001e e e said the e e third times a charm go good evening uh thank you for your patience while we get the technology set up so our live stream is working this evening uh welcome to the rsu5 board of directors meeting it is Wednesday February 26th 2025 we're here in the Freeport High School uh cafeteria and we have uh our we have a few folks that are uh from the board that aren't with us this evening for work or Illness but everyone who's going to be here is so we will get started and we'll start with the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America to the Republic for which it stands one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for okay do I have a motion for consideration and approval
002of the minutes from the February 5th and February 12th 2025 meetings as presented barring any errors or omissions Danielle Cheyenne thank you all those in favor great none opposed uh adjustments to the agenda I have one this evening um I would like to move item 12a 1-8 which is under unfinished business the budget review I would like to move that immediately following number eight reports from the superintendent all right uh and six on our agenda good news and recognition uh we will look for a report from our board student rep Phoebe all right so exciting news on Friday FHS Juniors and seniors are attending a trip to L Valley to ski or snowboard Snowshoe or tube so we're excited to spend this day outside um student students have been registering for courses next year we
003had our curriculum Fair where kids could learn about all the classes for next year and we're looking ahead um which is crazy that we're already thinking about next school year um before February break we had a photo booth um during lunches from the ptso which was really fun and a big congrats to the FHS girls Nordic team who won the class B state championship and the boys basketball team who received the class A boys sportsmanship award and before um before break the active Minds team partnered with minding your mind and the Kyle Caris Foundation to bring a guest speaker to freeor high school and students were really engaged in Kelly's story about her journey with mental health and on the note of student mental health um I think I'm concerned for the students at FHS
004you have like so much hate in the world that we kind of have to bear the brunt of and speaking with lived experience I don't want to lose another friend or a classmate or a Community member um so I think it's my job to remind the board and the community community that the number one priority should be the students well-being and all students wellbeing um because I think that's the most important thing so thank you thank you Phoebe okay so we will move on to item seven on our agenda which is public comment uh so how public comment is going to work this evening um is we have a signup sheet and I have the first 25 names here if you would like to speak but haven't had an opportunity to sign up yet there
005is still uh a sheet up here on the on the edge as you came in feel free uh to go up and sign up and we will we will make sure we hear from from everyone that would like to speak uh because there are so many we are going to start with members of the three communities in rsu5 but we will hear from everyone who has signed up to speak this evening uh and I'll just go through um I'll just call uh I'll I'll probably give the the next three names so folks can queue up um at at the uh Podium there so that we can uh keep it moving along I have a brief statement I'm going to read just because I think we have a fair number of new folks that haven't uh
006joined our meetings in the past and just to provide a little bit of of background on our public comment uh so in order to hear from the largest number of different voices each speaker will be limited to to 3 minutes for their comments uh we will have a timer going um you'll hear the buzz so uh when you hear that buzz that is that is your cue to to finish up that that final thought uh and and pass it to the next person uh for those of you who have not participated in our meetings before I want to review a few rules ahead of time to ensure that the public comments progress uh process goes smoothly and there are no surprises so uh at the outset we ask that speakers when you step up you
007identify yourself with your name and your town of residence we ask you to try to be brief and uh try not to repeat yourself we know that discussions of school related issues can get emotional but please remember that our children are watching and that we are neighbors so please be civil we will not profit Pro we will not permit profanity or shouting at one another or comments that disparage and attack individuals or groups of individuals speaker speakers should direct all comments to the board this is an opportunity for the board to listen to the opinions of the public that relate to school and education matters it is not a public debate nor is it a conversation no questions should be directed to the board the board will not be responding to a to questions or
008comments if they're asked we're here to listen this evening the board will not permit complaints or allegations against staff members these are Personnel matters which the board is not permitted to hear in public if there are complaints against staff these will be handled appropriately through our complaint procedure KB which can be found on our website if you're interested in a two-way conversation on the rsu5 uh website there are individual emails as well as a board email um and phone numbers for board members in the superintendent so thank you all for your your patience as I made the introduction uh I have hope and confidence that uh your participation will be helpful and constructive to the board this evening so we will get started um the the first three folks I have on our list are
009Lynn esler uh Janice Flynn and Kelly Fitz Randolph good evening everyone Jee nice to see you again um Lin eer fre Port main um I have been in this community oh can you hear me better all right Lyn eer fre Port M I've been in this community for many many years uh I've got two adult children who graduated from the school system I've been watching the events unfold on uh the boys and the men being allowed in girls and women's sports very upset about this to me it's Common Sense two genders male female and they belong in their own Lanes I believe it's incredibly unfair for our female athletes to be able to to be competing in this unfair environment that's really all I've got to say three minutes not even interested but thank you
010thank you Lyn Janice [Applause] Flynn good even good evening everyone um uh Madam chairwoman superintendent board members you've uh you've seen me here many times speaking my name is Janice Flynn I'm a resident in Freeport I'm a mother I'm a grandmother and I've stood before here you know many times uh asking you questions and giving you my opinion and my concerns um I want to thank the superintendent can you hear me oh sorry is that better I'm short um I want to thank the superintendent for responding to an email I sent last week um I had noticed that on the agenda this evening there were many items for Title 9 that were up for reconsideration and I asked for some context into those um so thank you for responding I appreciate that even though you
011were out of office last week you responded as you always do pretty pretty quickly um however um you know you the the explanation didn't you know didn't give me any more context um I reviewed the current documents online I reviewed those uh with the agenda and I didn't get any additional Insight I always write down what I'm going to say too so I don't go over my three minutes um beyond that they've reever reverted back to earlier versions to keep the policies um related to title um and you want to keep them more align with federal law I didn't see that um I still see gender identity in the documents so they don't align with federal law they still don't provide fairness and safety for female students I'm here also to give female athletes a
012voice I want to give the female athletes from Freeport some support we witness the commitment that these girls make to their chosen sport years of dedication practicing games um because they have a drive to compete they should be applauded the adults in their lives should at least commit to provide a Level Playing Field but today that's not the case the girls face a serious uh competitive imbalance um how many more Freeport girls and Main girls will lose the opportunity to place a state championship on the college resume I I hope not many more uh the Main's principal Association is policies that allow males to compete in girl Sports this isn't just about competition it's about fairness it's about safety it's about preserving the Integrity of girls Athletics title line was created to protect opportunities for
013females and female athletes it's resulted in opportunity and prosperity for women but uh not enforcing Title Nine and federal laws we're going to lose all of our federal funding uh and all while degrading our girl Sports as well I'm asking the board to stand up for our daughters stand up for our nieces stand up for all girls enforce Title 9 in rsu5 schools and to uh send a clear message to the main principales Association that they should do the same they must do the same let's protect the future of girl Sports before it's too late thank you for your time thank you Janice uh and and uh next meeting I'll come back to talk about the budget because I was going to do that as well uh okay next we have Kelly Fitz Randol can
014you hear me okay um I'm Kelly Fitz Randolph I am a member of the community I have a junior in high school and I'm also the seventh grade science teacher at Freeport Middle School I'm here to address you about uh upcoming suggested budget cuts of Staff uh Phoebe you couldn't have played into what I wanted to say even better um there are a number of cuts suggested in all of the schools and as a teacher of 35 years I have uh I feel like I am witnessing more trauma and chronic ABS absenteeism than I have seen in a long time behavior issues are on a rise and I've taught this is my third District I've taught and I've taught in some as people would consider tougher districts this is not the time to be making
015Cuts we need all of the Ed teexs that we have in our school we are down in edtech in the middle school that was not hired for this year we are scheduled to be cut one maybe two more we came up with some great ways for these Ed techs to help kids that are chronically absent to get them caught up to make them feel more secure and it would be awful to lose them it's been suggested that we lose a halftime English teacher which supposedly keeps our language arts level s at 21 well we counted and we always get kids moving in the class sizes would be 24 or larger for language arts my position is scheduled to not be rehired for I'm a seventh grade science teacher what is that supposed to mean are
016we not going to have seventh grade science or is are we going to lose our stem to replace the seventh grade science already at the middle school we're playing catchup for kids who are behind in Science Education because of the stresses at the elementary school level on math and reading so any staff that we have is needed for our kids mental health this is not the time to be cutting necessary people it is really the time to be looking at how to best support the mental health of our kids and the education of our kids so I think we need to really look at the purpose of these cuts and really who's who's going to be hurt the most typically it's the kids that struggle the most that are hurt when we lose staff members
017so instead of losing some I say we could use some more so thank you thank you Kathleen oh excuse me sorry Kelly um so our next three uh Folks up are Melanie Sachs Jonas wner and uh Jacqueline Priestley good evening thank you for allowing me to be here my name is Melanie saxs and I honored to serve as freep ports state representative in the main house on October 25th of 2023 this board the rsu5 board after a rigorous public transparent dialogue adopted a policy with the stated goal to one Foster a learning environment that is safe and free from discrimination harassment and bullying and two to assist in the educational and social integration of transgender and gendere expansive students in our schools I was very proud and glad to come before you and testify in
018strong support of that policy our local policy references and is aligned with main state and federal law including the main Human Rights Act I understand that there is an organization now intruding on our local conversation and attempting to F division this outside entity of which there's a very nice Banner behind me parents rights and education has not filed paperwork in Maine either with the office of the Secretary of State nor with the office of professional and occupational regulation as of even just a few days ago they State they have nonprofit excuse me nonprofit status in Oregon but they have routinely engaged in public political activity here in Maine which be would be an apparent violation of any nonprofit status an inquiry has been made made with the main attorney general gender identity has been included
019in the main Human Rights Act since 2005 while interpretation of Title 9 has been generally since its institution many years ago inclusive and expansive there may be Court challenges to reinterpret settled law which will be done at the state and federal level our main attorney general Aaron Fry has indicated that he is ready and willing to have that conversation as am I I urge you the rsu5 board of our local community to continue to follow the thorough thoughtful policies you and our community adopted through a transparent public and state aligned process I've been very grateful to work with many of you the members of this board and this community and I thank you for the time and work uh that you done on behalf of our children thank you so much thank you Melanie Jonas
020can I just say ditto uh my name is Jonas Warner I live here in Freeport um I'm grateful for the time that you're spending on all of these topics I stood before you some years ago the last time major Cuts were trying to be made at the middle school and argued about why that shouldn't be happening and frankly the cuts to public education have been happening since the 80s the cuts from the federal government and I don't see that getting any easier a lot of the people that are here tonight are here to talk about transgender children playing in sports which is to me the same thing the same fight that we've been fighting since the 80s where this is now a culture War being used to try to destroy our image of our public
021school system so that more money can be funnel off for private use it saddens me to have to be here I have a trans child sucks to feel like I have to fight for them to exist or fight for them to be recognized there's people in this room that refer to trans girls as boys I find that very Consulting to them in any deliberations you make about how to proceed I hope that you'll consider a couple things one is what's the purpose of high school sports what's the goal is it only to win or are there other goals to be achieved not just in spite of trans athletes but with the inclusion of transet athletes things like teamwork camaraderie the pain of falling down and the thrilling thrill of getting back up as an individual
022and as a team together it is also my hope that any changes you make will produce a system which creates the least amount of death of our children all of our children cisgendered transgendered intersex or otherwise I have yet get to see any evidence of the danger caused by a trans boy on the wrestling team or a trans girl doing the high jump where is the danger to our girls for me the real danger is teaching girls they cannot compete against a boy or a trans girl the real danger is telling girls they are unable to compete when a trans girl walks into a room or a boy walks into a room sounds like misogyny 101 we incurr only up to our eyeballs in it the rise of Christian nationalism in the US and abroad
023it's also dangerous and insulting to keep calling trans girls boys they are not boys you don't need traumatizing trans investigation of a child to tell you that trans children have been through enough without the added insult of community members feigning compassion for their daughters but refusing to acknowledge the existence of other children this is not a Christian ideal it's not the way Jesus would act if he were here today is my contention that the harm done to the trans Community by excluding them is far greater than the harm caused to non-trans kids if trans boys and girls are included in High School athletics I hope you can resist the cries for homogeny inequity and exclusion thank you thank you Jonas good evening my name is Jacqueline prle and I'm from Freeport um I'm here today
024as a taxpayer a resident of this town and most importantly a mother of three two of which are girls I'm deeply concerned and disappointed by the main Department of Education and rsu5 District's decision to disregard Federal protections and continue to push policies that strip our girls of the very opportunities that title 9 with was created to protect and frankly should never have been enacted in the first place Title 9 was designed to ensure fairness and equal opportunity for female athletes not to be twisted into something that erases those protections allowing bi biological males to compete in women sports is not inclusion it's discrimination against the very girls that this law was meant to protect as parents we want fairness and equal opportunity for our daughters we want them to compete on a level Level Playing
025Field we want their hard work their dedication and their dreams to be valued not sacrific for political ideology I urge this board to stand for Truth for fairness and for the Integrity of women's sports our girls deserve better thank you thank you Jackie okay um not that any would know what number they signed the sheet on I'm just trying to read a name uh from Freeport I believe the last name first name and last name both start with a D Dean maybe no Dennis Dennis it looks it looks like somebody signed this for us uh okay I'm just GNA keep going down and if I haven't called Your Name by the time we get to the end of the folks in the uh the district you'll know it was you and then you can come
026up okay um all right so we will move on to Jack Brogan and then after Jack will be Ashley Schumacher all right let's see here is this good can people hear me okay not quite okay all right uh well my name is Jack Brogan and um I'm currently the junior captain of the freeboard high school soccer team um I also play Varsity Lacross and I have also Run Track and Field both here and at Daran High School um so you could say I understand the topic of conversation competition and fairness in sports so over the past few weeks as we all know we've seen a 16-year-old child a high school student like me become the target of a nationwide outrage campaign instead of discussing the real issue which is fairness in women's sports people have
027chosen to harass dox and vilify a teenager and that is not okay imagine waking up to see your name your face and your achievements dragged across social media Nationwide not because you broke any rules but because adults elected officials National pundits decided to make you a political weapon and the impact is real really high school has increased police presence over the last few days because of these threats I have kids that I know on my club soccer team that have police at every corner in uh gy High School neighborhood but I I let me be clear I I fully believe in protecting women sports I ran track and field and and I did pole vault and I know firsthand how much strength and power it takes to compete and I I really think that's why
028the mpa failed here they should have had policies in place to sure that girls's reports remain Fair instead they let the situation I think spiral into chaos and this isn't about left versus right I don't think it's anything has to do with politics it's just about Fair competition two of our own lost a fair shot at a championship medal because an athlete who had competed in the boys division two years ago was allowed to compete in the girls pole vating and I personally think that is not fair but when the conversation shifts from protecting women's sports to publicly attacking a child we lose focus the outrage becomes the story instead of the real issue and we need Solutions at this point not any more social media outrage and not any more hate I think the
029mpa gy high school and governing bodies must step up to protect girls Sports while also ensuring that no 16-year-old is ever thrown to the wolves like this again at the end of the day no child ch have to become a martyr for this debate we can do a lot better thank you thank you Jack Ashley hi there I'm Ashley Schumacher I live in Freeport I'm a parent of a student in the district and I am a proud queer and non-binary member of this community um I'll be brief so you can get hopefully get some of the school board work done tonight that you came here to do um I sent you all a lengthy email um outlining my concerns about school budget cuts um and policy reversions that are on tonight's agenda um I trust
030this board to do the right thing by our students because I've seen you do it time and again um in turn please trust us the community to support a robust budget that allows Educators and staff to meet students needs as they already exist and as they arise uh along with policies and procedures that offer broad protections for all of our students thank you so much for living your commitment to this community by serving on the board and continuing to show up for the work despite its many challenges thanks thank you Ashley so uh next up we have Emily Styles Ron Schmidt and Amelia Nikki connley good evening my name is Emily moocher um excuse me it's Styles now um um and I live in Durham I'm the proud parent of three children who are or
031have been students in rsu5 um and I'm here tonight to urge you board to um do the three following things include existing rep staff at FMS and the eso position at FHS in the fiscal year 26 budget um vote no on reverting back to the 2020 Title 9 final Rule and to publicly recommit to the work of diversity Equity inclusion and belonging I've witnessed this board um do the right thing for rsu5 students in the past and I trust that you'll do the the same for them now thank you for the hard work that you all do thank you [Applause] Emily hello I'm Ron Schmidt from Freeport how's that um I am I'm embarrassed to admit this is the first time I've been to a school board meeting and I want to begin by thanking
032all of you for doing the work to to show up so much and to provide this support for our students I I grew up in Southern California I went to an enormous series of public schools and I got a really good education there but they were the schools were very underfunded the teachers didn't have the resources that they needed and a lot of kids fell through the cracks um my kid is having a very good education here in in Freeport but that's due a lot of the time to the heroic efforts of of their teachers um and I would want to see that level of or some level of of of robust budgeting at the very least to not make it harder for those teachers to do the incredibly important work that they're doing providing
033not just the the basic content of an education but also providing a a a protective and encouraging atmosphere around students is so key to their success uh at a time when we've got what like 15,000 kids I think without help health insurance in Maine and 55,000 who rely on on SNAP benefits that that could be cut we need to be making our students feel safer and more cared for and more capable of doing what they need to do to get the the the Top Flight education that they deserve um and needless to say providing that kind of safe space does not extend to uh a campaign to threaten uh trans students or to to expose them to National publics who think that either they don't exist or that they don't have a right to um
034thank you again uh for everything thank you [Applause] Ron um hello my name is Amelia Connelly I am a sophomore at Freeport High School and I do indoor and outdoor track I was born as a female and I identify as a female but cannot imagine having a different story and being ridiculed and attacked by an entire country for how I identify and how I view myself I just we just finished our indoor season we went to States we competed well I'm very proud of my team and we should not no one should have that much hatred or misunderstanding of someone to ridicule them and make it seem like we lost my team did very well as did every other team and we as a community need to respect others and how they feel because I
035would so much rather be an athlete who is competing against someone who is succeeding and who is happy with how they identify rather than someone who is not expressing themselves as how they feel I don't understand how we as a community can try to tear down this individual just because she was born a a boy and I don't think that we lost anything except maybe some of our dignity after tearing apart this girl just because she wasn't born as one thank you Amelia I'm Amelia's mom Nikki Connelly we live in Free Port Maine I have two other kids who also attend rsu5 schools and we're obviously here in support of um trans youth as well as uh girls and females it all goes it all goes together we just care about human rights um um
036I just want to point out that only five transgender athletes are competing in uh girls teams in school sports for GES grades K through 12 right now as of January 2025 and um a study founded or funded by the international Olympic Committee found that trans women had greater hand grip strength but lower jumping ability lung function and cardiovascular fitness compared to CIS women but I really want to point out the psychological distress that um trans Youth and trans people experience it can negatively impact athletic performance by causing decreased Focus impaired decision-making reduced motivation increased anxiety muscle tension and the list goes on um pheu mentioned mental health for um the free poor and rsu5 students and I thank you for saying that I think we really need to be aware of the mental health of
037the trans population in particular they're such a marginalized group they're harassed and bullied already and if Sports can help to elevate them and to give them some pride and a sense of belonging then we as a district and as a community owe that to them um thank you thank you Nikki Uh Kevin Jose johanes sorry if I'm messing up people's names and then U Maddie vertin will be after hi Kevin Joe in hands is that good close I'm a free Port dad parent of two girls um just wanted to say a few things um you know I I I'm sadden on kind of how we've gotten here today we keep mulling over the same things and talking about all these policy issues um and as I stand on this evening I see a fractured Community
038I see policies being brought by people no one in this room voted for uh Drummond and woodsome Main principal Association to give a few examples um the policies are drafted I I feel like historically um minimally curated I know um that's not that's a little abrasive towards the policy committee but we've heard so many varying um uh sides of the story and input from parents um that I've been I've become suspect of the whole process um I've I've provided feedback to the policy committee recently I never received an email back sometimes I have been given emails back but uh definitely not on that one um I I become suspect when uh Community individuals make foer requests or Freedom of Information requests and are met with a $55,000 Bill uh to pay um and I I
039think it's sometimes discouraging to see a school board vote and lock step and unanimously on so many issues when there's so many parents that have expressed concern I'll be very candid my frustration stem from a loss of feeling like I'm being heard a feeling of loss of control over our kids and a lack of focus on education uh it feels like creep of government and watering down of Education uh I want to mention what I said in my email on the volunteer policy um the it the way it's written and proposed I believe is an expectation that a volunteer is to report um kids they think are neglected uh to the DHHS or the district attorney but they're not trained in that ability to spot those types of things or make the report whereas the
040school employees have to be trained in that um with a certain timeline it's like four years or something but I think it's inappropriate to allow minimally vetted volunteers into the school and then Empower them to make reports to DHHS in the district attorney again it just feels like the watering down of parents rights um and relinquishing too much control over the unvetted volunteers uh ACA policy just real quick um is creating environment where girls aren't being allowed to excel we've had quite a bit of Parental input over the last year on the policy unfortunately the board voted unanimously to approve it last year when so many parents expressed their concerns um I would like to remind all the parents this policy was very cleverly written to piggyback on the main principles Association in reference to
041gender segregated activity ities so to clarify it sites inter Scholastic participation in athletics will be addressed in accordance with the current main principles Association guidelines so by Design the policy is written to allow for changes to be dictated by an entity other than the board it's my opinion the board will use this a way to Sher responsibility for upholding the executive order by being able to point to the main principal Association um I don't recall voting for anyone in the main principal Association uh so this event is played out in our community um resulting in girls not having their rightful place on the podium again it's a degradation of parental rights and students ability to perform at their best and have a shot for the top spot uh and again finally as we're here arguing
042over policy that seems to fall on deaf ears um with the unanimous voting records the expenditure of cost per child versus test scores is a Divergent curve and this is what really matters I would invite my fellow community members to reference the recent local property tax Assessments in Freeport I know mine went up substantially I know we're speaking of the budget tonight so I figur it'd be an appropriate time to ask what is being done to curb the spending increase and begin to move each of these Divergent trend lines in opposite directions we have politicians playing chicken with Federal funding while test sces drop just the timer when I'm not sure you heard it but the time I didn't even hear it okay well I'm just trying to just hope that we can focus back
043on getting the scores up and focusing on education and um I just feel bad that we've relinquished so much responsibility to people that we haven't voted for we're not making the decisions within our own community and the board thank you appreciate it thank you Kevin good evening my name is Maddie Venton I live in Freeport and I know I know you all very well and I know you do every time you meet work very hard on getting the scores up and focusing on education and um it's great when the public shows up to comment like this but it does take a lot of time from your agenda that said I couldn't miss the opportunity to speak on two things tonight um first I want to talk about the budget and I sent this to you
044in a letter but I wanted to just read a part of it um tonight I see this budget year as a time for the board to act courageously despite trepidation and take every action possible not to backslide when it comes to how the district serves our students it took a lot of years of incremental budget actions to get to where the district is today to cut those very intentional Staffing decisions in the face of economic uncertainty will undermine years of intentional board and administrative teamwork so I ask you to take on the difficult task of number one finding ways to reduce the budget that have a much less significant impact on our students and or propose a bold budget to our taxpayers we're not living in normal times the Department of Education and all government
045spending is under siege this has a direct impact on schools to put forward a budget that clearly shows the impact to our schools would allow citizens to make a choice about what matters to us do we value education do we want to invest in our students at a time when the federal government does not are we willing to put our tax dollars where our values are this is a big risk for you as a board I know if the budget does not pass then that means extra work for you over this over the summer I don't wish that on any of you but I believe strongly that there are much bigger questions at stake and that this is your part to play right now regarding title 9x uh yes over a year ago you unan
046unanimously approved the district policy protecting gender expansive and transgender youth that policy is sound and has done a lot of of good letting our most vulnerable students know that you want school to be a safe place for them to exist Title 9 is extremely complex I remember this from the time that I served on this board and on the policy committee I remember um the last time that our current president was in office we contended with changes to Title 9 and then I know that happened again when the last president was in office and now it's happening again um despite what some people in this audience think this board does not dictate how Title 9 works it makes sense to follow what's happening um at the District of Ed education level and um and what's
047happening in our state um I do think that what you can do is um uh and I think what what I'm asking you to do is let your voices be heard by the Department of Education by the governor by the Attorneys General affirming our values um and importantly one thing I keep hearing over and over again is do not comply in advance do not comply with this president's executive orders they are executive orders they are not law they are not settled law um and I thank you I just want to close by saying I know it's very hard to sit where you're sitting on nights like tonight and I just want to thank you for the work that you do I know you all do incredible work from the right place thank you thank you
048Maddie okay I'm going to jump back to if you signed the sheet and I haven't called your name in your F Freeport I'm very curious of what your name is yeah samanth no I have you on the other sheet no okay well then we'll uh we'll jump to Samantha good evening everyone my name is Samantha Bryant and I live in Freeport I'm opposed to the policy reversion proposed in item 11c in 2020 the Supreme Court ruled in the bow stock case that trans people are protected through the Civil Rights Act a federal law that ruling helped in ire the title 9 policy currently in place executive orders are not laws many recent Federal actions have already been found illegal unconstitutional and unenforceable that may yet happen with this one too finally the proposed change would
049be in conflict with State policy and state law so I asked that the rsu5 school board reconsider making this change at this time thank you thank you Samantha uh Kelly Delany hello everyone good evening my name is Kelly Delany and I'm from Freeport I just wanted to thank you all for giving us all a forum to come and express our opinions um I'm a parent of uh three Freeport students uh one in Mass Landing one in Middle the Freeport Middle School school and one at the high school and I'm here today to show my support for the title 9 programs now and going forward I applaud efforts to evolve our policies to represent the entire student body and to give our kids the support they need that means codifying policies around sexual harassment pregnancy birth
050and transgender inclusivity as parents and administrators you often bravely Venture into new territory with an intent to address issues and strive to provide equal access to programs I came to today's meeting as a show of my support for the hard work you do to uphold Progressive programs and to not give in to the opposition's baseless claims that promote hate and bullying of our children thank you thank you Kelly all right um may hona maybe hi can you hear yes thanks um uh I'm Reverend mayor Honan and I live in Freeport and um I think this issue for me about the uh competition the inclusion of trans the understanding of trans it's I can't isolate it I see it in the Under the Umbrella of the soul of America I feel like there's so much going
051on that tugs at the soul of America for me uh what's the soul huh how do we know that you can't really Define it easily to me it's something in our gut that we know is right that we have fought for myself not included in that hard fight and we have won you know less than or a little over rather 100 years ago women were being stoned because they had the audacity to think they could vote a 100 years ago I'm 77 and most of my well a good half of my life I knew nothing about trans I never thought about gender it wasn't in my environment as a topic and I hadn't met anybody who could teach me and that's how we learn you know we get stuck in thinking we know something and
052we know nothing as far as I can see we know the limited amount humans know and then some Brave person or group of people step up and they teach us if we have the courage to learn and we have the willingness to change we can learn and frequently us humans instead of that willingness we have fear it's different they're different they think different they act different God they want rights oh my God what's that going to mean we're going to lose something and we react with fear and frequently we never identify that that's how we're reacting we think we have the answer we think competition and who's winning uh an award is what we're talking about what we're talking about is much deeper than who's winning a swim meet and you're being challenged as all
053of us are being challenged to look a new to understand more deeply to talk to trans people to understand what we're afraid of in the changes that are coming I'm asking us to be the better people that I know is the soul of America thank you may uh Brenda rodrig and Shandra Jin Robbins and then we'll move on to folks from outside the district I am Brenda rodrig a resident of Freeport I have three young adult children who all participated in athletics in high school but in a different School District that competed against rsu5 the main principles associations and the school board's decision to allow men to play in women's sports is a poor decision and one I ask you to resend first it affects the safety of our students not only the students of
054rsu5 but also it affects the safety of students from other school districts when they're competing against free port pel and durm the safety of our students should be our first priority it's completely unfair to our female athletes to be forced to either compete with transgender athletes or not compete at all or to give up championship titles to the biologically advantag to give up opportunities to shine athletically on a college application and to stand on the podium and receive a medal the number of transgender students who participate in athletics is but a very small percentage of the student population yet every single female student athlete is affected by the decision to allow men to play in women's sports the biological male has an advantage over the female body in size strength and weight not only does
055this create safet concerns on the playing fields and courts must I mention during hotel stays when the team travels but it creates a safety concern for every single female in the locker rooms and in the women's bathrooms secondly our schools cannot afford to lose funding from the US government because of the decision to follow the main principles Association lead to disregard their Federal ruling of Title 9 our ranking and academics Nationwide is already near the bottom that's with the ever increasing school budget it seems the higher the budget the lower the Proficiency in the students reading and math how low can we go let's not find out let's not take a loss in school funding our priority should be what's best for our students as a whole not what's best for the ultra minority allowing
056men to play in women's sports it's dangerous it's fair to our female athletes and I ask you to prioritize our female athletes safety return fairness to our female athletes and keep men out of women's sports thank you thank you Brenda Shandra oh you always make this for taller people don't you hi can you hear me uh my name is Shandra Jin Robbins I'm a resident of Freeport I'm the mother of a Freeport High School student and I'm also business owner in the community and I my daughter is trans and I have never been so pleased in my entire life that she never had any interest in sports I am speaking in support of the current uh Title Nine um I know you went through a lot for this last year um I had never spoken
057to a group before because my daughter came out transs when she was 14 I'm speaking today to you and also to the parents of children who do love sport for whom sport is a Guiding Light in their lives for whom sport is something that drives them to be better to sacrifice to become the people that we want our children to grow up to be because if your child is trans let's say you have a son right now and you don't know yet that they're trans cuzz I didn't know till my kid came out to me when they were 14 and let's say they love sports sports is what drives them it is their favorite thing about school it is the best thing your lives revolve around Sports and let's say they come out as trans
058and then guess what if this gets overturned that is the end for them there is no more sport there is no more sport at all simply because they had the courage to come out and be who God made them to be and that's all I had to say also the doxine thing as Mayers we don't bully children thank you thank you Shandra all right I'm going to give one more one more opportunity for the Freeport person who didn't get called get okay uh so we will move on uh to folks from outside the district and first up is Scott Jordan and then Larry aier good evening how are you my name is Scott Jordan I'm from Cumberland Main and I'm here this evening to encourage the young women from the Freeport High School track and
059field team to speak out and to let their voices be heard on the record we know that a biological male in the gley team won but I think everybody in this room knows the truth and I think we should recognize Freeport is the real [Applause] Victor congratulations Freeport the biological young man or actually I'm going to take a step back the decision to allow a biological male John transgender young woman Katie to compete as a female in the recent Maine High School track and Championship is wrong the biological young man is a newly transgender athlete competing in a sport where he clearly has a physical Advantage it doesn't seen that there was any consideration given by the mpa to where in the process the young man is in his actual transition just from the pictures
060that were recently posted on social media and I'll be honest they were hatefully done in some cases it's an obvious young man and he has a physical Advantage inherent to males last year he was on the podium as a male winner this year he topped the podium as a female and his Victor uh I'm sorry victory was insubstantial 8 in in track is a huge margin for those of you who are unaware I ask you this is it right to hurt the hundreds of other female pole valters who competed all season long to be denied because a transitioning student uned them wholeheartedly as a governing body the mpa should have figured this out in advance they should have at least considered it because I guarantee you their decision made a huge difference to the person
061who finished second the young lady who finished second and even bigger to difference to the one who didn't medal at all because of this this for the record whatever this young man wants to do is up to him and his family can you please silence we're can I have my time back please we're we're not going to we're not shouting I actually I'm sorry I have a point of order are we supposed to be is the public allowed to discuss individuals I don't well I I think we're not talking names or any oh okay yeah okay there will there will be no names away can I have my time reset please and can we please ask the public to stop talking I I I did thank you can you please listen thank you we were
062respectful of you direct coms we're directing comments to the board not to other individuals in the crowd yeah but they've been disrespectful ma'am I understand we paused your time I apologize for your Interruption and if you're ready you have 48 seconds remaining and then also just to clarify point of order uh the person who was the former board member you allowed her to continue but you asked somebody prior to that to finish up so just be fair for everybody I am when the time goes just let you no you let you didn't say anything to that person all right so your your time is about to start I try to find a pause in in the thought before I ask folks to finish up regardless of the position that they're taking to me this isn't
063a judgment call it was just wrong to let the young man compete I believe the mpa should at least develop some standards Andor tests they already exist for elite athletes read the studies talk in terms of anatomy and psychology think about it rationally and dis disp I can never say the word sorry not in a liberal conservative context not in a political context just use some common sense at the end of the day we had an example with a volleyball player a male volleyball player regardless if he was transitioning or not slammed a ball into a young lady's face and broke I believe her orbit orbital bone common sense I was in the military I served in the Gulf War and our female American soldiers had to be masked up and always follow behind us
064how was that equal we couldn't get our pay our danger pay because we had female American soldiers with us think about that we want to talk about being inclusive um let's just say a certain mindset gets treated gets bullied by certain individuals I was already bullied this evening because I have a different point of view you want to talk about being inclusive America being the soul of America well let's think about it everybody should have a point of view everybody should be able to speak and be heard and not be bullied what happened to being Christlike what happened to love your neighbor thank you Scott Larry aier and then after Larry we'll have Nicholas uh BL BL chard Larry oero Cumberland um I've been an educator for over 30 years I'd like to preface my
065remarks by saying I empathize and have compassion for all transgender I've heard talk about hate tonight people who agree with me do not hate we're looking for something different we're looking for something called fairness compassion I'm going to tell you a story about a woman named Riley Gaines most of you have heard about her imagine that you have a daughter who's 18 years old she's a national champion swimmer she answers a contest and amazingly she ties a biological male transgender and they give the trophy not to her but to the transgender so she went to her coach and she said why how could you do this and he said took her aside and said we have to be tolerant we have to accept we have to welcome Dei of course we know that men are
066stronger we are bigger our heart size is bigger our we have 40% larger uh lung capacity our throats are bigger and that's very important very critical when you're in any kind of athletic Endeavor well to add insult to injury when they took the picture of the trophy they gave the trophy to the transgender and had her uh hold the trophy and With Tears In Her Eyes Riley Gaines went to her coach and and this we're going to ask that you don't specifically name students regardless if they're in this District or not we're what are you talking about she's the she's a national figure okay she's on TV all the time I'm sorry I thought you were please give me my time back please give me some time she went to her coach in tears she
067said I sacrificed 18 years of my life my social connections my diet my practicing every day how could you do this to me and the coach just walked away he said I I can't answer you again he said something about being accepting we talk about pain tonight think about the pain of these young women and girls who sacrifice so much to be put in a position that is completely unfair completely un unsafe and we can't say all it only happens here and only happens there it's happening everywhere so please when we talk about empathy when we talk about compassion let's go beyond the transgender Community who I have compassion for and think about these young women and what they go through I'd like to talk to the parents I notic a lot of people here
068who are parents who disagree with me and I understand that but there are many parents who should be here sticking up for their daughters and they have to be brave out of all the virtues in this world it is known out of love compassion patience Courage the most important one is courage because without courage love will get you nowhere and these men and these women I think we have to wrap it up okay no we're not we're not having a conversation in the crowd I I okay enough so I don't know what just happened what happened I was just asking you to wrap it up because your time went we went over we gave you a little bit of time back but we your time is up okay so uh men we are not asked
069to complete the task but neither are we exempt from trying thank you thank you Larry so Nicholas Blanchard is who we have up next and after Nicholas would be Kathleen Brown everybody's favorite guy inform States and School District that if any teacher or School suggest you can give if you want something to share you can share that with the superintendent and she'll make sure we get it no where we also don't have recordings if you want to speak you're welcome to your three minutes but we're not going to play a recording sorry it's fine part of our new it's pretty much just Trump explaining the executive order that he put out that you guys seem to just want to completely blow off but um this right here is is a picture of a biological man
070that competed against women that stole a championship from a young woman I have a point of order Madam chair yep I believe this is out of order how is this out of order I didn't say any names I didn't say any names he's using a visual it's not your why are you interrupting second time that's out of order okay we're we don't okay guys how is this Fair we're going to take a we're going to take a uh we're going to take take a 5 minute break to pause yes we are um it's okay so they they can keep interrupting we are going to we're going to take a f minute break you will have your time and we just need to relax here for a second they're the ones that's not relaxed it's not
071us we were we were respectful e e e okay so thank you uh thank you for everyone's patience I apologize for not doing the motion to take the quick five minute recess I appreciate your your uh Indulgence in that um we will reset your five minutes excuse me your three minutes we will reset your three minutes uh and um I'm just waiting for her to pull up her timer here uh Nicholas Blanchard from Augusta too am I good all right so um my whole speech kind of got messed up with the whole thing so I'm kind of just gonna go off the cuff but um so this is a quote from the uh coach Cornwall I know as a coach it's tough I think I would stop coaching the assisting coach said but kind of
072but but the assisant coach was kind of into it and said he had Championship fever to win both boys and girls championship at the state level you know our biggest problem here right now it to deny the fact that it is a competitive Advantage for biological men to compete against women how how is it fair for a young woman that spends all her childhood practicing you know you think you think they just wake up and become a state champion no that takes work that takes effort to come in and get beat by somebody that placed ninth last year as a as a male how do you as a father as a parent how do you tell that how do you explain that to your daughter that she worked so hard to get beat by a
073man how is that fair you know do you think that man practiced and worked just as hard as she did obviously not because he placed ninth the year before I mean it's kind of common sense I mean just like the man spoke about military I mean the standard for women is completely different than the standard for men women have to do a different amount of push-ups compared to men why is that our bodies are built different it's a competitive advantage and you guys are going to die on this and federal funding is going to come from these from all of our districts what about low-income families that that you know want this Federal that need this Federal funding for free lunch for after school programs you think the state funding is going to be enough
074for all that the way Janet Mills is spending our money really I mean come on guys what are we going to do when are we going to start thinking about our kids again when are we going to go back to teaching again we worry more about same-sex bathrooms and all this then we do worry about our test scores and everything else when are we going to get back to teaching our kids what is right and what is wrong and right now this is wrong and a lot and you honestly you guys are brainwashing these kids that's that's exactly what you guys are doing you're indoctrinating these kids and I feel bad for every single one of them CU when I was in school this was not a thing you did not walk down the school
075hallways and see a pride you weren't celebrating what people did in their bedroom you don't have a straight A straight flag hanging up do you no because we don't celebrate what we do in our bedroom that doesn't make somebody who they are what makes somebody who they are is their character that's right you guys have a good night Daddy's home thank than you Nicholas uh Kathleen Brown and then Elaine Dupri is after Kathleen good evening my name is Kathleen Brown and I've had the privilege of teaching science in Freeport for almost 20 years thank you for your important work on the budget I want to share my concerns regarding the proposal to leave the science teacher position at Freeport Middle School unfilled following a retirement first a little background the nextg GI science standards are
076the guidepost for excellence and Science Education Across the Nation Maine adopted the standards about about a decade ago and has built a state Science assessment around those standards unlike traditional science standards ngss prioritized science and engineering practices alongside content knowledge in other words it dictates a curriculum that explores both the why and the how of Science in response to the nextg science standards the Middle School developed a blended stem and Science Program each year students are enrolled for equal amounts of time in both stem and science classes we believe strongly that science provides the essential foundation and that stem allows students to apply that knowledge in exciting and innovative ways over the past several years our middle school has poured its heart into creating a curriculum that ignites students curiosity and encourages them to think
077critically and the success of this approach is clear 70% of Freeport Middle School students meet or exceed the standard on the state Science assessment that's not only double the Statewide average it's 20% higher than the district average it's a rate competitive with other top performing districts in Maine while test scores are but one measure of a Student Success we believe these results speak strongly to the effectiveness of our program to ensure we can continue offering these powerful learning experiences maintaining the Integrity of the Blended science and stem program is absolutely essential this means replacing the retiring science teacher with someone who combines a strong understanding of science with a genuine passion for teaching it it and leaving the stem compliment in place as you witnessed during a recent tour of our building learning at FMS
078is engaging and relevant our model is good for kids we're eager to tell you more about it and answer any questions that you have I know you have hard work to do and I thank you for it I respectfully request that the board continue to support strong science and stem education for our students throughout the district thank you thank you Kathleen Elaine good evening my name is elain depre and I'm the seventh grade stem teacher at Freeport Middle School I come before you tonight to speak about the proposed cut to the seventh grade science position at Freeport Middle School three weeks ago it was announced that upon Kelly Fitz's retirement the seventh grade science position would be cut with no rationale for how the seventh grade science content would still be delivered to date we
079still have not been given an explanation knowing that science still has to be taught we can only surmise that a cut like this means a drastic change to our science and stem program offerings already elementary students enter middle school with less science knowledge than they did 10 years ago whether it's due to covid or the emphasis on math and literacy at the elementary levels it is a market difference we cannot afford to weaken our stem and science offerings and we do not see that there's a way that this can be avoided if you cut the science position upon inquiring if cutting a science pos position could mean cutting a stem position by asking a current stem teacher such as myself to fill the science void the response was it's in the mix of possibilities so
080without being given any other information I feel I have to come before you tonight to defend our stem program just so that you keep in mind that if you support a cut in a science position you could be supporting a cut in a stem program offering by having both science and stem we are able to accomplish the science standards the district has adopted science classes Foster a spirit of inquiry encourage students to pursue and analyze evidence and master content that builds a strong foundation for future science classes stem classes go beyond content knowledge equipping students with vital problem solving skills developing those 21st century skills of thinking outside the box as they engage in real world engineering challenges stem classes are particularly effective in engaging students who may not thrive in traditional subjects excuse me
081Hands-On projects and Innovative problem solving activities offer learning experiences that do not exist in other subjects these experiences help students see the relevance of their educ ation fostering both academic success and increased School attendance if you want to know when students who are frequently absent show up to school come visit on a day when we are launching Rockets building tiny homes or coding and programming Rock uh robots the students are there furthermore the specialized skill sets of our current stem teachers such as expertise in computer science Hands-On project design and real world application of scientific principles should not be overlooked we bring unique qualifications and passions that have built the stem program at FMS offering students experiences that go beyond standard curriculum instruction and fostering skills critical for future success oops I'll rip this up
082um just this year stem teachers finally started meeting as a K12 stem Department even attending stem conferences as a cohort we are stem teachers because we are passionate about stem please do not assume that stem teachers are qualified or want to step into a St science position which we fear we may ask to do if the science position is cut a cut of a science Position will have detrimental effects on our current science and stem offerings which will unfortunately directly impact our students education thank you thank you Lan uh I have Amy Cola maybe yes okay thank you how's this okay great uh RTI is critically important in our schools my name is Amy Colton and I am the 0.5 math RTI teacher at Freeport Middle School as you may know it has been propose
083that my position along with the 05 reading RTI teaching position be eliminated and then we will both be replaced with one full-time RTI teacher who will deliver both math and reading interventions I think the loss of having content Specialists will outweigh whatever minor benefits there might be in having one full-time teacher in this role I also want to mention that this proposal has no impact positive or negative on the budget I love math and I love my work I know that everyone has the capacity to understand and be successful in math when I work with students in small groups I can identify their misconceptions and help guide them to a more accurate and deeper level of understanding I work to create a safe environment for sharing thinking and developing confidence I have over 20 years
084of math education experience most of those at the middle school level I've been trained in instructional strategies that help Learners develop understanding of math concepts I know the content of K8 math very well and I have a strong understanding of Algebra 1 knowing where students are coming from and where they are going is critical to delivering effective math in interventions as well as making in the- moment decisions based on observing students and listening to their thinking I admire and respect my reading counterpart and I know that I would not bring the same level of expertise if I were asked to deliver reading interventions it's my years of training and experience in math specifically that make me such a good fit for my current math RTI position when I've asked to understand the rationale behind eliminating
085content specialists in RTI I've been told that the benefits include streamlined communication and greater consistency in Service delivery H nervous sorry um I cannot think of any lapses in communication that have occurred in my 2 and a half years in this position although I work part-time I find ways via email or planning ahead to meet in person to communicate and collaborate with other staff members it is true that I do not attend all meetings but math concerns are so specific to math class that when a concern comes up the math classroom teacher seeks me out either in person or via email from there we make a plan for next steps regarding consistency and delivery of services there are places where consistency makes sense group size duration of intervention progress monitoring and there are places where
086consistency is unimportant some instructional strategies are critical in math and non-existant in reading and vice versa I do think that FMS has some work to do to improve consistency with regard to RTI but I firmly believe that the 0.5 reading RTI teacher and I can work collaboratively to ensure that we're consistency matters we make it happen RTI is critically important let's make sure we have specialist working with our students to maximize impact on learning thank you thank you Amy uh next up we have Alan svinz and after Alan will be Jeff Nessie maybe from Brunswick good evening chairwoman Richardson uh rsu5 School Board superintendent Scara I appreciate your time tonight um my name I am the director for parents rights and education and I'm the proud director of parents rights and education no matter where
087the defamation comes from we are in your District because ask you to just give your name and where you're from sorry my name is Alan sarenas I'm from topsum I live there with my lovely wife and two male children so we stand here tonight because we were invited here by your parents who know they have rights and they know will stand here and fight for them because they're inherent and fundamental to their life liberty and Prosperity we urge you to take a stand for your own girls for their safety and opportunities there is elevated harm there's great harm that comes to girls when their private spaces and activities are violated it's laying before you that's what I handed out and it's backed by Decades of legal precedent upholding title n the B the Biden title
088n revisions were ruled unconstitutional proving that the year of our advocacy is correct it's right for far too long parents have been lied to I know parents that we've worked with who have wept I've worked with military veterans that would walk through the door and people would say that's a big dude and the one thing they have told the other other side's advocacy what they have told them for years is that males need to invade girls spaces in sports because it's a vital part of gender affirming care except last month a transgender attorney stood in front of the Supreme Court and said that's not true that there's no data that there's no science that proves gender affirming care reduces suicides so I'm asking you who made decis decisions after having this your Goodwill leveraged against
089you for years who's going to be accountable for lying to you who's going to be accountable to lying to these parents imagine being told that if you didn't do what your kid wanted they'll kill themselves and then finding out five years later was a lie I mean are you going to still listen to the same people who have been leveraging your Goodwill main girl dads have had enough all parents have had enough this is about fairness safety and the Integrity of girl Sports if this board truly cares about female athletes you would uphold Title 9 as it stands you will send a clear message to the main principal Association that free poor girls will no longer lose their championships to males thank you thank you Alan Jeff uh I think it's Nessie but I could
090be messing up the last name does definitely look like it starts with an N from Brunswick no okay we will move on to Sarah Davis okay hello I'm Sarah Davis I'm from Auburn but I teach in Freeport at the middle school um I did not intend to speak tonight I'm not great at public speaking uh except in the classroom I guess uh so I did come though to support my colleagues and my students um with the budget discussion and I know it's a ton of work for you guys so I'm it's disappointing that we can't have this budget meeting separate from um the title n uh issue um my daughter who has an interest in local government and likes to know how like schools run wanted to attend the budget meeting um she happens to
091be trans uh and I asked her if she was comfortable coming and she said yes um I wanted to speak so that I could sort of echo what Phoebe said at the beginning so eloquently um I wanted to say before all of this uh to just remember to be kind because we're talking about children um and not just children trans adults as well who are people and humans who deserve to be loved and respected and included um and so I'm I'm a little thrown by the whole um a lot of the hatred that I'm hearing it really upsets me but it's been lovely to see um students who were at the middle school who are now here thriving at the high school and hearing Amelia talk so eloquently and Phoebe and I just applaud you
092I think um so I'm kind of losing track of what I'm saying but I would also like to just encourage you to reconsider the cuts at the middle school and find other budget cuts uh other ways of cutting the the the budget um and I think it is possible to be creative about it without cutting staff that helps kids who are at risk so RTI is huge and it's so important and um it concerns me when we cut programs that service the kids who are the most vulnerable um and I feel like that's all I had to say just um thank you for your work thank you Sarah all right so next we have um Margaret esbrook good evening I'd like to thank the board for giving me this opportunity to speak my name is
093Margaret esterbrook I'm a resident of Yarmouth I'm coming to you today as a coach and a mother of two NCAA athletes one of which was able to get a full scholarship um for college tonight I I'm asking you to demonstrate to to demonstrate your support for female athletes by complying with Title 9 this would not only put freep port in alignment with federal law but it would reaffirm your commitment to safeguard the civil rights of female students as a school board you have a real opportunity here to take the lead in Maine and show all female students that you see them you hear them and you acknowledge them and they are you wor they're worthy of your attention I'd also like to close with I don't think anybody here hates anybody we're here because we
094are protitle 9 we're anti-hate but protitle 9 and I'm asking you to consider what the original intentions of Title 9 were and I'm asking you to uphold Title 9 and acknowledge the civil rights that it bestows on female students thank you thank you Margaret uh Julia Dietrich Julia Dietrich hello my name is Julia Dietrich I'm from Bristol Maine I'm a junior at another Mid Coast High School and even though I'm not a student at Freeport High School I would like to sh my support for a team that rightfully earned its place in competition only to have that opportunity taken away by an unfair policy that ignores the Integrity of women's sports enough is enough it is time for female athletes across Maine to take a stand against the main principles Association and the governor's policies
095that are failing us we have trained we have sacrificed we have played by the rules yet we are being forced to watch as as the rights and opportunities of female athletes are Stripped Away if those in power refuse to protect fairness in women's sports then we must make them understand the consequences of their decisions in the only way they seem to understand Through Time resources money and undeniable public pressure for the past 3 years I have competed in Congressional debate which is another organization governed by the mpa even in debate there's a culture in the state of Maine that is anti-woman and our own state judges making comments such as your voice is too feminine you would never be taken seriously if you continue to hold yourself that way your views are unreasonable the fight
096is not just about one team one one Championship or one season this is about every girl in the state of Maine who has ever laced up her shoes stepped onto the field prepared for a tournament or poured her heart into a competition believing that she had a fair shot it is time to act show up for your games your meets and your tournaments be ready to compete and then stand together in silent unwavering protest let the empty scoreboards and unanswered whistles send a message loud enough to the mpa that they can that to the mpa our schools and the state that they cannot ignore it I believe that the board should take a public stand against the mpa and the governor's position we are not just athletes we are not just students we are not
097just parents we are fighters let's keep women's sports for women thank you thank you Julia I'm just going down here to make sure we didn't miss anybody on this list and I think we just have couple more here uh Sean Patrick Cody good evening my name is Reverend Shan Patrick Cody and I live in Portland but have the honor of serving as pastor of South Freeport church here and um love this town and I'm I'm grateful for all of you and for the great service that you do um serving on this board and thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight just want to speak on behalf of my trans siblings and express my profound love and acceptance for them wherever they are in their life Journeys and um my dismay at hearing some of
098the hateful ways that trans folks have been spoken about tonight and in the larger National debate that has come from this um things like referring to people's genders misgendering people and and saying the names that they um have chosen no longer to be called by like this is it may not seem like it to you but these are really hurtful really hateful actions to be doing um just I'm speaking on behalf of myself and not my church but uh although my church is an open and affirming congregation the United Church of Christ a place where we are welcoming all of God's beloved people but for me um one of the one of the things that's really sustained my faith throughout my life is the diversity of God's creation like just people of different ethnicities nationalities
099gender Expressions the more diverse the more beautiful the more better um so I'm just encouraging us to draw the circle wide to be inclusive and empathetic and um to protect the most vulnerable Among Us so thank you so much thank you Sean uh Tim cvoa good evening everybody um so I think this is good news I teach High School Civics here uh I feel good about that I'm going to ask you to give us your name and my name is Timothy grois and uh I am a a teacher here at Freeport High School for the last 12 years um every day I have the privilege of helping young people understand their rights and responsibilities as members of our democracy uh and tonight speaking about Title 9 uh not as a political issue but as a
100fundamental question of equal protection under the law um I just like to speak to the way that we have our students think about it um over the past 50 years this law has expanded educational opportunities for girls protect ed students from sexual harassment and ensured fairness in many different extracurricular activities but Title 9 is not just about history it's about our present and our future it's a living promise that every student no matter their gender deserves safety dignity and equal chance to learn that means that our schools must continue to protect all students including those who are transgender or non-binary but as a Civics teacher I remind my students that our Constitution's promise of equal protection is not static it involves vves as we recognize the rights and dignity of more people that Circle that
101the Reverend was just speaking about was a lot smaller 100 years ago there are people in this room who would not have enjoyed equal protection 100 years ago if we go back 200 years that Circle even smaller and I encourage everyone particularly the board that I'm proud to work for to continue to uphold policies that make that Circle larger not smaller at freeboard high school we teach all of your students we don't expect them to be a certain way or behave a certain way to be deserving of an educational opportunity they walk into the classroom we meet them where they are and we teach them to the best of our ability and that's why I love working here it's why I love working for this District um every student who walks through the doors of
102Freeport High School should be free from bullying discrimination and policies that make them feel unsafe in their own schools and no students who go here should be forced to justify their own existence I urge the board to continue to uphold policies that reflect our responsibility to protect our students that's less about politics and it's more that every child irrespective of gender can learn grow and thrive in an environment that upholds their dignity thank you thank you Tim okay so I I think we have everyone that was on our list so I will just take a quick moment to thank everyone who got up and spoke this evening uh and and spoke from their heart um and I would like to just take a a special thanks to um all of the students who got up
103I know this is It's someone said they don't like speaking in public I don't think any of us do but to do it as um as a high school student is um is is pretty incredible so I want to thank you uh especially for taking the time to do that um so yes thank you all oh we had one more on the list oh I'm sorry sorry all that still holds after this one person speaks hi um I'm Grace I'm from Freeport and um I am I want to speak to you today about what a lot of people have been talking about with the title 9 issue um it's been really shocking and appalling to see people from outside of the rsu5 community um speak on this issue because I think this should be an
104rsu5 Community issue um as someone who was born female um identify as as non-binary it's also really really painful to see adults adults who've lived longer than me parents speaking about the experience of teenagers and young people and telling us what it should mean for us to be safe um I can't imagine feeling any less safe with my trans and non-binary friends playing alongside me I was an athlete at free port for most of my life my childhood and I can't imagine feeling any less safe having my trans and nonbinary friends on my side where they want to be where they feel welcome and can have fun and most importantly feel safe um I do not understand why there are so many people here tonight so insistent that my safety as a girl as someone
105born female should be under their conditions um they do not know about my safety they do not know about our safety um and I can't um remain silent when the rights of women are being conflated with the rights of everyone else and I believe that we can all work together to work towards a future where we all can feel safe together thank you you thank you Grace okay so uh we have a full agenda uh which we are going to continue to work on um and starting with with our budget conversation so I just want to remind folks you are welcome and encouraged to stay through the whole board meeting uh we just ask that um as we continue the work of the board uh we just ask for folks to to remain quiet in
106the crowd um as we move forward with the agenda with uh we're going to the report from the superintendent item eight February 24th to 28th is celebrating Public Schools week an annual celebration dedicated to recognizing the transformative power of public education we honor our exceptional educ Educators and staff who work tirelessly to provide quality education to our students each and every day we honor our families and caregivers who are champions of their children's education and we honor our community members who support and support and partner and partner with us to make our work possible celebrating public school week shines a spotlight on the critical role our Public Schools play in shaping the future of our community in our nation public education represents opportunity in the shared belief that every child all children deserve a chance
107to learn grow belong and succeed number two resignations Jennifer Hayward FMS educational technician and number three we have one new support staff hire Kathy de gr PRI who is going going to be our community programs office coordinator and we welcome her to the rsu5 team and that's the end of my report this evening thank you uh so this is where we're going to uh move up the budget discussion yes item 12 uh so we will move on to uh number 12 in your agenda unfinished business budget review uh we are going to start with the region 10 Technical High School good evening hopefully everybody can hear me great thank you my name is Cil Brewer I am the business manager at Region 10 Technical High School um normally our superintendent director Shan Shabbat would be
108here to present um and unfortunately well maybe fortunately for him um he is in Bangor he is serving our National Guard um so so he has asked me uh to come in his stay um normally he would be up here standing uh tall and comfortable and I'm going to stand here not tall and not comfortable so I'll do my best uh I am used to being on the bench running the numbers uh and not running the plays uh so as a quintessential football mother um I can try to do my best and uh I am quite loud so I will definitely be able to call an audible there we go got a few laughs I'm good to go so our budget uh is before you hopefully um it's two sheets we've got a green here
109um and then the other sheet is our budget drivers I'm going to try to make this as brief as possible um obviously I'm not comfortable behind the mic so um for our background we entered all of our gathered data uh for the initial budget entry and that was a little over 3 $63,000 more than the previous year it was an 8.99% increase so we talked with our finance committee and discussed their Vision on what they felt was a favorable budget to bring forth um and they had given us some information and our superintendent director made adjustments which resulted in a little over $13,000 removed from the initial entry of the budget the adjusted budget was presented to our full Cooperative board on Monday night um after some discussion there was a motion to adjust the
110funding which was removed which resulted in $6,100 being added back to our adjusted draft budget so the budget you have in front of you shows all of those changes so our proposed budget for FY 26 for region 10 is 4,31 12,957 it is a six 6.59% increase from the previous year we also have our revenues we do have a new program starting next year um it is called the engineering and Architectural design program and so that you'll notice that we do have more funding from the state and that is the reason why um and then our breakdown for the assessments the local share you'll see that free Port rides in at $37 37,6 45 it is a increase of $17,988 at a 6.21% increase our budget drivers which is the second page our salaries for
111teachers and edtec and our two custodians are actually a blended rate of all three schools because of that we wait for our um we we wait for the contracts to be negotiated we have two open contracts for teachers this year so we had to kind of look ahead and see possibly what it could be we did put those in as an estimated 6% Contra uh 6% and then we also have our one new program which is a higher step to hopefully attract for that design program and we also have a 4% increase for our nurse the edtec have a 4% increase they're also in in contracts for Blended salaries and our admin salaries are at a 4% increase um our assistant director uh John Styers who's here tonight is actually going to retire at the
112end of the year so we have used the Blended rate of our assistant principles at all three sending schools to work on that vacancy salary we have our non-contract salar is at 4% and then our custodians are at um their contract increase is also at the Blended rate we had one open contract so we put that at 6% and then a 4% increase for our maintenance Foreman obviously our salaries run most of our budget um then the other budget drivers as you can see we have an 8% estimated increase for our benefits um we have our main paid family leave at 05% for the full year um jmg jobs for main graduates this is their third year with us and after the second year we had a um contract with them which was half of
113their normal contracted rate this year at the third year we have to pay the full so that is obviously a driver and then um we have our w we have a new collaboration with main Maritime Academy and uh BW and we are going to hold our new program over at the Ware building with collaboration with main Maritime so that is the one class that's obviously an increase for our budget and then our Honeywell maintenance agreement for our hbac system it's now aging it's 5 years old so we have moved that to a comprehensive service and that also is a driver so that's our full breakdown um the total budget um in the last three years for rsu5 our portion of your District budget has been only 70% so we've stayed at that for the last
114three years so at that I was wondering if anybody had any questions thank you questions for the region 10 budget Mora thank you so much cble for this information um do you know offand the 103 that you said thousand that was removed and then the 6100 that was added back I yes I apologize if I missed this but what that was you wanted to know what it was it was actually uh program field trips that was one of the things that we had discussed um and the board felt that that was an imp par imp Paramount piece of the student enrichment so it was put back in the budget so the whole 100,000 wasn't field trips no okay no just the $6,100 that the board asked to be put back okay the the rest of
115the amount obviously we look through the budget one of the one of the bigger things that we did was look at three-year costs and we worked very hard to kind of make sure that we weren't taking away from programs to make it harder for them but we also made sure that if you know within three years you know if if things weren't spent we kind of looked at it with a very fine tooth comb and made sure that we were making the right adjustments great uh I had one question on the increased subsidy for the new program yes uh so is that a sustained subsidy over time or is that a one time to get you up and running is that used for equipment purchases like what what how does that work so usually from
116what I understand from the state is that the first year of our new program it's usually three years that we get U influx of money to start that program and then after that third year yes it does come down from there but we also then have that in the system with a new teacher and so that that also helps our EPS but the first three years yes they do give us a slight influx to help that program get off the ground okay great thank you other questions on region 10 thank you all right great thank you very much hold on before you leave Colin has something Cil you did an amazing job thank you sir appreciate that thank you thank you all right uh so next we have uh free Port middle and I believe
117Paige is presenting for us this evening got another sub B bat here good evening uh thanks for having me here to present the proposed fre Port middle school budget tonight I'm going to ask you to move the mic up a little bit closer I know we move it up and down and yeah there we go um my name is Dr Paige fornier I'm the assistant principal at Freeport Middle and I'm here to present on behalf of principal St Pierre I want to thank you all for the hard work that you do to support the amazing teaching and learning that occurs here in rsu5 so thanks and looking at last year's budget additional days were added to the assistant principal position it's kind of funny for me to be talking about that but here I am
118thanks for that um it gave valuable work time outside of the busy school year um and that was helpful in preparing for the coming year particularly with lots of changes at free Port medal this year the the 2526 FMS budget reflects a focus on reducing expenditures while maintaining our commitment to delivering a rich educational experience for all students as you can see in the workshop presentation the first reduction mentioned is the retirement position while this retirement position is currently filled by a seventh grade science teacher I want to ensure the board and the community that science will remain a content in all grade levels at FMS science has been an important Focus lots of hard work and um dedication by teachers for many years and it's evident in our strong main science assessments course um
119integrating Hands-On learning experiences within our community um and these experience are valued in our current model and will continue to be facets um at FMS in the coming year stem has also been a rich component of our science-based experience at FMS and as we look beyond the budget decisions we'll be creative and collaborative in our approach to ensure that these rich experiences continue the second reduction indicated in the workshop presentation is the teacher position currently filled by a few part-time positions these positions service grade level um grade specific grade levels in ela and math and the class sizes are indicated um that will be impacted on the second chart that you have in front front of you um it's complicated to look at the calculations for class sizes when we're not looking at a K5
120it's not like a third grade or a fourth grade it's a lot of moving parts to this um and it can be tricky to determine so um we're in the early stages of planning for next year and so some of the variables that we're looking at that could impact these are the schedule the adult support the um small groups that might be pulled out of that so those would all be sort of like picture chest pieces moving around to ensure that we're keeping an eye on the thresholds and appropriate programming for each of the cohorts and their needs um thoughtful planning to address all three grade levels will be important as well as flexible approach to Staffing we're also um proposing the reduction of a general Ed edtech um this position has been unfilled all
121year unfortunately it's been challenging to hire Ed techs um I do want to mention that we have been able to fill all the special ed edtech positions with really strong candidates and that's been really beneficial for some of the students that um have significant needs in our building um as far as the Staffing adjustments to the budget um in the RTI position it is currently filled by two teachers the shift would be to one teacher in a position to support students across the building and the grade levels um this would allow the educator to be at Team meetings across grade levels support students with a Continuum of services and lead the mtss structures in our building so happy to answer questions or anything that you might have Beth I'll start with thank you for the
122presentation yeah sorry a little nervous thank you um I was just uh my first question we'll just start with this um why um the budget neutral adjustment with the halftime um Ela and halftime um RTI math with it being budget neutral and we've heard from people that are concerned that that would not be a good idea so I'm wondering what is the justification on your end of that yeah so I can speak to what we're talking about what I mentioned before the idea I think is consistency across the building um with two part-time people that is a little bit more challenging depending on when they arrive at school or being able to attend all meetings so they' be embedded in the building all day and so as we've done with some of the coaching that
123like I was a previous coach that was a not specific to a Content um we've also done that kind of approach where they're generalized versus like a specific to a content and I think I'll just jump in with the other piece of I think Beth's question as well Beth were asking like it's budget neutral so why why is it here for the board and I think that was um for the the middle school one to be transparent about their their thinking for next year that's why it's on this budget Cara thank you Dr fornier I don't usually use that in tonight for you all uh I I this must be really hard know like being told that the budget's going to be really tight and that cuts need to be made and so I'm I
124want to recognize that for all of the programs um and I also I'm I'm curious how it was decided that these were the positions that were to be cut how science was the position that was one of the was a was a chosen position to be cut in particular um and yeah oh yeah I guess we'll start with that I know sorry I'm I'm sort of here as a spokesperson but I'm happy to answer like been there for a long time have a lot of historical knowledge about how we value science and it's been a focus for us and it will continue to be but the process I'm happy to jump in with that answer uh and and you're right Carrie it's certainly a difficult budget year we were looking at every program um at
125each school but also as ad Ministry we've mentioned before as an administrative Team level as well um what we might do and I I think the as the as the middle school was looking at there um certainly as we had some retirements coming they're looking at at the number of students they're looking at programming they're looking at you know some Equity of programming that that made a made sense that that position would be reduced because there were there were um five folks and and through some some struct restructuring that still kids would still continue to receive a high quality education in both stem and science so that's where they landed on that that particular position can I so can you say more about how the students will continue to receive that education between both stem
126and Science and so that's where the creative planning is going to come um and what the plan is for the creative planning is my next question so we would have had a scheduling committee meeting this week but without um principal St Pier we we didn't hold that um so there's some flexibility in how we look at things as other schools have talked about particularly like Durham is talking about looking at how you service students with unified arts or with varied scheduling so um the core of science being at every grade level would be the start how we focus on stem could be like stem teachers at various times of the day or servicing multiple grade levels if it went that way it could be it it's like a matrix that we'll have to build when
127we know what the numbers really are and um probably start contingency of like how we could build stem at every grade level in this way or focusing on numbers so class sizes and thresholds meet where we all feel comfortable for that cohort because each cohort's needs can vary too so I know that's not a direct answer C could I ask sort of a follow-up question on that um I just want to ensure both for myself and for folks watching um every child at free Port Middle School will get both science and stem correct they do now they they do now right I understand that um but the intention is is that will continue I would assume we would try to do that I I we're are so early in this I haven't been a part
128of all of those conversations I mean if they're part of if they're part of a unified art then that would be a possibility if we prioritize it at a grade level it may fall that way too it would depend how um we look at those things I and I mean I don't mean every day right like they don't need science stem every day right but um those would Curr get it every day depending on how each grade level does it so this is the thing we've built like so many different schedules we're actually famous for having a variety of different schedules each grade level has a different schedule and a model that's specific to the needs so sixth graders at our school have you know hex semesters so six weeks of things and they may
129not have stem during that six week span whereas in seventh grade it might be they do trimester Le times um and so they may move through things in different time frames so there are lots of creative ways to do these things the idea would be that every grade level would get access to stem and Science and making that happen though if you prioritized some some different need you might have it be that one grade level gets more than another grade level so does that make sense yeah no that that sort of yes that that starts my understanding Y and I could just add one other other thing page is that um at the middle school you have your your Committee of scheduling it's it's also that there there are teachers at the table and and
130having a voice in those those scheduling decisions yes Cara I'm just gonna I'm gonna and then we'll jump back to you so I saw Danielle first and then we'll go to Anna so my kids went to Durham yeah and um I'm just a little confused how the science and stem thing works that report currently so I was just hoping you can explain it because you know at Durham it it um evolved from when my daughter was there to when my son was there to where it was um stem was considered a special so they had it once a week and then initially or then later it went to every five or six weeks if I'm correct every six weeks um I can't count my specials um so I'm just wondering how it works now so
131that I can kind of Envision how you're going to move this because I science is every day at Durham community school so yeah you say it could not be maybe at Freeport so I'm just kind of wondering where we are now yeah thank you and this is where um you almost need a whiteboard like it's complicated at each grade level oh will would you like to get up and I know he does a good chart for us CU we never these things so picture there's language arts Math Science Social Studies and stem are offerings and how each grade level at our school um hits those offerings varies so in sixth grade there's hex semesters so a student for six weeks might have Ela math social studies and stem and then the next six weeks they
132would maybe have a different rotation of science social studies and stem so it's six weeks switches um in the seventh grade they'll have two out of the three trimesters they'll have stem so it would be it's the same ordering of like a switch of science social studies and stem that rotates but it's trimester in eth grade it's every 3 days so it's a 3-day rotation so it's bananas when you look at a schedule all together but that's how they've programmed and and that's been driven by sixth graders need consistency every single day having them flow through three different schedules a three-day rotation we found was really hard whereas having the same teachers all day every day in in this for six week span was helpful um in seventh grade there's a lot of autonomy in
133like how we've been looking at these like team needs too so teams felt like that was the best way they could program and I would envision that we would get creative in the same ways cohorts have specific needs teams know what they can provide and how they provide them um and then sometimes they you know they get even more creative on how they do those things with flex blocks of time where they're building in a whole different schedule and having extended periods where they'll immerse in something uh Anna um thank you I'm you probably want to get closer to mic okay closer than you think you need to be how's this um thank you I'm obviously new to the board so um this is all new for me but I think what was concerning me
134the most is all the communications we got directly from teachers at Freeport Middle School that I would think know the their students the best um and we're talking veteran teachers here who've you know have a lot of experience working with kids and talking about how a lot of kids are entering the middle school with unidentified learning disabilities and huge challenges um we heard from a teacher tonight about more kids experiencing trauma in her 35 years of teaching and I'm hearing a lot of like it's going to be creative scheduling and planning and I know this is obviously a really difficult budget year um but I guess in my naive as a new board member like is there any other way that it just seems like I'm just concerned that these uh staff reductions are going
135to really hurt the most vulnerable students and I guess wondering if you are concerned about that at all or if it if you feel like there's any other way that this could forward I've been a I was a special ed teacher for 20 years of like self-contained students of the most vulnerable population we have and of course I mean it keeps us all up at night that's why we do the things we do so the level of concern that we have though I mean I think if we can be creative in the way that we move things around we could meet the needs of students um I do think like to acknowledge it's challenging work it always is and our staff is amazing though and the things that they do are amazing and we um
136I think an RTI position I'm glad that that's not moving that we have that still because that is vital work so that being it's a shift but if that was going to be cut that would be a worry um we're still going to have some of like that person who's overseeing all of those things and that's really the work that needs to be done um I can uh maybe this is a question for our finance director but I was um I know basically what the full-time teacher um amount is in the budget what is the um just because I'm looking for a dollar amount that the reductions um equal out to so we have two um full-time teachers which we budget for like 108 each 104 and then what is the General Ed Tech position
137budgeted at I get that you okay thank you so just to clarify on the edtech position because we did hear some feedback both in letters and I I think even some folks tonight had mentioned the importance of maintaining the Ed teexs that we have at the school because they're helping with absenteeism and uh which has obviously been a goal and a focus for all the schools in the district um well every year but particularly this year when we were seeing numbers that that were concerning um my understanding is the position that we're looking to not fill has not been filled so we are not displacing we're not taking away someone that's currently in the building this is basically saying we had a spot that we couldn't fill so we're not going to collect the money
138to pay for someone we can't hire anyway is that an accurate correct assessment okay so we're not we're not cutting anybody we need to hire after tomorrow so say that again we you saw the resignation we actually have now we'll have two unfilled right right um so okay I just want to make sure I understood that correctly that um that what the proposal here isn't to eliminate uh someone in a position but to just not fill a position or not reup a position that we haven't been able to fill correct okay Mora thank you Dr forer um I appreciate you filling in um in Amy's absence um could you speak to the impact of the absence of having somebody in that unfilled position um it's been the way that we've used edex like we have
139been targeting um some really awesome work around re-entering students when they've been absent and making them feel wrapped up in their supports um through some of these positions but what they've been used for has varied year to year so um there was initially like they'd be at grade level connected I think was the initial thought behind some of those things they've morphed into more of like where can where are their strengths of areas of people um what are their skill sets and then that that's how all those positions kind of go is like where an edtech might be placed and what the roles they do but that specific unfilled one it wasn't like I'm I'm not positive what it was aligned for like the specific it's not like it was a science teacher or something
140specific ad teex we sort of build the programming as the needs arise okay that's helpful thank you and how many Ed Texs do we currently have I guess without the one who just resign resigned that's tricky too because we have some part-time Ed techs as well so some of the positions we're talking about there's like a part-time edtech connected to like a section of a teaching role so um and Jean's telling me we have in our handbook so I can I can refer to that the actual so for for folks in in your budget handbook on page five we did a breakdown um for regular ad in special education at each School how many how many there are there so at at Freeport Middle School um for janed there are there are 4.3 there and
141we didn't the special as you noce we did a whole total there because as so they oftentimes texts move with with with a student for example we have a middle school a big po population in middle school that went to the high school then that there might be a tech that would move there so we did those for um for special education the total number but but for the jet at Tex we did them by school and that 4.3 includes the unfilled positions yes so the 3.3 so right now as of tomorrow after this resignation we have 2.3 actually in the building but hopefully we'll get back up to 3.3 and replace that okay yes we will repace but as you said that's more in individuals because it's made up of part pieces it's that
142weird point because it's like yeah there's some some part-time positions that have some teaching bits and some edtech bits right right okay gotcha um I just have one last question about that at Tech piece is there typically um like a ratio so I know we have the ratio like the class sizes but do we have a staffing ratio for edex to student population or does it depend on need particularly in Ed because General Ed Ed text because they can be utilized in a variety of ways and so sort of school dependent on many of those decisions like I say like some are using rtib things some are using it in like what we're doing supporting cohorts of students um in a variety of ways so um yeah they could be in a classroom embedded there's
143been a lot of that in our school co- teing or co- you know servicing students pulling them out it could be that they're um meeting individually with students for like structured studies or the cool program that we've been doing this year that was referenced was if a student's been out for more than say three days and a tech will help collect work work with that student for a couple of blocks get them back on track so it's not that barrier of feeling overwhelmed when you've been out which we found was a big factor in absenteeism for students they just it's overwhelming to see the list of things and so that's been a really awesome thing that's happened this year in our building but we haven't always done that thank you all right I'm gonna go
144back to Cara because I know I cut off her list earlier um so I have two questions but I can try to stick to one um following up on the edtech pce do we know how long that position's been vacant was it filled the year prior we had a person in in that position that was shifted actually to a special education role at one point because that was the priority for that but we haven't had that particular position filled all year okay and when was that uh listing for the position removed like has that been up all along and available for people to apply it has I'm looking at Kelly because I don't know when that was taken down or not umed going to pull it yeah and I'm not and I'm I'm not sure
145exactly exactly when that was but um we've had difficulty as you know Finding aex and the district's priority is filling those special ed Texs as well because though by by law we're required to fulfill students IEP so that's sort of where we had someone there for a little bit and they shifted to special because that's what the where the need was can I ask my other question okay um going back to the creative planning piece I think I'd like to hear more about the plan for that you mentioned something about you you um once you have the numbers like student numbers you'll be able to do that can you say more about how important that part is or is it just a matter of like this is going to be really hard creativity might not
146actually meet the students needs I'm concerned about that it's going to be different um it's going to be different for us to look at it this way um and so being creative means all of us we met as a staff today and I talked about us you know meeting in team meetings not just in our scheduling committee team um meeting because there are thoughts I think people are daunted by the idea of like a scheduling committee cuz that's like the structure of building like times and structures in power school feels like yeah not my cup of tea whereas I have ideas about how we can um have students have touch points on really important things that we believe in and so it's I Envision it um and I can't speak to what Amy envisions it
147as because you know I mean we've talked some about this but what as we've been moving through it would be like what do we value how is this cohort going to do the best with the things and then what are their needs like in sixth grade like I said we decided that having stem every single day it was better to have a consistent schedule with the same teachers that was what we found worked best and so it'll be that same creative process of looking at how we can make sure that students are getting stem and science but the answer to that is I we're still in the developing stages of that so is and maybe it's too early to say the answer to this but is The Envision do you guys Envision fewer minutes of
148those content areas or is it how they're delivered or when they're delivered is different um so you know I guess I always think of with with fewer teachers uh and the same number of kids we either have more kids in the room or we have fewer minutes to less kids in the room so um I guess I'm interested to hear if one I'm completely off in my how I'm looking at it or two which of those two is kind of where where everybody's heads at at this point right um it I honestly don't know how we're going to do all that you know there could be there's all kinds of schedules that have an AB schedule where you could have like I was saying like some teacher could be teaching multiple grade levels like there's
149lots of different things um and investigating other District's kind of schedules and approaches to that as well I'm sure we'll be part of that process um we haven't met as that team yet so I'm not positive but does I mean and I know it's different because Durham only has one sort of set of each content area but um you know the idea of teams and running it the same way is that is that a possibility or is that no it doesn't work for us because of no it's been you know it's been something we've considered for a long time as a special ed teacher it was tricky to have different three different schedules but we also are like a really flexible School we're small enough that we've been able to make lots of different things
150work and adapt um this year it's been wonderful because so many of our students the specialed staff has been co- teaching much of their um program is happening in a co- teing model and so flexibility around those things also impact schedules like GT part time teachers like all of these things like also impact scheduling and so um to say it's complicated is like just not enough to say but yeah I I think we can get creative with the way that we do these things thank you um I just wanted to clarify we recently had the opportunity to visit the middle school which was really great and we got to see you and some of your students so thank you so much for that um and I have the impression from Amy that this scheduling um
151so please correct me if I'm wrong regardless of whether these positions stay in place or not this scheduling um committee is going to take place and you're going to look at changing the schedule at the middle school is that correct I I I would assume that the changes would be made um the the scheduling changes will be okay I just wanted to clarify because when we T had talked about that I wasn't there for that I'm not that was that was my understanding as well as that there would regardless of what happened here that there was um folks that said we really need to look at the schedule okay and that and that there would be teacher involvement in that schedule was my understanding okay that was what I was wondering that the schedule committee
152wasn't necessarily driven by the Staffing changes but that it might happen regardless of whether the board like I say we've we've changed the schedule lots of years in a lots yeah it's so a that we're in yeah great um I had some questions about the RTI too unless my questions are about the RTI so I'm wondering how many I I understand you might not know the exact numbers and maybe this is something you can get to us but you're taking two positions into one is that one RTI person going to be overloaded with now supporting students on both sides sides and with two different subjects and is there a limit to again you know you can only have 20 cases I don't I don't know so I guess that's part of my other part of
153the question um so it's 2.5 positions that would be mushed into one so the you know the impact wouldn't necessarily the the amount of students that they would service would be similar was that one of your questions yes but if there's 30 math kids and there's 30 English kids right it's English um that's Now 60 kids for one person is is that too much is it so there is that really fair to the kids yeah so we looked at um there's about so the thing about RTI instruction 2 is that it's typically in like six week stints that we're looking at students as needs arise and that's driven by data that's driven by teacher recommendations parent concerns all of these different factors each grade level um the needs might vary as well so there's between
154six and nine students coming from um Mass Landing um that again when I reached out to Emily that that can vary too depending on you're hoping they're growing and and getting out of that mtss system and just not needing the services once they've gotten the intervention um at the middle level it it's varied so um sometimes teachers are pulling students from the beginning of a math book and giving them a a pump up sort of or like a pre-teach sometimes the RTI model is that they're pulling them out for a structured study sometimes they're meeting them at BCS and providing that so the numbers are tricky to understand like who's being serviced currently there's five students in um RTI Ela um in our building as far as the pull out that they're getting but there
155are also other classes that are addressing things with supports so um RTI is like a complicated framework of how we service students and the services that we provide so picture six weeks there might be 10 students that are getting something and then the next six weeks it might be there's four left that still require those but the other six are exiting because all they needed was a boost um the one person would be overseeing that though I think the vision is sort of to embed in team meetings give some support we're starting that work on identifying students setting goals and then um tracking that with teachers as well and so that teacher could oversee that as well um just thinking also about the RTI um Shuffle around um and you know thinking about the comment
156that we heard around um you know being specialized in the math area and then being specialized in the ELA area and um is it common to find somebody that specialized specializes in both of those um areas like do you think this this is going to be a part I understand like the consistency argument but I just um also get concerned about the actual instruction yeah I mean you're hoping for that Dynamo that you get I I mean I can't speak to who that person would be or what it would look like um lots of the approaches to RTI are sort of like you're looking at you're identifying skills you're using some preassessment whether you're an expert in that or not and then you're focusing on the skills that that preassessment is identifying and you're targeting
157them for the next six weeks um that's why lots of times Ed techs are highly involved in that process too because they aren't necessarily like an expert in all of these content places but they can still give the supports that were identifying that student needs a check-in they need a frequent um they need a chart they need prompting to this they need um some basic skill building around those things and so it it just can vary so greatly I'm going to jump back to Mora's question while we're still talking about RT thanks uh please forgive me could you say the part about the edtech support again with in coordination with RTI yeah so um that's another way that we've used edex so edex and General Ed have done that side of work I know other
158buildings have they've identified someone as like say an RTI or an RTI like academic or behavioral and so some of that work is students might need assistance with writing or initiating the writing task or something and So currently some of the texts that we even have do that or they carry over work or they support teachers in their RTI work gotcha thank you that's helpful um and also forgive me if we have this information already but how many folks do we have that provide um RTI we have the two two right okay okay so it is the two moving into one and that's it there's no one else okay I guess I'm also thinking of um folks who provide differentiated instruction but they maybe that's different POS embedded in in other positions yeah how we
159right I mean the goal is that everybody's differentiating all the time and that the more our teachers are that was some of the work that um that I did as a coach too was focusing on giving all teachers um resources and um things in their toolbox so they can differentiate so how we differentiate for our students our teachers are great at that we're always exploring new ways to do that but the RTI is like a much more identified sort of process that we're talking about gotcha um I know this is not a deliberation but I just feel uh I feel concerned about these um these cuts and I think we've heard a lot from the community um about this and we've heard concerns about the level of services already provided to students at um the
160middle school and I think we've heard concerns about students needs being met so I guess I'll just say um if if we're um I already have a sense from that there are some families who feel their students are not receiving um the services that they and supports that they need so it concerns me to um have even further Cuts I think if we I think if already had the sense so I just wanted to bring up that feedback that we had gotten and I don't know if you want to speak to that at all Dr fornier but um if if I think if I already had the sense that folks were saying oh I feel like we're getting really robust supports in the school I would be less you know I would I'd be more
161open to this but um I um yes I guess that's all yeah I mean we can certainly chat about that more on the deliberation side I think you know very rarely do we get an email that goes you're doing a great job thanks for that I mean the it's just it's just a different type of of communication that we get I mean we heard people today get up and say my kids have gotten a fantastic education here thank you so much right so I mean it's all sort of anecdotal that way but um certainly noted to obviously part of that part of the conversation did I see more hands up over here no I'm going to move back this way questions for you guys um I had a question and maybe I misheard you did
162you say that two and a half positions were going into one position no two half two half pause two pause half okay got it I like where's the other half position okay um was part of the that idea around the RTI um that's an interesting one for me because obviously it's it's budget neutral so it's really about the the delivery of instruction um which is a little more you know administrator driven and less board driven because it's not a it's not a a finance question but um I know in the past few years we have moved our strategists away from literary strategists math strategists to just instructional strategists um I was curious if this move was kind of in alignment with that or separate from that do you know I honestly don't know okay I
163guess I'll I'll turn look at Jean and ask Jean I think that's certainly you know a good analogy that we did just that this this past year change change our strategies to they're they're not specific for math or Ela they're looking at the total picture and I think the piece of this is what um well the thought behind this was also to look at the total child and the total child's needs and um I know historically we have often times struggled to fill halftime positions um it sounds like that's not a challenge right now we have folks in both of those two halftime positions that that seemed very very um happy with those positions so I mean that was just another thing in the back of my head um around you know people's life circumstances
164change people come people go we see it all the time on our on our agendas um I was also wondering if this was sort of in place to say you know it's hard to find a halftime people if there's ever a transition I know in the past we've had that issue as a board um where we we couldn't fill halftime positions and you know a full-time position is is an easier is an easier position to fill um I don't know I'm I'm sort of this is an interesting one um I was curious we've talked a fair amount about the science um and the stem and the delivery I I'm definitely interested in hearing you know in terms of other information we'd like to have I guess I would like to know um and I guess
165it also applies to the to the ELA and the math but we've kind of seen differing numbers in in our chart right so our chart says the the range uh the class size range with the proposed levels is basically 18 to 21 which is the target for 6 to8 um threshold being 24 um but then we also heard some feedback that that's maybe not an accurate assessment of what the classes would look like and I'm not sure how we would know that yet because you guys haven't done that scheduling work um but I guess I would just want to see if there's any clarification or you know is there is there Mis uh misunderstanding when we're seeing you know numbers coming in that no no no the classes would be 24 and up because that
166for me that's very different discussion than you know 18 to 21 so go ahead yeah so say um and this wouldn't this is why it's still in the Matrix but um sixth and seventh grade is the bigger cohorts right so those are the ones that really we need to look at um but say you aligned a stem teacher with just those two and that wouldn't work because we wouldn't be hitting it an eighth so we'd want to get more creative and thinking around that but if we did that the class sizes would be like 19 20 23 or 22 so that would be more within the threshold that we're talking about you're right if we if we didn't do that um and we just had four content we're back to like our whiteboard where we're
167doing like these four that would be beyond that and so it's something that we just wouldn't want to do if it was like a cohort that couldn't handle that at 20 particularly if it was like 25 right so um and right now our do we have three stem teachers and three science teachers we do oh wow so it's a lot cleaner right right so it's easy to just align whereas Durham we have a stem teacher for prek prek 8 interesting okay there a lot of moving Parts yes uh we'll start with more and then we'll go to Danielle thanks Michelle um I I don't think we've touched on the the reduction of the 75 Ela teacher yet and the 0.25 math teacher could you could you speak to that in depth a little more it's
168the same as us talking about these like class sizes um you know they they were bits of things that were attached to different like grade levels so so there's um a25 Ela teacher in sixth a25 Ela in math and then a 0.5 Ela and seven and eight and so you're looking at class sizes that's sort of where it correlates to it that will be the main impact as the class that is a bit more like in that K5 kind of approach where you're talking about other reductions that we've talked about in the district it's about it's that same kind of feel okay got you thank you so now I have two questions I'm sorry okay so so I just like to know the number of teachers so for the Middle School you have three stem
169three science how many Ela currently then um so this is where it gets weird again right so we have we have three and then there's some of these extra things so there's a 0.25 in sixth there's there's a teacher that teaches One Core like one class of English in sixth there's a teacher that teaches one class of English and seven and one class of English and eth is that the same person nope okay two different people so then I'm sure you know my next question how many are in math yeah so math is even trickier because there's an accelerated math teacher who is shared with Durham so there's a0 five there and then there's some GT as well and there's a05 and six so which um I mean a 025 which is one core class
170so there's um so in six there's a GT class or an accelerated sorry an accelerated math class and another core class on top of the math classes that are already happening and then in seven and eight there's um uh accelerated math for seven and eight on top of the regular Core Teacher okay does that make sense yeah kind of I know this is where it's really complicated with all of our part-time folks and how they service got it so then my real question that I had raised my hand for was um I think there was mention of um the minimal amount of substitutes out there right um and that some of these part-time people like the part and I hate to say part-time but the 0.5 RTI people were providing some of that um support
171with substituting do we think we're going to lose that um so that was from the yeah it's from the edte I mean on a tough subday like today I was two teachers in the morning and then another teacher later like that the first two blocks until we got a sub I mean it's all Hands-On deck um so yes Subs can be challenging um to find and so it can be like block by block we've had teachers cover during their prep and get paid for that too so that's where that comes from yeah it the this sub it continues to be something that's an issue have we grilled paig enough do we have more questions I mean I'm sure we will but yeah thank you uh Kelly has a question I just I just wanted to
172she probably has the edtech amount question yes so I just wanted to respond to that um we had originally toyed with 104 so sorry it's actually 102 102,000 per teacher um and it's 48,600 and that's not just salary I just want to remind everybody that is like the true cost of the teacher that's salary and benefits and payroll taxes and all those types of things so we use those um those numbers for when we budgeted um if we were to add those were the numbers to use and as we take away those of the numbers we use as well okay thank you all right um I don't know who's next who's next uh Transportation Jeremy the gentleman walking to the microphone good evening I'm Jeremy Asal the inter Transportation director the budgetary requests for the
173transportation department focus on ensuring students are transported to school and programming safely Staffing adjustments to budget and fy2 reduction of two school year driving positions that had remained unfilled Staffing adjustments to budget FY 26 mechanic position not funded other significant FY 26 request and budget in need supplies equipment Etc Fleet Maintenance purchase repairs and supplies $4,240 338 the implementation of vehicle and Equipment replacement plan phase one which includes a three-year lease purchase $163,600 superintendent recommendation is to offset with undesignated fund balance the phase one of the vehicle and Equipment plan includes the following Replacements Transportation two buses two student Vans maintenance one grounds truck one mower SL trctor miscellaneous other field maintenance equipment okay um sorry I was writing down two student Vans okay I have this tendency to write half a thought and then
174when I look at it later I'm like I have no idea what I meant um sorry about that so uh thank you Jeremy uh my question around the mechanic piece um is essentially the mechanic piece and the purchase repairs and supplies sort of an offset for each other like we haven't found a a mechanic necessarily so without that mechanic we would basically just send out the repairs correct okay I feel like we ask you every time we see you but how are we doing for our bus drivers we've actually gained a new one started last week we lost so are we lose one it's one for one but okay so are we sorry so are are we we're still in progress yes so we're still looking for how many we're still looking for I think
175we have two fulltime three have any friends family I got application I'm a school board member I can't do it right but you he said friends if you have friends right I have a family member oh if Rich cannot drive a [Music] bus yeah anyone who's seen Jean park in the parking lot knows where she doesn't get to drive the bus um true he says I'm not saying a word uh other question question for Jeremy thank you very much good night all right so I think nutrition Erica so did you guys eat dinner before this or you just eat the cookies yeah um I love that the nutrition person made sure we were eating our dinner thank you for that it's important um so staying consistent with previous year's budget reports um our program is
176in a good spot um We are continuing to feed a high volume of students every day um over 217,000 meals this year to be exact so far participation rates across the district are leveling out and starting to find their place this is the first year in a few years that the program hasn't seen massive spikes in our meal counts but as you know student enrollment across the district this year um compared to last year is a little bit lower um a couple of FY 25 stats so far um our average monthly operating expenses are about $157,000 up about $33,000 comparatively to this time last year um food expenses are a major contributing factor for that if you've been in a grocery store recently and seen the price of eggs I'm sure you understand why um
177our average breakfast participation in the district is about 38% and lunch participation is around 65% looking at Staffing for school year 26 um as you can see in the um Workshop um there are no changes to positions um or Staffing hours for next year um we are adequately staff based on this year's meal counts and we do still have an open position at the high school um which is sat open all year additionally if we were to see a cut in our federal funding um we would likely expect to see a drop in meal participation um which wouldn't warrant an upward increase to staff hours um we'll see where that goes um budget for next year the nutrition program is requesting $ 139,000 or so dollars from the general fund um which is a decrease
178of about 25% from the 185,000 or so in school year 25 this is due to the continued success of the program um we are serving literal truckloads of local food um apples are coming in weekly from an orchard in Limington I personally picked up fish um main fish caught right off the Coast here um in Portland through the fisherman feeding maners program um I've pledged our program to participate in the doe um main Harvest of the month which is a campaign that promotes the use of um seasonally available local products in our schools um each month is highlighting a different Harvest um local potatoes root vegetables main protein dairy products to name a few um this is all to say that rest assured a decrease in local contribution does not mean we are starting to
179serve Twinkies to our students during lunches um the nutrition program is in a great spot financially um even with that decrease um we can still operate at the same level to serve our students food that meets or exceeds the requirements for nutrition standards and let me just say that it is challenging to build a budget and make predictions for our program with this impending no more free meals um Cloud kind of looming over us um but as of right now there have not been any changes to our federal funding and regardless of these changes um you know if they were to come to fruition our students would still be served nutritious well-balanced School meals every day um as things change and evolve we would come up with solutions to continue doing what we do best
180which is serving healthy meals to our students that's all I have Phoebe so I like pretty much every day get lunch at school which is saying something because I have the ability to leave and go get lunch at home or somewhere in town but this year the changes that I've seen like here at the high school in the school lunch have been like amazing I'm vegetarian and before like the options for me were like salad or uncrustable which like I'm a growing girl so I I need like good stuff but now there's always like a vegetarian option of the main dish like today there was veggie nuggets and like when we have the like breakfast for lunch there's veggie sausage that's like my favorite brand too and it's so good and I also just so
181thank you for that because it is a lot better than Uncrustables even though those are good too but also the rumble the thumps casserole is so good and I'm sorry because I did make fun of it when I first saw it on the menu I was like what is that because could you tell us what it's called again Rumble the thumps casserole but I was so hungry that day and I was like okay I'm just going to get it and my life was changed it's so good so I want to say thank you for like bringing that to me and for having the vegetarian off options and like being in the lunchroom like a lot of kids at the high school are like eating that lunch and it's so important too cuz we're here early
182like getting breakfast here and without that like I would not be learning Erica maybe you can bring the rumble the thumb casserole to the board meeting next time I I can't take full credit for that part of it was for for the um the main Harvest of the month in January was potatoes and I worked with Lori our manager here and she came up with the rumbley thump um meal and I had it and it was like you say it was delicious so we will have it again definitely I I want to go look at everyone's paper to see how many of us just wrote down Rumble Thum we will all be Googling it later she probably just made up the name and we're never going to find it so it's it's real it's it's
183out there um I was had a question about uh the participation rates you said 38 for breakfast 65 for lunch is that consistent with last year I know you said the numbers has gone down a little bit because of the number of kids but is participation percentage in line um our lunch percentage is just about the same we have seen a drop in our breakfast counts um I believe it's around four or 5% from where it was last year um with that said um I've tried to be ahead of the curve a little bit with some of the changes in our added sugar content in breakfast options um this change is coming next year anyways so we were going to have to do it this year or next year um so we've definitely done a
184lot of experimenting you know phasing in some different things um and you know we're not serving maybe all of the same things that we were in the past um so I'm not surprised that we've seen you know a slight decrease in our in our breakfast participation just given that some of the options maybe aren't students favorites yet but hopefully they learn tried the rumbly thumbs yes um and I I feel like I've also heard sort of the ability here at the high school around breakfast to get it and be able to eat it in your first period has might have changed this year like they're not letting them eat yep necessarily in class or yep uh we are right now our um breakfast here in the cafeteria students are able to come in until I
185believe it's 8:45 is that pretty sure that's the time um and get their breakfast um it used to be that they could come at any point between start of school and 11:00 a.m. when when lunch started um there were some concerns from teachers around students not being in their classrooms and being down here in the cafeteria and so the move at the time was to um you know cut back on on how often students are able to come down to the calf um I have since been working with um the jmg program and we have a vending machine in I'm just going to ask about the vending machine just sitting there waiting for food yes um so the vending machine I know has been sitting vacant for two years some something like that um it
186is working and I think literally tomorrow it will be stocked with Second Chance breakfast options so there will be um yeah breakfast options available so that way you know our our cut off time is a little bit earlier than it used to be um but the hope is that having this vending machine you know right there that students aren't you know missing out on class and they're able to just you know go run a quick quick breakfast from the vending machine and get back to class um and we're hoping to see that our participation kind of boosts back up with that so great yeah yes I'm just curious how the vending machine works is it like cash driven or is it like they put in um it is uh both technically um to start I
187am just going to um actually I'm deactivating the cach option for ease of you know starting things um the jmg program students are going to be the ones that are you know stocking the machine themselves um so kind of for ease there we're just going to use students PIN numbers that they use here in the cafeteria so they're able to preload money onto that account and if you you know you only have cash on you you can always come down here and Lori or somebody can load that money onto your student meal account and be able to to get a meal that way I would like to make it a cash option eventually but I was actually I'm I was more concerned about them not having the cash and wanting to get something so I'm
188just happy that they can use the the PIN code yep the pin and then everything is all connected with our POS system so we'll see all of the you know meal counts and and everything that way yeah w thank you so much Erica I'm glad to hear the options are so great um I was just wondering if there are any updates about um scratch cooking um since I know we asked about that in in the past as well as the chocolate milk yes um the uh for the scratch cooking um a couple things to note with that I guess um I have applied for the um culinary um blinking on it now The Culinary Institute that car yes that you had told me about um so I don't think we'll heal hear back until sometime
189in April um but the hope with that is to be able to send a couple of Staff members to like a weeklong Hands-On like scratch cooking um training in main um so that would be at some point this summer um but pledging to do this um monthly uh Harvest of the month is a really great way that we've been able to Showcase some of those scratch made options like the rumed D thumbs um uh so we're we're certainly you know getting there um there's a lot of challenges with it that we're still figuring out but um it's it's improved definitely yeah and to answer your question about chocolate milk um I've reached out to urst a few times to try and get a better sense of what their new formula will be to be able
190to serve it in any schools with next year's um you know new changes that are going to happen um because they would not the current chocolate milk they would not be able to serve in any schools in Maine the way that it is currently um they've assured me that they are changing the formula but other than that I don't I don't know what that would look like so yeah so it might it might be back next year or I I would it would be great to have it back I think it's a really great way for students to be able you know we have a lot of students that maybe don't participate in the school meal program um but would still come up and and get a milk and something to keep in mind is
191like a milk that's not drank whether it's chocolate milk or you know regular milk is you know it provides nutritional you know value to the student and you know if a milk isn't being drank just because they isn't a chocolate milk option um I I think it's worth looking at you know what is that nutritional value that those students aren't getting because they are not choosing to have a milk at all anymore so there's there's certainly you know some exploring with it that I'm looking into thank you yeah other questions for Erica thank you yeah all right uh facilities Glenn thank you for your patience tonight Glenn absolutely and listen I got no rumbly dumbly I I got none of that so how do you top that I don't I don't I was telling Jeremy
192before he left it's you know it's tough act to follow so thank you Eric appreciate it uh good evening everyone um first off everybody hear me okay I usually have a loud voice anyways I never need a mic but um so the budgetary request for the uh facility departments focuses on supporting the infrastructure to provide a safe learning environment for all students and staff uh staff adjustments on budget fy2 were none Staffing adjustments for budget FY 26 are none other significant FY 26 uh requests in the budget and needs supplies equipment uh contract increases and so forth for an example like the Mechanical Services contract ends in June so that'll be going out to bid so there's a potential change there plowing contract was out to bid so there's a potential change there um and
193also supplies and and so forth um the FY 26 Capital proposed Capital Improvement plan some some of these were on last year's plan uh unfortunately when some of the projects that we did ran over financially so we weren't able to complete those so we just moved them into this year they are such such as the wall over at the music room at at Durham uh removing that wall removing and installing new ceiling tile uh ceiling in the modular at Durham uh putting snow guards on the modular over at Durham uh for the bathrooms over at Mo Street School um back on the audit it was it uh it was noted on the audit that the the bathrooms did meet Ada uh so one of the concerns we had was there may be asbestos under theum
194so we had that tested and that came back negative in a conversation with Jean and Kelly we decided to take this opportunity to take that boy's bathroom and make it Ada so that boy's bathroom will be Ada and then future upgrades we we'll do the girls bathroom as well um we're looking to install a heat pump in the Teachers Lounge at the high school we also need uh to replace the a roof section at the middle school and which is on the back section and the the last year was uh to replace the roof section over the gym here at the high school we put that back in the capital budget for this year so that's the show I just want to make sure the teachers room isn't also the library data closet right yes
195it's a cination room yes ma'am that's why we would put a split in there for the for the like the little room behind like the the fish bowl I I think they put they're going to put a rack or they put a rack up in there too so we're just going to add provided cooling for that room and the teachers will get a benefit by having that Cooling in that room okay yep it's a shared shared room okay closet just sounds really small that room is not a closet I agree could add one piece to What Glenn shared with the board as well is that I think it's important that the board knows that overall last last year you increased the amount um that we had had um in the local budget and this year
196we're requesting an additional um increase again of $30,000 to cover those projects it it really we looked at historically where that dollar figure was and it was like 400,000 for a long long time and we all know that the you know materials and labor and all that have increased so that's that's the the um is up to 475 this year yes thank you um maybe this a question for Gan regarding that um what because we were at the 400,000 for a long time did we just last year increase it to 404 okay I couldn't remember thank you um I see no Staffing adjustments uh since you know we did ask Jeremy so we'll ask you uh how is your Staffing levels do you have positions filled are you struggling anywhere um we we for the
197most part we have all the positions filled we we still have two staff that are out uh we're currently looking at filling one of those with a sub and the other staff have picked up but so all the positions are technically full okay great cheyen could you talk about why you guys are replacing the wall in the music room it just that you're looking to expand yeah so the conversation that we had with the teacher and the principal is the the number of students that are in that room with all their equipment and everything else is just really tight so they felt if we opened it up and they're looking at removing the wall that is current the storage room still using it as a storage room but just opening it up so the students
198can spread out a little bit with their equipment thank you yeah of course laa thank you so much um I just had some questions about the um energy audit and the life safety updates and I was wondering in terms of the age of our facilities if making those updates is a challenge if there are any limitations because of the age of some of our facilities um if that's a consideration um I'm just I guess um I'm thinking about the amount of money we're putting in to aged facilities um going forward in that whole conversation yep no so it's not it's not a concern about the age it's more of a concern about the age of the equipment so I'll give you an example at Durham that building is only 13 years old but the piece
199of equipment that they put in there for the fire alarm panel which is scheduled on the life safety to be replaced is obsolete so we can't get any parts for it we can't do anything so if it fails we're in trouble so we that's why it's slated to to replace the panel and all the devices have to be replaced as well because that piece of equipment is proprietory so Johnson Controls uh is the only vendor in town that that can work on that so we want to put a nonproprietary much like we did the boilers over at pel so that way there we can get better pricing to to be able to make the repairs and then oh to be able to make the repairs and then presumably hopefully it wouldn't be obsolete again so
200soon that is correct okay and um just a follow-up question has the facilities committee um had conversations about weighing you know because because of these significant new investments in the budget um are just large sorry I'm trying to think of different words and my brain is getting tired large is about right um yeah since they are large um just uh the conversation around around that and that aspect of the budget I'm sorry I lost my that's okay speak a little bit more about that yeah so um I was awful glad when I first came in and Gan told me one of the requests that the board was asking to do an energy audit so a new employee coming in um taking a look at everything it's nice to be validated right so I'd always go
201to Jean and I would always apologize like listen Jean I saw this yesterday I'm really sorry I have to tell you this and then the audit would come in and back validate what I'm telling Jean by this needs to be replaced so there's been a lot of great work that's been done in the district um but there's still a lot of great work that needs to be done uh for an example here the boiler uh we had an inspection with our insurance company we looked inside the boiler and it's 50 years old and it's showing every year of that 50 years um I knock on wood every day when we had that cold spell that it just didn't decide not you know to fail and not work we have air handlers we have rooftop units
202we have a non-existent uh I don't want to say non-existent but we have a very poor ventilation system at Mass Landing which again those are the air handlers Up on the Roof just a lot of a lot of part of the systems that need to be replaced not necessarily because of the age of the building it's just the age of the equipment and the amount that they're used um you know these commercial pieces of equipment are running a lot and they're working a lot so it's not like your air condition at home where you take it out of the window in the winter and you put it aside and all that other stuff these things are running 24/7 365 cuz they're designed to bring in fresh air so you're burning out pumps you're burning out
203Motors you're burning out squirrel cages evaporated coils all of that stuff so it's just age catches up with them so I think overall um I don't want to speak out of turn here but structurally I think the buildings are in good shape I just think we we have to catch back up with the mechanical side that we' started to do we just kind of either got sidetracked or whatever whatever the situation was and this these stages either the phases the life safety is going to get us there a little bit quicker that answer your question yes thank you that is reassuring because I know as you all know I have brought that up a couple of times so I'm that's I'm glad to hear that that's um just reassuring about making that investment and could
204you remind me with this 17-year lease purchase agreement even though it's the 3.6 million then in the budget it's the 303 thousand that will be just for this year next year I'm sorry next year I say yeah nothing in the 26 25 26 budget there's no payment required which is correct got it thank you very much year after absolutely y yeah um I I think the the key that I took out of What Glenn just said is that the the Structural Buildings are good right what we don't want to be doing is putting top-of-the-line engines in a a truck buddy that's about to die right like what's the point of that right so we want to make sure we're not investing no wait a minute I I'm a truck guy you may want to do
205that I'm just kidding now with my money right exactly no no of course you certainly don't want to if we've got buildings that you know we're constantly looking at rooftops and structural for the rooftops and um you know your walls and your floors and all that other type of stuff we certainly want to have those conversations do we want to continue or not um but I have I've been in pretty much every small area that you can think of in the district here and I don't see anything that's extremely concerning I just think we you know we got to continue the good work that started prior to my arrival and we just got some work to do great other questions y More's got more for you all right uh I wanted to ask about the
206life um safety updates um given um given the size and the amount of that and I know it's coming from Capital Reserves I guess I'll just say given the status of our federal funding and what's going on nationally um if we had to shift to wanting to hold on to more of those reserves how um would we be able to do some of these upgrades would there be able to be like a phased approach to that in a different way that would not be such a big chunk of money up front yeah and and I think what we would do with that if that's the if if that's if that's sort of what the what the the direction the board wants to go in we would get B together as a team and see if
207if you're saying we'll pause that for another year then we'd pause it for another year you say you know can we do some of these or what are the the the top what really is rising to the top then we would we would discuss as a team and come back together to the bo with a proposal to the board if that's the will of the board absolutely maybe to that end Could you um and I know Gan you went through some of these but could you just um explain the the necessity of them and the sort of urgency to like protect our students and make our facilities safe I think that that's like something that I would weigh when we make that decision um about like how like can we wait with this potential Federal
208funding up in the air or what yeah so you know that's all about perspective right so um you know there fire alarm panels that are on there that are extremely important for the the safety of staff and students 100% you know access to the buildings uh that's extremely important as well so I think like Jean said we' get together with team and figure out okay how can we best tackle the list based on what the direction from the board would be dollarwise right what can we accomplish that would still provide the high quality Safety and Security that the staff and students are looking for and get some of these stuff done um I I think that's what we you know we would sit down and have that conversation try to figure that out but you
209know that's a good point that you know how do you defi how do you decide and and Define what needs to happen what have you and I think the three of us can come up with a plan based on whatever dollar amount is given absolutely yeah I had the uh almost the exact same thought process I mean I I I hate to even verbalize that that you know all the work that has gone into that sort of three-stage plan which I think is um you know very very appropriate and but I am very nervous about um something completely out of our control um really impacting our our funding and us having to make other decisions if we don't have sort of um a rainy day fund that we could access right like maybe this isn't
210the time to spend that all down and when so much is is potentially up in the air um you know so I appreciate your willingness to to look at things um you know and maybe some of the stuff in the 475 would get suranta with stuff that you said geez if we're going to hold off on the on the life safety upgrade from from design uh from the capital reserves I might because I feel it's so important push that into the 475 in the local budget right um you know I mean that's sort of the nature of the Beast I guess yeah that's the beauty of facilities right so we're never looking for things to do there is always things to do so I'm never bored I want to tell you all that right so
211I'm not sitting back reading the newspaper there's plenty of stuff to do so you know the life safety the phases you know all of this is a living document so we can decide to do phase one 3 years from now it's still going to be there you know we're probably going to be repairing some of that stuff I'd love to be able to stand up here and say hey look look what we already did off phase one which changes that dollar amount but at the end of the day all that is still going to be there whenever we're able to get to it you know there's going to be some emergencies don't be shocked when there is but there are going to be that's just a natural the beast but at the end of the
212day it's a living document we can move things around and do things when when we have the opportunity to do them I will just point out the time value of money things don't get cheaper so pushing things down the road they will be expensive to do when we do them so just you know something to keep in mind a can gets a little expensive when you kick it far down yes ma'am so um yeah okay uh car to add to that too that there's also you know downsides to losing teachers and that if this is well first of all I want to validate like because I know that you said that that was one thing you really appreciated when you came here is that the validation that facilities are really important absolutely so I want
213to validate that and I think everyone here would it' be my guest we would all say like if we could do this yes let's please do this um I think we also probably would say if we can't if we could maybe not lose some teachers that would be great too so I'm I'm just thinking about this side of it with um in terms of the other cuts that we're considering in relation to using the undesignated fund balance for the life safety or just the 475 the increase for the 40,000 I mean it's not increase of 475 right I know I know okay but and however we whatever we could be flexible with I guess yep I am completely flexible I'll do whatever you guys tell me to oh Jean tells me to do all right
214any other questions for Glenn thank you great thanks guys all right so we're gonna move to Peter Community programs hi everybody um I should have put in for the public comment section because I think I'm going to take 3 minutes um so as um as some of you some of you may know or recall um since uh since I joined the office in 2018 the budget has been flat um so at least since fiscal year 2018 um at $112,000 and for the upcoming year we are looking at taking away 21% of that down to 88,000 um and that is essentially to reflect the adult ed coordinator that is uh that is working with us now who's part-time going from full-time person to part-time person um usually I provide a little more um context and and
215detail with the other things that don't come from local share but given the size of the agenda tonight um we've decided to keep it just at that one feature with Adult Ed so that's my budget report for FY 26 not even three minutes Peter Well Done okay all I guess my question question around that um The Adult Ed coordinator is that is that by that person's choice they prefer part-time are we able to accomplish everything we want to do with a part-time position so the the core mission of what we do with Adult Ed can be accomplished in that part-time position um when we've had full-time coordinators our our last full-time coordinator for instance um was able to grow and grow and grow the role and get into some um sort of additional services and
216Advising and C in and help that went that go beyond just the core English language instruction highet instruction um and so um so we we are fulfilling um the core Mission plus some um but just don't get to some of the same additional things um with the part-time schedule but also the population has changed quite a bit since the previous full-time person and the current uh not full-time person make sense y other questions for Peter Beth I don't have a question but I just want to thank you for keeping your budget flat for seven years and then decreasing it so I know it's um it's a challenge I'm sure and and I know that you have a small program cons you know comparatively but um it's you know thank you yeah sure thank you Beth
217if you could talk to your other like counterparts on the admin team on how to do that keep it flat maybe drop it a little that'd be great right yeah that's right we're just G to do adult for all the kids um other questions for Peter thank you all right thanks all right we're going to pull Sam away from his current Tech duties at the desk bring him up to the camera hope the hope the uh live stream stays up and running should just sco this forward so I'm in frame here we go was everybody else up there not in frame no no no I I just cut to the Wi shot because I can't switch between the different cameras that's all uh hi I'm Sam um I'm running the live stream back there uh
218and let's get this to a good height um so uh for the FY 26 budget um we're coming in other than you know our non- staffing expenditures are coming in a little bit below where they were last year um we've got we're kind of focused on infrastructure projects um like high school Wi-Fi um some classroom technology at Mass landing and the high school a few rooms of the high school um and then running a pilot program and uh to kind of pick the direction for which device we're going to go in certain grade levels in the future and then um new staff devices for the high school teachers um beyond that we've got some communication software um some copyright safe video software and that's really you know that's really that not a whole lot more
219to it I'm trying to reach my teach reach my teach is a communication platform so right now you you all get messages through bright Arrow um and reach my teach allows for uh broader flexibility as well as two-way text messaging um with teachers where a teacher or a staff member would not have to give out their phone number in order to accomplish that um uh it also does translation of documents and translation of every all the messages that go through it as well um in two directions and one of the cool features that it has is that um with so many of our our families coming you know our new Manor families um they're much more used to using Whatsapp or telegram or various other platforms and reach my teach can send send and receive
220messages through those platforms as well did did you say that the their next year is the sort of the planning year for what goes forward for yeah so so 6 through2 um we're we're kind of we we're trying to figure out where we go from here because I think that um frankly providing MacBooks to every student 6 through 12 is probably a little bit Overkill um and that we are not um we're I think our our teacher are doing lots of wonderful work with uh those devices but we are not always taking full advantage of them um and so we're going to evaluate all of the options out there and it might be that in you know a year from now I'll be sitting here being like well guess what we're going with MacBooks again
221but um in our estimation just um we're going to kind of evaluate the various other options so that would be uh Chromebooks and then an iPad with um iPads with keyboard and trackpad on it um and I know that I know that iPads are a dirty word in this District um but what I will say is that coming from a district that um coming here from a district that is an apple Rec is recognized as an apple distinguished High School um uh I think it's one of those things that once you see it um it's really remark once you kind of see how it can be used and how um how it can kind of transform what students are doing uh it's very powerful I'm not saying that that's the way that I want to
222go necessarily because I think we need we just need more information um but uh principal goco and I went on a site visit at Thornton Academy um where they had received a similar uh recognition from Apple and she went in like totally closed-minded about you know um about what you know we're going here to see things you know see kids using iPads and is this really a device that makes sense for high school and then four hours later she was like we got to figure out how we can try to take advantage of something like this so I think when it's done well um and teachers are on board and students are willing to work through some of the pain points I think it's a much more powerful device I also think when iPads were
223done here it was about uh eight years ago I think something something in that real I think there's been two rounds of MacBooks since then and uh the device has come a long way so that's why we're entertaining that I think the Chromebook is a simpler explanation um which is that most of what students are most of what students are asked to do not all but most is um done through the Chrome browser and so paying for MacBooks for every student is like paying for a very expensive Chromebook in a lot of cases that's not all cases but I think in particularly in stem and science um and some functions for math but in uh the humanities and social studies I think that it t it tends to be used primarily like a Chromebook so
224we'll see I don't know we'll have more data in in a year's time so the the thing that uh not that I'm only listening to One phrase that each of you say if it sounds like that but um the thing that popped out to me for you was you know getting teachers on board um because that is I think one of the areas where when we've had struggles with whether with whatever it is whether it's curriculum or whether it's technology or you know not necessarily having the Buy in from from all the shareholders um can certainly be a challenge so I am uh you know I have my initial thoughts but you know maybe maybe we need a board like field trip to learn how to use the the iPads yeah I mean we'll we'll
225we'll see how it goes I think what what we'll be looking for um you know we're still kind of figuring out the structure of what that pilot will look like um but what we'll be looking for are um a handful of teachers to kind of help us buy into that and for them to help identify some students who think this would be a good fit for and some students they don't think it would be a good fit for and so that we're getting data kind of across the Spectrum um it's not you know we'll we'll see I don't know it's one of those things we'll just we'll have to wait and see see where it leads us y we should do some parent education cuz I have one and I hate it I I struggle
226with it because I thought it was going to be very easy so I'm sure kids can use it no problem but I feel bad for the teachers yeah it's not it's not really about it's it's not necessarily about um kids knowing or not knowing how to use it it's more about um understanding how to kind of unlock the power of the device and and the ways in which it is much more um the the ways in which you know different devices have lots of interesting different functions um and can be used in different form factors and that sort of thing sound like a commercial unlock the power baby I fully endorse iPads I'm very very outspoken about this I have an iPad and I actually like love it so much like and I'm trying to
227convince my dad to get me like the pencil that goes with it but also like um a lot of well not a lot but some of my teachers use iPads and the pencil um in class like my math teacher that's like the majority of our class he's writing the notes Mr MS yep and um it's really like um easy to follow because like he's doing it out on the screen and we're writing the notes on our paper um but I also know a lot of college students have switched to the iPads for for note taking right yes because you can do the note taking on them and my brother has one and he like swears by it so I think that can be really helpful it can be like um the digital art which is
228like another like big thing of the future they can be used for that which I think would be really interesting to see so yeah you have a volunteer for your committee yeah and I I would love to just have guys like my iPad like I just go home every day and I just sit there and like type around and you can like go on photos and you can zoom in on people's faces and they're just like really large on the screen I'll pay I'll buy you the pencil if you come help me learn mine okay what a deal what a deal I don't know what Cynthia's is there policy about is there policy about that Cynthia about about trading Services yeah I'm not sure um that's Cynthia's job um yeah no I Phoebe I I
229totally uh um I totally hear what you're saying and that was the thing that I think for Miss GCO that um Mrs GCO that that really kind of unlocked things was watching kids take notes um and watching kids work on work collaboratively or then a teacher is sitting there take you know doing you know what Miss Edwards or Mr Mills or any a lot of the Math teachers do you know writing out kind of the notes and solving problems and then taking that and being able to share that to Google classroom for all the kids so they then have they have their own notes that they've taken but they also have a whole documentation of what the teacher has done as well so I it's it's also I I think a lot of the other
230thing is you know in terms of a teaching tool a lot of the um you know using trying to trying to you know projecting from a computer it's a much more kind of like heads down experience for a teacher that kind of like you know they're having to line something up focusing if you're airplane for an from an iPad you can have it in your hand have the stylus in your other hand you can be walking around the room you can be you know so you're kind of it's kind of this more of a um um you know classroom management by walking around kind of thing but um yeah I I I think you know and that's not even getting into the type of stuff that they're doing in gorum um which I think is
231sort of at another level Beyond just digital not taking so um or and and is much more focused on creativity um and student creativity so yeah we'll see where we'll see where it takes us I don't know sorry just one last thing um you said iPads I think that we had them because I'm thinking back to my oldest child and I think it was like 10 years ago or if not more that I started the iPads because she was in middle school and she's 24 now right um so how thaten yeah um and and so I think you know thinking about iPads what they were 10 years ago and what they are today is like you know it's huge difference right and I think and the other thing is that you know we would be
232providing a case with a built-in keyboard and trackpad on it so you can use it like a laptop you could do everything that you would do on a Chromebook on it but then also you can pop the device out of the case and be you know using it as a tablet being able to draw on it all that sort of you know so it's kind of Best of Both Worlds kind of thing but we'll see where we we'll see where we wind up I mean we've got a lot of leg work and we're trying to kind of we're going to be trying to gather feedback from students and staff at Durham students and staff at Freeport Middle School and here so it's going to be it's going to be um it's going to be a
233lot of leg work but we're you know the hope is that kind of the first few months of next year we're Gathering a lot of that data and getting a lot of that information and working with working with staff and students like thank you yeah okay um thanks for all that I was looking through the big Hefty thing here um line by line and notice that um computer materials there's an increase of $338,000 yeah so so equipment is down equipment is down by a little bit more than that and materials are up and that's really that's really a uh State accounting or you know coding things correctly for for um you know the Auditors and everybody else in everybody in between um which is that what's the threshold $5,000 for an individual item yeah so
234the threshold for equipment is actually $5,000 for an individual item so like we will very occasionally have a server that that that would be that much money but everything else because the individual item costs are much lower that goes under material so even like the laptops we buying for staff that's just under materials instead of being under equipment and that was just fixing something that so if you look under equip if you look at equipment which is 57 340 or 341 um that's uh yeah you'll see there that there's a big drop off there that was just showing off with like line item numbers I almost have them I almost have them all memorize uh the whole book not no no just mine but all right any other questions for Sam thank you thank you
235all right so we are technically still on the same item just so you all know because we do have a policy if for those who may not know I think my watch just died because it's so late uh we can't start a new item after 10:00 without a vote of the board um so after get through uh Cynthia's two um two sheets that we have here um is it two two right yeah back and forth uh then then we'll take that up but good evening I'm the tail end of all of the budgets I think I'm the last one to present so um tonight uh first of all Phoebe thank you for you know just being you okay I've enjoyed you tonight um not that I don't every every time but um okay so I
236have um my budget is flattish so I can't say flat but it's flattish um on the first page you'll see the um curriculum development and Improvement of instruction um there's no Staffing involved um in that and the Improvement of instruction primarily just to give um you a little context uh Anna because you're new and anybody else who may have forgotten um or wasn't here at the last last year at this time um so that's primarily curriculum materials and uh it it hovers around 53,000 and so uh next year um we are going to be looking uh we're going to well we're going to be looking at some additional science kits and we are also doing a curriculum review of math so those will be primarily the things purchased with those materials and then instruction um
237instructional staff uh training um that uh cost center is primarily this kind of like four big buckets in there um so there's purchase professional and that's flattish we we just moved some money from one level to another level a little bit but it's overall flattish um the honor ums uh so I have several those are uh for typically um committees if they're working um after hours so I have like I think six or seven committees that I lead and then there's some might be a couple other committees around the district so they get paid if if their meetings are an hour and a half they get paid an honorary amount for that hour and a half over the year each time they meet so that's what that bucket is um and then tuition um um
238Kelly has used the historical data for tuition that piece of it has gone up um because you you probably going back three years yeah so so it's up because the last three years that we're looked at was higher than dropping off one year and and including that year before it must have been lower so that's why that one's gone up it just happens to be in my cost center but I don't really control that uh and then um the last piece is the STP uh I only budget for the stiens for the mentors and the uh local credentialing committee um so those numbers of of people in those slots stay the same and the stipend as you know is part of the contract so that's that side of the page um any questions on that
239oh I should have asked defer to you sorry all right and then on the other side we have uh the gifted talented um flat uh same the same number of Staff in that position um and so uh we generally have about 5% of our students who um are identified in this category in either academic or Andor um Arts and Music and I'll take any questions on that okay very good thank you we are questioned out Cynthia can I have one piece at the end of yes so that does conclude all our our presentations for folks and um throughout the the last few weeks uh Kelly and I have been taking notes on other information that the board has requested so that you can as part of your deliberations and what we're going to do is
240put that information together in a packet for you so that when you received your board materials for the next meeting you you'll have a packet of that data that you asked us to collect um and in order for us to make sure we have everything you that that will help you with those deliberations I if there are other things right now that you know other data you'd like to have if you could let us know or if you're it's 10:15 if you're feeling I'm I think there might be something but I'm a little tired right now um if you could uh email Kelly and I by March 1st because there two pieces of this we have to collect it and assemble it and find it and then we have to make sure it gets out
241to you in your board packet and we'll also we'll provide that for the for um on the website for the community and so forth but we thought you might like to have it in advance so that you could start doing some thinking before you start deliberations anything anybody has right off the top of their head they want to make sure we I was trying to figure out about the um middle school and just all the staff and the just cuz it's so complicated and splitting apart is there any way we could get like a cheat sheet of what is currently being done and then what's being proposed for next year yeah I mean yeah I just ask Clarity for for us as we work with the middle school so are you thinking you're looking at
242sort of by grade level that like Staffing for that or I guess maybe by grade level and by subject area um because I was like trying to quickly take notes on how she was saying there's three of this and three of but it got very confusing and then how she was piecing it out so I think that would just a visual would be more helpful yeah yeah thank you yeah and you know and it sounds like there isn't a defined Way Forward on what it would look like but even just a potential you know what it might look like from a schedu like so you know this is what it looks like today this is what we envision it might look like um you know next year with these basically two fewer positions right going
243from 16 and a half to 14 and a half um and kind of inclusive of that sort of the the class size numbers in there that's right thank you because I I do still think there's some confusion like I I I'm not quite sure I quite understood what Paige was saying around like well we said the top would be 21 but they're saying well no it's 24 plus so where's the disconnect there is there just some misunderstanding or is it are we does that make sense yes even at 10:15 our best Mora um I think it would be helpful to see the budget impact with the some of the positions added back in um specifically the eso and Middle School positions and um is that I know we have the eight Educators and the five
244edcs and I think some of those are un unfilled so maybe breaking out the unfilled versus the already filled two could could be helpful right yeah I know Kelly's already working on sort of the although she looks like she has a clarifying question yeah I did so so when you when you're saying unfilled is that unfilled including a res at the end of the school year so it's unfilled for next year or are you talking about right now un if if someone is currently is someone currently doing that job or not okay so like the science teacher would be yes they are doing that job today yeah but that edtech F FMS is not yeah and and I think just for the proposed reduction so so for for the the all the teaching and all
245the edex the proposed reductions You' like like us to to look at um what it looks like if we filled all the positions that are currently filled this year what that would be yeah the difference in the budget impact yeah that would be great thank you top side of that chart yeah so so what Michelle's referring to we talked about it at Finance is one of the things we were that I had developed to to uh help in your deliberations was a sheet that says if we wanted to so say we wanted to get to a 3% taxation impact what sort of reductions would be needed but and I only had that like from our starting point down and Michelle um at our finance committee meeting um suggested that i' go like from the up
246to the like our original before any cuts and then kind of progressively step down um in positions so this is great that it ties right into what we were working on for you already yeah so um and then I guess this is very sort of ambiguous but I mean what we have heard a lot of is around like teaching positions and um you know the impact to students and really trying to not remove supports in a time when we're we're most concerned about our kids um but I also on the flip side I don't think we could come forward with a 9% you know expenditure and expect to pass it um I I don't think in good faith I could do that so um you know are there other creative ways that we could keep
247the the percentage which five and 5 six7 something like that right is where we are um without having to cut teaching positions like what what would we have to sacrifice otherwise to keep those teaching positions and is that you know Is it feasible is it not um you know it we could easily just take the capital budget and bring that to zero and use that $500,000 for for teaching positions you know that that's obviously a tradeoff um not that I would encourage or recommend that but you know are there other ways I mean I know you guys have been trying to skin this cat so to speak since October um and and you know this is the best thinking to date but um I would just be interested in hearing that since August August we
248started talking about this in August they enjoyed one month of the year before they started this project morea question Kelly do you know if there will be that magic spreadsheet again where everybody puts their budget increase in from all over and when that might happen did that District districts y sorry other districts oh I haven't seen anything circulate in in the business manager world yet because believe it or not we're really early like although we're a little further we're early for other districts you know most districts are just now like compiling everything and coming up with stuff they're they're not done presenting to their board and and ready for deliberation so maybe Jean through or superintendent can do it at this point I have some but it's sort of is in the confidential until they
249share it with their board and where they're at but as soon as it's it's out to the public then we can share that all with you we have that yes I will just say it's be it's a tough budget year in every District in May okay yeah um so I emailed the board and genene you had responded before about the question if we could if we could have some numbers that explain the difference between a 6% increase versus a 8% increase what does that really look like for the taxpayers um and I think you'd mentioned that that's really tricky obviously because each town does it differently but it might be possible to ask the towns if that's something that they could put together and how I had envisioned it was someone who has a you
250know a $200,000 home in Durham you know what would 6% look like what would 8% look like someone who has a $900,000 home what would that look like I I think that that visual could be really helpful for me and and I think for others and and also for the voters if we if we were to ask them to yeah pass a higher um budget to see what that difference looks like yeah the problem is is like the you know the medi we have like median value right but taxes aren't done on value they're done on the sort of the assessed value from the towns and there's you know they're in varing stages of of Equalization with market value I know in Durham we're I don't know 65% or something of market value for our
251tax assess um which is you know which you can see if you look at the mill rate right of 22 versus 14 in the other towns that's a function of the values um we won't get into that tonight but um it's just a challenging it's a challenging thing to collect it's probably even more challenging to explain in a way that doesn't create more confusion than it solves I don't know um yeah I just thinking about something Michelle mentioned in finance Comm because we were talking about all the requests and everything and um just how different each Town handles it so the fact I mean Durham has been using their undesignated fund um balance to keep their taxes low so even though it looks well not low I'm sorry keep keep them from increasing exponentially sorry
252um so they're using that to offset the increases is probably a better um sort of thing but it's it's almost like an illusion then because so the Durham residents aren't really seeing that school increase in their tax bill if the town is deciding to take some of their undesignated fund to give tax relief so there's not really um you know it varies by the town because each town can do what they want within some of that so I just wonder you know if if we're worried about passing the budget if were if we were to ask folks to pass a higher budget if there are some people who just won't do it because there's a it's a percentage that's higher than what we've done before but not really understand what that what that means means
253and if that means that you know does should each town be providing more education around that like is there an opportunity for us to be helping folks understand what that impact really looks like which it does obviously look different for everyone and I understand that it really does look very different for everyone um and we can't pass judgment on on folks for how they want to um um spend their money as much as we would like them to invest in education um but I I'm I'm just wondering if there's an opportunity there for us to be making things a little more transparent so that they can really make an informed decision yeah I mean you know we might be able to say something like if your tax assessed value in pel is $250,000 the the
254increase would be this if it was $500,000 it would be that you know so people can find the one that's closest to them maybe I mean if they even know what their tax assess value is versus what they think their house is worth right because that that's that's a huge sort of jump in a lot of people's minds on how it works um so um maybe I mean and then it's less um sort of uh less about like what's the median value by town because that varies based on the equalization but like if we just say hey you know when the mill rate is this the an increas in the mill rate of this for 100,000 per $100,000 of your house equals this many dollars right um you know we we talked about this you
255know they we did this a lot with with the high school renovation like it's a pizza a month kind of you know give people a perception process I mean that it's not always well received even when you give them that information um but we could try I mean that's probably that's prob probably more around um how do we communicate the budget once we've deliberated it and and adopted it um but less about you know the deliberation piece I think it it might make things a little easier or harder to swallow in in our vote to understand that a little bit better as well and and again the difference between a 6% versus an 8% in particular I have a really naive question um is it has it ever been done or is it even in
256the realm of possibilities to take some percentage of the costs needed for the capital campaign and the life safety projects and do like a private appeal to private fundraisers to have some percentage of that money come um from another pot um I mean we've certainly fundraised for capital projects before like the track and field right I mean that was um that was 2/3 three4 um fundraised um so it it's not to say it can't be done um I'm not sure we'd have the luck trying to get get people to donate to fire panels as we did the turf but you never know um oh 20 years oh I mean I don't know it got voted down a bunch of times like they well no I mean when it actually got done but I want to
257say I mean I jokingly said 20 years but I think the first vote on the track and field Kelly may remember I don't know it was like before the before the RSU was almost 20 years ago when they started talking about doing a new field and and stuff like that and it you know they put it with the school and they got voted down and they separated and they you know it went round and round until it was primarily fundraised um and I think you know we ended up using undesignated fund B we were going to bond it our the you know the the district's portion which ended up being a million maybe um but then we ended up just using the undesignated fund balance to to fund that so we didn't take on additional
258debt but um you know we're we're looking at something smaller than that right now on the the basketball courts right they're doing a fundraising campaign to resurface the basketball courts um so that kind of stuff does happen um I'm not sure first of all it it's not fast ever um you know they're looking at you know $100,000 for the the basketball courts and it's over a year probably maybe two um that they've been working on it so um I'm not sure it would give us a Quick Fix on any of it appreciate the question because that thought has occurred to me about the tennis courts um and as unbelievable as it is to me this is my seventh year on the board and I we've been talking about the tennis courts since I came onto
259the board and I'm like we want to get the kids those courts and I think we have 40,000 going into them this year and I think it's so great that we have the folks doing the basketball project and I wish we could get tennis courts faster and um that could be like maybe one maybe one area I mean I don't know if we I know Kelly Kelly has a a tennis tennis playing kiddo but I don't know if there's boosters there or or whatnot but it's an interesting idea any other requests of Kelly and Jean that would be helpful as we take on the work of deliberating at the next meeting send it to us by March 1 you think of it later so so March 1st is Saturday FYI um okay so uh things
260we have not gotten to yet um the finance report from Kelly says five minutes usually takes 45 seconds uh we have board committee and reports so um Finance facilities policy and curriculum um those I think we could easily push to the next meeting if if folks were so inclined um I mean obviously the big thing is the policies and um I I'm interested in hearing people's yeah sorry I just wanted to say I would like to let Kelly give her report this time because um next time she doesn't she doesn't come to the meeting well actually it's budget so she's going to be here any never mind TR we might still get to you though don't go anywhere um is the policy um obviously we have second read for some stuff there's some uh first
261read um new items and then obviously the the consideration to revert back to the former policies um I feel like this is going to prompt a pretty reasonable conversation um and I don't know that everyone how everyone feels about undertaking that now or if we want to move that to the next meeting what's on the agenda for the next meeting yeah Colin um I think my uh my proposal would be that we move the um the first and second reads to the next meeting um but we do the um C we do 11 c um I also have prepared some notes for that which I'm going to present which I don't think will um uh no [Music] no it'll age really well um no but I think it won't um uh um mean that we
262won't have to talk about it at all those notes are not going to solve everything for us but my hope is that those notes will clarify I think some of the confusion around um around that particular issue and my hope is that that might be able to speed up our conversation um around that not to say we shouldn't continue to have any conversation we have about it but I really would like to do that one tonight okay so we we can uh do I take that as a motion to extend the board meeting to for consideration of uh item nine on the agenda the administrative report and item 11 C past 10 p.m. I have I have made I have motioned it okay and Beth has second it any questions every okay uh and great
263so all those in favor oh we have a question this would be the meeting of the 12th right March 12th yes is our next meeting yep okay uh all those in favor great and um and so we will do that um and we can when we get in to see after we've heard colins's comments if we find that we still feel like it's going to be a very long discussion we can always table it um but at least it gets it started so we'll move to Kelly first for hers good evening is it morning yet you could say good morning no so the uh um figures that you have in front of you tonight are uh reporting out through January 31st 2025 uh for the current year budget that we're in and um right now
264now we're about 58% collected um you can see that our interest is ahead of projection and um that was one of the things we did talk about in the revenue section of the proposed budget for 25 26 we made a small um increase in that line based upon historical um numbers being a little higher and as far as our expenditures we're about 92.1% encumbered and spent for the school year um we are about 5% higher than we were last year at this time when I look at the numbers um and I think that's largely because everybody's getting used to Kelly being at at the helm now right and um and so I'm more of that active um be monitoring your budget kind of thing and we did have a um a request or I had
265a request at our last administrative team meeting asking the principes and directors to be um thinking about that this last quarter that's coming up for us all and to get their ordering in um and going for the supplies and and materials that they'll need for that last quarter so we can really kind of get a better handle of of where the budget's going to land for the year um and you know we can do a couple of things with that uh because we can if if some um items might potentially um be tabled by the board during this that we were proposing for this budget cycle do we have potentially maybe some funds that we can get those done with this year if they're high priority um and or it we can have a better
266sense of what's going into our undesignated fund balance so when we have these discussions about the concern about how much might be in on designated fund balance for future uses um we might have a better Target for that so I know it's probably going to be Beyond board deliberation on budget but please know that we're we're trying you know we're we have a we're trying to get a better handle on where we're going to end at the end of the year um in the event that we have to make some considerations about what we might be able to get done this year so okay questions for Kelly thank you thanks thanks for letting me do my part tonight and not have to come back for it okay so um I am going to get uh
267the motion on the floor and then I'm going to turn it over over to Colin yes great do I have a motion for consideration and approval to revert back to the prior versions of the following policies one AC non-discrimination equal opportunity and affirmative action 2022 ACAA harassment and sexual harassment of students 2020 ACA a r student discrimination harassment and Title 9 sexual harassment complaint procedures 2020 acab harassment and sexual harassment of of School Employees 2020 acab employee discrimination harassment and Title 9 sexual harassment complaint procedures 2020 Colin and Beth thank you uh hi all um if I could just beg the um board's Indulgence I have prepared some notes I wrote them when I was less tired uh than I am now so hopefully they reflect uh that mind um my intention here is to
268um provide you with a little bit of context for um why we are being asked to make these uh changes um what the changes uh uh do mean uh what they do not mean um um and how we may proceed after uh uh potentially making uh these these changes um I also just want to say that these uh these remarks are my own they were not prepared by the um um the uh committee I mean the committee when as I will state we were informed of our legal obligation or the recommendation of our legal council to change these um and um uh these are my notes in response to that um so in the Autumn of 2024 the rsu5 board approved new versions of a set of our policies to comply with new Title Nine
269rules created by the Biden Administration this set of policies did not include a C AAA transgender and gender expansive students this policy was not amended and remains in place in the same form as when the board passed it in the Autumn of 2023 on January 9 2025 the federal court of the eastern district of Kentucky vacated the Biden error rules meaning our new policies were technically no longer in compliance they reflected rules that were no longer law in our last policy committee meeting our board members were informed that we needed to revert to the policies that we had in place until Autumn 2024 policies that reflected the law under the 2020 Title 9 rules to clarify our bringing these policies before you tonight was not precipitated by any of the recent events at the federal
270and state level regarding president Trump's executive orders it is a coincidence of timing that we are taking this action at a time when many people are concerned about the questions raised by this executive order the reversion of these policies has no relation to the executive order our work today is to approve the reversion of these policies in order to comply with the law in short we cannot have policies that state the title that title 9 covers certain things it no longer does if we use the 2024 rules we would be liable for violating federal law again this would be true whether or not president Trump had issued his executive order so what does this mean in terms of protecting our students from discrimination under our reverted policies students and staff are still offered a great
271many protections as stated in the October 2020 version of AC non-discrimination equal opportunity and affirmative action quote discrimination against or harassment of students because of race color sex sexual orientation gender identity religion ancestry or national origin or disability is not allowed um and these policies are still supported in part by federal uh Title 9 law Title 9 law Title 9 is a federal law that protects students and employees from sex discrimination education it was passed in 1972 to ensure equal treatment for all students and employees in schools that receive federal funding Title 9 still provides a wide range of protections for students and establishes processes for in investigating cases of sexual harassment and sexual assault however the 2020 Title 9 rules created during the first Trump Administration are less stringent in certain areas and arguably
272provide fewer protections for students and staff particularly women and girls there is a range of potential impacts to this but let me list a few under the 2020 Title 9 rules schools will no longer be required to provide modifications for students who are pregnant contracted narrow definitions of sex discrimination including for sexual orientation and gender identity narrowed definition of sexual harassment certain actions that are deemed to create a hostile work environment are no longer forbidden under Title 9 narrowed scope of potential wrongdoing uh reinstatement of requirements that sexual harassment hearings are live and allow for cross-examination of the victim by the accused decreased privacy rights for all participants victim and the accused decreased responsibility to monitor programs and activities for sexual harassment abolished requirement for quote prompt time frames end quote for resolution decreased requirements
273to provide informal and formal supportive measures to be clear these protections apply to all genders but it's important to note that the highest rates of sexual violence assault and harassment are committed against women and these Pro protections have been decreased the 2020 Title 9 rules make women and girls less safe the Trump administration's reinstatement of the 2020 rules creates a situation where it is far more difficult for students to address experiences of sexual harassment and sexual assault the primary population impacted by this is women and girls some data from the amhc sexual assault support network funded by main DHHS approximately 7.1% of Maine high school students 10% of girls and 4.1% of girls of boys report that they have been physically forced to have sexual intercourse 14.8% of girls and 5% of boys report having
274been forced to have sexual contact in any way in their lifetime 17.2% of Main High School students 23.4% of girls and 11.1% of boys report having been the target of offensive sexual comments at school or on the way to or from school in their lifetime a recent study found that one in five adult main residents reports that they have been the victim of rape or attempted rape during their lifetime almost 36% of female respondents and 10% of male respondents have experienced this devastating crime at some point in their lives that means that there are about 14,000 main victims of sexual assault per year statistically sexual violence assault and harassment primarily impacts women and girls and is perpetrated by cisgendered men the 2020 Title 9 rules make it harder for victims to seek Justice what is
275the impact of these rule changes on transgender students are RSU 5 policy addressing transgender and gender expansive students remains unchanged and Untouched by the title 9 rule change and is not impacted by the reversion of these other five policies as stated in ACAA past October 25th 2023 quote the main Human Rights Act prohibits discrimination bullying and harassment against students because they're transgender end quote yes transgender and gendere expansive students have also lost certain protections by the reinstatement of the Trump administration's 2020 title 99 rules under Biden the Biden administration's Title 9 rules the following protections applied to transgender and gender expansive students while these are no longer covered by Title 9 and will not be enforced from a federal level students in RSU 5 and Maine continue to be granted these same protections under the
276Maine Human Rights Act trans students may not be borred from any covered educational programs on account of their gender trans students may not be denied access to restrooms locker rooms and showers consistent with their gender this means dress codes may not be applied against trans students in a discriminatory manner trans students may not be subjected to invasive examinations to prove their gender to be clear while these protections have been lost at the federal level rsu5 is still obligated to provide these same protections under the main Human Rights Act these obligations and these rights of trans and gender expansive students are out outlined in ACA let me be crystal clear the reversion to the 2020 rules does not change Our obligation to transgender students under main humans right Main's Human Rights Act the legal Authority for
277the protection of trans students in that policy which governs our actions as an RSU flows from the state of Maine not the federal government our responsibilities will be the same tomorrow as they are today as they were when we passed ACAA on that October night in 2023 in the panel gymnasium so to be clear what is our work we need to revert to the earlier policies that were in place until Autumn 2024 so that we are not listing Title 9 rules that are not current simply we can't say that title 9 offers protections that it doesn't does this have an effect on our students yes and arguably the reinstatement of the 2020 Rules by the Trump Administration will have the greatest impact on women and girls are the ferally recognized rights of transgender people decreased
278by the title rules yes however RSU 5's responsibility to provide protections to trans students has not changed our policy ACAA remains unchanged so we suggest uh the reversion to our old policies uh there is an amendment to that which I'll I'll explain in a moment however um I recommend that RSU 5's board requests that our legal council provide us with feedback on on possible ways that might in the future may changes to these policies in ways that protect the rights of students in ways that title 9 no longer does this is not a question that the policy committee is equipped to do on its own we do not have the legal expertise to do that work but we believe that it should be done then it's a bunch of blank page after which I didn't
279write any more words down um let's maybe talk about that okay I will start with a huge thank you for that um I think there was a lot of confusion about why we were doing this and and what it means so I uh I still can't claim to be an expert but I feel like I know more than before you started uh so thank you for that um I appreciate the part of the end about you know the parts that we lost by reverting it doesn't mean we can't have our own policy right I mean we can have policies that are tighter than laws we do it all the time um you know where we feel it's appropriate so um I appreciate the the thought around going back so we are in compliance with the
280law um but then is there another way to provide those those protections and assurances um that we we feel are still appropriate even if they're not covered by Title 9 my my qu I won't say my only question because I can't guarantee that but my question is Title 9 changes every four years it seems yeah um why this time because usually like my my recollection of how this has happened in the past is like there's a change in administration Title 9 changes it takes three years to figure it out and then we make the change and then somebody else comes in and we do this all again my question is is why the immediate reversion um like what is different about this change where we have to do it on the spot where I don't
281feel like we've historically had to do that yeah that's a really good question and I think I can answer it it's because the federal court of the eastern district of Kentucky vacated the Biden era rules so they didn't just change it they just said those rules never happened those rules were not were deemed unconstitutional okay so it's not that yeah so it's not that um the the the Trump Administration has not presented new title 9 rules it it's simply that um that just the Biden error rules do not exist anymore they just don't exist um they are they are good words um on lots of pieces of paper and on the internet but they do not exist as any as any law as a law okay more thank you very much Colin um I know
282you're not a lawyer but is there still an appeal going on in that case I can't answer that question okay an appeal because I guess that's my concern um is um I sought out other legal perspectives on this um other than Drummond and woodsom and I I don't know if that's something the board would like to do but I think that there are differing perspectives on this and I think there are some perspectives out there that this is going to continue to evolve and so um sitting tight is an option as well um that I would like I guess to see us take um I certainly don't want to put anything in Jeopardy but I think that this is also um a matter of of of principle um so to make the changes in the
283event that you know this this is still not not settled um doesn't sit well with me I guess how does it work if there is an appeal right so is the vacation sorry um on hold until the appeal is complete or is it the rules are vacated and if the appeal is successful they come back into place I don't know but I'm assuming if the Trump Administration went through another rule making process they could just change the title nine rules anyway right whatever they want so even if the appeal was successful they could then go and do what we've done every other time there was a new Administration and change the rules and then we do it again right but I think that they would have to go through like a process for that to
284happen um where they put out the rules and then there's a public comment but um anyway I guess additional legal advice would be helpful at least for me um I guess I would just be um concerned um that we're out of compliance with the law and that we would be vulnerable if we're not um in compliance with the current law um that we would be vulnerable to that so even if there is an appeal and things change then we come back and change things again I guess because I I am a fan of complying with the law so um you know that's my two cents just I think just quickly on that I think um yeah I think my I think my my perspective on it is that tomorrow our title n coordinator has to
285um enforce Title 9 like that's her job um and if tomorrow tomorrow if we did not if we do not revert these policies tonight tomorrow she would be required to use the the the um uh protocol that is established in our policy um which is not in accordance with law so I just I think my perspective is I just don't see a way in which that is a good route to go down so for example if if a sexual harassment case arrives on Cynthia's desk to tomorrow and she invest and she initiates an investigation um if she uses the 2024 rules we are we are liable um and that doesn't seem like a good idea to me I think the um the question around the appeal I don't I don't know like I just I
286don't know I don't know that in terms of process um I think uh I I think as as I as I I think articulated um it's not that there there are losses like there are losses um to uh there are losses in having the 2024 uh law vacated um but we are not in control of that um and I think I would prefer to be operating particularly as a policy committee and I guess I I will speak as the chair of the policy committee not for the policy committee but that I would prefer to be operating from a position position where I knew we were working from uh policies that were legal um and that then as we tried to rebuild the the protections we knew that we had that that Baseline um and that
287we could then work strategically toward that that would just seem like a much more comfortable position um and a more defensible position I guess I would prefer for us to have those additional potential expanded um protections that you mentioned Colin us us considering in place in advance of voting to change this understanding all the legal repercussions um I um just given my uncertainty about um about whether this is in flux and and the whole uncertainty around around it I it just gives me pause to to vote for it again fully understanding the the legal implications um yeah I guess my concern is I don't feel like I fully understand what the legal ramifications are like what are we opening ourselves up to my my initial thought is the the recommend ation from the policy chair
288puts us in compliance I feel like we make ourselves a Target if we maintain policies that are knowingly and clearly out of alignment with the law I have much more faith that if we make this change we are in compliance with the law and I have faith in this board and the policy committee that they will bring back um you know the the best way to get those protections back in place to to the best of our abilities to protect our our students and and our staff as we think is is appropriate um I I just I'm I would be I feel like I would be uncomfortable to put us in a position where I knew we were out of compliance with the law um basically asking someone to to to test it you know
289which I don't think we want to do but question there Michelle is when I said understanding the legal implications is I'm assuming that we're in if we're in violation they could open an investigation into the school and it could potentially lead to loss of funding but I guess I don't know [Music] um and I had I I believe I've read that there's never that that has never occurred in history the history of Title 9 where a school was investigated and lost funding but that certainly I mean we're in a new kind of era it certainly doesn't mean it couldn't happen quickly on that I think I think I mean yes I think that's I think that's a very big question I think um the way I'm thinking about it in terms of our liability doesn't
290have to do with Federal funding it simply has to do with if if if Cynthia um if a if a if a student comes to Cynthia tomorrow and says I've been sexually harassed and names an accuser the the accuser's family W would uh in all likelihood immediately sue us and that doesn't have anything to do with Federal funding um it just has to do with that that we followed rules that do not exist um and so therefore we are not following the law and therefore we it seems like that is a pretty cut and dry case just for that um accuser's family um so again I I I haven't I haven't been even thinking about the question of federal funding in terms of in terms of this um not to say it's not it's not
291related but I'm just it's not part it hasn't been part of the calculus as I've been thinking about it gu my question is what what exactly is in violation of the law would it be that the policy hasn't been updated yet or is it that is it how our Title 9 coordinator handled it and is the title 9 coordinator have to follow the policy or does the title n coordinater have to follow the law so even if the policy is not updated you would still be following the law and I'm curious something if you can say more like are well never mind nope I'm not gonna ask that question but I that that I think is something to uh to think about or to consider and I guess my question comes back to what part
292is the invi are we inv would we be in violation by having a policy that's not updated yet or is by following our policy would it be that we would be following the policy and I say this is a really this is a really difficult you know discussion and the decision for the board what's difficult for administrators is that we're required by you all to follow your policies yet you have a policy that is now in violation of the law so that puts that would put our Title 9 coordinator in a really really tricky position because we're obligated to follow your policies yet your policy is in violation and that's what You Know M makes it difficult and I think Colin did it did a nice example um it's not even necessarily the federal funding
293but it's the lawsuits if we're not carrying this out by the law well I had shared this with you earlier but I feel the same way that Beth does I I think we have to follow the law and otherwise I I just think that puts everybody at risk and I I don't think that that's worth it could it change again yes and then we bring it back but I I I think we have to we have to follow the law and it's it's the best thing to do that that we could do in my opinion I just have one follow-up question for the AAAA that's for the transgender that is still considered to follow the law because it's drawing from the main human rights Okay so until that gets challenged that's fine I got it
294yeah and just to be very clear title 9 is not referenced in that policy at all do you have a question back no answered the question that was brewing my brain he just sensed it I even did one of those searches where like you go to the menu on the internet browser and you like say find you know and I searched for all sorts of different ways in which I could have written Title 9 and it's not there good okay other comments or questions I just want to I just want to say this sucks yeah I just want to be very clear and as I tried to outline in my um in my remarks um the uh students and staff have fewer protections now than they did before particularly the population of women and girls
295who are most likely to experience sexual harassment and sexual violence but that is not something we control um and so it uh I do not like sitting next to Phoebe and saying that that is so uh as a student here but that is so um but also I as I said to all of you and again I'm saying partially to feebe but also all the other students is that yes we would like to continue to work to find ways to bring back those Protections in a way that is um the a way that that U meets the the the needs of the students and respects the students and staff while also complying with law Phoebe um so you said we could like have another policy that puts those protections back I mean this is where
296this is where it goes beyond the it goes beyond the expertise of the policy committee or anybody on the board um but we are allowed the board is allowed to have uh to have policies in place um that make stricter rules than what is required of us by either federal or state government um we I currently am not capable of going through these documents and finding a way to pull out um uh those Protections in a way that I could have any sense of understanding how it would actually what law it would follow or whether it's under state law or whether it's other federal law um that's just that's beyond our capacity um but I but I know that we can do that technically um but it would just be a matter of looking into
297it um and asking for legal counsel on what are the mechanisms available to us to do that so it would take like quite a bit of time yeah I mean I can't speak to that I mean that I think I think initially I think when I was thinking about this I I was I was trying to figure out a way is there some way that um in good conscience the policy committee could come to you and say we have a way of revising these five policies um so that uh they meet Title 9 while also maintaining all the protections um but we cannot we we are not CA capable of doing that currently um and we we just need councel on doing it so in terms I mean I would like to have it happen
298immediately but I I I would not control that particular process so similar to the policy for pregnant students we changed that's a shall May that's a good now in comp right exactly so like for that so for example yeah so um under under 2020 um Title 9 policy students are not require U sorry schools are not required to offer those protections to pregnant students they may do so but they're not required to do so um and so that's why making that onew change um was weirdly easy to keep us in compliance but it's not easy it's not in any way like that with the other policies have we been given a deadline for compliance not that I'm aware of we're already out of compliance we're already out of comp yeah I mean we're out of
299compliance as of J January whatever it was January 9th but everybody else everybody was out of compliance so wer yeah that's true changed everybody was out of the I I guess I'm just wondering if there's you know like a grace period because I agree with you Michelle I I trust the policy committee um to go forward and make policies that would help uh or bring something back to us consult with legal council um but would again like to have those in place before we before I vote to roll back any um protections but I guess um you know like so if we were out of compliance as of January 9th does that mean that a family could sue us that had a case from January 9th till now does it mean if we take another
300month and develop those policies and then vote like is that putting us at greater risk I guess I just I'm just wondering about that yeah I I don't I I can't answer all of that but I think that um I think and Cynthia just catch me on this but my sense would be if we tried to do that if we tried to not revert um and quickly try to to get our legal counsel or other uh Aid in in revising these um it would be a quite complicated just even motion uh because we'd basically be saying we're reverting except for these other things otherwise we have to go we would be going through our normal process of first and second read which would take at least um uh which would take at least a month
301and a half or two months to do once they were done exactly once they were done um so I think just again Cynthia I'm not sure if how I see that you are awake but I'm barely I'm barely I'm barely awake um but yeah I just I just I think uh just in terms of that process that I don't think that could happen anytime soon so we would just be indefinitely postponing um uh the the moment where we would have to we would be uh reverting and we'd be extending that period of time where Cynthia is caught in a position where she is out of compliance with our um policies but is trying to maintain compliance with law can I just ask a clarification question then I'm noticing the way that the motion is written
302when we revert we don't need to have a first and second reading we just go back to the last policy all right thanks would you like me to tell you what the little thing is that we would be changing as part of the reversion just because there is a there's there's one there's one thing um basically between 2020 and 24 um the ma uh the main legislature uh enacted LD 598 uh which is an act to prohibit discrimination and employment in School based on hair texture and hairstyle um so uh my I guess maybe it would be an amended motion is it amended motion amended motion would be um that we revert uh with um and I would I would read the uh the two places where we would re we would insert that language
303um to make sure that we're then in compliance with uh the main state law as well just that's not to shut down conversation that's just to say that's the information that I didn't tell you before oh um yes how Cynthia how much of this do I how much of this do I read and when do I and when and when do I read it no no no no no no no it's just a um okay tell you what I'm I'm just G to read it I'm just gonna tell you everything say again I would exactly okay great number one here is the sentence we need to be sure to add back into the reverted policies ACAA and ACA uh quote quote race end of the first quote uh includes traits associated with race including hair
304texture afro hairstyles and protective hairstyles including braids twists and locks the sentence will live between the first two paragraphs on page one I believe that's true uh yeah I had it yes yes yes right there right there yes um and then we would be doing similarly uh we would be adding the following phrasing into the um procedures associated with each of those um so into ACA a R and AC a r um we would be adding uh the phrase we add the phras so that the word race appears uh in the definition section one okay definitions we let's all turn our himels to Y section one where it says discrimination or harassment um the second line downward it lists which for students includes okay so we're on page uh one of AC a a yeah
305sorry I did write that down because I came over and talked to you about it and you were very nice and told me where to put it okay so yeah on page one of 15 of ACA a-r under uh definitions section one um under a discrimination harassment complaint procedure definitions um in the second line of number one you will find the word uh race it says which for students includes race color sex sexual orientation General identity Etc um we need to insert uh after uh race but before the comma um the parenthetical including traits associated with race involving hair texture afro hairstyles and protective hairstyles such as braids twists and locks uh and parenthetical and then there would be the comma and that would happen also in acab r is that correct Cynthia Wicked okay
306thank you for that um and um they both amended their motions for that so good uh any other questions concerns before we take a vote Phoebe has a thing yes um I guess I'm just wondering like until we're able to you know hopefully get some of these protections back in place like do we just like sit and wait or like is there anything we can do until then like as a board or as like like the administrators or something like anything yes yes Mara I was just going to say following the vote understanding like I think I know the way it's going to go like could the board send out a communication to the community like reaffirming our commitment to protecting students and saying that I don't know if we can say that we intend
307to pursue whatever we're going to intend to pursue but like something like that in in in um acknowledgement of the comment that we heard tonight and Etc I mean a a few of these things just to answer your question Phoebe I a few of these things are like the first one that I listed was that schools are no longer required to provide modifications for students who are pregnant we're not required to do so but we do we do that already we have that policy in place um um we cannot do anything about the narrow definition of sexual harassment in terms of How It's defined under Title 9 UM could could uh could we eventually create a situation where we have a definition of sexual harassment that is broader than that and is covered through some
308other legal framework I I I believe so I I would I would like to understand that better um uh I think we would have to Pro we I think we would have to comply with the rein we we would comply with the reinstatement of requirements that sexual harassment hearings are live that we wouldn't have an uh we wouldn't have an option on that um the question around privacy rights I think that's an interesting one I think like I don't um I think that might be something where I might even just ask Jean and Cynthia to to to think about that of just saying like right now are there um are there privacy rights that we can offer um that go beyond what is required by title n um uh we the title none uh the
3092020 has rules um means that we have a decreased responsibility to monitor programs and activities for sexual harassment but I think we could probably just very clearly say to Gan and Cynthia we would like you to continue to monitor programs and activities for sexual harassment um uh the abolished requirement for prompt time frames um but I think again that I could imagine that would still be a could still be a goal right because you know not it's not a require M to do that but um and uh I guess the maybe the biggest one is the decreased requirements to provide informal and formal supportive measures I mean I guess I don't think that tomorrow uh we would be changing anything in terms of the actual support that we would be providing to um to victims
310um we would be providing what we would be providing um and uh those would we just would not be required to necessarily do all of those things but those are just our practices anyway so I'm not sure if that answers your question but I mean to me I kind of equate it to sort of the AAAA right we we memorialized it and we put it down on paper but we were we were providing those supports to our students already uh and this just made it very clear that this is what we were doing and how we were supporting them and I I think I Envision a lot of those same things the same way we're not going to say oh we don't have to anymore we're not going to provide those supports we're not going
311to maintain privacy we're not going to monitor our programs um you know they're they may not be the law but they're probably still best practices um so you know we would continue to do those things yeah that's super helpful thank you okay um everyone ready for a vote okay all those in favor opposed thank you um and um to toor's point about a way that we could communicate our continued support for you know all the parts of that were in that Title Nine um I'm definitely open to a way we can who's our strategic Communications people can we task them with uh something like that Daniel just put to people oh it's Cara so do we think that's something that might be appropriate thing for them to take up yeah I think what we could
312do is probably draft something and then bring it to the board and the board could take formal action on that and would that make sense and and maybe you know maybe it comes in a form of a a co-signed letter between you and I as the administration and the board absolutely so so thank you for all your work on that Colin any chance you could email those comments to me thank you or the board I guess could you email them just send them to the board I will email them to all the email addresses individually try not to spell everybody billions of email addresses 2.3 million email addresses no sorry um is that it I think that's it right did we have anything else we had to public comment oh we're back to public comment
313oh yes thanks okay so yeah I mean we didn't have new business or personnel and we didn't vote to tackle those today anyway so we'll move those other uh policy ones to our next board meet do they move to the next board meeting or do they next move to the next policy meeting which would be the second one in March do do that one do the second one or we'll where we have okay let's yeah find some space yep we'll get it on okay great um then I would uh with thanks take a motion to adjourn Cheyenne and Beth all those in favor great thank you