MSAD#51 School Board Meeting & Budget Workshop, April 2, 2026

001Mhm. >> Mhm. >> Good evening and welcome to the MSAD 51 School Board of Directors meeting for Thursday, April 2nd. How are How are we already in April? Uh we have all of our board members present except Annika could not be here this evening. And we're going to kick tonight off by welcoming Linda McCann Olsen to the podium. So good to see you. Um she's going to present on the Hashi Maine Art Exchange. Thank you everyone for welcoming me to um give you a little update on Hashi. So for those of you who don't know, Hashi means bridge in Japanese and it is also the name of an art exchange of student art in grade 1 through 6 that I direct between Maine and our sister state of Aomori, Japan. Um so also if those

002of you who may not recognize me, um I was an art visual art educator in MSAD 51 for many years and I'm also a graduate of Greely and last summer and again this summer I will be doing art and culture camp for community education. So Hashi is an exchange of artwork. What do we do? We create prints and here are students who have worked with me creating prints some in our culture camp last summer and then others when they were students with me here at Mabel I Wilson School. In Japan in Aomori our sister prefecture schools there there about eight schools who participate every year students make prints each year in grades one through six and they contribute about a hundred prints they send their prints to me I send them about a hundred prints

003we each have an exhibition some examples of the exhibitions. In a moment so where did this come from and why is it important? Aomori had a number of exchanges in person exchanges with middle schools in Maine and junior high schools in Japan. And due to circumstances beyond our control including the covid pandemic that has kind of dissolved so person to person relationships in terms of cultural diplomacy are one of the best ways of making those important connections with different cultures seeing different perspectives and getting a new way to look at our own situations. So the exchange of artwork becomes very personal not only while you're learning about the process but also making the work and then enjoying the exchange, sending yours off, which work that mean students um donate goes to Japan and becomes part

004of the Munakata Shiko collection. Munakata Shiko is a famous printmaker from Aomori. And Aomori is a prefecture, which is the equivalent of a state, thus sister states. Um here are some examples of exhibitions that we've had here at Greeley. The first was in just our little gallery at the middle school when I was teaching grades 4 and 5 there. Um when we returned in 2020 after a brief um departure due to the pandemic, in 20 uh 21, I did an exhibit at the fair. Um Aomori had not created prints in 2020, so they did not send us any for 2021, but we had some amazing prints that um very motivated students returning to in-person learning had created. I think maybe we have two of those students here. Um do you recognize any of the prints

005in that? The upper left picture, that's me. We planned that. So, then in 2022, next to that fair exhibit, um my colleague and uh supporter in Aomori came to see the exhibition here. This uh gentleman is um a urologist. His specialization is kidney acceptance after transplant. He lived through World War II, and it was his dream to create this sort of peaceful act of diplomacy for children. So, um he is closest to the prince, his colleague that I now work with and his former medical student and also an instructor in medical school and is in the middle, and his daughter. This is the exhibition in Amori last March was the first time I was able to attend their exhibition there, which was great. Um it was my final actual active group of students. And um

006we had a wonderful celebration with um eight principals who have donated prints over the years, a couple of the other leaders that I work with and visiting artists. So, what next? Um it's a challenge to get elementary art educators to create prints with children. It's messy, it's involved. Um I am working with the education art education department at USM and Hiroshima University to create a uh little deeper relationship with the art education students to help plant the seed of the exchange. Um in the lower middle, you can see my colleague Eriko um Sato visiting me. She's a art education professor and researcher. Um just above that, she wanted me to visit the faculty lounge, absolutely lovely little historic building on the campus. The top right photo is Leah Bootwell, a former Greeley grad who's an

007art education student at USM. She also works in the gallery and she volunteered to give us a tour at USM. Um Dr. Sato was here for an occasion I was giving a workshop for educators to help create interest and participation in Hashi. So, this is a student group from my culture camp last summer, and then I'll be doing that again this year the last week in July. Um in May, actually it will be going up next week, but the celebration will be May 1st at the Portland Public Library in collaboration with the First Friday Art Walk. There'll be an exhibit of the Hashi prints both from Japan and um prints that were made by students here. I will make sure that a list of those students gets to the office. I believe they're between 6th

008and 8th grade now, but I would like them to know that their prints will be on on exhibit there. Um I was just recently featured in a Union of Maine Visual Artists an article about how um this interest, thanks to my inquisitive students, in East Asia materialized and my involvement with the sister state relationship. So, I believe and Mr. Pullen can confirm this that we will have an exhibit here again in the fall. Um and I'll make sure that that information is shared. Well said. I still have a print in my office as well, so thank you. I should not touch that. Um thank you >> Glad to answer any questions. >> to say, do do people have questions? Do students want to talk about memories from their experience? It was longer ago for me.

009It's up to you. I don't remember. I think it was it was really cool and really engaging. I remember making the prints and kind of like admiring classmates prints and then whenever we were finally able to see the actual exchange come into fruition and see prints from so far away. It was just It was really engaging and a big like moment of connection from different cultures that I think we get a lot at Greeley, but this was a big emphasis, which is really important, I think, especially being so young. It like starts you on the track and then you kind of see it throughout your years and I don't know. I think it it really comes through and especially our high school curriculum, too. So, I was really grateful for it. Thank you for that.

010Um lower left-hand picture was interesting how this little critique action would occur between the students after I'd given them some specifics about the criteria that we were looking for. They would really huddle around the actual inking and printing process became somewhat collaborative because they were sharing work stations. Any other questions? I I just want to say thank you for all your dedication over the years. You've been an art teacher or were an art teacher for a very long time and it's it's great and it was great part of the community. So, thank you for everything you do. Thanks, Sean. I really appreciate that. And now my um endless sabbatical of cultural diplomacy gets on and on. Yeah, we so appreciate Yeah, even though you're you're not in the district, still keeping this connected with us.

011We so appreciate it. >> And it is not just MSED51, but it it's statewide. I'm fortunate to have a close connection here and um the gracious hosting of the exhibit in the beautiful Greeley Center for the Arts. So, that's been really wonderful. Thank you. Thank you. Have a nice evening. >> All right. While you're you're working on that, we're going to move to our public comment section. The board welcomes and recognizes the value of public comment, and to ensure public comment is fair and orderly, we follow procedures outlined in our board policy BEDH, and we ask that all members of the public do so as well. We follow this policy to keep the meeting civil, respectful, and productive. We also hope that this allows for all community members who would like to speak to be

012heard. I also want to mention that public comment is one of the many ways to connect with the school board. While the format of public comment at the board meetings does not provide for back and forth with school board members, we offer many other options to do so. If you ever have any questions or concerns about the school or district, please don't hesitate to reach out directly. We are grateful for the questions and appreciate the opportunity to to dig deeper into any concerns or questions raised. All of our board member emails are available on the board website, um and please always feel free to reach out. For public comment tonight, I I'm I'll use the sign-up list. Uh residents and staff members will be given priority. Our policy allows for 30 total minutes, and I

013will use the list to welcome speakers to the podium. We ask that speakers use the podium when making comments and speak into the microphone. Comments by individuals are limited to a maximum of 3 minutes at a meeting, and a clock will be visible on screen to help keep track of time. After 3 minutes, the timer will go off, and I ask that your comments to be wrapped up. Please state your name and town of residence before beginning your remarks. And lastly, please keep comments respectful and civil. We are neighbors here. Uh let's all be kind, and that includes members of the audience. Please do not interrupt or respond to speakers' comments. Um comments should be addressed to myself as the chair, and please do not direct comments at or about individuals in our schools or

014communities. I will um stop any comments that are contrary to that. And I will welcome our first uh public comment from Derek DePiero? DePaulo. Welcome. Check. All right. Thanks, Greely. Uh good evening, everyone. I am Derek DePaulo Jr., a freshman here at Greely High School. I am also the master counselor of Knights of Sun Chapter, Order of DeMolay. I am also uh I'm here to present my upcoming fundraiser for Greely Reads. Uh this year for my charity, I chose Greely Reads. It is local to MSAD 51. And uh it was founded by John Marlow, a third-grade teacher at Mabel I. Um it will be The funds will be split 50/50 between my chapter and Greely Reads. Uh the day will be April the 19th, 2026, from 8:00 to 10:00 a.m. 1021 Turner Street, Auburn, Maine.

015This will be hosted by Tranquil Lodge number 29, ran by Knights of the Sun Chapter. I would really love a showing of Greely faculty and board members. Um not only to support my chapter and I, but Greely Reads. Uh I value education a lot, and I know you guys do, too. If I could take a moment to recognize uh Dad, Jason Curry, Deputy Member of the International Supreme Council of DeMolay. He is a world history teacher here at GHS. And I would like to take a quick moment to explain what DeMolay is. DeMolay is a youth organization for young men between the ages of 12 and 21. The purpose is to build good character in the young men of the future. In my almost 3 years of being in DeMolay, I can say that the

016effects of it have been positive and I will always remember the memories I've made with the my brothers. Thank you for letting me speak. Everyone have a good night. Thank you. Appreciate it. And yes, so we have this is more information that can pass around. People want to take a picture or to share it. We'd love to get that. Thank you. Okay, back to my list. Terry Maloney Kelly. Terry. Good evening. Terry Maloney Kelly, Cumberland. I want to share words written by a resident of Windham given by permission that captures my advocacy over the past decade. This was posted on the Cumberland North Yarmouth Taxpayer Advisory Facebook page and on our website and we called it same views from another town. Quote, truth is senior citizens are being taxed out of their homes, not because

017they made bad decisions, not because they failed to plan, but because the system is rigged to forget them. Imagine working your entire life paying off your home and finally reaching retirement only to find out you can't afford to stay. I've been there. Um every time excuse me. What's happening is happening across the state of Maine in our own community. We don't talk about it. We don't hear their stories. But every time the budget grows, every time a new tax is added, just a few more dollars a month, seniors are the ones stuck holding the bill. We're not on fixed They're on fixed incomes. They're not flying to Europe or buying new cars. They're budgeting grocery lists, skipping medications, and praying they can stay in the house they already own. Some are veterans. Some are widows.

018All of them are humans. And yet property cat taxes continue to climb. 8% here, 6% there. It adds up fast. It's not just a tax. To them, it's the difference between security and eviction. It's called property tax. But for too many, it feels like an eviction notice disguised as a bill. This isn't about left or right. It's not about being for or against schools. It's about fairness, compassion, common sense. If we can plan new buildings and programs, we can plan to protect the people who built these communities in the first place. Let's start talking about it. Let's start standing up for them. Because no senior should lose their home after they have already paid it off. Not now, not ever. End of quote. The work you are elected to do is hard and thank you.

019I sincerely appreciate the school board members who are standing up, who are actively engaged asking the hard questions, requesting more information, and seeking lower options for consideration. You need to hold firm demanding the financial information you need to consider as a decision maker. You cannot affect the impact that's trickling down upon us all, but you do have a financial impact on the lives of all taxpayers in Cumberland North Yarmouth. This is about fairness, compassion, common sense, and compromise. Please keep your community in mind as you work through this budget season. Thank you. Thank you, Terry. Appreciate it. Rich Parento. Hello, Rich Parento, North Yarmouth. I want to refer you to a handout tonight. It's called statement of projected revenues, expenditures, and assessment. On that sheet, you'll see that expenditures are up 7.68%. 53 million in

020fiscal year 26, 57 million in fiscal year 27 for an increase of $4 million. I'm rounding. However, the cost to taxpayers is up 11% in the lower section, you see that in the 2025-2026 year, the towns contributed 36 that 36 million to the school. And in 2026-2027, that is up to 40 million. That's a $4 increase, but $4 on a base of 36 million. So, the the effect to taxpayers is 11%, not 7.68. That's due to a disconnect in state funding. State funding has not kept pace. So, as the school costs have increased, the state funding didn't increase. An 11% increase to taxpayers is a big pill to swallow. An 11% increase may result in a no vote. And then you'll be backed into a corner. I believe you need to look at discretionary spending

021to cut. And you need suggestions. Here's one suggestion. We have an IB program that may have significant costs. And it serves a very limited number of students. I urge you to look into the savings if this program were eliminated. Other similar programs, you have to look at the discretionary spending that you're doing, these extra programs, and evaluate if the towns can afford that anymore. 11% is a scary number. Thank you. Next up I have Meredith Corner Corner? Thank you. Good evening. My name is Meredith Corner and I live in Cumberland. So my story is we bought land here in Cumberland in 2016 and have been residents here since 2018. I grew up in Yarmouth, but spent most of my adult life in Massachusetts. We lived in a great community down near the Cape, and our

022daughters went to a very good regional school. My husband and I retired 10 years ago so that we could move to Maine and live closer to my aging parents. My mother has been a Cumberland resident since 1985. We didn't really think about taxes when we moved to Cumberland. The community appealed to us and we wanted to be as close as possible to my parents. Plus, we were coming from Massachusetts. The taxes must be similar or maybe less. Taxa Taxachusetts, right? Well, here are the facts. Our home in Marion was almost double the square feet that we have here in Cumberland. We had less land there, but the location was nicer. It was on a tidal river. I checked the 2025 taxes on our Massachusetts home and compared them to what we paid here for the

023same period. Taxes on our home here are 60% more than we would be paying if we were still living in Massachusetts. 6 0. That's a big figure. We certainly want to provide a solid education for our children, but I feel like the school community really needs to do a deep dive on how our money's being spent and what's a nice to have versus a need to have. And as you look at the budget and plan what it should be for the next fiscal year, I don't understand how you can provide a reasonable projection without working from the most accurate, most current, and public year-to-date actual spending figures. That's a normal business practice. This is our money that you're spending. Many people in this community are retired and are doing their best to manage on a

024fixed income. I ask that you do the same and manage school expenses to an affordable 3% increase. Thank you, Meredith. Next, I have David Mel, North Yarmouth. Oh, is that David Oh, that's McL. Okay. McLaughlin, I got it. You guys try to trick me. I wasn't planning on talking, so it's pretty much off the top of my head. Um I don't think it's any surprise that, you know, costs are real issue. You know, we're going up at quite a bit times what the inflationary rate it is. I remember meeting with the board just after the no vote 3 4 years ago. And you were a little shell-shocked that we got a no vote. It wasn't expected. And everybody I think was trying to search and understand why. And my comment at that meeting was uncertainty

025is is kind of the kiss of death. There was a lot of uncertainty in the community as to the tax impact. I think we're there now. We still have that uncertainty. One of the recommendations I made recently when I sent out a mail to you was having better projections, to project out 5 years and just tell us what's coming ahead because it's going up. It's going to go up this year. It's going to go up more next year, I think. That's my conclusion. That uncertainty is not good. Let people know it's going to go up, but what's important is you have a strategic plan telling them, "Well, here's how we're going to get it down." There's one thing I really feel strongly about, and that's based on 50 years of lending in Maine to include

026private schools, large um camps, daycare camps. I think you're going to be forced to be looking at these costs a lot more aggressively. Uh you're going to have to reduce them further, I think. Because you're not going to be able to control the revenues. I think your revenues are going to be under pressure. The state's in trouble. Uh I think there's going to be cutbacks there. I think I've heard that there would be, so your revenues are going to come down well the only thing left is to cut costs. But here's the good news. I think 3% is not a big cut and that's 1.8 million and you say oh well I can't cut 1.8 million it's 3%. I would strongly suggest you get an efficiency expert there's firms out there that are do it

027that are good. Come in and take a look at this thing first on an efficiency basis. If you get the no vote you may not have time to do that there's going to be we want to see those costs cuz the taxpayers going to have expectations. If there's one thing I think you can do is get an efficiency expert in there immediately have them take a look at it. My experience has been when you hire one they're going to give you five times what their fee is. That's kind of the average that's the private sector the nonprofit sector when they bring them in. Um plus you don't have the time you got to run day-to-day operations so in closing I would strongly encourage that you take a look at an efficiency expert number one and

028number two is try to think a little more about taking the uncertainty out by providing budgets along with a plan. I think that would go an awful long way but those are my thoughts for the day. Thank you. >> Yes. And Shirley did you sign David up? You're next. Oh thank you. Well I just found out I'm hard of hearing by the way so that's my excuse along with that. Thank you. Good evening Shirley Story King Cumberland. Thank you for your time. I appreciate the difficult work you are doing and wish you courage to continue. I'm here tonight once again to ask that you do everything in your power to bring the school operating budget increase as close to 3% as possible. 3% reflects the cost of living. Current estimates put wage growth it for

029put wage growth for Mainers at about 3.5% in 2026, slightly lower than last year. That's the reality taxpayers are facing and the budget should reflect it. Let's be clear. Controlling spending is not the same as cutting the budget. Thoughtful restraint is responsible governance, not reduction for its own sake. Please don't conflate the two. I was concerned by a discussion at the last finance meeting about shifting FY27 expenses into the one campus budget. That is not a reduction in spending. It's kicking the can down the road. I urge you not to take that approach. Finance Well, I skipped a line. I urge you not Okay. And with regards to new construction, I ask that you insist on full transparency around any potential change orders, including clear upfront cost estimates. Finance and facility members should be meeting

030regularly with project managers. Change orders must not occur in a vacuum. I have spoken to you before about the narratives you should be challenging. I'll not repeat those tonight, but I will ask the entire board to keep the broader impact front and center. At your workshop just a few weeks ago, you were presented with a budget projecting a 7.68% increase in expenditure. As Mr. Parenteau pointed out just a couple minutes ago, but that translates to an 11% increase for Cumberland and an 11.2 in percent increase for North Yarmouth. Before you settle on a percentage ceiling for the operating budget, find out what that number means not only about the impact to programs and services but the impact to our towns. Those are not abstract percentages. They represent real dollars. Approximately 2.9 million more dollars from

031Cumberland taxpayers and 1.1 million more dollars from North Yarmouth residents. As you deliberate later this evening, please be mindful of the total burden being placed on the people you represent. And then thank you. And I have one question. Are emails to the board made public record? Okay, I need to stop touching. But yeah, they are. I don't see why not. David Noonan. Dave Noonan, Meadow Lane in Cumberland. Uh so I'm just going to talk about budgets overall. So I've been a manager salaried manager in retail establishments, big box, small box, whatever. All budgets have something in common. So when you think about payroll, it's allowed dollars or hours, right? So it's based off those two things. Sales budgets are goals of total revenue, right? So it makes sense. If you're owning a business, you have

032to kind of come within those things. So if we look at MSAD 1 as the business end of it, so I'll just speak here. I've had many budgets to meet and stay within. These budgets are corporate driven, however, for what I've had, however, they have all had one thing in common. They have actual numbers that they are based off of, not estimates, not prior year estimates, they're prior year actuals. So, something else that these budgets do is balance out at the end of the period, say a year. They don't move sales dollars from one month to another. They don't move payroll dollars or payroll from one bucket to another. So, why am I talking about these types of budgets? Because our school budgets aren't based on prior year actuals, they're based off of estimates. It's

033right in the form that was handout tonight. But, just the prior year's budget. This is the only place I've seen a new budget created off of prior year estimates, not actuals. This is not the way a fiscally responsible business runs. Some of you guys are business um business folks, and I'm sure that you wouldn't run yours that way, specifically. The stockholders of a publicly traded company wouldn't stand for this. And as taxpayers, we should not have to stand for our schools to not be able to have a budget process that runs off prior year estimates or actuals, not estimates. Thank you. Thank you. Pat Holt. Hello, I'm Pat Holt. I'm a Cumberland resident, grandmother, mother. Uh my children have gone through the school, my grandchildren are still going through the school. And um I've lived

034in Cumberland for about 30 years. I'm not going to go into all of the smarter money things because I try to understand. The reason I got involved in coming to your meetings and going to town meetings is because I live by myself and I don't really know how much longer I can I can sustain being in my my house. I want to be here, but my wants and what my needs are are paying for my everyday life are probably not going to at one point coincide. Anyway, putting that aside, one of the things that stuck in my head and I'm not a big big numbers person, but when and I thought it was called the fun the fun money. I don't think that's what it's called, but that's what it sounded like. That's not okay.

035That is definitely not okay. That made me angry to a point. I can't know how I pay my the rest of my taxes in September and to hear that there's a little bundle of seven million dollars sitting someplace. Come on. That's not okay. Anyway, that's that part of it. But now I have what my suggestions would be. Uh and then they're simple ones. You should be selling season passes to all of the athletic events. It doesn't have to be through the boosters or anything else. Get that money into the schools. Increase your class sizes and lower your staff. I know I'm like ancient. It was 53 kids in my class and I think I made it. 18 kids in a class isn't going to kill anybody around here. I agree with the IB program being

036canceled. It was started for soldiers, which I just recently learned, when they were overseas, so when their children came back, they could be integrated into the system. These kids don't need that. They can go with AP classes. They're they're smart smart kids. It'll get them as far. They don't even know that they have their diplomas and that until they after they graduate and are ex already accepted in colleges. Anyway, I think with the schools that are closing may in Maine, we really ought to go and visit. See what they have, supplies, furniture, whatever. Buy it. And then reduce those costs for us. See what we have that we're not using and sell it. I know that's a little gray area in there for people to sell school supplies and whatever. Somebody out there wants them.

037Get rid of them. We don't need them. Look at your bus routes. Okay, kids might have to be on a bus 15 minutes longer. Well, they'll they'll be okay. Try to consolidate a little. You see the buses around here. There's eight kids on a bus. This big old big bus. And you see the pickup lines for the for the children getting picked up. So, something's weird in there. You got to look at it. Figure it out. Um I'd be happy to be an independent committee to see where the waste is. I'll just mosey around the schools, put a little sticker on, walk through and see where the waste is. That's not something I'm just thinking, oh, it has to be some waste. There's waste. You know, the people that really know about the waste are

038afraid to come forward and say it. They're afraid. They're afraid for their jobs if they work for the system. So, I'll leave it with that. The other thing is uh if you're at a certain Oh, I don't know where I am. Sorry. I'm sorry. >> No, no. Thank you. Appreciate the and yeah. Thank you. Appreciate your list. Thank you, Pat. Okay. So, I will now close public comment and I will welcome Eric Brown and Tiffany Is it McFetridge? Thank you. Um on the main integrated health youth survey. Thank you very much. Okay, wonderful. Leanne, do we have to approve minutes from last I don't see that on the agenda. The minutes are not done. They'll be done for the 15th. Okay, good. See I'm I'm filling in for Veronica tonight. You You good? Awesome. Thank

039you. All right. We're ready to talk statistics. People love this. Uh so the main integrated youth health survey we'll we'll call it the MIYHS because that's a lot of words right there. So, again I'm Eric Brown. I'm the risk assessment mental health specialist for the district and this is my esteemed colleague. I'm Tiffany McFetridge. I'm a social worker here at Greeley High School. So, a little bit about the main integrated health youth health survey the MIYHS is it's been administered every 2 years since 2009 and we just had a recent survey with our students in 2005 so just this school year. And the last one would have been 2003. Um it's sponsored by Maine DOE DHHS and the CDC so it bridges basically academics and the health of our students. A little background the MIYHS

040covers a wide range of topics so from nutrition so it tests it asks questions about sugary drinks, sugary food, are students eating enough vegetables, um physical activity, so are they getting more than 30 60 minutes 60 minutes of activity, are they sleeping all right, school safety, so bullying, they're going to look at that, they're going to look at emotional connections, peer connections, feeling safe at school, mental health. And we'll cover some of that and also as far as suicidal awareness and substance use, so they'll cover a wide we'll go over a few few of those statistics on substance use. And the data from the MIYHS is used for evaluating student health and risk behaviors. So use the bridge the gap between academics and health, I've already said that. And it identifies where students may be

041at risk and areas where schools can improve on. I'm going to cover GMS, so Greely Middle School, 7th and 8th. This is administered to all 7th and 8th graders in all the school districts across Maine. 5th through 6th has their own survey, but that's more volunteer or not volunteer, sorry, random chosen schools, so GMS did not or for uh 5th through 6th did not get chosen here in Greely. So highlight of the aspects of the data and areas of we're going to focus on bullying. So we're going to talk about some statistics on bullying, sadness, which borders lines on depression, I want to talk about suicide, substance use, and the school climate. So 7th and 8th percentages will also be compared to the 2000 to 2005 state averages, which was 15,096 students, so that's basically

042taking a sampling size of all the students from around different schools around the state of Maine, so we'll compare our statistics to the state statistics. A little bit about MIYHS. So it's completely volun- Parents can opt students out of the MIHAS. Um it's strictly confidential, so students do not put their name, they don't put their date of birth, so it's they've really kind of take out that element of there's really no reason to I I don't know lie on it. Um and you know, I'm not much of a math man, but we had 307 students that were surveyed through GMS and that's over 95% of our student bodies, so there were only a few absent during this survey. So, the first one So, you're going to see I'm really I was really happy to see

043a lot of these stats kind of trending upwards, trending to the to the better. Um it's starting with bullying, so I'm back in 2023 the stats were 44% of students that felt bullied on school property. So, that's um in 2025, it's gone down by 3.4%. It's 40.6% now, so it's gone down. Um and that's compared to it's below the 9.8% of the 50.4% of state average. And they So, not not Cumberland Greeley specifically, but statewide they've they've done a lot of studies as far as why bullying is decreasing and they've said that more bullying is going towards electronic bullying, so social media, stuff like that. But, ours is actually pretty positive cuz it's trended down, so it's 24.3% um in in 2025, which is down from 32.4%, which was um surveyed in 2023. Percentage of

044students who reported experiencing sadness and hopelessness for 2 weeks or more and stopped activities once enjoyed, so that's really borderline, so in the ballpark of depression. Um in 2023 it was 30.5%, which was uh for me was concerning. Over the past several years, and COVID certainly didn't help things, but anxiety, depression, and unfortunately suicidal ideation had been on the rise. And we saw that trend last year in 2023, but 2025, it was um yeah, it went down quite a bit. So, 9.7% decrease, and 8.1% below the state average. Percentage of students who reported having serious uh seriously considered suicide. When we talk about suicide, we're talking about passive thoughts, and we're talking about active thoughts. So, the the um 2023, again, mental health was on the rise for the past several years, suicide related as

045well. So, in 2023, it was 20.8% of students that experienced suicidal ideation. And 2025, it had gone down quite a bit. So, 11.9%. So, I was absolutely thrilled to see that that trend. And again, 6.6% lower than the state average. Substance use. So, have you ever had a drink of alcohol other than a few sips? So, this is a lifetime use. So, has a student, middle school, 7th or 8th ever had a drink of alcohol? And this was actually on the rise as as well over the past uh several years for the younger for the younger grades, unfortunately. But, in this year, you'll see that it it went down to 11.8% from 15.4%. So, a decrease in 3.6%, which is 1.7% a 1.7% lower than the state average. And then, as far as the last

04630 days have students that have sipped alcohol, it was 4.5%. And parents and caregivers are really doing a good job as far as um putting that message out there that al- any alcohol use is wrong. So, um students felt that their parents or caregivers view their drinking as wrong by 96.1%. So, the message is positive. It's out there. Percentage of students who reported again, marijuana use has been on the rise as well, but with these stats, so in 2023, 3.7, it's gone down, 2.7% by 1% decrease, and 4.1% lower than the state average of 6.8%. And then, so that's in the lifetime. And then, the last 30 days, NR% means the statistics were so low that they don't that they don't um highlight them. So, in that parent again, parents character of his view as

047any marijuana use is wrong is 90.97.4% which is really positive. I wasn't sure if I wanted to put this one on there. Um not because of the stats are concerning, but I I cuz I think it's a confusing question to 7th and 8th graders cuz they may view pain medication as Tylenol, they may view pain medication as ibuprofen, things like that. So, they may be confused by that. So, but it startled me a bit to see the increase in it. So, the state of Maine has a huge opiate epidemic anyway. So, they really focus on CD, really focuses on pain medication. They did specifically for GMS, they're looking at those younger students that may be impacted by opiate abuse or addiction, maybe in the family. Um so, yeah, startling it was up eight to up

048to 8.6% of students that have used pain medication without a doctor's prescription. Um which was up from 6. 3%. So, two two percent higher uh when compared to 2023, which is higher than the state average. Now, so the last 30 days, so this is one question they single out was a pain medication. The next next question was medication, and also your stimulants, your Adderall, your Ritalin, your central nervous depressants uh depressants, your Xanax, Valium. Again, they lump pain meds in there. So, have you taken any of those in the last 30 days? And again, 4.2% is a concerning number that we need to pay attention to, but it went down um this this school year. But, 0.2% higher than the state average. So, research suggests that students use maybe use prescribed medication because they believe

049that it's safer. It's made by a doctor. It's made in a laboratory. And it's in the accessibility of um medication. So, too cuz it could be in the household. It could be in a a medicine cabinet. So, something we just want to be mindful of and and and pay attention to. Percentage of students who reported having smoked a cigarette in the past 30 days. This has been trending down for for years, which is which which is nice. And NNR is basically this is just this six again. So low, they don't report it. Um in 2020 2023, it was 1.8%, which is a decrease in percentage of students uh who reported having smoked cigarettes. Lower than the state average of 1.6. And percentage of students who reported having used an electronic vaping product in the past

05030 days. So, this is specifically for nicotine vape. And the decrease again is um over the last 32 days 30 days by 2%. So, and 2% lower than the the state average. Percentage of students who reported offered, sold, or given alcohol or drugs. We've seen the trend trending down as well um by a significant number. So, 2.6% 3.2% lower than the state average. And percentage of students who reported feeling safe at school. So, this is not only physical safety, this is also emotional safety, feeling connected to your peers, feeling connected to your teachers. Um bullying, which we saw was down, so this is all that. Um again, it's it's up a little bit, but 86.9% is a is a great number for a percentage for students who feel safe at school. Increase uh so increased

051by 0.2% and 6.2% above the state average. I found this to be an interesting stat. This went down quite a bit this school year. So percentage of students who answered that that at least one of your teachers really cares and gives you help and support when you need it. So in 2023, it was 73% and 2025 was 66%, so 7% lower. And I did a little research on this, so I can't speak for really specifically, but statewide they say some of the reasons it's it's gone down quite a bit and some of the reasons cuz we've become more of a digital age. So more uh school work done on laptops and it's taken away that that kind of personal connection between a student and a teacher. Um also they talked about classrooms they more students

052in the classroom, shortages in teachers, ed techs, so they talked about that as being a factor of why this has been trending downwards. Um so lower than in this for really it was lower than the state average by 4.1%. And same with uh parent caregiver asking about their school day, which in 2023 was 88% and this year it was it's down 83.6% and they talk about this is also has to do with electronics. It's easy to check PowerSchool, it's easy to check a student's grades through digital means instead of and that takes away that face-to-face kind of check-in of "How was your day? What'd you do today?" Where you can just go and I'm guilty of that because I have two boys here in the district where it's easy for me to just go look

053at a PowerSchool and see what their grades at are are at. So by fortune that's 2.1% higher than the state average. So, positive highlights, majority of our students feel safe in our schools including a decrease in feeling bullied at school. Majority of our students identify protective factors of teacher I'll get to that later. Teacher and parent caregiver. Um self-reports of persistent sadness, hopelessness, as well as um thoughts of suicide have decreased significant percentages. And a decrease in reported use of marijuana, vape, and cigarettes, and alcohol. Areas of concern. So, I want to pay attention or we want to pay attention to the prescription pain medication as well as just other medication. Overall, there's been an increase in that. And areas of concern is obviously the the uh teacher really cares about me as well as

054uh parent caregiver asked about those were both trending downward, so want to make sure we're paying attention to that. Those were areas of concern. All right. You're ready? Yep. So, um Here's your pen. Yeah. Again, I'm Tiffany McPeters, social worker here at Greeley High School. Um and I'm going to hit similar data points that Eric did, um but just the information that I'll be providing um will be speaking to um information collected from our students here at the high school versus the middle school. Um so, we um again, the following slides, we had probably we had 391 students um in grades 9 through 12 participate in the survey. This survey is something that they they can opt out of or their your their parents can opt them out. Um it is 100% confidential. We make

055a pretty decent effort to encourage them to take it and to stress the fact that it is confidential, um but I know that a lot of students um would prefer not to to do it sometimes. So, but either way, this is what we have for results. Um So, in the slides we're going to I'm going to highlight similar aspects that Eric did. Um, and that would be in the areas of bullying, depression, suicide, substance abuse, and school climate. Um, and we'll also I will also compare um Greeley High School's averages to state averages um as we go through. So, again, we start I was I start off with um percentage of students who reported being bullied on school property. You can see that in 2023, 19.4% of Greeley students reported Greeley High School, excuse me,

056students reported being bullied on school property, and in 2025 that number went down. Um I will say that this decrease, however, it is a good generally a trending in the right direction, but it's not a statistically significant decrease. Um, and really what we mean by that, so if a difference between two numbers is statistically significant, it means the difference is not likely to be explained by random chance. So, in this instance it is not statistically significant, so it could be have been explained by random chance. So, um just something to keep in mind as we go through the numbers. Um So when we were looking at the state average compared to Greeley's numbers, we can see that um Greeley actually is below the state average by 6.1% and um that that is a statistically significant

057difference. So, we are we are having less students report being bullied than on average in the state. Um, and when we look at the being electronically or experience electronic bullying, our numbers um, there is a difference, but it's again it's it's not enough for it to be statistically significant. And this slide is looking at the percentage of students who reported experiencing sadness and hopelessness for 2 weeks or more and stopped at activities once enjoyed. And again, that's where we're thinking about um, the symptoms of depression and um, can see that our numbers and have gone down since 2023. Um, we went from 29% to about 26%. Um, and while this is a decrease, again it's not a statistic statistically significant. For some reason that is a mouthful for me. Um, change. Um, we are also

058Greeley students reported um, uh, 1.5% below the state average. Again, the number's not big enough to to for it to be statistically significant. Which really means we're just sort of in line with what's being reported across the state. Um, so in this slide we're looking at the percentage of students who reported having seriously considered suicide. Um, in 2023 we had about almost 20%. Um, in 2025 it is down to 12%. Um, that that is a 7.4% decrease and that is statistically significant and that is a number that um, is really nice to see um, as a mental health provider in the community um, in the school, I mean, not the community in the school, the school community. Um, it's very nice to see um, and it is something that as Eric mentioned was on the

059rise after COVID. Um, it's nice to see those numbers start to come down a little bit. Um and we are very similar to the state average. So, we're the in general, we are trending down across the state. Um now, we look The next few slides we'll look at some substance abuse numbers. Um this one is comparing have you ever had a drink of alcohol other than a few sips than a few sips? So, that's lifetime. Um so, in 2023, um 48.7% of our high school students report that they had. In 2025, it was 49.6. That's not a big difference. So, we're pretty much just sort of staying the same in the number reporting. Um where the difference lies um on this particular question is it is between um the state average and uh 2025 and

060Greeley students average in 2025. So, we um our students here are reporting 9.1% higher than the state average. Um and that is a that is statistically significant. Um and it's similarly last 30 days use. So, that is the question is um have you had at least on how many Have you had at least one drink of alcohol in the last 30 days essentially? Um and our our students report 26.5% of our students are reporting yes versus the state average, which is 16.5. So, again, we're statistically significantly higher um than the state average there. Um this slide is comparing the percentage of students who reported um having ever used marijuana. In 2023, 30 about 30%. In 2025, we have 20 about 27%. Um there is a decrease there. Again, it's not a big enough decrease, so

061it essentially we're sort of staying the same um, as we had a couple of years ago. Um, and when we compare to the state average, we are right in line with what's going on across the state as far as um, ever having used and then also again having used at least once in the last 30 days. Oh. Oh, yep. I did change the slide. Um, so in this slide I have Percentage of students who reported having taken prescription pain medication without a doctor's prescription or differently than how a doctor prescribed it in the past 30 days. Um, I I don't know if we didn't have I would have to look back at the survey. I'm not certain if the high school didn't have the same question about the particularly the pain medication, but it was

062not highlighted in our in our report that we were given. Um, so but this question is asking about prescription drugs in general. Um, in 23 in 2023, 4.5% of our students said that they they had um, in the past 30 days um, used uh, prescription medication without a prescription. In 2025, 3.9% um, the decrease is slight. Again, trending in the right direction, but it not but essentially statistically it it is insignificant, so it it is we're kind of just staying the same there. Um, and we're right in line with the state average as well. Um, So, this slide is looking at the percentage of students who reported having used a vaping device in their lifetime. 2023, we have 24.5% of our students reporting yes that they had 2025. We had 21.7% of our Greeley High

063School students reporting yes that they had. There is a decrease. Um but it is not a statistically significant one. So again, I think we're sort of stay our our usage or at least our reported usage is staying pretty similar. Um we are lower um than the state average by about 4.4%. Um but it is not enough of a difference to be outside of the possibility of um just random chance. So this question is looking at the percentage of students who reported being offered, sold, or given alcohol or drugs on school property in the last 12 months. In 2023 it was 16 we had 16.7% um of Greeley High School students reporting that they had been. In 2025 we had 15.1%. Um it's a small decrease. Um and it is so again, it's about staying similar.

064Um it hasn't really changed over time over the last 2 years. Um we are slightly higher than the state average but it is essentially where where on the um we're right in line with what we're seeing across the state. Um and so more a little bit more good news, I suppose, our uplifting um news is the looking at the percentage of students who reported feeling safe at school. Um in 2020 at Greeley High School in particular, in 2023 it was 89.8% and in 2025 91.2%. So um an increase. Um so slight increase but when we look at and when we look at comparing Greeley's number to the state average, the increase was 4.9% and that was statistically significant. So our students are feeling are feeling safe in our schools, which is really nice to see.

065Um The percentage of students who strongly agreed or agreed that at least one adult at school really cares and gives them help and support when they need it. Um we had in 2023 about 74%. 2025 we had 76%. Um so again we're not too much of a change and we're really um that's over half and that is a wonderful number to see. There's always room for improvement, but um it's a good thing. Um and we're right in line with the state average on that as well. I think I have one more statistic to throw at you and then I can wrap this up shortly. Um the percentage of students who reported feeling safe at school Um did I go the wrong way? Yes, I did. Apologies. Percentage of students who identify at least one parent

066or caregiver talk with them about what they're doing in school about every day or about once a week. So um our students are reporting um both in 2023 and 2025 um in the you know, the 87 to 89 percentile, which is wonderful to hear. Um and it it there is a statistically significant difference between what our students are reporting and the state average, meaning more of our students are having contact with their parents and their parents were are doing an excellent job of talking with them about what's going on at school. Um So sorry, that was a lot of numbers really fast. I'm trying to get us through this. Um So some positive highlights, I would say uh the vast majority of our students feel safe in our schools. We had 91% you know, um

067signifying that. Uh the majority of our students identify protective factors of a teacher and or a parent caregiver. Um the majority of our students don't use alcohol, cigarettes, vape, marijuana, or prescription drugs. And I didn't have a specific slide on this, but when looking through the data, um uh of the full report from the Maine Integrated Youth Health Survey, um we could see that there was an increase in student confidence that the school is enforcing rules fairly and addressing conflict, negative language, and bullying in positive ways. Um some areas of concern, uh the percentage of students reporting ever having used alcohol remains significantly higher than the state average. Um And right along with that, 74.1% of our students report that alcohol is easy or sort of easy for them to get. And those two things

068kind of go hand in hand because uh one of the key factors to um underage drinking is ease of um ease of getting a hold of the alcohol. Um So if our students perceive that it's easy or if it truly is easy for them, then that is going to be something that they're going to be more likely to um participate in. Um A another area of concern, while there was a significant drop in students reporting ever seriously considering suicide in the last 12 months, it is still 12% um of our population. Um And if we were to do the math, that of our 391 students, that would be about 46 of our students. And in my mind, any any number above zero is too many to have seriously considered suicide. Um and lastly, among students

069who reported feeling sad, hopeless, sad or hopeless during the last 12 months, so among that group of students, sorry, among that group of students who reported feeling sad and hopeless in the last 12 months, the percent of students who answered that they got help from adult an adult was approximately 40%. And that would be a number I would love to see increase, um because if you think about a student who is feeling so sad and lost and hopeless, we would really love to um think that they had somebody that they felt like they could trust and turn to. Um last slide. Oh, and the top part's cut off cuz we had tried to squeeze too much on. But >> Some of that, yeah. You want to You want to do it? I'll do it. Okay.

070Okay. I was going to make Eric do this, but I'm just going to do it cuz now I'm standing out here. Um so we thought it would be really helpful to our school district is doing a lot right. Um and we thought it would be really helpful to just sort of put together um a list of what we would consider protective factors um going on at Greeley Middle School and Greeley High School. Um and so I will run through these quickly. Um Yeah, I'll run through these quickly. So, we have Kyle's Cares, which is a student organization, and the Safe Promise Club, which promotes mental health and school safety. We have at the high school, um we have a robust advisory program where they focus on social emotional learning, um and connection with peers and

071staff. Um we have health classes offered in 6th, 7th, 8th, and 10th grades. We have a civil rights team and a variety of pro-social clubs at GMS and and GHS. Um and that really just means after-school activities and keeping kids involved and connected. Um and that is one of the main ways um that one of it's a huge prevention activity essentially. Um We have the Rainbow Alliance and Gay-Straight Alliance to focus on support and belonging. Um we have Here at Greeley High School, we have a program called Broad Cove Academy, which is essentially an alert an alternative learning classroom um that focuses on behavioral support. We have social work positions, school counselor positions at GMS. We have um two social workers. I actually think we have more. Two two social workers and two um >>

072And two school counselors. I was thinking there were three, but I guess that's It's sort of changed. Anyway, we have we have a good number. And also at Greeley High School, we have three um school counselors and three social workers. Um We have Eric, who is our mental health specialist. Um we have that position. Um and he really focuses on risk assessments and making sure our most vulnerable students are safe and and cared for. Um We have a student support team and MTSS process including the SRSS behavioral screener. That's a lot of letters. But essentially what we're saying is we have a group of dedicated um individuals at our school who meet regularly and um for students who are are having are popping because they have uh maybe a behavioral or their grades are dropping

073or there's a teacher concern, they meet and talk about what supports we can put in place to help support that student and get them back on the right track. Um we have mandatory suicide awareness and prevention training for all staff. Um the middle school just finished theirs and I think the primary school also Greeley High School, we are doing that next week. Um we have NAMI gatekeeper training um and this year, I think it was just this year. Yeah. We've had over 30 staff participate in that and that is a again it's a suicide awareness and mental health awareness training. Um we have unified basketball and Best Buddies Club which focus on inclusion. Um there's restorative practices being used at at the middle school. Certainly at the high school as well. Um managing conflict, repairing

074relationships. Um we've had a number of assemblies focusing on wellness topics, social themes. I think of Kyle's specifically Kyle's Cares brought um a couple of different speakers uh focused on break um breaking down the stigma around talking about mental health um this year and in in our schools we do focus on digital citizenship teaching safety and responsibility. And I think that's that's it. So um any questions about all of that information? Thank you so much um for bringing bringing this forward tonight and um a special thank you to Tiffany for uh explaining statistical significance and then using that word. It was actually the first thing that popped into my mind when Eric started you started in the middle school. I was like I was wondering if that was statistically significant truly. So um I appreciate

075you you going through that. So um I mean I know I have some questions but I'll I'll open it up to other board members. Can I just do I just want to do um a thank you to Tiffany. My um second daughter, Hannah, was so inspired by you and her experiences with you and what you impacted in her life that she became a social worker. That's wonderful to hear. Thank you so much for sharing that. She works with Big Brothers Big Sisters. What a great program. So, thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Also not a question, but a comment. I think I can speak for both Katie and I and probably a large majority of our peers. And personally as someone who's pretty heavily involved in the mental health community at Greeley, the work

076and the information that you guys are giving us is extremely valuable and listening to this presentation was extremely eye-opening to me. And so I just wanted to say thank you and that it's not it's not underappreciated and that even us as students um and just the attention to detail that you guys are giving to our students and our staff is just awesome. So, keep up with it. Thank you. Also not a question, but a huge thank you. Um Eric, when you made this presentation a couple years ago and it was the first time that I had heard of the Me House Survey, it was a huge huge eye-opener. I don't think a lot of parents, you know, like in the Mabelvale and middle school ages know know about this. And this is that data that

077I think so many of us are craving. Like, how are our kids doing? And so the work of the Safety and Security Council is super important in our school and we put so much effort and time into doing that. But what you guys are doing and sort of your attention to this details I think the really proactive work that's going on to keep our schools safe and healthy and productive. So, thank you. This is super important. Thank you. Thank you. I have the the perfect um piggyback on that, which is compare Do parents see this information? Because I think this might inspire a lot of interesting conversations at home, especially among high school uh households. Yeah. Um so, certainly parents can see this information. I don't know that we have um as a high school

078have um really promoted it in that way or in the past, I will say in the past over the years, cuz I've been This is my 13th year here at Greeley. Um and I've been involved with the survey since I started um um partnering with Peter Skott. Um and in the past, we have done things with the information, try to get it out to the student body and and um and/or I feel like I can't really remember exactly, but I feel like last year we may have um Carl Francis may have um put some of that information in a newsletter um or access to it or how to access or if you have questions to see him, but um in general, we could do a better job sharing the information is what I would say

079um for sure. But and I and I do think we we are more than happy to do that. >> Mhm. We can also use, you know, we have a recording of tonight, and so we can also clip out like we could do the middle school one, do the high school one, and and and promote um that as well. Yeah. That's a a terrific question. It's I'm embarrassed not to have I don't have an answer for that. Um these So, these just came out like probably a month ago, I think these statistics, but I think it's it's not too late to get those out. I've always looked at it from like an internal sort of This is where our students at, this is where we should beef up this, this is what we're doing well, that

080sort of thing. But, it's very important, I think, for families and to have this community have this information. So, thank you. We'll make sure that's >> Oh, yeah. No No criticism. I just >> Oh, no. No. No. No. I don't take it. I No, it's Yeah, it should get out there. You're right. Yeah, I also agree with like school climate, especially knowing that I think if you could like I know there's a big emphasis on keeping it like anonymous, which of course, I feel like that's why students really feel comfortable, obviously, cuz there's a lot of questions that I mean, you know, that can be sensitive. But, I think especially the questions regarding like mental health and sometimes the like prolonged sadness, those types of questions, to have that more maybe given out during advisory,

081for example, something like that to the high school, for high schoolers to just have a really good like understanding of the people that they're actually interacting with on the daily basis that could be going through something that they might not want to share with you, but that obviously is impacting them cuz we hear a lot of feedback, I think, throughout our lives and especially in this community, just like you never know what someone else is going through. And I think seeing a statistic that really proves that could be really beneficial to the way that we interact with each other. Um so, I like Megan this was a pivotal conver- presentation a couple years ago. And I remember thinking, "Our kids are not okay." And thinking like it's uh it's only going to get worse. Like

082that's that's I think maybe coming out of COVID and kind of the pessimism. And then I look at this, and yes, some of them aren't statistically significant, but they're almost always they were almost always lower. And I think there is something there there, and I think we we might feel that. Um so, one of the things that really came out to me was the connection with adults in the middle school in particular. And that is something that you would think would correlate with some of the decrease and or improvement of numbers depending on it was that you would see higher connections but we didn't really see that and so I think that could be a good easy lift like low hanging fruit for us to focus on but my question is more from the state

083side did we see similar trends lowering at on the state side in terms of it looks like that but I'm not sure did you see similar trends of we are everyone across the state or students across the state maybe we're doing better than we thought maybe the kids are going to be okay and we need to like continue down this road and and what we're doing is working do we see this around state You want You know I no no I I think overall if I remember correctly I think the state's actually trending in a in a positive way as well and if you look at some of the statistics we weren't you know some of the gaps were bigger some gaps were smaller but I think the state too is doing I think there's

084just been more emphasis put on mental health emotional health social connections and I think that's really kind of state wide and a lot of school districts are doing that so I think we're seeing the payoff for that sort of stuff yeah I mean for for years so real quick I worked for a medical facility I was integrated clinician there and and my job was solely based on doctors young people going in saying oh I'm having heart palpitations having back aches and I'm having this it was all anxiety it was all depression it was like so the stats were just through the roof as far as anxiety depression goes as far as suicidal ideation goes and I'm just thrilled and of course covid didn't do anything to help that right it actually exacerbated it and so

085I'm thrilled to see that it's starting to come down again and well we're starting to come down period. Um and I think yeah, I think that's statewide as well as we're seeing that. Good. That's good. I'm Keep up the good work. I'm very happy about that. Thanks. Questions? Um so, I was really concerned about that middle school number that you just referenced. And um of course, tonight uh we continue to talk about our budget and our investments. I mean, this is what I really feel our budget is is our investments in in these kids and um what is the environment um that we're investing in? And one of the things that we will be contemplating at the middle school is a continued investment in a certain model that has been happening with the the classrooms

086and how they get teamed up. Um and we have some decisions that are that we're going to have to make around um that programming. And I just get really concerned when I see some of the numbers with the connections at the middle school um and what we can do with our our models for how we are creating opportunities for connection at the middle school. Um and yeah, the the number of teachers, the number of kids in a class I I feel I could have a huge impact on that. And as we know, most of us have have currently have middle schoolers, have had middle schoolers. Like, what an important challenging time in in their lives um that that is. And I don't know if you have any I guess advice as we're contemplating like thinking

087about how um the the configuration of the middle school, maybe what you've seen that might have been helpful and maybe in years past when those connections seemed higher. Any insights, I guess. Do you want to field that or No. Um so, just want to make sure just want to make sure I get the question. So, any insight as to what's going on or what we can do to improve? help make more connections with the middle school. Is there something obviously we have a lot of oversight on the budget and if through funding or configuration of of how we're supporting middle schoolers? Yeah, it was a it was a there were two those were the two stats that really stood out to me was just as far as like the teachers feeling connected cuz and parents

088and caregivers those are huge huge protective factors. Those are those are emotional social protective health, right? For young people is a is a positive unconditional adult. And I think and and I don't want to speak for really specifically cuz I think that JMS is doing a lot as far as social emotional learning. We talked that and and they're all teachers, right? They're all teachers that are doing small group advisories. There's social workers that are doing advisory groups. So, they're trying to um decrease the numbers in those advisory groups to make a connection with peers, to make a connection with um adults and it doesn't mean you're going to be in there with your best friend. Could be with any student. It's just randomly chosen. Um, and I think it's something that they're they're doing well.

089But I think we also need to focus on it and and parents as well is is I think we need to focus on the the lean on digital as far as like yeah, let's get to our work and we're opening up computers and we're losing that face-to-face sort of time. And that's not a bash by any means, but I think that's just kind of where we're at where at anyway statewide. And parents, I mean, it's really easy. Like I can go on PowerSchool and see what my ninth grader's got going on. Where where do you Oh, I see you have instead of going Dude, how was how was school today? What went on? What do you what do you need? I can say oh What did you do with that math test? You know, it's

090really easy to do that sort of thing to and then you kind of lose that emotional human connection. But I also appreciate the point of like be wondering how much time our middle schoolers are spending Yeah. this instead of like this. Yeah, that's great. >> So I think it's just I was it was a trend that I I just came across. I was like, "What is that all about?" So I did it it was a statewide thing as they're talking about again the increase in the numbers of the class sizes. Um and just you know our our focus on you know, digital. And does this then get work shopped like with the administration teachers in each in each building? Like do you guys sit down um and go through the results with with the um

091within each building? The results of the Me as? Yes. Yeah. Yeah, that that has happened. Um I just nudged Caitlin to ask if she felt the same way. I hope this doesn't yell at me. Hold on. Okay. Um but I think that yeah, I think that the switch from middle school to high school with computer use is crazy. I like hardly use my computer at school. I use it for maybe one class a day, maybe two to like housekeep. Um but I do most of my assignments either on paper or it's like discussion based and Caitlin and I take very different types of classes. So I think that's a good like she's more AP track and I'm not and so I take IB and so I think she can speak to that as well, but

092I the switch from middle school to high school and that might have been a product of the COVID years, but I feel like not being on my computer helped my learning a lot, but it was also very very significant in high school being off my computer almost the entire day. Yeah, I would completely agree. I think that our curriculum is largely focused on having those those human connections and those human conversations and a couple people pointed to the fact about making connections with your teachers and that is such a huge part of like my personal learning and such a huge part of my character development and like so much we talk about and like all of our profile of a learner stuff and all the work that goes into making Greeley students who Greeley students

093are when they graduate and teachers make up a huge part of that. It doesn't have to be like day-to-day teaching of like basic curriculum, but there's so much connection that goes on between a student and a teacher on a day-to-day basis and that like cannot that can't be recreated in any way and I think that in the high school it's definitely also a huge factor because you're obviously changing in so many ways and trying to develop on your own and social connections with your peers, social connections with your parents, all of those things are changing and so I do definitely think that that coming into the high school was a huge change and having that support was so so helpful and so I definitely think that that yeah, that was And it like only shines

094through the more conversations that you actually have with teachers and your peers rather than like emailing or asking a question through like digital services which you can do like literally during class. So I think that it's a big difference and I think it really helped with the transition. It's great great perspective. Thank you. Right, anyone? I have just another thing to add. I think I was really happy to see that I think it was something like 91% of students feeling safe at school in the high school and I think that that's obviously like that makes me smile, but I think that it's also like it's just such a great number to see because we have such obviously we all know it's such a changing climate and students see a lot of news and we try

095to keep ourselves up to date and sometimes that can be scary and it can create cycles of anxiety and that type of thing. But I think that and I don't know about the middle school but I do know that there are a lot of different services and people that I could talk to at the high school. Like I know I could go to Mr. Gray and say, "Hey, what would happen if this happened right now? If this happened right now, do we have any things in place? Like how could that work?" And I've probably done it before and he knows how to field that question and how to respond and tell me, "Well, this is what would happen." And then if that's a if we've stumped him, then he'd say, "You know what? Let's talk

096about it." And then we'd find a different way to think about it and then there are committees in place that try to make our schools so safe and I think that the conversations that our administrators and our teachers have with students when they have those concerns really changes the conversation and it makes students feel so much more safe to know that their concerns are also administrators and our teachers concerns cuz it gives you that like we're all in this change together type feeling and it really makes the students feel I myself specifically like that my teachers care in the same way that I care and there's really not like that loneliness aspect of feeling worried that you're kind of just you really are together in that and I think that's very prevalent at the high

097school and I'm sure at the middle school as well but I'm really glad to see that in like quantifiable form. I think already you thought you were How this is going to sound like such a basic question but I I think I just love to hear it stated out loud. How does this data translate to once a kid leaves high school becomes an adult? What what what is the advantage of a kid feeling safe at school? What what What kind of an adult does that make them? Yeah. I would I would I don't know. The way I would answer this question, the way I'm going to answer this question is So, there's so many different intelligences, right? And one of them's being smart academically, right? There's also the the the the one that really tests

098for success is emotional intelligence, social emotional intelligence. So, I'm hoping we're really kind of um now in that point where you know how to identify how you're feeling. You know how to manage how you're feeling. You know how to manage somebody else's feelings cuz that's happens when you go off into college into the job force and you learn how to make and maintain relationships. So, I I love to see I think that that social emotional and um learning that we focus here is going to translate on to adulthood, into college, into job. So, that's I don't know if that answers your question, but that's That's what That Those are my hopes and I and that's and that's where I think we're putting a lot of emphasis on So, Kim and UNE, this my question about

099Maine was specifically around the kids who are getting at UNE right now coming in are not okay. And this is what gives me hope in that Yeah, I've been saying like hey, we need to like boost some of those supports and maybe we still do, but it might not be as tragic as I thought, but the kids have very limited um social emotional development compared to let's say 4 years ago and the faculty all reported our stats reported and so, like the more that we can do here and get ahead of it, it it it's a huge impact down the line, huge. So. Yeah. Thank you. Well, it's not like I didn't know, but like I said, I just wanted to hear it said out loud because it is tempting to think about okay kids

100need to come here and they need to learn math and English. They need to be able to write a paper. They need to be able to be critical thinkers and there's so much to the social emotional learning that happens and that growth. And I will echo what you said that takes a lot of staff members. That takes a lot of resources and so it just helps again as we think about the budget why that matters. Thank you. Thank you. Really appreciate it. Thank you. >> Thank you. Yeah. Okay, now we're going to move to items for action and I can't help myself but touch that. Okay. Um so the first one is to vote on the name of our new pre-K to one school. Um I so much has led up to this vote. Um

101and I'm really excited to ask Megan who's head up headed up this whole effort um to seek names um and to put some recommendations uh forward to us. So I'm going to um just hand it over for her to give a little more of the background and to make a motion. Okay. Um I'll give a little bit of context which will probably be familiar to many of you. Um but many months ago the the board extended an offer to our communities to propose names for the new pre-K to one school. And we got so many submissions. We were heard. People in the community reached out. We got over 20 submissions which for us was very statistically significant and important. We got submissions that highlighted the history of Cumberland um including the history of the land

102around our school and honoring the people that were involved in the land around our school. To um maybe the lesser known history of Cumberland's involvement in the Underground Railroad. We got submissions um, for people with these beautiful, passionate stories about members of our community, many who are gone, but one importantly who is here, who is Coach Hale. And uh, garnered a whole bunch of signatures from students and staff, and that was really pretty fantastic and moving. So, we had wonderful, wonderful choices. Um, we narrowed down the list with partly the help of Mabel I. Wilson, who voted on the names of the schools, and we are faced tonight with a very difficult, but worthy task to choose between our fantastic choices, which include the Carolyn F. Small School, the Small School for short, and Greeley

103Primary School. Um, so as I make this motion, I am casting my vote, which uh, for me is a is really a vote for unity and for welcoming our youngest young learners into their home for the next 13 plus years. Um, so tonight, I'd like to make a motion to name the new pre-K one school the Greeley Primary School. Second. Thank you. Did I hear a second? >> Yeah. Jesse, second. Okay. So, this opens the floor for other board members who'd like to make comment on the motion. Yeah, go Kim. So, what will happen to Mabel Wilson School? I guess is my big question. I, you know, I like symmetry. It just feels very weird to me to have three Greeleys and one not. Um, I was actually toying with the idea of the Greeley

104Small School and a Greeley, uh, not so small school. I don't know, Greeley Wilson School. Um, something so that I I I I guess I I will, sorry, go back to my original question. What will happen to Mabel Wilson? Will it stay that name? Uh I think until there's some action for it to not be that way, I guess. I think there's a formal policy around naming of things. Yeah. So, I was planning Um I I feel like my vote in my pocket for a long time on this between the two. Um and then um we got an email from a school leader. I won't specifically name it and putting his rationale for uh the Greeley Primary School. And I thought about the different Well, his rationale was essentially kind of what Megan was alluding

105to is this unity thing and how um the Maybelle Y. Wilson effect really is like they're in their own little bubble. And um when I tell people that my kids go to Maybelle Y. Wilson, they're like, "Where is that?" The same thing. I feel that kind of connection to. But, I love the story and the romance of a human being and it's connected to something. And I I really enjoyed when I I went to George Washington University and the fact that like there was like a man at the center of that and the story behind that. But, I also went to uh Teachers College at Columbia. And my my um program was in the Teachers College, but it was also part of Columbia. And I didn't really feel like a home. And because like the

106name was like you're under Columbia, but you're at Teachers. And so, I felt that unity, too. Like, I want our kids to feel a certain sense of belonging and connection to the school. And while I think the person that was like the Caroline Small School is worthy, completely worthy of it. And I think I love the idea of the small school. It's like a really cute kind of thing. I think there's more connection in the Greeley Primary School. And so, I'm supporting that as well, um tonight. I'll go. Go. Uh so, full transparency, uh my my first choice when I voted as a um community member was the Caroline F. Small School for that very reason. I thought the small school, it's cute. Um you know, it's like a can be a a place where

107you know, little kids are going to small school and they're small kids. Um the rationale that we got uh for the Greeley Primary School made a lot of sense and so, I did some research. I have a first-grader. Uh and so, I've talked to my first-grader and all of his friends and across the board, they all wanted it to be Greeley Primary School. >> Mhm. Um and so, I think there is a there is a way that we need to honor people who do incredible work in our community and I think if we do go with Greeley Primary School, I don't know if there's a I know there are opportunities for maybe naming a library, finding a way to honor people in our community who have done tremendous work and deserve to be honored, but

108I also want to recognize um I know some people have, you know, said that, "Oh, kids would want it to be the small school." And I have asked all of the kids I can ask that my son knows and they all chose Greeley Primary because they're at Greeley and Greeley is the it's on the shirt and on the things. So, I I mean, I for me, that that's what swayed me, but I also recognize that we need to find ways to to honor incredible people in our community and if there's a way we can do that with a library or a playground, um I think Caroline F. Small is worthy of um I agree. Yeah. I agree. Okay. Sarah? Uh go ahead. Um and I lean the other way. Big surprise. Um without intention or

109anything, um I like the history and the connection to the community. Um I like I like the idea of the small school for the small children and it to be a safe place for them that's not part of this big massive unit. Um and just the small family has given so much to the community and to have to have a person and a family to connect our families. Mhm. I think so. Father John? Um I come at this a little surprised that that was suggested to be honest as the what we were going to vote towards tonight. Um since our school is already named after a person. We agree. It is true. So it's hard to hear what you guys just said and then know that the history is within my family and I know

110everything that's happened over My family's been here for more than 200 years. So and before this school was even the institute was over here. Um so it's hard to hear what you guys said in that sense cuz it's after a person already. So to name it after another school within our district after another person is no different in my mind and it's the same idea in essence. Um so I would lean towards the small school, Carolyn. As understanding that history is important and we build upon history and make decisions for tomorrow based on that history. So to recognize that is important. So I would devote that direction and I wholeheartedly always have, always will feel that way. Are we stuck in the two? Can we make it Greeley Carolyn F. Small School? Can we make

111some combination to satisfy people? We are not stuck in the two. If it if from a policy standpoint, like we can do that. Mhm. Nominate? I would worry that would become confusing. Mhm. Can I throw something out there? Uh so I did look up like what is a primary school and how is it different than an elementary school? Um and it's just like elementary and primary are sort of the same thing. So it's like if we had a a uniform naming convention, would it be Greeley Primary, Greeley Elementary, Greeley Middle, Greeley High, or are elementary and primary largely the same? I mean I mean we could call it the Greeley Small School. I mean you know, there's nothing to say we can't do that cuz like what is primary mean? Cuz my wife was like,

112"Isn't primary second through fourth?" And I was like, "I don't know. I got to look it up." And it's sort of just a school that's before secondary education, which is high school. Um Yeah, so there's nothing nothing to say we couldn't mix it up and Do a combo. call it, you know, why why why can't it be the Greeley Small School and not the Greeley Primary School? I mean if if somebody wants to make that motion, they could. I can't. We we can't. I do think Greeley Caroline Small Primary School I mean it is too many words. No, like we could do that, but I think that would be very confusing and too long. Procedurally reminder, do we need to vote on the motion on the table or can we Amend it. Uh yes, you

113do need to vote um and then if you if someone wants to make an amendment, they can make an amendment. So you need to vote first. Actually, you can I'm sorry, you can make a motion to amend and then you can come back to the main motion is yes, proceed. >> You cannot make motions. Yeah. Okay. So right like right this minute You can make a motion >> make an emotion to amend. >> Yes, you can make an amendment. You do have to come back to the main motion though and vote on it. After? That's a well, it's a new vote for the new amended motion. It's a vote for the amended motion. We've got the Roberts Let me just check it. Keep talking as we look up the rules. >> we've heard from everybody.

114No, come on, Lauren. Um, I'm I was so moved by all of the stories that we heard about Carolyn Small. And those are the only stories that people came out and talked about and felt passionate um, at public comment. Um, and so I'm I'm struck by that. Um, and I I hear the unity arguments as well, but um, I'm on the fence still, but but leaning still toward the the small school, but entirely the Carolyn F. Small School. I think combining them is is doing both dirty. Yeah. Um, I'll also say I think we just had a conversation about um, how are we shaping Greeley students to be the best people when they leave this district. And I think that like Lauren just said, listening to those stories about this one person who has put

115so much into community of kids, I think that if people were to if we were to name the school the Carolyn F. Small School and people were to talk to students and faculty and parents in the community and they were able to attest to the story of Carolyn F. Small and what she's done and students are able to look up to her in a in a way and um, have an inspiration and a mentor and someone like a pillar in our community that has done so much. I think that as a student that shows a lot to what what who we're trying to become and as faculty who they're trying to shape and in a way and so I would also agree that I think that the Carolyn F. Small School is is the best

116way to grow our community and to kind of unify our community and do a strong sense of what we're trying to build in the community. So consistent recognition even to different people I think means a lot. And I mean three really cuz Greely is a person too. Yeah. Yeah. And you look back on the schools that you've like gone to and like you remember oh I went to the Small School if you went to the Small School and then it went oh and then I went to MIW and then I went and you just have and you have stories and people ask you about the stories. Oh why is that this way and then you can answer and then I don't I think it builds more community, grows more roots that were already there just

117recognizing that. But I agree. I will say one other thing going to school here I would say when I left the community or the greater Cumberland County area I would be the same response. You went to Greely, where's that? It's not Cumberland High School or MSA 51 it doesn't associate with a place. So I feel like that's the same kind of vibe we were talking about that it doesn't have a location. So it's just Um Every time. Now I think it's like I have this nervous tick right that I have to touch the the microphone. I'll sit on my hands. Um this is a tough, like how many opportunities um, do yeah, people get to name a school, especially in Maine where the opposite is happening, right? We're closing schools. Um, and really not opening

118many. Um, and so this has been a tough one. Uh, I I feel like every day I I think a different about going a different direction and I would say the things that weigh against for me on the the small school um, is just the fact that there is another small school, of course, not the same person, but in I think it's South Portland. Um, cuz I look things up all the time and I like if there's I'm you know, and you search in like small school, you there's one in South Portland, they'll be they'd be one here. So just from a a practical sense, that was weighing on me. And also um, the naming somebody something after somebody who's still here. I'm so glad she's still here. Um, but alive, right? Um, there's a

119different Sometimes there's different views on on naming something after somebody who's who's who's still with us. Um, so those have been like the two things that I've struggled with, but um, yeah, I also like the unity of the naming. It just makes it easier to go with Greely Primary. Um, but I don't think easy is always the right answer. So, so we we have a motion on the table. So if that's You you can amend the motion according to Robert's Rules. You'd have to have a second, it would have to be voted on or discussion then voted and then you have to return to the the motion according to Robert's Rules. >> Did Annika weigh in? When I I mean, she doesn't have an official vote. Um I think her sentiment was she was not

120strongly one way or the other. I think she's probably heard more people when asked, especially kids, it being the primary, the Greeley primary, but liking the idea. The small school, so. Um when it comes to four, five, and six-year-olds, primary's a weird word. Small is not. So, the motion on the table is to name the new school, the pre-K school, Greeley Primary. So, all in favor. Three. And opposed. >> And all opposed. I'm not even used to saying the word opposed. Just it'd be like, what do I say? Say four. It's opposed to the motion, the main motion. >> All right. One, two, three. Four. The other way. Okay, opposed. Okay. Um okay, so that failed. Um would somebody like to put a new motion on the table? Sean. You're up. I move to name

121the new school, the Caroline F. Small School, the small school. I second. Okay, so it's back on the floor. Can I just say that I don't like it it's uh this is like a very personal thing for people, right? And there's a lot of emotion to that and there is a lot less emotion to Greeley Primary School, which is like so scientific, right? It's just like it's bland it's a little bland and I'm frankly surprised that the kids my kids do all wanted that, right? Um but I I do appreciate everyone's stories around it. Um and so like I don't think there's really a wrong like I'd be like I said I've been on the fence both ways. I really don't think there's a wrong way. So uh and I think I feel that from

122the board as well. Okay, any other comments discussions? I didn't know if anybody here cuz I didn't know when we named the middle school. I wasn't here. I know. I was just trying to think if there was any history or any knowledge of that. I I think there's somebody at the table that might know. Scott, do you remember? Scott, you're awake? You've been awfully quiet. I do not remember the exact process of it. It's been some time, so. I remember the day it was really junior high, so. Yeah. That's that's When it was the when it was 7-8 it was junior high and then when they combined the six, I think they went to the middle school. I think they they shifted. Used to be the old 50s building along the photo. Running along Main

123Street. That's cool, Julie. I wanted GMS named the Thomas C. Joyce Middle School. But we had a policy against Mhm. Interesting. We don't still have that policy, do we? Check it. >> Um Okay. Okay. All in favor? Oh, that's unanimous. All opposed? Okay. All right. Smells good. We We have a new SCHOOL NAME. YAY! THAT IS SO EXCITING. OKAY. Meeting adjourned. It's time. That's so funny. Okay. Can I have a motion to Do we want to take these together? Are these related? Yeah. Okay. Can I have a motion to approve policy I J O A school sponsored student trips non-athletic trips as presented paired with the deletion of policy I C A A non-school sponsored trips. So moved. >> Thank you, Jesse. Can I get a second? I'll second. Thank you, Kim. Can you present

124these, Jesse? Um so, we are second read. So, we're updating I J O A. We have um folded Did anyone realize there are no outside lights here to get to our cars? Oh. It's completely dark out here. We should have Oh, it's Let's go get Jesse. Let's go get Jesse. Yeah. I got you. Hang on, young lady. Thank you. That's gentlemanly. Yeah, what Why aren't The lights not on. Why aren't the lights not on? >> I don't know. Someone Someone should ask a neighbor. Oh, Scott's gone. Yeah, Scott's gone. We have lights out there. Yeah, we We have lights. There are no lights, I promise. Is there They should be on. In the parking lot, the lights are not on. Oh, the parking lot lights. Okay. Alexa, turn on Okay. We're working on that. All

125right, somebody somebody talk to somebody. So, I I C A A non-school sponsored trips has been folded into I J O A school sponsored student trips, non-athletic trips. Since our first read, Annika, who is not here, I need to give her credit. She pointed out, I think, six small grammatical errors, and those changes have all been made. I can go through them if you would like. Or you can see if you find them. But, those have been made, so the policy has fewer grammatical errors than it did that no one else caught but Annika. I was letting Annika I'm like, I don't care. I let Annika read. Yeah, it's really Yeah, good catches. Um Yeah, it's I think we went through it last time. I'm happy to go through any aspects of it that people

126still have questions about. Yeah, it's really just updating this policy. It was last looked at in 2018, and so there were some minor changes, and we folded the deleted policy, and so there's a singular policy. Great. Thank you. Any questions or comments? Okay. All in favor? Nobody opposed? Um All right, next up we have a professional position, the director of business services. Can I have a motion to approve the appointment of the professional position as outlined? So moved. >> Thank you, Shawn. Can I have a second? Second. Thank you, Jesse. This is exciting, too. Okay. Lots of exciting >> Nice. Lots of exciting things this evening. So, I'd like to uh nominate tonight uh for your consideration Mr. Donald Gray for the position of MSAD 51 Director of Business Services. Replacing, but never really can

127replace uh Mr. Scott Poulin, who's retiring after 29 years in the role this summer. Mhm. Mr. Gray has been one of the uh assistant principals at Greely High School since 2018. He's widely respected in this role. During the 2021-22 school year, Mr. Gray was appointed interim principal of Greely High School. And prior to his time in our district, he served for 15 years as the assistant principal at Mount Ararat Mer- Mount Ararat High School in Topsham. There were six applicants for the position. Two were interviewed. The interview panel conducted two rounds of interviews and included board members Leanne Candura and Shawn Thurston, along with several administrators, department supervisors, and the association president. Don's work as an educational leader in the district over the last 8 years, along with his lengthy military career involving operations work

128for the US Navy, has contributed to his selection as the candidate moving forward for the board's consideration this evening. Additionally, Don has chaired the district safety committee for the last several years, helping to realize numerous safety and security initiatives that have been put into place. Uh Don has multiple uh supports in place, including long-time experienced supervisors and managers in multiple departments. During the interview process, um he emphasized the importance of prioritizing an entry plan, learning the various aspects of the business side of the organization, and seeking training in specific areas. I'm very confident that Mr. Donald Gray will provide steady and productive leadership for all business-related areas of MSAD 51 and I place his name before you for consideration tonight. Thank you, Tom. Sean, I know you were on the interview committee. Anything you want

129to add for the board? I think there was we did two rounds of interviews and the second round was situational questions. And I think Mr. Gray did a very good job answering those questions and it led me to believe that he had a full grasp and understanding of the consequential nature of the position as well as being able to use resources and knowing where he may have weaknesses and immediately addressed what he was going to do about them and had a plan for them. So, it was it was very It's a good one. Uh, I was very impressed with it. So. Was one of those questions what to do with the lights are out? This was a test. Don't let them go out in the first place. >> Um, and yes, to to also add

130um we Um, Mr. Gray also has uh seen what um enormous uh shoes there is uh to fill through this job um which the things that were included in this in this job description, we as a board were concerned about um but we want to continue to work to make sure that there's really good supports in place for anybody serving in this position but having somebody who understands our district is also um have also going to be really important for moving into this role, especially with the number of responsibilities. Um and yes, we were very happy to have an internal candidate who who who seen what goes on uh and you know, it wasn't didn't shy away from it. Any questions? Okay. Oh, Megan, we're here. Um the only thing that detracts from this for

131me is just that my kids won't get you as as their vice principal in in the school. I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah. Yeah, and I hope you stay involved in the safety and security committee. Great. Awesome. All in favor? Enthusiastically, yes. It's unanimous. Thank you. CONGRATULATIONS. I ALSO WANT TO SAY THANK YOU. I look forward to working with you all and I look forward to working with you. I look forward to continuing my relationship with this board. Great. Mr. Gray, you can sit right next to me. Okay. Um so, now we're going to move into our workshop on the budget. I do miss our table configuration from uh 2 weeks ago, um but I know that we have a lot of updated information to to go through. I know there's been a

132ton of work um from the last time we met around the budget. Um because we as school board members and as a community find, you know, there's real challenges with the amount of increases that everyone is facing and that we're facing as a district, as an large employer, as our community members are facing and wanting to figure out how to do this next year's budget responsibly. So, I will hand it over for an updated presentation to Superintendent Porter. All right, thank you. I'm going to start the workshop off tonight um uh by just giving you some quick background information to get us back up to speed on the district's budget, not that you haven't stopped thinking about it every waking minute of every hour, I'm sure. Um but on March 19th, when we left you

133at the last workshop, um the budget stood at 7.68% expenditure increase, $4,135,653 over the current year's budget of 50 3 million um 53.8 million. So, uh looking at um the proposal from March 19th, there's been a couple of things that have occurred since then. Um we were short on some of our salary lines from March 19th in terms of FMLA, long-term leaves, and retirement payouts as we project those forward. Um looking at our staff, we've gotten several more retirements um since March 19th. We've had actually a numerous uh people submit their retirement um letters to us um for next year. They'll be retiring at the end of this school year. So, we have those every year and we try to project how many people we think will retire in the next year uh based on

134numbers that we've had averaging over the last several years. So, we were short in that in those salary salary lines. We also received more information from the Maine Benefits Trust. Um we were originally budgeted at 14% for health insurance, we received another notification a few days ago that the cap will now be 11 and 1/2%. Um we have we have not gotten our local rate yet. Uh we will are not expected to get that rate until April 10th. Um I believe it's the date that we'll be getting that amount. So, it's possible that it will be lower than 11 and 1/2%, but we now know that the cap is 11 and 1/2%. Um so, that took out another 197,000 uh out of our uh benefit lines in the accounts. So, that brings your baseline budget

135tonight down to 4,088,653, which is the increase. Um so, slightly down from March 19th at 7.60%. Um as our baseline uh discussion for tonight. Now, the Finance Committee in the meantime, after your workshop on March 19th, met and uh asked uh Scott and I to start looking at uh potential reductions. Um and to organize those reductions um into categories. And these categories start with um ones that um make the most sense, and then they start becoming more challenging. So, I have three tiers of reductions that I'm presenting tonight for the board's consideration. Um I do want to say up front um that we do need to know what the board wants to do um with any of the information that I'm presenting tonight. Um it's very critical that we are able to um start processing

136any changes to the budget immediately. Um we have less than 2 weeks to not only process the information in our budget, um but we have to prepare warrants, check with legal counsel on those warrants, and have them prepared for you on uh April 15th. So, that's why we really have to know by the end of this workshop what you are planning to do. It's very important. So, I'm we put together a list, and I'm going to go through these items. Tier one is considered to be the first category of reductions that And again, I'm not recommending any of these reductions. I'm simply presenting a list of potential reductions after we've gone through the budget again as a baseline. >> free to move closer. I I know that that you don't have People don't have this

137detail. We have it in front of us. So, if you guys need to move closer to see it, feel free. Yes, we can make Yes, I will have this presentation actually up on the website. The first item The town of Cumberland informed us that they actually have alternative funding for the joint study. There had been all kinds of back and forth about where the funding was going to go, the towns, the SAD, etc. through the project budget process. But thank you to the town of Cumberland, they did some work and were able to secure small alternative funding that doesn't is not taxpayer money out of either town or the SAD for 24,000. So, we're able to remove that item from the budget. And actually, I'll just recommend that you reduce that. It's on the reduction

138list, so you have to accept the reduction, but that one seems like a pretty easy one. The next one is 28,881. We purchased a Bobcat as the board knows. You approved that purchase, and we are proposing that we pay that off in FY26 for FY27. So, this would be the amount that we would have carried in FY27. Now, the important part about this one is if you accept this reduction, or you want to go forward with with this reduction, the total lease purchase amount that we still owe on the Bobcat is 115,525. So, it creates a hole when we pay something off uh in the next fiscal year, then we're starting already uh up in that area. So, we'd be already having to budget for the Bobcat lease purchase in FY28, it creates a hole.

139So, our recommendation would be to use year-end funds if you want to move forward with this reduction is to use year-end funds and pay off the 115,525 so that we're not starting FY28. Everybody knows FY28 is going to be the most challenging budget year. Um so, if you don't want to This will pay it off completely. We're not carrying any of it um forward into FY28, FY29 going forward. So, if you if you want to move forward with this one, I would recommend that with year-end funds, there's a transfer at the end of the year to make sure that we are purchased we are paying off the Bobcat in its entirety in order to make this one work. By the way, just I don't know if you want to Anytime somebody has a question on

140the board, feel free to just jump in. >> It might See, and now I can't help myself. Um yeah, I think as we're going item and item, that might be most efficient. Um so, then we don't have to keep coming back. Um if you have a specific question about the item, let's address it now. Can I make a quick comment? Sure. Um so, I just wanted to point out that the joint study would still be completed. Um do we continue to have {quote} unquote ownership of the information and um ability to ask the questions that were the cons our interests. It input into like what Yeah. I That That would be my understanding. >> That's my understanding. So, I had a brief conversation with um the town manager about that in Cumberland and um he

141told me that JP Cogg has agreed to foot the bill for for the most part for the funding. So, I and they do an excellent job. I know that um with these kinds of studies. And so, they would obviously be asking what it what kind of information we want to get out of this. Excellent. That that was my only concern with somebody else paying for it that they would own the data. And North Yarmouth was looped in their select board and all that? They um yes, he I believe Matt told Diane and I believe their select board knows about it. Yes, so we were we were Diane and I were both informed about it. Um Yeah, so we really appreciate the town of Cumberland's work on that. Thank you. Um Good right okay to go

142ahead? And I'm sorry this isn't larger. Um the next um two items of regarding special education 15,000 um and 9,500 um one for equipment and one for supplies. If you remember, we have a couple of uh we have new students coming into our district and their IEPs do require specialized equipment and supplies that we do not have in the district right now uh for these particular students. So, the special education or director of instructional support Julie Olsen is going to be is planning to prepay um some of this equipment and supplies out of her accounts so that we do not have to pay for this these are one-time purchases. So, they do not create a hole in FY 28. Very important. I'm going to keep saying we don't want to create holes in FY 28.

143And when you when you say create holes in FY 28, does everyone understand what that means? Just means that we do not want to start Usually, we start with zero and then we look at everything again. We do not want to start with knowing we're going to have to put this money back into the budget and start from a place of oh, we're carrying money that we've got to start. We're not starting at zero now. We're starting with we have to keep paying for these things because we it's showing as an increase the next year essentially. Um the next item is 87,000. It's a support position at the district office. Um and we are looking to reorganize um some of our office functions um in the district office. Um we do I mean I will

144say that we run a pretty tight ship in terms of the staffing that we have um for district services. Um but we were looking for um all available um you know, funding uh for this budget and we're looking at our office um and this was a position that we felt like we could reorganize functions in our office. Um and um so this is a position that we're putting forward as a reduction. I don't know if you're able to answer this, but uh is this in line with the efficiency study that was done um around our administrative >> It's not It's related to the efficiency study that Nesdek did for the district. Um however, that study was um more focused on administrator positions um and the fact that the district office is short on administrators. Um

145it does not have enough administrators at the district office. So this is a support position. So it's not directly related to that study. Do you want to talk about the person? So I will just say that I obviously we're not going to get into a lot of public information, but the person um has been offered another position that is going to be vacant due to a retirement in the district, which is a similar position. So I just want to say that there would be no personnel loss. Can Thank you. Thank you for saying that cuz that was my my I had some concerns. We have a similar position that's open. What would responsibilities would need to be assumed by other um staff in that office? There's a whole list of things that we're having to

146reassign and we're in the process of doing that right now. There's a number of functions. >> Okay. Okay. Yeah. Um the next one is tech lease. We we carry two technology lease uh leases in this district right now. Um we generally carry two. So, this next item 49,677 um is a tech lease for hardware and this would increase the tech lease by this amount. Um but um we're looking at So, we carry when we carry two leases, we carry them on staggered schedule. This particular lease, technology lease, would be year one in FY 27. And so, what we tried to do is to um because we're constantly um purchasing hardware for the district, um we looked at all of our MLCI revenue that we um carry in the district, and we looked at other pieces

147um that we need. Do we need projectors? Um do we need to be, you know, purchasing photocopiers? And we put these into the lease. So, the other piece that is a huge nut to crack is the intercom system at the high school, which is on its last leg. Um that is an item that would have been around 130,000 was the quote that we received um to replace that system. We had originally thought about putting it in capital reserves, and instead we've moved it to this technology lease, um which will save money on that end. So, this second tech lease would be for 49,677. Scott, do you want to provide any more detail on that? >> the proposed purchases for '27 and we actually reduced them, so the lease would be decreased uh in order to

148be able to do that. So, and there were items such as uh Jeff had mentioned uh projection units. So, uh there were projectors for the classrooms that were recommended, but we can delay those for a year because we have projectors in the modulars. And we'll just take those projection units from the modulars and repurpose them into the building. So, that's what we were looking at there. And then the other was just uh um we had a number of photocopiers were in there. We reduced some of the photocopiers and also looked at buying photocopiers outright this year in the year that we're in to basically not have to enter into a lease purchase and pay interest and principal in 27. So, and we'd had some of these comments conversations at finance as well about how to

149do this. So, Any questions about that one before we move on? The next one we've been looking at our budget to actuals again. We do this all the time, but we looked and looked and looked again and we're looking at advertising. We've been moving to digital advertising in a lot of fronts. We looked at how we've been advertising. We've been also reducing our printing costs. So much is digital now. Trying not to print as much across the district. We're able to reduce or we're recommending a reduction of $10,000 for advertising across the district. So, I had a question about that because again that Did I cut you off? No, no. Okay, good. Um that felt like more of a budget to actual. So, I was wondering why you put it in tier one as an

150option when it feels like it's more um you know, again, if you're budgeting to actual, if you're looking at what we've been spending and realizing we can lower those numbers, why wouldn't it just be something that you would have put maybe at the top to say We could I could have. I mean, I think it yeah. I think I could have put it at the top and just said take advertising, take postage, take printing. Those are budget to actuals. We could have just taken them off the top. >> Okay. Okay. I put them on the list because since, you know, we didn't want to put a huge list since March 19th. That was a little bit confusing. >> That that just felt to me like the kind of thing that happens during the budget process.

151Like I feel like we would have you would have uncovered that anyway as you were um I agree. >> you're continuing to refine things. So, yeah, to me that's more of the same thing and not something. Okay. >> Yeah, I agree with that. All right, thanks. >> So, same thing with postage and printing. Again, those are budget to actuals. Looking at expenses um and just continuing to refine the budget, you know. Hopefully, we're not we're not going back too much. We're not slicing it so much that we're saying next year whoop, we probably needed some of that money. Who knows? Um the next item 40,000. Uh this was a discussion um at Finance Committee around staff additional pay for moving and packing. Um however, the board adopted a calendar that has a day, a staff

152day at the end of next year um for pre-K to eight staff um to have a day without students at the end of the year in order to pack because most of our pre-K to eight staff will be moving in June of 2027 or we'll be moving them. But, they've got to pack in order for us to do that. So, we did provide a day. Thank you to the board for doing that um putting that into the calendar. So, we can remove this from the budget. The next one um and uh around athletics, reducing uh athletics at GHS, GMS 6-8, and um those two items kind of go together. If you recall, we had um increased those areas for Title IX purposes. Um there was we did a lot more conversations. Scott didn't come had

153some conversations with David Shapiro. And we also looked at the pay-to-play and the revenue offset. We've been bringing in more funds for pay-to-play over the last year and so because of that revenue we're able to offset some of those expenses. Looked at that again. Looked at the uniform rotation and felt that we can make um some decreases at both the high school and the middle school in athletics. Again, this was reductions to increases that we were putting into the budget. So it's not reductions to the current year. It's reductions to those increases that were proposed um back at the beginning of March. So I just want to make that clear. There's also the reduction of a custom coach bus that was $4,000 for a trip. So we removed that as well. Okay, thank you. And

154you're sure with those reductions we're still going to meet the Title IX concerns and adequately and robustly and Title IX was more related to the equipment, which is still in the budget. Okay. Which is which is under the equipment line for such as like the batting cage and the scoreboard. Okay. So that stands? That that still stands. That's still Okay. Okay. And I think the pay-to-play is also going to cover some of those pieces that those increases will be covered by revenue that we're getting back as well. Can I Can I ask Yeah. Can I ask a question real quick about the um budget line that included the batting cage? That's not something we're buying every year. No, that's a one-time purchase. >> Okay. So that is in as a one-time purchase. >> see it

155as an increase Okay. next year. It's just as a one-time. Yes. Okay. And that's something that obviously um we realize we need to do. No, no. I And I recognize that we we needed one and we needed to do it. I just wanted to verify that it wasn't rolled over into the next year. >> It won't be. Okay. No. Thank you. >> It's one time. One batting cage one year. We're not lease purchasing it or anything like that. We're buying it once. >> Yes, that's Yes. Can I ask a question? There's a few things that you're recommending to prepay this year. Um how were decisions made about which ones to prepay? I think bringing up the batting cages just reminded me of that. So some of them, for example, special special education, um when Julie

156looked at her account lines and she was able to say, "I can do that this year." So she's looking at her lines, managing those lines, Okay. seeing what funds are available, um what she can hold on, what she feels like she can prepay. So those decisions were made. >> And will she be able to bill Maine Care for that? Um For those? I don't think for those things you can you can bill. It's for It's really for staff, you know, staffing >> Okay. uh hours that you can bill for. Mhm. Mind if I just add to that? Yeah, go ahead. So if you take a look at the expenditure report that we sent out to the entire board for the current year, you'll find that there's a number that's related to special education that's that's

157unexpended to this point. Um the reason for that is that we had um several out of district placements of tuition that didn't happen because students actually moved out of the district. So that left some funds in special education, which we're able to apply towards other things in the current year or may even be part of the budget uh transfers that we do at the end of the fiscal year to pay off some of these other things that we want to get rid of that we can just eliminate principal and interest on a lot of things. So That's helpful. >> So that's what that's about. And also, you'll notice in the regular instruction, which is the first cost center, you'll see a balance on the uh expenditure report that we distributed. Most of that, actually almost

158over half of it, is related to the two teachers at Mabel I. Wilson School that weren't hired. Um and so, rather than just using the military model of spend all you have so you get it again the next year, we're being fiscally prudent, only spending what we have to, and if that results in a carry forward uh at the end of the year, or allows us to basically buy down leases, prepay things, well, that's a prudent use of those monies going forward. Yeah, that's a good point. >> So, this I've I've found this extremely helpful, so thank you. So, the first reference is literally line line one. It's line one, exactly. >> So, when just to make sure everyone's following, so teacher salaries, Maybelle I. Wilson, the fact that there's the amount remaining. >> Yeah,

159and that's and that's what we've done here. Every single year we've tried to, you know, spend only what we have to and be fiscally prudent with all of those lines, and sometimes they're up, sometimes they're down. Sometimes our our enrollment projections or kindergarten enrollment doesn't come in the way we expect, sometimes a student moves that is supposed to be in an out-of-district placement, therefore the district is um not expected to foot the bill. Um and so, you have savings in your budget, which um then goes to year-end funds that we have available. I don't know if you're looking at this, Scott, this special education lines. Yeah, if you go down uh the tuition lines. Yeah. >> Yeah, they're located in each one of the buildings under special ed. Um so, um but there is um

160there is quite a bit of funds that are left in there. One of them was a major one, um which was located due to a move out of district that was going to actually be a residential placement, so um so, that uh that provided uh significant savings to the special ed budget, and so the majority of that that's remaining Mhm. uh at least over half of it is related to out-of-district placements that didn't happen because students moved out of the district. >> Yeah, and we have to plan for them anyway. >> to plan for those because they're here at the time that we're planning on the budget, so. >> Thank you. So, while that might look like, you know, we're over budgeting in those areas, we really aren't. There's things I mean, I have to

161say this because you start building a budget and you pass it in April, you're not expending it until starting in September of the next year. And really, you aren't really truly into it until December. So, there's a lot that can happen between the time you build a budget and you pass a budget to when you're actually expending it. And that's why the state understands a complicate you know, the complications around that and they have a transfer rule which they put in for that specific reason. It allows the district the board to transfer 5% of any cost center to another cost center, okay? And usually the areas where you have your largest balances at the end of the year is regular instruction or special education cuz those are your two largest cost centers. So, so it

162makes sense that those are the areas you would transfer through to other items. So, energy costs and fuel costs have gone up. We're going to do a budget transfer at the end of the year for that. Um You know, so so that's really how that works. I thought I think that would just be helpful. Yeah. And I I do understand how a fund a fund balance can sound like a fund balance. I completely understand. >> a fund balance. It can't Yeah. Yep. Yeah. All right, any other questions? Uh the next one is NEASC fee. So, we um this is the high school accreditation 3550. Um it's been moved. We checked with NEASC and they actually moved our our um visit uh is in fall of 2027. We still have to have staff prep. There's some

163money that we put in for staff prep um that will occur in the FY 27 budget. Um but it's actually um in the FY 28 budget now that you'll see This will be an increase. I will say this. You will see the increase of $3,550 um in FY 28. There's nothing we can do about it. Um, NEASC has moved the visit. Um, go ahead. Oh, I thought somebody said something. Um, and then the last one we already talked about athletics at 68. Um, GMS 684200, we just found a duplicate. Sometimes we do this. You look at it a hundred times, you look at your budget, we discovered we had a duplicate of $4200 on line 816. So, we have removed or we're proposing that it's removed. And again, >> This could be a budget to

164actual. I agree with you, Kim. We could have just put these lines right at the beginning, but it would have been a long list of doing that. We just put it, so I decided to put it in tier one. So, if you take all of the tier one reductions, um, you would be taking $293,493 out of the budget. Um, that would bring your increase down. So, we started that increase at four, uh, almost 4.1 million, it would bring it down to three point or $3,795,160, which would mean your total budget increase would go from 7.60 to 7.05 if you move forward with the tier one reductions, um, that have been proposed. So, before I go on to tier two, any other questions or comments about tier one? We can come back to it. I just

165want to make sure. Okay. All right. Tier two. First on the tier two list is $27,000. Um, we had two vans that we had put into the budget for lease purchase. Um, we're proposing at this point that we only purchase one. The one that we need to purchase is the one that's the ADA van. Uh, there's a wheelchair lift. It has to be replaced. The other one really should be replaced. Um, it's rusting out. However, we have to make decisions. And so, if we're going to have to make a decision, we would propose taking one of the other van out and not replacing it uh in FY27. I would not propose replacing it in FY28. So, if you do this, you're waiting till FY29. And I heard there was this um auto repair shop that

166we might Could we use? I don't know. It's a guy who works on cars and >> Wait, somebody somebody in this room, you mean? I'm just saying. And I think he said he'd give us a fantastic deal. >> I think I think that we get a special rate. Check out my website. Can they go over to Paths? Can they work on it? Oh, great idea. Paths. The other one about this, too, is the van that we're replacing, we avoided having to buy another truck in facilities and maintenance. We have a truck that's the frame's rotted on, it's gone. And so, uh we use that for going just on the campus between the buildings uh to make repairs in a building, keep plumbing supplies on it, etc. We're going to repurpose the van that we're replacing

167Oh. and use it as a facilities van. Therefor, we don't have to go out and buy another, you know, $80,000 truck, okay? So, just so you know. Thank you for providing, yeah, that context of how what we're then doing with it. And well, my my comment about um the auto body shop was a little tongue-in-cheek. Um I really like the idea of the Paths. Um is there any opportunity for Paths to do any work on a vehicle to to um lengthen its life? We could I mean, actually, Don probably knows more than anybody about Paths because he is on the advisory committee for Paths. Um and so, that would be if something was going to be looked into, they do a lot of that is done at Westbrook, actually, and not at at Portland. And

168we do have a couple kids generally that go to Westbrook, as well, but they are I also know that they discontinued some of that program, the heavy auto repair And this this particular van, it's the whole wheelchair lift assembly that is rusted and broken. So, it's not necessarily just the the rocker panels or a problem with that. It's actually the mechanical piece of it that needs would need to be replaced. >> Okay. So, since we can we can use it cuz we don't need the the wheelchair >> We don't need the wheelchair for that. We can repurpose it to maintenance and put shelving in it and actually Don Foster and I talked about it yesterday to repurpose it and therefore not have to buy another truck for facilities. Great. Put shelving in it and put

169our stuff in it. What is the likelihood of the other van that we're not replacing for it to last 2 years, do you think? I think it I think it'll be fine. I talked with Phil Blake, who's our you know, who's our transportation director and he's looked over the van and so forth and he feels that van will be fine. Okay. Okay. For 2 years? Uh for next year. And then we'll have to start looking at replacement maybe a year after. Okay. Yeah. Okay. That that is something you just have to keep in mind though. We're talking 2 years away for these items. Uh cuz you can't put it in FY28. >> And these are used constantly. They're used by educational technicians during the daytime. They're used sports trips. They're used for uh special education

170pickups and drop-offs in the mornings and the afternoons. Midday, um they go to paths sometimes when we don't have a bus. Um so, these vans have been really really valuable to the district um because you don't really have to have a bus driver license to drive them. If you keep them, you know, down around a certain uh passenger level. So, these things have been amazing for us and they've done a great job for us. Now, I'm trying to talk ourselves out of it or you out of it, um but it does throw the rotation off. So, when we're delaying something, now we're the rotation that we have these on is now off. We're going to be off rotation. So, I'm just making sure you know that. It doesn't mean that we're not putting it forward

171as a reduction. We have to make choices. >> Mhm. I guess my question will remain about our vans and our use of them. Like, do we Do we have enough vans? We We really don't. I mean, we used to have no vans when I got here. We now have several vans and it really does reduce your costs in so many ways. And it's very convenient and you can have people that don't have a CDL driving it, our staff driving it. So, it's very important that we have them. Um Could we use more? Of course. We could use more. We don't They always seem to be used. >> Okay. So, if the one that we have that we're trying to replace, we could potentially get another one and have it and keep that one in in

172rotation until it really Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, we wouldn't dispose of it. We'd try to >> We would We'd try to keep it going maybe. >> It would be really nice. I I always get concerned about transportation. I mean, the hardest texts that I receive as a parent or seeing when like a bus route isn't able to run for whatever reason. Um and yeah, just there's so many transportation to >> Well, the vans often, you know, sometimes we need them because we don't have enough bus drivers. So, we have to get creative and start using vans for other purposes uh because we have people that don't have a a CDL to drive. So, it is a It's just It's on the list. I just want you to have all the information you need. Can I um

173throw in one other that's consideration here? Will we possibly need a van as we think about um the pre-K special ed um services we're going to be adding on in 2027? That's a whole 'nother ball of wax. >> a whole different Yes. Um So, that's a really great question, um, Lauren, because obviously you're a year away from having to actually purchase it for those purposes cuz we don't have to implement it until um, 2027-2028. Um, but you want to think about that and you know, taking one out of commission Yes, good point. There's very possibly you're going to need those. Is that a reimbursing private drivers for their vehicle use? Yeah, which is very tough. When we buy vans, do we buy new or do we buy used? No, we buy new. We've been buying

174new. >> Cuz we use them so much. Yeah. And and we've got, you know, we like having that extended warranty too. >> Going without problems. And what's the largest passenger size that we can fit in a regular van? >> 15. I think it's 15. >> 15, I think is our max. Is that what what we typically Is that what this was for? Was it for 15 passengers? >> think this was 15. >> this has got the, uh, handicap lift to it and so this would not take a full 15 because the handicap lift and the wheelchair takes up space. >> So, they both of the vans were handicap lift vans? >> Only one. No, only one of them. Sorry. I thought we were already purchasing. I thought we decided that we would keep the purchase

175of the handicap one. So, which one were we removing? >> We're removing We're taking the handicapped one and making it a maintenance vehicle and we're replacing the handicapped one with a new handicapped. >> Yes. But the other one is a non-handicapped one, regular van, which we aren't replacing and it's still in It's still in service. So, the the one that There's only one on here that you're placing is the ADA. The The old ADA will become the maintenance for the maintenance. >> Yes. So, when I'm looking at the the reduced one van, that's the regular van. That's the regular van. >> Yes, regular van. You're looking at a reduction. The reduction is not by the van. >> Right, that's it really should be in parentheses. All these are reductions. So, the reduction is the Okay.

176the The reduction of the regular van. And I guess yes, my question is how big was that van that we had budgeted for? Uh it was a 12. It might have been 12. >> the max. Okay. Yep. The next one um the bus monitor This came from the bus drivers was um two additional general monitors. We do have monitors for specific students who have that built into their IEPs, but I will be honest and tell you that we um struggle to find staff to ride our buses as uh even monitors for students with IEPs. So, it would be very challenging to also try to find staff who are available um to also ride and rotate around on buses that need that. I think it's a great idea. It came out of a a very good

177uh you know, an idea from the drivers uh after the two um tragedies this fall, and they we had a brainstorming session. Scott and I met with them, and this was something that came out of it. We're very supportive of this. We just feel like it may not be a realistic item, and so we've put it on the tier two list. And it's not one that I want to put on the list. I just don't think we're going to actually in reality find people that are available to do this. We have a hard time finding people. I don't I don't know what the rules would be around this or I mean I do think that people are always looking for ways to engage with their students um and they're you know, around the school, and

178this might be a great spot for volunteer opportunity for parents or guardians to engage and sit on the bus every once in a while or come and you know, uh be another adult in our community. So, I think we have other options, I think, if we wanted to look into that. And I bet you we could find people who cuz I think you're right. I think the bus story really resonated with a lot of people. And I bet you if we I think if we spoke to the need of it in the community around the buses, I think it would be beneficial to have more adults understand what happens on a bus, especially parents understand what happens on a bus. It's an It's a >> required. Yeah. And also um and yeah, so I think

179there's other options. But I do think there's a need for it. Yeah. Um I also know this might be like totally you guys don't want that with kids and more kids, but I also know that the juniors and seniors who participate in NHS are always looking for a volunteer activities. >> Oh. Um cuz they need to reach a certain quota of hours. And there's kind of a There's kind of a fight to the volunteer hours cuz if you don't get them, you're kind of on probation. And so, you need to get your volunteer hours somehow. And I think that advertising this but that also our safety people should consider that. That's very I mean it's kids on a bus. Are we safe? Are Um after school, the the least the release times are different. I

180mean Yeah, they get out later. So, that Right. Yeah. The morning wouldn't be a problem. We could have We could actually provide training to the volunteers on how to manage the buses and Kids are always looking for any sort of community service hours. >> It's a community service brawl. Yeah. I'm going to give that back to you. I'm going to throw it back to you and say, "Can you work on that with us?" >> Thank you so much. >> I I will say that my my bus driver um would really, really like additional support. Mhm. Um And that's what we've heard from the drivers is, you know, and again, I think the idea of volunteerism is great if there's a way that we can uh promote that a little bit more. Um we'd like to

181that. Um, we're just recommending at this point for paid staff. It probably isn't going to work. Okay. Question, is there is is there typically more issues in the morning or after school? Is there a pattern? >> school. It's afternoon. After school. >> It's definitely It's definitely the afternoon runs. Um, especially about the windows. Windows are especially nice weather. Yeah. Which could be an easy honestly an easier time to find people after school. Oh, definitely. Students are always around. Yeah. Yeah. Well, especially since the elementary buses, which is one of the buses, you know, that's probably where you'd want to do it. It's, you know, They're you have to be a bit later, an hour later. That's where we're hearing it's happening is elementary. It's not necessarily secondary. >> schoolers are so cool. >> Yeah, exactly.

182Bella said. They are cool. That is the thing. All right, that's a great idea. They're never a problem. Yeah. Katie and I? No. Um, the next item I really debated whether it's even put it on this list or to put it on tier three, to be honest with you, but we're looking for lots of ideas at this point. Um, the town of Cumberland, as you know, uh, requested an increase. Um, so the SRO, this was in the presented budget 33,638. Um, at this point I'm putting it forward on this list that we would not um, go back to we would go back to the 50/50 split with the town that we have. Um, they had, um, you know, asked us to please put this amount in the budget so that the I think it's a

18368 32 split um, that we would have, so we'd pay 68% of the cost. So, this is the increase again. So, I put it on the list that, um, this would be a reduction. That increase would not happen, in other words. I would just tell the town if the board goes forward with this that we would not be paying the increase. I don't know what that means. Okay. I haven't had a conversation. Being honest. But I would just say we the board couldn't move forward with this item. And can you just remind the board of what we how many SROs are >> one and a half SROs assigned to the districts. Um both SROs also work outside the school year for the town of Cumberland Police Department additionally. So they're here during the school year

184anytime kids are here. The one and a half SROs are here. The half-time position is two and a half um days a week. So it's not a full week. But This one came at us relatively late in the process. It was right as we were getting we were already developing our budget and into it and then we were informed of this additional cost from the town. So I think it it requires more conversation. We put it in the budget the presented budget because we received this increase. But it definitely requires a lot deeper conversation with the town of Cumberland around um giving us these numbers earlier, having you know conversations about why we're getting this increase. Um and just the opportunity to sit down and really talk about it. It was kind of given it

185to us at the last like Scott said at the last minute. My only concern with this is if you say to the town no thank you we would not like to absorb that increased cost. Is there any risk that we would lose then one of our SROs or the half So that's that's conversation I've not had with the town manager or the police chief. Um and I think that would be a conversation we'd need to have. However, it is a is on the budget list. We had to look for ideas. And so um if the board moves forward with it and that's conversation we would have to have with the town at that point. I do wonder I mean that I'm not I wasn't happy when we found out about this. Um the fact that

186the town of Cumberland is absorbing or not absorbing but has found a way to do the study with GPCOG which is saving us the 24,000 is that do you think that on their end then that would make more sense for us to pay the SRO if they found that? I'm not saying this very well but We share services in a lot of areas. We provide custodial support for example for the town office and other areas of the town. They provide plows. We provide facilities for recreation, bussing, things like that. I mean there's a lot of shared services that go back and forth. Um and um so I think it's I don't think it's one for the other because there's so many other variables at play in terms of shared services but um I do understand

187the semantics or the dynamics of putting they helped us in one area you know, can we help in the other one? Again we're trying to get to the get below 6% which we are asked to do and so we had to come up with ideas some of which many of which are not classroom related. Trying to keep this as you know, far away from the classroom as we can. I would love to have a conversation with them about this. I mean it was in an email. We we haven't had the opportunity to talk about it and what I also love is just a conversation about you know, how the SRO um how we're having discussions around what what they're supporting on campus. Um I know there's maybe been interest in helping before and after school

188to get um kids and people around the district in and out. Um is there support there that maybe we could be using the SRO for um but I guess are we willing to to say if they if they say well, this is the cost now only going with one SRO, which that could be the the difference in the cost is okay, we pay whatever was it 68%? Is that what they were saying? >> This is the their well, their proposed increase would bring it to 68% the SAD pay 68% of the one and a half SROs. So would if Instead of 50/50, which is what it is. And I I will say that the the total cost is not just personnel, it's also the cars, it's the uniforms, it's anything that is related to the

189position. Um And so And I also wanted to say our one and a half SRO our two SROs um are amazing people and we love them. We love having them has nothing to do with that. But again, it has it's a money issue and we're putting this forward. I just wanted to say something about this. Um We had a lot of people in the community ask us to get this budget out as much as we can this line item does not change their taxes. Mhm. If it goes back to Cumberland, anybody in Cumberland is still paying for this. So it does have zero effect on taxpayers in Cumberland. You could say that there's a shift to North Yarmouth by shifting that amount, but overall per person per household you're not talking about a lot. So

190by taking out of our budget, you're not really affecting what everybody was talking about tonight. Um the next item before okay, moving on. The next item is desks and chairs. Um this was a discussion at finance committee. I know people aren't excited about this or wild about this. Again, we're trying to reduce the operating budget. Um we did come in under budget. There's a lot of items um that still need to be considered by this facilities committee and eventually the board um that were removed from the um the bid when it went out from the bid documents. And now there's consideration should those things um be moved forward in the one campus project. One thing that is part of the project is movable equipment. So, that includes desks and chairs for the new school. This

191is also uh we're about to get into the one campus project. This is pre-paying for some of those things um as part of the one campus project. It's a year early. Um so, it does make sense to move this expense um in one respect, although I understand and respect um other opinions on this that maybe you shouldn't be doing that and keep it in the operating budget if you're going to do it. The bottom line is we do need it. We have inventoried. We do have a lot of old stuff in our school. And we have things that do not fit the grade level students that we need it to fit, which is 4-8. That's where our bubble population is right now. We have more kids at the 4-8 middle school than ever before. And

192um and we need to have desks and chairs that fit those students. >> And these will purchase from the project where they're budgeted. They'll actually go with the fourth grade to Mabel I. Wilson school. So, they'll actually you know, they'll be used a year earlier than they normally would be used. And uh and so, that's what would happen with those. Now, Carol McArthur and Monty I talked about I talked to Carol uh as early as today as latest today and previously they climbed through everything that was up in the attic of the middle school, went through everything, did a count using everything they can. And this is a balance of what they need to basically fund the additional classrooms that they have. Okay. So, but it's all been climbed over, looked at, and uh you

193know, they're using what they can. If kids just stopped getting bigger. It's not just the size, it's the volume, right? It's the numbers. I mean, we're we're using the numbers of what we have and then we're making up the difference. Can we get or at least facilities take a look at the inventory that you guys have? That might be helpful. And then the other thing would be if we do move it to the one campus project, which I'm not totally sold on. Um but I also could see I could see the rationale for it. I do wonder whether or not that 60 there's opportunity for us to be like you know, we don't have to spend that entire 60, right? So what what runway does it get us to in terms of finding deals of

194schools closing or cheaper opportunities for us? It just does it give us more time and space to be able to save money on that for some of our cost-saving ideas that a couple of us have thrown around um a little bit. So I guess that's my question from that standpoint. Like that that 60 that you have right now, that's all new and being proposed. When would we have to It also includes some cafeteria tables as well because the cafeteria tables are broken, okay? And they don't seat enough students. In the middle school district >> what you're saying. Like this is new. Right. >> we looked into your you talked about your listserv and these schools that are closing. Can we look into We're We're always looking. I mean, we did it one time before with

195Falmouth when they built their schools and we took their old furniture and utilized it here. So we've done it before, but um at this moment in time, I'm not quite sure what's available. So So Po and Lewiston should have stuff available. Yeah, it depends on their age of their their desks and chairs and condition and We have to look and see if that makes sense for us to the furniture and so forth. What is the likelihood of transferring funds to pay for these out of the remaining percentages from this year? I I would take a look because you still have a rather large technology lease that would save you more money than this ever would. Um going forward, so um I would look at that as a balance. Certainly this could be one of the

196considerations. Um but I would uh I would probably take a look more at the technology lease. And that'll be in tier three. I'll talk about that in a minute, too, because there are some you know, what everything has a a ripple effect when we look at these year-end funds and how much can we really can we really do at the end of the day? This is another way that we can pay for these. But that's that's a great idea, Shawn. Uh yes. I'd rather save the interest on the technology loans. All day long, cuz that's what I like. >> about those so in finance, so Great idea, Shawn. Um the next one is to I I have to say our our principals and our directors are very frugal and their actual detailed budgets um are

197incredibly um you know, they just don't ask for much. Each year they're they're putting the same amount in for more with more kids um or reducing in some cases already, but again, making budgetary decisions, um this will be 15,000 for uh all of our schools to ask the administrators to go back again through their detailed budgets. Um at this point, they said that they'd be looking at classroom and library books. Um if the board wants to move forward with this item, classroom supplies. That's what's in their detailed budgets. So, that's what they would have to be looking at. >> We're also trying to use um funds that are available from, you know, the salary lines right now because we didn't have to hire at the elementary school and so forth to maybe offset that. Um

198quick question. As I was looking through the um audited 24, there were um I think it was a schedule 18, if I remember correctly or 20. There were several lines that had um library books, book fair that had funds in them. And I sent an email about that and who owns that money? Is that money that can be used by um that those units? By the librarians, by how how does that work? Um the money has to be spent on what it was raised for. I mean and and and whoever raised it, but we could take a look at those and see and see if that's something that would be available. I think usually that book fair money is money that's collected for the sale of books. Um and then it may have just been

199a picture at a certain point in time Mhm. and that made money may not be there now even though you saw it from an audit 2014. >> right. >> we'd have to look at the um you know, we'll have the audit at the end of April and we could look at that then and see if that's something that might be available. So. Right. Right. Cuz those are you know, the student activity accounts which is where those are held are located in the buildings. These were not in the student activity accounts. No, they're they're all part of it though. They're still all part of what we call the principals accounts or the student activity accounts in the schools. And that's where you're seeing what all those schedules come from. >> Yeah, and librarians usually have a

200plan for that money when they they don't just collect it. They have a plan to expend it every year annually. So and generally it's for more books. Mhm. Also it's for they have programs in the school. Um the main book awards, they'll use some of the money to help the kids with those books. Um so the kids can have books to take home etc. So they have a plan for those. Yeah, and there's some rules around those about supplanting the general fund budget. Yeah. The next item is 15,375. Um finance talked about this one as well. Um I had put this forward because there's been, you know, concerns about the cost of the um seventh grade ecology school trip um and trying to bring those costs down to approximately $200 per family uh for or

201per student, I should say, um to go on this trip. And that would have the amount that we had put into the budget I had proposed originally, um I'm now proposing or not proposing, but I'm putting it forward as a reduction um to take it out. So, families would have to be responsible for the full amount um of of sending their child on this trip each year. Now, we do have funds um that we have um available for students that can't pay for it. We do have several students each year that I think I asked, um I can't remember, I had asked how many students needed to access the money last year, and I think it was around 10 to 12. Um who needed to access the family needed it. And our social workers monitor

202that, our school counselors monitor that as well. Um I had proposed we have a we have um a point eight counselor at uh GMS 6-8. We also have a full-time counselor in addition to that. And we also moved a um social worker from a special education program uh this year to school uh wide social work um to do more general social work at GMS 6-8. Um I had proposed because of the sheer numbers of students at 6-8 uh increasing the point eight to full-time so that we would have two full-time school counselors at GMS 6-8. I'm now putting this on the list as a reduction. Um so, it's not reducing what's already there, it's reducing the uh proposal to increase from point eight to 1.0. However, I feel um I don't feel great about that,

203but I feel okay about it because we had just made a switch of an embedded social worker in one of our programs to that school wide position this year. So we have increased metal health staffing at 68 recently. Yeah, this is a hard one after today's presentation for sure. What does this look like in a practical sense if somebody's point eight? Does it mean one day a week they're not in the It does right now the person in the position that also could be a reduced schedule. We've done different things with point eight. Sometimes they come in earlier go home late and in this case this person comes in four days a week. Okay. The next one is a kindergarten teacher. I'm a little bit I almost thought about moving it to tier three today

204and I kept it in tier two. Right now the numbers are not indicating that we need that K teacher. That is one of the two unfilled positions. We already took out one of the unfilled positions at MIW. This is the second one if you remember from the presentation. Um we had I think five or six registrations this week alone for kindergarten. So if that we just don't know. It's a we don't know. So we can right now in the budget we have up to 160 students without having to increase the budget increase staffing. We just met 140 registrations today. So we're 20 away. We're okay at this moment with me saying I think you can reduce this other unfilled position that was designated for kindergarten. Um I'm just worried that in two months we might

205be already at 160 but I don't know. It's just one of those things and that's where people you know when talk about budgeting and say "Why didn't you account for that?" We don't always know. We don't know. We make the best decisions we can. Um and if you continued with this position, it could be that it's unfilled next year. We just don't fill it. And then it goes into year-end funds next year. Or you decide that you want to um remove it, and then we end up with 170 or 180 kids, which I don't think is going to happen. We generally can We've looked year after year how many kids do we pick up after our initial registrations in the winter. We usually pick about 25 to 30 kids between now and August. Um so

206I think we're okay. But I'm I can't guarantee it. And that's one of the things that's very difficult about making these decisions, especially around kindergarten. We used to be able to predict our kindergarten enrollment based on um birth rates, and then we'd add a few. Now we can't. It's all off the window. Even first grade, we now are adding 12 to 15 students a year. Second grade, we started adding 10, 12, 15 kids that are not actual um in our actuals when we're when we're budgeting. Um we've seen that start happening even as high as second grade. Um we've Well, I'd say not just as high as second grade. Um Carol sees that in fourth and fifth grade. We just see students now coming in at different grades, but we do see more kids coming

207in at the primary grades um that we you know, now we have to predict we're going to get 12 more. We're going to get 15 more. Kindergarten is becoming less predictable each year Yeah. um as each year goes by. We used to be able to predict it almost down to a student. And now it's like we think this is what we're going to get. We just don't know. Um but I think at this moment in time I I feel reasonably uh comfortable. I've talked with Corey Munsey two or three times recently about this. Um and we both feel reasonably okay putting this forward um, as a reduction in the budget. So, if you took all of the tier two, that would be another 321,467, that would bring your budget increase down uh, to 3. Uh,

2083,473,693. It would bring the increase to the budget down to 6.45%. Again, just remember that you started uh, or the baseline was um, 7.60%. So, taking tier one and two um, together would bring the increase down to 6.45% if you went forward with all the items. >> And that includes over 1% of to which is debt service, which was voted on separately by the community. >> That's right. This is total >> talking about just operating budget at that level. You're talking about the debt that was also voted on separately. >> the total budget, which includes the debt service. Which the debt the debt and land the debt service land acquisition was 1.15%. >> When it was presented, yes. That percentage is going to be obviously tweaked a little bit. >> Yes. Yes. >> Yeah. Jeff,

209quick step back. That So, that kindergarten teacher, that's that's a pretty big chunk of that tier two. So, I just wanted to take one moment with that. Um, I I think our kindergarten team is one of our strongest teams. Like just this completely subjective, but it's a like a pretty cohesive, strong team. What Give me the worst-case scenario of that. Let's say that tomorrow 30 extra kids come in and sign up for kindergarten. What does that look like for that team and and where we're at? Um, we would be >> at So, we would be at one butt per like like class like ratios, stuff like that. What what would be the concern of what's our threshold there in terms of where you're comfortable with that? So, if you remove this position tonight, the kindergarten

210position, which is an unfilled position right now, if you remove it, it's no longer available, and we're at 140 right now, and you can go up to 160, we'd have 16 kids in a class. So, we can go up to We've generally had 16 to 18 students in kindergarten um for the last several years. And kindergarten is a grade where we try to be more sensitive to the numbers. These are many times the newest students to our school if they hadn't gone to pre-K in our school. So, um and we've gone as high as I think we've gone as high as 19 in kindergarten, but in recent years, especially since COVID, we've not. We've stayed in the 16, 17 numbers for kindergarten. Um first grade, we start inching up to 18s. Uh second grade, we

211go start going up to 20. Um third grade, we can go as high as 22, um in that grade. But for kindergarten, we generally have kept 16 and 17. So, without this teaching position, and if you gain another 20, 25 students, you're still fine. You're still in that area. That's what Corey and I keep talking about. Um and we feel okay today because we're still 20, 25 students away from that. Uh or 20 students away from 16. >> But if we went if it went 20 kids in a classroom, right? In kindergarten, you don't want 20 kids in a classroom. You just don't. Oh, come on, you guys. >> advocate that. I would never advocate >> So, that's my wondering is just in terms of like do they like if that is our worst-case scenario,

212what are we looking like in terms of a team culture there or the ability to serve those kids coming cuz it's a big year coming from preschool into that big school, right? Like that's that's a big year. What is that? Is that So, 20, you never you get to that point. >> I would I would at that point I would be coming back to the board if we ever got to that point. >> Okay. And I would be advocating that we put another position in and then we would find a way to do it. Um if the budget is already passed and we've done I've done that once since I've been here. I've come back to the board and I've said, "Look, the numbers were just way off and we're going to have to make

213other decisions budgetarily in order to hire a teacher. So, we're going to move things around. We can't overextend our budget, but we're going to have to make other decisions and I'm going to need the board's approval to do that in order to get that you know, whether it means going to the emergency fund or whatnot. Um or looking at our salary lines and reorganizing and making sure that we can do that. So, that would be a priority and I have done that once. It's been a long time since I've done that though. I think this is something to I am not as worried this year, but as we're going to next year and opening a new school, we do know that we do have families that will hold their kids to other schools or whatnot

214for for kindergarten and maybe even first grade and then we'll see a jump for second grade. If we're opening a new school, we may get more of those families deciding to come here potentially. Um so, just that's not a this year thing, but I just think it's something to keep in mind for next year cuz then we probably will need that position and maybe more. I I just that's just how This is not even move new families moving. It's different choices that they make um cuz I don't That's true. We have We do have a number of families and that's why in first grade and that's this is actually historical that we'll get you know, eight, 10, 12, but we're starting to see those numbers inch up of parents that didn't send their students to

215kindergarten here, but then first grade they show up in first grade. Uh but now we see that happening more in second grade. We're seeing even more families moving in or whatnot for second grade. So, So, it may it may be even more that we would would need to feel like we're adding going into the new school year opening. So, just wanted to put that on But it's on the I I wouldn't have put it on here if I felt like at this moment in time and even looking ahead that we wouldn't be okay. I feel like we're okay right now. And I I you know, generally we've looked back. How many kids do we gain between April 1st and you know, school starting at the end of August. And generally we pick up about 20

216to 25 students, sometimes 30. Um but we're well I think we're in the realm of being in the place where where the class sizes would not be impacted by taking a kindergarten teacher or taking this unfilled position now. Um can I ask for a motion just looking at the time to continue past 9:00? Anybody want to make it? >> So moved. All right. In a second? We've got to get this done, guys. We've got to get through this. Second. Okay. Thank you, Megan. All in favor of continuing past 9:00 to 10:00 p.m. Anybody opposed? Okay. Anybody opposed? I'm just going to say out loud, why are we doing this at 9:00 12:00 at night and why can't we do this meeting at a 5:00 meeting or a 4:00 meeting knowing that we need to be

217fresh and we want to look at this and we want everybody's freshest ideas. Um and I just I I have looked at these numbers a a lot and so I'm familiar with them. And I'm really tired. Mhm. Oh yes, we're all tired and I hope that we can get through um what's on this. We're almost to year three. And I just feel like a $58 million budget deserves our 100% attention. So, I wasn't going to say this tonight, but I'll say it. Um, I I work with Leanne or whoever the board chair is to put together the board schedule for the next year, and you'll be getting a draft board schedule. The board will get it at the next meeting. Um, one of the things that, um, I've been talking with Leanne about and just

218really thinking through is how much time is afforded to the budget during this to the year with a full board. Please. >> we need to actually back this process up with some workshops in the fall actually previewing the budget. And in addition to that, um, have some previews to the presentation and then more workshops built in for the board to have discussion as an entire board >> Mhm. Yes, please. >> in public after I present the budget. So, >> projections. >> And more projections. And I think, um, based on that, you the the schedule the board schedule and it's the board's to do what you want with it. The draft that you'll get in a couple weeks, um, will have some more of these things built in because I, especially next year, FY 20, you're

219going to need you're going to need a lot of time to talk. And you need dedicated time. And I also know, and I'm part of the problem, we put things on the I we put things on the agenda and I've got to make sure we don't put things on the agenda when we're talking about the budget. We've just got to have a budget meeting. Nothing else goes on the agenda. So, I've heard I've heard some of you. You've told me. Me? Have you Yeah. And it's really hard to get people if we haven't scheduled the meeting in advance. Yeah, I get it. I get it. And >> have statutory timelines, but we have to we have to back up the statutory timelines. We have That's the problem right now between now and April 15th and

220the end of the year. We have these timelines we have to meet and we can't meet them this year without getting this done. So, I'm I'm sorry, but So, we're going to get We're going to get the We're going to get the budget I 5 minutes, but thank you and I appreciate that very very much. >> We've heard you. Yeah, we're >> See if I whine enough. We need to plan a year in advance and that's how it works. So I can get that for the long term. I think that's awesome. I'm so appreciative of that. The immediate thing ahead of us right now is uh another tier that we go through and then Jeff is asking for direction which takes some time. I mean, I asked a question around 125 grand and a kindergarten

221teacher and people are like, "Ugh, we have another couple minutes cuz we're tired of talking through that." Like I felt that. I don't think so. I think we let's go through tier three. >> I hear you. Let's go through that, but I'm just saying that like it's takes some energy and some time to get to that point. So I'm cool with going forward if we close on that, but I think that it's going to take a little bit more time and energy to really run through this just for me personally. Tim Valenti needs a little bit more time and energy to look through this and really make a decision to give Jeff exactly what he needs. So I'm cool with giving it to the end of this. I just don't don't know where we're going

222in terms of a decision given our lack of energy and the time that we're at. So I'm cool with going forward if if we have a kind of a plan beyond that. Do we Do we have an option to add another meeting or a group workshop? Is that an option? >> be really hard. Um Scott and I talked about that today just based on the what we've got to get done and the dead the deadline for getting those warrants done on the 15th and all the stuff that has to go into getting those warrants written with the numbers that need to be processed and then if with these reductions there's a lot of changes we're going to have to make to the budget in advance of doing that. I think it would be very challenging

223to get that >> a finance meeting that should be on most people's calendars. But if we decide at the finance meeting, would you have enough time to write the warrants after that finance meeting? >> so. Problem is is if we go beyond the 15th that for the board to adopt it, then you'll start running up against too close to the district budget meeting in order to be able to The reason we moved the district budget meeting tighter was to allow absentee balloting. So, if you push this out too far, you could affect absentee balloting. >> Oh, they already have ballots and they're already voting on the budget, right? Am I wrong on that? >> Um they can't Yeah, they can't return the >> Yeah, I know that I was already asked to put in the

224They already put them together. No, we gave them we gave them the ballots. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is the timing to get to the district budget meeting in order to have one that can be posted the warrants, right? So, you vote on the articles at the district budget meeting. Those have to be posted within a certain timeline. They have to be countersigned by both the council and the select board. And so, there's this really arduous process going forward. So, Mr. Valade, if we delay that, um you know, you could be bumping up against those and the statutory timelines. Can we get to tier three? Thank you. >> Just say it. I know. Okay, so tier three, um the first one, again, this is this is more These are more

225challenging cuz I'm just going to say that's why it's on tier three. So, they're challenging from the beginning. And the first one's $179,604, which is to prepay off that second tech lease that I was talking about, which is in its, um what year is it, Scott? Remind me. It's in the second year. It's in the second year. So, we would be going into the third one in FY 27. It's to prepay it off so that is not You don't have to pay it in FY 27. The problem is that we could because we carry two leases and because we have to keep purchasing devices and equipment and projectors year after year, um and we put them into lease purchases to make it more economical for the district and for the taxpayer, um going forward, um

226it we have to would still have to carry another tech lease, but it creates, again, that hole. So, it's going to show as an increase right from the get-go in FY 28, unless, and Sean, you just talked about You just referenced this. Unless the board is committed to if there's enough year-end funds, which we project there will be, um is to pay off the in you know, the entirety of this lease purchase and get it off the books so that you're not having to pay this and show it as an increase and carry it as an increase into FY28 and FY29, which you do not want to do, at least in 28. That's the year you don't. >> help out with the year that you're going to have one of your largest increases as well,

227right? 28. You want to get this out off the books. >> and the year after. >> Yes. So this one is a >> for interest, too, that we could save, right? It's a significant amount. >> a sizable amount there. So you're not So if you want to move forward with this item, just know that you are dealing with a lot more than 179. We don't have I don't have the exact number here that you would want to consider paying off this lease purchase with year-end funds in June. So I just want to say that really that's important. >> about the Bobcat and the two tech leases we would be buying off completely. >> One One tech lease. One tech >> One tech lease. >> we just we just decreased the amount >> the second one.

228Yeah. >> Thank you. Okay. Yeah, we just decreased the total. What if we don't have this amount of money at the end of the year? Can we pay a portion of it? >> We can pay as much as we can pay off so that at least it helps. Yeah, you could you could pay half of it. You could refund it. There's a number of things we could look to do with it. >> have to pay off the whole thing, but but I do believe you come close. I do believe you're going to be fine just because of what I know is in out-of-district placement, you know, the two positions that we haven't filled. I think we're going to be okay to do that. We're going to have to have a little bit of a transfer

229to transportation and facilities and debt service, but those won't be to the magnitude of this. Since you just mentioned this, I I noticed it looks like there's a line. It looks like for a bus that was remaining. It was like a hundred thousand dollars. Yeah, what we did you mean in the current year we're in? >> Yeah, in the You'll see that just below that there's a well, there's a lease purchase that it was budgeted for but yet you'll see a cash purchase below that. What we did is we didn't lease it. We just did the cash purchase and it was only a twenty something thousand dollar difference between what we actually had budgeted. So so we chose to do the cash bus purchase just so that we're in that bucket of money so that

230we can get state subsidy on it next year. Okay. If we buy it out of this year, it's all playing those two buckets of money whether you lease purchase two over a couple of years or you buy one outright so that you can get that money in the next year. You never know which bucket you're going to get approved for. Okay. Okay. That that two buckets of money, right? >> Cuz yeah, I was noticing that was >> to we try to play those buckets to our advantage. Okay. Anything else on the lease purchase? Any other comments or questions? So the next one is the pre-K coordinator. Um Yeah, go ahead, Scott. On a lease purchase, the nice thing about that is you can wait right up until the last week of June and pay it

231off. When you're talking about pre-buying furniture and things like that, there's a lead time, right? So it may be twelve weeks until you can get the furniture here. You may not have enough time and it has to be on site prior to June 30th in order to be counted as a year twenty six expense. So you can't like wait until the end of the year, buy the furniture, you know, or obligate yourself to it until it has to actually be on site by June 30th in order to have it be a expense in fiscal year twenty nineteen. So that's the difference. All right. So the pre-K coordinator, again, this is one of those things that uh we depending on what the board is doing, you're going to need a pre-K coordinator. I think everyone is

232more or less in that mindset. Um but, we put it on the list um and to hire somebody halfway through the year, it is more problematic to look for a person in a position like this halfway through the year. However, we feel like it's possible um that we would find somebody qualified to do that who is very interested in this work. Um it is not my first choice. It's not Julie Olson's first choice um either, but we feel like we feel okay with it enough to put it on a list. Um the other There's two other problematic things. One, it it creates another, again, hole in your budget in FY28 for the other 50% of this position. And we believe this position is going to be revenue-generating for the next at least the next year.

233We don't know about after that. Everything the Department of Ed has said is it we're going to get revenue. You can bill for this position. So, it's kind of if we've been told that, again, I always look at what the DOE says, and I'm hoping that's the way it will work, but things um sometimes don't work that way. Um I don't think it's the best choice, but it's on tier three, and if we have to make decisions, here it is. And then the last one um is two uh teaching positions. Now, again, I'm going to just say right up front, we're not talking about actual personnel. Um we are talking about uh one teaching position that has um been um proposed as an increase to handle enrollment at the middle school at the middle level.

234So, it's somebody who's not in the position yet. It was an It was one of the proposed new positions at the middle school. So, I'm proposing if we have to have a tier three reduction, that we simply um remove one of those two uh teaching positions from 6A. That creates some issues. And I've talked to um Monty Selby about this two or three or four times now. Exactly might what might happen. Um it could create some programmatic issues around teaming at the middle level. Um it's not insurmountable, and we have done this before in the past when we've had these issues around teaming imbalances. Um we've been able to fix it. Um and we can it's not ideal, but it we've done it. It's not the It's not the first time we've done this. So,

235that would be the first one. The other one is again, I've looked at um all the class sizes. Marie Trebelcock did a complete analysis of all of our class sizes again. She does this annually. She just finished it um last week. And um we found that, you know, again, potential of another FTE at the elementary level um MIW next year and looking at class sizes. Um I don't feel 100% certain about that, because again, we pick students up at MIW that we don't know about sometimes. We just kind of predict that we're going to pick kids up as they get older at at MIW. Um but this would be the other position. Um again, it would be um there would be no personnel loss. It would just be position losses. And um What would this

236mean for So, just as a reminder, our sixth grade class right now, um for the first time, there's three teams. And so, this was to continue the three-team model for the seventh grade. So, moving >> That's correct. >> that um group of kids within that team to the seventh grade team. Yeah. Um That's right. >> So, what would happen if we said, "Yes, let's take these two positions off." Does that mean that those kids then just instead get split into the two existing teams? So, this if this reduction goes through, we would still have one position added to 6 8. Okay. >> is only take out one position. >> Um so, the other position we absolutely is necessary. We cannot go without uh both we can't reduce both both positions from 6 8. So, this

237is only one position. So, you're still adding to 6 8 with this reduction. Okay. Um what we would have to do is move staff around in order to make that teaming model work. Sometimes what we've done in the past is we've had a staff member who teaches more than one content area or more than two content areas even. We've had and this is again not ideal, but we've had teachers who have taught a teacher who cross teams and um teaches more than one content area or teaches one content area with for multiple teams in order to keep class sizes down. Again, not ideal. It it disrupts the teaming model, but it is something that we've done before. Don't love it. The middle school doesn't love it. But again, when we're proposing a reduction that this

238is an area that we went to when we looked at actual class sizes um and outside of the teaming arrangement. And remind me the size of the current sixth grade compared to the current seventh grade. Is it like how many I mean, I don't need exact number, but I was just trying >> have those I have all the enrollment numbers I can share with the board. I just don't have them right in front of me. >> Okay. What What other questions do people have about this? I would like those Yeah, the enrollment numbers especially even for all the way back to like fifth grade cuz are we just kicking this down the can down the road cuz we know that it's even bigger and we're going to have to do do anyways. >> Well, in

239in the the one campus staffing and that's why really the board needs a workshop this in the fall and talk about the staffing for FY28 in the one campus model um early and often. Um we do account for that um larger class in that staffing that we've already put forward to finance committee and have shared with finance committee before. So, we already accounted for that that part. We know that that's coming. That was part of the one campus staffing. Um in those in discussions that we'll be having um early next year way ahead of the budget process, the whole board will be part of those discussions that the finance committee has started having. It's interesting because when we were talking about these positions and that was something that I was advocating for was to only

240add one for 6-8 or six. Um someone, a former middle school teacher who happens to be in this room right now, um said something very reasonable that I had not thought about because I had not taught middle school, which is that middle school tends to have the highest class sizes. Um just based on the fact that they're older, so you can have more kids in a class, but high school is when things become more diversified. So, you're talking about more papers to grade, trying to remember all the things that you were saying, more papers to grade, managing behavior, all of those things. And that I was so appreciative of that perspective. So, I'm going to throw it back at you because uh that that is a reason that I have been since then saying, "Okay,

241you've convinced me to keep that position in the budget, not cut it." Yeah, and I will say that um I wouldn't have you know, even propose this reduction. Again, I'm not recommending these reductions. I'm proposing it. Um and there's a difference. And but because we've looked at the actual class sizes for next year, and can we just add one position instead of two, which I propose. It disrupts the team more than it disrupts the class sizes. So we there is a range of class sizes at the middle school, obviously, just like the high school. And it depends on whether it's an allied art, whether it's a content area, depends on how many students are in that grade, depends on how many teams. So at sixth grade we adjusted this year, we have three teams. One

242is a two-person team. So in seventh grade, because those numbers are moving forward, sixth grade students going to seventh, we wanted to replicate that so that we could keep that teaming structure in place. But some of the class sizes we looked at we you know, if you just look at the class sizes we feel I feel comfortable that we could add one FTE teacher and not two at GMS 6-8 next year with the class sizes. However, it is a team structure issue more than anything else. And I I just want to say that up front and be up front about that. I'm surprised at this one just because we know that that sixth grade class is so big and moving to the three team model was such a mental leap for so many families in

243sixth grade and those kids they were like kids sobbing when they found out that they were on the middle, you know, that the new team and it seems like it's gone so beautifully. So then as a sixth grade parent to get an email about two months ago saying, "Does your kid want to stay on their team? Like would you be open to switching your teams?" was like, "Whoa." This is going to throw this whole class into disarray. So I'm I'm surprised that this is this has made it on here just because it seems like it's really poking the bear. Yeah, we definitely don't want to poke the bear, but again we're asked to come up with positions. Nobody really wants this, but you know, in terms of getting the budget down, this was one area

244that we could hang our hat on and say, "Class sizes, if you look at sheer class size, um we could put this forward as a reduction." I can say from a lot of experience, um there's been a lot of tears about neighborhoods and teams. Um there was a year where the third grade was split between the Memorial School and MIW. There were a lot of tears about that, and um Everybody survived. Katie just said that, not me. I remember my seventh grade year, I went to school with like, what's a fourth of our grade, Caitlyn? What would that be? Like, cuz you have your team and then you have your cohort cuz of COVID. >> Yes. So. Yes. I Yeah, I get it though. I just want to also I'm going to I know I

245said this, but I know it's late, so I'm going to say it again cuz so we don't miss it. This is actually a reduction to the proposed addition of two FTEs at GMS 68. It is not a reduction to the current staffing at GMS 68. That staffing would actually still increase by one FTE even if you took these two reductions. I just want to make that really clear. Okay. For the sake of moving us forward, I was just going to say. Uh so. I'll go with the the finance chair's recommendation to move us forward. I want to go back to what Scott said, which is that we are talking about, if you think back to two weeks ago, the presentation where that middle box was the operating expenses. Right? So, one of the things we

246did at our finance meeting uh Yes. two weeks ago, which was the day after that monster meeting is to kind of create that formula so that we have that debt service box we do not touch cuz we can't. And then manipulating the middle box or the far right box which is the total to kind of play with it and see. Um I'm just going to go ahead and say to all of you not because I expect you to do what I'm saying, but to give you kind of an idea. Um I These are the things I'm not comfortable with move taking out, okay? Just me after a couple years of being on this committee. I'm not comfortable with taking out the SRO because I just don't know what's going to happen with the town. I'm

247not comfortable with asking the schools to reduce their budget lines cuz we did that last year and I genuinely believe that they have stuck to that. I am not okay with taking out the van lease because I think that kicks it down the road. Uh and I think that it does save us money on fuel and other opportunities. The pre-K coordinator, I believe that I was the one who was advocating for a half year. Um I'm going to call it E-sped, early special education coordinator, not pre-K. Um Odds are well I don't know. I just I feel like that one should stay in especially if we're going to be able to bill for it. The two 6-8 positions and the school counselor given everything we heard about what middle schoolers need right now. So if

248those are the things that we don't take out and we take out everything else then that middle box operating expenses represents a 5.07 percent increase for a total of 6.31. Does that make sense? >> Mhm. Um so I say that not because I expect you all to agree with me on every single thing, but just to give you an idea because Jeff has given us options. We can play with it, but again, we're really talking about that middle box. And for us to increase our operating expenses by 5% I think is a very reasonable, especially given the health insurance increase. >> Yeah, because the this is not saying that these things that we're keeping in equal 5%. This is on top of the health insurance increase, on top of salaries and benefits that are encumbered.

249The when you do that and you're increasing your operating expenses by 5% that's something I could live with. So. Okay, so, I'm going to go to Shawn. I'm going to start with finance committee member. >> I just had one question for Kim cuz I was wanted to do one calculation. What is the dollar amount that increase? Do you have that right there? >> Yes. Um, so we are reducing by 2,072,8279. No. No. I did this See, I did this last time. Our operating expenses would be 2.728279 million. Okay. And then when you add the 666,000 for the debt, you get a total increase to the budget of 3.394 million or 6.31%. 3,400 I will say that more slowly. 3,394,853. Okay. Cuz I rounded. And that is a total increase of 6.31. Mhm. And I want

250to keep going with finance committee members and I would love every I want to give a chance for everyone on the board to kind of say, similar to what what Kim said, her her non-negotiables were. Um, so I'm looking left first, So, I have two other finance committee members over here if you want to go next, Jesse. >> I think I'm a large largely aligned with you, Kim. Um, I think the pre-K coordinator the state is going to reimburse us unless they take a 180° turn and we are currently attempting to develop a pre-K program and to not have somebody who can start figuring out how do we operationalize that and hire people and help what we're going to do it seems really foolish to me. I mean, from what we heard about kids in

251middle school, like I do not want to move us into a less than ideal position. I know I know we can make it work and if the budget gets voted down, we will have to make some things work, but I'm not comfortable putting kids in a less than ideal position um, at this point. You know, the rest of the tier ones and tier twos I'm okay with the SRO. I mean, I know. I know. I'd be I'm I'm fine kicking that to Cumberland and then seeing what happens with that, but I'm also okay leaving it in. I think Shawn has a good point. Like, I'm going to pay for it either way cuz I live in Cumberland. So, you know, like that one I I'm ambivalent about cuz I'm going to pay for it either

252way. Um, Do you want to tell you what what happened if I moved SRO to >> No, it's fine. No. Okay. No, I think that's it's a small one. I mean, I mean, so, but every everything else I think I'm all aligned with Kim. The SRO is just It It seems like it's the It's the same amount. I'm going to pay it either way. So, Okay. I That's not a deal breaker for me. Okay. So, and everything else Kim said that you're pretty much aligned with. Okay. Shawn. I am on board with everything that Kim said and I concur that that is the best approach based on what we have been presented currently. Um, I already mentioned the SRO, so it's not going to help anybody tax us if we do anything different with it

253unless we reduce it. I never want to do that. It's critical. >> Well, just for fun, I will tell you what happens if we take out the SRO. And that gets us to a 6.24% increase. Instead of what What did I say before? 6. >> 6.31 Thank you. Yeah. Okay. The only thing I I know I've been hammering this. I keep hammering it. Just using Kim's number, if we went that approach, just the cost in health care from last year to this year is 19% of that increase. >> Mhm. Just health care. Just health care. Yep. Thank you, John. Anything else? You good? I'm good. >> All right. Sarah. Um I my um I'm going to surprise you, Scott. You surprised me earlier today. Um little negotiations joke. Um I I would um choose to

254put back in um the van lease purchase. And um I think the SRO is an important conversation to have. Um I am going to continue to pound the drum about um looking at that 60 the the chairs. And I'm I don't love moving it to one campus. Um I would rather us bang down the doors of the other schools for that opportunity. But either way, that would be taking it out of the operating budget, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, what if we could buy it with the year-end fund balance as well if we had to? I would agree. So, if you removed it, if we had the flexibility of doing that either way, Ah. okay, then that would allow us to >> campus we'd keep in bricks and mortar. More other things. Okay. So, bricks and

255mortar. So, the main thing you disagreed with was the van lease. You think we should keep that. >> I think we should keep that to stay on the schedule of equipment. >> Okay. Thank you, Sarah. All right. And now I'm going to just go right down the line cuz I did finance committee first. You're good, Katie? Above our pay grade. Caitlin? Okay. Can you Sorry, can you quickly go through the list and say what you said? Yeah, go through the list. >> Yes. Okay. So, the list of what we would keep in our budget Essentially, these the things that are on this list that you would omit. Do you want to go Can you go back? I think it's helpful. Um so, tier three Can you go to tier three? Sorry. Okay. So, we would

256keep everything in tier three ex- except Wait, no. No. I see I keep I'm No. We would I don't Okay, so I I want to go back cuz you you I I shared this with Leanne. You put no, Sarah. Um so, Sarah, did you say keep the van in the budget? >> budget. >> Keep the van >> Okay. >> So, in other words, >> But you and I are You're in agreement. All of the other um recommendations I I feel are I appreci- I Okay. >> would approve. >> Okay. All of that I approve. >> I keep swapping cuz I'm all all of Jeff's. Okay. The thing The only things that I would put back in or request financing for would be the um van and the SRO. And I'd like to see how to

257do the furniture not through one campus. And cheaper if we can. Okay. Okay. So, then Megan, to your question. >> Yep. The things that I'm saying I want to keep in the budget. In other words, remove from the reductions. >> Remove from the reductions. >> Thank you. The schools reducing their budget lines by 15,000. Yep. The van. The e-sped coordinator, not pre-K coordinator. The two teaching positions. The school counselor. And I'm on the fence about the SRO. Right right now I have it as keeping it in the budget just cuz I'm nervous. And that gets us to a 6.31% increase. Okay. Thank you. For a 5.07% increase in operating expenses. Okay. Does that make sense, Megan? >> Yep. Okay. And so you're just looking for are we in agreement with him? >> Mhm. And I

258please you guys, I do not mean to be taking It's great. control. I'm just trying to move us forward. Tim. Megan gave her answer. I am in agreement with Kim um on everything except the van. I feel like the van is a toss-up. I don't feel super strongly about it. You're saying we've got it for 2 more years, we're we're going to be fine. I don't feel super strongly about it. The SRO, as long as we don't lose our SRO. And I hear what you're saying, we're going to pay for it either way. I just I don't want that position to be in jeopardy. And I don't think it will. You know, if we say to this town, we don't want to absorb that cost. I don't really know what's going to happen. I just

259don't want to lose that position. Great. Tim. Okay. I'm going to do something rare for me, which is I don't feel comfortable to actually have a position on this. Like, for example, I want to look through what we just got, some of the actuals here, so thank you for that. Um, and see, like, can I find 25 grand for that school counselor that like can we ask more about certain line items and stuff like that. So, I'm not like given the time and the position and how much how much I've had the opportunity to kind of look at this and digest this since getting this a couple hours ago, I don't feel comfortable making a recommendation in a way that feels responsible to the duty. So, I'm going to sit this one out. >> Okay.

260Lauren? Um, I think I'm in agreement with Kim. I think the the items that she has identified are in alignment with what's important to me. I think the van is we're going to have we'll have needs for it. It will be used and it will be difficult to purchase down the road if not needed sooner. Um, I I think the this East Bay, what we're calling it, coordinator >> it. I'll never remember as the chair of that committee, um, I really don't want to limit um, what we're going to be able to do there. Um, we're really we don't have uh, we're just early stages. We're not sure where we're going with that yet, so I I I think that's a a real hampering to just say half a position there at this time. Um,

261and and uh, I'm yeah, all the other items make sense to me, too. Great. Can I just ask one? >> Yes. Out of all the things that are on there, Tim, is there some that you're just 100% I'm fine with that? Or is there just like two items that you're on the fence about? That's what I'm trying to get at. >> Oh, uh that's fair. I appreciate that. Um I also really appreciate the work that went into that, too. So, these are not easy things. Um Yeah, like I'm okay with like the postage and printing and most of the tier one stuff. >> Mhm. Um The I'm shocked about the van. So, like everyone else's opinion about the van has now pushed me towards the van cuz I was okay with that. Um And I'd

262want to know more about the SRO, honestly. Like what the conversations with them cuz that's probably not worth the the political calculat- calculations and games that we play back and forth with that. So, yeah. I appreciate that. But, yeah. So, everything in tier one and I'd really need to know more information about the tier three stuff, I think, or really think about that because especially the the teacher positions in the middle school, that one worries me. Mhm. Okay. Can Can I ask a So, here's my question about the um early the E spec, as Kim's calling it. Um so, any program that that we would do, we would not do until 2027-2028. Is that a correct statement? That's correct. >> Okay. So, what would that person do for an entire school year? A full-time job.

263But, they're not going to have all those kids and they're not going to have all those names and they're not going to be able to start the child find process. There's an entire I mean, I feel like we can't we don't even have the capacity right now to create a list of of things that like contacts with providers and all of the things to get the pro- ready to start the program. Um So, they >> wouldn't be responsible for starting the program. So, there is a sample job description, but it was based on it was a while back. And so, it's hard to answer this question because there's no delivery model right now. And so, I think it's fair to say that their job is planning for whatever that delivery model is that the board

264approves. And it's a year in advance. So, it's a planning position a year in advance of that. So, I think you're asking is that you're you're wondering. I'm hearing you wonder, do you really need a year to do that? And I mean recognize where I'm speaking from, please, for a moment. Um it One of the things to consider is the person that's going to go for this position is going to likely come from CDS who's having this major shake-up. And by the way, CDS does not function on a school calendar. Lauren, can as part of the process, I know you guys are contacting schools who have already started their pre-K models. I would love to have more information about like did they have their coordinator a year in advance and what would they be working

265on? Yeah, so a great question. Yeah. And it's a little bit different because um the I mean, this position is for the special ed aspect of it. This is not about a pre-K coordinator. This is for the special ed aspect. So, we're not going to Yeah. We're not going to have the documentation, the data, or the lives to manage. We're not going to have the information to manage for an entire school year. So, I understand the concept that >> been our understanding and I think we put this forward cuz our recommendation was for this position. >> planning for the delivery model, but I mean, that is true. We won't actually have the students for that because it's a planning year. >> half the half year would facilitate time for planning and we would have a

266model for them to go through. We have um someone at the district that is already working with CDS with pre-K too. I'm just curious um whether they could start some of this process. Given that we don't have the lives, we don't have the documentation. Sir, you as you know from finance committee like this was my idea was to have it be a half year. >> you had my full support. >> like I I'm still in favor of that. The only thing that pushed me to say let's keep it in is if we're billing it and it's not costing us anything. So, to me let's start finding that person. I I mean, I don't know. We might not even find them until like you said that the calendar year, but the only thing that pushed me

267to say let's just keep it in there is because as of right now we can bill it out. >> Mhm. And just recognizing that when we bill it out on that free money is still taxpayers' dollars. We're just paying it's just taxpayers' dollars. So, it's not like we got free money. Fair point. >> It's never free. It's nothing in life is free. It's coming out of our pockets. >> I think that um this is one of the items that we've and I know talked about a few times now um as part of this committee and I've been in support of partially because it's revenue generating but yes it's paid for somewhere out of something for sure but really wanting to ensure that we're setting our district and those ultimately those kids and families up for

268success and so that was part of the goal but we it would be great to get more information I know Lawrence on it to better understand what districts have needed to feel like they're in a position. But the districts are handling a pre-K program and not the special ed aspect of this mandate. I I'm talking about the ones that have been in earlier cohorts that have But they're still not handling all of those special ed kids. Okay. Um so I think I'm the last one who hasn't weighed in. I the only one thing on your list was the also the van. I'm like thinking we could probably use it and maybe save money other other areas if we had that van and could keep the other one running and not be out of schedule so

269that's the only one that I'm like on the fence about. Wait you're so you're saying on the fence about keeping it in the budget or on the fence I mean if you're on the fence then you're half and half. I know this is where when Yeah right the the time of evening of whether we should not buy a van I'm supporting buying a van. Okay. Yeah so keeping it like pink colored. Yeah. So I made a lot of noise and asked for um a lot of considerations to the the budget and um and I just want to appreciate Jeff and Scott for really sharpening the pencils and going back and looking at the numbers. I jumped up and down when I saw the postage and the printing and those opportunities. Um and I'm just really

270cognizant and concerned about um 28 20 27 28 29, right? Still 28 the the next >> It's 27 28 school year. Um and and I just think it's so crucial that the community feels that we have truly truly truly done the work on this budget so that they can feel confident in us going forward. The thing I would say too is that we aren't done yet. And we're waiting on the health insurance numbers. And we haven't really gone through and calculated all or recalculated all of our health insurance costs. We're just building on what we had last year in terms of where we're at. So, I would expect that once we get that number, we're going line by line by every employee for what health insurance is. And you know, if you know, you save

271just 1% on health insurance, that's 78 80 grand, right? So, so it it could end up being a sizable number. Also, when we start going and we look at who took health insurance, who didn't take health insurance, who might come on, who might not. And so, that's still one of the steps that are still left in the process. We also have the collective bargaining agreement which is unsettled right now. Um if that is settled, well, then you're going to also going to spend more money out of the current budget, right? Cuz you know, you'd be spending that. We'll know what that looks like going forward to the next year as well. So, so there's still two really major unknowns um that we'll be looking at and um uh have more opportunity in the in the

272several weeks to come. So, or the week to come. So, I really appreciate that. When would you feel like we needed to get any additional questions, comments, concerns across to you? Would What day is today? Today's Thursday. A Monday or Tuesday? I I think that I could have nothing any later than Tuesday because we're going to be going through and we're going to be going through this budget and uh we've got to create all the warrants, get everything ready because we have to bring them to you on the 15th. Okay. To sign in order to stay with our schedule and in order to meet the state statutory >> Which gives us just a little over a week to get all of that done, which is huge. It's going to be a busy week, so >>

273Yeah, okay. And I just want to say finally, I appreciate that the um there were no reductions in in staffing. There were reduction reductions in positions that were not filled and that you looked deep enough into the numbers to feel confident not excited but to be able to make these recommendations. Yeah. >> Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, and I appreciate that, too. And uh like we've said previously, we're we're still one of the only growing districts >> Exactly. >> in Maine. Um and so I just I know it's uh a few minutes uh of 10. Again, just so appreciative of all the work that got us here tonight and the board, you know, digging in and understanding. And certainly, please um at with as Kim as finance chair, if you have more questions, please reach out

274to her. Um I know, like I said, there is a finance meeting next Friday. Is that it? Okay. Um but I want people to feel like they've at least had the opportunity to dive in um before we're asked to vote uh on this on the 15th. Um which is a Wednesday? >> It's a Wednesday, so it's because of the spring break. >> It's a Wednesday. Um but we do text me So, we do it's important that whatever happens tonight is lines up with what happens on the 15th. Yes. >> So, yeah. Yeah, I'm I think I'm confused about the diving in part. So, we have we've been diving in, right? >> Yeah, yes. >> Um so, but I think what I'm hearing from Jeff is that our diving in and the board part of the

275process stops tonight. >> tonight. That's what I hear. Is that correct? It really I'm asking I'm requesting that that occur because we need the time to take Usually, we don't have a long list of reductions to the proposed budget to process. So, we're not asking you to make this kind of commitment this early. It's usually at the adoption phase, which is 2 weeks from now. Uh but because there is a long list of reductions and we've got to process that and then create the warrants for that, it's it's backing it up basically. So, it is true. Yes, Tim. So, we haven't I like I Do we have clarify like do you have clarification now based off of everyone's various opinions of what we should cut and put in? >> We generally do. I think I'm

276going to have to go off of Kim's list a little bit, but I'm not sure. >> an agreement on that, right? So, there like there's multiple different opinions. So, how are you going to come up with saying this is the board's budget cuz that's not cuz that's not my budget. Right. And I mean that respectfully. >> Yeah, yeah, I'm just trying to figure out like how you're going to do that because I feel like we're not what we're presenting for it is what you just dictated based on what you That's what we're hoping for. call it Kim's budget. >> Oh, sorry. Yeah, that thing. I didn't mean it like that. >> Sorry, Sean. It might take some time. I'm not going to lie, but is it can we all just say tier one we're good

277and then go line item there if we say yes or no? Yeah, so go put it back up. Tier one. Yeah, sorry. Yeah. And then we we get direction from Jeff. And there's some be some flyers with are marks. Are we good with reducing everything from tier one? Believe I am. No objection. >> Is there anyone that objects? >> No objection. So tier one is a go. Tier two. Are we okay taking everything in tier two out? I am hesitant I do not want to take out the school counselor and I am hesitant about the SRO only because I just don't know how that It's like declaring bankruptcy. You can't just say to the town we're not going to pay it. So I'm just uncomfortable with the with that and I really don't want to

278take out the school. Can we go Sorry. Can we go like Sean's saying line by line and then and then kind of vote like a yes or a no, right? Okay. >> Yes. All right. Yes >> Just an indication. So yeah. Okay, so let's first agree. Does tier one sound Yes. Mean keep it in the budget. Right. Yes means I want this in my budget. I want to pay for it. I want to pay for that. That's a yes. Okay. Wait, yes is a A yes is I want to pay for it. A no is we want to take out. Okay. Is essentially keep it on this list. A no will keep it on this list. A no keep Sean, put us in order. A no No keep it. >> Yes spend money, no don't

279spend money. >> There you go. Yeah. Okay. Van. Yeah yes. Wait, are we like Do you want to vote with yes spend money on the van? So another words keep the van in the budget or put the the van back in the budget. One, two, three, four, five, six. Okay, we have a majority. Okay. Number two, bus monitors. Yes. Okay, we don't have a majority. Um, three, SRO increase, yes. And yes is keep it in the budget. Yes. Pay for money. Yes. Oh, I don't know about this money. So, I mean that one is seems like a split, but >> That one's up for conversation. >> Yeah, talk about >> we need clarity on this one. We need clarity. We need clarity on this. >> to get clarity tomorrow, Jeff? I mean, I can support

280that. >> Yeah. Okay, we're going to get clarity clarity on this one. >> well, I will just say the clarity you mean from the town? Mhm, yes. The town will say please pay it. They'll say yes. They'll be very clear. There's no clarity, but it is what would happen if the SAD did not pay the that money. Yeah. How about We can try. How about let's I want to support yes and we'll work to see if we can get it down. Um, would people support that? Like let's keep it in, but we want to have conversations to see if they would not make us keep it in. Yes. Okay, so yes. Yes. Uh, yes pay for it. >> Yes. Okay. Pay for it. Yes means put it back in the budget. >> Yes. Pay for

281Come over and try and make them pay for it. Yes. Make them pay for it. Okay. Desks, chairs, yes, keep it in. Okay. No support. Um, 15,000 for the detailed budget reduction, yes, keep it in. Keep it in. Meaning keep it in the budget, not take it >> Okay. So, that does not have the majority, take it out. Okay. Um, What do you say? I'm sorry, the detail is uh, gone. Gone. >> So, in other words, we are taking the money out of the budget. >> Okay. We're double negative. Yes for the ecology school. It's all double negative. It's all double negative. It's all double negative. Yes for the school counselor increase. What I'm sorry. Yes. To pay for the increase, pay for it. Yes, pay for the school counselor. >> Instead of saying yes

282or no, can we just say uh, Remove it or can we say keep or remove cut pay? Pay for a cut. Keep it in take it out. Okay, we do not have a majority on the school counselor. We do not have a majority on that. Okay, K teacher. Okay, no support. Keep going. Tier three, tier three. Pay for the lease purchase. Pay for the lease. Let's pay the money pay interest. Pay okay, pay the money and Scott is going to find the money at the end of the year hopefully. We've identified it. We've identified it in special education because of the out of district placements that we didn't have to find. Okay, pay for the lease purchase. This one gets confusing. Which means that 179,000 will come out. Means it's coming out of the district.

283Oh my God. No, I don't. We're all it's coming out of the district's operating budget. Keep it as a reduction. Don't confuse us, okay? Keep as a reduction. Okay, cuz we were saying yes before and wanted to don't. Can I just say you're just keeping it on this reduction list? Keep it on the reduction list. We're taking it out. We're taking it out next year. Nobody raise their hand. We're paying for it out of the my apologies. We just need to know what's coming off the list. Is it staying on the reduction list or is it is it coming off? That's all. Okay, pre-k coordinator. That I do not think that that should be on the reduction list. I think we should take that out of the list of reductions. I would like to take

284it out of the list of reductions. So, we want the pre- yes. So, this would be a full year of pre-K coordinator. That's right. That's what you would be deciding. Yes. So, I have a little bit more complicated question on that one. Okay. So, if we keep it on the list, do we want to count the offsetting revenue as a revenue against the tax assessment? So, do we want to assume we're going to get the money or assume we're not getting money? Oh, that's a good point. Because we can actually reduce the tax >> Yeah, we we've asked this and they've said that I mean, that's part of the conditions of why I'm not supporting it. >> be in the budget as an expenditure. Yeah, that's the only But you would show an offsetting revenue

285in your revenue side where you keep your state subsidy or miscellaneous revenues, etc. The only reason I'm 100% supporting it Yeah. personally is that we've been told multiple times. That we know of. That we know of. So, therefore you're writing therefore you're all set. It's in the budget. It's an expense. It's part of your warrant, but you have an offsetting revenue that's going to be coming in that will help offset taxes. Okay. Okay. So, we're going to put it as a net zero in the budget is what we're saying. It will be a net zero to taxes, but not a net zero to the expenditure side of the budget. Okay? It'll show it much like other things do, all right? I mean, it'll be it'll be basically net zero at the end of the day.

286Okay? On taxes. Okay. I Who wants to pose the last question because I am so confused at this point about which direction? I suggest that we remove the 2.0 FTEs from the reduction list. >> Okay. Keep the teachers. >> Keep the teachers. >> And so Kim, your hand is going to be up. But they're not teachers. Yeah. It's not a whatever. This is $250,000. >> They're not teachers. >> we all agreed on this already. You know, that's all I'm saying. I'm just saying. What do you mean they're not teachers? Keep the teaching model intact. Right. I think we just need to take care of what the is right now. So in other words, I were Yes, which is what we're voting on. Yes. We Okay, so I think that we should have those two positions

287in the budget. Mhm. Yes. For Yeah, so in other words, we're increasing the number of FTEs. Yeah, so Yeah. Yes. In the middle school. Okay. Okay. Can I do a summary so I get it right? Mhm. Okay, so tier one, everything's gone. Right? Yep. Yep. Yes. Tier two, putting back in the budget, okay? Just think of it as already gone. We haven't done it yet, but if it's out of the budget, so putting back in the budget, the van, one van, SRO, school counselor point two. Did I get that right? >> one didn't go through. >> Okay, so not the school counselor. So the van and the SRO are the things that are going back into the budget. Did I get that correct? >> coordinator and the two >> Wait, wait, we haven't gone to

288tier two. Just tier two. Is there anything missing? Or I got it. Okay. Tier three, putting back in the budget the pre-K coordinator .5 and the two teachers. Back in the budget, but everything else that we didn't just mention is being reduced or eliminated. That gets us to 4.99% on the operating expenses for a total increase of 6.23. So, we got Yeah, 6.23 on the total. >> the goal from our two weeks ago to get this in the five range. Is that really 4.99? All right. Well, Kim's little worksheet says Wow, interesting. Which part do you not agree with? Can we can Yeah, just please share. You want me to share? I'm struggling I'm seeing to share. I'm struggling that we're putting a van back in the budget, but we aren't putting in the counselor,

289which is directly related to students and many of the things that we heard tonight at the beginning of this meeting. It's hard for me to swallow putting a van in, which is the farthest away from students, and keeping the and not putting the counselor. That's a strong argument. So, okay. I agree with that logic. I I can I can sway that. Thank you for bringing that to our attention. >> close to the classroom and and kids as you can, and the other things are the things that can go by the Okay, so I'm going to ask for another vote cuz I was in support of the counselor in general. Um so, let's first vote on including the counselor in the budget. Do we have the support of including the counselor in the budget? Okay. Generally,

290I didn't see that. Okay. >> Sorry. So, we're at 5.04%. We but we haven't talked about the van. We haven't talked about the van. Okay, so it look it looks like we had a majority for the school counselor. Um do people want to reconsider the van? So, Kim's calculations, we could this could still get us under five because we have other adjustments that are going to be made that could get us if that was like a a turning point. Um but I will ask so we're put the school counselor in for how much money was that for the school? 25,000 and the van lease was 27,000. Do people want to um keep the van lease um in the budget. in the budget. >> not. Keep the van lease in the budget. No, it wasn't keep

291the van lease it was buy the additional. It was get the additional van. Get the additional van. >> And what I and we've heard from our transportation director that that van will continue to run and be fine. For at least two years he said, right? We're voting to keep the van in the reduction list. Or to put it She was asking if you want to then raise your hand. So, we were going to we we agreed to pay for the van but then we added the school counselor back and I was just Okay, I'm not raising my hand. So. >> taking the vote one more time on the van? We I I think so. So, we had decided we wanted to to pay for the van now. But now we just revoted to add the

292counselor in. Do we still want to pay for the van? No. Okay. All right. Thank you Scott, I appreciate you. >> it's just so close to kids versus a van that could go another couple of years. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Okay. Nice job, everybody. Solid work at direction. So, all I need is one more thing this evening. Motion to approve the motion. I'll second that. Okay, all in favor. So, are you so excited? Yes.