Saco School Board Meeting 5-24-23

001e e e greetings and welcome to the Saka school board meeting for Wednesday May 24th 2023 call this meeting to order at uh 2 minutes after 5: p.m. uh let the record reflect that all school board members are present with the exception of school board member uh Truman who's been excused and School Board member Gail who's running a little bit late uh with that i' like to invite you all to join us in the Pledge of Allegiance thank you very much uh item three on the agenda is a very special uh item and superintendent Ray has some names and some uh comments to go with those special retirement gestures so superintendent R all right thank you very much uh and welcome everybody to the meeting glad that we have a good crowd for a good

002reason here tonight because if we didn't have a retirement and this many people were in the crowd it means I did something wrong and you were happy about that probably still think I did something wrong and you may still be unhappy but we're here to celebrate U for employes who uh again positives and negatives are celebrating a special moment in their lives uh with their retirements uh from the Sako school department for all of you who are retiring please know that main state law only requires you to be unemployed from the school department for 30 days of a weight period before you come come back and say drive an athletic trip or help sub or do any of those things so just remember that 30 days is all you have to stay away and we

003would love to have you come back um but uh as we get to this piece we're going to call up the uh director uh or principal from a building uh to talk a little bit about the employee and we have a a have a gift for you and you're welcome to come up and say something or stay seated and I'll find you uh but I first would like to call Wendy leblan the principal of Fairfield [Applause] school good evening oh wow good evening everyone I'm Wendy leblan principal at Fairfield school and tonight I have the honor of celebrating the retirement of Mary Bishop Mary is currently A literacy intervention edtech at Fairfield and has been with our school department for 11 years though I've only known Mary for one school year it's easy to recognize

004the that she is loving thoughtful reliable and a hardworking person Mary goes out of her way to get to know you I'm pretty sure she's the first person to ask me how my weekend was and if my children were sick to check in to see if they're feeling better and she clearly reads all of my weekend and monthly newsletters so that's awesome Mary and some of the other interventionists are in the portable located behind our school and even though she has the longest distance to walk she's always on time she's reliable um she's well known for being all dressed up in her parka and everything for duties and assignments and just happy to be there just recently I was walking through the building during one of our extended days and Mary was seeing being a

005group of students just taking advantage of every second that she had to deliver instruction she seeks these opportunities on her own to help kids and her team and she's always doing it with a smile and a positive attitude when I asked Mary's teammates about her they shared the same statements hardworking being one of the first people to show up being easy to work with collaborative and always willing to help out these St statements describe the Mary that I've gotten to know in the last 9 months I'm very happy and support Mary with her retirement she's not here tonight because she chose the book club over her principal and we've talked about that but um it will be a loss for our school I asked Mary how she felt about retirement and she said she has

006mixed feelings she's excited about her future but she's very sad to leave her Fairfield Family Mary I'm going to make her watch this video later thank you for your years of service as an educator I wish you a wonderful retirement and she has already promised she would come back and [Applause] sub good evening I'm April Noble the prin principal over at CK Burns and tonight I have the honor of recognizing Nancy Carroll she too is an edtech who works at CK Burns school she is not here tonight because she did not want to be honored in any special or over-the-top way and that really just exudes kind of Nancy in a nutshell Nancy is new to CK Burns this year but previous to that she spent 15 years as an educator in both the Cape

007Elizabeth schools and at the scar brro schools and she taught in a functional life skills capacity so as you can imagine with her skill set coming over to Burns this year as an edtech she was invaluable in our strides program uh immediately um we have a new teacher in that program as well immediately they almost became co-teachers um while she was under an edtech contract she was always there to help support and guide and help make decisions and give her advice she stays longer than she's expected she comes earlier than is expected and she really has just fit in with our staff so quickly and seamlessly so I just want to commend her on her number of years as an educator in the state of Maine I want to thank her for her year of

008service at CK Burns and I'm going to have to remember tomorrow to tell her about that rule about 30 days because she'll be a wonderful asset should she choose to come back and do some subbing for us but her experience with students with a similar profile as a teaching uh as a teacher has been really beneficial for all the students students and all the teachers in the strides program so congratulations to Nancy [Applause] Caroll good evening uh V and I have worked with Lucille and Elaine for 15 years or more and they've been through an SAU and RSU s schools Standalone unit they've been through numerous uh leadership changes they went through covid and from either one of them we've never had a complaint they've just shown up and done their work and just been

009Exemplar in their work so from the bottom of our hearts I'd like to say thank you for your dedication your professionalism and most of all for getting our kids home thank you very much and like the 30 30-day deal if uh if either one of you get bored anytime you know where we're at you coming up first now any anybody we talk to about Lucille the first thing they say is Lucille is the sweetest person they've ever met I wouldn't I wouldn't disagree with that but I would add uh meticulous and organized she got a list for everything keeps track of everything that's right I mean she has probably worked with every member in transportation she's done every run in transportation and it's just she's always done it with a smile I once thought she

010might she might have a twin sister or something running around because I I'd see her all over town walking and I and eventually I figured out no that's just that's what she does she walks everywhere and thankful I just want to thank you for having high hied me because I love this job great I love working with the kids the bus drivers the buses everybody believe we are hoping you come back once in a while just to keep your little brother step there we we have trouble with that so we're hoping you come back and help us out and we did find out you like bowling so good luck and I hope you get a chance to raise your scores and do whatever you need to do while your bowl need enjoy your retirement thank

011you very much thank you very much you're welcome thank you first thing I have to say is anybody who knows knows I'm not going to miss an opportunity to say what I what I want to say okay okay you going to let us go first or you going to go let me let me start by saying Elaine is probably the most humble person that I've known in my life I mean not not many people know that she is the director of Open Hands Open Hearts that's an organization has helped hundreds if not thousands of local residents with with clothing household goods and she just has countless hours in that place probably countless dollars because I've seen her go to the store and buy socks and undergarments for kids that needed them so she also works

012for the rotary I could remember not arguing but having discussions on whether she could park her bus at The Rotary meetings because she didn't want to be late for the Rotary meeting or getting back to work I'm sure we worked something out we did for a while we did I I'll definitely miss when we'd have our discussions just told you whatever it was we were discussing she told you like it was she didn't hold anything back she sugar Cod or anything she was always very honest and very forthright and I appreciate that I'm going to I'm going to miss you youly uh wish you luck and I hope you can start your golf tournament up again that was great start Friday okay start Friday okay um what I want to say is when I first

013came back to this job not back to this job I worked as a school bus driver in my younger days and uh when I needed a job the bus drivers going around my neighborhood hinging so anyway I got the job when I got the job two little kids in the bus was wild and I wanted their attention and I reached over you can't fire me now because I'm leaving I reached over and I hit one of the kids on I'm like this he turns around like what like you're not listening to me and when I did that I'm like oh my God I shouldn't have done that and it was around Christmas time and I said I'm G to get a bell I'm going to ring the bell every time they misbehaved and I never

014did that thank God because they took probably say remember that crazy bus driver we had so a couple of that was an experience and a couple that I think of is when two little kids fourth and fifth graders were sitting behind me and they were arguing about Santa Claus and I could tell what was coming so one said he didn't believe in Santa Claus the other one said yes and they argued about that and the fourth grader say I'm getting a Nintendo for Christmas and my parents would never spend $200 and I knew the question was coming Lane is there really a Santa Claus I said whatever you believe is true turn out pretty good to me we heard it here the bus driver is the one that makes that determination and one other story

015is this one little kid had his backpack got caught in his little girl's hair that sitting in and I couldn't do it kept telling them hold up wait I couldn't get it done so what I did I got the seat belt cutter I just [Laughter] her her mother's gonna kill me but she got on the bus the next day and I said oh it looks pretty good and one last thing I want to compliment jeie on everything that she does she keeps this place going like unbelievable I don't think anybody could do it the way she does she can she can control is everything the only thing she can't control is the traffic you do a marvelous job really really I think she'd agree we got a great team but not [Laughter] days el el

016Elaine Elaine 60 is fine too thank you thank you up next on the agenda is item four approval of the Schoolboard meeting minutes dated May 10th 2023 is there a motion to approve the minutes Mr Mayor member Richard I move we approve the school board meeting minutes dated May 10th 2022 2023 second thank you motion and seconded by School Board member prebble any discussion roll call votes School Board member Archie yes School Board member prebble yes School Board member Richard yes School Board member L Fortune yes School Board member Gail yes Schoolboard member Truman excuse me Schoolboard member Johnston yes and that is five 60 excuse me uh item five of the agenda this evening uh there are no adjust ments to the agenda and so that brings us on to item six there is

017no correspondence this evening and that arrives us at item seven public session if there's any member of the public who would like to address the school board please come forward and be heard with nobody seeking recognition moving on to item eight of the agenda and that is the superintendent's report superintendent Ray all right good evening so there that there's no awkwardness that you do not have to stay if you don't want to hear the entire meeting so if if you do choose to leave this would be a great time I'll I'll pause you don't have to listen anyway but I knew that would be coming don't worry about that [Applause] okay good evening everybody thanks for coming out tonight uh couple of things is we are in our last 16 days of school um and

018our last day is Friday the 16th which will be a half day of school for students and for staff um just a reminder to everybody who may be watching at home is that Wednesday the 14th will be our extended one hour day we'll send out another notice for that but that is how we made up a couple of those snow days so that we didn't have to come back on the Tuesday of the next week this summer we have a ton of work that will be happening around our our buildings uh that we discussed during finance committee but just for the rest of the school committee just to update you is that we will have completed uh this summer probably around 95% of the ventilation work at SMS um we are just leaving a a

019small set section in conjunction with being about 95% of the roof will be done um and when we install that last section of HVAC work we'll then finish that last section as we didn't want to put the new roof down wait for the part to come in rip that back up Etc at SMS and at Fairfield School throughout the summertime uh through the revolving Renovations Grant we will have all exterior doors or majority of exterior doors replaced we are also working uh to add a security feature at SMS that will um provide entrance way to the gymnasium not going through the front lobby of the school so that we'll kind of have to walk around um and part of that is just as people come in and out of the school keeping our students from

020not having to mix uh with visitors will uh provide a more safe atmosphere additionally we have received bids to replace the bleachers at SMS which will occur over the summertime we'll next start looking at um the backboards on some of the sides and the curtain in the middle uh of that gym and really taking care of that uh all at one time we've had um flooring concerns uh of certain tile work that hasn't been done over time and we were replacing I believe five rooms there while also looking at since we have all new furniture at the SMS Library New painting there that it makes sense also to replace the carpet in that room while we're doing everything at one time so a lot of work this summer are will be busy while uh parallel

021time of making sure that we're moving ahead on that building projects of ours for any parents at home or if we have friends if you have changed addresses or know that you're going to change addresses or if you're just someone who's saying I'm moving to Sako in August and I haven't reached out to the school yet we need registrations so please register early and if it's a change of address it is so helpful for us to have that now versus two hours into the first day of school and then we're concerned about what busing looks like um as we know we have uh the routing system uh for transportation which I get it on my phone with my kiddos it's great I love it when it pops up and I know the bus is going

022to be there but that's all information that has to be set up prior to the start of the school year or there will be a delay for some families rolling that out um at this time it appears that our kindergarten and prek registrations are very strong uh and so we'll have to continue to evaluate that over the summer for any of you who have been watching um the budget process at the state you'll see uh a couple of weeks ago the governor announced that there was going to be an extra amount of money put into our state budget in that piece was $50 million for the revolving renovation account which would give us access to Priority one priority two items meaning air quality and we will continue to Lobby very hard in this round that

023we get to Priority two which may help us address Windows um those would be the types of items that we would hope to get to um so more on that to come and then also finally a reminder for families at home this tends to be the field trip time of year because you're taking kids out so watch for those permission slips make sure we know uh what's going on our principal send home newsletters and I know it's easy to be overwhelmed with all the stuff that we have to take in as parents and family members but uh this is an important time because sometimes our kids are not always in the building based off field trips um like tomorrow I believe we have some of our students going to a Sea Dog game or or

024things like that so any questions no questions on the superintendent's report moving on to item nine the chair report chair Preble I don't have anything new to report this evening thank you thank you item 10 there are no staff reports to review this evening brings us to item 11 uh board subcommittee minutes uh the policy and Personnel committee meets uh on June 14 2023 at 5:30 pm finance and infrastructure uh committee met today at 4 pm and the curriculum committee met uh on Monday at 4:30 P.M any questions on the minutes for the board subcommittees moving on to item 12 old business there's no old business before the school board tonight so that brings us to item 13 new business item a is a memorandum from superintendent Ray on new hires that's been in your

025packet superintendent Ray does this require action yes it does thank you is there a school board School Board member la Forge I move we approve the nomination of Jacqueline Lyman school psychologist Kaye Tingley SMS IEP coordinator Justin Fel SMS art teacher Noah cotch CK Burns paths teacher and issue a contract for the 2023 2024 school year second motion's been made by school board M of Fortune second by School Board member Archie any discussion roll call vote Schoolboard member Archie yes School Board member prebble yes School Board member Richard yes School Board member L Fortune yes School Board member Gail yes School Board member Johnston yes motion passes 60 brings us to Item B and that is a memorandum from superintendent Ray on resignations superintendent Ray it does not see that the Board needs to act

026on these so no the board does not need to act on resignations U and that is a change that we actually talked about the other they to go to a policy or is in the policy historically you guys have um and so I think that's something that we may historically we have approved those registation which I say we should tonight but that should be something that the policy committee talks about of whether they want to continue that practice or thank you is there a member of the school board willing to make the motion some M of Fortune just a question is the motion related to the names that are in the memorandum we have now that is correct so it's just so just so I understand what the motion is gonna be just that we

027are accepting accepting the resignation do do they have to be named specifically or just accept them as as written you can accept them as written all right I move we accept the memo the resignation memo with the names as written second motion made made by Schoolboard member Le fortun second by Schoolboard member Archie any discussion on the resignation memo no discussion roll call vote School Board member Archie yes School Board member prebble yes School Board member Richard yes School Board member of Fortune yes School Board member Gail yes and School Board member Johnston yes motion passes 60 that brings us to item C which is a school board meeting calendar that was brought up at the last meeting and I think this is up for approval tonight board member willing to make the motion SCH

028board member of Fortune I move we accept the the Schoolboard meeting calendar as proposed motion's been made is there a second second second by School Board member Richard any discussion calendar school board member Gail um I guess I just want to take a minute here and and discuss the Schoolboard calendar for next year um I know last year kind of raised some of these issues and um I continue to believe that the five o'clock meeting is just not in the interest of full public engagement uh also in thinking about it a little bit more I also think that meeting at 5 and having that in the calendar for the rest of the year as we come up on elections um that I think could prevent some folks from thinking they want to run because of

029conflicts in their work schedule and their life schedule five just seems a little early um doing a little bit of research search a couple months ago I was hard pressed to find any other school boards that meet at 5 typically they're six um there was one I think Augusta met 5:30 so aside from bord and us I had a hard time finding other school boards meeting at 5 I think if you look around at City councils there aren't very many any that I know of that meet at 5 as well so I'm wondering if we can have a discussion about this 5m meeting and whether we can either have a separate meeting or foro or at a very minimum can we push this to 5:30 on those dates recognizing uh the superintendent's busy schedule on

030these Wednesdays School Board member Gail would you like to make an amendment to uh see if there's an appetite uh to look at the 530 yeah I guess so I guess I I'd like to make a motion to amend the School Board calendar as presented and change the 500 PM date uh 500m meeting time to 5:30 on those dates amendment has been made by or offered by School Board member Gail to move the 5:00 meetings to 5:30 uh for the 20123 2024 Schoolboard calendar is there a second second second by Schoolboard member Archie so now it is open for discussion School Board Mara Forge so I have I'm not going to make a motion for this it's going to just get really messy heading down the path so just from a logistic stando Point looking

031at the calendar that we have proposed the majority of the ones that land in the five o' slot or ultimately 5:30 if this motion passes are a couple of exceptions the second meeting of the month is an alternative approach to just not have a second meeting of the month I mean just from the standpoint of the types of of business we cover when we're not in a budget cycle there isn't really a lot of time sensitive stuff that comes to the board just an observation do I get a vote on this because I'm in favor superintendent Ray uh you know this question was brought up uh you know could there still be enough business done in the one meeting aside from the the budget presentations uh could you do the business in one meeting I

032think is what Schoolboard member La Fortune was asking uh and and that might be a way to remove the second meeting but you need your expertise to yeah I mean I think that you can I mean I think we structure meetings you know like tonight I know that Rainey and I traded emails about a presentation and when that would be and quite frankly looking at June 14th didn't necessarily seem like the day and had things been different I probably would have looked at you know had rainy and I communicated I would have said okay this would been perfect for the 7 o'clock meeting versus this but knowing that June 14th wasn't probably going to be um a high level of TuneIn on a school committee meeting it felt like this would be the night um

033I mean I think what it would allow you to consider and I want to say this during budget season no we need to have two meetings um we've had a couple of decent budgets but we know that we can have some tough ones too I think another piece that is a little bit challenging that we have for a setup is that we have a charter requirement that requires us to meet with the city council um once a month starting in January what we wind up doing having a very kind of redundant meeting um which is and frankly in my opinion we kind of wasting people's time that way by hearing the same thing I don't mean that we're wasting but it's the same information that we've just talked about the week before because trying to

034prep the school committee for what we're going to talk about at city council so I do think that we could have a conversation about that additionally one of the things that you could reserve that night for starting at 5: or 5:30 or 6 o'clock could be still having your finance committee meeting maybe that is the night that you want to have policy committee meeting um and do some of that work that if you did need to host a school committee meeting you could do that mean I think there's plenty of different options I I mean there's some months that we only have one meeting anyway because of holidays um you know August 23rd that meeting that would be a month I would say yes we definitely have need to have a meeting why because I

035need to remind people about transportation and I need you to officially hire teachers those would be what those things is we're just trying to get contracts out when you look at you know September 27 and October 25th those may not be times of the year in normal years um that we would be doing something this year on October 25th I hope that we're having a great meeting talking about the vote for a new school building so that would be you know we would say yes let's get together on that let's make sure that we have that so Kevin I do think that's a reasonable suggestion and I think we could carry out the business [Music] any Schoolboard member Arch and then Schoolboard member Pro uh I wanted to have more of a discussion about this

036and Kevin I I actually really see where you're going with with that and um Jeremy you're definitely you're definitely not wrong we definitely are redundant on most of our meetings there during budget season um and I do like the idea of having the subcommittee meetings like kind of all in one that way if all of the board members wanted to join you know one evening you know and we can go over the sub subcommittee meetings um it's not a bad idea but what I would request is if we do scrap the five o'clock meetings could we change the time of the seven o'clock meetings and maybe do it on a different Wednesday than bford and maybe do like at six o'clock so kind of like we're not trying to shove everything to one meeting superintendent

037Ry I'll look to you to I know it's a big advise the board of your schedule again I also have another set of meetings that not having any of this conversation beforehand that has to be talked about we have a contractual relationship that needs to be worked about worked on and I will say that this um nobody loves doing a double header twice a month um there is a situation where I am going to continue to try to do a better job with getting a few things for my kiddos uh at nights based off all of the other meetings so I think that would be something that we would have to think about I think that we can have S o'clock meetings and change the whole thing I also could have a conversation with the

038bitterford board about what would happen if they started at 6:30 here on our 5:30 meeting 90% of the time or probably more than that we can make that so I think that it would require further discussion with multiple groups School Board member Arch any followup and I and and and and it's not just bord I'd need to consult I'd also need to consult the Dayton board as well no I completely understand where you're coming from I just figured if we're going to get rid of a meeting it would make a little bit more sense to have a little bit more leniency on the start time of the meeting that we do have and I didn't know if the other boards would be open to maybe them starting a little earlier on those meetings so we

039could start a little earlier it's just this is all up for discussion I just wanted to point that out do we have anything uh Mr Mayor do we have anything in the charter about the number of meetings the charter only speaks to the school board meetings uh when it pertains to the finance and budget so that would be the uh meetings in January starting in January and going through uh June because that that is a consideration for me with the other chter school board member is it possible to consider maybe Kevin's idea and see a revised calendar to compare the two to see if that's something we would um be interested in what that would look like if we were to reduce our meetings just to give us like a visual aspect of it uh

040so what you could do is you could deal with the amendment that you're currently discussing the amendment to move to 5:30 and then you depending on how that goes or however it goes uh you could table this until the next meeting okay and give your your board and and superintendent time to review discuss and maybe present an alternative calendar based upon the discussions that have had tonight so that is probably the easiest and simplest way uh to move forward in the process okay thank you any further Schoolboard member Johnston um so I am trying to follow this conversation we've obviously got a lot of different potential plans in the year um I guess my question would be for the superintendent in terms of the this specific amendment to change the meeting time to 5:30 is

041that something that would work for you Mr Superintendent at this point in time do you know clearly anything can come up that will require a lengthier meeting do I think that you think do I think that we could structure things in a way to make that work yes at the same token I think that we could look at Kevin's idea and things that way I think I have a little bit harder time adjusting to moving one ahead on the same night that would be a little bit harder for me but I can look at that and we can bring back a menu of options next meeting that would allow people to to do a comparison okay thank you I needed that Clarity I think I did with all due respect want to respond to um

042to um Will's comment that this might that our current calendar might be discouraging to people in terms of running for the Schoolboard office I guess for me there's this reality about it it's not always going to be convenient for anybody who's on any sort of board Council or government office um obviously your life has to be has to offer enough time to to to be responsible to most of the meetings that you should go to but I think that that factor alone you would either have to have a a basic ability to attend meetings or you don't and if you don't then as much as you might want to run for an office you're not going to be able to fulfill your responsibilities so I just not sure that for me that's a particularly valid

043argument thank you thank you Schoolboard member of Fortune I was going to suggest the same thing about maybe bringing it back at another meeting um the other um thing that I was just going to bring up is that we have we have policy support for modifying the schedule if a need arises I I I like the idea of having the meeting be at a consistent time and by having just that first s o' meeting which is pretty much almost every one of these calendar months has that um it would be consistent not only for us to plan around it but also to have you know maybe people who would not otherwise be able to attend um to be an audience member also be able to to attend the meeting and my um point about the

044policy is that we you know if something were to arise we have policy support to add a meeting with enough public notice if necessary and we've done that you know probably more than we probably should have in the last few years whether it was things related to covid or hiring superintendent or or any other topic that's come up so we do have that flexibility if we did actually have a need and I mean I seem to recall many years ago that when we were doing the budget cycle we had weeks where we had two or three meetings in a row just on the budget like Tuesday Wednesday Thursday say I'm definitely not suggesting doing that but we have flexibility if we need it thank you any further discussion on the amendment only again the amendment

045only School Board member Argie yeah so I I I'm really glad that you brought that idea up Kevin I've been mulling over this for a few months now as most of you know and I I it didn't even consider I didn't even consider you know moving to one board meeting um but I think part part of the amendment that will has presented to us is so it is more feasible for families and and and parents to come to the board meeting and I know that my age of children bedtime is 7 o'clock so if we're only going to have one meeting a month I think 7 o'clock is not really the best idea because we're gonna have parents that are trying to put their kids to bed and want to watch the meeting at home

046or come to the meeting and then you know there have been nights where we've had a 7 o'clock meeting we've been here till 10 10:30 so that's with two meetings a month um I personally would like to see uh if we go to one meeting a month see if we can work with the other committees to see if we can have an earlier start time um that way you know we we don't feel rushed and then people can still come to the meeting and then make it home for their their kids bedtime thank you thank you any further discussion on the amendment only and the amendment is to move the second meeting from 5 o'clock to 5:30 any further discussion board member just a proed procedural question so in terms of getting to a place

047where we're thinking about having this go back to the drawing board till the next meeting is the best approach to withdraw motions and seconds or to vote it all the way through we're going to vot negative procedurally would deal with the amendment however the board sees fit uh and then table the current uh proposed calendar in favor of an alternative at the next meeting you don't want to turn down the calendar because I'm not sure of your policies of whether you can take up same business in the same same calendar year same term so have to those policies but the easiest way would just be a motion to table then table you can bring it back and then deal with the bu SCH board member R Jeremy is there a way that we could get

048kind of a rough draft as to what we are talking about with these um amendments for the next meeting yes I I'll get to work on those and if you could do that I'll put a motion in the table first I have to deal with the amendment once we deal with the amendment then you can motion the table the main item as amended or as non Amed okay table the amendment School Board member Gail sorry Mr Mayor just one procedurally then uh at the next School Board member um School Board meeting we would have to make a decision uh on it you you would have options provided by the superintendent and then you could either table it again or you could table it again if you had to or you could approve one of the

049other options or you could approve uh the same one that's been put forward to you tonight y okay so on the amendment on the amendment only and the amendment is just to move the second meeting from 5:00 to 5:30 so I'll I'll withdraw my second you're going to withdraw your second on the amendment yes okay is there a second on the amendment on the amendment only the amendment fails for lack of a second back to the main motion now as now as three of amendments School Board member Archie I would like to put a motion into the table this school board me member Archie has made a motion to table is there a second second by School Board member prebble roll call vote School Board member excuse me School Board member Archie yes School Board

050member prebble yes School Board member Richard yes School Board member L Fortune yes School Board member Gail yes School Board member Johnston yes motion passes 60 to table until the next meeting moving on to item D School construction update superintendent Ray all right so Megan and I will meet again tomorrow morning with uh oako we're really kind of a little bit in a holding pattern until we hear back from the Department of Transportation uh on the work that we had reported out last time in our schools and around the community there are maps available that we've shown here uh so if people have thoughts about those um I think it's just for for it can be difficult for people who haven't necessarily followed the process from start to finish to understand like so why is

051that room 800 square F feet and when you're looking at a state funded building because that is what their formula allows but when you look at a prek classroom th square feet um and so I think that's always something that can be challenging is that people sometimes just don't know that there are for a state construction problem there's a lot of requirements that are there along the ways of how much square footage a gym will be or how much square footage uh the library will be and so you follow those formulas a little bit and that you know is how you get to the construction of a building um in a square footage piece so those are around uh we continue to um I would say hopefully very soon you guys will start to see

052more of what an outside of a building will begin to look like um as they're starting to add those levels and starting to look at the landscape features um a lot of conversations still about play space and and all of those pieces but the our big hurdle is the next um feedback from the Department of Transportation and our responses from our consultant to the doe thank you superintendent Ray any discussion or questions for superintendent Ray on the school construction project School Board member problem um superintendent Ray could you review for me again where the boards are located for the Public's knowledge I know they were at the schools I believe but I don't know if they were elsewhere in the community I'm sorry they're at the schools I believe there's one downstairs here at City

053Hall um and I've got to get a couple to Chris Striker because we want to put them at the um at the Little League field um out there we have those made so they're in our schools they're here I think I have another set that I wanted to try to get out U into a busy Place uh in the summertime and probably the recck department just because they'll have a lot of people in and out this summertime as people drop off for summer care any thoughts at the transportation center maybe is a good spot for some of the boards to for the new schools I just know there's a lot of traffic foot traffic in the transportation center yeah I think we can consider of that piece I just would want to make sure that

054that was we're putting those with places where that is local traffic for people who may or may not have kids um coming to school school board remember Gil following up on uh on that can we are we going to do we have plans to place one at the library for the summertime we C we certainly can do that and thought about that place no further discussion moving on uh to item e and we're going to have a dorton Academy presentation from Headmaster manard e I was just grabbing some extra documentation is there an extra one of these for Schoolboard member Truman okay we have one thank you just making sure we get all the information well good evening thank you for having us tonight um let me just Begin by extending congratulations to the recent

055retirees and certainly thanking them for their service to our Soo students and Families my name is reny manard I've been a classroom teacher and an administrator at Thorton Academy for 28 years I've had the privilege of serving as the Headmaster for the last 11 years um I grew up in STO I graduated from the Thorton Academy my wife and I I have raised our two children here in s uh they went to S schools had a fantastic experience and they went off to to Thorton Academy and one is off uh to college um I'm joined here today by my colleagues Carol Tano who is the associate head of school and and Marie swensson who is our our CFO and you'll be hearing from them uh shortly before I begin I'd like to invite all of

056you to our commencement ceremony our graduation ceremony which is just around the corner uh that's on June 4th it's on a Sunday it's 1:00 outside in Hill Stadium uh we'll certainly send all of you a formal invitation by the end of the week and we will be praying for good weather if it does rain and I'm knocking on wood that it does not but if it does rain we have a rain date we'll do it on Monday evening uh in Lenell gymnasium I'd also like to welcome the opportunity to give all of you on the board a tour of the campus if you've never been on campus or if it's been a while I'd be happy to do that um at at your convenience the last time we were invited to present here it was

057preco it's been a little while so certainly appreciate the opportunity uh to be back here our existing contract between the academy and the city articulates a number of data points that we present to you and uh we will certainly do that and then we're going to add some other information that we hope uh you find interesting and certainly um invite you to ask questions at any point as we present this evening so I'm going to just flip through here this works table of contents and then we'll go to uh our first slide which is on page three and just show you some data on Soo enrollments and you can see those numbers there in front of you uh this is all based on October 1st counts enrollment counts and for consistency we're going to talk

058whenever we talk about enrollment here would be October 1st understand that enrollment as it does in K8 can change from day to day generally the enrollment tends to go down a little bit as we get through the school year uh an interesting fact so you see 869 soer students on October 1st five years ago in the 2017 2018 school year we had 969 students at Thor Academy we have have 100 fewer Soo students at TA today than we did just five years ago as we look ahead certainly as we plan we look at the projections from prek through 8 and we're anticipating that next year's sock enrollment will will be flat or or may even go down uh slightly slide two just gives you a little um perspective of the enrollment at Thor Academy you

059can see in this pie chart that the area shaded in yellow or gold is our Sako enrollment and this is schoolwide population grades 6 through 12 and you can see that Sako comprises about uh 58% of our students uh the maroon section you can see Dayton about close to 12% a Rundle about 8% boarding students again close to 12% and then what we call our other private students who who um pay day tuition from surrounding communities make up another nine and a half perent of our student population total High School population um is uh was on October 1st 1320 and our Middle School population was about 178 students I just want to talk a little bit about you have a program of studies and uh certainly welcome you to look at that and uh get

060a better sense of what we offer for our curriculum as you can imagine we're fairly large Comprehensive High School just want to talk about a couple things that are unique about ta uh the first bullet point the fact that we offer 47 offerings and what we call 26 AP or advanced placement courses that's a national curriculum University recognized as perhaps the most rigorous courses in in high schools in America today it's college level work and U many of our students are able to as they are in other high schools are able to earn college credit while they are in um high school we also offer six languages you can see those Chinese Arabic Latin Spanish French and German and those are fouryear sequences so every student at thror Academy has the opportunity to take four

061years of Mandarin four years of Arabic and in most of these cases uh they can take what we call a core or an honors level or even an AP level at any of those languages we also are very proud of our Arts offerings per Performing and visual arts over 35 courses in music and dance visual uh performances movie making Etc we do have a couple of articulation agreements one with um's College of Engineering uh we penned that maybe a half a dozen years ago uh we're proud of the fact that about five years ago we had two Sako students who were able to enroll into um's College of Engineering with sophomore status and we also have a similar agreement with the University of New England and the last bullet point uh we have are proud

062of the fact that we've been recognized as an apple distinguished school and you can see the years from 2016 to uh 2024 and that's generally given to schools um who have demonstrated Innovation and Excellence primarily in the use of technology and instruction there are probably two or three or four other schools in the state of Maine and I think there's about 400 schools Nationwide um not to receive that that designation and the next slide I mentioned the AP courses earlier you can see those 26 AP courses that we offer there's 25 in list physics one and two our two separate exams um proud the fact that we offer more AP opportunities than any High School in the state and we have some data there this year for for the spring of 23 we had 272

063students took 48 5 AP exams and they just finished those exams up last week uh so when you look at they're primarily offered to Juniors and seniors there are few one or two courses where perhaps a student can take it as a take an AP class as a sophomore but close to 40% of our Juniors and seniors take an AP exam which is slightly above the uh national average uh one of the things we um and Carol will talk about scores and our AP scores and we're proud of how our students do but the other primary reason that we offer this AP curriculum is that we want students to stretch we want students to challenge themselves and know that they are capable of doing college level work the next set of slides can be presented

064by Carol and then I'll stop back up here good evening thanks for having us again my name is Carol Tano I'm the associate head of school at TA I'm going to share a little bit about some faculty and student accomplish ments talk a little bit about test scores some of the support programs that we have um and I'd like to start um talking about our faculty we have 83 full-time equivalent upper school um teachers 70% who hold a master's degree or higher we have six teachers who've earned a national board certification in the last three years and an additional person who's working towards that um accomplishment and hopefully will be um completed during this school year you'll note some individual recognitions in both Athletics and the Arts with some of our faculty members I think

065it's particularly interesting to note that we have four faculty members who have been or will be trained this summer in something called the Harkness method of teaching this is a manner in which the teacher literally brings their classroom environment kind of into a circle where they work with students to teach them how to have equal voice and opportunities in problem solving collaborative work together um in their learning and it's just a proud something we're pretty proud of and um I think rather unique start with some student accomplishments in athletics certainly very proud of our athletic teams we offer our students 24 Sports over the fall winter and spring seasons including Partnerships with areas cities and towns and wrestling and girls hockey you'll see several individual and team accomplishments on the slide from our fall and

066winter seasons including a a really exciting SMA title in for the girls swim team and a state championship for our boys hockey team spring sports are still underway and we welcome public support for our student athletes at all of those events additional highlights we have an array of very active extracurricular clubs they tend to be in three areas one might be community service the second is awareness an example might be a community Leaders Club or a Red Cross club or um something that's more of a passion or a niche area such as our Robotics tedex and the Outdoor Adventure Club you can see a few highlights from this school year such as our National Honor Society members completing over 2200 hours of community service in our local area and as well as some accomplishments from

067our world quest team and the TA speech team this year we had 24 athletes and partners in our Special Olympics Unified sports program and then a nice bridge between our younger schools in Sako and ta is that many Thorton Academy students are part of the fulfilling the someday um idea uh requests I guess from from the younger students and one that's particularly interesting is we had some students who had at the high school and at one of the elementary schools had a shared passion for American presidents and so members from the the students from the history Department went down and had some um a time to to share that passion and and enjoy one another in that setting we also have a partnership with the Olympia snow women's Leadership Institute and just today five members

068of the class of 20 26 um committed uh went participated in the orientation and um committed to that three-year program in the Arts we have several students that that participate in volunteering in an art capacity I believe it was just this weekend where we had some ta students do some face painting for the on the Wild Side um event at young school and then I believe the burn School field day coming up soon we have some ta students also going to be volunteering there's some digital design students that have created a lot of work for Community Partners and you'll also note um some wonderful recognitions for our students um with the 2023 Scholastic art Awards as well as many of our um theater students uh took home a really exciting third place win in the

069one act festivals this year academic accomplishments at the high school level include performance on AP exams annually the College Board bestows bestows excuse me AP honors on students earning a particular score on one or more exam and in 2022 ta had 18 students named AP Scholars with distinction 14 students named AP Scholars with honors 27 students named with ap Scholars and then you can see on the slide um the Criterion based for each of those recognitions th a Thorton excuse me AP exam average scores exceeded Main and national average in 13 courses last year let you read the particular AP classes that met that honor before I advance to the next slide I just wanted to share a little um similar to the main standardized assessment provided to students in younger grades in Sako this

070year the required High School assessment shifted to the main threeyear assessment for 10th graders as this was the first year that the state of Maine um was involved with that test results won't be released until the summer or um perhaps the fall from the main Department of Ed however ta decided to include standardized testing for all of our ninth graders as well this year we administered the nwaa again some a test probably familiar to this board as well as our students who attend grades ka8 and Sako the intention was to utilize both cohort and individual uh scores to support data informed decision with our instruction and with our interventions and so on the next two slides you will see some the outcomes of the both math and reading we participated in both a fall and

071a spring Administration and two really important pieces that I think Bridge uh the younger Sako schools and ta the incoming ninth grade students during the fall Administration many of which were from Sako Middle School performed above the national average reflecting their progress in skill development at Sako Middle School indicating that on average Sako students are coming into thoron Academy well prepared to manage the academic responsibilities of high school so that's really terrific it's and uh something important to note Additionally the same coh cohort that tested this spring just a couple of weeks ago continued to demonstrate growth through their through their first year of high school with the cohort on average scoring at the 12th grade equivalency level and Beyond Carol so that the data presented here that is Sako students or is that all

072all nth grade stud all nth grade do we have the ability to pull a Soo students because as you looked at the percentages 58% of the students from s we have the ability to pull that data so that Marie would have that ability to look at okay Sako students in particularly are here as we make plans around lining curriculum doing extra work etc what are the skills that we're deficient sure it's possible how easy I'm not sure but I'm absolutely willing to look to it for you thanks girl you're welcome and this is the um the reading scores as well so in terms of standardized test scores really what that means is that the teachers have access to group and individual profiles of students strengths and weaknesses to inform their instructional planning ta has use

073these measures as well as um additional measures to establish development of multi-tiered systems of support within our schools with our most notable addition during this 22 23 school year as our achievement Center just like to read the mission of our achievement Center the purpose the purpose of the TA achievement Center is to create a community of support that empowers students by providing and developing skills resources and struct structure for them to achieve academic success students were able to access targeted supports in math and literacy as well as focus on work completion and executive function skill development in their time in the achievement Center it's also a place that students can self- select to attend so it might be that they and their a group of their friends are working on a project or perhaps they

074have a particular uh having particular difficulty with a a single assignment or um they're receiving peer tutoring for example um in a in a contents area the ultimate goal of academic progress and success at the secondary level is to acquire credits towards graduation and the main Department of sets the formula for graduation rates this slide indicates Thorton's graduation rates and for 2022 that was 91.6% compared to the state average of 86.1% it's important to note that this is for main residents only that's how the da the doe excuse me pulls that information so the international students at TA have a higher graduation rate however our focus is not solely on this one data point as the Department of Education therefore formula um doesn't indicate the thoughtful transition planning that sometimes needs to occur for students

075in a fifth year we understand that there are multiple types of family needs or circumstances that require an alternative path for our students and we proudly serve all of those needs for our Saka residents members of our student services team so folks like our school counselors our Deans our social workers nurses special Educators they understand the struggles that some students have had and they're committed to helping meet those personal goals and this was has been very true certainly through covid um as we help to transition students to that post-secondary so I have a quick question sure what is the actual graduation rate of um students that receive those services that you were just speaking of so if I have a um a child in the school that has is under special education what are the

076graduation rates around that or the fifth year student I don't have those in front of me but I certainly could get those for you that would be appreciated thank you sure just the same question is it possible to pull graduation rates of Sako students only just like like the last question just so that we could think about you know as you think sometimes we know that high school graduation around social emotional pieces in so four-year completer in terms of foro students particularly yeah I I mean I think that would be ideally the goal is to look at is that is that much much different is it you know 91.5 or is that 87 and something else is bringing that up I think that would help us in our middle schools absolutely one more question I'm

077sorry to intervene um and I'm just asking this just to have have a better understanding of graduation rates do any of these um also have options for finding out more information if there were any children that were dismissed or God forbid EXP spell from ta do we have any of those totals as well to just have an understanding of that withdrawals yes or expulsions uh imagine it would be the opposite or the the total you know from 100% but if the the way that the department creates the withdraw so there's an actual withdrawal data point and it's not the same it's because it it's not specific to a four-year cohort which is how a four-year completer has how their their the formula is created for the graduation so it's not an Apples to Apples um

078if were you know if we wanted to look at some data around the number of students per year uh from sto that have withdrawn or been expelled it's certainly something we could dig into okay thank you you're welcome Carol do they do they still do make sure I get those data points do they still do that at one point we were doing a six year graduate you know how like You' have all those bands in Neo that you would have to fill out do they still do I know we do the fiveyear one I don't think we do the one the six years I don't believe so a really exciting part too this is really the the end of my my time here although I'm happy to answer questions at any point is is talking

079about the post-secondary plans for our students so this slide indicates um where our students from the class of 2022 um where they headed after they graduated from Thorn Academy there were 82.4% of students entered either a two or foure college or university so certainly we're looking at the both the maroon and the gold or yellow um portions of that pie another 1.2% went to the military or to a military academy and 15.5% went straight into employment or career Apprentice apprenticeship and there's less than 1% went to a non- US school after graduation uh I'm a couple slides behind Okay so uh going back to the RIT scores um and you had said that you can't specify if those then if averages were for just Sako students I was just curious um what would it take

080for SMS eighth graders to be able to take you know ta classes ta courses because I mean the numbers are pretty good now but we don't know if you know it seems like they would qualify right you do that at Tams so there are some eighth grade students that participate in in um because of their enrollment at thoron Academy Middle School are able to participate in classes at the high school so would that be something that SMS students could have the eligibility for it's not something we've done in the past what we have done is um engaged in some onetoone conversations or group conversations with staff at Sako Middle School to look at where someone's for example math is an easy area to look at to um assess skill development at in the eth grade

081and then so many students from midle stco middle school will start their math experience um not the traditional Algebra 1 for example but they'll start later on we've had students from Sak Middle School that have started their math curriculum as as high as you know Algebra 2 or even a pre-calculus their freshman year so that they can move um through that math curriculum we have not had students from Saku Middle School participate in um courses when they were in eth grade okay yeah something I would I I would like to have looked into um maybe I'll talk TOS a little bit more about it but I mean the numbers are trending above average now and I'd like to see what the children could be capable of if they had um High School level classes thanks

082I'm gonna turn things back over to Mr Menard thank you just as a a followup to that we do have a cohort I think it's about six students who are Juniors right now from s Middle School who just finished AP Ulus BC which is uh very impressive so they were very well prepared I think it was a GT program perhaps at s middle school and so we're encouraging them to um to pursue AP stats but there doesn't seem to be much interest there but we'll see we'll keep working on that um I'm just going to talk a little bit now about some of the financials and a construction project that uh is is just around the corner that we're we're happy to announce uh the next slide I'm just going to try to simpli simplify

083something that is fairly complex but to to give you all a general sense of the tuition payment to to thoron academy uh most of you probably know that Soo pays a per pupil tuition rate it's on it's on a headcount and the tuition rate is set annually by the state of Maine and in theory it reflects the average per pupil High School expenditures across the state of Maine uh excluding Debt Service major Capital outlay special education transportation and CTE expenses uh there is no Regional Adjustment for um mat so schools like Thorn Academy in northern Maine get the same mat rate as we do here in Southern Maine and uh I think most of you know that salaries as you all are facing salaries here in Southern Maine are certainly more competitive than other parts

084of the state the FY 23 total tuition rate and that's what we call M and IVF combined uh this fiscal year is $3,438 two per student and then uh there are additional special education costs which are calculated separately and in addition to that standard tuition rate the tuition rate is announced in December which is halfway through the fiscal year and I know that creates a real challenge certainly for us and I'm sure for superintendent Ry uh when we build our budgets I can tell you that I anticipate that the mat rate is going to be really low so I can cover it and I'm sure he probably anticipates it's going to be very very high so he can cover it and then we both find out in December and one of us is happy and

085the other one's disappointed but uh it's it's the system that we have and we we uh we make it work as best as we can um continuing and talking about that mat tuition rate if you notice the next slide which is pretty interesting I call the W graph and this is a graph over the last 15 years of how that mat tuition rate has fluctuated and you can see the increases and um again neither Soo nor Thorn Academy knows what that rate increase will be until December of the fiscal year so sometimes either party is scrambling and hopefully we both of us have budgeted accordingly that we can absorb either of those uh shifts I just want to kind of point over to the the far right of that actually this won't work on a

086digital screen I just realized that uh to the far right and you can see from fy21 to FY 23 in just a short period of time fy21 the rate increase was 0.03 and then here you are two years later it spikes at 6.7% so it's sort of these wild swings which again makes it challenging I think for both parties to try to uh plan accordingly in terms of what that tuition will be and of course the other major factor in determining is uh enrollment so it's primarily the tuition rate and then whether or not uh we think the so enrollment coming into Thorn Academy will be up or down that year uh the next slide looks at some perer people expenditures and when you look at what soace Thor Academy I think you'll see that

087ta uh is a good value this is all fy22 data on SOA schools and neighboring towns which is taken from the Doe's online uh Essa dashboard and if you look in the top uh yellow uh box you'll see what ta spends to educate a student and this is again fy22 this excludes our debt service which is about $1,237 per student so this is educational expenses and if you look at that number of 1833 versus uh the U elementary schools in SAA you'll see that we're in line educating students is expensive and um I think most of you know there are lots of variables that impact per people expenditures and that can swing dramatically in a couple of years uh certainly the experience level and education level of your faculty as as a primary driver class

088sizes specialty programs lots of variables that go into that into that formula uh the bottom yellow box shows what we call Soo payment to TA this is the mat and IVF tuition rate uh this includes special education and 504 uh cost these additional Services divided by the number of students and I believe in fy22 is 884 students and so I'm just going to direct your attention to the far right the largest yellow box over on the right um you'll see that Soo paid uh Thorn Academy about 3,400 less than what our actual prayer people expense was and um and I think you can see we paid less than uh perhaps some uh some neighboring towns and so you for our on our part we have to subsidize that make up that uh that shortfall with

089our fundraising efforts um on rare occasions it might be a a draw down from the endowment but primarily our private school uh students and you know I've been at throon Academy like I said for 28 years and um when we started the boarding program we started it for a lot of reasons we wanted to bring diversity to our community and uh but another Factor was we realized that that would be another Revenue source that could help subsidize the cost of Education of local students and allow us to have the breath of programming that we we do offer on uh a modest mat rate uh and the final topic I want to talk about is the new athletic complex or the Fieldhouse and again uh we've talked about this publicly for a number of years it's

090been a long time coming uh the board had planned to do this for probably about a decade now now but before we tackled this project we wanted to make sure that we took care of all our other infrastructure needs primarily our academic uh spaces we created a New Media Center a library uh classroom Wings a stem Center Etc we wanted to make sure that we we uh we took care of the academic programming before we took care of our athletic uh complex and you can see here's a overview of our campus map and uh those of you who have been in Lenell gymnasium and many of you we're probably going to be there for so Middle School's graduation I don't have to tell you it's old it was built in 1963 and it is tired

091it's a wonderful space a lot of great memories there but it is the old I believe it's the oldest gym and the SMA the league in which we compete it might be the oldest gym in in this part of the state and um it's it's worn out and quite frankly it's too small the enrollment at Thorton Academy in 1963 was about 6 660 students and as I showed you earlier uh we're more than double that size and you can imagine what's happened to the athletic program from 1963 to where we are today the expansion of Athletics Title 9 all kinds of wonderful things that have happened but we don't have uh the space we spent a lot of time looking at doing engineering studies Environmental Studies about renovating Lenell and as if you ever tried

092to renovate an old building you probably understand that sometimes it's cost prohibitive so we are going to keep lenel uh we may do some some minor updates to it but it'll be a primarily a uh practice space and and uh secondary athletic space So the plan is if you look on this map you can see in the far right hand side of the slide is uh route one and uh then you can see the stadium and then just below the stadium you see the track is that large maroon uh rectangle and that is where the new athletic center or the Fieldhouse is going and we're doing this project in a couple of stages and we've already begin what we call stage one to keep the cost of this project reasonable the Fieldhouse is going to

093be basically it's a prefab steel building and so we uh certainly we want to have athletic space a track a competition courts but rather than build out the building even larger to put Fitness rooms and weight rooms we've decided to repurpose some existing space so uh again adjacent to the to the right of that maroon rectangle is a current uh Maintenance building it's it's right next to the bleachers to the stadium and we are renovating we are going to renovate that space it's an existing building and put new fitness uh room weight room multi-purpose space right there uh adjacent to the stadium which makes sense and adjacent to the new Fieldhouse and if you look way over to the left of your slide you see a smaller rectangle and that building is already gone up

094if you walk on the Eastern Trail you're going to walk right by this new uh red colored steel building again it's very efficient you pour slab you put the steel building goes up and that's our going to be our new uh maintenance facility so again phase one uh is is uh is underway the next slide are just a couple of renderings broad renderings of some of these spaces so if you look at the image on the left uh that's the current that's what the renovated new uh Maintenance building right next to the stadium will look like again that will be converting uh that building into strength and fitness space and then on the bottom right hand of the slide you can see a rendering of what the facade of the building will look like so

095again that'll be a steel building we'll put a brick facade on it to blend in with the with the brick architecture of our campus um the first floor will have about approximately 36,000 Square ft of new space and we're really really excited about the opportunity to provide this resource to our community as well I think most of you know that we always open up our campus to the community um our tennis courts the walking Track the Eastern Trail I I've had conversations with parks and wreck about using this space and i' certainly extend that invitation to the s school department as well if you folks are short on athletic space or large events you know we'll now have lenel gymnasium and this uh field house so I think it's it's going to be something that

096we certainly intend for the community to uh to use and enjoy and the last slide uh shows a little bit about what the again these are just some rough renderings of what uh the Fieldhouse will look like so on the left hand side you have an image of that first floor and you can see those are three basketball volleyball tennis courts multi-purpose courts uh you'll see that the Center Court runs perpendicular to the other two that will be the competition Court uh the idea is that it'll be a hard rubberized surface it's multi-use we want to be able to use to do anything on this whether it's AC cross practice indoor soccer whatever it might be and for games uh we're looking into basically a portable uh wood floor sort of like they do at

097the Civic Center something that you can bring in and set up uh during basketball season um you'll see some large shaded areas on either side of that Center Center Court and those are retractable bleachers and at the top of the screen top of that image uh you'll see there's a 55 M straightaway sprint track um when I was in high school at TA I did run into a track and we used to run through the science building we would run down the hall up the stairs down the hall and down the stairs again if you are a sprinter and you want to run in our gym you have to run from one corner out the other corner and and be careful that you don't hit the vending machine so this is long overdue we look

098forward to having a space where our sprinters can practice um and not be encumbered the other image that you see on the right is a mezzanine layer so this is a billy this is the the second floor but again it's a mezanine track it's a 200 meter elevated track and uh we're really excited about opening that up to the community as well uh I know in the past I've uh I've talked with Jean Saunders of AG friendly Sako and we'd love to invite um our senior population and others if they want to come walk on the track in the morning and then you know we're looking at hours of of during the day or on the weekends and somehow you know opening this this space up to the public to use particularly in the winter

099time certainly in the spring and fall uh the public is welcome to walk on our on our track that we have on campus um and that's all we have for today I'm happy to answer any questions you might have about anything we've talked about and I'm sure that U Geral would be happy as well just go B remember Arie yeah this looks really exciting I I've been in the old gym I I know it could use an update um I was just curious how how you guys are doing with classrooms uh you feel like you're kind of outgrowing the classrooms too uh that's a great question a number of years ago we were and there was as I mentioned earlier five years ago we had a hundred more Sako students and we had more Rundle

100students at the time date enrollment had been pretty stable so we were looking at a place where we were we were overcrowded and so in 2016 we built the stem Edition and so we built four new labs and four new classrooms uh and that was a real concern uh so I we have the space now the local enrollment has gone down and boarding enrollment has gone down a little bit um again we have about 200 few fewer students at the Academy now than we had maybe five or six years ago so we have we have ample classroom space and looking into the future we things could change I know there are housing developments they're talking about in town but we don't see an increase in our local enrollment in the near future so with that

101fluctuation you know in the last five years uh what is the average class size right now uh that's a that's a good question I you know a couple things that varies if it's a if you're an AP Mandarin Chinese it's going to be small if you're in world history it's going to be larger I think at one point I'm going to look at Carol maybe it was around 22 21 19 but there may be a class at 25 or 26 kids in it perhaps how many core classes do you think are in the high 20s yeah uh core class is probably low to mid 20s I think some of the more specialty classes sometimes um depends I mean if you have a course class it's got to be it's going to be larger than than

102um some others right uh I was I'm not from Sako and and I had a different resources available to me when I was growing up um I have to say that I'm I'm slightly disappointed at the gear towards college grad you know classes uh what are you offering to those that don't want to go to college well we have a uh we certainly have a relationship with the regional center of Technology yeah how are those numbers those numbers right now I think um we started off with 75 I think there might be 65 Soo kids I think there's a bit of a dip in the second semester and then we have students from Dayton and Rundle that that attend I think again they're primarily yeah all yeah yeah I think we had 95 yeah so

103I didn't mean to pry I just I was wish it was in the presentation that was yeah no sure I mean we we could come back and go another hour I we want to be mindful of your time there's a lot um we have um the uh Center of Technology classes are primarily available to Juniors and seniors so I think you look at maybe 95 to 100 Juniors or seniors that's about 14% of the Juniors and seniors will take uh course at the regional center of technology and then we have other we have other programs uh what we call core classes we have Foundation classes we have a lot of specialty classes for students uh if you're interested in um you know Fish and Wild life and there's if you look through the program of

104studies you know you have a sense it's 200 plus offerings and you know try to offer something for everyone as much as as it's as it's feasible I appreciate it sure Schoolboard member appr um I have a couple Financial questions um it was brought to my attention recently there's a legislation passing called LD 100 that talks about private schools that have taken public tuition are pro are um obligated if this passes to provide state ments um financial statements So currently if that passes is that something you guys intend to um do and is there any update or anything to the city about having financials provided to glennis it was just a curiosity of mine yeah so historically a number of years ago schools like us were required to submit a letter uh from our auditor

105to the state saying that our financials were in good standing at some point during the leage administration uh try to think what the commissioner was it might have been Jim ryer at the time there was a move to um to remove that requirement and so there's this new bill that's going through and my understanding is that it came out of committee saying the old system worked let's go back to that and so uh so we will submit a letter from our auditor to the doe um and the auditing firm will will um notify by the state what the St status of our financials and is that something that our city can have access to this year I don't know if that's something I know it's not usually traditional I'm just curious uh we've never provided

106our our audited financials okay okay okay good to know yep good to know and Thorton would not send that to the city they would send it to superintendent or the finance director it would only come to the city as part of the budget process okay and then I have a second question um so I'm just curious because I've I've had a couple people reach out to me about the fre and rudus lunch program and I understand given that Thor Academy is a private institution you're not obligated to by Under any means except the new national funding so I'm curious um given how wonderful your school is is that something you would reconsider doing potentially and if so yes or no regarding kind of what that looks like and then um is there something existing currently

107that you guys have to replace that given that you guys aren't currently working towards getting funding from the national for the free reduced lunch program and what does that look like for students um because I know there is be a population of disadvantaged students that do attend Thor an academy that I know you guys work really hard to make equal opportunity um but I just wanted to kind of get a better idea of what that looks like and because I know I'm I'm sure you guys must work really hard to reduce stigment and that sort of thing we don't want to have a stigma for a kid who doesn't have let's say the equal lunch so I'm just curious what that looks like and who would the parents reach out to to access that if

108should be needed yeah absolutely thank you for asking that question we certainly have had uh conversation with u superintendent Ray and and Council of Fortune myself and my board prayer uh board president this fall to talk about that I know it was discussed here uh publicly but happy to sort of reiterate what we do so um historically before this plan was available we would sort of model our system on on what every other public school did which was you have the free lunch and the reduced lunch and the federal guidelines we've never offered a reduced option we've always said if you fall within that boundary you get a free lunch so we wouldn't distinguish that if you needed the aid we figured you needed the aid and we're just going to do that so what

109we did recently uh and understanding that that you know times are tough for a lot of folks we move that federal poverty line um qualification from 130 to 235 so if you're a family that would fall within that you get free breakfast and lunch we sent out when we did that we sent a notice out to our families who uh maybe historically would not have qualified and at the start of every school year in a welcome packet we send this out to family saying if you would you believe you would qualify or you need free readers lunch you know please let us know uh the other thing I think is important to note is that because this is um self-funded we fundraise specifically for this we have an account called the Headmaster Student Assistance fund

110and we really um appeal to our alumni to help support this effort we have uh four social workers eight counselors four Deans two nurses and uh as Carol said 83 uh teachers at the high school that are uh passionately concerned about the well-being of our students and so if any of them suspect or believe at any point that any student needs uh a free breakfast and lunch we give it to them no questions asked they don't have to fill out forms we don't even call home because the reality is we know that there may be families that are struggling uh maybe families that are too proud there are all kinds of circumstances out there and the last thing we want to do is to have a student um you know be impacted by that so

111it's very simple social worker uh secretary says you know I notice so and so they don't seem to have anything to eat whatever it is we give their name and it's a free mail um again no questions no forms um the other thing we do is uh most of our kid kids have ID cards with the number so when they go to the calf they swipe it if they forget they can tell the name and the people the register will will uh will pull them up so there's no different uh process there's no different line there's no different food kids can go up and get it and nobody knows there's no food shaming nobody knows who's eating who isn't I do lunch duty I try to do lunch duty every day I go down I

112have my lunch I usually stand there for one or two lunch weights um and there's just no way of knowing no one knows the people that register don't know they may be the only ones who key in something different great thank you sure yeah okay yeah perfect good to know I just wanted to be able to point anyone that comes brought to my attention in the right direction and and we understand there are families that this might be something that's U shortterm and again we want to you know want to treat everybody with dignity and we can take care of it and not have people jump through lots of Hoops we want to take care of kids and Families parameters you said you changed the parameters I I didn't catch that yeah so traditionally what

113still happens in other states with federal guidelines is 130% of the poverty lines if you if you fall within that you you're eligible we've increased that threshold from 130 to 235 to to sweep in more families that might be on the on the cusp sure and the community has been very generous in in recognizing that and supporting our efforts to to help these at risk kids okay thank you I appreciate it you're welcome School Board member Gail um just one quick question and just a couple of comments thank you so much for coming to present um thank you to the board members who are here and taking the time out of your evening to to present I hope next year we can have a similar update report because I think we've all found it um

114very valuable and looking at the student accomplishments I guess there's the uh thank you for helping out with the Su days that's awesome and I know that made um was kiddo's day and then I just wanted to also highlight the the partnership with the Olympia snow women's Leadership Institute um that's terrific and I hope that continues at Thorton and the engagement and opportunities for those those students too um just a quick question M could you kind of summarize and and give just high level um what the impacts and what you've been doing to address some of the new neighbors that have come here over the past year I'm sure that had a huge impact to you and sure you do yeah did did you want talk about that more Carol tends to oversee more of

115our student support in terms are you looking specifically for can how to how we welcomed them into the community and what yep perfect so not unlike the other Sako schools I mean our this town our city excuse me is was new to welcoming so many Asylum seeking and Refugee families all at once and so we wanted to make sure that we um embraced and understood and and what's not un to TA is that we have students from many different countries different cultures um however it is unique and it was a challenge continues to be a challenge to have so many students and families that are um have language acquisition um needs so part of um how we support that um we have a team of teachers and staff who get together on a regular basis

116and we've really just kind of went month to- month and we said what's coming up so at the start of the year it was orientation how do we make sure that our students have um information that they need what what's it like to be you know a TA student what does going into a pillar assembly which is just an all school assembly we have monthly um quarterly excuse me how do we how do they know what to do and H where to sit and and so we we've been fairly strategic but recognizing each season of the school has something different certainly at the start of the school year making sure that students understood how to access free breakfast and lunch was really important we helped with some clothing donations with during the winter months um

117being able to make sure that they were outfitted appr rately uh so last week we had a coral concert we were able to transport the students and their families so that they could participate in that celebration at the end of the year there's a Sako full-time multilingual teacher that's employed by Sako that comes to our school and and manages the specific multi um lingual education with those students she has also has um students not only the new maners but students that reside in Saka who also qualify for that service they on her case load and in her classes we've done a tremendous amount of professional development with our staff to help them um better understand it's a learning process it it continues to be a struggle um and and we continue to learn and hopefully

118that that that um enhances as as we um continue to work with families I lost my train thought I apologize um caic Charities the certainly the sponsoring agency to help support the newers that are in the hotel um we have nice connection with them and we participate at Jeremy and Meg often are on some of those um group calls with other Municipal folks so that we can have a sense of what's happening for them outside of the school education for us is the whole pie right but for for for um thinking about orienting these families into our city it's just a slice of all of the things that happen so you know it's a learning process I I'm proud of the work that we've done and we still have some work to do you're welcome

119schol School B member Johnston thank you um Mr Headmaster my question has to do with uh counselors at Thorton Academy guidance counselors um and what sort of a student number that each of them I don't first of all how many do you have secondly what number of students are they responsible to work with yeah so we currently have eight counselors we we have four social workers I believe the main uh excuse me the National Association of school counselors um recommends I think case loads of 1 to 250 our case loads are just under 200 So Below the recommendations National National averages are even higher than that so yeah there our members are our councilors are active members of that Association and I think that's um we want to be mindful of those recommendations I I'm

120sorry I didn't catch the last thing we want to be mindful of those recommendations and keep our case loads manageable right and well below the recommended ratios is there um I'm I'm reflecting on when my children were at Thorton Academy but I'm wondering what sort of a schedule you have through the year or each one of the four years that students are there um to sort of make sure that kids do get to see their guidance counselors when it's appropriate um I can remember some s situations where kids tended to fall through the crack and they maybe didn't show up for their appointment with the guidance counselor or whatever so I'm just wondering what kind of safety net you have in place to make sure that students do get to see their guidance counselors as

121is appropriate yeah I I I'm sure that um there are still those CH those challenges are still going to still exist there's no question about that sometimes we have students who um um they have struggles coming to school absenteeism things like that and sometimes it's harder to sort of uh make those things happen but I think our counselors are are very intentional about trying to ensure that they connect with those students certainly in their freshman year we want to make sure there's that onetoone connection and then they do a lot of things just from a pragmatic standpoint groups if there's information that they can be shared which is not personal or not specific to them then perhaps they'll go um you know maybe get eight or 10 of them at a time and just give

122them updates here's where we are in freshman year here are some things to be thinking about your sophomores now uh there's some um career interest inventory uh surveys for you to take and that sort of thing so uh I think uh you know our counes are are um very thoughtful and I know they work very hard to get to know their students but we know that there there are students who certainly need uh those supports and that's something we work on and and we hope to prevent kids from falling through the crap craps cracks excuse me um but that's something where you know we have to work on every day well I thank you for for your answers and I guess I'm just hoping that it gets better and better in terms of being a

123m able to make sure that kids you know are getting the attention that they need even perhaps if they don't always want it and I'll tell you and this and there's no there's no secret to this I'm sure it um we see it certainly in other schools but there's a real concern about mental health needs of young people today and uh we have four outstanding social workers and um you know we're so appreciative of the work that they do these last couple years have been very very challenging for them uh as a school Community we've we've dealt with some loss which is uh unfortunate and um but our counseling staff uh have tremendous faith in them and gratitude for the work that they do and that's a it's a tough job and I'm sure it's

124a tough job in the K8 system and in any school system I appreciate what they do do well I appreciate you're bringing up the social workers as well because that is a very pertinent to the wellbeing of of the students and it has been a a rough few years for people absolutely thank you sure any further questions thank you very much for the presentation thank you for coming this evening thank you all appreciate your time that brings us to item F the first reading of policies policy k F Community use of Sako school facilities policy e Fe competitive food sales sales of foods and competition with the school Food Service program policy ehb school records retention policy EF free and reduced price food services policy efba menu development options offer versus serve lunch concept policy

125ECF automated external defibrillators uh policy ebb use of private vehicles for school business policy GCI professional staff development opportunities and policy GC QC resignation of School Employees is there a motion School Board member Johnston thank you Mr Mayor I move we approve the first reading of policies KF ef ehb ef efba ebcf ebb uh GCL and GC QC second motions made by school board member Johnston second by School Board member prebble any discussion no discussion roll call vote School Board member Archie yes School Board member prebble yes Schoolboard member Richard yes School Board member L Fortune yes School Board member Gail yes School Board member Johnston yes motion passes 60 that bring us to item 14 there's no other information this evening moving on to item 15 there is no executive session this evening that

126brings us to item 16 I'll entertain a motion to adjourn so moved School Board member L Fortune is there a second second by School Board member Richard any discussion roll call vote School Board member Archie yes School Board member Preble yes School Board member Richard yes School Board member Fortune yes School Board member Gail yes and School Board member Johnston yes motion passes 60 to adjourn at 651 have a great evening everyone for