001We'll be back. Okay. Good evening. I'll go ahead and call the school board meeting to order at 5:31 p.m. Please join us for the pledge of allegiance. One thing that I did miss was to um let the record reflect that all schoolboard members are here and that the mayor is absent due to illness. Okay. First item on the agenda is the approval of schoolboard minutes dated October 12th, 2022. Is there a motion? Mr. Mr. Chair. Yes. I move we approve the school board meeting minutes stated October 12th, 2022. Second. Motion made by Beth Johnston, seconded by Jeff by Jeff Richard. Okay. Any discussion? One quick thing that um is sort of general for the minutes. Um I did have um a email back from uh Jen regarding the times and there is no clock that's
002visible to um anyone watching. So it's difficult to say when someone has arrived. Um so from this point forward if if I'm presiding I'm going to try to make sure that if that does occur that someone is late. I'll make note of it and state it for the record just so that it's able to be recorded and I'll pass that along to the mayor as well. I think it's definitely useful information. Okay. Any other discussion? Uh I just want to say that I like the video notation like the the time the minutes on the on the videos. So if people want to find that specific thing that's a nice addition. Yeah, that's very helpful. Okay, roll call vote. School member Archie. Yes. School board member Prebble. Yes. School board member Richard. Yes. I vote yes.
003School board member Gail. Yes. School board member Truman. Yes. And school board member Johnson. Yes. And motion passes 70. Okay. There are no adjustments to the agenda this evening that I'm aware of. Okay. And there is one uh correspondence that does not appear in the packet, but it's probably one of the worstkept secrets of the day. Um, I want to pass along for anyone that hasn't heard this that um, this morning Jeremy was recognized by the main school superintendent association and the department of education commissioner Pender Mackin as the 2023 main superintendent of the year. So Jere Jeremy's been a superintendent um for us for a short time, but he's been a superintendent for over a decade in Maine. Um he serves on the main school superintendent association board as its funding committee chair and
004he's widely considered the state's foremost expert on school funding and was even tapped by the main department of education defies an equitable funding formula for ESR money's outside of the EPS formula. He currently leads three school departments and one of the state's most successful regional service centers. Under his guidance, schools reopened or stayed open during the pandemic. He's built athletic complexes and programmies. He's expanded the arts, doubled vocational programming offerings, and turned flagging academic metrics around. He's helped SACO move the school construction process forward, brought substance abuse counseling and trauma response practices into our schools. He's successfully reopened our schools. He's helped keep us in our within our budget, and he's put together a tremendous leadership team. Um, this is a great honor. Um, I'd like you to join me in congratulating Jeremy on this
005amazing recognition. But on a personal note, one quick thing that I do want to relay is it's been a pleasure to work with Jeremy. Um, I know that this honor is specifically for Jeremy, but in my personal opinion, he's one of those rare leaders who isn't really focused on who gets the credit, but is instead really really understands that the power is in the collaboration. and it's evident both with what I've seen here um and I'm sure that's probably part of the driver behind um him getting recognized by his peers. So congratulations [Applause] Jeremy. Okay. The next the next item on the agenda is the public session. If anyone wishes to address the school board, please come to the podium, state your name and address, and address the school board. Good evening. My name is
006Jennifer Viello and I live on Ocean Greens Drive. I'm here to talk to you tonight about free breakfast and lunch for the SACO students at Thornton Academy. Or rather, I should say the lack of free breakfast and lunch for these students. SACO has a contract with Thornton Academy to provide a high education, high school education for all of our SACO students. Then Academy does that. They provide high school classes, advanced placement classes. They provide an unbelievable, very successful drama and music program for our SACO students. Then Academy provides the opportunity for SOCKO students to try out for and to compete at the highest level in athletics. What Thornton Academy does not do for the SACO students is feed them. Unfortunately, our students do not receive free breakfast and lunch at TA. Two years ago when
007the pandemic happened, the federal government said in this very unprecedented time, we need to take care of our kids. It's all about our kids. And they decided to feed all of our students free breakfast and lunch. And as the pandemic continued, the free breakfast and lunch continued. But for those last two years of the pandemic, the SACO students that you are responsible for who attend Thornton Academy do not receive free breakfast and lunch. And now this year begins and it's our third year. And for this school year, instead of the federal government, the state of Maine where we choose to live, we choose to live here in Saco Maine. They have said it is very important to feed all of our kids. Our children need free breakfast and lunch. This is not about a contract
008with Thornton Academy. That contract was agreed upon a few years ago. This is about a pandemic. It's about economic hardship and it's about food insecurity. That's what it's about. It's about every SOCO student having the opportunity to have a free breakfast and lunch every day to have a variety of choices for hot and cold meals, fresh fruit, fresh vegetables every day. And I believe it is the responsibility of SACO to find a way to make this work as you are responsible for the students. I know that when you come here and share a concern, you should probably share at least one idea. And so I thought, how can we find a way to make this work? Because it is going to be about money. Unfortunately, it's not about money for the state of Maine. It's
009not about money for the federal government, but it will be here in SACO. And so if we need to find a way to work something out, maybe we can use our local businesses because I think if Starbucks and Aroma Joe's and Dunkin Donuts showed up with a food truck in front of Thornton Academy and we worked a plan and the SACO students left that cafeteria and went outside and spent their money somewhere else or spent the SACO money somewhere else or did something different, more economical for your families here in SACO like mine, that would be great because if something does not change. What is incumbent upon the school board is to talk to the middle school principal because you need to educate those eighth grade parents to start working on their budget now because
010they need to know free breakfast and lunch is not provided TA. They've had it for three years of middle school and their family budget as we all know when we all read the main Sunday telegram with the front page about the food store. It is it is very important that we know our families are having tough times and so the middle school students are used to that and they're used to that wide variety and choice and they deserve it and so don't our students at TA. Thank you for your time. Anyone else wishing to address the school board? Okay, I'll go ahead and close the public session and that brings us to the superintendent report. All right, good evening everybody and uh first thank you uh Kevin for the kind words. Uh I'd be remiss
011in saying that the job of the superintendent uh is first and foremost can be a very difficult job but it can be very easy when you work with great people like I do. uh whether that be in all departments to the administrative staff. Uh I have the pleasure every day of coming in to work. They probably have less of a pleasure having me come to work. Uh but we get to come in and we get to uh collaborate, solve problems, try to do our best for uh each of the communities that we serve. And the other big part of that is quality school committees and elected municipal officials. And uh over my uh 11 years in Bford and now I I forget how many months. I think we're out of the month stage here. Um
012but year and a half time here, I've been very blessed and in Dayton for eight years to work with high quality elected officials and school committee members that understand um what it takes to move districts forward. So I've been very fortunate in throughout my career and in the positions I serve. So I thank you very much for that. All right, let's talk all things construction projects. Um, so as after our vote last week on moving forward on the CLA parcels, uh, a couple of things that are working through now is that we are beginning to to start our conversations about the exciting pieces about classrooms, programs, how does this lay out, how do we pull those together? Uh and that is a process that will become more public as we move forward. Um we've connected
013I've connected with Drummond Woodsome about the starting of the uh purchase and an option to purchase the land just kind of starting that contract piece so that we can move forward. I've connected with two diff district uh different appraisal companies to get quotes so that they can begin their process with the hope that we would have an idea on land appraisals by the middle uh to end of December. Last week, Meg and I and Oakpoint, we met with the team at the DOE to kind of update and begin thinking about what are the steps that we need to take in order to hit the uh ballot for next November. And we have a ton of work to do. Um, and a lot of that is because we really need to be ready to to have
014something prepared for the state board by July so that we can hit the milestones uh in timing to get on the agenda. Um, as we talked about with Bill Stockmire that night, that process is a little bit longer here. So, we've got a lot of to do between now and then. Um, I know that several of you are interested about that next step on site selection around straw pole and we can anticipate that timing being sometime in January. Our hope is to get to the state board during the month of February. On Monday morning, we will meet with our transportation consultants to start the process of the transportation study. in wetland study has uh been completed and we have preliminaries back and the environmental piece um is well underway. Um, in the agenda tonight, you
015know that there is a transportation to talk about transportation and for the public, anyone that's wa watching, we are looking for drivers, van drivers. Um, we are working hard to try to acquire vans andor minibuses and all of those things that supply chains makes it uh difficult. Um, but if you're interested, please reach out and apply. Um as we talk about some of the financial things as we begin our budget process and yes our principles have started the budget process already. Um a little bit of news around uh valuation and the EPS formula has come our way. the average state increase in property valuation was 6% and SACO we were at 7% and so that puts us on the wrong side of the state average. Um 1 percentage point is not going to you know
016totally ruin things but it will make things more and more challenging. Um other pieces of the subsidy um that we'll learn much more about is that the commissioner and the governor had the ability to make some changes to the funding formula last year and and and the two main places were in student staff ratios and in our weighted counts for disadvantaged. Those two areas will be going back to the preandemic um levels of 17 to1 ratio and a weighted count for disadvantage of 0.15 um which is different than the 0.2. So when you think about it a quarter of funding towards the disadvantage piece will be shifted out of that. Now what they have done is they are looking at increasing the salary matrix which makes up on page one of the staff staff salaries
017uh and making that minimum on the matrix to equal the $40,000 uh that is the min minimum teacher salary. So that will drive some funds in in those pieces. Additionally they will be updating the percentages on benefits on the front page to be more realistic costs. But there will be a lot of work um for us to be uh doing with the DOE, looking at how they impact and advocating for more funds for our students um throughout all of our communities in Maine. In the next in the upcoming weeks, fall parent teacher conferences will begin. So, if you have not made that appointment with your um child's teacher, please reach out uh and make sure that you sign up uh as that will happen in the next coming weeks. You also in our packet, we
018will have um we'll talk a little bit about the expenditures uh for the new neighbors and kind of the impacts on our budget. Um, but we did learn today that um 52 h uh permanent housing um options were opening up in South Portland. And so this could create a situation where families who have moved from South Portland may be moving back to permanent house housing which will then have other openings and create some other changes for us. Um but that is something that we will need to keep our eye on. Any questions? Any questions for the superintendent? Okay, seeing none, that moves us on to the chair's report. And I I don't have anything additional this evening. Um the next item is staff reports, which there are links to all of the s'mores in uh
019in the agenda. Um does anyone have any questions related to those that either Jeremy or one of the administrators could answer? Okay. Right. Moving on. Uh board subcommittees, the next strategic meeting is on the 9th of November at 5:30. There was a finance meeting earlier this evening that was held here. Um and that is it for scheduled meetings. There is no old business. And the first item under new business is new hires which has a a memo in the packet and I don't believe there's any change that would require action. Correct. Any questions regarding the hiring memo? Okay, that moves us on to the next item, which is resignations. Uh, similar situation that's in the packet. Uh, there was no action that I noticed in there. Questions from the board? Okay, moving on to the
020enrollment update. Okay. I I have the TA tuition piece. Kevin, is that what Okay, there was the enrollment update was the next item, which was a different It looks like that was removed. Yeah. On the public agenda, but not on ours. Correct. We removed that on the public agenda because um we had some changes last week and we are trying to give you a final number on the certification which we have to do on Friday. Um so things have changed slightly on that. So if we could jump to um item D item D. Y so that's the TA tuition and special education preliminary estimates. Correct. And so this is justformational only. Um obviously as you know every single year uh when we get to closer in December we get our final tuition um amounts uh
021through MAT but where we stand today um is we should be under budgeted by $217,000 on tuition. Um this includes um the enrollments of our new neighbors. Um and on the special education budget side um at TA it looks like we would have 211,000. Uh we'd be overbudgeted by that much. So we have a a little bit of a a softness there that we can handle some of the changes. This is where part of uh some of our ability to pay for the costs for our new neighbors that were not budgeted uh will come from. Questions? Seeing no questions. All right. No questions. Moving on to the new neighbors budget expenditure item. Okay. Um, at the first part of the memo, you can see where our enrollments are throughout the school district. Uh, and like
022I said, this was locked in last Friday, but certainly is a situation that the new news about um, permanent housing in South Portland and knowing that some of our families will be interested andor will qualify for that will certainly change things um, over the next couple of weeks. Um, as we looked at the budgetary impacts, um, you know, initially we were worried about what those funds would look like. Would we have the ability to cover those costs? Would we have to have, you know, special considerations throughout the process? And it appears that we'll be able to through some of the savings uh, in the regular budget and with some of our federal ESSER funds be able to cover some of these costs as we uh, move throughout. Um, we're looking at a possible need for
023around $577,000 of incoming uh money to offset the expenses. And we have kind of looked at $200,000 in tuition savings, $177,000 in kind of employment savings. Um, that's not necessarily from a loss of any positions. is more from the fact that retirements that you know when we put a budgeted salary in in uh you know December of last year and then retirements and people's left there's always a flex in salary, health insurance, some of those pieces. So you have some uh savings throughout. There is going to be a hardship adjustment uh for the 279 that we will be able to apply for after the October one enrollments have been finalized by the state. there is a half a million dollar pot that will be available for districts who have seen a large influx of newcomers.
024Um certainly we will be in competing for those funds with some of the other major um school departments who have seen much more growth than we have. Um but I'm hopeful that we will be able to pull 50,000 from that. We received 66,000 of additional state subsidy in round one of a specialized grant that they put out this year to help school departments with ELLL and homeless counts. Uh and after the October one counts, we are expecting um another grant that will go out and I'm hopeful that we because our population has increased significantly here um that at least $84,000 will be able to come in that way to help offset some of those. On the bottom piece of the memo, you will see where the expenditures are at or the anticipated expenditures throughout. Obviously
025knowing that transportation um is a big one and part of that transportation number is hopefully um the purchasing of some additional smaller vehicles andor vans. Um that will help free up some of our bus runs to have people uh available as that added stop is there. And then certainly translation services um will be high throughout the year. Hoping that that number will be 40,000 um or less, but as you can see, it's been pretty heavy usage so far. Um so overall, I feel like we'll be able to handle this within our budget or with the SR funds um that we have. And so I will need to continue to update you throughout the year. We certainly will have additional student needs uh throughout the school year that will arise that we will need to be
026responsive to. Um but this is where we are today. Any questions for the superintendent? I have just a quick one. The hardship adjustment. So that is something that is you can't apply for it. they finalized numbers or you can apply for it and they don't make any decisions until after they finalized. So I cannot apply for until numbers are finalized. Uh obviously we know that we've seen an increase in our population by more than 10%. Um but that that trigger has to be done which means that we have to have a finalized student count at the state level and then they have to kind of okay the opening of that process. Is that for all school districts or just for any district that would apply? It would be any district that exceeds the 10% growth
027area. Um and how those determinations are made is something uh this is new um this year because there wasn't money in the budget prior to this. Uh in the state budget they used to have a million dollars that was available for highcost um special education kind of outliers for districts. Um but one of the challenges that uh in the past is that you also had to have an increased cost of 10%. Um, and so in a larger district like ours, that would be tougher to get, but they're they're going to be talking about student counts in this situation. So, we should be able to apply for that. Thank you. Right. Seeing no other questions, moving on to the transportation plan. That's item F. Okay. So, we all know that nationally we continue to have a
028bus driver shortage. Um, and we are trying to be as creative as we possibly can because as we see, you know, just the people who call out sick in a given day or the shortage in staff that we have, um, we're really trying to think about how we serve our families um, the best that we can while creating the least amount of change on a daily situation. Um, no family wants to get a phone call in the morning time and have a change impact 15 to 2 thou 1500 to 2,000 students. And so we've been working really hard to figure out, okay, what does that plan look like? What are the resources that we have? What are the resources that we need um in order to do that? And we put together a plan um
029with the first piece would be um we currently have two of our two staff members who serve our Rundle students that are transported to Thornton Academy. And as the plan uh outlines here, it would be pulling back on one of those staff members. And it's actually a position that's open right now. So it's not like we're pulling back and adding, it's kind of open. Um, and by doing that, um, it would allow us to serve some of our other routes on a day-to-day basis because I think one of the things that we're need to be thought planful of is that based off the side of our staff and the frequency of absences, you know, just driving a bus and illness, we need to do our best to have kind of a floating sub available for
030those runs instead of programming for runs um, and then making that change every morning. Uh in this scenario, we had proposed having kind of 8 to 12 designated group stops, but in conversations with TA, we're hoping that we will have the ability to keep one of the bus runs the same and that they will be able to supplement some of the transportation support for those families uh on the smaller bus runs. we felt like that would serve the best in in our case that it doesn't matter to us if if we're eight eight stops or doing a run and TA picks up the other pieces. It's still one bus driver and so certainly can be very flexible with that. Um the other options that we're we're looking at is as I talked about purchasing a
031mini bus andor vans um to think about how we can get staff members to help us with some of our specialized transportation um and having the ability to free up a CDL driver um that again could be a spare pickup uh you know a bus run when someone calls out. Um, that seems like a better alternative than trying to reroute buses every single morning, every time somebody's out. We need more spare bus drivers. So, if you are watching at home, we will train you. We will help you get a license. Doesn't have to be every day. We would be we could use help two days a week. We could use help three days a week. Sports trips, all of those pieces. if someone was interested, um, we really would be in would be willing to
032help train and and go through those pieces. So, a purchase of smaller vehicles to help with transportation, and this would be drivers that don't require a CDL license. And then plan C is on those really bad days, um, when we don't have enough, um, drivers to cover the runs. And right now we've been kind of um taking an approach that um you know we try to pull everything together and jockey a lot of bus runs and I think that creates a lot of confusion for parents and so what we are proposing is that you know as we gave an example that if bus 758 is one that we can't cover for the day that we would run our regular routes at the regular time and not disrupt those families, send a message just to the
033families of bus 758, hoping that parents and community and neighbors can bring kids to school on time. And then after the high school and elementary runs, you know, target a large group of our buses onto that runs to pick up kids um in a fashion that is similar to say, hey, these streets would be picked up by this bus number and this would be the time that we could expect that. and to be able to communicate that to families so that they know and then have that same process happen at the end of the day, which again is a loss of instructional time. Um, but I feel that it's better to address one situation at a time versus trying to navigate the changes for, you know, 1500 students. That just seems unfair to families. Um,
034so we're looking to put that piece in play. Um, we've been very, very fortunate that Jeanie and her staff have worked so hard to try to make this work, but we can't continue to do this every single day without a real plan of attack and clear like hand off the sheet to know what's going to happen. Um, and so that's what we're working on now. uh I think that we felt like making sure that we communicated the steps that we would be proposing and planning to move forward so that it's very clear what choices we'd be making. Um you know as an example this week we were short uh drivers and our solution this week was Mr. Mers came to Bford he grabbed a van and Mr. Mir was transporting students from the hotel in
035the morning time. That's where we were this week. Obviously, we cannot continue with that approach um because we like to see Mr. Mirs at bus drop off in the morning time. Um but we're kind of in that situation where right now we are um doing everything we can to hold it together and we need to have a very systematic approach to trying to communicate to families having a process in place. So, if I know what bus number it is, we're not sending um you know, just this mass message to every family, which causes confusion. But, you know, Sarah, if it's your if it's your child, I want to target just those families so that we're dealing with a smaller group and and less questions. So, um these are the next steps and I'd entertain any
036questions that we have about our plan moving forward. school and margin. I was just curious about plan B. Um how many buses are we looking to get and what would the what routes would those possibly relieve? So, I think one of that is um again, we're looking at some of our specialized transportation options. And again, a lot of it is just about having flexibility on the given morning to to shuffle things around and having the resources to to pick up kids. Um, I think that we would look at is there a way to pull apart some of our lighter bus runs, um, and maybe combine some things so that you could then have another CDL driver available to pick up a route when somebody is out. Um, we have a lead on a possible purchase
037of a minibus um, that came on the table this week that we'll know hopefully in a week to 10 days time. I know that we've been corresponding about vans. Um, but it's hard with those high mileages and high prices to to jump on those without a lot of due diligence. Um, and so we're looking at putting every option on the table because I don't think that CDL drivers are necessarily um, you know, they're just that's been hard for districts across the country and um, we're no different than those. So, we have to look at different flexible options to try to respond um to these situations. What's the uh capacity on the mini bus that you're looking at? So, anything under 15 passengers is able to and 26,000 lbs is able to drive a rail. So,
038that's what we're looking at. Anything under those numbers. Okay. I have a related question. Um I'm I'm sure this has been asked already. Is it is there any likelihood that um the town of Arundle has a bus and or drivers that might be available to help with some of this? So um those kiddos uh in a rund have school choice um outside of RSU 21. So when they exercise uh school choice whether that's attending Thoron Academy or some of those come to Baford transportation is then kind of on those families. We have had an arrangement with Thornton Academy where they have paid the costs of these services uh back to us but it's you know what the hard part is it's like when you don't have the ability to perform those services um we can't
039do that. So, um I know that TA has um access to some of the smaller vans uh and they're going to be looking at their staff to see if they can provide some of that transportation uh for those students. And you know, I was able to be very honest with Rainey and this was not even a conversation that happened this we started this conversation last year of saying um you know we're going to do what we can but it may be hard to continue this long term or we're going to have to look at something different um because driver availability is certainly a problem. I suspect that as we move through the spring and um if we continue to be in this same scenario, whether it's here or anywhere in the state, I think that
040school districts are going to have to be really mindful of um their policies and what those policies say and begin to think about every out ofthe-box solution um that's there. Because while it would be great to say, "Parents, help us out." I know that Mrs. Noble and her staff and Jeff and his staff don't exactly want more cars in the drop off line each and every morning. Um because that just creates a different strain in a different place. Um kind of in finance committee we kind of joked about the incentivize incentivizing parents, you know, to drive their kids. And really what we need to be incentivizing for families and pleading with them is that if you have a car that can take three children or four children instead of one, work with your neighbors. Help
041them out. That will help us out. Um, and so we need to kind of continue to brainstorm those types of ideas and see where we can get um in the future. [Music] Any further questions? Okay, Mr. Chair. Yes. Um, just wanted a little piece of clarification. obviously in a very complicated matter and I appreciate the fact that everyone's been working really hard to solve this and I think it sounds having listened to Mr. superintendent at finance first and now here again I feel like all these pieces may come together and provide the answers that we need but um just one please clarification in plan C where um a bus driver is unable to fulfill their run that is the the plan that we were talking about putting into place with moving the times of arrival
042and departure would only be in the event that a particular dress bus driver was not able to do that run that day. Is that right? This is like the the default plan in the event that that particular day it's not going to work for the Okay, correct. That's a particular day, particular solution uh for that problem that happens that day. And it's really about making sure that people are aware so that we can build a communication strategy for that. Build a plan of attack of how that would happen. Begin to give Genie kind of the go-ahhead to pull apart. So, if it is bus 7 uh 758 that is available, we need to be able to communicate to families to be at your bus stop at this time and expect this bus to come there
043because what we don't want is we certainly won't send one bus to do that route because we want to move it as quickly as possible. We may send three or four to do that route. Um, and three or four to do the middle school part of it. Um, because we're certainly not going to put kindergarteners and high school students on the same bus together. But if you are a kindergarten family, you may see a couple of buses drive by. And we need to be able to communicate to a driver, yes, it's going to be 706 at these stops and 7:14 at these stops and so forth. Um, and that's the next piece that we have to be able to build out or maybe Mr. Mir's in a van. Any additional questions? Okay, moving on to
044item G, which is first reading of policies. There are several policies that have first readings that are either modifications, some that are stricken policies, and some that are recoded. Is there a motion? Um, Mr. Chair, I after discussing this with a despite our due diligence in committee, um there were two um policies that I've already discussed with Miss Parkhurst um that have the word committee instead of board in it. And those two policies that I could find it in were ADDA and policy CCA in the organizational chart. Um, so I don't know if those are something that we can just change those two words and then still move it forward for through the first reading. Okay. When you make the motion, just make the motion with those changes. Okay. Um, I move we approve the
045first reading of policies BE DB-R be DG A DDA. uh with the change of the word committee um to replace the to replace it to say board um a d a- r dj policy cb cd CBC CBI- and uh CCA the organizational chart to also have that changed change to uh from committee to board. Motion made by Sarah Truman. Is there a second? Second. Motion made by Sarah Truman. Second by Beth Johnson. Any discussion? Um with reviewing the policy for ADDA-R, um I had some questions. Um towards the bottom of the policy, it refers to inservice training deems appropriate. I was wondering if we could have more details. Um there there's nothing else in the policy stating what training we're going to give the teachers and I don't feel like it's appropriate to be just
046giving that to them and doing it as deems necessary. I think we should have a process involved. Um, and I I'm also not a fan of excluding parents from the discussions. Um, this is just my personal opinion, but if we're allowing the parents to not be a part of the discussion and then they can later on find issues that might involve their family uh in the educational records. Um, I just feel like that's putting our administrators and teachers in bad position. Can I speak to the Um, as far as the training goes, if I if my memory serves correctly, um, it's going to be Do you remember how this went? It was going to be something that was going to be um done as needed um and some training. Correct me if I'm wrong. Do
047you want to speak on this? So, we did discuss this at policy committee and a bit of length and felt that it was appropriate given the number of organizations and the shifting landscape not to dictate in the policy what type of professional development would be appropriate. But we did have some conversations about what we already had in place with respect to the changes in this policy knowing that they had come from MSMA andor Drummond Woodsome about sharing those with the administrative team and then putting together a plan to share the policy changes with staff and then working with staff and the administrative team to determine based on those conversations with staff what would be the most appropriate PD moving forward. forward after that. So that was just a reflection of the discussion. I don't know
048if you want to add more. That was mostly just a cover us so that if for some reason there's a training out there that would be a good fit for that, we could use that. But where everything changes so often that if we specified a particular training uh that would kind of hold us to it. We don't want to put it in the policy itself. policy is just saying that we we need to do the training of some kind. Um but to specify it would just require revisions could be semiannually at that point and that's yeah defeats the purpose. I understand where you're coming from because if you don't have anything there and someone could say well I I didn't get the training you know I wasn't told about it. But I I was just
049hoping that we could get a little bit more length as to what the process would be. Um more of a blanket statement. you know, I I would just like to know how it's going to be handled. Um, and I know it's hard on a casebyase scenario as this whole policy is based on. Um, I I'm just concerned for the teachers. That's all. I think the idea was that it was going to be uh part of the professional development uh and possibly, correct me if I'm wrong, um like annual trainings. So there are certainly legal implications that are covered in annual trainings. The initial steps are to share the policy changes with staff and to do that a little bit more intentionally with this policy based on the impact to staff. And through that sharing with
050staff, we would be able to ascertain what additional training we might want to seek out in order to support staff compliance with the policy. Meg, do you have anything else to say in regards to my second statement? My response to that would be that we follow the legal guidance regarding changes in the law and that parental notification was a change in their original recommendation on this policy and I believe it was in their September changes that that parental notification piece was taken out and I feel that it it's pretty clear in the policy that that is a determination that is made in the safety and the interest of a child. It's not blanketly to not include parents in the decision. Are you referring to Title Nine? No, I'm referring to the changes in ADAA. Okay.
051ADDA. Okay. And ADD. That's one I hadn't checked yet. So, any additional discussion? I just wanted to say that I'm happy that we're having this policy because these are things that have been ongoing and the administrators have been kind of left to their own devices in this and I think this gives them a good plan um that they can follow so that they feel like they're being supported and I mean not that they're not because they can call upper management if you will um when there is an issue but I think it's helpful to have some guidance in writing for administrators to handle this. Um, so I'm happy that we're we're we're getting this on the books. Mr. Chair, I I just wanted to add that um I think that we that this policy is
052optional if I'm correct, but we were advised by legal counsel that it is something that we should have um so that we do have as Sarah said some guidelines, some things to refer to and something that's established. Um, so I do appreciate the fact that people um question whatever policy they're concerned about when we do come here. I think it's encouraging and clearly this one is a little complex. So I just want to say that I think we're trying to work through this here and now to inform as many people as we can about why we're doing what we're doing. But I do think it's good in general for people to either hear at first reading or later before we go to second reading to really look into anything that they need more clarification on.
053Thank you. Do we have any do we have any inkling as to how frequently we anticipate changes given that the the language that's in the policy says almost every other every other section that this is evolving very quickly. You know, I'm I'm my question is we're going to approve a first reading presumably this evening. we'll have a second reading and I'm just anticipating would we be expecting to see you know another one before the end of the year because things have changed or I don't believe so but I think that um leaving it as it's going to be ever evolving leaves it up for discussion with the administration with building administrators if I'm correct I was going to say we should just call Meg up here to the the last iteration of the recommendation I
054believe was 2019 and the revisions that are shown are not revisions to SACO's policy because SACO did not have this policy on the books but it is just an example of the suggested revisions to their original share of that policy so it was it was three years that doesn't mean it couldn't change sooner but I don't anticipate that it would change that quickly. Like less than a year from now, I would say is unlikely. And from a logistic standpoint, it would likely have to go through legal again. Oh yeah. To be looked at and then come to us. Mhm. Given the touchy subject this policy covers, I don't think that we'd feel comfortable covering this without legal counsel. Um, that being said, just because we're putting a policy on the books here does not mean
055that this is something that this is something that's been ongoing like and this is just to cover everybody so they know what to do. Unless there's any other discussion on on this policy, I just want to just make a quick quick note to kind of explain my no vote on one of the policies that were slated for first reading, which was the um uh the policy related to the agenda. And so the beed B-R. Um, so while I voted no in committee, I'll probably be voting yes obviously to move move forward because there's a lot of important policies included in this slate that I think should move. But I do just want to reiterate and I don't think it's any big surprise that the the the five o'clock meeting time I just don't think is
056is one that encourages a lot of public participation. And um I thank Beth and Sarah for a lot of good conversation and committee and talking talking it through. And while we didn't see eye to eye on that, adding additional public session to the 5:00 agenda, I think that adding, excuse me, frogging my throat, adding language at the bottom to indicate how people can get more involved is an important step um to continue that collaboration with the community and get folks engaged and um able to to have their views expressed. So, as it relates to that particular note that's in that policy, is the intent to treat it very similar to what we did when we were having remote meetings where um the someone who would want to make public comment who wasn't going to be
057available would submit those comments to either the superintendent, the board chair, the mayor, ETA, and that then it would be read in public. Is that was that the intent? I think the idea was to encourage people, let them know that they can write into the school board. They can also request to have their correspondence what they would have said otherwise in public session, have it read out loud by the chair um if they wanted to, but also that they can contact us at any point with any of their concerns. Um which is why that note was in there. Um Beth and I both um didn't feel that adjusting the agenda to put in multiple public sessions to have to open and close a bunch of times that may or may not be necessary. Whereas the
058mayor is at the has the discretion to add in another comment section at their will um at any point. So, I we didn't think that it was crucial to add in another public session into the general format of the agenda, if that makes sense. But that extra note at the bottom was just to reiterate, please feel free to contact us and if you want to have your comments heard publicly to request to have them read out loud. That that part is not clear. Well, I mean people can ask that. Guess I mean it was more it was more to make sure that both the public has a clear understanding of how public comments will occur and and have us also know that either you know the mayor or the superintendent or you know if it's
059a council meeting the city administrator or or chair or particular schoolboard member will be reading something that was submitted as opposed to here's my comments and I've shared them with you type situation. Right. In this case, we've directed them to the chair of the school board. I guess the question that I'm raising is that encouraged to share comments with the school board chair is much different than encouraged to hand comments that you can't make in person to the school board chair to be read. Those are different in my mind. Could could we just amend the last sentences add to be read or to request to be read because there have been there have been times in the past like when we were remote doing our meetings remotely that people would submit comments and they would
060say clearly in their I don't want this read or can you please read this? Sure. So yeah, it was sort of fluid at the time. There was no real policy around having those things done. But if we're going to make a point of saying we encourage you to, you know, share your comments, that it's clear that if you're sharing your comments, you are sharing them with either the intent to say I don't want them shared publicly or please share them publicly. I think we need to be more clear about that just so that everybody understands what happens when something gets submitted to us like that. Can we include language in there as part of the I I think you also should just make sure this matches up with your public comment rules on the city
061side before you take a step to make sure that you're following those pieces. Any further comments? All right, that was great discussion. Roll call vote. School board member Archie. No. School board member Prebble. Yes. School board member Richard. Yes. Yes. I vote yes. School board member Gail. Yes. School board member Truman. Yes. And school board member Johnston. Yes. The motion passes 61. That brings us to other information. I don't believe we have any this evening. There's no executive session this evening. And that brings us to adjournment. Is there a motion to adjurnn? So moved. Motion made by Sarah Truman. Second. Seconded by Jeff Richard. Okay. Any discussion? A 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. School
062board member Truman? Yes. And school board member Johnson? Yes. Motion passes 70. We are adjourned at 6:29 p.m. Thank you and have a good evening.