001e e e greetings and welcome to the Sako school board meeting for Wednesday uh September 27th 2023 call this meeting to order at 50:1 p.m. let the record reflect that all the school board members are present with the exception of school board member Gail who will be joining us shortly uh with that I'd like to invite you all to join us in the Pledge of Allegiance thank you very much for that uh item three on the agenda is approval of the school board meeting minutes for September 13 2023 is there a motion Mr Mayor School Board member Richard I move we approve the school board uh minutes dated September 13 2023 motion's been made second by School Board member prebble any discussion School Board member Le Forin just a minor thing to add um under
002the um attendance just to mention that the mayor was also absent because you weren't were not here this this past meeting either okay it's not noted okay so notation that the mayor was not at the September 13th meeting any other omissions or added items hearing none roll call vote School Board member Archie abstain Schoolboard member prebble yes Schoolboard member Richard yes School Board member Le Fortune yes School Board member Truman yes School Board member Johnston yes the the uh minutes pass Five Z with one abstention that brings us on to uh item four any adjustments to the agenda this evening no adjustments uh brings us to item five correspondence there was no correspondence in the packet this evening uh so that brings us to item six which is public session any member of the public
003wishing to speak to the school board please come forward and be heard state your name and address for the record and please keep your comments to three minutes with nobody seeking recognition moving on from public session to item seven of the agenda superintendent's report superintendent Ray good evening I guess or early or late afternoon to everybody um glad to see you all a few items for tonight before we get into the major parts of the agenda it's just uh there will be an an enrollment report uh and update that's in your calendars and just a reminder to everyone that enrollments the big day for enrollments is October one that's when we need to lock those into the state uh it's also important that any families at home who um may have not completed some of
004the lunch verifications uh forms even though kids receive free lunch uh in all public schools it's important that those forms are filled out because those help us with Title One title two gr and other grant opportunities based off uh poverty rates um one of the things that's really exciting to see is that um if you remember five or six years ago we started um as communities uh nearby we started Elementary cross country as a free fun activity uh for kids after school and what's really amazing is how that's grown over the years and we had our first uh Dayton bitterford Sako cross country meet this week at burn school and while I'm sure we caused some traffic concerns for the police department and I'm very thankful um to the Chief and deputy chief who responded
005to a you know kind of a late call from us saying hey there's going to be a lot of traffic but you had 160 Sako kids participating um I think over 350 is in total um and that's just a great activity that we can have for kids and I think it's a great reminder for us that when we build positive things after school that can be costeffective opportunities kids will join and that saves all parts of our community long term and it doesn't separate families who are halves versus Have Nots because anyone who has kids involved in Youth Sports or band or any of those things you pay a lot nowadays and so just want us to have a reminder that it's item it's things like that that are low cost we have some great
006people who are who are you know receiving a small stien or a lot of volunteers or seeing staff out helping uh afterwards that those are the things that we need to consider doing more of um making sure that kids outside of those pay to playay or some of the other organized Le that we have some options and that it just doesn't end with Athletics either and that we get creative um also just For an upcoming date uh professional development Workshop day on October 6 uh for all staff so that's a no school day um uh for students leading into the long weekend and then any of you who certainly have kids at schools or others really great uh seeing how staff uh is using a program that we uh put in last year and now
007is widely being used called talking points um just a great way to get information out to parents in such a quick and easy fashion because half the time we all do it as adults we don't answer all phone calls especially because so many of are automated emails can be overwhelming but what we do tend to do is glance at our text messages um and so I think that's just a great feature and it's great to see staff using those I receive uh several a week from the teachers of of my students um you know I think this week Holly what do I have to come up with shoe boxes is that what see I actually read that one uh you know and and uh just great use of uh making sure that we get quick
008things of information out to parents uh in community um so superintendent board any questions any questions for superintendent Ray School Board member Truman I don't have any questions but I just want to remark on the couple of the items that you brought up um cross country I was at that meet on Monday and it was so much fun my hands kind of hurt and itched a little a little bit from clapping for for so long it was really fun though um and just cheering on all the kids and uh my son absolutely loved it um and then the um talking points app big fan I'm kind of happy to see uh some consistency of like where information's coming from and uh it's all in one place so doesn't get lost in email per se so
009I can just open that up and find things easily and talk to the teacher if I need to just chat with them real quick or it's a message from like Holly for instance like you mentioned got to find a shoe box and uh yeah so thanks for uh helping get that on board so thank you very much any further comments questions moving on to item eight chair report chair prebble I don't have anything new to report this evening thank you very much thank you uh that brings us to item nine staff reports there were no staff reports in the agenda so that brings us to item 10 which was the board sub commmittee minutes policy and Personnel committee meeting um minutes their next meeting is October 11th 2023 at 5:30 p.m. finance and infrastructure committee
010met today 9:27 at 4:30 p.m. and the curriculum committee meets on October 23rd 2023 at 4:30 p.m. that concludes the board subcommittee minutes and next dates any questions comments omissions additions moving on uh item 11 old business there's no old business on the agenda that brings us to item 12 new business item a is new hires uh there is a memorandum in your packet from superintendent Ray some new hires information and I don't believe that it calls for no action so there's no action to be done on new hires are there any questions on new hires superintendent Ray do you want to speak on new hires or is the memo speak for itself memo speaks for itself uh if there's no questions we'll move on to Item B Item B is uh stien memo in
011again there's a memorandum in your packet uh for stip and positions superintendent Ray are you looking for a motion on this to approve these stiens do you want to say anything else or does the memo speak for itself thank you uh any questions School Board member Truman you like to make the motion yes uh I move we approve those listed in the stien memo and issue a stien contract for the 2023 2024 school year second motions been made by Schoolboard member Truman second by School Board member prebel any discussion with no discussion roll call votes Schoolboard member Archie yes School Board member prebble yes School Board member Richard yes School Board member Le Fortune yes School Board member Truman yes School Board member Johnston yes motion passes 60 to approve the St uh that brings
012us to item C again there's a memorandum in your packet from superintendent Ray requiring no action superintendent Ray does the memo speak for itself thank you board members any questions on the resignations any comments moving on that brings us to item d as school construction update superintendent Ray all right so um last week we met with the city council and um kind of gave them an update of where we were uh was was a lot of it was what we had talked about prior at one of our meetings with o point we had a meeting with the Department of uh Transportation this week uh in the doe to try to continue to work through Transportation related issues uh following that meeting um I want to thank Patrick Fox Emily Prescott is planning uh and Joe
013Laria the city engineer to coming to meet with us um and with oako to kind of debrief what we heard from the traffic study I will admit we are very lucky to have those individuals as resources about traffic because that is not something that um I understand the technical details about out but it's been coming up with a plan and um thoughts about our response to the traffic uh report what needs to be done future meetings that uh come back uh and so that's positive is great to uh again just uh Kudos um to those department heads uh we also had the police department at the meeting who came together to say hey we are a community we all got to get on the same page and try to make sure that we respond and
014think about all the projects the city has going on at the same time with traffic plus the school and how we move together as one uh real positive and and thank you to those pieces additionally uh Meg and I have been working with oo to talk a little bit more about uh playgrounds and play space and access roads and and Eastern Trail pieces um that you'll be updated on in the near future just trying to build some more pieces together so that we can start showing you guys and the public uh and again this is the next steps before state board is traffic traffic and traffic thank you for the update any questions on superintendent raise update on school construction moving on thank you very much item e is an enrollment update and so just
015have a memorandum in your packet superintendent Ray yeah just uh putting uh just keeping you updated of where we are right now based off uh three subsections of counts are K uh prek through 8 enrollment which is 19 18 which is uh approximately 32 students more than the prior year uh some of that uh comes from having the additional halftime um prek students that we were able to add in that piece um currently as last month uh we work with Orton Academy for enrollments at the first of the month and that was at 870 our next update will be October 1 as we move through those processes and then looking at our multilingual Learners by grade level uh you can see that prek through 8 we have 166 uh that number obviously has grown because
016as kiddos move in at the beginning of the year there needs to be an assessment in screening um in the high and the eight nth through 12 has remained constant at 35 thank you any questions for superintendent Ray on enrollment superintendent Ray the the 870 number at Thor Academy that is higher than last year correct that is actually exactly on from last yearly on okay um you know those fluctuate up and down throughout the year so you know I think we started at 8 I think we started at 8 79 last year and Jason we got she's left uh I think we got down to like 6 860 something um and so that will e and flow throughout the year and they calculate the average so it's about on what was the budget allocation for
017amount of students 890 89 we kept that number consistent with what we had had budgeted from the year before thank you any further questions moving on uh next up is a msma legislative update superintendent Ray so assistant superintendent Parker serves um on the legislative committee um for msma which is in main School Board Association which does a lot of the lobbying one way or the other for bills and this is a fairly intense session on the amount of new legislation that impacted schools and so here tonight we include the um legislative update in your handout the full update which there's a lot there um but miss Parkers is here to kind of update some of the important ones uh to us while also uh talking about any of the carryover bills that may have significance
018so Chris indorf and I had the pleasure of attending drumond Woodson's annual legislative update which kind of furthers the work of msma and summarizes what some of the policy or operational changes will need to be as a result of changes in legislation all of that is on the backup that's there but I wanted to kind of give a high level overview of a couple that we feel like are going to have a particular impact or uh we really want to pay attention to in terms of the path that the legislature is either following now or in the future uh first to start with are a couple of resolves a resolve is an area in which there may have been legislation that was suggested but rather than pass that legislation the determination is made to study
019either a group of bills or languages or concept bills in order to provide a report back to either the commissioner or the education committee so some of those are uh have resolved to study the school bus driver short shortage so in January 2024 we will have some information from that resolve a resolve to study existing studies on the EPS formula which is a study of studies if you will that will um hopefully shed some light on how the EPS formula can continue to not fluctuate widely for districts and also uh support the intent of providing additional State funding to those school districts who have less local ability to pay LD 10002 which is a study of the school day and that lumped in uh some bills that were around mandating a 30 minute recess mandating
020a 30 minute lunch and mandating late start so rather than pass that legislation they've looped in that will be coming out in February of 2024 some uh takeaways from that type of legislation that impacts the school day which historically in Maine has been a local decision so would be very different from kind of the will of the state legislature to get involved in those details of school in the school operations category I wanted to highlight a financial audit bill which will uh require 6040 schools to provide a little bit more uh accounting transparency to the commissioner there is a LD 405 which changes the penalties for making false reports so if there are threats to schools or school buildings it increases that penalty to a felony um there is a school construction funding bill that
021mostly applies to Coots but we'll have additional guidance from the Department about how that funding can apply ld1 1420 expands the commissioner inspection of private schools or non-public schools includes 6040 schools within that and clarifies several different Avenues including um voter school board or other requests to the commissioner to look at compliance with main human rights basic standards under title 20a Statewide assessment implementation of main learning results health and safety requirements concussion protocols and vaccination laws and allows that to be triggered in a couple of different ways that it wasn't before LD 707 updates the main Human Rights Act to include gender identity and expression as its own category the truancy law was updated to require additional notices from school and attend similarly in terms of student rights there is a attendance review team that
022is now going to be triggered at a different threshold of 10% chronic absenteeism of the percent of school days so rather than looking at that after a certain number of total school days we kind of have to keep a rolling record of what that 10% Mark is andure sure that our Student Assistance teams are meeting to review attendance in a way that will respond to those in a more timely fashion there are a couple of bills around which prescriptions can be kept on hand by School departments and they added uh nxone was earlier than this legislative session but they've now also added glucagon rescue therapy so these are prescriptions that can be held by School departments on a stand ing basis because they're deemed to be kind of helpful in the event of an emergency
023and yet not harmful enough that if that type of emergency weren't available that it would be of concern um another expansion of preschool there is of course going to be more Department of Education rules on what that means but the intent is to continue to expand preschool offerings both in terms of access to programming for four-year-olds as well as lowering that age to three and trying to find ways to expand Public public offerings for three-year-olds in the um labor and employment area there were um two LDS 343 and 1366 that expand certification Pathways which is really helpful for us to you know it's address shortages that we have for both teachers and Ed techs that allow retire ired teachers in edtec to recertify with lower barriers and also expands edtech certification Pathways with some special
024programs offered through uh Community College Partners uh additionally there is a new paid leave law that will not start until January 1st 2025 um that law will have significant impacts on what the state requires for paid leave and we are still awaiting information about how that either overlays or um takes over what the contractual obligations are that are currently in our various bargaining units um it it expands certainly paid leave for all you know employees in the state of Maine but is um it's yet to be seen how that looks when there's already different layers of paid leave in cont contracts existing so uh additionally with that there is a financial cost because the state is going to be collecting additional taxes from both employees and employers to fund that from the state level so
025we will be watching intently to see how that's going to impact budgets and how it's going to in Impact current contracts in our early estimates that cost was in the $2,000 range for the school department which would also then be tax for employees as well of approximately equal value of what we were looking at and the last one I wanted to share from that long list is an another resolve to study school safety and that report out will not occur until January 2025 there were a couple of bills that expanded or sought to expand access to Firearms within School range with the intent of protecting especially the most rural schools that may not have uh the same level of access to police services that were afforded in the city of Sako as well as a
026parent optout bill that was proposed for parents opting out of lockdown drills so that resolve will kind of take take a look at all of those bills that did not pass individually in order to make some recommendations moving forward I uh look forward to providing a bit more of an indepth preview to the policy Committee of some of the specific policies that we will be looking to implement as a result of these this legislative session which those laws become effective in October uh on the 25th thank you assistant superintendent parkur for that presentation we all love studies that study other studies so uh with that are there any questions uh at this moment in time make how many uh bills did your group work through this year we reviewed and weighed in on 283 bills
027we did not provide testimony on all of that sometimes we review the contents of the bill and determine that we just kind of want to watch to see what happens and um other bills we contribute to testimony that's then provided by msma superintendent R did you have a followup all set thank you School Board member Gail um just a quick followup um on the bill regarding um prek and expanding that access can you if we know what the impact is right now can you kind of talk about that in relation to the new school construction and how if that would be impactful and something we should be keeping our eye out on as we move forward with layouts Anda yeah it it right now is not necessarily legislation that is targeted towards Public Schools so
028it's not necessarily indicating that public schools need to hold that responsibility in any way um so we will certainly be keeping an eye on it it's more uh an intent bill that the state wants to continue to support and investigate how to expand B those programs for three and foury olds and looking at the percent of fouryear olds that are covered by publicly funded programming which doesn't just include Public Schools but can also include other programs such as Head Start and there are other districts as well that have Partnerships with private care providers in which the school department isn't really in charge of that but help as a Fiscal Agent for the state to pass those public funds to those private providers so I don't think that we currently you know we've certainly talked about
029the number of prek classrooms and have looked at that as being much larger than what we currently offer and could have some flexibility in that space as well as those designated expansion spaces that we've talked about in the new school construction project but I don't anticipate that it's going to uh cause us to do a drastic 180 in terms of the facilities that we offer that there would be an obligation for us to provide any of those Services followup a followup and I apologize for coming in late and I apologize if you um covered it but is there any major um unfunded mandates in these bills that we're going to have to be cognizant of either this in the next budget cycle or coming up so the next as we head into the second part
030of the session this year that's when the funding will be in question for the legislature so there's not an intent on the legislator legislature's part to have a lot of unfunded you know they are kind of saying that this session is the things that don't require funds we recognize that that's not truly the case it it more means they're not going to fund it but but the the new family or new leave in 2025 will be unfunded mandate that we'll have take care of locally yeah well it's funded in the sense that they've figured out how to make us fund it that's right that's right it all gets funded eventually Schoolboard member Truman I just wanted to as a followup to uh board member Gail's question about the prek my understanding is that we are
031basically designing this building to accommodate what similar to what we have for kindergarten will be kind of matched in the size of the pre will be correct so that if it is become it does become mandated that it shouldn't have any effect on space and that sort of thing right yeah and one of the interesting pieces of that is that they're not mandating compulsory attendance that's different than providing Public Access which is why even if we expand like we have had waiting lists for prek for many years those waiting lists don't equal our kindergarten class sizes because compulsory attendance is not required in the same way right until the state actually requires everybody to offer Universal prek and even if they do they probably won't Force compulsory attendance so that parents will many parents will
032still opt to right keep three and four year olds home even if there is access to public because what's the age currently for compulsories six six okay or five and having attended school already so you can't put them in and then just say you're all set unless you want a home school superintendent Ray I think uh getting back to Will's question about unfunded mandate pieces is it's important to just also realize that while sometimes a bill doesn't have a fiscal note attached to it pieces start coming at you and it and it adds to a greater staff count an additional this an additional that and so I tend to be one that says they all have something that's attached to them uh and those ones that say a dollar whether it's time energy additional employees
033down the road I mean we we talk about the prek piece and that we're pretty well positioned to do that for for four year olds but if five years from now someone came at us and said okay now it's we're working towards three year olds that's a whole and whether it's this community or or every other community I think sometimes we forget that a little bit when we talk at the state levels when we talk about um CDs services or prek Services because if you're in a rural school that has had typically a declining enrollment over the last 20 years it's probably not that big of a deal to add one classroom into your buildings because you you know if you were a former miltown that had you know where was class A you think
034of like a place like Sterns or melan noet that has gone through some of that now has plenty of space probably not the biggest deal if you are a special ed director uh for a District of 600 students and you talk about four or five additional CDs kids that you're picking up in space in the grand scheme of things that can probably happen but for our larger districts when you think about what space needs are and when you think about some of those other ads it quickly becomes a position or this so I think we just have to always be cautious about um when we see things that initially appear as no cost that it always in the end for especially larger communities it has impact in some way or another thank you any further
035questions followup discussion School Board member Johnston um Meg I'm curious um you're talking about the three-year-olds and the prek not being the age not being mandated to attend but is there any talk about that occurring in the future it may be out there too far I don't know but I'm just curious if we at some point in the foreseeable future might see that being a mandate attendance that would be highly speculative on my part I don't think it will happen Okay I mean it's been something that we've heard discussed in the past and obviously there is an emphasis on getting younger children into school but I you know I'm just curious I was just curious I it would be highly spective I understand but I just wonder if there was any conversation going on in
036the background about it I think the intent is build good programs that are low cost or free to families and see if they come as a first step and see what that impact is before compulsory attendance would be required okay thank you Schoolboard member Truman um question about ld00 in regarding the um annual Financial audits um this is this would affect ta yes if I'm yes and it would it requires that private schools that receive state funds which would include ta that submit their audit to the Department of Education so how does that work would they submit that those financial documents to us or do they submit them directly to the state do you know how that's I don't think that I think the requirement I'm just pulling up the exact language but it's yeah
037it goes right to the commissioner so it doesn't involve the sending school okay I just wasn't sure if that was going to be something that um will give us a little more transparency about how our subsidy that we send to them will be is being used but it sounds like it's going directly to the commissioner so any further discussion thank you very much for your presentation thank you that brings us to item G the msma annual fall conference superintendent Ray I just wanted to remind folks that if you have interest in attending that conference we' sent out an email for you to fill out those uh so that we can get you registered uh it's a good conference it's a great learning environment to hear what other schools are doing see the challenges that other
038uh School boards face um can be very uh worthwhile for board members and we'd love to have any of you who would like to attend that every everyone raising their hands to attend that uh msma conference okay moving on uh item h on the agenda this evening is a first reading of policies policy ibac child find ihbb gifted and talented education I Joc School volunteers imbb exemption from requ excuse me required instruction uh IMG animal in school and there's also a a motion to strike IJ -2 volunteers for the Sako school department is there a motion School Board member Johnston thank you Mr Mayor I move we approve the first reading of policies ibac ihbb i j o i imbb and I am G and to strike policy I j- 32 second motion's been made
039to uh by Schoolboard member Johnston second by Schoolboard member Truman any discussion on the first reading of policies see no discussion roll call vote Schoolboard member Archie yes School Board member prebble yes School Board member Richard yes School Board member La Fortune yes School Board member Gail yes School Board member Truman yes School Board member Johnston yes motion passes 70 that brings us to item I a second reading of policies this evening and it's to strike three current policies GC d-r recruiting hiring and employment change procedures ihcda postsecondary enrollment options and JJ o - E1 School volunteer registration form is there a motion School Board member Johnston thank you I move we approve the second reading to strike policies GC d-r I hcd and IJ o C- E1 second motions been made by school board
040member Johnston second by School Board member Truman any discussion on the second reading of policy Schoolboard member Truman I just wanted to mention that these are procedures and a couple forms that aren't necessary as far as policies go thank you any further comments 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 School Board member Truman yes School Board member Johnston yes motion passes 70 brings us to item 13 other information there's nothing on the agenda for that uh item 14 executive session there's no executive session this evening so with that we make it our way to item 15 and that's an adjournment I'll entertain a motion to adjourn so moved second I think that
041was moved by Schoolboard member Truman and second by School Board member prebel or vice versa because I think it was almost a tie uh with that uh we'll we'll take that and we'll we'll go along any disc discussion roll call to adjourn Council excuse me School Board member Archie yes Schoolboard member prebble yes School Board member Richard yes Schoolboard member L Fortune yes Schoolboard member Gail yes Schoolboard member Truman yes and School Board member Johnston yes motion passes 70 to adjourn at 5:42 p.m. have a good evening everyone Arie that was just a e