001e e e okay good evening I'll go ahead and call the school board meetings order at 7:00 please let the record reflect that the mayor is absent due to travel and Schoolboard member Truman uh is absent due to a death in the family and I would like to extend on behalf of the school board um our deepest condolence to her and her family in this very difficult time would you pleas please join us for the Pledge of Allegiance okay first item on the agenda is the approval of the Schoolboard minutes dated November 30th 2022 is there a motion Mr chair I move we approve the school board meeting minutes dated November 30th 2022 second motion made by Beth Johnson seconded by Jeff Richard any discussion okay roll call vote Schoolboard member Archie yes Schoolboard member
002Preble yes School Board member Richard yes I vote Yes Schoolboard member Gail yes School Board member Johnson yes motion carries 6 Z okay that brings us to adjustments to the agenda um I have a couple uh one is um actually not noted on the agenda we had initially planned to do uh board officer um selections this evening um but given that we are not all able to be present here tonight um I think it would be best for us to move that off to a future meeting um probably right after the holidays um it's not on the agenda but I'm making note of it because we discussed it last time um the one thing that I would like to do to the agenda is I would like to move that we take item item C
003under new business uh which is the CK Burns Lego robotics presentation and move that up to uh be right after this adjustments to the to the agenda that way we can let these kids get out of here earlier is that a second second okay so motion made by myself and second in by Beth Johnston any discussion okay roll call vote screw board member Archie yes Schoolboard member prowell yes Schoolboard member Richard yes I vote Yes School Board member Gail yes and Schoolboard member Johnston yes okay motion carries 60 all right and that brings us to the presentation so the ckb elect El ronic Mustangs went to competition on December 3rd in J Main and we were fortunate enough to bring home a trophy for our robot design what they would like to present to you
004tonight is um not so much what they do with the robots but the judging that happens behind the scenes so there is a lot more to the Lego robotics team than just running a robot these students have done an amazing amount of research they have interviewed professionals and they have created a design solution to a problem that we as citizens of the world are facing today um the they are going to share the information that they researched and they have written it as a pitch like a a cell right like to shark tank or something and so they're going to pitch their idea to you after that they are going to show you their um robots and talk to you about their robot design which is what they won the award for um I do
005also have a few of the rubrics from the judges after they present that I would like to highlight some of the comments that the judges made about the students after they did these presentations for them so the electronic Mustangs can take it away have you ever wondered about gas fueled airplanes and how plane ticket so expensive well we have a solution to this worldwide problem here in Southern Maine we have Pratt and Whitney and true Enterprises who have been provided with a solution a solar power plane we have come up with this solution to help solve the problems that have doe of global warning and ticket prices we double the solar panels compared to the solar impulse 2 a plane that FL a single person around the world on the Winds of an airplane to
006make power as we went through the process we would think of how the world is affected by fossil fuels and how eventually fossil fuels run out as you can see we have the problem of fossil fuels on this paper that talks about global warming and ticket prices growing so drum Woll please we present to you the solar Mustang 3.0 this is the world's first working solar panel plane that can fit 115 people we are making the plane out of carbon fiber so we are not using aluminum we have made the wings and the tail double the size of the solar impulse too we double the solar panels to gather more sunlight to power the plane we also have a lithium storage battery which will be placed in the fuselage and the battery will charge four
007um propeller engine planes when the plane is not flying it can still be charging on the tarmac the price the price for the the price for everything is 48,4 39,5 120 because the plane itself is $418 M400 th000 and the solar panels are $39,500 each solar panel has uh 550 Watts we estimate that each ticket is going to be $300 so if we divided 418 m439 520 by 300 which then gets us 1,394 700 which is how many tickets we need to sell to pay for everything also it would take you 1,200 rides to make your money back so in all this solution which makes passenger planes with solar panels will help global warming come to a stop and the cost of tickets Skyrocket down this solution will make the world a better place and
008make life easier for us humans so this is why you should invest in and build the solar Mustang 3.0 we're done our first step to making was making five identical robots to find out which one would be our main robot um um everyone made we spun off into Pairs and everyone used YouTube as a like inspiration to make every group every pair made one identical robot and that made us gave us five robots okay um our second step was to pick one robot he went through a lot of thinking when we came up to a conclusion everyone accepted and we were able to move ahead our third step was taking attachments from all five robots to attach them to our picked robot our first our fourth step was making five identical robots we made five
009so everyone could do different coding to get the last process our fifth step was going on separate loading missions some were windmill TV and solar farm our sixth step was making two identical robots to take to to to competition one of one of the Prime things we made on this robot was the batter was to make the battery easier as as you see we made two easy attachments to the robot itself so then we could just pull it off easily and change the battery so for example at competition if it somehow just ran out it we could easily just take it off and change a new battery also audio had an amazing idea about variables so so originally we're going to we're going to do each challenge separately the now G use variables so we
010can connect them using variables we also had inspiration from YouTube to use Nai gears to control our arm and Motors also Evan who made the motors was uh had a good idea about it I made um the motor so we could attach attachments to the robot using uh knobby gears um so if I don't know if you can see that there but that's a model of the solar powered plane it took a lot for tape because yes it yes it did it took a lot of time we use YouTube tutorials that cut out the body the wings the tail and and and then we had to scrap it but we kept the body and then we had to weed do the tail and the the tail and the wings and then we had to put
011those um like like salad covered thingies um on the thing and then we and then we I guess decorated the wings with black and then put them put those things on and that's how we made our model okay so now I'll be talk you want to hold the Rob so now I will be talking about the arm I took audio's lovely design and I took a design on a website and I just combined them together and then I kind of made it more usable to the uh challenges that we had for competition so for example we had a hand um challenge that the hand was down but we had to kind of lift it up so it could like represent the high five and I made this one especially for that so it could just
012come up to the hand lift down the arm and then just pull it back lift the arm back up and then go back to the starting Square home I'm um when and I was the one who also helped her in building the arm I was the one who made the attaching the what's the gear called the kni gear to each other uh that's the end of our presentation what I do with [Applause] this we go we go it so one of the things you might have noticed was how nicely they complimented each other that was I think a large reason why we also won the trophy they spoke very highly of each other in front of the judges and they really appreciated that so this is also about the core values of the team and
013um the way people treat each other how you discover things how you use innovation your teamwork having fun together and whether or not this goes out of the Lego robotics room into the world if it has an impact in your life and in how you treat other people so we're going to do a short one minute video um showing you what it looked like when they were at the table in [Music] competition and I'll just explain that how you just saw Josh start something else again that was how we joined programs using variables uh he so first they put a TV up and then they just um made the windmill work and produce energy and so each of the challenges on the table represented something that had to do with renewable energy I'm not sure
014if it's going to keep working but that's okay we can go to the rubrics we we don't have to get it to work we can go ahead to the rubrics so there were four rubrics on every rubric they met or exceeded every standard for every standard that they exceeded the judges wrote a comment about what helped them to exceed in that standard so this these are the core values that I just discussed um and you can see it they did say that they are a rising Allstar team and that they were motivated at the top um a team to watch for the future um and so some of the comments like in Impact they really made sure that their idea um left the classroom and even brought it to Pratt and Whitney and Pratt and
015Whitney even liked the idea and said that they could explore it further and and that they were interested in this happen Pratt and Whitney actually said they think it's a possibility about 20 years from now when improvements in solar panels are made um if you could just go down to the bottom where it says great job there uh their presentation collaboration and passion were very clear during the presentation one of their members had an anxious moment and needed to hide behind the poster to recenter and each of his teammates took the time to EV individually check on and encourage him while continuing to present their ideas clearly this is going to bring me to tears it was such a sweet moment while presenting they continually complimented each other's ideas and gave credit to each other
016for the things that were done well uh including the designing of their team logo they clearly encourage their teammates regularly and greatly care for each other if you just want if you just want to go down to the bottom where the comments are on the bottom I'll just read that the poster the other poster the third poster they were really impressed that they came up with a strategy to clearly communicate their ideas and make sure that they didn't leave anything out you did a great job including each other in your presentations had a very effective plan with budgeting for each item such as the tickets the plane and the solar panels very well thought out they had a very clear solution and they developed it intricately especially with reaching out and sharing with Pratt and
017Whitney teamwork and communication to bring so many ideas together was clear even with five different codes they printed out how everything worked and even had variables which is an advanced topic for elementary schoolers they pointed out what areas of code did what and provided amazing explanations for the reasons and ways that the code completed the missions they provided details regarding their process of different robots and and testing each robot's code to build on to build one unified program students described building several robots that were then redesigned multiple times and condensed into two main robots all members contributed to at least one Mission and then combined them together and used one robot to pull all of their work into an effective Mission plan one that works so I just feel like those comments are amazing about
018our soccer students um and I just would like to applaud all of their hard work they are also quite versed at answering questions if you had any questions but if you don't that's fine does anyone have any questions for the team great job you guys that was awesome I haven't been on the school board all that long but that is by far the best item that we've had since I've been here so congratulations and the teamwork really showed um you guys should be proud quick question on the Pratt and Whitney how was that discussion and another kind of big question is what was the funnest thing about this this process it was very enjoyable and even though they both didn't come at the same time it was still very easy to present and um I
019think just we also presented we also presented to True Enterprises so um it was either Pratt and Wy Whitney or true Enterprises who asked us this what was our favorite part of doing this and for me personally I would say building the robots I I don't have a question just one thing that I observed for the very first time which um was the presentation itself um many years ago when my son was in Middle School he participated in Lego robotics there and they went you know to one of the competitions and one of the things that I remember about it is there's a little contingent of parents that had gone but you couldn't see the presentation you had to stay outside it was only the students and the and their coach that were allowed in
020so you didn't get to actually see how it worked and it was kind of really neat to see a a class put that together and and give a presentation so that was that was a nice little thing to have have tonight very very nice job and thank you for coming and next year since they're a rising team maybe you do the presentation here first for a practice uh that's and then we can really grow them a little bit and get you all prepped for the for the big day thank you very much for coming I appreciate it question so what does that look like so these kids are in fifth grade and they're going off to Middle School does middle school have a budget next year for our robotics team or we know what that
021might look like for them just asking question off the top of my head I don't know that I can answer that tonight but certainly um we've definitely had conversations about how Student Activities need to be something that we focus on throughout all of our schools uh making sure that they're available for all kiddos um especially in a situation that is not of cost to families I think that's important and um I know that we've had a little bit of transition on uh there from what we may have had a year or so ago but I will make sure that we have those discussions during the budget piece because our interest is making sure that kids have affordable after school activities uh that are of high impact and this would be one of those okay moving
022on to the next item is correspondence and I don't believe we have any this evening correct okay that brings us to the public session if anyone wishes to address the school board please come forward and um state your name and present to the school board rep okay seeing none I will move on to the superintendent's report all right good evening everyone um couple of items for tonight um at the middle school we've started our winter sports season and teams are competing um and high levels of um participation which is a great thing uh we're also getting ready to start our Ski Club uh that is traditionally held here and one of the things that I really proud of uh with the work that Marie and the team has done at the middle school is we
023really focused on solutions to make this highly affordable for students and families uh to include more and I think as of yesterday Marie you said you were at 87 kiddos um which uh Transportation will continue to be worked on and find solutions for that um but it's just great to see kids involved uh as many activities as possible um reminder to everybody in the community that we could be coming up on that first weather event uh that always gets people excited or not excited or at least worked up um it's an important to reminder that the process begins in the morning time typically around around 5:00 A.M will be when the first posts online will go um Facebook uh Andor Twitter are is typically the first places that we put things because it's quick and
024easy and it doesn't have to go through the process so if you check there first um that will be the first place and then Meg will put out the any calls throughout that please make sure that you've updated any information uh through the rooc call system um because that can always be frustrating on the first day if you don't get that information out uh but know that there are plenty PL uh places to also look other than that call um we hope to have those calls out around the 5:30 Mark is what we are always aiming for um let's hope that uh any of those events are smooth ones this year for um any of you in the room who may have seen or had students or had an opportunity to come uh several years
025ago um Sako parks and recre uh partnered to establish Twin City theaters um which is a combined effort between our communities and several communities in the area area uh and last Saturday night they put on Elf the musical Junior Elf the musical uh and on Friday night there was 900 uh people there and on Saturday night around 700 and we had students from all communities performing and it was absolutely amazing uh they did such a wonderful job and appreciative for Sako parks and wreck and all the effort that they uh put into making that happen uh as we'll begin to head into the budget season principles are working hard to get those budgets into us before the winter holiday so that we can begin to review at the central office level um also certainly be
026very active on the state level as with a new legislative session typically there are a lot of items that come that can impact uh the financial cost for our districts and we certainly will be very active on those fronts um just kind of a capital Improvement update as we had talked about all the furniture and the first round of things has been in in at the middle school and we currently are working on um improvements of of furniture for the library teachers room uh was kind of the next pieces to try to bring those uh up to date um and then kind of an update uh for the school is that I did receive word that by NE by next week I hope to have the first of the two um kind of evaluations of
027the property uh for an estimate on price and um we have also been working on getting the uh option agreement in place for the land so that we can right after the New Year kind of lock those lock those two items down to move forward as uh the land decisions are obviously the big piece um you probably had communication uh from City from City Hall that on December 19th there will be uh a joint meeting here uh with some conversation about uh property thank you any questions for the superintendent okay that moves us on to the chair's report I I don't have a report this evening I just wanted to um mention that if you have not seen it yet um we were um Extended an invitation from the Board of Trustees at Thorton Academy
028to join them for a um sort of a holiday uh Gathering um amongst the boards and that is to be held on the 12th of January um you should have received that in in your home mail it was a was a small card and there's a an RSVP by date of January 5th um just a reminder to check your mail for that um we haven't done one of those in a few years and um it's been a probably a while since I attended one um when I was on the board previous time but it was a really nice event it was a very informal um opportunity to kind of just kind of get to know each other um where we end up ultimately working together a lot and probably will be you know that much
029more as we head towards the you know the contract renewal so that's pretty much all I have this evening okay that moves us on to staff reports um of which there are none in in the packet um the next item is board subcommittee minutes there was a uh a personnel and policy meeting um held earlier today uh the next finance committee meeting um as noted is on the 25th of January at 4M uh there is no old business um and then under new business the first item is new hires um there's no action but there was an update from the original version of the document that was in the packet um that went out on Friday any questions regarding the new hires okay that brings us on to Item B which is resignations uh the
030same thing that's no action but there's a a list in your packet any questions on that topic okay that moves us on to uh what previously had been item D which is the school safety update so as everybody was uh aware that several weeks ago one of our local area high schools um in schools across the state of Maine had a very challenging Day based off um a hoax threat uh and while we are you know very fortunate that it turned out to be a hoax it left schools scrambling um and it left schools in a situation where you had a real good opportunity to look at the safe plans and procedures that you have in in place um which anytime you are able to put those in place it also is a great opportunity
031to reflect debrief and look at ways um that you can improve uh for future events and so I just wanted to update people on on a few of those items um number one uh I think I commented at the last meeting of just uh how pleased I was with the communication that we had with the local uh police department during the event um Chief Clement and his crew immediately responded to our schools Chief Clement and I were on the phone consistently throughout the morning with updates um and I felt that that was a real positive thing um what we did look want to look at is that yesterday we had and we had a presentation last meeting about SE stag training uh threat assessment training um and we had 30 to 40 members of the
032school department involved in that yesterday uh and going through uh phase two of that training we also um wanted to look at what is Alice training which is alert lockdown inform uh C what's that communicate communicate and then evacuate um is training that uh we've reached out to the police departments to look at how we provide that um through the winter and spring for our staffs as certainly these are events that we always want to continue to revisit and again improve upon um communication during events like this um is extremely challenging because not only are you dealing with the internal communication and external communication that comes in from School departments but you're also dealing with a whole lot of miscommunication uh rumors social media and so one of the items that um we really reflected
033on in York County Superintendent uh spent a great deal of time in a couple of sessions just like talking about what was successful what was not successful um was looking at one how superintendents communicate with each other during this um and for York County uh I will serve as a point person to be the the person that kind of diss Ates information out to other schools unless it's happening within our school department uh then msad 57 will serve in that role to be the bridge with other superintendants because one of the real challenges that day is that we had staff members we have uh parents who have loved ones that work in the district and they're feeding you information and trying to figure out okay how do we know what's true what's not we have
034police departments who are calling in um and so communication is one of the the big pieces we've also reached out um afterwards Meg and I reached out to a couple of different vendors and we are trying to um put together a collaborative buying process for some alert notification emails that would help within the schools um where schools would be able to report um not only incidents but for us to be able to communicate back out to staff um in a way to to provide some updates that was certainly a very challenging piece because when we saw the communication Rising quite frankly my cell phone became almost unusable because of the number of incoming and outgoing messages through that and you guys were all part of that communication process that day um so thinking about how
035we're able to communicate that understanding what we need to have uh available for substitutes and how we can Leverage techn ology when they're in our building on those days because certainly substitutes may not be 100% up to dat on safety plans or procedures um really kind of examining evacuation sites and knowing that um some of the feedback that uh came from other communities is that one evacuation sites were wildly known were widely known about from members in the community because people had practiced that which led to some challenges with traffic and organization and so uh here we need to look at having a menu of evacuation sites um that we can go to because not all emergencies or situations would be the same I think we also have to be uh very thoughtful of the
036needs of some of our students that may different from others and areas um for evacuation um we just need to have a larger pool for that to think about the response from traffic and and and all of the things that would go with this um also looking at um schoolwide go bags for evacuations and making sure that some great suggestions um that if we did have to leave school and the Central and and April's office had to pick up and relocate making sure that April has enough of the appropriate supplies in place uh and that's that's monitored in a refresh cycle so that's something that we're looking at putting together here and making sure that we have a clear process for updating that also reviewing uh emergency uh protocol cards that we would like to
037have make sure they're posted in each classroom um for students with also helpful tips on the back for staff members um during the emergency I think again having something for staff to read that's easy to focus on because again very challenging if you're a staff member in there and you know that your niece or nephew may be in the neighboring school going through this making sure that we have helpful tips for staff members and staff members um job of working with students in de-escalating situations um and then also just looking at um the swipe card scenarios of making sure that um swipe guards are doing what they are supposed to do during the lockdown um and that police and Fire have access to all of that inform all of those materials so that if they
038do need to come to a school it's easy for them to get into the building during a lockdown situation um and everyone's locked out overall I think on that day extremely pleased with the way that uh staff communicated it was difficult they worked well Administration did a good job um and so I couldn't you know from from that standpoint extremely happy of how we responded but again in every situation how do you get better and make sure that you think about things that you may not have thought about the first time and then take the feedback from other School departments that were actively involved in um The hoax threats to make sure that you learn from the things that they did uh and incorporate them into your plan any questions not seeing any questions all
039right all right moving on to the next item which is the educational specification so we are bringing back to your attention the educational specifications document that we shared several months ago um want to highlight a couple of changes that were noted in that document in red one is related to highlighting the importance of outdoor education and tying that back to community involvement and use both for the school department and Community Partners that was some feedback that we received at the last school board meeting when we met with the doe they were also able to provide some feedback so you'll note some changes with respect to further defining flexible spaces on pages 7even and8 of the document passive supervision which was better explained on pages 8 and 14 evidence and backup for multi-age and looping classrooms
040for students information about safety in classrooms and the exterior of the building can be noted on pages 19 and 28 we also tried to highlight multiple gym spaces and PE spaces and how those those spaces may be different from one another and their use cases decentralization of administrative staff and student services was very important to our team so we tried to disperse that a little bit more throughout the document and explain the reasoning behind that and that summarizes some of the changes made to date we would be looking for next steps in meeting with the Department of Education to have a vote from the board to support the educational specifications as written Andor suggest additional revisions that would need to take place I do want to thank board member Johnston for pointing out an error
041that I had made and since fixed if you're looking at the digital copy to include her name which I had accidentally omitted on our program committee so thank you for pointing that out I appreciate it thank you does anyone have any questions just one thing that I'd like to note is the the thoroughness with which the questions were answered is um thorough is probably an understatement um there was a you know a question raised that the meeting that we had um related to the um it was our last public forum essentially and the question was raised of like well why why are we doing certain things why have we arrived at a particular configuration and the answers are really here in this document and I I mean it's there's a lot here to to digest
042but the you know I do like how the themes that you just mentioned get repeated throughout the open space the collaboration Project based learning capabilities it's just you know it's it's pretty clear that it's you know it's sort of central to every single one of the seven questions that we're trying to answer and and I just I you know I I think it's a fantastic document in its current form thank you does anyone have any questions or comments okay so from the standpoint of um moving us to The Next Step adopting this is the the Next Step correct okay so I will entertain a motion chair I I move we approve the education educational specifications for the new Sako School construction project as presented second okay motion made by will Gail seconded by Jen Preble
043any discussion additional disc all right seeing none roll call vote Schoolboard member Archie yes Schoolboard member prebble yes Schoolboard member Richard yes I vote Yes Schoolboard member Gail yes and Schoolboard member Johnston yes okay motion carries thank you it's very exciting thank you yes it is all right the next item is other information and I don't believe there is any this evening um there's no executive session and so that brings us to adjournment and I would entertain a motion so moved second motion made by Beth Johnston seconded by General proble any discussion okay roll call vote Schoolboard member Archie yes Schoolboard member Preble yes Schoolboard member Richard yes I vote Yes Schoolboard member Gail yes and Schoolboard member Johnson yes motion carries we are adjourned at 7:47 thank you and have a good evening e