about a reduction in the next phase of the budget. when we talk about we talked about this sheet the other night and we talked about additional items um that added money to the budget and we're talking about um increase in tuition and last year and that's $35,000 which is actually a positive for us in the in this from a financial standpoint on our side uh because last year you
041were budgeting for 926 students there is, you know, certainly just less students feeding in from the graduating class to um the eighth grade class. And that trend continues um in a downward fashion. We added seed and we talked about that the other night that when you bill for main care, you also have uh 34% that you have to pay out um and kind of match and that's reducted uh reduced from your state subsidy. So you have $165,000 there to offset that reduction in subsidy. We have vocational funding for TA students uh that we've talked about some last year that the gap between uh state funding for vocational students and the operating costs uh the area towns are chipping in to cover that piece. In this budget, we've added a resilience uh resilience should say resiliency
042coordinator at SMS uh to go along with what we have at our elementary schools. We know that we need an SRO uh at our schools and uh Chief Clement has been wonderful to work with in the fact that um you know we talked about where that number should sit whether that's on the school side, city side, we really felt that since that person would be spending threearters of their time working with the school department that probably appropriately that threequarters of a salary set on our side. Um, again, it's one pocket or the other. Um, but it's a true it's a true cost at the school department. Adding a day one um person at SMS that we did earlier this year. We have an added homeless liaison uh that halftime piece that's in the budget that
043we're hoping to uh offset with grant funding. Making sure that CK Burns has a full-time social worker. They're at 08 right now. And then looking at increases in coursework, just kind of looking at what that true number has been based off some expenditures and you're pretty close to the additions and they are pretty close to that $500,000 difference. Now, there are some things that we took out. Um and and actually one other piece in the budget is we continue that half a million dollars of additional capital funding at SMS to hopefully take the next bite at the roof. Some decreases is that we decreased some of the summer school uh lines based off the fact of not seeing uh expenditures, decrease in superintendent salary, eliminated four unfilled edtech positions, um decrease contracted nursing services uh
044for a student um that may not be here. uh decreased um uh contract there should be a typo there contracted IEP uh support of $40,000. So you have a total decrease of 325 to kind of offset some of those other pieces. Um the other piece that we talked about is reallocated staff members from special education to bring back the alternative ed program uh at SMS. That's a program that needs to be there for students. Um, and then also part of that reallocation would be moving the PATHS program uh to Fairfield School. So there would be a one PASS program in the district K2 have the coast program go to young school. We can serve students um a little more uh efficiently. And we also have um the challenge that um the music and art program
045at Fairfield Schools on a cart. By making this move, we can give them back a classroom. Um something that that that needs to happen. We need to get that space back in an appropriate classroom. That's just a lot to ask for a teacher. As we begin to look at um expenses verse revenue, we can look at at the budget um on the next page. And you can see that um total expenditures increased by $1.6 million or $3.63% because of additional subsidies on the other page. a lot of those coming from the state. The tax uh increase that we would be looking for, additional money increase is $219,000 or.77%. And what makes this interesting is that um Jason and I we you know had those conversations what does valuation and new properties being built and how
046does this all work out because this is a puzzle of or you know we have to combine the needs of the city versus the needs of the school department. Bring those all together make this work. Um and based off where we would be right now in our ask, uh Glennice is estimating that this would actually have a negative impact of it of the 50 cent range or more to the to the mill rate in the city of where things are snapshotted today. Now, does that mean that will necessarily be there? But that means that we're in a pretty good position today of what how it would impact um the tax rate. Uh certainly the things that are not in this budget that we uh need to talk about and Mr. Archer and I know others
047will u join us here is looking at that SMS situation. Um, and we talked with students and staff of furniture that is um, 20 at least 25 years old. And I've heard some reports that it might be older than that. A lot of it is original. Original. It was there when I was there. Okay. That's a lot longer ago than when Okay. Um, you know, and we were, you know, just talking with students and teachers the other day and, you know, like one of the comments that a teacher said to us was, "Oh, so if we had new furniture, maybe I can decrease the amount of pants that I rip." Uh, you know, by going by old furniture that you get caught on the side. Um, and again, I think that it's about looking at
048that school and knowing that no matter what happens in the construction project, that school's going to be standing and operational and we're there. Um, and we have some things that we need to take care of uh in that building. Um, you know, having Mr. Rodman who's come in and spent some time in other middle schools and been able to give us some, you know, some that outsider look into some of the things that we need to do, knowing that we'll be able to put some money into the roof and knowing that we have um a fair amount of money uh put towards revolving renovations funds where we get to uh improve the air quality there. is now looking at some of the cosmetic type things and uh the furniture that support our students so that
049as you walk into that school uh you begin to have a little bit of a different feeling um as you come in and so I think that's an important piece for us. So from a very high level overview uh this is where we are um and I think it would be a great time for us to to dive in a little bit more and and take some questions about things. Um I would say our next piece after this would be to schedule between now and the 28th which is a Monday night. Um another board workshop for review. Uh because on the 28th we present that kind of budget to the council. After that piece, I am hopeful that that last week in March, that first week in um April, we receive those health insurance numbers
050so that we can formally adopt um that budget on that first uh April meeting. Any questions for the superintendent? A qu excuse me, quick question about the uh valuation piece. As as the valuations continue to increase and the subsidies go down, does that mean there's a a bigger share from the city side? Yeah. So, they would they will shift if you'll see on page five, and I apologize for having the wrong one in there. Um, you have a state share and a local share. And as your property, the assumption is mathematically that the more property value ha that you have, the higher that is, the greater ability a community has to pay. Um, and so yes, the answer is yes. As property values rise and if you outpace the rest of the state, you're going
051to see a decreased subsidy. Um, Superintendent Ray, I think this is like fantastic. Thank you for walking us through it. It makes a lot of sense and um it's great overview. I um for a little bit of education for me on page two on the disadvantaged rate. Yep. Um I I thought that I had heard that um the the free lunch is not uh at Thornton Academy is not is that provided to the SACO residents. So it's my understanding that a universal free lunch. I know that they support students who are um that would qualify for a free lunch, but universally right now in the state, all students have the ability to get a free lunch. And it's my understanding that that may not be the case. And I guess I I bring that up
052because I remember, you know, months ago you had been and everyone here had been repeating, "Hey everybody, it's really important that we turn in our paperwork." Yep. for the universal lunches. Um, and I guess my my thought there is if that's not supported at the same level at Thornton Academy for SACO students, there would be real no there really wouldn't be an incentive for those families to to fill out that paperwork because they wouldn't necessarily again from my understanding they wouldn't necessarily benefit. So but in a in a normal year the answer would be that it was important to kill for those forms and again when we were pushing every year as a superintendent you push those forms and you push that out there uh and you are making sure that kids have an opportunity
053to qualify because you want no one following through. In the last two years where it has been universally uh free for kiddos we as superintendents were certainly worried about this number. This this is what we were worried about because we could see that they weren't coming in. Our schools and our food and nutrition staff, they know families, they know situations, our principles, our resiliency, our guidance counselor, our social workers. Um, and in a normal situation, you'd be able to make sure that that happened. But in this situation, there was no incentive to fill out that form because the playing field was leveled. All kids had an opportunity to eat for free. all all families. And what we've seen from that uh is a situation where you're seeing greater participation in the school lunch program. You're
054seeing more meals go through because there is zero embarrassment. There is any of those pieces. And you know, quite frankly, as a as all of us see rising costs in our homes, whether that be from heating oil to gasoline to rising food costs, me others, yeah, send your kids and have a meet at school. It's a great nutritious lunch. I don't have to pack lunch in the morning time. And it a and it helps school departments because typically your reimbursement rate from the federal government is greater than your production cost. So when you think of the the wonderful job that Sue does for us and we've always been a school department that typically operates in the black um this she's able to grow that re revenue so that we can take we don't have a
055request that comes for a new stove or a new this or a new that. So it's really a benefit for students to take that lunch uh at school. But I guess though without without that participation from the 9 to 12 uh range there on on three that kind of artificially deflates that 30% number or that that yeah that 30% is calculated off what we get and then it and then it whether they participate or not they're using our K through8 number so it's the same thing I have in Dayton K through five whatever that K through five rate is set at they apply that direct directly to the upper students. So our our percentage rates that we collect here in the district set that number for 9 through 12. Does that make sense? So I'm
056going to ask a followup because I I think I know where you were going with this. Well, so the reduction in participation that we've seen in the last year or so with relative to the forms being filled out, has that had a negative impact on that number? So luckily, no, because they took a three-year average. So they looked at that last year that you were collecting forms in 201920 and every school and they took the highest of what you had for a number and moved it forward. And every superintendent and and the experience that we have is that highest number was when you were collecting forms, not without. You know, as we know that we move into another school year where you're going to have the ability to have universal school lunches for kids, we're
057going to continue to have to work with the state of what is that strategy um to make sure that um we are have a true number of what our disadvantage rates are because I suspect that you know I think we can go back another year. We were in the 20s last year. Um, and so we have worked hard to communicate that to the commissioner and she has a a strong understanding of what schools face in this arena and we're going to have to continue to advocate for whether either a different metric um or some other way of making sure that we get that information. Because if you're a if you're a if you're a family right now, why fill out the form? School member Johnson. Uh, excuse me. Superintendent Ray, could you just go over
058again um under the decreased items? Yep. The um particularly the elimination of the four un well the unfilled edtech positions. Mhm. give us a background on that again please. Yes. So as we looked at one of the pieces that we came in into here looking you know at our budget and our budget situation um and what Jess needs for positions in the special ed line. Currently we have 85 or actually 83 edte in the current year budget. We are filling approximately about 73 of those on a consistent basis. And so we looked at a number to make sure that we had some buffer um of filled positions and that as we look at bringing everybody back next year who's who's there and looking at having um obviously there's some some savings in the moving of
059the coast and the pass program. we can be a little bit more efficient there. But making sure that Jess had and I believe our number is 78 position. Jason's up there. I believe it's at uh 78 or 79 be 79 positions in the budget with only initially filling 75 of those and making sure we have a buffer in place for moveins for kids who may need service um for additional pieces. Um, and quite frankly, the ability to fill those 75 may be a bit challenging for us as well. School member Richard, I just I brought it up at the the workshop, but I'd like to to revisit the um uh the need for a licensed prek special education teacher uh for a few, you know, few reasons. um you know compliance obviously but um uh
060you know learning about a different way to uh to bill for their therapies as well and having that ability to bill for uh through main care um you know billing as developmental therapy. Um um also actually there's some legislation in uh that's in the works LD 386 and LD255 that if passed would shift the uh provision of special education services uh for children with disabilities uh from 4 to 6 years old uh from the current CDS system to SAUS. uh MDOE actually would like to move all FAPE uh for three and four year olds by July 1st, 2023 um to SAU. So u given that information, I'd like to see u you know whatever the need is for a special education teacher at the prek that put in the budget. And I think Jeeoff, you
061and I have had some conversations about that that like to work on something. I think we can get to that solution uh and and have that revenue offset one way or the other. I think we can get there. Just need some time to figure that all out. So when you're saying time frame for figuring that all out, Mr. Superintendent Ray, can you clarify if that would be for this budget cycle or next budget cycle? Oh, I think it's our goal to make that happen. Make sure that there's a position in place for the fall. Whether that is funded locally or the state is paid for that through a revenue that comes our way or there is a third party that that comes in. I think there are solutions for that. Um, so I think we
062can make it happen. just need to find the the best pathway for us to do that while you know again while those laws are coming our way possibly CDS has a transition of in the state has a transition to figure out how that funding uh goes and I have been someone who has said that I am very concerned of the transition of funding from the CDS program to the local school department through the 279 and And the reason that I say that is that while it may not happen here in this community, there could be communities who begin to start making choices about taxes, expenditures, etc. because of what their ED279 says and services are diminished. So I worry about those two funding streams coming together through the state funding model and have advocated that
063if this happens, this needs to be similar more similar to say vocational center where that comes as an addition that you c that you have to spend and that you can't decrease because you need a new whatever. That is my fear about how that money comes to us through a funding stream. Thank you, school member Gail. Um, shifting gears here on on slide one with the uh attending counts for the students. Um, we talk a lot about the decline in enrollment um, kind of generally, but I I thought it was kind of interesting with the the preK through K. Um, and just from from your experience and and helping to educate me, is is this a typical trend um that we see where prek enrollments grow year-over-year and then it kind of dissipates in the
064the upper grades as as folks metriculate up and or is this maybe a um potentially a spot of growth or a So one if you look the prek and K piece. Um, that's slightly higher is that I think you've had better success filling all of the slots at the prek that are available. So, that's that's number one. Um, and certainly we have some conversations like, you know, like the other day, I think Ja, you were in email with somebody who works in town and wanted to bring their kid to SACO PreK. um they work in the school department and you know in that situation we have to we have to answer well first we need to serve local kid kiddos first and make sure that we're not in a lottery situation but sometimes we have
065some of those sitting on on the side that come September if you're not there you can say okay that makes sense that makes sense because you're building that student count and you're filling those numbers I think traditionally what I've seen in school departments is that your class sizes are bigger in in the smaller level. Um, and one of the pieces that, you know, I worry about a little bit here and well again I worry about it in all of southern Maine, house affordability. Um, as people either are looking to buy their second property from their first home or if we look at the rising costs of rent in this area, what is that going to do with people with kids? um they're living in some of our apartments, can they afford it? So, we could
066see that number decrease. Um statewide trends don't say that populations rise. We are the oldest state in the United States. Um and so that trend is going down every single year. Um, you know, I suspect part of us being probably a little higher this year was because we had five days a week, you know, and in, you know, in other years or the year prior, people made some educational decisions for their family that met their work life. I I I I don't see populations increasing dra dramatically. Now, new housing development on a certain side of town may skew some things. Um, and that would be something that hopefully with a new building will address those situations to, you know, you won't have that problem of one school being bigger than the other and redrawing lines
067or letting kids cross boundaries. Any other questions? Okay, just quickly before we move on, the slide five, that's that's wrong. Yeah, the the budget book also has the full 279 and that'll have the right page on it. If you're looking for the real numbers, that's where they'll that's where they'll be. Okay, moving on to item E, which is first reading of policies. Is there a motion? Mr. Chair, I move that we approve the first reading of revised policies. AD educational philosophy, ADA, school district goals and objectives. BEC executive sessions, BEFA abstensions, BIC board member freedom of access training and BID board member compensation. Second. First and second. Any discussion? Okay. Roll call vote. School me. School board member Archie. Yes. School board member Prebble, yes. School board member Richard, yes. I vote yes. School board
068member Gail, yes. School board member Truman, yes. School board member Johnson, yes. Motion passes 70. That brings us to item F, which is second reading of policies. Is there a motion? Mr. Chair, I move that we approve the first, excuse me, the second reading of policies AC, non-discrimination, equal opportunity opportunity and affir affirmative action. ACAB, harassment and sexual harassment of school employees. ACAB-R employee discrimination slashharassment and title 9 sexual harassment complaint procedures ADA school system commitment to standards for ethical and responsible behavior ACA-R student discrimination and harassment complaint procedure ACA harassment and sexual harassment of students ACAC service animals in school. ADC, Tobaccof free schools use and possession of tobacco and electronic smoking devices. ACAD hazing. ADF school district commitment to learning results and GB workplace bullying. Second. There's first and second. Any discussion? Okay.
069Roll call vote. School board member Archie. Yes. School board member Prebble. Yes. School board member Richard. Yes. I vote yes. School board member Gail. Yes. School board member Truman. Yes. School board member Johnson. Yes. Motion passes 70. That brings us to other information. Is there any other information this evening? I think we just ought to um I'll send out an email just about that next date would look like to have a board workshop in before the 28th. um on budget piece. So, look for something u for me or for one with a couple of different options. It'll probably be like a doodle poll so that we can put something out um and we'll send it to everybody. Thank you. Okay, there's no executive session this evening. Motion to adjurnn. So moved. Is there a second?
070Second. Second. Okay, roll call vote. School board member Archie? Yes. School board member Prebble? Yes. Yes. School board member Johnson. Oops, I'm jumping ahead. School member Richard, yes. I vote yes. School board member Gail. Yes. School board member Truman. Yes. School board member Johnson. Yes. Okay. Motion passes 70. We are adjourned at 8:12. Thank you. Have a good evening.