001Greetings and welcome to the SACO school board meeting for uh Wednesday, November 9th, 2022. Call this meeting to order at 7:04 p.m. Let the record reflect that all school board members are present with the exception of school board member Le Fortune who has been excused. I'd like to invite you all to join us in the pledge of allegiance. Thank you very much. Moves assigned to item three of the agenda and that is approval of the school board meeting minutes dated October 26, 2022. Is there a motion to approve the minutes? Mr. Mayor, school board member Truman. I move we approve the school board meeting minutes dated October 26, 2022. Second. Motion's been made by school board member Truman, second by school board member Prebble. Any discussion? Roll call vote on the minutes. School board member
002Archie? Yes. School board member Prebble? Yes. School board member Richard? Yes. School board member Gale? Yes. School board member Truman? Yes. School board member Johnston? Yes. Motion passes 6. Brings us to item four, the agenda. Are there any adjustments? Seeing no one seeking adjustments, moving on to item five. Any correspondence this evening? No correspondence. Moving on to item six, public session. If there's any member of the public who would like to address the school board, please come forward and be heard. With nobody seeking recognition, moving on to item seven, and that is the superintendent report. Superintendent Ray. All right, good evening everybody. Um just a couple of items for tonight is first um our applications for electric school buses were not successful in the first round. Um those were awarded to communities that met the
003rural uh guidelines, but we are on a wait list. What a wait list for electric school buses looks like, I do not know. Um, but we will continue to apply as this is one of what will probably be five rounds as there's $5 billion available for electric school buses um over the next several years. And so we'll keep a try uh trying and and hopeful that we'll be able to add those to our fleet. uh we are working with on our transportation plan and we've had uh some luck with finding a couple of spare drivers to come in but at the same time couple of people have um to to be out uh I communicated with uh Rainey today that after uh after the Thanksgiving holiday uh we'll start the plan for one a rund
004bus uh with Thornton Academy picking up um half of the half of those runs Um, and we're hoping that we'll be able to make it through the winter without having to cancel trips. Um, reminder, no school on Friday. Uh, for any parents walk, uh, who are at home, just remember that Friday is a no school day. Um, I did want to mention that while this affects our 9 through 12 students, um, and vocational programming, we will be adding, we were awarded a grant, uh, at the vocational center, and we'll be able to add three new offerings in the coming years, uh, for students. One of those in the, uh, culinary program, hospitality program, and an athletic training program uh, will be available to students in the region. uh principles and staff have started the budget
005process. Uh that process will uh mean that they'll have that first draft of the budget to me prior to the winter vacation. Then we'll start going through line by line and hoping that by early February as a that's in statute that the DOE will be able to provide us subsidy reports. Um, as I mentioned last time, our valuation in SACO was at 7% increase in city valuation, which is 1% higher than the state average. Um, that's not necessarily where you want to be, but one percentage point u hopefully will be offset by some of our increased enrollments. Substitutes. I'm going to say it every single week. Substitute. Substitute. Substitutes. If you know anybody, if you're at any community events, we need people to talk up becoming a substitute. Our kids need you. Um that is
006one of the most uh frustrating things that we deal with right now for teachers um and for admin is just not having enough bodies uh in the school. Uh for our administrators, they end their day thinking about when they put their head on the pillow of what it's going to be like in the morning and then they wake up at 6:00 a.m. and adjust to those challenges. Um we are planning a set of videos that we are going to make to release to the public at some point uh in the near future kind of um promoting the idea of the benefits of substitutes. We will, if anybody's out there and you say, "Hey, I just got Mondays. I can do it. I'll hire you every Monday to do that." If you've got Mondays and Fridays,
007we've got a job for you for Monday and Friday. Um, we need people. Um, and so please, if you're interested, reach out to us and and we'll help you work through the process. Thank you. Thank you. Any questions for Superintendent Ray? No questions. Moving on to item eight, chair report with the chair not here, the vice chair. Richard, any anything to report? Thank you. Moving on to item nine, staff reports. There are no staff reports in the agenda. It brings us to item 10, a readout of board subcommittee meeting minutes. Excuse me. The policy and personnel committee has a next meeting on November 9th tonight at 5:30. Uh finance and infrastructure committee next meeting is November 30th at 4:30 and the curriculum committee has no meeting scheduled at this time. And Bill, can we just
008also just as a reminder knowing that that next school committee meeting is the 30th we don't have one the Wednesday before Thanksgiving which would be two weeks from now. Just mark that in your calendar. Just it'll be easy to Thank you for that reminder. That brings us to item 11, old business. There's no old business this evening. So that brings us to item 12, new business. Uh item A was new hires in your packet. There was a memorandum uh on new hires. Is there a motion? There's none needed. No motion is needed. But you see there are there's a memorandum with names and so forth of new hires. Uh with that item B also in your packet is a memorandum on resignations. Uh that does not need any any um any action at this time.
009That brings us to item 12 C, construction update, DOT meeting and land appraisals. Superintendent Ray, just updating on the U last couple of meetings that have occurred um since um two weeks ago. the Meg attended a meeting with some members of the city that were there as well. Um Oakpoint DOT staff to begin um the conversations about traffic coming in and out of the possible CLA parcels that we are looking at. Um they actually I believe they're doing it tomorrow. um intersection studies uh and test will be done just to count um the traffic flow in certain places. They had some ideas about um what could happen on route one and we are really pushing that timeline and asking them uh and working with the DOT to do as much as they can now because
010we don't want this delayed um into the spring because that would push us back. So, traffic studies have begun. Land appraisals, as you know, we've talked a lot about how there needs to be two uh land appraisals of property that we are interested in purchasing. I've solidified uh companies for both of those and we hope that by early January, we will have that report. Drummond and Woodsum has started the process to um draft uh a purchase option for the property so that we can continue to move through all of the hurdles that we need to do. And then finally, Megan and I met with the DOE the other day just to kind of we're trying to meet with them every two to three weeks just to keep them on like up to date with everything
011that's going on. Um the real next task now that we have is to look at space allocations within the schools like how much space will we get? Um looking at um all of those pieces and they have some information that they received from O Point about space allocations that they are reviewing. and then they hope to have their review done by we get an email this Saturday, November 30th, uh which will then trigger another meeting with them to discuss. So, a lot of different things happening um with the construction project. Thank you. Any questions for Superintendent Ray on the construction update? Seeing no questions. Sorry, Mr. Mayor. School board member Gail, just a um uh on the straw poll. When when was that going to be again? I'm sorry. So saw it somewhere. The the
012thought is that will be sometime hopefully in January, but all of those other pieces kind of have to get done before that. And the and the biggest one is going to be um the DOT piece behind that. That's the probably at this point that's one of the top one or two things that we need to get a lot of information on. And Meg learned a lot about turning lanes and road road diets road diets during that meeting. So she's well verssed on it. That brings us to item D. Item D is an October 1st enrollment memorandum with a historical data memorandum. Superintendent Ray. Yes. So, um, we always kind of talk enrollments and what I have for you is a snapshot of kind of the completed uh, form that goes to the state to show
013where we are enrollment wise. And I just wanted to go over that um, a little bit. And what you can see from this is it gives you a comparison from last year's October one enrollments to this year's October one enrollments. And it's kind of looking at the at the bottom section. Um what you will see if I want to kind of start on the right hand side with the last column. Um, and you'll see that our prek counts are up 66 students from last year. And you know, that corresponds nicely with the about 63 or four students that um we received from our new neighbors um overall. And if you jump to the other side though, you will see that our prek through 8 counts is where 79 79 students grew. So, um on the
014912 side, we were minus 8. Um, now one of the things that is a if it wasn't for the new neighbors, we would still be up a little bit on the prek through 8 side. But it's also important to remember that there was a lot of students who did not attend for COVID rel related purposes over the last couple years. A lot of people homeschooled and those those have come back. Um if you go to like the middle column um where you'll see econo e economic status you'll see that in that category um we have 30 students less that would have qualified for the free lunch program in that situation. So that will kind of hurt us a little bit on the subsidy sheet. You also see that there is an increase in special education
015counts up 6.38% throughout the districts and you can see that our ELLL um increase is 141%. So we know where these numbers come from. Um, I think that at the end of this, just as we look at the subsidy, student counts, knowing that you're talking student counts and property valuation, the increased student count should offset that 1% u higher valuation than the state. When you when you kind of mathematically play that out, um, this will put us in a pretty good spot, I think, uh, as we move into the 279 in the budget process based off state subsidy. Any questions for Superintendent Ray on the enrollment data? School board member Gail. Just a quick question on the the economic status counts and then on that second memo on the historical um so the is the
016driver for this the free and reduced lunch sheets that get submitted. Correct. And as you know that with all kids qualifying automatically um that's a real dis dis I want to say disincentive but you don't have that ability to say here return that form because something may be different for you. Um so that's something that a lot of school departments are experiencing um across the state. We continue to push to have discussions about because our state is one of the I think it was at three that continued over in the nation of providing free and reduced lunch for all students that that form that comes from the national school lunch program may not be the best indicator or tool for us to use in the in the future. So, superintendents have had conversations with the
017commissioner, with main school uh management about what could we do uh in order to find a different metric for poverty rates and does the the fact that Thornton Academy doesn't um participate in that hurt because the the on the historical memo there's a column for free and reduced lunch prek through 12. So does that 625 number for for 2022 through 2023? No. Does that include 9 through 12? So the Thornton Academy number will not be hurt one way or the other because what they do for students who uh for communities that tuition uh whether that be 6 through eight or 9 through 12, they look at the rate that you have and apply that same rate to that population. So you don't have any ability to increase which typically all schools see participation of returning
018those forms over time actually decrease at the high school level. Um so there's no harm in this. There's no harm by that process for us. Thank you. Any further questions? Moving on to item E, a fall NWA presentation. Good evening. Feels like not that long ago that we looked at our postcoavid data last fall and this is an opportunity to revisit those data points in context of this fall's testing as well as the winter and spring testing which we've reviewed briefly prior but uh doing a bit of a deeper dive in the fall so that we can really understand where students are. So, I apologize for repeating this, but I feel like it's incredibly important each time to kind of talk about what the assessment is and how to see it in context. The NWA
019is put out by Northwest Evaluation Association and the name of the test itself is measures of academic progress or MAP. We administer three assessments, math, reading, and language use. This year we are administering it three times. The only change in grade levels as compared to last year is language usage which was last year required by the state of Maine and this year was not required by the state of Maine. And in discussing with administrators early in the fall, we felt it was appropriate to administer that for our sixth through 8th graders so that we could really understand the trajectory of their progress, but did not find it to be as useful or valuable to test students and use that additional time for our elementary students. It is an adaptive assessment. So that means that it
020the question difficulty changes in response to student answers. It's a combination of multiplechoice, drag and drop, and fill-in test. And it's all computer-based. It's norm referenced data. So, they look at how students compare to their age and grade level peers. And that data is collected from 2015 to 2020. And then they use that normative data to apply to future years. All of the predictions about success are based on 50th percentile. So very similar to like height and weight. When you go to the doctor for your kiddo, their projection is based on what 50% of the population can or can't do. So when we talk about students reaching their growth target or their growth goal, that goal is determined from what 50% of the population can do, which is a little bit different than the kind
021of goal setting that we would do for ourselves in which you're trying to make that an achievable goal. It's mathematically based on the 50th percentile. And also those norms are not accounting for COVID. They are based on a normal year. So though we're still using those percentiles, they're not an immediate feedback of where the nation is in this test session. We're still comparing to normative data prior to CO. Couple of other things to kind of keep in mind. This is only one data point. We like to use these with classroom assessment points. Trends over time can help provide context. SACO has used this assessment in some variation with different grades since 2015. So that does make it a helpful overtime comparison. And it was adapted for use as the main state assessment in January. And
022this spring, they're going to further refine and adjust to what they're calling a through-year assessment that will still use the same platform, but may include some additional changes so that it can be used as the main state assessment, which is kind of a nice feature for us because it means that students are taking this three times a year without the added MEA testing that can take multiple hours in the spring on top of NWA. So, it's really just the NWA for standardized tests at this point. So, now we get to what I consider the fun part, which is the actual data from this fall. On this graph, you can see the percentile rank for each grade level, first through 8th grade, with the 50th percentile being right in the middle there. Our um math scores
023are in the dark blue with language use in the lightest blue and reading in the teal there. Here isn't where we necessarily see a whole lot of patterning yet because this is just that single test session that we are looking at for all grade levels and all tests given. So now we're going to uh jump into cohort growth over time and look at those historic scores for cohorts of students. So first we'll jump into reading and it is a little bit tricky to see but hopefully you can zoom in on your own screens. Really what we're looking for here is differences between that gray star which is the 50th percentile and the bar which shows SACO student achievement. So our current second graders are scoring above national average in the reading NWA map. Our third
024grade students were slightly above average last fall. There were some pretty big gaps throughout the course of the year, but we're closing that gap back to average now with their progression. Our current fourth grade is just above average now and experience some gaps uh below average over the course of last year. When we look at our current fifth grade, we see kind of a similar pattern to fourth grade with uh some lapses below average but squeaking up to just above average in this test session. For our sixth, seventh, and eighth graders, there are some similar patterns that we see here with respect to student achievement. and continuing for the most part with the exception of sixth grade and seventh grade for one test session performing above average. And it's what I kind of like to
025see as the fall to fall that we're really um making gains over that national average in a greater amount. So if you look at the fall of the year prior and the fall of the current year, we're kind of widening the gap above average between that average in SACO, which is great to see because that means that over time students are on average on the whole gaining additional skills over as compared to nationally normed peers. This kind of just shows on average all grades two through eight with that kind of center line being what percent are they above or below average. Um, our spring test session was a bit of an anomaly, but other than that test session, we kind of see that precoid pattern, the lapse, and then overall a a clearer trajectory of
026making progress again with the exception of spring. And our language use, we we don't have the same level of historical data because last year is the first year that we took that assessment. So this is just this fall's scores for sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. And you can kind of see across grade levels that nice and clear pattern of gaining over the national average as students age in grade levels. So just to kind of summarize some of the things that we saw in that data, there is a general continued pattern of recovery postcoid. Our strongest subgoal area, which you can't really tell on any of those charts, is consistently in vocabulary acquisition and use, which is a subgoal area that appears in the assessment grades three and up. The areas of weakness are really mixed
027across the grade levels. But interestingly, K2 consistently is lowest in foundational skills, which kind of speaks to the word study and the need for implementing that curriculum cohesively in our lower grades. Language use is consistently outpacing national norms for our middle school students. Some of our next steps are uh one child study in one of our buildings that's really looking at individual student data and then figuring out how to close gaps for individual students. And then our word study pilot which will help to continue to bolster those foundational reading skills and help students be able to comprehend better than in the upper grades. Next, we'll take a look at math in those kind of same visuals but with the scores for mathematics. So here you can see our current first and second grades are um
028maintaining above national average scores in this test session. And that pattern for second grade is that kind of clear spreading of the gap moving outpacing the national average which is great to see. Here you can see our current third, fourth, and fifth grade with um fifth grade particularly still performing below average postcoid. And we we could certainly entertain a lot of interesting discussions about what skill gaps there are, especially with something as wrote as mathematics. and that how that how those gaps present themselves over time may look different depending on what age or grade level was missed for students. So we have our fourth grade outpacing the national average and third and fifth grade just being slightly below that um with some of those gaps in fifth grade and third grade pretty close to getting
029to that national average. And when we look at sixth, seventh, and eighth grade, we still do see some scores below national average, but we're kind of closing that gap or pacing to be ahead of that as students progress over time. So, that is a a promising thing to see, but we certainly want to be pushing that at the middle school level over that national average as we uh continue to implement a new math program. We're hopeful that that will help address some of those issues. Here's that overtime comparison to national average, the precoid and postcoid. In math, we see that uh summer slide is pretty consistent with the national average. that national average goes down in the fall and there uh is a bigger gap in summer slide for mathematics than there is for reading.
030There is still that pattern of recovery postcoid and the areas of strength and weakness when we look at those subgoal areas do not show patterns across grade levels or test sessions which is both good news and bad news. It's frustrating when you can't really see an area to target, but it means that we're generally curricularly speaking hitting the marks that we need to hit with individual students performing in different areas. So that we really just need to be targeting individual student subgoal area weaknesses. This year we are in a full implementation of Eureka Math Squared for K5. So, we're really excited about that and that that programming being able to provide additional support for students and into our 6th through 8 full implementation of reveal math which is new to SACO and also um new
031to have all sixth through 8th grade teachers utilizing the same core resources. So next steps is our building leadership team reviewing grade level and teacher level data, academic coaches working to support teacher analysis, looking at individual student data to inform classroom supports and pull out interventions. So students that are receiving interventions and making gains may no longer need those interventions. And students that maybe aren't showing the gains we would hope might be pushed into those slots. And then uh we will be sharing the reports with parents during parent teacher conferences and if folks are unable to make those sending those home to ensure that parents have an opportunity to view those reports for their children. Thanks for taking the time to listen. Happy to answer any questions. Thank you very much. Any questions for Assistant
032Superintendent Parkerst? School board member Johnston. Thank you. Um, Meg, could you speak a little bit more because I may not have understood everything you said, but perhaps a little bit more detail on both the reading and language and also the math in terms of the areas. Well, for instance, with reading and language, the areas of weakness are mixed across grade levels. And in the case of math, you found that they weren't there was not as much variation or so the subgoal areas which I didn't go into a whole lot of detail in the graphs but just in the reporting out in reading there were some consistencies in the areas of strength of the subgoal of vocabulary being a strength across multiple grade levels and multiple test sessions. And the other two kind of components are
033that are are key ideas and details and then a more inferential comprehension. So those two aren't neither one is necessarily a weakness over time in reading, but that vocabulary stands out as a pattern of strength for students across grade levels. In math, it's pretty mixed all across the board. So different grade levels have different strengths depending on the test session which generally indicates that while individual students may be struggling with certain components or having success in per certain subgoal areas there isn't necessarily a curricular gap or whole or particular strength that's providing students kind of a leg up. I would say the vocabulary use and acquisition indicates that our curriculum is doing a good job of exposing students to a wide range of vocabulary and helping them to use that vocabulary in context given that
034pattern of strength. Thank you very much. That's helpful. Any further questions? Seeing no questions. Thank you very much. Thank you. That brings us to new business. Item F, a second reading of policies. Policy BEB-R agenda format. BEDG-m minutes add transgender student policy. ADDA-R uh transgender student policy procedure. DJ-R Administrative procedure federal procurement manual for main school units. CB school superintendent CC administrative organization CHD administration in the absence of policy CBI-E superintendent evaluation form and CCA organization chart. Is there a motion to approve the second reading of policies? Mr. Mayor, school board member Truman. I move we approve the second reading of policies BE DB-R be da Oh no, sorry. A da A da- R DJ-R CB CC HD CBI-E and CCA. Motion's been made by super, excuse me, by school board member Truman. Second. Is
035there a second? Second. Second by school board member Johnston. Uh any discussion on the second reading of policies? Just my usual thank you to uh Meg for all of her due diligence on our policies and helping us get through our agendas every every single time. So, school board member Johnston, I just like to say that we I think that our committee has worked really diligently in the last several meetings to try and thoroughly examine these policies. And um I again thank Meg for her help as well. Um I'm glad I think I stated this last time, but I'm glad for board members who don't serve on that committee to express their concerns and interest. Thank you. Any further discussion on the new second reading of policies? Roll call vote. School board member Archie. No. School
036board member Prebble? Yes. School board member Richard? Yes. School board member Gail. Yes. School board member Truman. Yes. And school board member Johnston. Yes. The motion passes 51. And that brings us to item 13. Other information. There's no other information indicated in the packet. Does anyone have anything? Okay. Moves on there. Item 14. There's no executive session tonight. So that brings us to item 15. I'll entertain a motion to adjurnn. So moved. School board member Truman. Is there a second? School board member Prebble. Any discussion on adjourning? Roll call vote. School board member Archie. Yes. School board member Prebble. Yes. School board member Richard. Yes. School board member Gail, yes. School board member Truman, yes. And school board member Johnston, yes. Motion passes 60 to adjourn at 7:40 p.m. Have a wonderful evening, everyone.