001Greetings and welcome to the SACO school board meeting for Wednesday, February 8th, 2023. Call this meeting to order at 7 p.m. Let the record reflect that all school board members are present. We'd like to invite you all to join us in the pledge of allegiance. Thank you very much. Uh item three of the agenda is to approve the school board meeting minutes dated January 11, 2023. Is there a motion to approve the minutes? School board member Truman. Uh I move we approve the school board meeting minutes dated January 11th, 2023. Second. Motion's been made by school board member Truman. Second by school board member Johnston. Any discussion on the minutes for January 11th. Seeing no discussion, roll call vote. School board member Archie, yes. School board member Prebble, yes. School board member Richard, yes. School
002board member Fortune, yes. School board member Kale, yes. School board member Truman, yes. School board member Johnston, yes. Motion passes 70. Brings us to item four, adjustments to the agenda. As I understand, there are no adjustments this evening. Moving on to item five, correspondence. There is no correspondence in the packet this evening. Uh so with that, we'll move on to item six, public session. Two folks have signed up for public session. And the first up is Holly Troier, and I remind everyone to speak directly into the microphone, state your name, your address for the record, and please keep your comments to three minutes. Good evening. I'm Holly Traier and I'm representing the SACO Education Association and I would like to say the SACO Education Association would like to thank the SACO school board and administrators
003for working with the staff so that teachers have quality time to focus on planning and assessment assessing thereby using assessment to drive instruction for our students. Thank you for sharing our values. We would also like to ask a question about the TA tuition overage plan being presented this evening. We noticed the following in the list. The unfilled literacy coach position at Young School, an unfilled special ed teacher movement, and a district stipens not being filled. Our question is whether this is the plan for the rest of this school year or if this is a plan moving forward into next school year. In regards to the unfilled literacy coach position at Young School, we have noticed definite gaps for teachers who are seeking to deliver the best possible instruction to our students. Our coaches provide invaluable
004conversations and coaching cycles, assisting all of our teachers. Many veteran teachers look to coaches for ways to enhance the learning of students who are meeting standards. And coaches are able to help push the envelope of the status quo. New teachers rely on support to process the curriculum and deliver quality instruction through co-eing models and consultation and planning. 30% or 11 total teachers of our combined staff of classroom teachers have three or fewer years experience and four of those 11 are firstear teachers. This is a considerable percentage and offering coaching support for them at this point in their career is crucial. One coach would not be able to provide quality support and meet all of their needs in effectively teaching K2 literacy which includes reading, writing, and phonics. Three, actually four separate curriculums, reading, writing, phonics,
005and phmic awareness. What teachers do at this level sets the stage for future learning. Research shows that if students aren't reading on grade level by grade three, it becomes considerably harder to close the gap. Having strong consistent support from coaches readily available to teachers in these areas is essential. K2 will be implementing a new phonics program next year and that will require support from literacy coaches. In addition to working in coaching cycles with individual teachers, coaches also work closely with PLC's. one only one literacy coach split between two buildings and six separate PLC's while covering four curriculum areas would impact the teachers opportunity to deliver the quality instruction that we all desire for our students. Enriching activities that are organized by literacy coaches are less likely to happen if a coach is split between buildings.
006These activities include, but are not limited to, literacy nights, schoolwide book clubs, literacy leaders from TA, among others. The special ed teacher movement has resulted in some teachers taking on additional responsibilities to provide specialized instruction. We've actually lost two special education teaching positions this year at both of our K2 schools. The association feels that these teaching positions are necessary for optimal student growth. In addition, each time we reduce our teaching staff, we are increasing the workload of other teachers, impacting the ability to retain the teachers we currently have. Case in point, we have lost teachers midyear this year, causing the movement within the district, which is why these positions have been vacated and subsequently not filled. Furthermore, the changes in stipens being proposed to save funds could directly impact extracurricular opportunities offered to our students.
007It is the hope of the association that these adjustments are just for the remainder of this year and are not impacting hiring decisions for next year. We request that you discuss these concerns at tonight's meeting when you discuss how to make up the deficit. Thank you. Thank you. Up next is Enga Brown. Hi, good evening. I'm Enga Brown. I live at 161 Simpson Road in Ward One. Um, I wanted just to quickly um say how much I appreciated as a parent. I have a seventh grader at Sako Middle School and how much I appreciated, Superintendent Ray, your communication to parents and the community on January se 27th um as we knew that there would be some very difficult um feelings with our students and our staff when some pretty violent video was released um from
008from Memphis, Tennessee. And I appreciated the resources that you provided. I think that this type of communication to families um to bring awareness to our students what we're seeing at home, what we're seeing in the school is so important and it also sends the message that we we should be talking about this. We can be talking about this. We should be aware and as we uh delicately tread um still in uh difficult school years after COVID with lots of delicate um feelings in the classroom. I just appreciated that very much. Your proactive um reaching out very much. Thank you for that. Um on a second note, it's a very superficial topic. Um I've been lucky enough this year to do some subbing in our SACO schools and I've been enjoying that very much. Um I
009know that when I'm a sub at Saco Middle School, I have been um surprised that uh classroom tissues are not provided to the classrooms. And I know that um teachers usually bring in tissues or parents are asked to donate tissues. Um but to me classroom tissues are are a standard operating procedure. Um there's not a class where teach uh kids aren't sneezing, coughing, bloody noses. And I just noticed that many classrooms do not have tissues. Um, so you know, very cheap tissues, tly, cheap, nothing fancy or anything. But I was surprised when I asked a teacher, are there tissues? And I was told no, that teachers have to bring them in or get them from parents. Um, I think it's a pretty basic need that classrooms should have. So that's just a a request to
010for consideration that uh maybe at the younger grades uh tissues are there all the time through parent donations but I think at the middle school I don't think parents are donating as as much stuff to the classroom if you will. I know Clorax wipes uh expo markers all of those things are extra that teachers need to to bring in themselves but tissues I think are just a standard thing that I think teachers should have in the classroom. Thank you. Thank you. That is it for those that have signed up. If there's anyone else, if there's anyone who did not sign up who still wishes to speak to the school board, please come forward and be heard. With nobody seeking recognition, moving on to item seven of tonight's agenda, and that is the superintendent report. Superintendent
011Ray. All right. Good. Good evening everybody. Couple of weeks ago when we were talking about snow days, boy, we went on a little bit of a run and we thought we were in for a long long summer of makeup days. Uh luckily one storm missed us and hopefully the storms will continue to miss us. Uh and that we'll move into springtime, but we do have to think about um the possibility of if you're at five days and what comes next. And we sent a survey out to staff members just to kind of think about all those options because state law doesn't provide you with many options as a school district. It is add days on to the end of the calendar. Um or you have the option of adding five hours of additional time for
012up to 25 days throughout the year to make up a day. Okay. So, if you do 5 hours after extended, that equals one day. Um, and just once we get past those five days as a board, you'll have some decisions to make. Um, obviously there are some districts who have done remote. Um, and I think that you guys over time have been pretty clear about what I feel personally about remote days is I don't do not see for younger students how that is even close to having a kid with a great staff member in a room. Um, being behind a computer screen and trying to plan a quality lesson is difficult, especially on short notice. uh and the fact that it took us so long to kind of get up to speed during the pandemic
013of how to teach a kindergartener to go on to an iPad or a parent to go on to Google Classroom, but I just don't see how you do that quality um in one day. So, we just have to be thinking about um that makeup piece. Um last weekend obviously we had some really cold weather. Uh and certainly with that uh comes cancellations and sure people had feelings of the decision to cancel a middle school dance but I've seen kids wait outside and I don't know about other middle schoolers but I can't get a jacket on mine. Um sweatshirt at best. Um, and just knowing that, you know, for a night to be out at -30, 40°, it just a week can be happen and it will be much warmer this Friday night when our kids
014are waiting to get into the car. I think we're 50 on Friday. Um, but what we need to say thank you to is Mike Junior and the crew of maintenance staff because we took some proactive approaches of, you know, usually we're not a group that says turn up the heat on the weekend, but that was a weekend to turn up the heat uh and make sure that our buildings could hold temperatures and monitor the buildings throughout the weekend. Uh and we did really well in SACO uh trying to uh get through those brutal temperatures uh because quite frankly without taking some of those preparations you wind up with busted pipes, a lot of missed days um and a lot of damage that just takes time to fix. And um if you noticed if you were
015driving around uh the Saco Bifford area on on Saturday or Sunday, I think I saw more service trucks than I've ever seen in my life uh moving through the community um and all of that. So big thanks to to those folks who uh a lot of times don't get a lot of recognition, but you know, they do a lot to keep those buildings open and safe and warm so that we couldn't come back to school on on Monday. Uh, another thing that, uh, we're working on right now is, uh, the purchasing of an emergency, [Music] um, software program called Share 911. Uh, share 911 is a program that will um allow our staff members and this will be kind of a kickoff for the fall to be able that if there was a severe emergency
016situation to be able to notify all staff andor administration that it's time to go into a lockdown. Uh one of the pieces that was really evident during uh the situation that happened this fall and working with other communities is that communication in um the flow of information is extremely difficult in all of that. There's one of me and one phone and everybody in the world who wants to text know what's going on while you're trying to put out communication and the fact that we live in a day and age everybody has one of these in their pocket um that sometimes misinformation gets around. And so this is an app that allow par that would allow staff members to um communicate that there was an emergency from anywhere in the building simultaneously get that message out
017to administrators andor other staff. Help in the reunification process if needed and allow information to be disseminated at one time to everybody. even if it's quick like yes, we're still in the lockdown or it's safe to come out of the lockdown because calling everybody, getting people on and communicating that message. Um, you know, you can start at Fairfield School and by the time Wendy makes the announcement that a lockdown is over, you still may be on the phone or texting with Burn School or Young School. And now the teachers in that school have texted to somebody in the other school and they're like, "Well, no, we're still in that was really a hard piece about um thinking about the emergencies." So, we're exploring some software that will make that communication uh much easier. The other
018piece that it would do is those uh have the same ability and I've had a great conversation with, you know, like Chief Clemens and things is that it will provide the same to our first responders. So if we went into a lockdown and it was a serious situation, they and all of their officers, excuse me, would get that same message at the same time. So they could respond and open their phone up and know that if we said classroom X at burn school was where the emergency was, they could go to the map on their phone, know where that emergency was, and respond immediately. So we know that time is always important in that. Good news is February vacation's only about a week away. uh and we'll have the opportunity uh spend a little time
019outside of our schools, hopefully with our with uh families and friends. Uh and that would be a great week for us to have a little bit of snow so kids can get outside. Um and then other than that, that's what I have for tonight. We'll talk about uh school construction down on in the agenda. Thank you very much. Any questions for Superintendent Ray? No questions. is moving on to item eight, chair's report. Chair Prebble. Uh, yep. I do um have an update on committee assignments, so I wanted to just go through that real quickly. Um, so real quick, for policy/personnel committee, I've assigned Beth, Sarah, and William. For finance and infrastructure committees, I've assigned myself, Jennifer, Jeff, and Kevin. for curriculum, um, which is a newer committee, I have Beth, Sarah, and Arty. Um, I
020also have some liaison positions that do also exist. Um, for wellness, I have Beth and Jen, myself. Um, for PG&E, I have Beth and Kevin. Um, for dropout prevention, I have myself and Jeff. For calendar committee, I have Sarah and Arty. And for stipen committee um liaison I have Sarah and William. And that's it for me. Thank you very much. Any questions regarding the committee assignments or the chair report? With no questions. Moving on to item nine, staff reports. There are no staff reports noted in the memorandum or excuse me in your packet. Uh that brings us to item 10, board subcommittee m minutes. Uh there was a policy and personnel committee minute. Uh their next meeting was today at 5:30 p.m. Uh and there are some minutes in your packet. And then the finance
021and infrastructure committee will meet on March 22nd uh at 4 p.m. And then the curriculum committee has no meeting scheduled at this time. Any question on the minutes of the subcommittees? With no questions, moving on to item 11, old business. There's no old business this evening. And that brings us to item 12, new business. Item A is new hires in your packet. There was a memorandum that was updated recently requiring some board action. Superintendent Ray, before we move on, is there anything you'd like to add to the memorandum? Okay, with that entertain a motion. School board member Truman. I move we approve the nomination of those listed under the stipen positions and issue a contract for the 2022 2023 school year. Motion's been made. Is there a second? Second. Second. Second by school board member
022Richard. Any discussion? Roll call vote. School board member Archie. Yes. School board member Prebble. Yes. Yes. School board member Richard? Yes. School board member LeFortune? Yes. School board member Gail? Yes. School board member Truman? Yes. School board member Johnston? Yes. Motion passes 70. That brings us to item B. Uh you all received a memorandum of resignations in your packet this evening. Superintendent Ray, before we move forward, anything to add to the memorandum? Seeing no additions, school board member Truman. I move we accept the resignation of Christina Petruli, Fairfield kindergarten teacher, effective 12723. Motion's been made. Is there a second? School board member Johnston. Second. Any discussion? Roll call vote. School board member Archie? Yes. School board member Prebble? Yes. School board member Richard? Yes. School board member Lefortune? Yes. School board member Gail? Yes. School
023board member Truman? Yes. School board member Johnston? Yes. Motion passes 70. That brings us to item C, a job fair update. Superintendent Ray. So Chris is going to come up and talk about this piece. I Good evening. I think as we've shared with this board before, long gone are the days when we would wait with baited breath until the class of 2023 graduated from Farmington and rush through our doors and applied for jobs in mass. And we are for the first time really spending a lot of um the school department's resources both financially and in human talent uh constantly recruiting to bring in uh faculty and staff of all types. Um, we had a a job fair across the river in Bitterford two weeks ago that was really remarkably successful. We had uh 20 people
024come through the door. We're able to sit with each and every one of them and guide 13 of them through an expedited application process. Um, we're going to continue that work moving into the spring. We had a catchment area last year of job fairs between the University of Farmington and um the University of Massachusetts. uh we're just not competitive in that market. Uh we were in a space with uh Hartford public schools, with New York public schools, with Boston public schools and one of the strategies that those districts used was to have a placard on each one of their tables that displayed their pay scale and it was two or three times uh you know what we were able to advertise. Obviously, uh we went down as a three district consortium for Dayton, Bitterford, and
025SACO. And the only interest that we were able to drum up was someone who thought that we were Dayton, Ohio. Uh and I had to explain the difference between Dayton, Ohio, and Dayton, Maine. And so that was kind of the end of that piece. So, we really are um focusing our efforts in the coming months on um on local cities and towns that are close to us, including on February 14th between 8:30 and 12:00 p.m. I'd invite members of the public to come down and meet with us at the SACO Transportation Center. We are particularly interested and in need of employees in SACO for bus aids, bus drivers, custodians, uh educational technicians, food service workers, uh secretaries, and substitute teachers. Um we've really tried to streamline the process. Previously, folks had to go on to
026frontline and fill out a lengthy application system. we've been able to truncate that and basically have a halfpage fill-in sheet that if you can write your name and about three other details that we'll consider that your initial uh sort of foray into the application process. Also something that we're going to try for this entire job fair is on the spot interviews and if anyone comes with the requisite clearances and all that sort of thing that you have to have for school, we would even consider on the job uh sorry on the spot job offer as well. So we're continuing to sort of beat the pavement. We're advertising this through boosted posts on Facebook and other social media outlets. We seem to get the best sort of bang for our buck um in that regard. And
027we have, I believe, four more job fairs that we're either producing or attending in the next six to eight weeks on the calendar. And we'll sort of keep you updated as we move through uh through that process. Uh we are hiring all positions all the time, all year to try and fill needed vacancies within the SA schools. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Endorf. Any questions at this time from the board? Schoolboard member Truman, then school board member Gail. School board member Truman. Just a quick one. What was the date for the one at the transportation department? Yep. February 14th. That's what I thought. From 8:30 to 12. And Jeremy's running an omelet bar. So you can come and you can order your omelet and he'll he'll fix it just how you like it. Perfect. School
028board member Gail noticed on the hiring memo that there were a number of edtech positions that have recently been hired. Is that have you found that this is a result of this push or is that Yeah, where we've had most success William is with the edteex and the substitutes and one of the things that we haven't done a great job with in the past and I think it's mostly a function of capacity and bandwidth is providing uh ongoing training and inculcation for new staff members especially itenerant staff like substitutes. So, we've had two preliminary meetings to talk about how we can put on sort of like a new staff seminar that's really targeted towards substitutes and educational technicians. I think for a sub, even someone who has experience in education, coming into a strange building
029for the first time can be very intimidating. So, we're talking about a program that really starts with like a full day welcome, some kind of dos and don'ts and basics of the trade, some skill craft, and then literally hopping on a yellow school bus, driving building to building, acquainting yourself a little bit with the campus, coming in, having a warm welcome with the principal, maybe a brief tour of the building. And that can also help folks who are maybe a little uncertain whether they'd rather be with an eighth grader or a second grader get a sense of, you know what, Fairfield School is really the right place for me or I made a great connection with April Noble at Burn School or whatever that might be. And uh because one of our challenges with substitutes
030is sometimes people come and they might not just be in the right spot for their personality or their disposition and they only stay for a couple days and then we don't see them again. We'd really rather have them start off strong in the right place and with a support network built in and some opportunities for ongoing training so that when they maybe feel a little overwhelmed by classroom management, they know that if they can just hold on till Thursday, that's going to be the paid topic that we're going to offer that day after the school day ends to support them in that work. And following up on that, is that do you do something similar with the edtech positions as well? Yeah, so that that that was Jeremy's suggestion actually. We we sort of came
031to him with a preliminary proposal like hey would there be budget support for this piece for substitutes and he said I'd really like to see you fold in ed text for to that as well which is I think why I brought it up because you had asked about the tech position but we experienced some of that same turnover especially with tech ones as well and and I I think Jess is probably always looking for qualified candidates to to be on the bench for an edtech an edtech job. Any further questions? Thank you Mr. Endor. Thanks. That brings us to item D and that is the TA tuition overage plan. In your packet, you received a memorandum uh regarding the TA overages. Superintendent Ray, do you want to speak further on that item? in any situation
032as as we know uh and I had communicated with you that the tuition amount at Thornton Academy came in at an increase of 6 7% and we had had uh not only budgeted additional students which many of that uh additional students kind of buffer got um cut into with the welcoming of our new neighbors um that when we built the budget we weren't necessarily didn't know that that was going to happen. Um, and so it leaves us in that line with a deficit of $157,000 and making sure that we have a plan and having money encumbered below the areas that we are recommending to fill that for this year to make sure that again we still have a lot of heating season, electrical prices. If anyone's seen their delivery piece of bill, while we're protected
033on the um kilowatt hour piece on the contract, you're not necessarily protected on the supply side of of the delivery portion of that. Um, you know, we hope that we're not burning, you know, having weekends like this weekend. We don't want to have more of those because we heat into we eat into the the fuel budget. um which again prices um we have pretty good locked in prices but just having a plan and I think that one of the things that people sometimes forget when you're looking at schools andor municipalities is that you know even if you had $500,000 left in a budget at the end of the year you're looking at 1% of your budget that gives zero room for errors mistakes a bad day with snow load a boiler that goes down quickly
034Um and so you have to make sure that you're in a position that um you know like this year we were very concerned at one point that we may have to go back to the city council when as the new neighbor piece was rolling out but we were able to cover some of those pieces. So this is our plan for the rest of this year to make sure that we have funds encumbered um to cover those costs. Thank you. Any questions for Superintendent Ray? school board member Lefortune. Just a followup to that to that topic. So, we're about to head into the budget cycle. So, the um the plan of this being through the end of this year when we start the budget cycle, all of that is in the one that we will be
035discussing. Correct. Correct. And I think one of the pieces that like built into the budget when you look at uh tuition for next year, we have 5% built in. Um and again that may even be a little bit you know low because one of the factors that I was looking through um that they determined to use um for the increase in MAT is around a two-year average on inflation. And this year that piece of it ate up 3.99% of the increase. And I just, you know, trying to think about a two-year average. If you think back two years ago, we weren't having the same conversations about inflation as we have recently had in the last six months. So, I worry a little bit about where that piece will settle um as we move forward. School
036board member Gail. Um, so I guess the the literary or literacy coach position at Young School. Um, why was that one selected? because that was an open that current open position that we didn't fill this fall when we had a person move out of that position and we had to make it some decisions about whether we would be um uprooting classrooms at the time and switching people around and really we felt the best decision at that point in time was not to give children a new classroom teacher in October. I think that's a pretty tough thing for an elementary parent if people are to move around. And so that one is selected because it's open and that's a pot of money that you can easily identify. And then so then in the next budget is
037the plan to have this position I guess get reposted so at the beginning of the school year or I guess I'm a little confused. So, when we get to the budget pieces, yes, that position will be in our budget, but in a couple of more items, you'll guys will start to get a preview of where we're at budget-wise. And so, those will be have to make some decisions that you guys will have to make on what the budget increase would look like. So, that positions in the next budget, you'll have to make some decisions on that piece as a whole. Okay. And then there's no way to like backfill or find $65,000 from our capital improvement budget based on unanticipated uh freeing up of revenue sources I guess in terms of line items or again
038there's always those things that you can look at but we've made a pretty good commitment to making sure that our roofs at SMS are taken care of uh city council put money in for um furniture for painting for those pieces. The other piece that you have to look at is that there also would probably be uh will and uh I'll talk to you this a little bit about a personal story is few years ago when my child was at young school um he had a midyear switch uh in September which resulted in a young kid uh who loved their teacher and very rightfully so wanting a different position and then you're looking for a classroom teacher for 20 new students uh early into the year and I don't think that's the best thing when you
039look at those positions. So when we make those decisions about filling a position sometimes midway through the year you have to look at what the impacts can be to the entire school and the entire population. And I think in this situation that's something that I was unwilling to want to put forward is that you're going to swing around and impact some kiddos. So when you go forward and you look at that now and filling that this year, one you have to look at a qualified candidate. If that's somebody internally, can you properly replace that position? Um, and then when you look at our capital projects, one of the things that we focused on the last couple years, making sure that we don't ignore them so that we're not in the same situations that we have
040been in the past, you know, and we when we roll out this budget, we'll have some other steps in there to make sure that the one facility that we know will be remaining in this um school department has new roofs, which we will be able to accomplish at the end of this year. that the entire roof will be replaced. The council gave us a great gift in the amount of money in painting and in furniture that will be almost all replaced in that looking at the safety and security in our hallway so that students throughout the day don't have to it's really awkward at SMS as you walk through and that you can have kids kind of going to class and in through the gym while also intermixing with people who are waiting which probably
041not the safest situation in the world. We've looked at what we've done in our cafeteria, providing new cafeteria tables to make that uh to upgrade that piece. U so again, every anytime you look into that capital budget, I recommend that you're probably costing yourself more money. Yeah, I guess I was just thinking if we got a grant that and we were anticipating buying something and then we get, you know, I I guess I just part of my concern is looking at that and then just over the last several months hearing that there's an influx of students at Young School and then seeing on here that we're going to cutting a position um or not cutting but but not funding an unfilled position. position for the rest of the school year. Um, at at young school
042um, it's just I'm I'm just having a little bit of trouble. But see, at the same time, Will, we also have a situation where because of the rise in ELLL students, we were forced to add an ELLL teacher to that staff that we didn't plan for either. So, so I have to kind of cover that money as well. um throughout the budgets and that's just fi continuing to fine-tune certain different lines and all those pieces. So we've had when you think about additional pieces that we've done this year, not only on the tuition line, but we have two and a halfl teachers that we weren't in the budget at the beginning of the school year that we had to come up with and find. So promised you guys we wouldn't overspend here and that's going
043to be something that is much more difficult for us to do when you have those surprise things that happen. Thank you. School board member Truman. Did you have a question? Uh Mr. Gail took care of them for me. Thank you. School board member Leforge. Yeah, just a followup to that. So just to round out the whole thing around the position that's unfilled. So at at this point given how challenging it's been to hire is our most likely way to fill that an internal position anyway and then we're talking about a ripple somewhere that we also then would have to fill. Correct. And many times in a position such as an instructional coach, you have people who have been in your district, have worked really hard and gone through a lot of the training and done
044some of those pieces, the desire to move into that position. So when you look at that and you think that that may come from someone who's currently on your staff that you then have to replace, which then creates a change in programming for kiddos, meaning calling all 20 parents in a classroom and said, "Hey, your kid's teacher just became the instructional coach. Now I've got to find either a substitute or someone to do that for you once into the school year." Um, I suspect that parents of younger kids will definitely have some feelings on that piece. Um, I know certainly I did when that happened to me uh as a parent because your kid has developed this wonderful relationship with the teach person that's in front of them. Um, and that can be very hard
045especially in a situation where you know we have come back from not having a lot of time in front of teachers. you have absences that people have to stay home for nowadays when you had a cold you used to three or four years ago we were thinking about how you kind of bought through it and now you really want people to kind of stay home because you're not trying to pass COVID um and so I think you have to look at all of those value pieces and what do you value and I believe that once kiddos have made that connection with their classroom teacher in a year you got to try to do everything you can to preserve that Um, and sometimes you can't. Um, but you got to try. Does that answer your question?
046It answers my question. I guess in in a more tactical from a more tactical angle. During the period that it was it was posted, did we even have an internal candidate come forward? No, because I didn't post that position. Any further questions? uh on the memorandum regarding the Thornton Academy tuition update. Superintendent Ray, are you looking for a action on this item tonight? Are you going to bring forward a budget amendment to present? Nope. Just informational of making sure that we have covered that piece. Thank you. That brings us to item E of the agenda and that is the ED279 state funding update. You have a memorandum in your packet from Superintendent Ray. Superintendent Ray. So just as we work through these E and F really go together. Um and F was something that we
047added today because um I had budget update on there and we were able to pull together some numbers. And before you leave tonight, I need to know from people who wants all 800 plus pages on paper format and who would really like to have that as a PDF because uh no sense printing it if you don't. Well, let's um talk a little bit about um this piece and and where we are subsc. So, the 279, if you can pull up that piece um in there, that's your state funding formula. And what is it that we know about state funding formulas is that there are two factors that influence it the most. Student count and property valuation. And we spent a lot of time talking about property valuation last year. So when you think about property
048valuation, SACO has seen a lot of growth in property valuation. And when you think about that piece, SACO's property valuation for this current year on a three-year average increases $181 million. That's what's figured in this budget. Now, when you look at the three-year average for 2025, you're going to be looking at $221 million, which is going to put you at a point where you're at about 9% valuation increase. Anytime your valuation increase is more than the state, that's a bad day for us because they're saying that your community has the ability to raise more money in taxes. Now, the other day I had the opportunity to [Music] um speak to the mayor's uh group about some of the changes we're experiencing. There's 10 mayors that kind of sit together. Sako's on that piece. Auburn, um
049Bitterford, Sanford, Westbrook, big group. And what's really interesting when you look at the 10 kind of I I'd say you're about the largest communities in the state of Maine. Portland's there but Bangor is not Bill. Is that correct? Yeah, there's a couple of bigities. And so when you look at those communities that are a little bit larger in nature, you're starting to see a trend that they're having much larger increases in valuation, which is a little bit scary because now as you get to a point where all of those communities are over 10% more, you're going to see less state subsidy going to those communities. At the same time, SACO has uh a free and reduced lunch rate that's a little bit over 25%. Uh and so you have members of our community that fall
050in that economically disadvantaged piece, but at the same time, you have rising valuations that push your property tax up, which says that your community theoretically can pay more. At the same time, we know that every cost goes up. Just go to the store. We know those pieces go up. And so, you kind of start getting into this perfect storm of a situation where costs are rising up and subsidies going down. And so in this scenario that we have here and when you look at the 279 in the budget piece, SACO for preK through 12 education lost $256,000 from what it received the year before. And that's just a mathematical computation because theoretically your value goes up. And so when you think of a situation where your your subsidy from the state is going down and
051your costs go up, your spread actually gets a little bigger. So your costs go up plus takeaway bigger spread. And that's going to continue to be the challenge that we see here because while the state puts things on a three-year average of property valuation to kind of help smooth some of the drastic spikes, you have a situation that when you look at the property valuation that's reported by the Secretary of State um in January of each year, when you look at 2023 versus 202 22, not on a three-year average, but just at a one-year piece, you're looking at an increase of like $397 million in value. Eventually, that piece starts to catch up on the three-year average, and now you're looking at a situation where you have a valuation increase of over 10% in a
052community. When you think about the valuation increase, there's sometimes And again, probably Brian and Bill and some of the city councilors would be able to explain this better than I can, but when you think about valuation and you think about the house that you may have bought 20 years ago at one price and you can say that I believe we talked about it, Chris, the median home income that we came up with the other day in SACO was 498. So, as you think about your home value going up in price, in some sense, you say, "Well, it's great. My home's valued more, but there's obvious a mill rate calculation that goes into that, but you don't want to move. You love where you live and you want to stay there." So, it's really not like
053it's found money and you, if you did sell it, you'd have to replace it with something. But it's also thinking about what new value has been in there. And the new value is the piece that you know you'll debate as a municipality and talk about of what money goes where and did it raise additional taxes and whatnot. But then you turn your you turn over to just your expense increase. And I just want to give you a couple of quick numbers. when you look at Thornton Academy tuition for next year's figured in uh the same number of students because I think we've talked about that we believe that um our student counts based off our new neighbors will probably be very similar next year. You're looking at uh a tuition increase of about a million
054dollars at a 5% in that line. When you look at salary increases and steps across the board, you're looking at about $886,000. When you look at main PERS is going to increase from 3.84 to 4.47%, you're looking at $106,000. And then when you look at health insurance increases and changes throughout the district, you're looking at aboutund another $194,000. Um, and when you look at those pieces, you very quickly can see what the driving costs of a budget does. So when we look at this budget, we haven't really in the first draft that you will be getting. You haven't decreased anything. We've included and kept in some of the ELLL positions. We've looked at reallocating staff uh in special ed to make sure that case loads are equal and covered across the district. We decreased some
055of the capital expenditures uh by $500,000 that the city council had given us money for furniture and for painting and that will kind of go off the way. kind of take 500 out of that, but still keeping um $600,000 in so we can finish that roof piece. Um looking at um adding additional capital funds from existing carryover, looking at funding field trips and educational experiences for kids at our schools so that there's equal access for all and we're not continuing to um kind of put out there uh a situation where families have to make choices and pay for those. to just open that. Um, and then looking at we did have a great thing happen for us that six buses qualified for state reimbursement funds, but you have to come up with that one-year lease.
056So, that's a great investment to have that when you look at our budget piece, when you get your printed out portion, you're going to look at a 4.63% 63% increase, which is $2 million. But because you we lost subsidy, you're going to be looking at a tax increase of about where you stand on day one, $2.2 million. And really, when you think about 4% 4.3% increase, there's not a lot of things that haven't gone up 4.3 6%. But at the same time, you know that your m municipality has increases as well just because of employees and all of those pieces. So, it's going to be a real balancing act uh for everybody here on the on the community to think about where we are budgetwise and hopefully keeping right on track. Um, we'll meet with
057city we'll meet with the city council next week um to talk about land because we know we have new schools coming and all of those things and knowing that we'll be going to the voters in November to think about that ask of, you know, what our budget situation is going to be. Um, and so this is where we are today. Later this week I'll have printed copies for you guys. um to look at and we will get to start that process of figuring out where we are and comfortwise kind of as a community. Thank you. A lot of information to unpack there, but uh just make sure that you get your requests in for a printed package or a PDF package or or electronic package to the superintendent. Uh based on that, any questions uh
058regarding the ED279 state funding uh portion uh and maybe even a little bit of the budget portion that Superintendent Ray went into? Superintendent Ray, anything further on the budget update item F that uh that you want to touch upon? No, that was that was really it was looking at that memo and looking at those pieces and um you guys will get in the next several meetings you'll get to see those the real explanation of the 279 like we did last year um and all of that real exciting talk about valuations and three-year averages and all of that stuff. um as we just look at where the numbers lead us and what you know our internal battles and whether the conversations here or with the city council about what can we do to get to that
059sweet spot um you know for taxpayers and making sure that we fund our schools and we maintain our schools. That's an important piece. Um and think about what decisions we need to make uh for our kids and for our community. is going to be the right one. School board member Gail, just a real quick um on the on the 279, Jeremy, the the way that you lay that out and explain it, I think is is fantastic. It's really transparent. It's easy to understand the way that you've laid it out. So, I'd encourage folks in the public and when we talk that through and and you're you're going through those spreadsheets to tune in because it is a it's a great run through and it's easy to understand. So, thank you for for developing that. So,
060that will be I think we're be scheduled for that one in that first meeting in March. Um and then city council is March 20th I believe is the date that you'll see that. And you know, there's still work to do between now and then as you know, there's some fine-tuning and and pieces that need to occur uh in all of those budgets, but this is a kind of a quick snapshot of where we stand today. What's there hasn't really been anything taken away yet um because that's we're not at that point to talk about that. I I do continue to worry a little bit though where we go. utilities is so difficult to predict right now. Um, and that's the piece that I I worry about a little bit more because, you know, while we
061can sit here and I know it's not time to lock in for the city for fuel, seems like one world event here can really drive prices or lower prices and almost feel like, you know, you just have almost no control over that anymore. Um and then you know just thinking about um as we refine our student and class counts in places you know one of the challenges that again we talked about this earlier this fall like the challenge that that April has at burn schools is really not a classroom available if you have um high without displacing somebody or moving people around or putting people on a car which isn't good. So, we have some limitations in some of those things that um aren't great while also making sure that you know we provide options
062and support kiddos and uh you know kids come to school with so much more I think on their plate nowadays than they typically did 25 years ago or at least we have those greater conversations and uh I think what's not that it's encouraging but main school management uh Superintendent Association is um putting out a couple of surveys to members of just what those initial first drafts are of where we're at. Where's everybody at? And I think that's the challenging piece that we hear from superintendent is that seems like everybody right now is in that four to eight% range and a lot of it is just salary and benefit driven um without changing or adding too much uh in those areas because we need to be competitive and hiring pieces. Um, and that drives, you know,
063some of those costs. And we have to make sure that people are making a wage that allows them to live in our area, which is important uh because when you think about what housing and rental costs have done um in the last couple of years, that's a major concern for people. And so I'm not sure um how this will all play out, but we'll get to have plenty of conversation about it over the course of the spring. Thank you. Any further questions regarding budget or TA tuition or excuse me, 8279 funding? Seeing no further questions, moving on to item G, which is school construction updates. Superintendent Ray. Okay. So, we have had several conversations with the DOE uh recently. We'll have another one on Monday morning. Correct, Meg? Um with the DOE, just trying to
064really stay on that timeline. Uh for our joint meeting on Monday night, um we'll have a conversation uh in executive session with the city council um to discuss um some more of the the land options. Um, as we look at where we are kind of today, some of the work that we're working on is really in that kind of figuring out how many classrooms you need for this and how many you need for that based off statistical data and your kind of projections on future enrollments. Um, that's going to be an interesting conversation for us because just because let's say we have the current staff doesn't necessarily always meet the formula that the state has. Um, and so you'll have to have some local decisions around local pieces of square footage um, and conversation that's
065in that because what's interesting about the process is that there is a formula for what a school department should have. I can't remember how many exact square feet it is per kid and per everything Meg on that but you know our recommended size for a building one through five is about 140,000 square feet and I think we're at like 153,000ishund and growing uh and that's the hard part because you know Just I want here's a simple situation um that we're working on currently. Right now we know that burn school cafeteria at lunchtime doesn't necessarily hold the number of kids that would make it most effective to manage a school. You probably can get about a hundred in there at a time and you have 600 kids. So Marie's running like six uh Marie, sorry, April's
066running like six lunches, seven lunches, six. Then you have a state formula that says you should have x number of square feet for a cafeteria. And then you try to work with them on how you would possibly navigate your school day if we only stay within that recommended amount of square footage. and you try to explain that no, you can't have lunch starting at 9:30 a.m. and going till 2. And then you make references to the law. And then you talk about the bill that's sitting in legislature right now to have a mandatory 30 minute lunch, which would increase that time in a day. And you try to do all of that while predicting what things are going to be like four years down the road in construction cost. That's an example. Another example is
067the conversations of navigating say gym space. While some people may say it's very okay to run physical education classes with a curtain in the middle and call it good, I don't necessarily agree with that. Um, but we also, one of the things that we struggle with in the community is just having enough gym space on the weekends for our parks and wrecks and all of those pieces. And we're moving from a situation where right now you have a Burns gym and you have a Fairfield gym and you may not have that situation in the future. So, making sure that you have enough gym space. Um, so is all of those conversations that go on of trying to figure out what they will pay for versus what they would say if you want this, this has
068got to be a local option on top of conversations about all the other great things that we'd like to have. Um that's a really interesting process right now as we go through that and um think about the things that make sense when running a school versus not. Um, and you know, one of the pieces that we had some discussion about is, um, most schools will place a nurse's office close to the main office. Makes a lot of sense because parents when they come in, pick up a sick kid, have it by the office. One of the points that we're trying to make with them is that there should be an auxiliary nurse's office located next to the e entrance and exit to the playground because kids get bumps and bruises on the playground. And when
069you have a 15minute recess time and they may have to walk through a building that may be know a quarter of mile from the playground to the nurse's office in a snowsuit and tracking in mud that doesn't make a lot of sense. So we have to try to advocate for some of those things about as you look at a design of the building functionality. Where does some of those things go? Um, it's really fun to to kind of do those those pieces to figure out how you can kind of shape a building for the future. Any questions on the school construction update? No questions. Moving on. Brings us to item H, a first reading of policies. policy DK's DKC travel expense reimbursement DD grants DI fiscal accounting and reporting DIA fixed assets DC use of
070credit cards DN school property disposition DFF-R school activity funds student activity funds administrative procedures and DFF accounting for non-budgeted funds and student activity funds Is there a motion, school board member Johnston? Uh, thank you. I move we approve the first reading of policies DKC, DD, DI, DIA, DC, DN, DFF-R, and DFF and also strike policies DFF-E1, DFF-E2, DFF- E3, DID, and DJ. J A-R second. Motion's been made by school board member Johnston, second by school board member Truman uh to approve the first reading of policies and to strike the policies identified as well. Any discussion? Seeing no discussion, roll call vote. School board member Archie, yes. School board member Prebble, yes. School board member Richard, yes. School board member Lefortune, yes. School board member Gail, yes. Yes. School board member Truman. Yes. School board member
071Johnston. Yes. Motion passes. 70. Brings us to item I of the agenda and that is the second reading of policies. Policy CB-E, the Superintendent Job Description. AC non-discrimination, equal opportunity and affirmative action. ACA harassment and sexual harassment of students. ACA-R student discrimination harassment and title four sexual harassment complaint procedures. ACAB harassment and sexual harassment of school employees ACAB-R employee discrimination harassment and title excuse me title nine sexual harassment complaint procedures GCFB recruiting and hiring of administrative staff and GBN family and medical leave. Is there a motion? School board member Johnston. Thank you. I move we approve the second reading of policies GB-E AC AAA ac-RB and GBN. Second. Motion's been made by schoolboard member Johnston, second by school board member Truman. Any discussion on the policy? Second reading. Seeing no discussion, roll call vote. School
072board member Archie, yes. School board member Prebble, yes. School board member Richard, yes. School board member Lefortune, yes. School board member Gail, yes. School board member Truman, yes. School board member Johnston, yes. Motion passes 70. That brings us to item 13 of the agenda. There's no other information at this time. Does anybody have anything that they want to share? Moving on to item 14. There is no executive session this evening. With that brings us to item 15. A motion. 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 to adjurnn. School board member Archie. Yes. School board member Prebble. Yes. School board member Richard. Yes. School board member Lefortune. Yes. School board member Gail. Yes. School board member Truman.
073Yes. School board member Johnston. Yes. Motion passes 70 to adjourn at 86 p.m. Have a great evening everyone.