001e e e just us I guess just us y I just this is organization okay all right go ahead and call the meeting to order at 602 and turn it over to Jeremy okay good evening uh thanks for coming tonight just as we get prepared for next week's board meeting and to start talking about um the budget piece that will be there just trying to want to give a kind of an overview of where we're at what our timeline and Pace would be so that we're kind of teed up to be in the right spot so we'll have a school committee meeting next Wednesday night which my hope is that for night we will kind of look at any items that we want to talk about at the school committee meeting so that we have
002proper information prepared and then Monday the 28th we would have city council presentation we would post for our public hearing uh we have to have that public hearing on the budget and I believe the date is April 9th is the day is a Tuesday night that week maybe it's not the 9th maybe it's [Music] the um 12th so we have a Tuesday meeting on the 12th of school committee which is a change because of vacation week um and I want to be able to make sure that we're teed up and lined up to hit that date so what my Hope was tonight was just to start talking about um a few of the items and some of the things that we're finding and whether we want to think about putting them in get more information
003there are things that we've all set on this for a week or so items that you may have that we need to build more information on so that by Wednesday night we have a better idea now health insurance still nothing yet so we know that that's a big item that we'll probably be dealing with on the night of the 12th because I'm hopeful that we will have that number that night Jeff and and Ry you guys spoke about special ed teacher at prek and so I want to know from you guys guys what information you want I know that we have some interest in that position there's certainly a lot going on this legislation right now um I've got a meeting next Wednesday that I've got to be for part of on that I've been
004in some discussions about what funding may or may not look like but that's very unclear right now so I do believe that we could think about having that position and and that can be an item that we bring next week I don't know that that will need to be locally funded it may need some local funding um but I kind of want to get some some pieces so I want to be sure about what what our ask is so that we bring that back appropriately I yeah we're on we're on we're on the camera here tonight um I would just you know I don't know if there's a way to forecast the the need you know um and and plan accordingly for that I know it's that's kind of what I what my ask would
005be you yeah I think that the forecast of need of where that information sits is a little bit difficult for us um I'm hoping that by next Wednesday I definitely will have some more information about what funding may look like um got a meeting Wednesday morning with msma on that um it looks like if things passed it would be 2023 school year um um but there's definitely some CDs funding depend on depending on how this goes it looks like it's available if if you know we would want it to be that's how I read it today yeah I don't know what that structure is because one of my obviously this whole change over of CDs I definitely have some concerns that if the formula is not done correctly this hits the mill rate um and
006so those are the pieces that I want to have an ability to check in with the doe and I don't know that I will'll have answers immediately but yes I believe there could be funding that would be non-local funding available next year and that's something that we'll explore I don't know all have the answer Wednesday night but I know that that's an item that a couple of people have shared for SDI piece I have a question around that too yep so um this is my billable brand thinking from when I used to do billables um what are the able hours can we get a can we find out for prek what the bill billable special education hours are and what are the rates reimbursement rates for main care and private insurances so we can take
007that into account too because I'm guessing some of that funding that's non-local can be recouped through insurance as well possibly well I think by 2023 that is what the plan says in the law what I can tell you is that there's not a lot many school some many School departments can handle the main care piece I don't think any of us have dived into the billing private insurance piece um I haven't heard many that have done that piece um so that will definitely be something that School departments work on or will need to figure out how they do that piece um I'd say my biggest concern on the transition piece that's coming in way the raw the laws um written is that we do have to have some concern about okay just say you have
00860 kids with IEPs in prek that's 60 more how's the management of that what's the oversight of that and then as the billing piece we do have some billing pieces figured out that's with main care billing Anthem or whatever Harvard Pilgrim or whatever that's going to take some work so I definitely think there's a layer of um administrative oversight piece that we're going to be working on a lot over the next year if this comes 2023 to figure out what I have figured out is that um in some Communications that we've had about this it says that students would hit uh a prek student would hit the Ed and while that's all well and good we all know that the local share in Sako is different than the local share for reimbursement in bitterford which
009is local which in someone like old Orchard's case is a zero because they're a minimum receiver and then it says special education cost would be 100% reimbursable but where on the formula which line how is that calculated there's a lot to to figure out and I don't know that those answers are going to come by next Wednesday or we're going to be working on this for a while but I do think that there are the ability to gain funding just don't know the method yet so so we have the ability to to Pivot or you know what I mean not knowing what's going to happen uh regarding the budget we'd have the you know whatever ends up happening we'll be able to kind of adapt and and I think so yeah I think that we
010will'll be safe enough to be able to do that you know as as you look at positions that you know come and go during and there's and they been flowing salaries um in that piece and we'll just try to be planful to make sure that we have that piece because again you don't you don't know how much SDI would be there available for kids but we'll plan to have that piece on there and understanding what a cost or what a revenue would need to be to cover that piece okay the second thing that I really wanted to talk to people tonight hold on one second go ahead so with that being said what can we do in the time being because I mean we're talking a whole whole a whole class year that that bill
011will be passed and we're taking the gamble that that might uh so the law wouldn't go into effect into 2023 but I think that we could work with CDs and ourselves locally to figure out to have something in place next year I think that that's something that we need to look into yeah I don't think that's going to be a problem okay just making sure we figure out what the right funding source is going going to be the bigger challenge in that piece and it's not really a challenge it's probably more weeding through legislative and working with CDs and working with the doe to see what the reimbursement rates are because the law set it basically says that they'll work with you now I mean that's their intent is just to work with districts now
012um but we have to make sure we have very good deals in place and it's clear it's clear how reimbursement is going to come in so from the standpoint of of what we're going to be able to do is this the the funding supports a specific position like we talked about the last time or is it along the lines of we have to be flexible because it may not actually be a position that's ours it may be services that are that are built out or something like that so I think that's I think that's the pieces I don't know that it will be ours it may be that it's buil out it could be purchased from somewhere it could be ours funded from somewhere we'll have the position we'll figure it out and whether we
013build an expense and a revenue at the same time you might do both um so that it's there but I'm com I feel comfortable thinking that we can get to that point and we might I might learn a little bit more over the next couple of days um what's going to happen I know legislator is having their Public Work session Wednesday morning at 9:30 so by Wednesday night I probably will at least know what their recommendation is going to be as it goes to legislature is is there an open discussion or is somebody researching the CDs contract that we have with them right now as far as billing them yeah so it's built through sync um but like part of the piece the when syn is their billing service and like for our edtech positions
014you get so much back per 15 minutes of billable time my concern being is that you're not going to have a bill enough you're not going to have enough billable time during the day to cover the full cost of salary and benefits for that position so then that's going to shift locally and that's the piece that that's the piece that school districts on a Statewide scale are going to need to to figure out because if this is the state CDs right now now is fully paid for by the state doesn't hit locals but as this starts hitting local municipalities it means that as we talked about last time my fear was that those Services would hit the 279 which send men that boards across the state might be making decisions about Staffing for those Services
015versus Capital cost let's say I don't I don't like that idea um that people people would have choices to and I'm not saying they would limit or deny but it just it puts it in that realm of a possibility like oh we're not going to fund eight positions we're going to fund seven because the budget's tight this year um that's what I want to learn more about so going back to the billable piece is there a way we can get some kind of rough draft number of billables what we have currently maybe off of this year for special education so we can gauge better if we want to have this position be full-time part-time I hear what you're saying about billables where there might not be enough billables to pay fully for a full-time person
016so that would um be something I would be interested in knowing and I get the every 15 minute thing that's something that's typical with billing that I'm familiar with um so I'd be curious what that billable rate looks like how many billables per hour is that enough to do a 40-hour work week more or less I'm guessing not but I just wanted to get a rough idea of what that does look like but I think that's that's the piece gen that makes me nervous about how this lands in any school department is that on a reimbursement system is like right now like you made the come and like is it enough for a full-time position or a halftime position okay so boards say make a decision okay we make a decision in May halftime position
017that's what we put into the budget but then the service requirements because many of those IEP happen in the springtime don't necessarily line up with our cycle and that's what scares me is because now you don't have the op you don't have the option to say it's only going to be a halftime if you have more hours than that if you have service requirement this is where it's sticky because none none of the timing lines up correctly that's that's why we're going to have to think about like probably not a minimum but more of like a higher end thing uh and I'm saying like here's what the most would be fund at that level hope that you get figure if you can negotiate timing and positions with with CDs fund that position and move forward
018and I have an unrelated question I know I'm not following the agenda all right um my curiosity is um what do we have for teachers like teacher payouts for retirements this year is that included in our budget um are those positions we're going to fill and are we doing the same thing for not just teachers but across the system transportation janitorial maintenance any of that happening I was flipping through but I couldn't put my fingers on it so again on retirements typically those are in that would be in money that's in this current year budget so anyone who retires and takes that piece there's money in this budget for that um right now we have plans to fill everything that comes open and whatnot collective bargaining agreements for maintenance and transportation Jason they have uh
019SI day up to 6,000 so through finance committee we'll be putting that piece as we start moving into the spring like this is what our total this is what we'd be anticipating for utilities this is be because as you get towards the end of the year you're going to start building those piece while your budget is going this way this this line goes this so that we can anticipate kind of what the carryover amount may be um and depending where we are hopefully as a finance committee we'll have some conversations about okay if we're really healthy is there an opportunity to look at our say facilities line has that all been spent down do we want to spend some of that down do we want to we got a lot of catch up and Facilities
020over time to do around here um so that's something that we'd look at so an item that I added to the list tonight um is about maintenance and custodial staff and one of those pieces is that as we look at kind of had some tours around SMS and we looked at the building and having more conversations with Mike and we certainly always want to do a good job with our facilities piece but we have one facilities person that is a maintenance person outside of Mike and we were talking about square footage of our building so we got about over a quarter of a million square foot of building with one facilities person and this was not something that was necessarily right on our radar during the budget development process um but we've been able to
021do some things and we have an open custodian position um that a person left the district that's a was a halftime custodian and we'd like to bring information to you guys to look at what it would be what additional it would take to take that halftime position turn it into a full-time maintenance position um and what that would add or and we'd bring that to you guys next week if there's some interest in that because having one facilities maintenance person District this size this many schools that's part of the challenge that we're not staying on top of things um because there's just not enough manpower um and so we wanted to see what kind of Interest the board might have and bringing some more information to looking at that piece to see if we can
022make that work so are you referring to the um open Fairfield position just turning that into a maintenance position or you so I'd be looking at the uh on the spreadsheet there's kind of a red line down there uh and there's an open position that was District SL Learning Center yep and so what we've done is that with prek that building's um about 10,000 square feet actually yeah 10 10,000 or a little under that um when you look at the average for people uh in a custodial setting that's a place that doesn't equal what the other square footage people so we've shifted a couple of hours over to the Learning Center for that individual so they could do both which freed up this job that was kind of District Learning Center part-time and looking to
023see if we could take that position find some additional funding through an through an add-on and fund a full-time maintenance person to add in the district so what what is the salary difference between a custodian and a maintenance person so Jason and I were kind of just talking about that and we'd have to look that 100% but it would be probably somewhere between a $25,000 ad to the budget at this point okay um and what about that open position in Fairfield have we had any luck with that so some of that just uh have just opened up and so we are advertising for those positions first you have Sometimes some people who are working nights that may want to say oh I want to dat a daytime shift so we have to look at that
024internal switch that could occur um but then yeah filling all those positions we need all of those filled right I just meant as far as like how many people were applying um so forgive my ignorance but are the part-time employees getting benefits Jason okay they 8 signant more employ I got you so we're not only looking at that 20 $225,000 salary increase but we're now also including more for it' be more benefits but we think that 25 to you know $30,000 would be both okay and um what would this increase the amount of money that we would be spending on tools and vehicles and everything like that I don't think it would be huge I mean I think some of it would be just making sure that we're on the back of a paint brush
025for c for certain items looking at interior stuff in the building right um again we got one person who works nights that's trying to do clogs and drains and all of those pieces that's I mean one person has four items on a list and a night shift and you go to each and you go to four schools your night's pretty much over um so there might be some you know there might be some ideas of one it might be about skill level on certain things like who's got the the skill and whatever the the situation is and then some may be a little bit area driven so that you know maybe you have someone working on this side and someone scheduled to do things on this side so there's less transition throughout the city yeah
026so when I was looking at this earlier my thought process was um going back to a conversation that we had had about um painting yep and my thought was is that if we go and we we're basically creating another position we have an opening but we're making it a full-time and I didn't know if maybe this was something that we could share with the city to try to kind of recoup those costs um you know because we do have City buildings that are going to need to be painted and maintained I don't want to step on anybody's toes on their end but it might be a valuable asset for them as well and obviously if we can find someone with more skill level for those things you know there might be a little bit more
027cushion for a higher salary if we're splitting it with the city and that might entice more people more qualified people to come over can I can I interject here I think with the amount of work that's required between all of our buildings I think that that person would need to be full-time with the school I mean just walking around St middle school and seeing all the unfinished business that's going on there because I can't keep up I don't feel like this would be necessarily a position that we could share I mean I don't know if I'm wrong but like I feel like if anything we could share maybe somebody El like another position maybe but I think we need to have two people doing maintenance for our schools in our schools solely because obviously we
028can't keep up as it is so I think we definitely need a full-time equivalent um how that full-time equival based off a skill set and working with the city you may get full you may get fulltime by several things and again I wouldn't want to speak for them in that but you know one you know an idea would be maybe you're hiring skill X that's working you know 75% of the time because it it it fits in the school things and then you're trading 25% of the time for for 25% of the time something I mean I'm not I'm just spitballing here but that would be worth it'd be worth conversations would we anticipate that when the position gets converted or listed that that we would get to see a job description prior to that
029that way we could know where the line is between what this person would do and you know what normal janitorial activities would Encompass yeah yeah and I believe we have some job descriptions for those positions uh this would be this you know it's the same bargaining unit um which is a good piece but but we need to do more on our facilities and and figure out how we and again my concern being is that patterns develop and right now we know that we need more there my biggest fear is that we won't change that pattern before five years comes and we're moving into a new building and just think of the the square footage that could be there we need to make sure that we're adjusting along the way so we're prepared um because you
030don't want to take the same pattern and then be 10 years down the road be looking at a new building and be like hey what just happened um just kind of ramp up for that yeah I I strongly agree with you um I I don't doubt that there's enough work for one person um but at this rate any any position would help alleviate that um my thought process of it was um you know we need we need changes with morale over I mean look at the middle school you know we need somebody in there that's going to care about their job and there's they're going to like doing it and they're going to want to make the schools look better and so my thinking was is that with this new school coming up you know
031maybe to alleviate our budget a little bit if we worked with the city and we could get a top-notch employee and pay them a little bit more because we would have that question with the city you know we might actually get somebody who wants to do that job that's all that that's where I was going with it I think with the with the bargaining unit though I think that would prevent us from paying somebody more would it not because unless we had some kind of agreement but bargaining units prevent us from so we need to yeah if if it was our employee we would need to continue with the bargaining scale that's been negotiated uh you might hire someone a little more experience and again I think we have employees that work really hard and
032have a care for the building we just don't have enough right we just don't have enough in that Arena um and again custodial wise if you look at the um industry standards that you can kind of Google industry standards of square footage for a person that's out there we seem to be in the ball park we're not in the ballpark facilities wise now granted let's also remember that the city does a lot of they do all of the grounds for us so that's an important piece but we still have over a quarter of a million dollars uh quarter of a millon quarter of a million square feet of space with one real maintenance person that's and one one person for aging buildings yep that are in dire need of and Mike and M Jason informed
033me that again there was some conversation uh a few years ago around hvhc where that position fell off retired he did all of our filters Oiler up was problem someone not eat Scott used to run onare time do some other small pieces he retired no discussion maybe able to har some of that out maybe using some of the electrician the city Side they have electrician on the city just as busy doesn't have time for school either so I think that's last we mainten depending on the skill set it could help save some money I would imagine too not having to sub out you know for you know so on on that is there and I guess if they're in the same bargaining unit um is there a way that we can kind of internally advertise
034for the new position amongst this amongst the custodian pool here to kind of facilitate and and hopefully get this position get a get somebody on board there just thinking about in terms of Maintenance um and and I I don't know what the what the pay scales are here but you know a maintenance person right now is in high demand everywhere so um I would imagine the city but I don't know but the point being that um just looking at like prek looks like with custodians every school's got from 6 to 10:30 as coverage but a prek is you know a quarter of of um in terms of square footage per custodian anyway it looks like there's maybe some flexibility to kind of Shuffle some things around and then back fill in the custodian than the
035maintenance and that's kind of how this opening came is that they were able to take that custodian move some of that time to The Learning Center cover that piece uh hire someone you know for an hour to do central office and now you have a an opportunity to make a step towards a position one of the challenges with the number of buildings that we have like that particular position prek is way up rout wand yep Learning Center down here it's there's not going to be a complicated activity happening at both of those buildings on the same day it's probably unlike it correct okay so we'll bring something back on Wednesday night with an idea around something around facilities that would give us some clarity um during our our last Workshop I looked at kind of
036that those additional items and additional decreases that we'd kind of made at the superintendent level um and I just really wanted to look at that sheet and and basically get a feeling as they're like are we starting to feel pretty good about that are we not feeling is is there something we want to talk about a little bit more on that piece is there an ad that we don't just trying to be prepared for next next Wednesday night I guess on the addition pieces that then um where the 500 or whatever the the total is for the uh SMS um I don't know maintenance or however we want to categorize that would that be included here as a separate so I would probably bring that is a separate piece I would just these are just
037more like that during that first draft like are we good with those things because you know what's in in certain places like you take um social worker for example the earlier we can advertise for what we know is going to be a retirement and that you know you guys have anti and we would advertise as anticipated to get that process moving uh if we look at resiliency uh coordinator at SMS like okay that's going to be in the budget let's think about that anticipated opening because hiring will be difficult this year as it is in every profession um and if one of our internal people makes that jump that then opens something else up and that snowballs and now you're it's August and I think our principles are really looking forward to being able to
038do those things so if we came through like Wednesday night kind of or tonight you guys saying okay yeah we're pretty solid on this type of stuff and then we get to Wednesday night we're kind of solid again we would probably look at um starting to post some of those positions as anticipated um when we you know when we've talked about uh position reallocation of finding alternative education teachers at the middle school like there are some people who are very interested in doing that position which might make some other shifts that happen in the district um and then you know anyone who's a math teacher science teacher or special education teachers those are really hard to come by so would we anticipate for next Wednesday numbers for some of the ideas that have been tossed
039around tonight to appear up in the green section so I can do it either way I can we can say we're good at this piece right now moving forward we can put this back again I was kind of thinking that for a lot of the stuff I'd come with kind of a separate item for each of them like the maintenance Fe that feels like a separate item to me the prek special Edge feels like a separate item this stuff was kind of in the superintendent's budget I see this as you know unless you want to pull something out individually and get more information I would see this as a chunk um but just trying to get your your thoughts on how you want to proceed want to be prepared for your Wednesday night I mean
040I think this looks good I just one question though and I should have asked this maybe earlier but just kind of dawning can you talk a little bit about this vocational funding for ta students just it's surprising to me that it's essentially the same as the increased ta tuition um yeah and that's what does that cover that's just straight straight up the the same as straight up coincidence um so talking a little bit about vocational funding so vocational funding comes to a center whether that's bitterford Sanford whatever directly to that hosting organization there's an amount of subsidy that comes in and then here's your operational cost of the center several years ago in and this is how this came to be here we talked about it last spring is that the state used to say
041to a community who hosted a center here's your subsidy you'd spend your money and then two years later you would get reimbursed what you spent so if the cost for operations one year was less less than subsidy you knew that money was coming so it really wasn't a problem it was just more about bford saying yeah we can wait for the catchup pretty simple actually was a pretty good formula because it also allowed you to handle some Capital Improvement things and you knew you were getting your kind of your money back on that they switched to an EPS formula at the state that they've been kind of moving us into over time what it's done is it's created a gap between the cost to R to run the center and subsidy but now there's no
042ability to catch that up without going to each local municipality for the number of students that attend the center so from the position as of the host in in bitterford they have a big majority of students are bitterford students because again walking across the the driveway makes it pretty easy right now I think Sako has in the neighborhood of about 65 students um that come over to the center Dayton's got um I think n 1719 a Rundle has you know seven or eight 21 has that in Old in Old Orchard Beach and so what we proposed last year is that that Gap that exists which I think this year it was like a gap of under it was under $200,000 for everybody that you'd look at the Gap you'd look at how many students you
043had enrolled and each Community would pay their share of the Gap um and so based off the information of projections of current enrollment and that spread that's where the 32,000 would come up that if with the 65 students from Thorton Academy that's that's where kind of where it came from it was 25 in the last budget that we had from last year so that's that probably reflects a few more students than we have yeah I mean as those cost goes up and subsidy goes down and you know it's hard to figure out you know what we have here is we run a year behind so that we can lock in that number um and what that cost would be versus what the enrollment was so that it's not a situation in October or November where
044let's say your enrollment went out for a reason that then You' pay a bigger share we just operate a year behind so that it's a lot cost and and who who operates the center is it so the center is so the center is operated uh by bitterford okay uh and that's where that funding like if you look at page five of their 279 you'll see a vocational funding line that comes in it's a little over 3 milon do and so all of that stuff gets operated um by bford um just like the other Vocational Center in New York County Sanford they Sanford superintendent operates that Westbrook superintendent they do the Westbrook one um but then you know if you want to talk about vocational and Statewide there's something the difference between centers and regions centers
045are linked to particular School departments regions operate independently kind of have their own board their own piece and then everybody pays into those so I'll bring back this sheet separately does that work for everybody we'd vote on this piece as kind of a group okay so when we do it that way if the other you know two or three items whatever ends up being come as separate items we would yeah we would move those each individually and then I guess the the question that I have with respect to this to the spreadsheet is this does a really nice job of you know taking the increases and decreases and you know distilling it down to you know one final number is it possible to have that also be part of the maybe what I'll do is
046I'll set these up in I'll set these up in one spreadsheet and I'll move some things around be like okay if you take this if you take one item one in this category it would do this it will do this so that again we're not talking about huge money in in either way but Jason can calculate that piece pretty quickly so that we can get ready for the next Monday night because I'm I'm anticipating that when we get to the council they'll probably start asking questions like that yep and I know the process that they've used in the past involves a ad remove this is what it looks like type of process yep uh I don't know I mean I feel like maybe we should just add the SMS maintenance budget just because you know
047the city councilmen have gone and done the tour they're all aware of what we're trying to do I mean I just seems to me like we should just add it in there and show them what it would look like I mean I get what you're saying but like I mean we can show them on a on the computer screen what it would look like immediately or we could just present it that way yeah let me let me think about how I can set that up the best way visually for us yep um as we took on that as it does seem to Let's maybe I can just uh yeah we we can move on to that piece I'll come back to bus right um as we look at the painting and Furniture just to kind
048of give you an update as ask Mike to start kind of looking at what quotes for certain parts of painting would look like so that we could have a good conversation with the city council we've also reached out to some vendors on furniture um that are going to bring in some samples for us um and also try to give us a little bit of detailed pricing on what that would look like yeah that was my next question is how many vendors we were able to get that furniture from um we're working with I can't remember School something something or something um they deal with a lot of different vendors um and there's some products we've used in the district before that we had other schools we've really liked this vendor um one of the piece
049that is important to me is that we have an ability for teachers to look at the product first um there are some they're called flow deaths which are neat that are they kind of have different shapes to them so that it could be a situation where I'm working by myself at my desk that has this unique design but if I want the five of the teacher wants the five of us to get together they fit together in a perfect circle so you might order 20 desks for your room that can be spaced in rows like probably most of us s in or they can be five tables that only take up I think it was uh it turns into like a 60inch table you know um at the same time I also want to be
050able to have a look at like a a table seating like this that would fit two two kids because I think there's going to be um what's going to be interesting about SMS is when you guys walked around you notice that some rooms are configured One Way some are a little longer and narrower um and so when we worked with the company the other day they had brought us a sample of each and I said no I need to see what five deaths look like so the teacher you know if we need to move them up to a similar room and you put five together because um you think about our um our team structures that are there you got someone who's teaching in a science room that's got the the science for they're going
051to need stools in those rooms um when we have some of our you know other teams they might might want teachers work uh they might want groups together we look at like the current health room the health teacher has big round tables in there so we got to kind of look at that piece um and see what what is that but we got some good some numbers so that we could actually say like if we need 400 desks and 300 we won't get 300 tables but 100 tables it would be able to put a price but we're just not quite there yet but it's going to be uh I would say that furniture in that building would be approximately a quarter of a million dollars is that including um the tables in the library and
052teachers desks includes teachers desk okay so none of the furniture in the library not yet um but again we they you know they were working off an estimate that might have been all deaths and deaths might be a little bit more expensive than if there's an option where someone wants tables so that's the piece that we've got to kind of hammer out out and uh Jeff Rodman's working with Meg on that piece of saying okay what would those counts actually look like if we were able to go ahead with this um and again that means that by the end of we were hoping at the end of this week early next week we would have the other four desks from the company that we could set up there I also wanted a kind of a
053standard Series so that people could say okay if we wanted to be like we always were this is what you would get if you want to have this Vision You' get get this if you have this Vision you would get this and then calculate those up because other people may have different feelings about what they want in their rooms so we're a little bit out on it already but getting closer so do you uh feel like we'll have an answer back before the joint meeting uh probably not a full answer back um because I I I hate to submit a number to the council if we're not even sure if that's the number it's going to work I think we have roundabout numbers yeah um I think that you know we still will have some
054time between as we go to the n9th and we look at health insurance we know that we'll be back in front of the council making probably an adjustment one way or the other on that um which may play into this situation and hopefully we can talk I mean I think everyone that we've spoken to so far recog recognizes the challenge that we face up there and seems um somewhat enthusiastic if you remember there's us and there's City side if it all can work together uh financially I think they're U some people who definitely recognize the challenge that we face and they're excited to help I guess the the last piece before I get on to anything else that you guys would like to bring forward is um just jumping back up to that right program
055that I've sent you a couple of videos for that's not in the budget yet but the more and more I look at this program and watch the videos and if it delivers the more and more I really like it um and I know that this sounds uh strange but the last one I sent you guys about like the parent ability to follow the bus like where it is and the ability for the program to set an alert that says okay you know I get a notification on my phone that says the bus is 10 minutes away as I think about the changes that Congress possibly will make around daylight savings time if any of you guys are watching that piece or saw that that if that goes through the mornings time here in Maine then
056our number of days after 6 o00 with light drastically increases but also our morning times with less light SL uh after seven decreases okay so our our days are going to kind of go up not down um if that passes I really like that idea of being able to say okay I'm not going to have my kid waiting out in the dark I know it's four minutes away um I think it's a great Customer Service Tool I think it's a great routing tool I think as we look at substitutes who will be driving buses and to be able to have turn BYT directions of a route it is the more buses that we add to this we can get a price where it's about $700 a year a bus that comes with the technology um
057we're at under $20,000 I think this is a pretty darn good program for us to look into um because if you think of operationally where are the most difficult challenges sometimes with how we service the community and that can be transportation I have a silly question is there any kind of grant funding or any kind of that kind of stuff out there for things like this in the universe so we've got a call into um the doe that we haven't heard back from yet um um because they have supported versatrans as a kind of a state um transportation system um and I want to try to ask them they consider alternatives um may not happen the first year may happen after they look at that piece um there's just a lot of different features that
058we've set set back set with that you know are exciting to me the fact that you know any of our trips that are let's say an athletic trip or we send kids to a robotics competition that's in Bangor if you use the the program 100% you have a situation where you're a parent and you're following that bus trip back from Bangor on a Saturday for you know when you're not sitting in school waiting or texting like you know where it is um show you upcoming trips so it could help with a scheduling um working with a company one of the features it doesn't necessarily have is all the fields that we'd like to have for billing um but they're very open to they're they're not working a lot in the state of Maine um and
059they're very open and seem to be a very flexible company to say okay what do you really really need um the other piece that I find that's amazing with it is being able to say like let's say Jeff calls me and says hey I'm worried about the safety at my bus stop you know whatever we can immediately pull up that drop off and go directly to street view on on on Google Earth so that you know you can say oh yeah that makes sense that Jeff there's a hill that you can see and it doesn't make sense for his kid to be you know picked up at the bottom of the hill we want to back it up a little bit those are things that boy is very integrated take some time I'm sure obviously
060to maximize all the usage like any of the programs do but it's quick and it's it seems pretty good and that would be something I'd like to bring forward to say this makes a lot of sense for us is that a recurring cost you're over here yep have you gotten any feedback from Transportation staff or so I met with uh Mike and genie on that and we've gone through a couple of those and you know I think like with any program you're a little overwhelmed at first when you look at it and there's all the things and questions that jeie would have about what she's used to using that's where a lot of the billing questions came in um this is definitely a situation where you got to put some time into building it right
061also building it right through our student information system to make sure that those those uh two programs are talking to each other all the time um so you know like this hasn't see with changing things over I just see this as very um public facing and and what we have right now isn't very you know there's none of that public facing piece the ability you know what I think while there's a lot of work that gets put in over the summertime to be able to use one program and if you know a parent registers on that and to be able to push out a message to all kids on that bus immediately that says bus 10 is delayed by 10 minutes the amount of man hours that that creates for our secretaries and Genie on
062those types of calls especially when you think of like you know we all we all know that the first week of Transportation at the beginning of the year is a no matter what it's going to be challenging because you've got new prek kids you've got kindergarten kids the bus routs the you're adjusting the traffic patterns in t in town and just to be able to push that that push notification out seems like just so ideal to me um and then there won't be the need for one parent to get the call put it on Facebook before the next parent gets the call or the ability like right now we have to go to you know you're looking at the bus system un phones and now you're over here on that our instant alert system it
063just takes so much time to enter those messages that by the time you send out that communication and it takes seven or eight minutes to build it the bus is already two minutes away for a 10minute delay and you've had 40 phone calls that to me is just if you used effectively that would be that would be worth it's Wai and cold right there no I think it's pretty cool I think we should consider it that's just my thought knowing as a parent when I put my kid on the bus I had a independent tracker so I could keep track of her on my phone as she goes throughout the bus so it'd be nice if I think it'd be super user friendly for parents especially new parents coming into the district so that might
064be something worth definitely looking at yeah I was you know I am a parent of a young kid and you know I understand that pieces and you know there's the days you're screaming out of work to make sure you hit the bus stop and you know sometimes you get there and you're like oh did it go already I missed it you know I would know if you're a parent and you're going to be five minutes late for that bus stop you're going to know immediately whether you're going to make it or not um so I just think it's just safer all around and you know looking at a price that's around $20,000 to be public facient on things like that if we can get the doe to buy into some of those you know because
065they buy some of those we got to push them to understand this and again might not happen year one but if there's a lot of users who start doing it and they might say well make a choice we can offer two up so question around the around the licensing and all that is there a cap on the number of people that or is there like a scale of how many people out in the world can be using this app that changes the cost so the more buses I I can add to this uh if I can purchase this uh with both districts we will drop our price um and kind of I think that we've also negotiated a situation that if we're one of the ear ear adopters and I can work on bringing other
066groups into the contract we can continue to take it lower so from an initial standpoint a 100 parents signed up to use the app doesn't cost us any more or less than a thousand parents correct it's all that that price is there's no additional on that piece what is the uh cost for it right straight out right now is you said 20,000 about 20 20,000 we've got to look at a little bit and that's why getting some information because I think that we would want to also make sure this is on our special education Transportation Vans for some of our other District runs um that that piece the other piece that you know I I often wonder when I look at transportation is that if we can get the system to add stops to the
067this route is very quick and easy you know it's kind of like pinpoint here and it's like just shoots the route out for you what I always have wondered is when you look at uh industrial park if you're on Industrial Park Road at about between 2:30 3 o' you will see about seven or eight different transport School departments run through that section with vans and I've always been fascinated by saying okay if you had the information and you had really good routing program could you reduce or share share some of those rides if appropriate and I know that jeie and Audrey have been talking because it makes zero sense to take a ban from bord or Dayton and drive to X say Morrison Center and then also have one going from Sako if you could
068make it work like those are places where we could find efficiencies uh very easily and kind of being able to you know if you had people who again if it's not cumbersome and you have the ability to share information then it helps with those greater collaborations of saying oh yeah this does work or maybe I only need to get to the parking ride and then we can run something from the park and ride to wherever and share that cost um those would be things that we'd be looking for so I think it's really important you know again as well if you're a parent who has um specialized transportation for your kiddo coming from Portland down having the ability to know you know whether it's on a snow day or or you know a day where
069it's tough travel you're going to know where that that route is and a parent would only have access to that they assigned kiddo I just see no drawbacks on this one other than implementation they're always hard how is the bord committee feeling about this because I'm assuming you're presenting it to them as well yeah we're we're going to go ahead okay and do you have a time frame of when you plan on doing it over there we are we are planning to start in the fall okay um so I think we can probably all agree that we're on board with it right um yeah I would like to I would like to have numbers um with the two districts put together Y and I I think it's definitely beneficial to get their surroundings put in
070yeah I'm I'm hoping that we can gain momentum people like the product and then you can kind of push it out suppliers like volume makes sense give me one question on the routing side of it um do they and don't expect you to know the question but uh the answer but um is the routing is it just optimizing the distance or do they uh take in there's a program called street lights which is like a realtime traffic that uses Bluetooth from phones do they fold that into that routing as well do you know or I mean again so from my I wouldn't have the answer to that piece but from what I see this runs very much off like your off like a Google Google mapping system which would do that for you seems very
071integrated that way um even like the the the search piece like if I'm building route from Soco Middle School to Bonnie Eagle Middle School you know how like when you're typing the addresses it almost comes up like when I type Bonnie Eagle it's almost like that Google piece so I'm saying that my is that it's building in all of those layers through that I'd have to ask that specifically yeah yeah it's just this one's pretty flexible these are um the the company is uh very much uh a team of of newer age digital natives that have built this um looks good with um going back to the data that we're going to be handing over to make that happen where what are the I'm assuming that they're they're used to working with school department and
072school age children and yeah they've got privacy and all they work with School departments uh Massachusetts New York New Hampshire that area um they've got plenty of them on board and again we would have that system and it just be our our routing system talking to our student information system locally okay any other items that that kind of through the board that we've been through that we haven't talked about or you want to talk about so we're prepared for next discussion on Wednesday night did is that going to also include the the cap piece because there's the Ada discussion for the the um restrooms so is your plan to talk about that too or so you you guys will have an agenda item for revolving Renovations and so my recommendation to you guys is going
073to approve all revolving renovation projects so that we can move ahead with um the question on the ballot you don't you have some time before you have to like you can vote to do it and then not do a project and it just lowers your your your loan balance I think that we need to have that discussion once we know a little bit more about what we're going to be into for a school so we're probably going to know that more by that October November time or well before that for it to get on if if we can get on this ballot so we've got some time to have that discussion but it would be all inclusive initially so we would vote to make sure that it was in the package and then make those
074once we you know again if the decision is to rehab Fairfield school as part of the the pro then that would be like yeah let makes sense to do that on that if it's not then it might not be it makes as much sense right so just to clarify because I think I know what why you're asking the question th those decisions around that funding is decoupled from this budget it's like we don't have to make decisions for that in order to affect the number that we're going to go to the council with we will go we will go with the full number of we will go with the maximum but you may not access all of that so that full number of I think the payment is say $75,000 a year for the for
075the total piece that would be in that because the public has to vote on that number whether you borrow the 75,000 the pay payment up to 75 might be a different story if that makes sense it's hard of does so the number that we're talking about so from the ballot standpoint these are two completely different decisions bot questions so so no you will have one ballot question for all revolving Renovations funds and one for this budget that's and one for this budget but the payment for that Bond Fund is in the budget at the full amount so you'll vote at the full amount and then once we decide what the school is we we should do the doors over at Fairfield anyway obviously we'd be doing the doors and the uh HVAC project at the
076middle school the only piece would be the ada8 piece and off the top of my head it's 300,000 I should say you may wait to to not start that project until we have a full decision on what the plan is for our elementary buildings you don't have to complete those projects until September of 23 which most of the work won't the work wouldn't even be done this summer anyway because the time's not there to set it up you'd be doing everything the next summer and you just would let's say either opt in or opt out and if you opted out you just wouldn't be borrowing as much money would we ultimately change so just following all the way through so we go with this budget with the full amount that goes through to June yep
077gets you know gets approved yep we then have a have one for the bond to cover this yep and I guess the question that I have is if that number changes does that Bond question change or is it still the full amount it's still the full amount until you don't accept something and all we would do is adjust our payments in other years so an example would be is that we had some prior to going out for covid in bford we were awarded a couple of um revolving renovation funds actually we were on Ada and two weeks later we went out of school for the rest of the year couldn't have anybody in our buildings got back in the fall and everyone was kind of operating like okay you don't bring guests into your buildings
078and do those pieces so we had a couple of projects that we just didn't do even though we had the opportunity to and just borrowed less and the main Bond Bank just work with you because by the time the 18 months was up we had no ability to do that the other thing that worked in in those S against us is that when we were doing applications in 2019 building projects were at one amount and then 2021 come and it wasn't even close and we were like okay no we we go back to the drawing board so I mean that could happen here up or down for us in any of these projects is we could get to a point where we're putting forward what we have estimated and then when bids come back anything
079that's above that amount that's approved would have to be a local decision so you may have a you may have a decision here Kevin where you where the um door projects let's say it comes in $10,000 more than what was allocated you'd have to make a decision locally are you going to do that or not um and so you would have that you might and you might decide not to do the Ada stuff and then you'd have money at least built in to cover some of those costs right so to summarize from what we've been through so for Wednesday night we should get some numbers and some details for bus right some numbers and some details for what maintenance position change would look like same is true for prek yep and SMS painting and Furniture
080I miss anything painting and Furniture would be pretty global so something that bothered me during the tour was the uh the floors the floors are very bad at SMS and obviously that's not something that we're going to be able to tackle during this budget but I didn't know if maybe it'd be a good idea to like set aside some money to you know in this budget to help us in the future budgets I didn't know how people felt about that but I figured I'd mention it I I think it's one of those global SMS things anyway that it's it's part of the you know there's deferred maintenance that's probably affected the floors as well over time um but I mean we were having that conversation out on the you know out on the sidewalk afterwards
081and I think one of the questions that I know you raised was well we're going to bring in a whole bunch of desks and tables that are brand new and if we were to set money aside and do stuff with the floors we're you know going to probably have to do some of it again because we're going to bang them all up in the process of doing some of that stuff so but I I do agree that there's definitely some pent up need for a lot of that stuff floors is one thing walls is another ceiling tiles I mean there's a multitude of things that that really do need to be addressed I think that once I think once if we're lucky enough to get an amount in and start with one project then it's
082easier to start talking about the next year say okay there's there how much would we need right and I that was depending on the furniture and the painting and I you know if it comes in a lot higher I don't know it was just a suggestion I mean rather than having to tackle it all because we don't know what's actually going to happen in the next couple of budgets you know we could get hit with a curveball but if we tucked away like $50,000 towards it I didn't know we had that wiggle room or if we felt comfortable with that but I mean to me I'd rather prepare for something that I would like to do than just try and deal with it when it gets there I think the other piece that you guys
083have to remember is that last year you guys were able to put a half million dollars into a roof that's sitting in the budget from last year and we're going to do a chunk of that this summer and then we're going to do we've got another half million dollars in this budget to handle roof and the next section of the roof and to offset some of those um cost for revolving Renovations another cycle you're going to be done with the roof and then you have that amount of money in there that hopefully could then coincide with some of the desk pieces some of the other pieces and say okay now that we have this like plan of a half million dollars in in here how do we cycle through that roof and start attacking some
084of those other issues um in addition you know as we make decisions in three years about where prek is as part of the school project we also have to remember that you have a fairly substantial lease payment that's part of that prek thing and you will make some decisions as a community so there may be some pockets of funds over time that don't necessarily raise the budget that we can see in the next three or five years that we could kind of time this out and and take some significant chunks of things away I also you know as I talked about as as we get to the end of this year and seeing what we have left for carryover in other pieces that may be an opportunity for us to plan by using some of
085that stuff because like one of the pieces we will want to be careful about is let's say you have a high level of carryover this year and in this budget I think you've got 200 and something thousand dollars in carryover which in the past we've kind of been zero or negative so we've got to come back with that number not to create a Cliff let's say we have $700,000 in carryover that might be a perfect opportunity in the next budget to line up your carryover with an expense so if you looked at the difference between the 300 and the 700 maybe there's a $400,000 expense in that year that you would want to chip away at so that you're not creating some carryover cliff in the future but you're spending it when you know you
086have the revenue to offset the expense I think we can make some big strides in the next couple of years by working you know good here having our mind on it being committed to it and you know I got the sense that there were some counselors who were pretty committed to it too they were enthus I think they want to help us solve problems yeah I appreciate the answer I didn't even I I didn't even consider the 500,000 for the the roofs that makes perfect sense I get where you're coming from be nice to be able to get into a pattern and it feels like we're sort of heading that way where we do think about those things out a little farther and you know do you know a lot of the things that ended
087up as deferred maintenance that we just brushed aside that they get inserted you know in a more planful way and so that we don't end up with you know a whole chunk of stuff that has to get done all at once it'd be nice to have it in you know just be part of the way that you things are done and I obviously we need people and the funding has to be there but you know it's it would be nice to not have to have things accumulate for so much time that you then you got this giant thing you can't manage I think one of the things that we have to really be disciplined on and I know it's very difficult is that when times become tough that you don't go to that well you
088just can't do it because it only cost you more I mean I was I was having a conversation with a superintendent assistant superintendent in the area in Southern Maine uh yesterday and they called me because they knew I had done a project that they were looking at um that was fairly Apples to Apples and we had done it in 201 uh 19 and they said what did you spend in 2019 for that and I said oh give me a second let me go to the computer and I and I pulled up and we were at like say $320,000 and their quote for the similar type project was at like $675,000 and so and we kind of laugh like whoa wow what a what a pickup in just four years times and and it's all things
089that you've seen the materials just Skyrocket on and so I think that's the piece that for us is really important is that when you get into those tough times how do we become disciplined enough to be like no even if it means like keeping the money there and not doing the project and saving it because there are certain times that you might want to do that like you know again anything that involves steel or metal right now you might say let's just hold off a little bit and see if the prices come around or you know sometimes those it doesn't necessarily hurt to save and you know there are some things that a few years you know last year anything that we were running 2x4s for we didn't necessarily want to do immediately we wanted
090you know look at something else and then wire costs and everything like so like now the electrical side is through the roof or PVC pipe is through the roof now it might be time to do something that's on the list if you have a good list and a good thing to say well you know number seven makes a lot of sense right now just because of material cost versus number three we've had a we've had a list you know Mike maintains a list that he's had every year that a good list never remember it's a great list we just the problem is we always raid the funds when things get tough and we just don't end up doing them yeah Mike has a good list and he he has that piece we just got to
091be disciplined to look through that while also making sure that we keep an eyeball on where this Elementary Project's going to go so that we're not just waste you know not doing something that then's not going to be used speaking of that when is the next um construction meeting or or public hearing so would probably be a couple of weeks out we met with the doe the other day um to talk about uh we' had the site selection I think right uh site inventory was right before last school committee meeting um we had some conversations with the doe about the number of sites they may fund for us to do Vernal pool testing because that's coming up very quickly um we're thinking that once we get the full information on that the next public meeting
092would be talking more about what the three possible sites would be uh We've also set up a schedule just to try to move things along a little bit better where every two weeks Meg and I will be meeting with the school construction team with oako at the doe just to try to push some things along a little bit we're going to do kind of a every other one will be a zoom the next time they they want to have the inperson meetings they there and so I would say that probably right after April vacation we'll be looking at a big push to have that next site um site piece because we're down to about three possible sites what who how does that final selection get made for the site yeah for the site once you've
093got the three main ones and you have your public hearing so you'll have a you who raises their hand to say okay it's us okay I was just curious like if it was the site committee that comes back and says this is our number one pick and then we vote on that or is that like so the site the site selection committee the next piece of that would be kind of we've started to see the General locations I think in the last meeting they put a great slideshow together the other day which would be part of the next uh public meeting once we're down to kind of those three and say here's what it is you're waiting on some testing let's get some feedback about which site what are all the pluses and minuses I
094think the site selection committee would then take that feedback from parents public whoever that is and then they would make a recommendation to you guys as a board um to kind of lock that in and at the same time working with the program group to get them down to there a lot of decisions in a short amount of time and they're very big decisions when do you anticipate we'd be voting on something like that would it be I think that by June we probably could be maybe before then I mean okay what what would be H like I can't have you vote on on a final site until that Vernal pool testing comes back because we need to know if it's a a viable site um and that's why we're testing um up to four
095sites here because our concern is that because the window to test is the spring and our concern being being like what if two of them came back and they were like no good um we can't wait another year and do we have a time time frame on the veral pool testings yeah it's it's done in uh April and May it's the only time of year that you can do it and not to continue down the non-agenda item but um but the site selection recommendation is going to go basically hand inand with what the program committee put together right because it's those two things are are inter intertwined for square footage and things like that I want to say yes and no if because a lot of it would be site dependent on buildable Acres so
096if our sites come back that could handle everything like all of the program options there may be a situation where we come to you quicker with the site and and the reason that we would do that is because sites are just keep falling off out from under us that's our biggest concern they we will try to bring them somewhat paral somewhat at the same time um let's say we test four and there's only one that's um feasible we better uh we better jump quickly back to the facilities discussion in the um preventive maintenance the um the lead testing yep um I know well from what I've I've gathered uh the state still hasn't really put any sort of funds or anything behind the requirement for all schools to test um but is that something as
097we move forward uh not only us as a school department but around the state can be pressuring at in Augusta that they need to put money behind this because now we may or may not have a problem but we won't have any funding to yeah I mean I think that's the we did that testing during February vacation and we haven't got the results back yet because every school department is now you know doing the same everyone was looking at oh February vacation what a perfect week um the other piece that's come right behind that is there's also the radon testing by 2025 that's another one that has to be there is some grant funding that we're exploring to on the startup of that piece that they put some money behind but you know the lead
098testing results come back and we may be dealing with a challenge very immediately you know again just another one of those things that all is all important and we all should be doing it as those re requirements come down you know it's $2,500 in the budget it's not free um something we have to add up every year it's not the 25 test that's what comes after really gets there and you know we do have some buildings that are a little bit older than others um I you know one of we do have public water here which will be a little bit more helpful to us uh in this situation but you could have a drinking fountain somewhere that comes back as a you know as positive or higher than and now you're tracing that back
099it's going to be interesting to see what this all pans out to be anybody have anything else okay I think that's it for tonight okay see you Wednesday night e e e