RSU 22 School Board Meeting 12/15/21

001um right well here it is group coming from the education committee so they're not just late meetings [Music] academy library for our board of directors meeting this evening we are any missing one person jessica hamilton won't be joining us tonight other than that everyone else is in attendance that will bring us to the a budget of one allegiance under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you um that brings us to the approval of the minutes of our november 17th meeting um if i could have a motion for sir okay i have a motion and a second discussion seeing on all those in favor opposed or abstentions all right adjustments to the agenda this evening we have uh under old business we have discuss an act on consideration and approval of the another

002field trip and then under new business we have discuss and act on strategic plan and discuss an act on our district safety plan also on uh under adjustments we have uh look at seven policies that um due to the fact that policy needs uh prepared this week we didn't have it on the other hand so that uh that'll be coming up those are in your pack excuse me mr chair um policy jke which is on your adjusted we won't agenda discussing that one tonight but waiting until msma has to move so no we didn't act on anything on that one so that should probably not be terrible okay thank you we'll remove f from that all right um that brings us to the section of persons to address the board and i have a uh

003i'd like to read policy b-e-d-h so we're all on the same page before we begin all meetings for the board shall be voted to the public all actions of the board shall be taken openly and deliberations leading to board action shall likewise be conducted openly the public is invited to attend board meetings and will be given limited time to voice opinions or problems the board recognizes its responsibility to conduct the business of the district in an orderly and efficient manner and will therefore require reasonable controls to regulate public participation to the board the primary reason of the meeting is for the board to conduct a business charged by law spontaneous discussion as well as order disorder and disruption prevent the board from doing its work and will not be permitted a person wishing to be

004heard by the board shall be first recognized by the chair he or she shall then identify him or herself and proceed with his or her comments as briefly as the subject permits the chair is responsible for the orderly conduct of the meeting and shall rule on such matters as the time to be allowed for public discussion the appropriateness of the subject being presented and the suitability of the time for such presentation a speaker in violation of these rules may be required to leave in order to prevent the orderly consideration of the matters for which the meeting was called persons who disrupt the meeting may be asked to leave and the chair may require request law enforcement assistance as necessary to restore order speakers are asked to observe the following in the case of a large

005audience speakers may be asked to sign up before the meeting so they may be called on expeditely speakers may be asked to keep their comments to three minutes confidential personnel information will not be shared in public session no complaints or allegations will be allowed at board meetings concerning any persons employed by the school system or against particular students personnel matters or complaints concerning students or staff issues will not be considered in public meeting and will be referred through established policies and procedures all speakers are asked to identify themselves gossip and inflammatory comments or abuse or evolve their language will not be permitted speakers must address all comments and questions to the chair comments will be heard and considered requests for information or concerns that require further requests research may be referred to the superintendent to

006be addressed at a later time generally the board does not discuss or act on an item not on the agenda speakers are asked not to be repetitious of comments already made to the board in the interest of a most efficient use of time the chair has the authority authority to stop any presentation that violates these guidelines for privacy privacy privacy rights of others persons wishing to address the board may be permitted to do so only during designated time of public comment at the discretion of the chair a speak speaker may be recognized for a second time on a particular item all speakers must observe rules of common etiquette the chair may interrupt or terminate an individual statement what is too lengthy personally directed abusive obscene or irrelevant the board as a whole will have the

007final decision in determining the appropriateness of all such movements again all right mrs boone you have our first speaker we have 12 speakers this evening and first signed up is dave bear [Music] uh good evening everyone uh my name is dave barrett and my son is a student at hammond academy i actually put that into my paper so i wouldn't forget later on introduction this time after all i'm not the type to intentionally break the speaking rules such as by changing the timer to give me an extra minute in front of the microphone perhaps i'm here to speak tonight about the books being provided to students in our district although i wasn't able to make that particular board reading i did hear about some objections being raised about the particular materials in some of our

008teachers classrooms as a ya author myself this is certainly something of importance to me what really struck me was the fact that if people from outside our community or with no children in the district were this upset there must be something truly a miss so i said to myself dave because i'm on a first name basis with myself you should look into this and you know i have to admit that i'm not only shocked but appalled but in the year of our lord 2021 we're still talking about banning books in schools i mean really this is after after all a world in which in the immortal words of beau burnham you can get a little bit of any everything all of the time from the internet those of us old enough to remember napster know

009how easy it is to find and download media if you want to on the other hand our teachers are trained professionals many of them have master's degrees and this past year not one but two of them were finalists for the maine state teacher of the year award just like i trust my accountant to know what is or is not an appropriate deduction on my tax return i trust our teachers to know which books are age appropriate for their particular students and to stock their classrooms accordingly more importantly i trust them to be able to provide needed context about those books which is not something you can reliably get by using google my wife amy and i feel so strongly about our educators expertise that i dropped off a check for a thousand dollars at the

010briar patch earlier today on behalf of rsu 22 teachers any district teacher or librarian who would like to go and pick out a book for their classroom is welcome to do so until the credit runs out jabron the proprietor has assured me that he has copies of both are you there god it's me margaret and the 1619 project in stock thank you for your time and your service on the board i wish you all a happy holiday season thank you david thank you very much my name is david kasivan i'm a citizen of hampton and my daughter attends hampton academy in her first year i just want to take this opportunity to thank you very much for all of your service i've been here to a couple meetings and have reviewed other videos and all

011i can describe them as is code fatigue shall we say you face a tremendous amount of complexities and challenges in educating k-12 students there's a diversity of needs and abilities regulations abound our k-12 students are asymptomatic carriers and you have to protect students families and staff and it's clear when we look at the statistics that covet has had an impact on learning so i really want to thank you very much for your efforts at keeping our students engaged and in place despite your best efforts you face tremendous criticisms associated with things such as masking people come and argue against masks are doing so under the guise of rights liberties and freedoms but yet rights liberties and freedoms take sacrifice to attain and have an eye toward the common good the arguments you're hearing are arguments

012of inconvenience which do not give credit credence to the complexities you face and it's not with an eye toward the common good but instead asks others to accept greater risk of illness which makes arguments for rights liberties and freedoms seem empty to me when you engage in educational studies of those genuinely deprived of liberties and freedoms you are again criticized the nature of their arguments is a mischaracterization of a critical race theory and you're faced with labels such as marxist and doctrinaisation which harkens back to mccarthyism education is about learning about the pleasant and the unpleasant it's about growing in understanding which leads to empathy which leads to unity paraphrasing from similar expressions theories don't create divisiveness theories don't divide people do with respect to government i believe that government is best that governs least

013which is thoreau's writings on civil disobedience and those that are criticizing the studies of racism and sexual health are actually calling for more government intervention but to engage in censorship regardless of the effects of the impacts and freedoms of speech and press there's another famous expression regarding government which is if men were angels no government would be necessary this comes from the federalist papers but to achieve less government there's no room for personal attacks there's no room for disinformation for false labels for mischaracterizations rather if we not less government we really need to make meaningful gestures associated with sacrifices for rights liberties and freedoms such gestures would involve wearing masks not arguing against them so again i would like to thank you for your efforts and i would encourage you to keep moving forward you're

014really doing a wonderful job despite all of the challenges that you face and i would ask you not to be discouraged by some of the arguments you are about to hear that you have heard please know that you have my support i'm very grateful for all of your efforts and i wish you the best of the holidays thank you very much [Applause] good evening my name is dennis marble and i live in hampden and i offer these comments that i've worked on based on what i observed a month ago in this room and what i've learned since but to start off i'll tell you i went to kindergarten through third grade in a four-room schoolhouse there was one room for each grade along with coke rooms an entry foyer a teacher's room and the principal's

015office the principal's office was small and off the third grade room because the third grade teacher was also the principal one day in spring day in second grade out in the school parking lot my best friend and i mean that sincerely and i erupted into a fist fight out of nowhere i have no recollection as to any reason but i clearly remember hearing the window thrown up in the voice of the kindergarten teacher we both had her name was miss gramzo yelling at us in no uncertain terms to get into her classroom now ten minutes later tony and i heads hanging slowly walked back to our second grade class with miss moran can you remember a fight like this in your young life i think there are three phases to this kind of conflict first

016there's some kind of one to ten explosion and everything is hot blood and adrenaline there's no thinking involved next there's a confrontation and captured by an authority figure with time to reflect on what just happened third and final there is humility and the reassurance of knowing it was stupid but that the friendship lasts i know it's naive to try to apply this to the conflict that has been confronting this school board and administration this trust in local government has been trending for the last 10 or 15 years is probably not enough of an existing excuse relationship between the parents who are upset and those in administrative leadership positions but as challenging as things are i'd really like to think that if everyone genuinely puts the interest of the kids front and center resolution is possible

017i agree that there are parents experiencing frustration i agree that our schools and their leadership are imperfect i am certain our school leaders and administrators would agree with that fact with the exception of some parents however this has not been about the kids or our community it seems to me it's been about a small few trying to tear down local leadership rather than working towards improvement it's been about a political agenda one with state and national connections that feature male white supremacy and that is pretty much nothing to do with local needs our families let's get back to concentrating on the welfare and education of the kids who live in this district thank you [Applause] dana joe smith i'm back up here again to address an ongoing issue that no one seems to be trying

018to resolve and honestly i'm getting really discouraged about it this school system is failing my children your children and there should be more parents that are upset about this how much money and time are we wasting on testing contact tracing and quarantining and for what honestly for what that our kids came in contact with someone who tested positive and they have been exposed my children have had three quarantines that is 30 days of missed school you know how many symptoms they showed zero zero symptoms and as their mother there was nothing i could do to bring them back into school i can't bring in a negative test from a doctor i can't use common sense i'm expected to sit home lose out on wages when my child is perfectly healthy this makes no sense i

019found it ironic that in an email from my child's school it said attendance matters and that two absences a month make it harder for students to stay on track two absences a month and you are forcing my children to miss 10 days at a time are you seeing how many of the positive cases are actually needing additional care are you following up to see how many of these close contacts are turning into positives and then seeing if those positives need further care we think we are protecting the public protecting our kids but have we stopped and asked ourselves if we really even need to is all of this even necessary you guys probably don't remember because i'm pretty confident you don't actually listen to comprehend but in my very first speech before school started i

020said life is about risk versus reward everything we weigh the risk to see if the reward is worth it is quarantining a close contact worth the education that they are missing out on have been battling covet for a while now we have masks pool testing vaccines people that feel they need those have them available when are you going to give parents back their right to choose for their child i'd say it's about time thank you [Applause] good evening chairman miller superintendent nichols members of the rsv-22 school board good evening also to any undercover fbi agents who may be surveilling this meeting tonight on orders of the attorney general of the united states and finally good evening to all the fake news reporters who may be here in person or watching virtually i'm lawrence lachman i

021live in bradley my state taxes both sales and income taxes help pay the bills here in rse 22. just this morning i received the public records i requested on october 28th from superintendent nichols records i requested were entered any teacher training material purchased during use as of june 1st of last year on the following subject matters diversity equity inclusion unbiased training privileged or or advantaged identities targeted identities intersectionality intersectional identities and decolonizing the classroom i wasn't surprised to learn that rsu 22 has paid thousands of dollars to the augusta-based cultural competence institute for their critical race theory training material for teachers chairman miller you and superintendent nichols know exactly what i'm talking about because you took the online instruction let me share with the board some of what is in the material the very first

022lesson the reading assignment is a book titled black dignity in a world made for whiteness and here's the first sentence in that book white people can be exhausting particularly exhausting are white people who don't know they are white and those who need to be white now i ask you can you imagine making that kind of a negative generalization or stereotype about any other racial or ethnic group no you can't you'd be instantly labeled a racist that is a racist statement right there the one that really blew my mind this afternoon and i'll be back next month because there's a load of material here but i want to share this with you the history of racism in the united states a lengthy get this in 2009 the american recovery and reinvestment act the stimulus bill that

023allotted 840 billion dollars for schools municipalities infrastructure development energy quote this act disproportionately benefits white people because of who are more able to meet qualifying criteria sorry for the butchered syntax but that's exactly the way it's expressed uh so that was a racist bill the stimulus package they also complained that in 1981 president reagan weakened affirmative action through his judicial appointments well i got news for you affirmative action is itself a racist policy so this is all left-wing politics the teachers are being drenched in i'll be back next month it's been great talking with you tonight thank you sir [Applause] good evening my name is samantha foster i'm a parent of a kindergartner at mcgraw tonight i would like to voice my concern about the esser application that was signed by the superintendent on september

02429 2021. part of the application process includes something called interim final rule or irf under this rule the school administrative unit must engage in meaningful consultation with stakeholders and give the public an opportunity to provide input in the development of its arp application when the superintendent submitted this application she acknowledged that meaningful consultation was conducted with students and families however i find that to be quite false over the course of summer 2021 and during the meetings held on august 18th and august 24th the discussion was solely focused on rsu 22 reopening plan not the grants themselves and most certainly didn't i'm sorry and most certainly not the requirements that the approval of this group entails it was not transparent that once the grant was awarded that our children would be possibly locked into masking for

025the entire year in addition the survey that was given prior to the two board meetings in august was used as proof of public comment in the esf er application which had many parents questioning why you could vote more than once and of the validity of the results entirely when a community member asked about this during the meeting on august 18th there was no comment from the superintendent or board members once again ignored my point of all of this is the complete lack of transparency and communication to me it feels like you forfeited my choice of whether to mask my child for two million dollars does the esser grant award ensure that my kindergartener will be masked for the full 21-22 school year when will this end according to the cares act if i am reading

026it correctly the funds for the crf esser grant will be available until 2023 do you plan to mask our children until the funds run out or is it really all about the science and if it's the latter cases are still rising even with mass usage and school testing is it just a coincidence that the media knew about the miscount at the first meeting in august before parents did then the emergency meeting was held a day after the town council voted in a temporary board member who was in favor of asking is robert's rule only used when it's convenient for your agenda like limiting the amount of amendments to prevent a chance of a parent's choice all we want is transparency and trust instead we've been misled hushed and ignored something needs to change thank you

027[Applause] stephanie my three minutes to brook miller ma'am um the policy that i read b-e-d-h does not allow yielding of time to other participants i encourage you to speak here three minutes it doesn't say that that i can't have someone speak on my behalf it clearly states that it's it's there for three minutes for community members to speak good evening brooke miller winterport my two children are homeschooled this year there's a running theme every meeting with the many of the speakers every meeting they're trying to communicate with their elected officials and an employee of our district i will share the summary of now two conversations i've had with superintendent nichols that this community is fractured and much of it has to do with school issues and how these issues are affecting our kids during the

028first conversation the beginning of october i expanded on what this community needs to come back together and how it starts with a real forum for discussion these meetings are often just a place to get aggravated after spending hours crafting and timing our three minutes just to avoid being rudely interrupted by mr miller even though there's a timer and we are all well aware of our time at the conclusion where points are raised and questions asked we simply get thanks next no answers no discussions just frustration parents are frustrated because they don't feel like their concerns are being heard i felt like superintendent nichols really listened and actually was open to what i was saying she indicated that she there would be thought going into the idea sadly that didn't happen and last meeting i called

029out what i felt was lip service within a week superintendent nichols had called me and while discussing another item she took the opportunity to tell me how genuine she was during our first check i acquiesced and reiterated the need for a platform sooner rather than later as a community is only getting more shredded as time passes once again we ended up with the conversation concluding i was hopeful while i realized that this may be just one small item a long list of tasks it should be near the top just as you think spending 1.8 million dollars of coded relief aid meant for covering lost education to build the third floor of a new high school will keep kids from dropping out respecting and responding to parents who are raising valuable questions and attempting to have

030a dialogue is how we make sure we are doing what is best for all of our kids it has been two and a half months and we seem no closer to form where parents educators and school superintendent can sit down and have a real discussion about the issues and topics dividing us all if the attendance just to weed out parents or students whose values and ideals you don't like you will still be plagued by parents like me whose kids aren't even part of rsu 22 anymore i will continue to come for my monthly aggravation and stand here to push for better communication and a path forward to mend this community i will continue to make my foa request to make sure you all know that we are watching everything the district and the administration is

031doing and i will continue to push for parents to be heard for them to get the respect that they deserve from you by answering their questions addressing their concerns and opening a dialogue instead of really interrupting them before dismissing them thanks next [Applause] my name's rick stimus bloomberg resident taxpayer and neighbor who when needed for the last 24 years not a public speaker we do not want to be standing here there are many parents and serious concerns that feel we are not being heard i am also the father of a beautiful and talented young lady that is halfway through her sophomore year here at hannah academy who has yet to have a normal high school experience as we all do i feel that students mental health plays second fiddle to the coveted cash the school

032receives to keep the masks on last meeting mrs hamilton asked what would happen if a student wasn't allowed to read a certain book we sat back here and listened to you guys trying to answer it i'll sum it up october 3rd sunday night we were told that we had to watch a video and sign a permission slip not for a field trip to read a book actually respond via email with permission when we decided against it the first thing our daughter said was everyone is going to think i'm a racist start crying she didn't get that from home because she was taught the difference between right and wrong at a young age that's a parent's job not yours your job is education mrs nichols community letter on art on november 4 stated that rsu 22

033is quote committed to the optimal learning of all students and committed to equity in education as the class discusses the book our daughter is sent to sit in that hallway or should i say segregated apparently student slang for it is the special ed hallway not a chair here in the library not an empty desk out on the mezzanine the hallway why is that is that optimal learning it does mean best or more favorable more favorable for some but not all is it equity in education is it equitable to be segregated out of tens of thousands of books to choose from the thought alone to even need a permission slip from parents should have been enough to choose something else instead of taking a chance at dividing the class her first day back in class without

034having to leave was december 1st do the math i don't have teaching degree but comb sense tells me that that's wrong and 100 of the people i talk to agree does anyone in this room think this is okay is anyone sitting up there to think that this is okay if you do maybe it's time to find a new career it's time to get back to education not this woke garbage [Applause] hello melinda pelicans from newburgh i noticed when the chair addressed the board tonight he addressed them as his or her why are our children being taught that it's appropriate to pick your pronouns i was recently shown a video called why gender pronouns matter that is required of our children to watch to me this is unacceptable i ask that you take this out of

035the curriculum and lead the parent into the parents that's all i have [Applause] sean mcgrath concerned taxpayer chair miller you've already agreed through your lack of action lack of following policy and lack of your oath of office under god the comprehensive sexual education books are okay for eight-year-olds at weatherby you agreed that graphic pornography racism incest and pedophilia is okay for 13 year olds at hampden academy to read without their parents permission you've allowed bullying and libel towards me from teachers the teachers union and your one employee realize that i will not stop advocating for the students of rsu 22 who feel they don't have a voice just because they were raised with morals nor the parents who are too afraid to provide pushback to the indoctrination parents don't want rsu-22 to parent their kids

036parents pull your kids out of these schools now the district is currently broken beyond repair the educational assessments are dismal the gas lighting constant with our tax dollars your children are at risk based on socialist communist and totalitarian doctrines if you decide to stay get immediately involved with your kids homework now so we're at an impasse you won't act because of your fear of conflict and i won't stop pointing out this district's hypocrisy and nonsense on a national level so i'll be offering the district a book list to counter the critical race theory and hypersexualization of children's books that this district finds appealing i'll advocate for student choice since you won't do so you will not advocate for parental choice the first book i'd like to recommend is johnny's walrus which was number one on

037amazon's lgbtq list so quickly johnny's a boy with a big imagination first amendment allows me to say anything i want these three minutes reading a book is an activity one morning he came downstairs barking and clapping wood spoons and tests socks and things reading a book johnny the walrus he said with a roar excuse me reading from that book i'm going to ask you to go sit down okay the woods floor is my ocean the carpet can you go sit down your public comment period is over thank you chair miller outstanding thank you [Music] [Applause] kristen pete please good evening and thank you for the opportunity to address the board my name is kristen pete i'm a mother of three kids in the school district two at smith school and one at hampton academy i'm

038speaking tonight in support of the equity work the district is doing i sit on the equity and education committee and i'm honored to hold that position i was raised as a pastor's kid in a conservative christian household and i still try to live my life according to those values i was taught to treat everyone with kindness and respect to be in service to others and to uplift those who were oppressed this is what equity means to me and i hope to see these values reflected in my kids my home my schools and my community i believe equity work transcends gender race political affiliation social status or sexuality i believe that having our children learn in an environment that promotes respect for all will make our children better people thank you again for taking on this

039work and for the opportunity to speak tonight [Applause] all right that takes us into my report the policy that we have for you tonight is actually um it's main statute it's duties of school boards that's in your pamphlet it's a lengthy read so please feel free to read that on your own time committee assignments are also in your um folders so uh i think you've all been aware of that already so that's there for your viewing and um i just the last thing i had is superintendent evaluation um there will be an electronic version possibly already in your um full un uh electronically file um that will be sent to you and we will get those back to the vice chair frank what says at um day are we trying to get us two words

040all um have them back to chairman vice chair rob ranked by the 28th all right that takes us um two personnel so we'll send this evening i have one resignation to announce and that is of frank perry who has been a mathematics teacher at hampden academy his resignation will be effective january 1st 2022 due to retirement mr perry was hired back on august 26 of 2002 and has taught at hampden academy for 19 and a half years so i'd like to thank him for his service and recognize his longevity with us so mr perry thank you so much we do have one teacher to nominate tonight uh this is morgan johnson as a replacement for mr perry's mathematics position morgan johnson is going to come to us as a long-term sub contingent on the receipt

041of her teaching certificate from the university of maine she has just graduated and so she will be hired on that contingency at a salary of thirty nine thousand forty three dollars so we have a motion and second uh discussion all those in favor opposed i'm sorry will she have insurance during this period this contingency when she's conditioned yes she will yes she will she'll have all of the rights and responsibilities of the focus correct thank you and we also are bringing her in before mr perry uh retires so that they will have some overlap in the position anything else you'd like to add mr tracy uh no we're just really excited she has some experience as a long-term sub after she completed her student teaching so while new she has some experience in her own

042classroom setting so we're really excited to add her okay any other questions all right let's try this again all those in favor opposed or abstentions and i believe morgan may be watching so if you're out there on youtube congratulations to you morgan next we have three coaches so we have christy knights as girls basketball b team at wagner middle school she is a former former basketball player herself and played intramurals in college at a stipend of and 2817.36 cents all right removed and seconded uh discussion all those in favor opposed extensions next we have michael knights as assistant indoor track coach for hampden academy he is a former basketball player and college as well he has a stipend afforded at 2 817 and thirty six cents all right we have a motion and second discussion

043all right all those in favor opposed for extensions and lastly we have brittany layman as assistant indoor track coach for hampden academy she is currently our head volleyball coach and an assistant outdoor track coach at hampden academy as well her stipend three thousand forty seven dollars and forty four cents okay it's been moved and seconded uh discussion correct any other discussion all right all those in favor opposed or all right let's give all those three of those around [Applause] now this evening i'd like to welcome board member anderson to read the essential behaviors and outcomes proclamation education enables all students to learn the skills acquire the knowledge and develop the attitude necessary for them to reach their potential as citizens who can meet the challenges of a challenging global society we believe that all citizens

044in our communities share the responsibility to educate our children and themselves our schools are community support systems and should welcome and encourage all members of our committee communities to participate and our schools will have a supportive and empowering atmosphere for all students and community members thank you as we move into the superintendent report tonight i'd like to start with recognitions we have staff recognitions and student recognition tonight i'd like to start off with a recognition for a teacher samantha pohl is with us tonight and it is my pleasure to announce that she has been selected to receive the annual award for excellence presented by the maine stem partnership and samantha has been awarded this honor already and in attending that awards ceremony i need to speak to the fact that her colleagues not only from

045rsu 22 but our surrounding school districts had nothing but the best to say about her collaboration her dedication and how they could consistently depend on her not only to help the partnership but also to mentor them as well so i'd like to offer samantha an opportunity to speak if you'd like to and congratulations to you [Applause] it's off so thank you so much for recognizing me tonight it means a lot to me i also wanted to take the time to thank uh the main step partnership in the rye center for allowing opportunities for me to learn and grow as a teacher and i'd also like to thank my family of professionals at wagner who i'm so lucky to get to go to work with every single day thank you [Applause] we've had a long-standing partnership

046with the rye center and it has brought hands-on science to our schools the units of study that the teachers present with the students are memorable they certainly want to get outside get to use a lot of manipulatives it's very rich so thank you for promoting i'd like to recognize uh our boys cross-country team coach and a runner for our team danielle johnson has been recognized across the state as the boys cross country coach of the year in the portland press herald and runner abbott valentine has been announced as runner of the year and i'd like to welcome them to be honored tonight so danielle [Applause] um so yeah thank you for honoring us both tonight um you know we're called like our our sport is like other sports punishment so any you know i know

047guys we're crazy when we're out there running but we actually enjoy running oddly enough so um you know thank you to the board for all your decisions to keep us healthy you know we have very little interruptions to our season with quarantining so it made the season really great for us and it's been very helpful to have athletics it's a stress reliever for kids for a lot of my kids they need that that that's the best part of their day is coming to practice and running off that energy and frustration and you know the happiness they had so thank you for allowing us to have sports and for that um you know positive part of the day for a lot of my kids thank you for this recognition and i also want to thank my

048team for pushing me to improve and for being there for me throughout my season they really the culture that we built on this team throughout the past couple years that has really helped me and helped us all to become better runners and just better people and i also want to at this time it's been a great thank you to my coach who has really probably been one of the single greatest people who's helped me improve in my running she's done a lot for the team and for me especially and it's been great to go through these four years with her i also like to thank my dad who's here in the audience tonight for helping me to improve my running and for help to putting me through a lot of my summer training i wouldn't

049be where i am certainly without him and when i think about all these awards i've gotten all these races that run what really really what i love is just being here doing the work putting an effort and seeing improvements and i think that cross country is a sport it really gives a lesson for a lot of us that if you're putting an honest book if you're putting in effort then you'll get your rewards will get your improvement thank you [Applause] we've always been blessed to have such a great uh cross-country team and it's it's great to have um new leadership in that position and thank you mrs johnson for all you've done and thank you abbott for your words to us tonight i almost couldn't say what i wanted to say i was so moved

050by what you said so thank you congratulations to both of you again uh next we will move to the district status report that is an annual report that is presented in december and so we have has been asked to consider the tv being angled differently toward the audience and we've done that tonight so board members you can view this through your computer you do have a pdf of the presentation before you so we'll get this set up and start in dorothy could you read me the number one nine seven four so this evening i would like to have this report be thorough enough for you to have an aspect included that you feel is important of course and ask any questions but i also recognize that it is important that we move through our meeting

051so i am going to go at a pretty good clip through this presentation if you would like to stop and ask any question along the way please do we'd love to have that in our interaction we will have our administrative team here to certainly be able to follow up on anything that we'd like to discuss more in depth and then we also have a student who's going to be presenting with us tonight i'm excited to say district status report our goal in rsu 22 is a culture of success and culture of success is absolutely about moving forward recognizing where you can improve and making good on that i do think you'll see in the district status report that we've recognized that there have been many many challenges in the past year if not 18 months

052and the way the district has approached that i think has been one where we've managed to have school open five days a week and we certainly hope that we continue with that and more rsu 22 is comprised of six schools and we have photographs of each for those who might not get from one town to the next to enjoy each of the campuses we are very fortunate to have a contiguous campus on the hampden campus and then we also recognize that there is a pathway between uh smith school and wagner and we're going to continue to consider what we can do with that so we can get as close as possible to contiguous there as well we're built on a tradition of excellence we all recognize the old hamden academy it has been a school

053of tradition i would like to say that when i talk to alumni of hamden academy that is what they often speak of it is a tradition of rigor it is a tradition of pride and we certainly are striving to continue that with the students of today graduation rates in rsu 22 exceed the state average and have for years as you can see we continue to build momentum in our graduation rates we are constantly seeking to make sure that when students do graduate they are afforded all of the benefits that a solid education can provide and have opportunities no matter whether they choose college career or to go ahead into the military school of choice we do have many tuition students from surrounding schools for which camden academy is a school of choice you can see

054in this slide that we have a total of 66 tuition students attending our schools right now so in glenburn we use a van system because what we have learned through having so many tuition students is often they get to an age point where they prefer to drive and then for orington we have bus routes that connect so we do send a bus over to brewer that connects with orrington students just like you to get a picture of who we are of course you see here that our students are involved in many many things each and every day you get out in the schools every hour is different and we're very excited to say the students being back in school has certainly been not only something they have been wanting to do but the teachers have

055said having students back in person there's nothing like it this is the part where i get to invite a student brooke mckay from hampden academy hampton academy has been working with us over the last year around portrait of a graduate designs related to our strategic plan and brooke has been a member of that team from the inception she is coming out tonight and do you have awesome thank you very much so brooke uh would you like to go to the podium so you could use the microphone and then everyone could hear you let's have your introductions first okay for both of you uh hi everybody my name is brooke we've been working on this portrait of a graduate project since last year it was me and three other students two of which are gone now

056so we've added some more to the project and it's gone through several phases and we've finally reached a certain point that i think you guys were happy with and we were happy with too and we wanted to take it a step further this year uh so we have some new students like declan helping us and basically we wanted to take it from the design of a tree if you want to go to so we have the design of a tree with the wording of the five categories to represent a portrait of a grad an rsu 22 graduate but we decided to take away the whole word thing because you can't really read it on a logo it's really small so we're working on these new draft versions and you guys said you wanted to see

057a bronco because you know that really represents hamden academy and everyone comes through hamden academy so you felt like that was an important aspect and we do too so we wanted to kind of combine the tree with the bronco and so we have three new logos to show you oh so in this first design here we have the tree uh we've got that we have the rsu 22 in the middle similar to the previous one and then two broncos on either side of the tree um yeah i guess you can go to the next one and she also made the weeds a lot more full i know that so this is our second one um in this one there's a bronco in the middle um almost like a part of the tree i guess and

058it's centered to you know sort of emphasize its significance you know in our district and then rsv22 on either side is larger so it's a little more likeable and then uh changed up the colors in the in the leaves a little bit so it brings that uh bronco a little bit more uh and some rings around it so it kind of brings everything together and then i have a third from brooke and i'll pass this around yeah okay uh so this next one i actually did on my laptop not the school maps which have like the way better photoshop so i will say this is just a draft um that i did on my laptop but you can go ahead to the next one oh wait oh i don't have the electronic version of that

059oh my computer sorry um yeah i added a lot more leaves too but i decided to keep the leaves purple because i felt like we kind of gut we stream into hampden academy from all these feeder schools so i wanted like the leaves to represent i want the bronco to represent the student and the leads to represent all the things you gain once you enter hampden academy once you become a graduate and the roots are where you came from the smaller the smaller schools um and i just liked the it's like kind of like uh doing that i just feel like it it represents strength and like you know the one outside kind of looks like that well thank you both very much for representing your team and your artwork we will continue to review

060the drafts that are coming in and our ad hoc committee will be in touch about where we go from here but the start for this revision is really amazing great job thank you [Applause] so i guess we'll keep on hoping okay so demographics in rsu 22 we are in an enrollment right now of 2264 students that is down from years pre-covered and we certainly are making gains every week we do have six returning homeschooling students that will be starting by january 1st we do have 86 tuition students and or superintendent agreement attending students home school 152 students and you see our free and reduced lunch rate is 24 you'll see our ethnicity percentages there along with our balance of males and females in the district in attendance we do have goals around attendance this year

061we're working very very hard we are required by the state of maine to report out on truancy and we do have 27 truancy cases we also have a chronic absenteeism rate of 19 which i'll speak to a little later and describe what the differences are there our district budget is 35 million 209 158 dollars we did have a passage rate of 65 by our communities and we do receive state subsidy at a level of 20 million 779 we are a 69 receiver which is substantial in the state of maine federal funds have certainly come to rsu 22 as well as all other school districts across the nation we have tried to make the most of identifying areas with these funds that our administrative team our teachers we've talked to transportation we've thought about the learning

062impacts that we do need to address and we are excited to say that we are about to have liftoff for a tutoring program and a pre-teaching program and some focus on foundational skills that i'll speak more to in this report and if you are curious about the additional details just for tonight this was also featured in the link 22. our current enrollment across each school is listed on this next slide along with the aggregate daily attendance we call that the ada and chronic absenteeism rates you'll see in the first column what the enrollment is and then the daily attendance percentage the chronic absenteeism and just listed by the number of students that we have in that category as of right now chronic absenteeism is based on not having more absenteeism than 10 of your school

063year so i do want to say very clearly that students who are under chronic absenteeism right now as the school year goes longer you actually will have people coming off this list because if they've had five to eight absences already they might not have any more for the rest of the year and so we'll be keeping an eye on that of course quarter to quarter trimester of a trimester part of the culture of success we have is our staff we certainly couldn't be doing all of the things that we do or providing the opportunities you've heard about much of the success this fall as we come back i'd like to let you know though that in this slide it shows that our veterans status is quite significant in rc22 we have just 15 percent of

064our staff that is actually under 10 years in experience so regarding that professional excellence you'll see that we have a goal around national board certification and rsu 22 we're up to 12 certified teachers we do have 122 master's degrees in our district that is solid and of course with the veteran staff we would expect that we would see numbers like that and we really look to grow the number 12. we hope that the national board continues to grow it's very important that foundational skills are cemented for students no matter what grade span they are in we recognize that there are trajectories that students are on for their learning so when you have a steep trajectory as a student it means you're gaining gaining gaining gain when you start to have more of a flat trajectory

065we know that you may need to have some type of enrichment or you may need to have some type of remediation or intervention so it's very important that we focus on what those foundational skills should be so you can see here that we've defined what it means strength of curriculum we call this tier one in education practice we want to make sure that our teaching practices are aligned well with the solid curriculum learning to read needs to come before you read to learn things so learning to read is going to be quite an emphasis for us in the coming months and we're excited to tell you more about that writing instruction and practice is very strong in our issue 22 we actually are receiving reports from secondary ed telling us that our writers are performing

066very strong in our majors and we also recognize when they get to high school most students are very able to write with some level of quantity and also be able to write in certain modes which is very important we start that very young the understanding of numeracy concepts and application procedures is critical for math and so we have much training under our belts around new numeracy strategies but once again we also have envision math curriculum as our basis and i would say to you those on the education committee are familiar with this and to learn more please attend those meetings a mix of traditional and innovative academics for both literacy and numeracy are important but we also make sure our science and social studies are strong as well so you can see all of the

067ways that we recognize we are addressing those in middle and high school of course they are receiving students who have been through the paces of learning to read transitioning to read to learn basic mathematical skills we take the students from there and really think about the focus especially the focus for independent reading literacy skills for critical reading and analysis and then writing assignments are based on a number of different modes of writing so that students will be proficient in whatever type of demand they find themselves in whether that's for school or in their life we also are sure to reiterate teachers studying the data that's coming from these experiences in the classroom so our schools have data walls that focus on attendance behavior and or academics we have reteaching expectations when students are not achieving

068at the levels that we expect and then we have committees that are underway and scheduling in our schools is very important especially at middle and high school it's actually a strategy we use to make sure we're prioritizing student time correctly and that we're getting the priority areas met we have a focus area in middle and high school to teach students how to think not what to think it's very important basis and we are moving forward to continue to have our curriculum identify those areas and move forward now beyond the foundational experiences targeted supports need to occur because there are times when students don't learn what they might need to initially so we call these targeted supports most often interventions and for students who have early intervention needs we know that where we need to focus

069first is what's called tier one that means it's the teacher in the classroom day to day today around the focused curriculum then we move into thinking of those steeper learning trajectories to get more gain quickly we try interventions which might be differentiation changing it up depending on what the student needs and being quite sophisticated about how we actually are customizing then we also need to think about small group instruction how do we group and regroup depending on what is needed and then we also make sure that we have intervention time built into the school day and we're working on that you'll see in the strategic plan later on tonight that that's going to be one of our emphasis areas we also target support for our teachers because in learning all of these strategies and recognizing

070when remediation needs to happen or to become proficient in a new curriculum approach we offer professional development to ensure success we support national board attainment and the programming that goes behind that along with college degrees in the community we know we need targeted support around other things like food and security that some families are facing we have school supplies provided in rsu 22 that's been a board effort over the last three years and then we have the holiday giving we are sure to look for places where we could be of support and then we have had the vaccination clinics for the families who have been interested in that option within their home district targeted supports at elementary are many and they change based on the grade level of the child because we all know the

071difference between a kindergartner and a second grader and a pre-k student is wildly different so we make sure that we're customizing those enrichments we do have two and a half literacy interventionists that are serving in our schools we have a halftime math enrichment interventionist in one of our area schools and the theme this year is tier one toolbox so that professional development has been focused on and that is primarily at mcgraw school for that theme we have social emotional support pbis has been introduced at both our mcgraw school and at wagner middle school pbis is positive behavioral intervention support and we also have training from our bcba lots of acronyms in education bc behave bea is basically a behavioral coach so this person not only assists teachers in learning how to implement strategies but also

072coaches and works with students directly title one is a federal program that does allow us access to funding for remediation and we have two and a half title one teachers and also we have extra math for third grade called the tricky tuesday so we're trying to think of uh this is just a smattering of what we have going on building principals are constantly working with their staff to think about what is it we need to do and the teachers are stepping right up to do so here are elementary supports for social emotional needs certainly students and i heard a parent speak of it tonight mental health is critically important and we need to have the sports in place we are looking to have professional development and coaching from our bcba where needed we also are

073thinking about ways that we can incorporate students having more engagement with their building and feeling good and positive about school academic supports are listed there and you'll see some additional social emotional supports at the bottom middle and high school another acronym rti rti is response to intervention it's used at all levels of our school the way that it works is that that tier one that i spoke up earlier that's the foundational curriculum and teaching is always prioritized the measure they ask us to think about is our eighty percent of your students getting what they need from that tier one and if not you should work really hard at refining there so we do that then tier two is getting your supports through remediation differentiation tutoring and then level three is a level that many many

074students do not reach but we would have intensive supports in place and most often that results in also having special ed services so our ti process is being built in our middle and high schools those are the levels where we've often used course types or course tracking and education to differentiate but we recognize in our school district that we want to take it to a much deeper level and have students have actual time in their school day where the teachers can respond to them targeted supports at the high school include bar you've heard about bar it's been brought here before as a discussion and certainly to ed committee heart is a hamden academy response team that looks at students in their achievement and then makes decisions about how they might be better supported there's an

075equity response team that has recently been developed and is working very well at hampden academy along with a student-driven writing and math center which is new and it's really exciting we have students helping students it's a great collaboration discipline strategies we also target because we know the social emotional is just as important so we are really focusing on restorative strategies and reducing in-school suspensions and out-of-school suspensions and making sure we're prioritizing which one we're using as a strategy and having tiered friday night detentions so when you think about all the supports that come and are needed we do have postgraduate plans for students you can see here that we had 183 students graduate in 2021 of those 183 114 responded to a survey the results of those 114 show that we had 61 going to

076a four-year institution 24 headed to a two-year institution five percent were going into the military and six percent going to their career straight to work and then we of course had a few who are undecided which to me at 18 fair enough let's talk about student achievement now there is a system called mars that's the main achievement register in maine and we have to report our test scores there each year these are our 2021 spring scores as aggregate we had a reading score of 75 as achieved as compared to the state score of 63 and then math at 65 as compared to the state average of 54. and now we're going to go into some building data and i'm going to go through it relatively quickly but certainly you will have this presentation you can

077refer to and we can stop at any time for questions so this slide looks at our k1 achievement and it's looking at fall and spring 2021 so let's talk about the timeline fall 2020 led to spring 2020 and we all know what happened spring 2020. there were no tests we were all at home we were required though to follow and make sure that we look at the cohorts as they move through the system so let's just take kindergarten math in the fall of 2020 the kindergarten cohort was at 93 when we get to spring of 2021 you see that they are at 78 and so that has led us to question why would that be then if you drop down to fall of 2021 in first grade because those kindergartners are now first graders you'll

078see that they have so we've chatted about this and we're doing these studies on our numbers we recognize that kindergarteners learn by having hands-on learning so often manipulatives having games having activities play is part of learning in kindergarten and when you have remote learning you have absence of that so we're paying very close attention and this is going to lead us to share with you some plans we have regarding our earliest learners okay next we have our grades three four and five we'll do the same exercise there you can see math fall for the third grade was at 47 we moved to spring of 2021 you see quite a jump to 66 and then we're going to look down to fourth grade fall of 2021 75 we recognize that these students of course being older

079are able to gather conceptual understandings from having conversation which you can do on remote school they can look at something that's displayed and replicated remote learning was a different experience for that grade level we also recognized that coming back to school was likely helpful in april of 2021 that in-person experience probably supported some of the increases that we've seen along the way we're going to continue to study this though and the teachers will be our best leaders around what they've witnessed in the classroom we have slides for each of the schools for you to be able to look at a specific achievement in each of our buildings and certainly our ed committee is looking at this type of data on a routine basis and will continue to do so so i'd like to talk about

080the hamden academy slide just because the name of time if you have questions on any of the school data we can go back to it at the high school right now we don't have nwea tests all four years and we are certainly already in talks about that about what tests are going to matter most you may remember that the state test was the sat that no longer is the case so we will be continuing to discuss is it important to have the trajectory of four years worth of data for the high school at least three years because of course as seniors we may not need to collect in that year but you can see how the impact of being back in school and moving into a full five-day environment probably is beneficial for all levels

081of students we haven't seen anything but that in our data so i'm going to stop there and are there any questions about achievement or foundational skills and certainly our administrative team if there's anything you'd like to add please do on we forge okay engagement we recognize you can have all the programs you want to have you can be having students sit and taking tests but they're best off when they are fully engaged in school and are deriving a sense of success from it they feel like it is their school there are many opportunities for them and i have to commend our teams in every school the level of engagement of our staff with each other and with students is very high order and our principals are directly involved in that so that is going in

082the right direction for sure so we're interested in helping students find their passion in areas of interest we know that students have the highest learning when they are manifesting and something that they enjoy and something they believe is relevant in their life we also know that to engage staff so that they're having those peer-to-peer collaboration opportunities is important too and that our families need to be engaged we're hearing tonight families want to be a part of the decisions they want to be part of the schools and we want to be providing those opportunities for that engaged community events um are happening we have many different volunteerism aspects that have been put on hold because of coven and we're starting to talk about how we can bring those back we have classroom speakers and i just

083had a teacher tell me this very week that the maximum use of zoom and google me for bringing in guest speakers has been excellent that is one of the silver linings of us learning to use this technology so well we are bringing back ptos pies pride pack interaction they are signing up to use our schools almost every single month we continue to have heavy communication from schools to their parent base and we also have surveys that we are preparing and have certainly done in the past as you you've known and then clubs concerts and sports spectators are back in business and i've heard nothing but it's going very well and everybody loves that i'd like to tell you there's some unique things happening too rsu 22 is strongly aligned with state farm to school committee

084and we are developing a farm to school institute for maine schools that we are helping to lead and we also have our pbis teams those positive behavioral supports have parent members and board members on those teams so we're getting the integration there there are virtual parent informational nights held at certain schools so the parents can be involved and knowledgeable we have a specialist night at one school this year as a trial to see how that went so the music pe art teacher came out and spoke with parents it was very successful trunk or treat happened across our district for the students and you know that we have many clubs going on and you heard about those last meeting november there was a move here at hampden academy for aspire higher month it was military day

085on the spot college admissions day where we had many different schools come in community partnerships are being developed and continue and then we're trying to connect students to opportunities out in the community for volunteerism or maybe for support so i want you also to know that we have resurrected our composting efforts we had two years ago full composting and three to four of our schools and we did pause that due to coven and we started it again health and wellness has been absolutely a critical juncture we have worked on this significantly in the past year as you know school safety has certainly been something that we've discussed heavily related to covid but we've now made a transition and you'll hear tonight that we're putting a school security and safety audit in front of you that

086has been part of the plan all along from building committee and in our capital reserve and then our school garden and orchard efforts we have those up and running in many schools and it's really an exciting endeavor because the community does get engaged with that as well and just a tidbit we have served 252 435 meals since january i have to commend school nutrition they have done so many turnarounds to make things happen and then our facilities have been utilized by 25 different outside groups and that is since july so we are getting groups back in so being future focused we do have the vision that is our driver and that is graduates from rsu 22 will enter life career and college environments well prepared as problem solvers collaborators be persevering effective communicators and critical

087thinkers and this is all reflected in our strategic plan in the direction that our strategic plan has taken the mission is our roadmap to get there and we are committed to the optimal learning of all students and to achieve that mission we know that we have to foster and model a love of learning we have to develop self-reliant creative and responsible citizens provide the necessary resources to the schools and students directly so they can do so and create a community that is respectful and caring and our strategic plan development will define those goal categories articulate the objectives and clarify strategies in addition we will have an evolution of the measurements that you will hear about so we are accountable for those steps so the strategic plan is where we come to and you'll be looking

088at that again later tonight but we have had 70 meetings related to the strategic plan and those are various types small meetings just to plan another meeting community-based meetings that have been much larger and then of course you as a school board have had two workshops we have 877 participant hours into our strategic plan and that doesn't include the time that we did have people taking the surveys to give us information the result is the strategic plan document draft that is before you tonight and i would like to say in closing that i think this plan well represents not only the board's goals but your community's goals and certainly we've taken the time to hear from the community members who participated almost twice a month for many months about what it is they felt were

089priorities our staff has had a listening tour so we understood what the needs are as well and we're very proud of where we've come to have this plan for you so i'll close there and open it for questions and administrative teamwork for the students that we have who are chronically absent is that something that's tied to illness is it tied to quarantining um where do we get i'm so glad you asked that question and i'm sure principles are too because it does involve health issues and quarantine but we also are seeing that our community um values that family time and is going on are going on more vacations now that it is safe to travel so i think principals have shared their nodding that some of these absences are being heightened due to family vacations

090okay i just want to say a quick thank you for a very comprehensive report out i appreciate all the time and effort that went into it to really pull all the aspects of the district together to give us a great overview so thank you for that you're welcome mr mcbridey can you pull your mask up please sam okay next what i'd like to do is move into just a quick presentation on pool testing i did have the pleasure of meeting with a couple of parents who have had concerns about the way that our district has implemented pool testing and there was a question that i feel is really important to discuss and that is how is it that you have two students sitting in a classroom on either side of a positive student one is

091signed up for pool testing and gets to stay the other is not in pool testing not vaccinated and has to go home in quarantine and i think that is a fair question to ask and so i'd like to address that tonight and share that the primary reason that that issue exists is because of tracking when a student is in pool testing we're testing every single week and that allows us to test within that incubation period so if we have a student who is exposed to a positive student and is in pool testing and not vaccinated we are still able to know that within a matter of days we'll be checking and can have early detection so i do know that uh we have our parent here who is our h.a school nurse and we have

092dr barrett here who has helped to advise us and i would like to open it to speak to any aspects of pool testing that you feel are important for the community to know and to understand i can say i can say that so far we are detecting students prior to them becoming something out which is the beauty of cool testing everyone that we have found so far that has indeed been the case so when the pools come back if one is positive we test all of those students and that's how we find the one positive student in the pool so it's been really good at protecting that before he becomes what's the impact of the positive students are they being hospitalized we don't we don't have questions from well i understand but these questions are

093not being answered in any other aspect so i don't know any other way to working on it right now okay so um that just to to speak and to also add to what mrs parent has shared the other advantage that we have is that with the pool testing not only are we getting the students when they're asymptomatic we may also be getting them and often are getting them prior to the time when they have a sufficient viral load to be contagious so therefore we are better able to avoid the outbreaks and the issues that have plagued many other schools in terms of severity of illness it is it varies quite a bit in and now i'm speaking more in the community in general um i don't know all the specifics for each individual positive case

094in the district because that's protected health information um but it is true generally young people do well and generally they do not require hospitalization so the goals of a lot of our covet strategies are two-fold one is that unfortunately with this virus we are not able to easily predict who will be that rare case that will go on to have more serious illness more serious and long-lasting effects will say in the community there have been hospitalizations within um children again i don't know about this district in particular and as we continue to see increased spread in the community we continue to run the risk that there will be more variants more mutations every time somebody gets a case there's an opportunity for viruses to mutate that's what they do that's how they spread um but

095the other thing that we have to recognize is that we don't exist in a vacuum that we in this school district have a responsibility to the greater community as well and so some of our efforts are to protect other more vulnerable people within our district and in our greater community so and we've been able to do that actually pretty well i've been impressed by how well we've been able to contain positive cases how well we've been able to identify cases that could have had the potential to significantly impact school attendance athletics and um other activities so all in all i'd say it's actually been pretty successful thank you doctor just a quick question yeah i know that a lot of kids have varying levels of comfort when it comes to their bodies and whatnot um

096the pool testing is that something that's as physically invasive as a test that they would get at their you know with their doctor or a drive-through testing facility the tests that are performed here are more shallow than the more invasive tests that we used to do i will say now the pcr tests at most doctor offices are that same sort of more shallow nasal swabs they are not the deep all the way back swabs and those are extraordinarily uncomfortable i've had them and i don't like them yeah no they don't but um and the students swap themselves the pool testing is much more shallow and um so it doesn't doesn't have that same level of pain or discomfort sure so with a student that where are we here okay so the student that has direct

097contact is not partaking in the pool testing saying like a thursday is sent home and good parents say hey i'm going to call the doctor get a pcr test test comes back negative on a tuesday is that test being recognized in our school district we do not currently have a test to return yeah so if a student doesn't participate in the pool testing and they have direct contact on a thursday to a coveted positive student they are sent home correct yes right no so if they're in full testing they do not have the quarantine from school so if the student is not participating in testing and they have direct contact with a covenant they are sent home correct correct unless they're vaccinated unless they're vaccinated right so if they're not vaccinated and they take a

098test on a monday tuesday comes back negative they're still required to quarantine even though they've had a pci negative pci and part of the reason for that is that some students and we've had this happen have not converted to positive until day 9 or 10 of their foreign so there is no currently the cdc does not recognize a return based on testing testing and the pool testing allows us to track over time so we have the benefit of that student having had a potentially a negative pull test on tuesday another negative pool test the following tuesday assuming that everybody is being honest about their health screening at home and not coming to school with symptoms we are able with the pull testing we can track them over time rather than a single isolated if we

099truly wanted to develop a return policy it would need to have testing on day 3 and day 5 potentially day 10 to really capture that same sort of opportunity that the pool testing grants us and i want to clarify that the cdc does not allow us to implement that type of testing to return and i've been approached on that by several parents i don't think we have a manpower to do that kind of testing and when you say for students though correct is what you're saying by the students that see he does not have a return to school policy for students correct cdc is considered to be the legal authority for health in maine and so they are not allowing us to implement a test to return for students okay i just want to clarify

100that yeah recommending they don't make i see we've identified 36 positive cases in our are that that includes all students correct um how does that compare uh from a population basis compared to other districts do we have that data to share are we performing for our positive cases at a lower rate or a higher rate than some of the other schools in penobscot county or other areas i here at the moment and ours is lower than what they're seeing in some of the other schools in our district that are the same size as us but we don't have data yet on any other questions thank you both very much [Applause] next i'd like to report just a reminder to all and i'm hoping people listening tonight will take note december 23rd is a school vacation

101day so i want to be sure everyone is aware of that as is january 3rd january 3rd has always been a vacation day on our calendar but it is the monday after the bulk of the vacation so i wanted to make sure people recognize that and i know that our student representative jacob reminded me of that as well and he plans to speak to it too so we don't forget another date change we do need to discuss our february board meeting date the third wednesday mrs boone and i will not be in the district so we would like to ask that we consider a date change for the february meeting i am recommending to you that we consider wednesday february 9th or monday february 28th as alternatives because we do know that february vacation is

102in there and because we have so many staff who do attend our meetings we have tried to avoid school vacation meeting dates and probably many of you will be with your children that week too so i don't know if this is the pleasure of the board to discuss it now but i wanted to put it on your radar anybody have any discussion about that does anybody have a preference yes it is a different day of the week monday [Music] if there is no buddy that has any issues with that let's just go with that and we'll have lester there too i move that we move our february board meeting from the to the 9th of february you have a motion and second any further discussion all those in favor okay i would like everyone to

103know that i have been receiving weather updates throughout the day it is going to be icy tomorrow reportedly so we are assessing right now what school will look like tomorrow and transportation but plan on it plan on it i will say the bus driver shortages that we have encountered i want to give a shout out to sear bus because they are working overtime to try to figure out routing it's not easy and i know it's been difficult on some students and families when the buses are late or the routes change but we've had busing every day and some districts have had to call off bus routes entirely or say everyone bring your children to school today so well done to see your bus and then also just to let you know that at our last

104meeting we talked about the brookfield medway hydro project and i did get back to you about the board member questions that came up from that the contract was presented on december 3rd and so i have gone ahead and signed that so we are moving forward having that energy billing credits so that's all i have for you today and now we have the assistant superintendent report you just saw mrs jared come up and remind me that we would love to celebrate brian ross brian is the new chef manager for the weather b mcgraw school and it has been announced that he is being honored as the first annual volunteer of the year for the christine b foundation i'd love to take credit for the christine b foundation being a christian b but it is a non-profit

105organization that provides medically tailored grocery packages to cancer patients and their families throughout maine since march of 2020 they've distributed more than 150 000 meals to over 1300 families ranging from eastport to millinocket brian has assisted in food procurement and coordinating the assembly and distribution of the final packages for both volunteer drivers and the satellite distribution points ryan is a cancer survivor who became a beneficiary of the program and has now given back and he's we're proud to call him our own in irish 22. he was chosen from over 120 other volunteers as this year's christine b award recipient so we'd like to honor brian ross was earlier being kind of a big deal cook but um it's wonderful to be in the district it's an awful lot of fun and the best thing about

106it is it allows me the opportunity to continue with my volunteerism so thank you very much i certainly appreciate [Applause] okay you do have the monthly financial report in your packet and we are tracking well in all areas for our budget we are right on track with expenditures and the areas where you see that we have expended with an additional amount in the percent remaining in our school year is simply because of advanced purchases in the summer so that's typically article 5 and article 9 maintenance if you have any questions be sure and let us know and next we have our student board representatives all right uh i believe we got it all figured out so hopefully i don't take whatever she planned uh but uh overall uh i think the student body is in

107a it for the school year i think it's in a pretty all-right state um springs are not spring i'm getting ahead of myself winter sports have started up so if you're smelling chlorine that is not you being insane i just came from swim practice so just got a little bit of reassurance uh but if my timeline is correct we had a tri-m induction which is for uh music honor society which went very well and uh both steph and i sent out a survey which she'll talk a little bit more about but responses are still coming in so we haven't really formulated everything together and ran by mrs nichols but i want to take it away yeah so we sent out a survey um on the half day so last friday um we sent out a

108survey to the entire student body at hampden academy and so far we have 119 responses um i'm really trying to push that out like i talked to my advisor today i was like guys let's do the thing do the survey um and so yeah we're getting more responses every day even over the weekend a lot more came in and so i think our plan is to just keep accepting responses until responses stop coming in i guess and um i think we're going to try and analyze all of this with mrs nichols and hopefully we can formally report on it at the january board meeting i do want to say i've read through most of these responses and some kids that really were very descriptive and i'm looking forward to sharing it with you guys uh

109one final thing to note which the school day or the former school day of the 23rd of december there's been a lot of questions about um whether that's a school day you even have to talk to my coach about it because she was curious so i think we should try to push that out a little bit more if it has not been i'm not fully in the loop on that but just to make sure everyone's on the same page about that before we close out with student board reps i wanted to let you know that we have some exciting news that stephanie has been selected as an alter alternate for the united states senate youth program for me and so congratulations stephanie [Applause] um yeah thank you i was actually um i also i think

110it was on friday that i also got the email um about the united states senate youth program um and so yeah i'm really happy to be an alternative and maybe um i will attend washington week that's kind of up in the air right now um but yeah thank you can i ask a quick question please give me the gist of the survey yeah for sure so basically this survey consists of eight questions um so most of them let's see so the first question is um what do you call this kind of skill oh let's see like it's like a one through five scale yeah um so the first question is how do you feel the school year factoring in clovid um and other restaurants going um so just to get a general idea um then

111we asked what's going well and that was a free response what could be better what is a change that could benefit the student body regarding this year how are you adjusting to a full schedule of the school year we also wanted to know is there at least one adult in the building that you trust and could go to for support and then following that we said if no share your experiences and then just to end it uh we asked if there was anything else they wanted to say or add and we did hear a lot on that one thank you all right that brings us to questions of board members any questions i have several um unfortunately i know again but i'll try to keep this free um a lot of these relate to questions

112or they came up during the public comment for me so our students when they're quarantined are they missing out on education are they given an assignment path while they're gone are they checking in with teachers students are receiving educational materials when they are out and depending on the developmental level in the school is the way that that occurs so do we have any principal reps who like to speak to that yeah google classrooms open so students are able to touch base with teachers during this course of the day after school before school through google meets through email but google classroom is still a place where students sign into and are able to access all their assignments at the middle school level we have the kids have tighter schedules so we are able to set a

113kid up with a google meet so that they can hear instructions and the students have been very receptive to carrying their classmates around and it's pretty humorous because in the hall you can see them talking to his laptop and you know taking in the lunchroom that we discourage that because we didn't want the laptops near the food but you know it's pretty cute and um they but as mr tracy said the google classroom is the primary um feeder for assignments readings teachers started using that quite exclusively last year with remote learning and so we've encouraged them to continue that for kids who are absent just on a regular basis but also for the quarantine kids it really works well for them at the younger ages we're doing a mix of both um so the three

114and up we're using google classroom and for the k2 we're doing paper packets that parents can pick up and we're also offering seesaw if they choose that and i would also just say that upon completion of work materials or participation they are marked present even while they're in quarantine so that's i know when you were discussing chronically absent before so they are able to still have a remote present um day for those days too it's i'm a little bit um with the esser funding does that fight the mask initially it was initially when corona relief funds known as crf and s or funds were released we were required to obligate that we were following all of the cdc guidance regarding masking so we have committed to those the america recovery program doesn't have the same

115tie because of the way that the timing worked so that districts had more latitude at that time so we have reported that we are using a masking system but our pull down of those funds is not contingent that we are wearing masks and i would also say to you that the crf funds have been concluded so we've already obligated those funds and spent them and then the esser funds that remain we are not being held that we would not be eligible for those funds because of masks because the rules have changed in maine and we're no longer longer under that order um the one that was a little concerning to me our students being sent into the hallway i looked at policy i and b while we're looking at this when students are being when

116a classroom is engaging in controversial materials and a parent-student combination opt-out aren't they provided alternate assignments or i can speak to that yeah so the student would have been provided or was provided an alternative assignment so there's a different book that has been used in the past that they read had alternative assignments that align perfectly with the same assignments the other students were doing the student was doing so there are very there were excuse me many similar activities where they stayed in the classroom to do that they're actually their library spaces where they were going they were in here but we have multiple spaces in the library from breakout rooms to larger rooms over here we have some working spaces in the hallways it just happened to be the space that was available where that

117student was working so there's no special ed hallway or anything like that just was a space we had available for a student to work quietly so in say hallways still within the library area so so you might be envisioning that great big corridor right down the hall down in the second floor and this loop right here if you walk through it has desks and learning spaces in it that are offered in small spaces thank you all right the last one i almost hate to ask this because i think i know the answer but are we teaching critical race theory training to our teachers or staff members we are not teaching critical race theory to our students nor our staff chairman miller just as a as a it's not a question but uh this past week

118i was i participated in a training for spruce which i hadn't done before taking the committee um and so it was really enlightening regarding the policies that look specifically at the spruce program so i just wanted to let you know that i did do that training and i'm also on the legislative committee and the resolutions committee for maine state board well we thank you for doing both of those things so thank you very much i do have a question but before we get to it i just want to thank faye and yourself you for coming into the high school and uh getting an opportunity to talk to the student council i thought that went really well we were scheduled for 50 minutes i went 45 minutes there's another opportunity so that's my segway into the

119questions there's another opportunity tomorrow at two o'clock over at reedsbrook uh to meet with their student council so far on the dock is myself faye and heath and we're always looking for more volunteers so um love to see some more board members coming in participating yeah chris that was a great opportunity thanks for lining that up for us all right that brings us to questions of committee chairs we all have seen the reports in our packet uh are there any questions for those committee chairs as you've read those and thought about that now is the time to ask them or if any committee chairs think there's something that they'd like to touch on okay all right that brings us to policy considerations i ask everyone to be patient with me this is my first time

120doing it here we go um policy committee meeting uh matt the policy committee met and we reviewed several of the policies we looked over our second readings that were introduced at the last meeting and then did some first readings the first one is policy be school board meetings in the packet in your blue folder today shows the policy that we presented at the last meeting no changes were made to that and so i moved to accept policy be school board meetings all right we have a motion we have a motion and a second discussion any discussion all right all those in favor of policy be for second reading all right opposed or abstentions the second one is policy k j k a a and j we don't do the res uh the other part but

121jkaa this is for second reading it is regarding physical restraint and seclusion these changes were made before the last meeting that reflects the new laws that went into effect and so i move that we accept policy j k a a physical restraint and seclusion all right motion and second discussion all those in favor of policy jkaa for second reading opposed or abstentions that did you know the next one is policy jlcb immunization of students again this one was changed due to changes in the laws we had no recommendations after the last reading so i approve for the second reading policy j l c b immunization of students so we have a motion and second discussion seeing all those in favor of second reading for policy jlcb opposed or abstentions we also are bringing to you

122that we are removing policy b e a from the right which is regular board meetings that has been now melded into policy be so i move that we approve the removal of b e a regular board meetings all right we have a motion and a second any discussion okay so all those in favor of second reading of removal of policy b-e-a all those in favor opposed or abstentions that's unanimous we now move over to uh first readings for new policies uh policy j k d which is suspension of students in your packet this evening you see that there have been a few changes and this reflects what is in our jke-r and so these few changes are based on what's in that part but also that just so you understand that there will be more

123changes made to this policy again the law changed regarding suspension of students and i just received yesterday from maine school management the updated policies and so this will be coming back to you but in the meantime we would still like to go through first reading with the few changes that are listed in your packet and basically it is what it's going to be mirrored in jkd-r i move for approval first reading all right uh we have a motion in a second uh discussion bro just [Music] school activity versus campus for all of our activities that those might entail and that seems to be quite grey basically it was uh we updated it to match the um is it the resolution regulation thank you to match the regulation that doesn't mean more changes won't be happening

124as a matter of fact as i looked over the policies from msma there will be quite a few changes to this policy all right any further discussion all those in favor of policy jkd for first reading as i shared with you earlier jke which was originally in your board packet expulsion students again we've tabled that until we review the msma policy that's coming up the last one that we reviewed was policy kdd public's rights to know freedom of access you will notice that there are a few changes that were made and that is to reflect the law and to update it with rsu 22 versus msad 22 again this reflects the new laws that have been passed uh i move to uh move that we accept k d b public's right to know freedom of

125access ad you have a motion from fay and i'm going to give the second colleen uh discussion it's seeing on all those in favor of first reading of policy kdb opposed or abstentions that's unanimous all right that brings us to old business i'm going to turn that over again uh we're going to be discussing a field trip request and teacher ben johnson is here from hampden academy regarding a trip to italy that would be scheduled for 2023. the situation is that it is beneficial to the students and parents if early sign ups can occur and we come to you tonight to seek approval for him to move forward with the sign up registration process and planning and not necessarily ask for full approval of the trip just yet so i'm going to let mr johnson

126come up and share further details is um let me try to i'm sorry tv card you can see my notes there okay here we go and i can't see my notes so i'd like to thank um the board for listening to me um and for everything that you guys do and will do and i'd also like to thank mrs nichols for letting me come and speak um i know that um we're going through an interesting time right now i'm asking for the board's guidance on moving forward with international trips uh not this year but in future years for international trips we're kind of at this this quandary where we really need to plan multiple years in advance and yet when the board approves trips they approve trips for that year so um i am going

127to talk very briefly because i know it's late about what and why trips uh why we need to plan early how does covet impact the planning of the trip and then asked maybe as mrs nichols said to consider signups um while postponing approval um uh i know mrs nichols introduced me i'm ben johnson i'm a latin teacher here at hendon academy um and i've done trips uh in to italy and greece in 2005 2008 2011 2014 2017 there's a pattern there but not 2020 because of coven we were scheduled to go to greece that got postponed to 2021 and obviously that trip did not happen students have gotten used to expecting that there are trips that go overseas and i know that at least one board member here has had a child go hopefully they

128had a great time the uh the trip that we would consider for 2023 which is in a year and a half would uh start in the naples area we we'd actually stay in sorrento um and then take like a whole day trip to capri which is this fantastic island um lots of great roman stuff over there um go to pompeii i hope vesuvius doesn't take us um then uh go to the mafi coast because there's some actual great uh greek ruins um at this town called piston uh the second half goes to rome because when you're in italy all roads lead to rome so we have to go there and uh we would visit the vatican city um and uh in the normal year we would visit the vatican city and uh go to the

129coliseum the roman forum um and then visit a lot of the other regular like renaissance tours of rome rome's a great city because you can go from one block to the next and see ruin see places that are 2000 years old a thousand years old 500 years old and then just a few years old so the benefit of international trips um gives this firsthand exposure to classroom concepts all students learn about um uh through world history they learn about the romans and the greeks in our latin class that i teach we spend our first semester in latin one as jacob knows reading about this family in pompeii and getting really attached to them until something really not so great happens but that's okay um someone survives we won't tell you um and it also allows

130our students for an appreciation of foreign cultures and uh for travel too um sometimes it's great to get outside of what we know and to even experience this concept of traveling and how you travel but in a very safe environment we go as a travel company they organize everything but still that allows us as chaperones and teachers and student travelers to worry about all the stuff that you know involves like going overseas for the first time or for for chaperones it would allow us to make sure that everything is safe and that the kids are well protected etc um there is travel insurance that for a trip like this i would recommend that and we can actually require all travelers to purchase it um and the benefits for travel insurance i think in our age

131of covid um are immense and really important so now is the time where i'm supposed to woo you with pictures great pictures of trips in the past we have also taken as a school we've taken trips to france in spain and also to to quebec in canada these are from my trips um you can see like that firsthand experience a lot the reason why we go with the community that i do go with is because they provide active experiences you don't just go to the coliseum we do go to the coliseum but we also take half a day to go to this pilates they call it a gladiator training school where you learn about um the different weapons and um weapons the the different like things that you can do right the the weapons that

132they have but also like different ways that they can fight um and uh then they end with a couple of students um duking it out uh this is actually really interesting it's a great it's a great way of spending an afternoon in italy um but also um you can see the size of the groups that we normally take which are in their 30s and 40s the top left picture was taken in pompeii with vesuvius in the background we survived that trip and then the bottom picture is taken in the captain of ona in rome and that was our most recent trip in 2017. kids really enjoy it it is a great experience and uh while it is a little pricey it is worth it um and it's also open to um all students and him

133in coming you don't have to be someone that has taken a class from me um or from one of our chatrooms um mrs kilgore is in the back there she's been a chapter on regular chaperone for a long time and it's actually impacted our curriculum because of the things that we can bring back to our classes for future years um and it actually uh helped us create a new course at camden academy that focuses on um some of the cultures of from the ancient world um why plan early why am i talking to you now about something that's in a year and a half when we don't really know what's going to be happening in a year and a half we have to do this a trip can be paid in monthly payments um and

134so spread out over more months makes it a lot more affordable for our families there's also more time to fundraise and that's going to be an important component if i could go ahead with this greater discounts are available further up from the trip um even right now there's a discount between now and um christmas for our travelers to get an extra 75 off but as we get closer to the trip the cost of the trip goes up because the discounts go down it does take time to organize recruit and plan and we had a trip that was originally scheduled for south africa last year last this year last year i got postponed maybe to this year but that isn't going for um for obvious reasons um some of those travelers are graduating seniors and so

135they will need to get refunds but there are also some travelers who are not graduating and if our trip were to be able to go um they could transfer their costs with no change uh no fees associated with that um to this trip and then get that experience in a different country but i i personally am a little biased towards italy i think that it's fantastic um so that is also a benefit of early planning now so that they can have options those students can have options um with the trip that they have um so we can make date and location changes at the trip prior to 60 days before the trip that's something that's really important um so if something were to happen like what happened a couple years ago and this year we

136would be able to make that change for either a location or with itinerary or even like move the trip date wise closures or restrictions may impact the trip the reason why we go with the company is so that they deal with that and not us the traveler can transfer spots to a new participant so if the trip had to be postponed for another year unfortunately um if there were a participant who would come on they could transfer that and then not have any cancellation fees associated with that um and then if if i were to get approval to sign up students for this trip um obviously we would not look to cancel immediately if there were no if there were no way to go or if the school board next year were to decide to

137not allow the trip to move forward so if we weren't able to get approval when we seek it we would look to postpone it because that's probably the best option and the only people that would be impacted that point would be people students who are graduating seniors next year and um in talking with the company with the travel insurance the um if us if a student would have to would have to cancel and with the travel insurance they can cancel for any reason they can cancel because they don't feel comfortable even if the trip were moving forward or if they had an incident or if they were able uh were unable to get like the testing necessary to travel um they would get everything back except the 350 and so priority would be given to

138spending the time over the next year plus to fundraise or to give students the ability to fundraise that amount so that they would um be able to uh not have a loss on this trip and one of the things that we did with the grease trip was um some students were able to get um more money back than the cancellation fee cost because they had fundraised more than the amount that they had that they had to lose because of the cancellation fees so um that would be something that we'd be spending over the next year um prioritizing uh and so um so i guess the the request that mrs nichols put forth with you guys was that uh not to approve the trip because we don't know what the world will look like but to

139suggest like seeing if students would be interested in signing up for the reasons that we have to start thinking now and uh postponed approving the trip until later in the year or even next year as the situation becomes more clear because you do have the flexibility and having more time allows us to um put off decisions which is always what i like to do and so if you guys have any questions i'd be happy to ask and i know this is probably something that we should be thinking about for other international trips uh moving forward too so don't want it to just be about this trip because i know that there are probably other programs other languages that are thinking of traveling um maybe we could set forth some sort of plan to figure this

140out mr johnson i was wondering um what is your estimated fee for students and we would also mention trip insurance through about how much that would be per student yeah the the uh the cost of the trip is around 4 600 um the travel insurance is i believe it's 250 and it comes the without purchasing um travel insurance uh there is insurance provided along with the cost of the trip but the travel insurance is likely canceled at any time sort of like the the extra super plus model that they always want to sell you on but i think in this day and age it makes sense and i think the material that i provided to mrs nichols um to put it in your back it says that like something like two-thirds of all travelers go

141with the travel insurance so that's that's something that i found to also be relatively like around two-thirds of the people choose it anyway oh did you was there a second question um i guess my only other question is what time of year were you going like is it in season or out of season because i know that food has a really big difference on the costume trip uh so yeah we go and we we have gone in april in the past and that's typically where we go now february is a little chilly um april's a little chilly too but maine kids with 60 degree weather yeah uh the most expensive time is june in july to go um that's also um rather it's rather hot over there too so so traditionally april is the time

142that we go and we have seen a lot of other um tour groups around uh from maine in fact over there at the same time mr fire yes knowing that time is your frame when it comes to fundraising the more time you have more you'll likely be able to fundraise what has your experience been on the ability of those desiring to go to fully fundraise knowing one of our biggest inequities in rsu 22 is social economic yeah that's a great question um fully fundraised from the perspective of what we can provide um when we create a fundraiser um for instance we've done uh fundraisers through like crispy krispy kreme um or um uh the point selling poinsettias um at uh at holiday time um a student who is ambitious um can make several hundred dollars

143at each of those fundraisers uh and when we have a trip in store we try to do one every every quarter or so a student by themselves through the fundraising that we are able to provide can probably who's very ambitious can probably make many hundred dollars which goes a long way towards the trip but fully funding a trip that is four thousand six hundred dollars um is something that um i don't think that i personally could come up with fundraisers that everyone is able to do um with with a day job and things like that um so that's something that we also encourage students to um fundraise on their own getting a job um you know asking for um money from family members or even applying for scholarships for this sort of thing which during

144my time in the school was available to some students depending on the town that they lived in and uh having time being out there right that is something i have had students that have had to and i think actually had the benefit because i think that it's actually good for them to have paid for this trip at least half on the stuff that they've earned themselves through a summer job things along those lines thank you i think you bring up a good point mr frank that you know time is of the essence and information if there are students that are looking at fundraising a majority of this they need to have the time and opportunity to be able to do that and so if we temporarily improve you know the sign up process i know

145there are other local districts that are actually planning on going international trips in spring of 2022 so i think that you know for that reason i think that we need to really let mr johnson consider sign ups at this point yes um have we tried looking for sponsors like businesses um who might want to help with our fundraising efforts when you say we you mean you right [Laughter] i personally haven't but i think that's a great idea and in fact like that's i think one of the benefits of coming to a group like you guys because i am just a meager latin teacher and i can live in my own mind but i you know it's great to hear great suggestions and ideas from other people so i think that that's something that would be

146great um i to mr frank's point around the inequity that we have in this district um i would want to find a way of having if we were to search for a sponsor to having that go to the families in some way that need it more rather than the families that might be willing might be able to pay for themselves and i don't know the best way of doing that um but that is definitely something that i would i'll talk to mr tracy about and he will figure out the sponsor [Laughter] when will the board invitations go out uh so adults can't sign up for the trip um and the only uh thing is that you need to be background checked um and so i would love to have you guys join along um but

147there is an additional fee for adults because you get a state you don't have to stay in like quads with teenagers but we typically have uh anywhere from three to six uh parents or uh even grandparents go uh on a trip and it actually helps because there's just more more adult eyes although the kids are fantastic and very well behaved um like we take the best we have i i just want to put a plug for our students because whenever i go overseas we always hear that our students are the best students that are tour guides that our travel um our tour directors have had they are exceptionally polite they do what they are supposed to and they are there for the right reasons um they are they know that they're there to learn and

148to experience and that that sort of thing comes along with um following the rules being in the right places when you're supposed to be not participating in uh in bad activities etc so um and i think having having some adults there also kind of hammers that home but also having great relationships with the students and the chaperones who go um that really kind of makes that makes that everything i'm taking up a lot of time so i'm sorry that's all right before you go any further mr les mr franchiser i i move that we extend the meeting by a half an hour so we have a motion in a second any discussion all those in favor all right seeing none i would entertain a motion um to give mr johnson the um okay to go

149forward with uh pre-planning so a motion that would go ahead and somebody tried to get him out there i move that we approve a pre-plan for mr johnson so that he is able to pre-plan for the 2023. all right so we have a motion on the floor in a second uh any further discussion or questions from mr johnson i i don't have a question i only have a a statement that um being the board member that mr johnson was referring to that um my daughter had a wonderful time over there and i think she still connected with one of the guides of world strides but even more importantly i was really impressed with the numbers that world strides provided for the um the number of infections that they've had with their clients and even more

150the fact that there is someone there with them if they have to quarantine um over that was a big concern i had with uh with trips overseas so i appreciate the information that was sent ahead of time sorry to that point we have had a student get an illness while we were in greece in 2011 and they were unable to travel that time it was food poisoning stomach bugs something like that and um world strides um did everything that that you would expect and more um to make sure that everything was taken care of that our tour director stayed with us i stayed back for that one day our two directors stayed with us missed her flight to venice couldn't get a flight for like three extra days um and that was the expectation um

151they are the best i really have a lot of respect for this company and i think that i think that i would feel less comfortable along with another company because of my experience with them all right no further comments all those in favor opposed or abstentions all right mr johnson right here now you can go to work all right that brings us to new business zero two nine two tonight i bring before you discussion and action on our strategic plan for the next five years 2022-2027 the plan includes areas for student success professional excellence community partnership and operational excellence there is absolutely going to be a focus on making sure that we are preserving our roots back to tradition of excellence and rigor and moving forward in the future to have the innovation and creativity

152in education but also the results i think everybody agrees the foundations are critically important to that end we have four building blocks and you can see within those building blocks what the attributes will be for the goal areas so we will have academic excellence and achievement foundational skills that you heard about tonight instructional models such as focusing on reading writing and math very heavily so that we have those foundations in place strong engagement for students recruiting and retention for professional excellence professional development for our staff you saw the veteran numbers that we have here we need to continue to build capacities in our employees and also the institution of best practices community partnerships family and community engagement will be first and foremost for us along with rebuilding the rsu 22 educational foundation to bring additional

153resources to our educational community communication and transparency efforts with the district-wide communications plan and the campus-based services that will support those allocations operational excellence for budget development the development of fiscal and facilities management plans that are bringing our models into line with what is expected for financial management especially with the new grant and competitive aspects to some of the monies that schools are expected to respond to and then comprehensive planning for our facilities you'll see that we have four goal areas in student success we have action steps and you are well aware of those and helped develop those through workshop sessions with the ad hoc committee we do have three goal areas for professional excellence for the areas that i just read before and the action steps will all have measurables that are aligned to

154them and those are going to be evolving in the next several months and you'll be aware of those as they happen and then we have five goals in the areas of community partnerships we definitely will be looking at how we're making each of these community partnerships grow and that's everything from getting families and communities and members engaged in the way that the school feels would be beneficial to students but also the way that families and community members feel are beneficial to their participation also working really hard to bring community partners in for businesses and internship opportunities as well as externships operational excellence of course we're going to be looking at to continue our budget processes it's been evolving over the past several years and we are going to continue that along with facilities management to

155be looking at what campus projects are necessary although our buildings are in very good shape they do require significant preventative maintenance to keep them moving toward their full life and then we have comprehensive planning ideas one of which is to consider looking at our middle level instruction we all know that the trades used to be quite prevalent in middle level education and we haven't seen that as recently and utc as our career and technical school is so popular and successful with our students we just had two students named student of the quarter hammond academy at utc and so we want to start looking at how we might restructure middle level to incorporate some of these ideals but also think about what are the great span configurations that are most important for middle level developmental learning

156so there's a lot to come there in five years so i present this to you following our workshop session and seek your questions and certainly i hope you would consider for approval discussion question i know we've put a lot a lot of work in this in our through through the last year so a lot of us have already had a lot of input on this but i'm sure there's other questions here if anybody has them now's the time to ask them well seeing none i would entertain a motion all right we have a motion and a second to accept the strategic plan as it's presented any further discussion or questions i just want to make sure that um the board's clear you'll have the premium flexibility to change any of the measurable outcomes uh based

157upon the action steps correct yes i'll be bringing those back i do feel that year to year once we've committed to immeasurable we'll need to see it through but we will have evolution and latitude for that thank you well i would just like to say that this one is much more clear than prior strategic plans where we're getting much closer to actual uh task force with the action thank you i agree with rob i also think it's incumbent upon us as a board to keep the momentum going i've been involved with three strategic plans across different institutions and see all the energy go into developing the plan and then just see it sit on the shelf so as a board it is important for us to assess this every year look at the measurables and

158uh and keep the momentum going all right seeing no more discussion all those in favor opposed or abstentions that's your names thank you all and thank you for all your participation over the past year it's been a very good development cycle and i look forward to what's coming next access to the school safety security contract uh in our capital reserve project list over the past two years we've had a safety and security audit in that list and due to covid we turned direction but now we're right back to it and we have put out for three quotes we received back two quotes that were wildly different in price but not wildly different in scope the third entity that we had sought was one that was recommended because they had done a couple of districts for

159audits down in southern maine but they have declined because they feel that they are unable to come this far north and see it through so we are going to bring forward tonight a proposal for 17 for ns and ss national school security incorporated to conduct a safety audit of our entire campuses there's considerable scope in that the other quote was for 79 000. we have compared the scopes for both of them and we feel that the 17 500 quote is absolutely a deal and we are looking forward to their arrival if it is approved as early as january um they have considered that it will take months so we probably wouldn't be hearing anything before june and it could be into september did you check references on all three of these folks you've provided you

160have check preferences actually we checked references on this one that we're bringing to you thoroughly trc was the one that said they would end up giving us a quote and we had done references on that as well any other questions all right i would entertain a motion forgive me if i'm worrying this improperly i um move that we accept a bid for um from ns and ss for 17 500 for a safety and security audit i think that's good you have a motion in a second further discussion all those in favor opposed or abstentions one abstention rob okay all right that brings us to setting meeting dates do we need any dates out here this evening i will be contacting finance we are awaiting our audit and so we're going to time the meeting with

161the accountant's notification that he will be ready and we also will be timing building committee for when we hear back regarding arp we'll figure out next wednesday during our meeting the targeted dates for the budget roll out okay we do need a motion because we do have an executive session and we need a motion to enter that executive session i move that we enter executive session for the purpose of discussing the personnel matter [Music] all those in favor opposed to attention okay