001Greetings and welcome to the SACO school board meeting for uh Wednesday, March 22nd, 2023. Call this meeting to order at 5:04 p.m. I'll let the record reflect that all the school board members are present with the exception of school board member Gail. And with that, I'd like to invite you all to join us in the pledge of allegiance. Thank you very much. Next up on the agenda is the approval of the school board meeting minutes dated March 8th, 2023. Is there a motion to approve the minutes? Mr. Mayor, school board member Truman. I move we approve the school board meeting minutes dated March 8th, 2023. Second. Motion's been made, second by school board member Richard. Any discussion? Roll call vote. School board member Archie. Yes. School board member Prebble, yes. Yes. School board member Richard.
002Yes. School board member Lefortune. Yes. School board member Truman. Yes. School board member Johnston. Yes. School board member Gail. We are voting on the minutes for March 8th, 2023. Yes. Motion passes 70. Let the record reflect that school board member Gail arrived at 5:04 p.m. Uh item four, any adjustments to the agenda this evening? Seeing no adjustments to the agenda, moving on to item five, correspondence. There was no correspondence in the packet. Uh that brings us to item six, public comment. There's any member of the public who would like to speak, please come forward and be heard. Those that have signed up are Holly Troier sea president. Again, for those speaking, please state your name and address into the record. Speak directly into the microphone and keep your comments, please, to three minutes. Good evening.
003The SACO Education Association respects respectfully asks the school board to consider the start time of the parent teacher conferences next year when you are looking at the calendar. You are looking at a draft calendar tonight, I think. Thank you very much. Thank you. If there's any other member who would like to speak to the school board, please come forward and be heard. With nobody seeking recognition, moving on to item seven of the agenda, and that is the superintendent's report. Superintendent Ray. Good evening everybody. Um, we were here on Monday night, which I thought was a really nice presentation that we had in conversation about uh the school budget with the council. Um, it's a good starting point for us to all kind of understand the processes, how funding comes in, some of the challenges that
004we face. Uh and then now beginning to examine how do we get to the sweet spot that protects the programming that we have while at the same time is respectful of the needs of the council and the public because ultimately council has a pretty big balancing act that they have to do um with their side, our side and making sure as a community um it is something that you know everyone can hopefully find some general acceptance or comfortable And um as we look at the financial situation that we have um I think it was what was nice about that meeting is that we were able to talk about what the drivers were and the fact that you know this is a budget that is about tuition. This is about salary and benefit increases um and
005kind of some of the hard realities that all organizations face at this point in time as you're dealing with labor and those increases. Um just a reminder for people kind of uh I want to say one more finance related thing. Um our finance committee we just uh finished meeting and we are going to do a meeting next Thursday uh 600 6:30 is just got to figure out that time uh just to kind of start talking about what might be some options that we have in the budget. If you are a prek student or or an incoming prek student, please reach out to the school department and uh make sure that registration has started. If you are not in prek this year, but you're going to kindergarten, please reach out um to the schools so that
006we can have uh early notification of about how many kiddos uh we're going to have. Um certainly there will be some dynamics in our population and some flux because we expect um that our new neighbors will be with us again next year. But certainly those may not be the same children that we see or had this year because new families will come in. So certainly when we think about class size that has the that has the possibility of reshuffling the deck a little bit. Uh as we plan for this fall based off the information we knew that it was first grade at Young was was the place where it was going to be problematic for us. That may be something that we won't know until August. Um so staff did a great job being flexible
007with that. Um but any notification uh if whether you're a prek K or if you're just moving to Sco and you want to get a jump start on uh the registration process. Parents sometimes watch school committee meetings. So hopefully if they're thinking about moving to town or are moving to town um they will call the schools. Our spring conferences are just around the uh corner for parents and for staff. So, if you haven't um been able to reach out for a spring conference, please contact the school or look at the emails that may have been sent to you uh from your classroom teacher. And we are about three weeks from April vacation. Uh reminder that here at the K12 at the prek8 uh system in Sako schools, we do not go Thursday and Friday. So,
008our last day is Wednesday. Uh just a reminder for that piece. Any questions? Thank you very much. Any questions for Superintendent Ray? With no questions, moving on to item eight. That is the chair's report. Chair Perva, I don't have anything new to report this evening, but thank you. Thank you. With that brings us to item nine, staff reports. There are no staff reports in the packet this evening. That brings us to item 10 and that is the board subcommittee meeting minutes. There was a personal excuse me a policy and personnel committee uh there are minutes in there from March 8th 2023 and a meeting agenda for April 5th, 2023 at 5:30 p.m. Finance and Infrastructure Committee. There was a meeting today 3:22 at 4 p.m. And as the superintendent just noted, there is a new
009meeting scheduled for next Thursday, March 30th at 6:30 p.m. And then for the curriculum committee, there's their next meeting is March 27th at 4:30 p.m. It's that's it for board subcommittee meeting minutes. Brings us to item 11, old business. There's no old business. And that brings us to item 12, new business. Uh item A is new hires. There was a memorandum in your packet. Uh some requiring no action. Uh and then I think for the stipens, you are requiring action, Superintendent Ray. No, no, no action. Okay. So, there's a memorandum. Any questions for Superintendent Ray on the memorandum for new hires? Do we need to do a motion for the siphons? Superintendent Ray has indicated there's no need to. Oh, we don't need to. That should be that those should be appointments. Okay. So, there's
010no need for action on that item. If there's no questions, moving on to item B, and that is resignations, which there was no memo uh in the packet. So that brings us to item C and that is the 2023 2024 school calendar draft. Superintendent Ray, do you want to start us off? Sure. And I will ask uh Meg to come up because Meg did majority of that work on that. So for the school calendar, we were able to meet with a committee with a couple of representatives from school board as well as association representatives. I think it's fairly straightforward. Some of the discussion points that we had were around double and triplecheing the teacher and student days to make sure that we had the 175 required student days that we had uh correctly marked those
011professional development and new staff days. We are again looking at a school start prior to Labor Day, but putting that 4-day weekend in there for the Labor Day weekend. Um, denoted the conference times in there. part of the discussion around those conference times related to pushing them slightly earlier, but given the contractual end of the day for SACO Middle School on abbreviated Wednesdays, that would be the official start time if all grade levels were going to remain the same. If we wanted to stagger them so that preK5 started a little bit earlier, um that would be one way to do that. The way that we utilize that comp time is to have a consistent three and a half hour block and then ask teachers to document the other time on their own schedule with the
012exception of SACO middle which has to have those consistent times with teeming teachers. So they designate an additional night in addition to what's listed on the calendar for approval. We have not put in the asterisk pending snow days that we have in the past because it's a one for one trade on snow days. We've found it to be only confusing folks where if we put those in and then we end up going beyond that or if we don't. So each day is a one for one on snow days at the end of the year. The calendar at present represents zero snow days with that end date being June 10th. I'm happy to answer any other questions if there are specific questions about the calendar. Thank you very much. Any questions from the school board? School
013board member Gail, I'm sorry. Could you just explain a little bit in more detail about the parent teacher conference? So it sounds like those times were set based on Saco Middle School's teachers availability and that Yeah. So the idea was to keep a consistent districtwide 3 and 1/2 hours which would represent half of the 7hour comp time that teachers would be utilizing and that that would be consistent districtwide which would mean a start time of four. It does present I can understand the challenge that that presents because technically there's some time between the end of the contractual day for our prek5 teachers and the start of that conference time. However, for those prek5 teachers, there is another three and a half hours of comp time that they need to account for for parent teacher conferences
014outside of that day. So in theory that could be utilized in that in between time that hour and for some it's 45 minutes for some it's an hour of time between the end of the contractual day and the start of conferences if that makes sense. I think it does. So then I guess the a teacher would start their morning start their morning and then go through till 7:00 and using what if they're not a middle school teacher then using the hour break in between the end of the school day and the beginning of the parent teacher conference and they would count that towards this comp time that they have to do anyway. Correct. But it's if they're doing conferences, but it's just okay. It's just making a very long day for those folks rather than
015staggering it. Yeah. And it it does at present go until 7:30. And I think that's the concern. I think the balance of that is providing those later times for families that don't have the availability during a more traditional immediately after school time that often those later times are the ones that are needed for two parent working families or for families that have unusual schedules. So there there was a balance there. We did have a good discussion about it and that's where we landed for now. School board member Leforune. So a followup. So the time slots the same time slot that we have in the current year and the challenge is the abbreviated Wednesdays since the the conference dates that are on the new calendar land on Wednesday as opposed to Thursday and Tuesday last time.
016Correct. Any other questions? Thank you very much. Thank you. That brings us on to item D and that is a construction update. Superintendent Ray, do we Sorry to interrupt. I think we have to do an approval of the calendar. Is there a motion to approve the calendar? I move we approve the school board um I'm sorry. I move we approve the uh first reading of the 2023 2024 school calendar. Second motion's been made by school board member Truman, second by school board member Archie uh in a tie with school board member Prebble. Uh and any questions discussion on the motion? See 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. School board member Truman,
017yes. School board member Johnston, yes. Motion passes 70 to approve the 2023 2024 school calendar. That brings us to item D, a construction update. Superintendent Ray. Okay, so we are still full speed ahead on everything construction that we can possibly fit in. uh during a given week um really trying to move forward on finalization of property. We are working a lot on layout simultaneously trying to make sure that we're counting classrooms, working with the DOE, um doing our best to try to get as many things funded at the state level as we possibly can in all of that piece. Um, I know that Meg uh attended planning board and a prescope DOT meeting this week and the Department of Transportation meeting requires a lot to be done. We hope to be able to turn in
018the permit uh the application for permit sometime this week. I believe believe this afternoon we got an email that said they were handd delivering that to the department of transportation this week. Um which means we are continuing to push ahead with that goal of being on the November ballot. There's just so much that has to happen and sometimes we become um just is the process slows down because of other agencies or other work companies that have employee issues etc etc. Um but we're still hoping to get on the agenda for May at the state board meeting so that we can move this along. Um but there's still a lot of hurdles to get over. So, we hope to go uh and have another meeting with the DOE in the next couple of weeks to prepare
019them for the site application. Um, but it's very busy time with the construction update. Any questions on the construction update? No questions. Moving on uh to item E, and that is a budget update. Superintendent Ray. So, I think I kind of wind up doing a lot of that during my superintendence report. Um, just highlighting the meeting that we had this week. Um, again, I think our job now is to meet as a finance group next week to really think about if there were reductions that are needed in that budget to put some real hard numbers and specifics to what that would look like. um and try to kind of map out a plan a little bit so that we can work collaboratively with the council and for you know just so that it's clear to
020the council that if we went in a direction this would be the end result. Um so that there's kind of no guessing or um it's hard when people start throwing around um you know loosely like what would this look like or what would that look like when you're in the heart or in the midst of a meeting and we really need to say hey if we had to do this it would equal this um and just bring clarity to everybody. So, our goal is to meet as a finance committee next week to start developing what that process would be so that um we can get back to the in front of the city council um more quickly than having it drag on. Um I do think that at the end of the months we will
021get that upper band or band of what health insurance will come in at. So, that's important uh for us to get, but we probably won't know until the middle of April what our specific school number, community number will be. Um so, as we move towards next week and get that band, let's just hope that that's a tight band and not a a wide band. Thank you. Any questions for Superintendent Ray on the budget update? School board member Gail, just a quick question slashf followup to one of the comments from one of the counselors on Monday. Um just in terms of the employee and kind of the um having something that we can see that shows you know what's what positions are open and and what the counts have been like I think would be helpful
022and help us with your type of that the the discussion about different options and scenarios. Yeah, you'll get we'll get something very detailed for you guys that says here's what this looks like, here's what this looks like, here are some other options. Um probably put that in a tiered uh thing saying hey this is my recommendation. Certainly you guys will have an opportunity to not go in that direction. Um but show you kind of what hard harder costs would be. We try to make it very detailed and easier for you guys. And actually just one other follow-up point to the um on the toddle in because we had a little bit there was a little discussion of that on Monday. Um I know it's still a couple years out but it's going to be coming
023up sooner than than we think and it's a complex not to untangle. I'm wondering if there's um are we thinking about that as we move forward in in not only this or not in this budget but the next budget and in the following one in case there are things we need to move around or things we need to do uh in that one to two-year gap between when that lease expires and hopefully when the new school building. Yeah, I've certainly been thinking about those more internally about, you know, what those cost, what that would look like. You know, clearly part of that um discussion becomes transportation. Um certainly if after the two years you are not at a standalone situation that greatly helps transportation issues. Um but you know when I say greatly helps that
024just means that we have limited bus drivers and not having dedicated routes for preschool kids um would be less of a burden for our transportation department and it would decrease ride time. I know that you know some of you Jen your your child's picked up pretty early 6:30 right on the nose. That seems pretty tough for a pre-K kiddo. Um, so that has to be and then obviously space is one of those pieces. Now, when we built some extra space at Young School, there are four classrooms sitting there. Um, that solves about half of our problem. Uh, if that was to be used, um, it's about finding where that other space would be that would make sense within the city, make sense transportationwise. Um, so I think that's some of the work that we have
025to do and as we as we move towards the end of that contract. Um, I think what's what's a little tough for us is that if we knew our new neighbors were here for a long time, that puts us in one box. If that is only another year or another two years, that puts us in a very different box. Um, you know, and as we think about growth with within the city, we have a little bit of we have a much more flexibility thinking um K through two because with the extra space at Young, one of the worst case scenarios that a family might have would be having a conversation of, you know, would you have to have a couple of kids come to Young School if this side of town at Fairfield got full?
026the hardest the hardest piece is burns that there's not a lot of extra space at Burns. Um so you really would be looking at teachers who may have to move classrooms to do things like that. Um that is really where we need to go, you know, cross our fingers and hope that there's not a bubble for that school. [Music] Any further questions on the budget update? Moving on to first reading of policies item F and that is policy EB environmental health and safety program risk management EBAA chemical hazards EAA drug and alcohol testing of school bus drivers and EBCA a comprehensive health and safety and emergency management plan. Is there a motion? Mr. Mayor, school board member Johnston. I I move we approve the first reading of policies EB, EB AAA, E E A E
027AAA, and EBCA. Second. Motion's been made by school board member Johnston, second by school board member Truman. Any discussion on the first reading of policies. 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. Yes. School board member Gail, yes. School board member Truman, yes. School board member Johnston, yes. Motion passes 70. Brings us to item G, a second reading of policies. policy CBI evaluation of the superintendent DJ-R federal procurement manual DJ uh bidding purchasing requirements DJA purchasing authority and DJH purchasing and contracting proc procurement staff code of conduct is there a motion Mr. Mayor, school board member Johnston. I move we approve the second reading of policies CBI, DJ-R, DJ, DJ, and DJH. Second. Motion's been made by
028school board member Johnston, second by school board member Truman. Any discussion on the second reading of policies? Seeing no discussion, roll call votes. 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. And school board member Johnston. Yes. Motion passes 70. Approve the second reading of policies. That brings us to item 13. Other information. Anyone have anything other this evening? There's nothing in the packet. Okay. Moving on. Item 14. There's no executive session this evening. That brings us to item 15. I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. Second. School board member Truman and then school board member Prebble and I think that was a tie on the right side again. Any discussion
029on 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? Yes. And school board member Johnston? Yes. Motion passes 70 to adjourn at 5:31 p.m. Have a great evening, everyone.