001Katie are you all set you passed everything up okay good evening everybody thanks for coming tonight um if we could please uh stand for the Pledge of Allegiance pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with li and justice for all thank you so uh we have a busy agenda lots of interesting conversations tonight um and looking forward to all of them uh but first I'd like to just uh recognize uh Caroline who even at the last meeting here that she's going to attend uh is on her computer uh it's okay to be on your computer I'm just saying you're right right up to the end uh which is one of the reasons we enjoy having her so much
002uh you've been a great addition to the board we really really appreciate everything you've done you've added a lot of energy and have kind of help to you know deepen the level of student participation that I'm sure Aurora is going to to take on uh for next year and whoever we get next year but we just wanted to thank you very much for everything wish you the best best of luck uh and your C we know you're going to do great you just have to promise to come back and tell us all the good stuff and uh we have something for you that let Patrick uh say just a small token of our appreciation that I'll give to you and but thank you you've been a great role model for other students a great scholar
003athlete and um a very conscientious board member so we really appreciate you giving us two years of your time and don't come to the June meeting after [Laughter] graduation we'll have to send you away thank you [Applause] okay um we move on to approve the uh minutes we have two one from April 29th and which was our board meeting and then the May 6th meeting uh can we take if everybody okay if we take this together but do let me know if there's any corrections you found any no okay so can have a motion I move to approve as written great second okay uh any other further discussion okay all in favor thank you we are uh adjustments to agenda yes we have one we're going to move the climate change resolution policy discussion that
004uh Mrs Wright and the students will be very happy we're doing uh is going to now be 7.05 before the 7.1 so we're just going to do a public session and then get right into it and uh I think that's the only adjustment 3 11 oh that's right yeah two trips we have two extra trips that came up after the fact so one is across country and one is Special Olympics and those will now be 11.4 Point uh D and 11.4 e so those are the two additions and I believe you got that emailed to you and I think actually we just got a hard copy tonight any is that it okay that's it all right so then let's move to a public session if anybody was here to speak to the agenda or things
005on the agenda for against or indifferent uh now's your opportunity to stand up and uh just tell us your name and where you're from no okay um moving on 7.0 so 7.05 we're g to move right into uh the climate change resolution policy discussion Monica okay I want to be as live as possible so thank you for allowing me to speak tonight to urge you to pass the resolution to address climate change through our role as a district um I'm Monica Wright I'm a science teacher bath Middle School I'm a taxpayer in bath and I have both of my children are students in the RSU so on behalf of a growing Coalition of Educators and students and community members during this busy time of year I truly appreciate the time to discuss this policy and
006how the district can play a role in environmental change affecting our local and Global community so I'm not here I just sounded really fun okay so um many people have shown support and added meaningful discussion to the document in front of you tonight and I really need to mention M deer because he's not here tonight and he's the one who built this Coalition of people and he's the one who worked on the last um six months on the multiple versions of this policy through feedback he's not here because of the birth of his second child so that's like a legitimate reason um the rsu1 Won't Wait a policy resolution to address climate change is an opportunity filled with hope the resolution before you tonight allows the rsu1 leadership to to take positive change in that
007leadership role and the best way that we know and that's through educating our students and then educating them at the whole student at all levels the education we provide is not just in classrooms with high quality instruction but in the choices we make to run our school buildings our transportation systems and how we choose to spend our money acting our values is the education we can also give our students the rsu1 Won't Wait policy resolution to address climate change allows us to have a time and place to gather ideas and people to continue work that individuals have already started to make our facilities transportation and Food Systems more sustainable the working group would be required to present to the board and public which makes our Solutions more transparent the local governments that work with the
008district will now have another group of people to implement Regional Solutions success feeds on success and the best part the students are going to be part of that entire process if there are any others here tonight that want to show their support want to give a little wo woo [Applause] oh maybe a little May a little more woot woot standing yeah like who's here to help support a climate change resolution that the rsc1 can thank you okay I want to hear some uh the people who out of the most hold on hello everyone I'm Ren coffinger a sophomore at Morris High School and a rasic resident and a good friend of Mr deer who is heading this project I'm here to talk about the climate education aspect of this proposal I feel fortunate enough to
009have been taught well on climate science through involvement in climate committees and internships this education has greatly improved my knowledge on the topic but also my decision making when it comes to actions to work against climate change however I have learned a notably negligible amount from the school system well I don't think anyone in the school will argue that climate change isn't real and that it doesn't have effects I strongly feel the knowledge on the local outcomes outcomes of climate change are incredibly under acknowledged within the student body this can result in major in a major problem having seen how aousc has addressed climate change it has become increasingly obvious that action against climate change is a community effort the community needs to acknowledge the problem and even greater than that it is the community
010that must unite to take action now if you spent any time in bath you know that moris and bath Community are incredibly intertwined many of the people who graduate moris stay or return later in life whether after college or later down the line the people being taught in Morris will become our community leaders in the next line of defense against climate change and bath the people who like those here tonight will need to take action it is our duty to prepare them for the effects of our changing world but more importantly how to respond to and protect themselves from climate change we must work together to embody our motto think Care Act by giving students the knowledge they need to address climate change the sympathy to recognize its problems and the confidence and support to
011act against it thank you [Applause] hi I'm Elena trundy I'm a senior at Morris as some of you know um I just want to say that climate change is having a direct impact on our community whether it's rising temperatures or sea levels I'm a part of the moris green club and obviously not every member could make it to this meeting but when talking about this matter serious engagement and concern arose many students feel passionately about taking steps to stop climate change however in order to take action as students we need the adults around us to support us so thank you thanks yeah I I'm available to well question no we need yeah I think they're probably questions so um I'm going to open up to the board I would just just a little bit little
012bit of history for the board I think I put this in your backup but this is something that Mr deer brought to policy committee I don't know couple couple months ago two three months ago and we had a lot of discussion about policy versus resolution and he's done a ton of research and I think I don't want to speak for the policy committee members but I think we felt like a resolution was more appropriate and so this is an opportunity for the board to ask questions um it doesn't need to be voted on tonight like and and to me I think it would be more of a a vote of support if if and when you're ready to do that um I think you know my conversations with Mr deer was uh we have another
013meeting in June if you know if you're not comfortable this evening uh or if you have questions you want us to research um but I mean as far as going into another school year that would be the hope of um the group that is supporting this resolution so so just in terms of just Logistics when you you know what is a resolution versus a policy what is what is that like if you vote on a and I'm not it's not about the topic just in general if you vote on a resolution versus what is a policy what does that commit us to I mean it's a little looser than a policy a resolution not as strict at the same time if the board voted you know I think what we're looking for is a vote
014of support so that the action steps that are within this document would be followed through on and there would be a level of accountability because part of what you probably saw on the last page was the committee coming back to the board um I think a couple times in the first year and after that once it's finalized getting you to okay it and then um and do this work great that's some good Clarity uh questions comments from the board Jennifer go ahead so I was in the policy committee when we talked about this and I think that I did see a pro that I think we did want to engage our our academics our curriculum requirements that already exist on this topic so I think we made a change to that but then I was
015reading it again and I did have a question um one of the whereas statements says that um that the city uh that the city of bath has um is requiring active engagement from all elements of city government including the schools of the rsu1 and I was just kind of wondering what the city of bath was requiring like how that where that came from yeah I don't know but that's a great question which one is it I'm not sure I can answer that truthfully I know that the city of bath has a climate policy resolution have I seen any relationship between the city and our town that's formal I think it's all been informal at this point in terms of um student groups openly working with the sustainability um executive director that is part of the
016city but I also don't know if it like this that's why I like this resolution that it provides an actual voice of like who we are as an RSU and that's who we want to talk to when the city needs to be able to communicate with us um in addition to the administration of course because I think right now there's so many individuals in the RSU that are doing small great work but don't have a A Gathering Place of like how do those come together and even know what each one's doing in terms of even our different buildings we don't have a lot of opportuni where we share common regional types of solutions so that would like like what's going on in Woolwich isn't always something that I know that was happening at BMS and
017then those can be communicated with how we're addressing issues the city also cares about such as flooding and moving buses around the community to take our students home when the flooding exists and bigger issues that both of us are dealing with okay and the reason uh the reason I asked it's just um it's just a little I was thinking about the wording about the city of bath requiring something of the art you um because I would understand maybe if the city of bath required that of the buildings located in the city of bath I don't know how the city of bath could require that of the RSU buildings not located in the city of bath and it was just you know I just kind of reading it over again thinking that I don't think that's
018the intent at all but um so maybe that's an area would we like some revision to make it more clear that the requirement doesn't make sense but to have communication so that we're coordinating our efforts when things such as flooding and the cities are the streets are flooded how do we get our students back home or to school right in all the towns and I really I loved the um I love on that same page paragraph a says that um that the program is you know wants to convene a work group with members of all local governments from the towns of RSU um I think that makes sense to include those municipalities in all of our towns I think that's a wonderful way to connect us in that way um and that it would be
019to make sure that all those voices were being heard you know the school voices and the town people so that was just the only place I had a lingering question about so thank you thank you hope I answered that I I just want to say that I fully support this effort and have watched um the progression of of how Micah has brought it forward and very collaborative minded and I really appreciate that about this committee um I think just to answer Jennifer one of your questions that the city of bath has reached out to a number of people that are connected with rsu1 whether they're Educators or Community Partners to make sure there's representation and I think that coordination of on their on their climate committee um and I think they just started that process
020last week and I agree with you that in a where we're talking about convening a work group I would love to very specifically State um from each town that rsu1 serves and then um you know a couple of the questions that I had as I continued to read throwing things at me Lou yeah um is you know in on page two under B where we're producing climate literate Workforce ready citizens what does that look like I would love to see maybe a little bit more specifically what that looks like and then my other um just thoughts again is on page three it kind of like skips over a bunch of process I think where it's it's like once the plan is adopted well what are the steps to get this plan adopted that they want
021to have um I think one of my concerns is I don't want to handcuff Us in tight budget years to say well we voted on this resolution last year so we have to replace all of our heating systems districtwide that there's a process that this would have to go through and kind of outlining what that process is like how they make recommendations exact exactly if the committee has recommendations how do you make the recommendations and how is it and and yeah supported by the full board so it's still just a ongoing process but I think it's great and one thing that I think is important since we're talking about mental health so so much tonight um and every day is one of the things that I learned from our young people in a world Cafe
022um event last spring was climate change was one of the top things behind school shootings that stresses them out so I think it would be um behoove us to empower young people to feel like they can be part of the solution but then also see you know leadership saying yes this is important and we want we want to empower you all and all of us to come together around so that's great um Anita did you have she covered everything you sure okay so you agree with Jamie all right um yeah Kurt Monica I was just wondering uh piggybacking on what um Jamie said about students uh are there any ideas or expectations and I apologize if it's already covered in here I was trying to see that for um student involvement and I know if
023you the best person to talk about that or if you want to defer to I think um the model we had before when we had a solid waste committee is that there was a student from every school on that committee and that this one is even more important that there would definitely be student representation on any kind of working group and maybe the working group would be too big and there would need to be subgroups of course because to involve students from every school including even Dy no and fburg and which you know with younger grades would be important but maybe not part of every single Committee Member and then um once there's a like a funneling of how we can gather these ideas from all the districts I think that's when teachers like oh
024I have a group that really can needs to has a project that they can speak to and that's when younger students even can be involved so yes 100% students involvement any other board members um I would just like to say yeah based on what everyone else is saying too I think I don't think we have to have all the specifics because some of it is is you're going to need time to figure out what's the best way it may change it may do this but I think a few more specifics just understanding that the procedure would be the committee re making recommendations that the board should work with and but I do also like very much the I mean I love the um be here about producing climate literate Workforce ready citizens that that permeates
025everything we teach and everything we do that makes a lot of sense uh but but again with the working group having a few more details about what that would look like I do like the idea of finding out what's already happening because you know everyone may not be aware we bought into a solar farm you know that's that's a thing you know people aren't aware of some of the stuff that's already happening there's a lot more to do certainly and and I think people would want to uh want to do all of that but but just having a few more specifics about what we think that could look like and I know that's tough because when you're including the other towns you know Bath's still figuring stuff out they're still trying to figure out their
026priorities and what does it mean as a as a working group and stuff so we know it's evolving and I get that but I think a few more specifics and I think the board would be pretty comfortable passing that resolution so maybe if we could if everyone's okay with it we get a few more specifics for the June meeting and then we could pass that so then you can get your everything going so it it's you know going into the fall with that does that sound yeah that makes sense and I think even having this public forum now you might be getting more feedback from the community for ideas and how to like make sure that what's happening and then that gives us a month to be able to vote on it right and that's
027what I'm saying just we just want a little more structured so it's kind of solid as to how we're progressing but I'm well aware that something like this will evolve and you know could look different in December but that's okay because we just we want to make sure we're all starting on the same page in the right direction knowing there's certain things we absolutely know we want to do and some other things we may not know yet and that's okay too but it's just about I think a little more structure so we know you know what are you asking of us so come in kind of with the working group What specifically are you g to you know you're going to recommend things to us and uh as other board members have said you know
028we have to some of it could be due to budget it could be goals we set up and say Yes by this date we want to be moving toward this certain things are going to save money in the end but you know an initial investment but then it saves you know I know where because isn't uh moris like we could plug solar into Moors you know we made sure that when it was built it had that we didn't have the money to get solar panels at the time but you know things like that so you know a real analysis of where where we are so I think if we can do that and like you said this is good because if people are watching or people will hear about this we may get some more
029feedback oh you need to think about this or think about that and then you can come back in June and uh I think we'd be ready to move forward with that so people can so just to be clear what I'm hearing you guys say is that the last page of what the role of the board is is the part that you want the most attention yeah okay thank you does that make sense you all said great does it make sense to invite them back to the policy committee no no no okay no no just brings something to the if you have questions feel free to get in touch with us during the month you don't have to wait till the next board meeting if you have any questions or you say hey we're thinking this
030does this make sense I'm happy to show up at a meeting if you want I'm sure other board members would be too so just you know keep keep in touch I'll come see you and we'll work out some details y work hey thanks a lot guys can I ask one more question all right um I guess it might also it might be too early for this but it might be a good idea if we're going to be voting on adopting something that we'd want to have a better compreh more comprehensive understanding of all the resources needed you know whether that's Staffing or funding Etc so you that's part of the working group list of things that were required like how to support staff and budgetary constraints of there what there would be are you saying
031you want that before the resolution's even passed no I think aren't you aren't you asking like is there a cost Upfront for putting this together at all like you passed the res even have the working group meet right right is there because I mean you just have to think is there is there how much time is it are people willing to volunteer are you looking for some funding even for that I don't know like yeah and I guess also you know certain things in here like commission and audit Etc you know just to have an idea of what that might look like if that's possible at this point which may not be for the next meeting thank you I think it's safe to say everyone wants this to work we're just we just gota you
032know get some things refined and and and we can make it work yeah no it's exciting I'm really glad everybody's you know thank you to all all the staff all the students everybody who's uh um you know put this put the time and effort into this because this is looking really good so we appreciate it okay thank you all right next 7.1 the main Health uh mihs presentation it's my pleasure to um invite Melissa fosado up to the microphone um she's here from Maine health and she is the director of Community Health um and she's going to review the results of the main integrated youth Health survey what Mias um last year I'm not sure if it was last year or the year before I did present um some of this information to the board
033I believe it was last year and then we were rating for these results to come up main health is able to do an even deeper dive with the data which is why we wanted to invite Melissa to come present to us and you all have her packet it's the one with the red stripe right thank you thanks Katie thanks so much for giving me a few minutes here at the board um meeting to present some of this data and I have also baked in some time for questions and I'll keep an eye on that so again I'm Melissa fosado I'm the director of Community Health for Mid Coast hospital but I also talk about how I although I work at Mid Coast hospital I really work for the community and I'm involved in many of
034these coalitions that we have on this slide as well as many working groups including the working Community challenge group out of the United Way and many of our staff work with Jamie on the Mid Coast youth center and with Katie for several so we're very integrated into the community working beside you um so when we talk about some of these results especially for anyone listening in I always talk about how this is a reflection of how we're doing as a community not necessarily how we're doing as School departments but this is where the kids are right so this is where we will survey them but you'll see woven in throughout this and at the end a conclusion of what we can do together to address some of these issues and we're going to talk about
035what's going well as well so there's a lot of data in the Mias uh we're really covering areas tonight that I know of particular concern tonight um with you that's the mental health and substance use numbers as well as areas where there's been a change or where maybe a school in rc1 differs from the state averages but I am happy to have coffee and talk about every single data point in this so a little bit about the background of the Mias the local data you'll see in this presentation comes from the 2023 Mias which is a collaborative effort between the Department of Health and Human Services main CDC and the main Department of Education and the schools that participate so thank you it has been administered every two years in Maine since 2009 there are
036separate surveys for middle school students we actually when we say Middle School we're looking at seventh and eth students not sixth grade and one for high school students which covers grades 9 through 12 the data are collected cleaned and made ready for release by a contractor who ensures the data is accurate and representative and if you have any questions about that methodology there's a methodology Point uh report that I can point you to at any point and then a note about completion rates very robust for rsu1 and we really appreciate it um 82 81 and 85% for your schools what this tells me is especially for those schools with a higher number of students this means that we can this trend and this data are particularly informative and tell we uh I have a higher
037confidence in the story it's telling when you have this participation rate so we really appreciate that and we appreciate all the students that that take this anonymously and tell us what's going on and so again uh really thank you for that so I'm going to start with the question that's always of a concern for the community and that's what is the mental health status of our students if you look at this this is the high school rates orange is the Morse rate and the state is the blue are the blue dashes so as you can see there's been an increase in students who've experienced signs of depression and considered suicide since 2017 and this is looking in the past year the steepest increase came between 2017 and 2019 and has been relatively stable since both
038are higher than State average at this point and we'll talk about that in a few slides and again this is the reason that we pay to have this analysis because if you look at the pdf online you don't quite get this trend data so I really like to look at a trend over the past five to 10 years and not just over the past two years especially when two years ago we were dealing with covid so this is why this is great analysis to have when we look at Middle School mental health status note that the high school rate is for the past year Middle School rate is for a lifetime so we have to be careful not to compare them a lot of times this kind of makes you take a breath but remember
039we're talking about ever when we're talking about Middle School have you ever experienced signs of depression or ever contemplated suicide in your life this question was not asked at a level to get school level data until 21 the depression screening rate um but as you can see if you look at the last two again it's just two um two years worth of data the sad and hopeless rate is trending down for both schools with suicide considerations starting to Trend down for BMS which again is orange woit which is in red has fewer students so that's why that data point it's difficult to measure Trends with woit and it's going to go up and down a little bit um but it looks like perhaps that is also trending down so again a word about significant I'm
040using this as a statistical term it's not a reflection of the actual difference so I also I always like to tell people that and although when you look at that PDF or look at these numbers on paper the act the rates may look different but unless we say they're statistically different which means they fall outside this confidence level that means we're confident that they're different so and this will be noted in the slideshow if we're looking at that data online so be careful when you're talking about trending that it's a statistical Trend and you can see that the mental health rates of more students are worse than State average a little bit higher at State average are the number of students who were when sad and hopeless reported getting help from an adult which is
041what we want them to do and 45% of Youth who feel like they matter to their Community again those are EST State average and we'll touch on that near the end as well again if you review the rc1 results you'll notice that the number of students who felt at least one of their teachers CA cares is declining for Morse so again Morse is on the right I wanted to let you know this rate fell significantly among high schoolers Statewide between 2017 and 2023 so Morris is not alone in this so I just wanted to bring this up that you may see this but no you're not alone this is not any different than what's going on so the top row are high schools to the left is the main rates and to the right is
042rsu1 the this result was statistically significantly worse at bath Middle School compared to Maine in 201 21 but it's increased in 2023 and now at both BMS and woit we're at State average of students who feel like at least one teachers really cares about them and gives them support it's also very important when examining mental health rates to recognize that some youth experience these mental health concerns at a higher rate than others included in these groups of students of particular concerned are youth who identified as female lgbtq or lesbian gay bisexual transgender requer especially youth who identify as transgender you can also see that in the call out boxes to the right transgender students were also much more likely to have attempted suicide and reported Force sexual contact in their lifetime in this Slide the
043darker red and the darker blue are the proportion of students in those groups who answered yes the lighter red and blue answer NOS for instance if you look at that top red um about a quarter of all males indicated signs of depression in the past year that's in the dark red versus almost half or 40 6% of females so he broke out male and females and in those group looked at who had a higher rate of depression I give you a second with that one it's that's why I it's easier to to look at in your pocket and we'll come back to that if we need to when looking at substance use rates of mors high school students there's no statistical significant change between 2017 and 2023 and they're all at the state average there's
044not enough data to determine vaping rate since 2017 because we didn't think to ask about vaping in 2017 we sort of learned that that one was coming right and we had to re rechange up the the questions but we know when compared to 2021 that the main High School rates are down about 2% Middle School's up about 1% and that's about the same reflected in the rsc1 rate so not I was really worried that we'd see that Spike after the pandemic and we're not so I just want to say kudos to all the work the schools are doing and the Public Health Community are doing to really address this because it was really one of our highest concerns so again a few other substance use questions um we look at binge drinking this is when
045we're asking if you did drink did you drink five or more drinks in a row which is a really concerning Trend to see um that rate and early initiation rates are at State average I also want to talk about protective factors these are things that we can do to protect kids and address this I often get this question you know this is pretty hard thing to look at so what can we do so in addition to re increasing awareness of risks which we often always um immediately go to we must teach we must teach increasing protective factors can also decrease substance use and improve mental health status protective factors are characteristics of individuals a feeling of positive self-worth positive relationships a feeling of self-control and conditions things like do you have social support do you
046feel like you live in a caring community that correlate to lower substance use rates and better mental health rates and outcomes these are also measured by the mihos and we're going to look at how worse rates compare so we measured six that I've brought up here um light blue is Maine dark blue is Morse we looked at this these six measured four at the state average but I want to look at number five which is the schools cares about students how often do you feel the people at your school care about students and encourage them more students answer this at a higher rate than the state average so good job more staff number six and you also know this that the percentage of students who have reported for more Aces is higher at Morse High
047School your students are dealing with more than the average Maine high school student so they need to be a little more support than maybe some other students these are things like abuse neglect poverty racism violence separation from parents we also pulled out um woit had some even more positive change so we pulled that for you um you can see that suicide and mattering to the community are statistically better when comparing 2017 to 2023 or this 2023 to 2017 they also feel safe at school and bullying statistically significantly better comparing 2021 and 2023 but again do caution that there's also fewer students so just you know a couple students may change that rate but that is a that's a good Trend very positive trend and finally when we ask about who RSC students who feel like
048they matter to their community that between 17 2017 and 2023 um that did decline but it did better in wage so it declined at moris did better at wch and stayed steady at BMS so this is where we all need to do more as a community and that's where I'm going to wrap up my remarks and open to questions so we all have a role this is my next two slides that talk about what is being done and what we can do more um we've invested a lot in me student mental health and youth mental health from Mid Coast hospital and we're doing a lot with the community we you may have heard of our mental health first aid courses that were offering for free throughout the community and I encourage everyone who has not
049to to um sign up for that and that's just like a CPR class you don't know you're not asked to become a counselor how to treat but how to recognize crisis and how to connect a youth to to help we also do a lot of work with youth we have sources of strength with for middle and high schools we have a youth for Action Council we just started at Brun Junior High and would like to replicate and I believe we've um gone to Brandon at BMS to talk about that we have a community health Improvement fund that your schools have applied for and this is money to improve or um extend the number of activities so the kids feel involved and feel like they matter and and really looking at those kids who maybe aren't
050involved and why aren't they involved and what could we do to get them more involved and more supportive we have um many substance in tobacco use prevention you may have seen the signs when you came in that was from a coalition there's the new tip line of speak up you know if you see something say something is what you do internally we took that at a community level if you're in the community at any time in 247 you feel uncomfortable calling the police then you can text an anonymous tip if you feel if you feel you're worried about anyone a family member or a friend my staff is currently reaching out now and his meeting I think has a meeting set up with all your schools to talk about what we can do and what
051we can start in the fall and continue so they'll be getting a call on that and then finally it's all about Community coll collaboration as you know I've mentioned the southern Mid Coast communities for prevention we all know about Mid Coast Youth Center all the work they're doing you're having your second bath Pride I was part of the first bath pride and seeing the number of kids downtown celebrating and being their authentic eles was just great um we're working closely with main youth Action Network on restorative practices and how to bring those to communities and schools and we look work very closely with out M on how to make sure all students feel supported in their school so that in 10 minutes was a high level summary of of the Mias data and I'm happy
052to try to answer any questions or bring information back to you no that's great very well done uh very very good I open it up to the board you have questions any questions on the stats what they look like Jennifer anyone if anyone else needs to ask questions please um the uh I'm interested in some of the questions and I was interested how they combine the words sad and hopelessness because they seem to be two different to me I think of a not any kind of medical standing but a vast difference between the two it's it's a great question and that question is actually a screening question that's used Universal so it's I believe it's one question that's asked in the Mias and it's one that's recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics the same
053question they would get at and you and I think it's whether you Fe feel either or if you if kids respond that they're feeling sad or hopeless that's a sign of depression if they've said they it's more than two weeks in a year and I think the question is something so much that you've stopped doing things that so it's a longer question question that you can certainly pull the PDF and yeah absolutely and is this one of the ever in your life or currently High School is um if you felt sad or hopeless for the past two weeks in the past year Middle School is ever for all questions no for the sad and hopeless and the suicide question in particular the mental health questions okay yep um is it was interesting also then on
054another slide they use you use the word depression not sad or hopeless I think when I say depression because we already talked about that I condensed it but whenever I say when we're measuring depression it's based on that question so that is the same question that is the same question yes which is a screening uh depressive screening question yes um and then for The Vaping was vaping um was it was a specific vaping nicotine versus cannabis was there a breakout in what they were vaping I yes there's several questions on vaping to ask that and I didn't pull those but I certainly can but yes and I think we've learned right that and and there's a question about do you know what you Vaped I think is a question and one of the concerning questions
055Statewide is although not I'm gonna a very high percentage of these devices have nicotine a very small percentage of you think that they had nicotine and so there's a lot of confusion about what's in those Vates but yes we do ask what's being Vaped and we there's several questions on that and do they ask if they're flavored like candy yes yes absolutely and I can tell you they're flavored I mean I don't have to look at data to tell you that anything a kid is using is going to be flavored and no other year past that like I know you didn't have 2017 right but it would be interesting to see if there are any other years we have it at the state level but we didn't again because H adding a question to a
056tested it takes a little bit survey so we didn't get it at the school level until 2021 I think I can get it at state level at 2019 okay but they didn't and we it was an uproar when they didn't include I think help me to say we need to know this at the at the school level which is why it was included in 21 okay but it kind of snuck up on us and thank God for the sro's that came to our meeting and said something is very going on backpacks are smelling very fruity we're like what is going on and literally that's how we found out that vaping has started and then we started you know and then science catches up so your staff knew you know before we knew at the even
057the public health level but yes I forget why you asked that Jennifer but yes that's like I wish we had it going back but that that was uh like an epidemic the way that that just shot up over literally a summer so it was coming a long time yeah yeah no it actually wasn't coming a long time it was they got out in June they think something's going on we came back in the fall and it was like probably 55 to 75% of kids had Vaped over the summer it was really quick it's the fastest thing I've ever seen it was yeah now the last question was it said um Aran students who feel they matter to the community what was what's a community to a student that's a good question for your students I
058would ask oh it's a community that I think that the intent is to your general community so there are a lot of questions about school but that's a great question I would say to all any adult asking ask your student that what is a community to you and where do you feel valued and where don't you feel valued y um and the last thing is um some of the resources there's a very powerful um set of videos from the US level of tobacco compliance that I don't I it's not called do the right thing I don't why that's but they're very visceral videos what's the name oh my gosh of course you'd have to um tobacco free kids and it's oh my gosh my tobacco prevention specialist is gonna kill me I know exactly what
059you're talking about and yes we use them and they're like having their anniversary to show how impactful they are and they are a little you know gross show but they but they're tested right not Center for tobacco free kids I'll think of it as soon as I sit down but yeah and those are what I love about those is they're tested with youth like youth don't want to say you know if you use this you could get lung cancer in 50 years so what they want to hear is you're being right you're being manipulated because we can't make money unless we hook you now because 30 year olds aren't going to get hooked and that's what they do right and which is um the truth campaign the truth yeah that's what I that's the one
060I'm talking about okay there there videos there a bunch of videos they made I I'm I would be surprised if it wasn't the truth campaign but it could be something else yeah check out the truth campaign thank you great any anybody else have questions comments great questions by the way thank you um I'm if our students feel comfortable I would love to know what you guys how you feel when you look at this about your own school and if you feel like it's relevant connected accurate and if you don't feel comfortable that's fine I guess I think that a lot of it about the LG btq health is very accurate um even though I think Morse is like one of the most accepting communities I've ever been to um and bath as well we just
061talked about bath Pride it's still because it's so I guess Universal in the fact that it's not entirely accepted and especially with the increase in anti-transgender legislation that's been passing recently um a lot of students in that demographic feel hopeless um which I've witnessed among my own friends and then distance acquaintances um so just focusing on that within the school Community um would be very helpful old microphone today uh um yeah I think it's it's kind of like it honestly makes me a little bit sad looking at it too because like all the people that I mean obviously it's not it could be anybody that feels this way but I just I want to say and I it's difficult to speak for everybody especially with topics like this but like the school board the Morse
062Community the community of bath it's like like also one of the most welcoming places I've been like I hear about I moved when I was younger and the community that I could have been in if I didn't move is like not as accepting as this one and I think that even though like suicide or sad or hopeless rates are strangely high at Morse compared to the state averages I think this board and school Community just does a great job I think it appreciating the students and making sure that they matter and there's so many um extracurriculars for students to be involved in students are comfortable starting their own clubs I think that's great um so yeah that's my input maybe it'ser maybe more comfortable doesn't mean it's that much different than other places in main
063I know that's the hard thing one way or another but I think environment where you feel safe may students comfortable absolutely survey where if you're in a different Community you know not everyone even if it's Anonymous yeah I think that's a really good respond you may have some communities it's not as high and then it's lower so I mean I know it's that's when you get into right exactly and that's why I always talk about that this is a lot of correlation like con you can't really tie all these together um absolutely yeah um speaking personally to this I remember taking the survey when at school and it was when I had just moved here and I know for a fact I lied on some of those questions um and now I think if I
064took it I probably wouldn't because I know that the school is definitely here to support me no matter what and I can speak so I hear this a lot like how do you know right um and just so that you know that there are ways that this is designed and so if someone completely randomly filled out all C's right then some of those things wouldn't match up and so when they talk about the analysis they do a really good job analyzing this data and making sure that things make sense because we hear that a lot that especially with schools that don't want to face it which I don't think Morse is one of them like well that's not true they're just how do you know well because you're comparing it to the rest of main
065so why would you know so there's a lot but right we we do hear that sometimes but I'm pretty confident in this data and the numbers that we're have especially when you look at Trends right that's where I usually look at instead of that point in time look at the trends how are you doing compared to two years ago four years ago six years ago because then you're comparing more apples to apples in your own school and you can see that line is flattening which is what you want to see and then after flattening it's going to start to go down right that's great any other comments questions thank you so much that was very very meaningful presentation and you know take it very seriously and thank you for participating it's because of the particip
066participation rates that we have this data and we have some of the programming that we can do so we really appreciate it and we appreciate you all that's fantastic we appreciate you too thank you okay um got some real real deep stuff tonight uh let's move on to speaking of that student board representation report what's going on aside from prom or including prome and everything else let's hear about it um so for starters I like to say AP exams are finally over so that's a lot of students are feeling very relev all done all of them um there's I know a couple students who have makeups who have to take them but in general they're all done um the school also finally received a yearbook so we're going to be passing those out soon um
067academic award night is this Thursday where we'll be recognizing a lot of students for their academic achievement and unified literacy and I think science went to the B Gardens today um and they had a lot of fun on their field trip um and for mine we had prom but I just wanted to say um put on the record thank you to everyone who helped out it was so fun I had no part in helping out so I really appreciate everyone who all the Juniors who set it up and all the people at the golf course who worked it um it made it very fun um and last Thursday I think senior te happened I think it was the 71st senior to you which is exciting um Miss Nichols told me that um there's uh progress
068Improvement on the progress for an Amphitheater and a raised garden bed um in the back kind of by the teacher parking lot which is awesome um and the process for selecting Juniors for NHS has begun I think people are submitting all of their people got their letters last week so that's awesome congratulations to all the NHS students uh BMS stepup day at the high school is this Thursday the 24th and scholarship night for seniors is happening soon I think and I also wanted to thank the board for giving me this opportunity I've had a great two years and thank you for the cute little card thank you Lou for writing all my uh letters of recommendation um yeah I have a I love being here I've learned so much so thank you everyone is B
069yes basser yeah congratulations um all right any questions for the students no so so how's the NHS so the they the Juniors find out now in the spring yeah okay so we applied in like late March I think and then got our letters and our first meeting I think might actually be tomorrow I have to check the email okay I couldn't remember when the timing because I remember over Co it all got screwed up with the timeing I wasn't sure if it was spring or fall okay great uh superintendent's report yeah just a couple items uh BMS play it was our first theater production with the new Sound and Lighting system that we've talked about that we bought um murder at St roses it was very very entertaining Katy and I went together it was
070very good and it was uh you know with the BMS rock band in between kind of the axe um with them with you can see Mr deer who's been here before you know helping the helping the rock band play Guns and Roses theme songs so it was uh yeah it was very entertaining so um but it's I it's you know the enthusiasm will lead to a very strong theater program for the theater program here at Morse uh WWI tomorrow I I didn't get a chance to check at this but we have a very popular go-to science program which is live virtually but um Beth and Curtis from go-to science I think we're going to be here live tomorrow to do presentations with our K2 classes at woit um and so that's I'm sure the students
071are excited for that eighth graders at Wich are gearing up for their annual DC trip here at Morse and I I hope I get this name right but junior is it Kai nasimo that sound right um earned a spot to attend the National Flight Academy for a program the summer for students that are interested in pursuing a career in aviation that's awesome uh Spring Concert occurred last week with just great performances and AP exams you mentioned Aurora but we had 119 students take 20 30 exams in 17 different subjects it was impressive and I would like to thank Amber Macwan who monitors all of those and takes our students down to our central office to our conference room and organizes that and the students do a great job a couple um things coming up if
072anybody has an interest but Bath Tech graduation is May 23rd at noon Adult Ed graduation these are all on your program too but adult educ education graduation is May 29th at 4M at the Orion which is the um theater at Mount a at middle school May 30th we've got a trifecta we've got unified literacy poetry art Gala we got jmg closing ceremony that evening and then we have National Technical Honor Society at Bath Tech during the day and lastly well not lastly we graduation probably is the last big thing but May 31st bath Middle School celebration of learning from 10: to 1 you can stop in at any point and just kind of go into the gy and see what the students they'll present to you it's quite it's quite a nice event that they
073put on and that's it oh and one last thing just may more for the board but um is that May 28th next Tuesday we have our District budget meeting and uh we will get you the kind of um script we'll get that to you maybe tomorrow so you can have that if you have any questions about it's going to be in the auditorium yeah it'll be in the auditorium and we'll get reminders out we sent you the budget link uh today for the booklet and all the documents and we'll get that out to you know we I think we already got it out to staff but we'll put reminders out in a newsletter about just encouraging people to come and be part of the process great great thank you any questions for Patrick can I
074just can I give a plug I didn't give this to you but there is a um at the main Maritime Museum there's an exhibit up about uh the wool witch boat building program that's been going on for 15 years collaboration between between WWI Central School and Maine Maritime Museum so there's an exhibit up on the last 15 years of the program some interviews with students audio video interviews with Natalie Emerson actually was in a video that uh is up there now so if you that'll be up for about six weeks if anybody wants to check it out excellent and Kurt do you have a date for the launch of the boats or not yet still working on it yeah for it's THS June 13 at 9 okay all right um DB right than um tonight
075we're looking at the month of April so um Caroline I know you're excited to hear this last financial report right uh so we've spent $31 million out of our $41 million budget uh it's about7 5% so we spent a little bit less than last year last year we had spent 78% at this time but basically it's just a easy way to monitor that we're on track um for the most part expenses are within budget there are some lines you know obviously that are up and others that are down but overall um you know I think that the administrators and their administrative assistants do a good job keeping an eye on their own budgets um as far as Revenue we're at almost 35 million which is 86% so it's a little bit higher than last year
076so that's a good thing so we're bringing in a little bit more or showing a little bit more Revenue at this time of year um and as far as the ARP funds we have about 318,000 left at the end of April so we'll be pretty much winding down with that after the Amphitheater and the final um air conditioning payment in Woolwich um so that's it everything I think is going as well as we planned and what we had hoped for a lot of activity and payroll this time of year a lot of uh Anthem rates did go up almost 10% um but we have um yeah we have a you know this is the time of year where we have open enrollment and lump summer requests and so it's busy in the office a lot
077of moving factors right so questions any questions for Deb Jennifer you just mentioned the amphitheater out of the ARP money right was that the BMS um theater improvements that you just talked about Patrick or is that no the BMS one was from the Rev Grant this one is at Mo it's a outside classroom kind of Amphitheater oh okay Greek style okay thank you great thanks a lot DB appreciate it all right uh so now we're going to go to 11.1 and Katie is gonna she passed out a lot of information we're going to go over all of this and have some discussions about it and we'll see where everybody's at we do not um we don't have to vote on anything tonight if you don't so I mean it's it's really make sure everyone's clear
078that we're on the same page with the information she's given us I just want to thank Katie for all her hard work on this and for everyone who worked with her because this is really great stuff uh just the way you pulled it together really well organized and made it very easy to see where we are with things so I wanted to thank you for that and so go ahead and take it away and we'll have a good discussion and um we are required every year just before we get into the PowerPoint to go over the um title funds and just to remind the board how we spend them so because this is a quick conversation I'm just going to do this first before we get into the deeper things um you see that you
079have a white sheet with a chart across the top you have our Title One title two and title four funds you can see over um the years from fy22 to what we're expecting for next year um this change is is a direct result of um the change in the way free and reduced lunch numbers are collected so um the state had us move to um counting on the direct certification numbers um so we finally have um what that impact will be for next year you can see that title one went up by about 1,600 unfortunately title two went down by about 19,000 um and title four went down by about 6,500 um so what does this mean um our title four funds we always lump into our Title One funds so we don't really we
080consider it really just Title One and title two um for title one you can see on the list we pay for our interventionists at fiser Mitchell and Dy new we have um parent funds and homeless Transportation funds that were required to reserve um and that's takes up the most of the money um for title two we always um pay for one teacher out of that to reduce class sizes um so we'll do that again what will be hit with the um decrease of the 19,000 is professional development money so usually title two is a person and then PD money um and so I will just draw from um what we have locally will just means we'll be doing less um so we're not worried about any Personnel at this point which is good news any
081questions about that okay thank you all right so um as L said I just want to be clear that this is the start of a conversation um I gave the board a lot of homework um on that document with all the live links it had a lot of Articles both on school start time and the research around that and on cell phone use and the research around that as well as um all the different community members who were able to um join the conversation for start time and then cell phones um was really an administrator committee that um started that conversation and so um in thinking of how to do this I didn't want to just regurgitate everything you read and so I'm just highlight um some things but I think it's good to note
082um for the record that the board did a tremendous amount of deeper reading and research so this is just really um a reminder of some of the key points for tonight um so we're going to start I mean Melissa's presentation on Mias was the perfect I think introduction to this conversation um the reason why both start time and cell phones have come up as priority discussion questions and possible changes is because of um we're continuing to look for ways to improve our mental health for our students especially our teenagers um and a lot h of States um California Florida or two of them have actually moved Statewide to require that their high schools start at 8:30 A.M or later um because of these effects um that are positive that they've seen from doing that so
083improve safety better attendance better achievement um more rest for students is the reason why these things are happening and I think the biggest one is um a pretty phenomenal amount of research around reduced depression and anxiety just from sleeping more um so again you've done a lot more reading on this but this is just a quick hit of of what this sleep um conversation is about you can go ahead um you know in this while this might be a new conversation for us we've actually been having this conversation since before the pandemic for with a school board um committee that was started that Lou and I have been running basically since then in addition to what we've been doing you can see um here that you know there are lots of major scientific and medical
084organizations and also educational organizations who promote this initiative to start um school for older students at 8:30 or later um and so I just wanted to remind um the board of this um I think one of the biggest points and I have this on this slide in another one that that we should talk about is that second bullet point there students have shown uh sorry Studies have shown that as adolescents have a natural shift in their sleep wake Cycles resulting in later bed times and waking times making it difficult for them to F function optimally with ear school start time so a lot of the um when we were doing all this research Lou and I had a very hard time finding any research that opposed what was found to be positive because we wanted
085it to be really balanced um and this bullet point is one of the reasons why there isn't much out there even though you can move to the next slide Jake um even though um a lot of these Arguments for why people are opposed to changing start time come up um there is research that shows that on the bottom chart you can see the start times are along the top and this was a study um done I believe on over a thousand students yes over a thousand students um that the the later the start time at the bottom you can see the amount of sleep that happens um and the sample sizes from there go from 300 to about 50 1500 showing that um regardless of when students choose to go to sleep the later you
086start school um the more hours of sleep they get meaning if you look at the quote above that um I think this is worth reading um although many people seem to think otherwise teenagers are still children and growing ones at that they're they are not adults and their growing brains and bodies need an average of 8.5 to 9. 25 hours of sleep per night many teens simply cannot fall asleep before 11: p.m. due to shifted circadian rhythms or body clocks yes poor planning electronic and other distractions and poor parenting can certainly contribute to the problem but the fact that these circadian rhythm shifts appear in adolescent mammals as well as adolescent humans suggests that there's more to the story here than irresponsibility so I just wanted um everyone to see that you know a lot
087of these um arguments and opposition are really tricky ones um this would not be an easy switch that the board would need to decide on um however the the research is pretty bulletproof um okay so what are we actually talking about in changes um over time this is what the committee came up with our current schedules on the left and then the um three options that we would be considering are the next um three columns uh I I want to note that these are just draft possibilities because first student really can't take all the time to run all the bus runs unless we choose to do this because it's a tremendous amount of work and so um the amount of time here between when the younger students would start earlier and when the older students
088would start later we are guessing is around 40 minutes they did say and this is something consider it might have to be longer and so these might have to be even later um they also wanted me to share um that they hope it could be done um with the amount of buses they have but the shorter amount of time we put between start times the more likely it is we might need to add more buses and so if the board were to ask me will this cost more money my answer is it might um if you don't want it to you would probably have to make sure there's an even wider amount of time or a larger amount of time between when the younger students start and the later the older students start that makes
089sense okay can move along um so what did our community think you have three very large colored packets that are the survey results um I for the sake of the trees I didn't print all the comments because they're in pages and pages of them but on your um homework page you can actually digitally link to see all the results for everything in everybody's comments um I will say we had amazing um numbers and feedback in terms of feedback um we had 307 stud thank you by the way so I emailed these two and said I've only had two students reply help me and so this is what they were able to do um you know I think I've just picked a few things to highlight so you really want to dig into this before we
090talk about more at our next board meeting um but you can see that on weekdays the average students getting up between um 5:30 and 6:30 was sort of the highest number and then on the weekends you can see that those times are obviously different like many of us um so between 8 and 9 was 33% and after nine o'clock was 32% on weekends and so the reason for the committee wanted to ask those questions because it sort of shows what people's more natural sleep patterns are they don't have an alarm clock waking them up um 70% of students feel tired when they wake up or during the school day and 73% of students felt school starting later would impact life after school even with schedule adjustments um so here in lies um the tricky part
091of all of this um it while I spoke with um our athletic director and many other organiz ations like the why for child care the amount of logistical lift to make something like this happen is tremendous and the kids are the students I should say are actually recognizing this because um if they get out later and all the other schools around them do not um while um our athletic director and our club the people who run our clubs and other things can shift things it will mean that school time will be missed for students on a rotating Bas basis if they have to leave early to get to um meets um competitions and that sort of thing um the students uh are you can see 56% of them um do not support a schedule that
092starts at 8:30 or later so the students and I was talking to Aurora on the way in um would prefer that the student the schedule stay as is even though they re recognize um that starting later might actually be good for them many of them and I think um one of their data perfectly shows what the issue is they know it would be good for them um and they know they would probably appreciate it but they know it would cause so many logistical pro pro problems that they still would prefer our current model does that seem accurate in terms of what people have been talking about that's what I thought okay um all right so 461 families um answered and um for we I asked the question who had just K toy versus 6 through
09312 and said answer for your oldest student um and just pick one student so we could break up the data um you can actually see on your document your Google doc now you I disaggregated the data by um kada 5 veres 6-2 if you want to look at the separate responses I put graphs all the way on the bottom there um but you can see that obviously the bed times range depending on the age um and we have you know anywhere from 9 to 11 being the the times when as research shows students at this age are usually falling asleep um based on what their parents think um close to half of the parents or more believe that their child's mental health and sleep are not negatively impacted by the school schedule um and then
094you can see the two graphs I highlighted below do you support a schedule change um 63% said yes yet over here choose your ideal school schedule and the largest percent is actually the current schedule um this if the board moves to look more closely at possibly changing it we would need to break that second graph down into um K to 5 versus 6 through 12 because it's kind of tricky in terms of how people responded if you look on that um document I just mentioned that's there already all right next um this is another look into K to 5 versus 6 through2 um and I think if I were to summarize all of this it would be that um the majority of families do not support the shift either um similar to the students while
095many of them would answer that they agree it would be helpful um all the things that would get in the way make them prefer our current schedule can move along um this is what our staff think the majority of Staff support keeping the school schedules as they are as well um and so when you look at those more carefully um you can really see that they do see students looking tired often um and they do worry about students mental health that's the one on the bottom right where um 56% of Staff who answer this said they worry about students mental health more than once a day and so it it's very um it's very disperate in terms of both ends of the spectrum of what people think there's very few people um who seem to
096fall in the middle um and again I I you know I don't want to sugarco any of this this would be a pretty tricky decision for the board to make as a singular District in an area where nobody else is choosing to do this so all right um You know here I just quickly laid out what the benefits were and obviously the benefits are enormous which is why this conversation is difficult um you know decrease in substance use decrease in depression and anxiety increase in attendance um and then the challenges though are very very real um Sports busing child care and being the Sol of school in the area doing this and having to figure out what that would mean okay so next before we move on to cell phones should we take some questions
097on this and then do cell phones next yeah that makes sense so questions J has yeah of course um have any of the neighboring districts indicated that they are looking at this at all I um went and presented at a meeting with Dr Manuel with um Freeport 75 and Brunswick they were they we are farthest along they were still deciding whether they were either going to look into it or not and wanted to know what we had done so so so far of all of those places I haven't heard of any of them picking up the topic um and to be honest there was a lot of very wide eyes um because it it has been a project that's been taking place over years um and so it's a it's it's a lot um so
098I don't if I had to guess maybe one of them wouldn't talk about it next year if we were lucky and then the only other um comment that I have I was going to take the survey as a parent of a second grader um but after like the first couple of questions it was it asked you know do you believe your child's mental health and sleep are not are negatively impacted or something like that and no because they're in second grade right but if I were to answer that for my high schoolers a year or two ago 100% so I know if there's a way for us to revisit that at some point if you if you look on the document I added today you can see there's an it's an Excel document where I
099downloaded all the survey results and then sorted them by K to five parents versus six through 12 parents and then made some more of these graphs so you can actually see the difference because for that very reason and I also didn't want to make the survey so long um or complicated like if you're this person fill out this one and if you're and you know so there it's not perfect data and you know one thing the board could decide is we need more information from people okay other other um schedule questions any other comments you have one well I was I just been thinking a lot about this sleep issue and about you know change this is one way of trying to be better rested and it just occurred to me I forgot to ask
100I wanted to before the um Mias Society but is caffeine considered a drug when they the survey for me has when they ask about caffeine and then I was wondering when it comes to the sleep stuff if there is ever we ever ask like how much caffeine is is consumed you know after 12 after noon after two after three like just and I'm not saying that that's the other solution to this at all but I started thinking about those sleep patterns and difficulty getting up in the morning and how much caffeine is consumed and yeah I don't know does ever come up at all it's a good question I honestly can't remember if it's asked so you two having taken the um Mias remember of caffeine I'm not I don't think it is right okay
101yeah so yeah I think I mean I think I agree you know we've been talking about this you and I for a long time I I think it's coming down to um it's it's such a huge like if if all the statistic if all the surveys had come up well we really want this that's one thing because that's not what it's coming up with I really think I think this is extremely valuable I think you did the homework for the other districts they could see what was going on I think we can we should continue to push um with our representatives and our state senators on a on a state level because I really think that the way this the only way this really shifts is if everybody's doing it so if everybody's doing it
102it's a whole culture shift for the state and yes it would still not be easy but it but it's I think next to impossible to pull off solely by ourselves um when you aren't even sure if we got half the people saying you you want to do it I mean this is excellent work and I absolutely agree that the science is clear but just the logistics of it you know I'm willing to talk continue to talk about it I don't think we should let it go in terms of just like we'll never talk about it again but I really think being advocates for the state need to look at this because if that happened that that makes a lot more sense because you know then you're not competing with high schools aren't competing with sports
103jobs everything else because Brunswick's getting out earlier you know that's the if everybody's doing it later then it's something more to look at with the state RoR do you have something to say um well I agree that it would be a lot easier on the state level I think among the students the main concern was just the fact they were getting out later individually um because like sports go late I know like a lot of the swimmers they go from like 6:30 to 8:00 P.M and if we shift that later they're going to be swimming until 900 p.m. um and even though we're starting later we're g to have the same volume of homework just with less time to do it after school and so although we might still be going to bed at 11:
104the hour before 11: instead of being spent relaxing or kind of recovering from the day is going to be spent finishing that homework um and so just considering that I guess even on a single School level rather than no it's a big it's it's a big that's very well said and that's that is a huge concern and and that's why like I said doing it solely you know why we shouldn't have to be the ones that are taking that that carrying that weight um but you're right even if everybody did it that is a huge factor and then there is the other Factor because in um like you said Florida and California have done this they also have more light than we do in general and so that is a real thing and as long
105as we're in Eastern and Atlantic time zone that's going to you know it gets dark here early that's a factor so things going even later you lose any light that's happening at certain times of the year and that's also a real thing yeah in terms of mental health and all of that so I mean there's more looking at it I think you know we we can continue certainly to have this in the Forefront discussing what it means to get more sleep and all those things and like Jennifer bringing up caffeine and other things no I mean there's all these factors but you know it really is light much light there is in Maine is a factor as well but no I'm not proposing anything uhuh I'm not getting involved with that the state that's right
106yeah we'll do it just just just in the just in Sag hot County sure um no I think uh I just think there's a lot a lot of these factors and this really highlights it and this is a very meaningful and I think necessary discussion and it's great to hear from the students on what everybody's thinking um because uh it all that would have to be taken into account so anyway that's just where I'm coming from but and and I would say I'm really proud that our district took this on as a research project because I think um you know I wish it would be easier to move towards the step because the research is so strong but I also know we've changed so many things to try to improve mental health over the past
107few years and I know once those get a little more traction um you know we are doing a lot um and so you know I would definitely support keeping all of this data and coming back to this you know in a future year if other people start to do it or the state changes their mind on the resolution they were considering which looks like they just want local control to be the way that this goes so so I guess my question for you then is should we discuss this again at the next board meeting or should we decide I've heard from a it sounds like a few people are are okay not what do you all think yes Anita I'm okay with not moving forward with changing the times is that what you're asking but
108or talking about I really feel like the conversation shouldn't end as far as addressing overall health ramification physically and mentally what are some other things you know we should continue the conversation around what are some things as a district as a community that we can do to support our kids to have healthy sleep hygiene to balance school and sports and their health right um better to have to be better educated and and to I think we need to continue that conversation and look at other ways besides changing a school schedule that we could help with that not just drop it and walk away that's actually making I I agree with you and I think maybe one thing I can do for my board presentation next time is put together a list of all the changes
109we've made since the pandemic began um because like any change it takes time to see its impact and you know you're you're making me even think of the leads substance use program that we've just piloted in sixth grade that next year will now be in second fourth and sixth like that will impact mental health um because substance use impacts mental health um so there there are a lot of things that we're doing to help this issue um so this doesn't need to be the only answer that we look at I think we can continue digging for things that might be logistically more tenable that makes a lot of sense yeah I think that would be great to uh to do if you could do that for next time sure but I don't unless someone else
110says I don't think we need to specifically address this in this format next time I think people are right is that I reading you all right okay I think it would be nice for us to keep the dialogue open with neighboring districts and I'm looking at you to um you know just keep it as part of the conversation because it something you know if I could wave a magic wand only because I spend so much time with Dr Haggler and hearing you know the benefits like I wish we could do it but I truly recognize especially Aurora sharing that you know that's really insightful so yeah yeah because that would mean other changes on the level of homework and G all the things that we expected the students that would have to shift as well
111so it's a real culture shift right but yeah I agree yeah Jennifer and um also if we're not going to do this is there any kind of programming that we can do internally to change what we do at the beginning of a day I mean would that matter at all in terms of waiting until those rhythms and those energy levels get up to a certain point I mean you know we've talked about how it's not great to have math early first thing in the morning for every single day I mean like I don't know if there's any more researcher any other kind of programming we could do that would help even being here but what they're doing I don't know sleep pods sleep pods in the library yeah no no that Mak that kind of
112stuff question and our principles especially at the elementary and middle school levels where they have more um sort of say in how the schedules work themselves out have have worked with putting study halls first or other things so students can ease into the day and you know it's always to be honest it's always mix mixed results some people feel like the students are freshest in the morning at the younger grades and you know and even at the middle school and that's when you have your um best teaching going on so I think it's tricky to give one answer to that question but it's a good one to ask okay um great we all ready to move on to cell phone cell phone policy so we'll put a pin in this but keep thinking about it
113exactly great thank you all right so let's talk about cell phones which I know Aurora already got stressed out about on her way in um because you will see that the student results not surprisingly are very different than the um family and staff results of the survey here so we're going to actually do the opposite this time and start with the the benefits challenges because I thought it was easier for this one because it's pretty again straightforward so there's strong research um coming out that um the amount of screen time and time on social media is one of the if not the main reason that um mental health for teenagers has decreased since the start of cell phones so um you know Banning cell phones would obviously increase mental health um increase in-person social um
114connections and red reduced digital bullying which we know is a big problem um decrease depression anxiety increase academic achievement um there's also a lot of research that shows that um when you take cell phones fully away during the school day students use them less outside of the school day because they have gotten in chosen to get involved in more things um and so it's there's not as much of a need to use them to fill in their social time um decrease in the compare I wasn't sure what to call this mentality um which impacts wellbeing so the all the people you see with the perfect lives on social media and comparing yourselves to them the way they look what they have what they do is extremely D detrimental to everyone's well-being and so obviously that
115time would be reduced um the challenge is is um people are addicted to it very much so and rely on it and it can be used for educational purposes um I know that families in terms of safety worry about being able to connect with their students I hope the board read the two letters from the bath police chief and the sheriff um that they actually um mentioned that cell phones reduce the safety in a crisis um like a school shooting because phones make noises when you're need need to be silent people could be texting um and panicking others and having them come to a scene where the when the police need more space and so um you know I think I that was all surprising to me when I started doing this because I was
116thinking of my own child and wanting to be able to connect with him um but you know now knowing that is interesting to think of the other side um okay I think we can move on Jake okay um so why just restricting doesn't work so this is really interesting there there was um the reason why I included this quote is and this um reference to this study is that a lot of people say well we just won't let students have the phones out they'll be in their pockets or in their backpack or we'll have them you know put them somewhere where they're not allowed to look at them um but the addiction is so powerful that if it is on you it was upside down on your desk if it's in your backpack um you
117are are less likely to be able to think clearly Focus um you know and they tested put your phone on your desk leave it in your pocket or your bag leave it out in another room none of these conditions involve active phone use just the potential distraction um the results were clear the closer the phone was to the students awareness the worse they performed on tests in the study even just having a phone in their pocket sapped students abilities um because they're often thinking about what they're missing who's talking with whom um I see some smiles over here um and actually after reading this I have started not putting my phone out on tables during meetings and it is kind of amazing um and I don't even have social media um okay let's move along
118it is this doesn't count um yeah if if in a ban it would be watches as well yeah um okay so here are some terrifying statistics so you have the teenager's age the percentage spending at least four hours per day on their cell phones um and then the average hours per day um people are using their phones you can see that every single one of these numbers and this was a Gallop poll so very credible um students are spending at least four hours on their phone um girls spend more than boys the purple is average hours per day so 4.8 is the average of all teenagers um 17-year-old spend 5.8 hours per day on their phones according to this because all the minutes add up I don't know about you but I'm always shocked by
119my screen time amount that it sends me um I do read books on my phone though so that counts okay all right so um the students do not want to give up their phones uh they um they think that they spend less than 30 minutes on their phones um and their main reason for using their cell phones is to text their friends and to use it for school assignments all right so we can keep moving along staff on the other hand um it says from your observations how often do you think your students use their cell phones during school 37% said um they work for younger students so I took that data out so the ones who work with older students which is what we wanted to pay attention to um you know we have
120numbers in the 40s at least um of people who are using you know it's most of the highest percentage is in the students at school use their phone more than two hours a day that's from staff um what do you think your students primarily use their cell phones for during the school day um 36% said that it's checking social media during class okay we can go on um again more staff results because I think it's different when um people are being and I I don't mean to disparage the students results at all I think it's very hard to be for all of us to be self-reflective I find it interesting how different the student results are to the staff who are actually watching the students do the behaviors um um so the staff feel that
121cell phones distract from the learning environment very high percentage in the red there do you believe cell phones should be allowed in school based on your observations 62% know they are too distracting how often do You observe students getting distracted by their cell phones the largest percents there are five or more times per class and um let's see the orange which is three to four times how do you think the use of cell phones during school hours impacts social interactions a large majority it hinders face to-face interaction which we all know okay um in terms of parents I would say the parent um results were almost identical to the staff results maybe slightly lower in terms of being more self-owned positive um but they um I were leaning more towards restrictions on phones not totally
122taking phones away um which is different um however do you think the use of cell phones during school hours impact social interactions 70% said yes um Do You Believe cell phon should be allowed in school of that one where yes but with restrictions is in the 50s um the no is still 35 okay we can move along um so a little background on this and I know that you you all read this in the notes but just for the sake of this Public Presentation it was an administrative team of um assistant principles deans of students myself technology direct director and our SRO who came together to do this initial research because of the amount of problems um that we're all seeing related to cell phone use related to um interpersonal relationships related to bullying um
123and so after doing all this research ourselves we unanimously wanted to move forward to have the school board um determine whether we could fully ban cell phones in grades 6 through 12 um what that would look like here um and there are lots of schools I'm sure you've read um in the articles I posted who've done this already successfully and their results are fairly amazing obviously there's um Growing Pains um but there are many ways to do this cell phone lockers I won't go through all the things we researched this is the most popular way it's also while expensive um $36,000 which we have already set aside in ARP for mental health technology um so we could pay for this um in June so it would not be a local cost um essentially it's magnets
124on the wall every student has their own pouch um they would put their cell phone in it it doesn't work um which also means I have to look more into the watches but I'm pretty sure if you're I know with my phone if my phone is disabled my watch only tells me the time it doesn't send me like text messages and things I see some shaking heads of the younger people that's good okay probably accurate then um Okay so the thought would be that the pouches um the magnets at the front doors um everybody keeps their own pouch for their entire obviously some will be lost and it's like our computer and computer case um policy um with Replacements but we would just buy a new set which is around 4K if I base it
125on a 125 student class um every year locally which would just give the six graders new pouches um and so that's sort of the money and the systems I I don't want to um bore you with the details of the uh policies and procedures that we've already looked into um I know that you guys have access to that but um at all of our schools where this would be the case they've actually written the procedures already to make sure they could actually make it work and they can oh that's it okay so um now questions about this right so the so again it's the the parents are more for it the kids are not so before we ask questions I want to ask Aurora and Caroline and ask Aurora if she's been talking to my
126son Eric because he feels very much like you do um as yeah he's ready he's like no no you can't do this um so I just want to hear what what you're all thinking and then we can ask some other questions were you giggling at the year survey results is that why you were laughing no we were laughing because it said we use it over two hours a day at school which I think might be physically impossible to do like you look at my screen time it's like three minutes in this class two minutes in this class maybe 30 minutes in study hall and then done um no I think for starters I think limiting phone usage might although it would may increase face Toof face interaction I think it might also increase like the
127separation between like CP kids and AP kids because I have friends that are in CP classes that I never see but I can text them so that kind of maintains the friendship or I otherwise wouldn't be able to maintain it um and it's going to sound kind of bad it might actually convince you guys more to ban cell phones but there are some classes that are just boring and if you don't have a phone on you then you're just going to fall asleep and leave so like it's a it's a spark of hope even if it's just two seconds and I know there's classes that I've done poorly in because they're so easy I just like get bored and they phones help I guess balance that out a little bit that's not really a great
128answer though to that I know um yeah and I don't know I think a lot of the older generation does exaggerate the extent to which children use their phone because it's so much more than they use their phone so by comparison they assume the numbers are a lot higher than they are um especially in school [Music] hours I think you need to read all the articles I assigned to look more at the research um yeah well I it'd be terrible to say that this doesn't affect me but um because I know I have younger siblings and just people this obviously phones are huge uh but I think that the classes that I'm in I kind of travel travel with like an amoeba of students that are pretty motivated in a classroom and don't typically go
129on their phones I know that's definitely different I know every classroom isn't like that um uh but um Mr Foster had a great um kind of uh fear tactic he would say that you had like so many strikes and if you lost all your strikes like having a phone out in class like if he saw your phone you would get a strike and would be sent somewhere and that terrified me so I never touched my phone in that class and it definitely helped me Focus um which I thought was good I think also the idea of having the phone in the pouch but letting the student keep the phone on them is smart because again like you said like if you just completely take it away from them it's pretty likely that they could freak
130out um but yes again it could also distract you so I don't know I mean there of course there's gonna it's not going to go one way with the positives and the negatives but yeah that's my input all right thanks for the input um other know you have questions Jamie or comments would this also apply to Educators in the classroom um we part part of the procedures would be what cell phone use would be would look like for adults as models it's I don't think we would just because we have um you know some of our emergency things need to happen on people's cell phones we wouldn't want them to be demagnetized um but yeah it's absolutely something we we would put in writing for grown-ups too and in part of my research at birthday
131parties over the past weekend talking with parents um something that was brought brought up to me that I never even considered was what's being done at the elementary school age when um maybe a fourth or fifth graders bringing a phone to school and showing inappropriate things to third graders and what is our um I guess safety net with elementary schools we do have different procedures in the elementary schools that to address that um but they because it's so few and far between at least at this point um and also you're with one group of students all day long with um it's it's a little bit of a different scenario so we could definitely tighten those up but um the administrators didn't feel like they also if we moved in this direction would need a pouch
132for let's say fifth graders um kind of just a second what Caroline said about Mr Foster's classroom he has that I'm in his class this year and he has like a thing on the wall to put your phone in when you walk in and technically putting your phone there is optional but it's kind of he has the three strike system and pretty much everyone puts their phone there entirely by choice um just to not risk the detention um and also I know this is a very isolated incident but I do remember a time where my friend was on a phone call in class and the teacher was like hey what you doing and then my friend looked up with tears in my eyes I was like yeah my dog just died so so there is
133that aspect of emergencies well emergency and so I guess the thing is if you read the articles the and I know it's hard for you to comprehend it because you've grown up in a world that only has cell phones but for those of us who are old like me and have grown up in a world that did not have cell phones that's what the office is for so when there are emergencies you call the office and it's going through which is the right way to do it you go through the adults in the office who then can call the kid down to the office it's much better than someone who's randomly with without knowing gets a call from the parent saying my dog your dog just di which is um however that happened but so
134I don't think that's really an excuse to have the phone because that's what why you have phones in the classroom or in the office and it's just the the way you you get things done you need you need to pick up your kid early you call the office and say please call whoever down I'm picking up my kid I think from what reading these articles and stuff is the the big thing that I'm really impressed with is in these schools once they established it so it's it's like Mr Foster's class all day long uh really and you don't have it at lunch because then you have to you're actually engaged with other people at lunch there's no one because in this in the schools it said in the schools that it was only you know
135oh everyone can have it at lunch everybody because they didn't have it all day is like this and that's not good either so that kind of intermittent thing doesn't really work if you're going to ban it I think it it makes a lot of sense in a lot of ways uh because it's in the end believe it or not I think kids would be less stressed because you're not missing anything because no one else is on it in your school and if there's really an emergency that's what the office is for teachers will help make sure you get in touch with your parents if you need to but that's I think that's where a lot of the research is going showing that while it you know you're like detoxing yes you have to detox but
136once you do you know I think if you talk to students who are in those schools now most of them would probably be like yeah it's great but go ahead um I think I think it's also important too like um like how you brought up the office and things like even when I was in mostly at like elementary middle school but like I was still getting called down to the office for kind of stuff like that like I'm uh and I'm sure a lot of my other classmates can say this too and um that we would have to go to ask to call down to the office to go like phone our parents or something like um I think the kids in my grade and my age and like people older than me were kind
137of the last of the children that had to go down to the office to ask to contact our parents and I think as like younger kids are coming in that have that are born after the phone was like invented like they never had that at all growing up so I I agree like I think it's definitely important that like as my age and a few years younger and a few years older now that we're all clearing out of high school sort of like it's a whole fresh set of kids that have an entirely different childhood of like less going outside doing other things so yeah I think yeah yeah yeah I mean like with my because with my two kids it's the same way that Isaac the fouryear difference and what Isaac experienced is very
138different than what Eric experienced and and so it's the same with you and you're younger siblings it's that very um it is very different but that's also why this is so important to have this discussion because they should experience a period where that's not they have to know that's not how it always has to be done all the time and so anyway yeah go ahead could I make a motion to extend the oh thank you meeting time Beyond two hours all in favor okay thank thank you any um other comments go ahead I was just thinking about um how our front offices have changed and so one of the things would be interesting and is that if would there be Staffing and bandwidth in our front offices if all of a sudden they had to
139handle a lot more of this traffic and finding out you know the things that we've kind of forgotten about when you know at a time when we didn't do this as much um so that was uh one question and then I think the the other question was you know know um how how different is the cell phone use versus the other device use you know if if the screen time is screen time no matter where you are does taking away a cell phone dramatically decrease when they're you know when you're on your tablet or your watch or your computer and do using the same kinds of resources social media whatever else you know so I was like I wonder how that those things are separated um that chart with the screen the four to five
140hours was any kind of screen okay um and then here in school what would be left in terms of a screen should this happen would be the computers um which block you know and catch up as more things are unblocked and then they need to be added in um because it's really hard to block everything all at once um and you know I think some teachers use the computers a lot some don't so that would vary yeah um so would you ban personal computers too like like I have a Macbook I use for school would that fall under it because I can go on those blocked websites on that computer that would that would be a tech question I would need to I mean we we'd have to look deeper into that yes yeah that
141would be I was thinking the same thing um other because this is obviously a discussion that's going to have to continue beyond tonight so I don't want to we don't have to exhaust all the questions tonight because we have other things we still have to do but go ahead yeah I'll just ask a technical question so the phone is banned for it's in the pouch for the entire school day so you put it in on the way in the door and you press it against a magnet and it locks it you carry it around in your bag you can't get it open and then the magnets are uncovered again for when people are leaving the building or there's one at the front office if people get dismissed early that's way better than what I thought
142um as the as the self-proclaimed youngest member of the school board I could not I could not be any more in favor of this policy at this moment so thank you for that presentation and so we aren't taking a motion we don't have to unless the board wants to I mean there's there's um so in terms of the timeline you can choose to talk about it again um the the one thing that's tricky here is the ARP money needs to be spent by the end of this year and so that's a little bit of the um putting pressure on the time to make a decision we would we would be able to um if you voted at the next meeting we would be able to make the purchase still well yeah and I guess the
143question question would be if we vote we were to vote tonight or next month I mean what what's the actual motion and would it fall and you would if you're doing it then it would be for the fall I we'll have to defer to Patrick with what the motion would be I'm not sure I know enough about so is it just the wording let's not make it that complicated I mean seriously you would vote to ban uh you know student cell phones or not ban I guess yeah we can come up with something lock them up into the you know the pouch system and the fall for 6 through 12 right use the Yonder pouches phone access 6 through 12 okay aora is not giving up what is oh no I just have one more
144question for like senior opens when you leave for senior opens could you have your phone yeah you would once you leave the building and for sports it would be the same access as you have now because you're not you know I mean you're basketball you're in here but you know what I mean Sports we would have be the same RS as it is now because it's after school yeah you're not going to take away it's really that while it's during the academic time you're focused on 74 to other you don't have the distraction and what we're seeing in all the research is that not having that distraction makes a world of difference you may not see it because you're immersed in it but that's what we're that's what everybody's seen and that's why you would
145would want to do it it's not punishing anybody I guess I would wonder about you know and I Pro hopefully it's a short amount of time but we're going to would this cause anxiety and how would like because because we're supposed to be we're using mental health money to fund this right so I guess my question is is that because we've kind of like um allocated the money before we've voted on how to spend it which is kind of backwards a little bit in my head I'm just trying to like well we just in in the way the ARP grants written we can put lumps comes under right titles so this is just the technology these are technology funds we never specifically wrote they were for this okay but all of our projects that are
146in ARP have to be related to learning loss or mental health Improvement because that's how we wrote our grant so this would be approvable okay with what we wrote but it's not specifically stated that this is what we will be purchasing well it's not locked in and I think in terms of will this cause anxiety yes at first because it's the growing pains but if you look at the research after people get used to the rhythm of what it's like to magnetize and demagnetize and I'm really not missing out because nobody can do it then when you read all the studies that are done of places that done it you know it eventually becomes normalized like anything I would just hope that we if we pass something tonight that we would have you know a
147how we're going to implement this very you know a very clear policy going into the next you know doing it and then practicing it and helping with that anxiety of not having that thing that gives you feeling of safety even though it's fault or not I don't know Jamie how would you is there think they you I think you we have all the procedures right gonna say so I get I guess the question is though in full transparency though does it make sense to I know we did the SE I know people know about this but does it make sense to bring the polic you know this is how it will work and show all that at the next meeting and then vote on it or you all I'm I'm asking you know where I
148am I mean between a policy that makes the overarching decision and then the things that our principles do every day which is to write the procedures in a handbook which you all don't usually look at to be honest so let so let me no let me so let me ask where are people do you want to vote on it tonight are people pretty sure where they're at I think we should wait because um I guess I'd like I mean while I've already said how I want to vote I do really like the suggestion of Educators staff phone use uh you know to sort of whether that's in conjunction with students you know whether everybody's part of the same team you know if that's kind of the the culture that's going to be created has that
149been thought about and could that be worked out I and I can get you all the details more so of the procedures we can add that to the procedures that would just be something normally that's talked about with staff but we can absolutely easily put it in writing and would we want I mean there there's no public comment tonight about this you know why would we vote on it have you know there's been a survey but I mean I don't know if we want 400 students at the next meeting but um that seems like the transp do it you'll get I mean you'll get students but that's okay I mean that's part of the process I'm just saying I think it's um yeah I I kind of feel that way too but go ahead I
150would just say that you know a lot of what we're asking for is actually not our role to sort of manage the procedure and how it's implemented at the staff level um we're passing policy and I think I don't know I mean if we're having a meeting on June 28th and we have to spend the money by June 30th that's true I just why why would we wait if the research is clear it was on our agenda it was sent out to people um even if even if you don't have to have all the details I don't feel I have to have all the details of how you're going to run it um but because we didn't say this is an action item yeah that makes sense it just I just feel like someone I
151feel like if even if everybody this is great some people are going to feel like hey I was left out of this conversation didn't tell me you were going to vote on it tonight um yeah it's more for me it's more procedural in that end I'm not as concerned about Ian if you have a few more details great but I'm not really wor that worried about I can put some more details together I do feel really good about the number of respondents we got on the survey which clearly stated it was cell phones and start time so that good I mean hopefully that's a true representation of our community and what they think about this issue I'm I'm less concerned about that as as just but we need to follow the procedur showing showing that
152we're being transparent and you know if it were in act you're right if it were it was on the agenda and it said action we could just vote on it but not because it didn't say that it appears like oh we're just talking about it um and that way if someone does want to come to a public session if we do need to put it in the gym fine we'll do that but um I think is everyone okay with that yeah I just want to know you want to vote tonight no tell me how you're feeling I'm really it's not it's not that I I have a preference of one Dev vote anxiety I think the longer we wait the more anxiety will Brew Over the whole thing but I agree with the whole concern
153about it having not been noted as an action item on the agenda I think that is a big concern um and and to to touch on the whole issue of anxiety it it is going to result in some anxiety and there may even be some meltdowns from some students um who use their phone as a coping mechanism yes um and but I can speak from personal experience as a parent to be honest with you um my youngest son used his phone as a coping mechanism and it wasn't healthy it was not a healthy coping mechanism and it brought me into his day in a place that I didn't belong in his day where he should have been relying on his teachers and staff here at the school instead of me and it was not healthy
154for either of us and it wasn't productive um and I think taking that piece away for a lot of students is going to be positive thing very healthy thing parents absolutely I am trust me I am and I don't even have kids in school anymore and I'm yeah I understand I can empath no I understand that too because that's that's the other culture shift that has happened with phones is that it's brought the parents into this the school day that was never a part of how you didn't you just wasn't part of it and now it's part of it so now you're asking families to oh no you don't need to do that so yeah so there is going to be some folks who are even if a majority of families are like yes take
155them there will be some who will say hey wait a minute it's I know my kids's okay but you you got to know your kids's okay because it's just how it works yeah Caroline um I don't I don't know if this is just totally false but have I've heard from for a while back when I was in like middle school and I was part of Odyssey of the mind and a lot of the competitions would happen at Brunswick High School is isn't there some like data or like Wi-Fi Block in place so like students don't go on their phones as often that's what I've been told from like other students no the sites are blocked and um but we if we have Wi-Fi yeah you know there's Wi-Fi yeah I don't know I don't know
156where I heard that from but I was just wondering if like if this had been a thing that's been like how we were talking about with the late start time like have we been in contact with other schools about it at all or about the cell phone use um there are a few schools that some of the um the assistant principal and the dean of students reached out to um I personally haven't done that yet um but yeah there are schools in Maine who are doing this that we reached out to so and one in Massachusetts as well is the one we base a lot of our procedures off of because it's it was going well there so we took a model that we knew was working okay uh Megan you want yeah um I
157was just going to say um well I I'm in support of it too but voting on it tonight like I purposely read made sure I read over the agenda to know if I had to be ready to make a decision so you're kind of throwing this gives me anxiety that I was not prepared to fully make a decision and um and then going along I just want to note too that well like uh what Anita said like her son um you know involving the parent I think there are parents too that are uh not in the best way reaching out to their students during the day that could cause stress to their student because uh anyway and so making that not happen and when you mentioned like the dog like finding out at school is
158probably not the best place to find out that your dog died and I'm not discrediting anyone one's thing but those are the kind of things like things you find out at at a appropriate time so you can continue on with your and then I'll also say like my daughter will text me I don't feel good can you come pick me up like okay this isn't how it works you have to go that's actually a huge problem tell the nurse first tell your teacher you don't feel good they'll send you to the office you're going to see the nurse or something and so that's my own experience yeah yeah let's quickly um yeah I guess the other piece I'd like to know about is that um is a phone one of those tools that somebody can
159say um because of my um diagnosis I have to have it with I mean in terms of a technology that they need to communicate with or their anxi or any kind of diagnosis that would say I can exempt out of this because I can prove I need this as a as a use uh you do that only in the very occasional exception in an IEP but often it might be for calming music or many of the things could be adapted for their Chromebook use so it's not a cell phone specific um accomodation okay um we're gonna move on since we're not GNA vote on it tonight um Katie thank you for everything um certainly took all the a lot of work a lot of work and all this um thank you very much and we
160got to get through a few more things tonight um thank you all for your patience uh so now we are at the um first reading of board policies which is uh no action tonight uh the what is that copyright compliance administrative procedure did anyone have any questions about that okay uh 11.4 now this is uh remember we added two more that you have the copies in front of you so there are five different uh aate field trip requests um we okay taking it all together may I have a motion I move to approve the field trip request okay may I have a second second second all right any further discussion regarding it yeah have question one question there was some one form where I couldn't tell the funding source um it said OJ or something
161on it um I was just curious J what is J Special Olympics oh It's So Special Olympics that's a special Olympic Special Olympics so it's Juni yeah okay all right so with that clarification uh all in favor okay thank you very much uh we move on to Personnel items Patrick so just some a couple resignations uh Janelle Skilling who worked in our office like to thank her for one year of service uh Rachel shonberg grade one teacher at wowit thank her for one year of service and also Samantha Leo who's a special ed teacher at Dyke new school retirement uh Tamar seins a food service assistant for us at Dyke newel School she's been with the district for 18 years uh either in a subc capacity or Food Service assistant so we'd like to thank
162her for her commitment to rsu1 and then under nominations uh we have two this evening one uh is the nomination of Connor Walsh to be the new bath Middle School principal and you can see um the interview committee was was large 13 people we had four applications we interviewed two people and you can see Connor's um educational background and currently he's the assistant principal at Freeport Middle School and also served as the interm principal at Mass Landing School in Freeport and prior to that he was an assistant principal in fitzburg Mass um so the committee was very impressed with him so that is our nomination for uh BMS principal and the second one we have is uh Amy Bennett for prek teacher at pipsburgh elementary school and Amy has been in the district for a
163couple years as an edtech at Dyke Newell and most recently as the library edtech at fitzburg great um okay the uh 12.0 we've got the just need you guys to approve it I make a motion to approve those nominations oh that's right uh second okay all in favor okay so that's done those are approved and um 12.0 approval of yeah we have one staff person in your backup uh that U we're recommending to go from P2 to continuing contract and I explained you know why that person wasn't on the original list last time so um we just need a a motion a motion for that yes uh move to approve approval of probationary teacher to continue in contract and second second all right all those in favor thank you uh now we're going to move
164move into uh executive session I'm going to need a motion pursuing to one MRSA uh 456d to discuss labor contract negotiations so can I have a motion make a motion to enter executive session second second okay all in favor we moving in executive session you two can take off get done all that last minute homework You' have to get done back e e e okay okay and so now I need a motion to approve the uh appsme contract I move to approve the as me contract yeah for 20 for 2024 2024 2027 proposed contract between rs1 board and the afscme barain yep all right and may have a second and Patricia seconds any other further questions on this all in favor and we pass that so that is done um any board goals reference Jennifer
165no I don't think we need your good move it's like uh no just make the meeting faster all right next meeting date so everybody it's next Tuesday six o'clock here at the high school and then uh June 24th uh for the next uh journ please need a motion to adjourn second okay we're out that's good you guys are done I'm not doing like I'm just