MSAD#51 School Board Meeting, April 17, 2025

001I know. Welcome everyone to the MSAD51 board of directors meeting Thursday, April 17th, the Thursday before April break. I know many families have already started. I was going to say go to warmer places, but it's a nice warm day today. Um, which is a nice change. Um, we are going to start uh with some recognitions, which I always love to kick off these meetings with. Um, I'd like to welcome Principal Monte Selby uh up to the podium. Thank you. All right. This is a little bit of an unusual recommendation to I'm going to talk about professional development, but I really want to do that to highlight some things about staff. And uh the reason I put that picture in there is just we're trying to focus on things that are right up close and we're

002al always looking way ahead. And I'll give you a little more picture of that in just a few minutes. So, um, that engage, empower, inspire that you see everywhere, we we really took that on with a little deeper meaning for theme this year in terms of every time we have PD or staff meetings or parent teacher conferences. Can we go in with the idea of trying to engage people or whether it's kids or adults, parents, whatever, and then give them something usable and empower them and hopefully leave people inspired. And so that was our approach with the idea that if everyone's trying to do that in each direction, we make everybody a stronger part of the organization. So, um, when we when we quit going backwards and go forward, then well, this is playing some

003funny games with me. Let's try this. Aha. So, the people who tend to be in charge of professional development would be the teaching and learning team and then other individuals and administration. and whether that would be someone within the building or central office. And uh so just as an idea on October 11th there are the staff members who were like teacher toteer presenting areas of expertise and every one of those people spent time prepping to help their own colleagues which I think is pretty cool and that were that shows you the topics for the day and people were able to choose something that would be meaningful and help them move forward and um some of those would be more tech skills or things about group work or moving an individual lesson from good to great,

004that kind of thing. So then one other piece was, and I'll tie this in in a minute, but taking something like latest research on instruction that helps kids learn. Um, embedding that in some of the work we did. So it might look like this. That was March the 14th PD. And you'll see that there were a lot of people presenting on a lot of topics from from our looking ahead on MTSS and AI and tech tips and things like that. And then we start getting feedback from the staff about the brunch. That's always a hit. But AI and MTSS, there's direct feedback to other to the staff who are presenting and um and then things about the chapter work that we did on that book and the interactive discussions. So then you take that feedback

005and what they wish for on the next follow-up PD. So then there's April 9th using that feedback data to plan for April 9th. So we're trying to specifically deliver to staff things that they would find helpful. And so next steps as we're when I said looking up close and further ahead. So the administration, teaching and learning team LC as leadership council and the staff, you start planning for our school improvement plan for next year and our PD days and our early release PD days and planning for when we become a 58 school, which seems like way down the road, but it feels like tomorrow. So how do you get the time and you keep working together? And I stuck this slide in because all of that work and the day-to-day stuff with kids, there's always

006something to deal with. And to if you don't keep laughing about the hard stuff, then it's it's just hard to move ahead. And that's a real life picture, just so you know, out of out of the past. But stuff like that really happens. And you're trying to plan for a 58 school someday, you know. And so when we got ready for April 9th, we asked some kids to help out so the staff could kick it off with something a little bit lighter. And we'll see if this works. Hello fellow adults. I am one of Dr. Selby's AI developed video presenters. And I was designed by Mr. L. They carefully designed us to look like familiar middle school students. Thanks for taking the time to read this book, The New Classroom Instruction That Works. As you

007know, the book includes the best researchbased strategies for increasing student achievement. Today is an opportunity for content teams to have meaningful conversations related to a preferred chapter. Please use time wisely and stay on topic. I know how easy it is to get you off topic. When I see you in class, I'll ask you what you've learned in the book so far. Oh, you want to know what comes next? Next year, we'll continue discussing and applying the ideas from this book. Keep working your way through these chapters. As my teachers say, you'll need to read it more than once to effectively integrate the strategies into your classroom. After that, it's practice, practice, practice. Yes, I read chapter 5 as well. Well, what are you waiting for? [Laughter] We'll see if it'll let me go. There you

008go. That's it. [Music] And thank you. Yep. You're welcome. That was really great to get more insight on what goes on on the days. I know as a board we end up talking a lot about PD days. Um, and I don't think I've had this good of a view into it previously. So, thank you. All right. Ask you a quick question. Yeah, Dr. Selby, how um I don't know scale of 1 to 10, how much space is there in those PD days for just one more thing? Like I get the sense that they are packed. Yeah. A lot. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Especially with looking at next year. Yeah. Because I think sometimes when we're like, "Oh, maybe we could introduce this in say a personal development day." It's It's nice to know. It's enlightening to

009know that like actually stop doing that because we don't have time. You can do a Saturday. Oh yeah, sure. Everybody would love that. Yeah. Thanks. Thank you. And welcome, Julie Olsen. Hi. Thanks. So, I don't have any AI children to present tonight. And I have a very different take on my highlight. You also get me a couple of times tonight. I was um thinking I'd stay connected, but I don't know with public comment that I can because I think you put a video timer up, right? But um my highlight is a staff member and I could go on for days about my staff member and I won't but I am happy at any time to talk to any of you about my staff member. He is ultimately the best and this is a really unique

010position that years ago the board supported and it is invaluable. Our district honestly could not function well without this staff member. So Eric Brown and I did put a picture of him. So if you are on campus and you see him stop and thank him. He is a mental health specialist for us. um his lensure is a social worker by trade. We call him a mental health specialist because that is what he does. So he works with our students from preschool up and through age 22. So our students who under the law stay through age 22. So he does the whole gamut. He works across all of the buildings and he is literally often seen sort of jogging through all of the buildings. Um he probably wouldn't mind me sharing that he has a black

011belt um in his personal life and does athletic, you know, softball, baseball. I'm not sure. He has children in our district um himself. He's so he's a community member and he supports our students with their um mental health needs, their social emotional learning, their substance use needs. He collaborates with all of our social workers and all of our buildings. He collaborates with our administrators, with all of our parents. He um crunches and considers all of our MIAS data, so our mental health mental youth survey data. um uses that data to help drive our instruction forward and look at where our holes might be and help us program and plan for that. He completes all of our risk assessments in um the district. So once a social worker um considers a student might not be low

012risk and needs a more formalized risk assessment that might be more considered borderline low or on to moderate or high. He does all of that formalized testing, does all the collateral contact with our outside providers. If we have a student who's placed someplace like Spring Harbor, he is the student who's doing all of the collaboration with that outside hospital like Spring Harbor or St. Mary's, any of those places. Um, he's doing the discharge work with those teams, transitioning them back into our school, um, developing safety plans. He's doing what we call our sea stag, which is our behavioral threat assessment management process, bringing teams together to do those sea stag processes. So, right, heavy, heavy, heavy work, right? He's carrying that on his shoulder every day for us. Um, he also then provides direct clinical

013services for some of those students as they're needing him before he can pass them back off to our school-based social workers. So any students that are sort of our higher tiered students that come out as high-risisk are struggling and need some more sensitive care, he's he's doing that either in collaboration with the school-based social worker or doing it himself and then when the time is right passing it along. Um he works with teams to create safety plans, helps implement those safety plans. Um and and really he's just invaluable. I mean I can't rave about him enough. And I know historically we used to sort of bring folks and embarrass them and stand here. He knows he's being embarrassed tonight. He's he's very aware of that. Um I was supposed to be here in December and

014then myself got COVID and so this presentation is delayed. So he thought he was being embarrassed in December. I told him it was postponed and did inform him that he was being embarrassed today. Um and he would not be somebody that would do well. He's very humble so he wouldn't do well standing here, but he is um all of our social workers feel very supported by him. our administrators know he is always sort of a few minutes away if they need him. Um he comes to support them and um he is just really somebody that our district is very fortunate to have and he does his job with grace and with um and is very humble and I think I would I have never had a parent not be very grateful for the work that

015he brings to the table. So that is my highlight. I'm happy to answer any questions, but if you do see him, please thank him for his work. Yeah. Thank you for bringing this forward. I know anybody who's come across uh Eric and in the hallway just like his presence is just oh my gosh. Right. Like so positive. Um any questions? I'm so glad that you have honored Eric in this way because yeah, it's we are very uh I'm very grateful that our district has this role and him in it. So thank you. And I think people who don't know him wouldn't necessarily know him and so I hope he does get recognized. Great. Thank you. So should I un you need the screen comment only if there's I have no one signed up for regular

016public comment. I feel like I shouldn't even like say that out loud but I don't I don't have anybody for regular public comment. So I'll just say what? So yeah, the only thing that we have in between that is just approval of minutes, but that just takes a moment. So we can move on to approval of minutes. Would somebody like to make a motion to approve the minutes of the April 3rd, 2025 meeting as presented? So moved. Great. Thank you. Have a second. Second. Thank you, Kim. Any questions or comments? Right. All in favor? It's unanimous. Were you not there that he wasn't there? Okay. Thank you. Can I have a motion to approve the minutes of the April 7th, 2025 meeting as presented? So moved. Thank you, Sean. Can I have a second? Second.

017Thank you, Jesse. Any questions or comments? All in favor? Great. It's unanimous. So, as I mentioned earlier, the next item was public comment for the general non-budget items. Okay, great. Moving on to presentations. Hi, I'm back. So, thanks for having me. U, this is my annual update around instructional support and I'm here to discuss a few things and I'm happy to take questions at the end or if there's anything that you want me to pause or elaborate on, I'm happy to do that. just go ahead and um you know signal me. My agenda today really is around I'm trying to take sort of a 30,000 foot view around special education more than instructional support. So my title is really director of instructional support because it captures quite a broad range. Um and I'll speak a

018little bit around um multi-tered systems of support since that is a portion of u my role but more focusing on special education tonight. Um, so I'm going to talk a little bit about the state and national landscape of special education, the supports we have here in MCD51, the continuum of services of special education, and then some data specific to instructional support related to special education, and then some continued work and next steps in our department. Um, Carla Fancy is also here, who's our assistant director of um, instructional support also for support and I just want to point that out. I also want to just take a moment to thank the board. I think that we have absolutely incredible programming in this district um for instructional support across the board and I think that you will

019see that in this presentation and I don't feel like the board gets thanked enough for your support in our department. We are very fortunate. We have people move here often and they tell us that often in meetings that we bought a house here for the special education programming. We came here because of special education programming and we all can't do our job without the support of the board. So, thank you. Um, so to start with some landscape information that I think is very relevant to just the where we are. Um, right now it is my understanding unless something's changed sort of more recently, the state of Maine special education identification rate for students with special needs is over 20%. So over 20% identification rate for students with disabilities. Maine has the second highest identification rate

020in the nation with Arkansas being the highest. Um our identification rate in MSD 51 is about 13.4%. So we are lower than the state identification rate. I'm going to go on to explain what supports we have in place for that. Um to sort of understand that data, please do understand that our data changes almost daily. We hold IEP meetings daily and some of those are identifications that we identify a student and sometimes we dismiss a student. So we do an October one count and we do an April one count and so that is where our data comes from but really it is shifting daily. So this is a moment in time. Um so why why would we be that much lower than the state average? What is it about MSD 51? I mean certainly we

021have a lot of students with disabilities. we have just like the state would have we have a sampling of students. Um what would we attribute that to? And I would um really attribute it to what our built-in supports are that we have across and this comes back to sort of what I was saying at the beginning of this of the thanking the board and and administration and my colleagues across the district. We have RTI or multi-tered systems of support for reading, writing, math behavior across our pre-K up until high school. And for some of our postgrad students that are here, we have a very robust system that we're pretty well known for across the state. Our system's well-developed. We have great um systems in place with programs being implemented that are um valid, reliable, and

022consistently implemented with staff that are well trained. We um have a two half-day pre-K program that um we're partnering with CDS and again we're seeing an impact of that with our students who are entering kindergarten. So those students are coming in there are students in those programs that are identified and some of those students are being dismissed by the end of prek or the beginning of kindergarten. So some of that identification rate is even dropping before they've begun with us where they'd be coming in in kindergarten identified. Um, you've probably heard me talk. I did a presentation previous in a previous year about our embedded professional model. The board supported us hiring professionals of speech and language, occupational therapists, and social workers that we placed as full-time professionals in our self-contained classrooms across the district.

023So in our functional life skills and our behavioral classrooms so that they could partner with our special educators full-time and be specialists working with our most involved students. We have nine of those professionals across the district at this time. We have seen a big impact working with those students and working as teams of educators across the district. Um that's a pretty unique model. Um certainly we have Eric Brown's position and that helps us a lot um in terms of early intervention um supporting students across in their mental health. We have a very robust new teacher series um that Jeff, myself and Marie run to really um retain and attract teachers and provide our regular educators as well as our special educators throughout the year so that they are being given strategies and support not just

024at the beginning mentoring opportunity but throughout the year. And then we have an edtech professional development series that Carla runs similarly where they're being provided professional development throughout the year to be working with our students. Um, additionally, we're working really hard to support all of our learners with diverse needs across multiple settings. So, we support them whether they're in general education, in their special education classroom, in their um self-contained education classroom, recess, lunch, allied arts, wherever they are. Um, and we have all of these resources in place, including the embedded model, our mental health specialists, our board certified behavior analysts, all of those resources and specialist work across our district. So we don't have it just sort of housed in one building, but we have those K through PK through 12. Um I do have

025a note here at the bottom. So while we're lower than the state average, we have seen an increase. So in fiscal year 22 23, we were just over 12% and we're now over 13% creeping up to 14%. So we also are seeing an increase. Um, so this is this slide is really about what is the continuum of special education services. I've gotten that question some this year and I think it's important to just sort of pause and talk about what does that look like? You know, when you say embedded professionals are in your self-contained classrooms, what does that look like different than another classroom? So students can have services in a variety of models or a variety of places. Um, we always start by law in a multi-ter system of support or an RTI service.

026And you, Mari, and I have both talked about that with the board before. So, we always start with an intervention practice. Um, and then if the student requires per that data and per testing an IEP or speciallydesigned instruction, that's what the SDI stands for, in academics or behavior or executive functioning or some area of need, we move to an IEP at that time, and the IEP team walks through state eligibility forms. It's very scripted, and if they meet criteria, then an IEP is developed. Um, and we train our staff to work in whatever program the child needs based upon their disability category that is identified. There are 13 disability categories that the state recognizes in grades one and up and there are 14 in kindergarten. Um, so a student may be a resource room student.

027They might be in what we call our bridges program, which is sort of our students that are in a gapy program. They might be in functional life skills or they might be in our behavior program. and we train all of our staff to work in those programs and they have the proper training and then we monitor them in those programs and we shift and make changes to their IEP with an IEP team that includes parents throughout that process. Um, and that continuum of support might increase for a student if they're struggling or it might decrease for a student if they're becoming more independent and they're making progress and we tailor that based upon a student. If our in-house programming becomes unsuccessful for a student or we've exhausted all of our resources, the IEP team monitors

028a student's data and determines that an out of district pro program may be necessary for a student and then we follow that channel of discussion. Um certainly we believe as a district that a least restrictive environment is always the place to start with a multi-tered system of supports and then um working in a general ed setting for a student and then building up through a more restrictive self-contained setting based upon students needs and programming certainly. Um, so now I'm going to share some data. And while this was taken last year, I try to survey staff based upon what our topics are. So this year we're doing professional development on different um topics. So it wasn't relevant to the presentation, but um if it still feels relevant and and new enough to share with you all.

029But we surveyed our staff at the start of um the year last year around sort of where do we need to focus our PD? what are you guys feeling about our reading, writing, math, social emotional programmings? And I wanted to share with you about sort of how are staff feeling, where are we at, what do we need to focus on? And so 47% of our staff agreed or strongly agreed and there were 13.6% of staff who responded to this. So that was about 88 89 staff who responded at this time felt that our reading programs were strong and researchbased. So they were feeling like we were doing pretty well in the area of reading. um at at the time 23.9 and 13.6 being new felt that our writing programs were strong um and researchbased. So

030clearly an area of need, right? And I think again if you guys can pull the start of the school year, I know it's been a long year, but Mari and I shared our um district plan of what we were working on and writing was one of the areas that we've been working on as our literacy group. Clearly this data substantiates that work. um 37.5 with the um six with 13.6 being new said that math was strong research base. So again continued area of um growth for us and 51.1 with 14.8 so another staff member had answered this question felt that our behavioral programs and supports were strong and researchbased and um 15.1 with 14.8 eight um felt that our social emotional programming and supports were strong and researchbased. So for next steps sort of in

031the area of instructional support, we obviously always have a ton to work on, right? Our students are dynamic, they're changing. Um people move in, people's needs grow, people's needs change. Um we continue to need to be strengthening and be proactive around our social emotional learning and our substance um use interventions. That's what our data says. Um, we're going to be responsible in fiscal year 2728 for our three and four year olds who are identified. So, that is planning that is on the horizon for next year. Um, we certainly need to continue to stay current in best practices and are really focusing on the area of writing this year and that work will likely be continuing next year. Um I think Jeff had shared with the board the NZDC um findings that came out and two

032of those had a real focus to special education. So that's work that our department needs to do around engaging stakeholders regarding special education and programming and considering additional training and around the criteria setting for supporting the district IEP teams and ensuring that all relevant information is considered when making those determinations. and then certainly continuing to survey our staff and shaping our professional development accordingly based upon sort of what we're hearing from staff and where we're at. That's all I have. Um but again, it was a pretty broad overview. What questions do you guys have for me? Thank you. That was really helpful. And I think especially as we're, you know, having the bud budget conversations tonight as well to better understand, you know, what goes on in special education and um what the services are

033that are being offered in our district. So that was really helpful, right? Um do people have questions? You know, I do go after you. Okay. U Thanks. That was a great presentation. So, I've got a couple. I think this is definitely something that's been on my mind and I'm actually surprised how low our numbers are, but your explanation was fantastic. Um, how does this break down, do you know, by school for identifications? Yeah. So, I can't answer that off the top of my head because, um, again, it sort of shifts day by day, but, you know, in general, our populations are not higher in one building than another building. We're pretty evenly split. So we don't have a sort of heavier teeter totter if you will in one building than another. We have equal programmings

034in each of our schools. Okay. And then the other thing is, this is kind of a selfish Tim's personal life kind of question, but I've noticed at my role at UNE that our kids come in and a lot of the services and support they had in high school drop completely and then they don't know what to do and it's like they're on their own to find their own accommodations. Is there anything on like this end that we do for when you like maybe you are dismissed from accommodation even if you're here or if you've been if you graduated that we do to kind of keep an eye on them or make sure that that support continues even after they've left us like what are some of the practices with that? So I love this question.

035Um, so a couple of things. We two years ago um hired um a new role called a transition coordinator and it is um a role that we're trying to really focus on that idea. So an IEP expires upon graduation. It's a law that goes away and then students move to they can move to a 504 plan which is an accommodation law versus direct instruction which is drastically different. Right? So kids go to college and all of a sudden the umbilical cord's caught and they're flailing, right? So our job really in high school is to think about how can we go from what has really been and I would say and really particularly a Taj Mahal approach to a lot of supports and still hugging our students but yet trying to systematically fade some of those

036supports and teach as much of the skills that they need to go off and be college and career ready. I mean that's the language that we're trying to support and balance that while still monitoring that we're supporting them and teaching the skills when there are these early adolescents you know 14 15 16 right that we're not pulling those supports and it is a balancing act and it's one that we h that I don't think any district yet perfected but it's certainly something that we continue to work with students and families on how do you access you know your college student support services how do we provide you with all of the proper documentation. How do we work on self- advocacy? Our school counseling office is really working with setting students up for having the right

037documentation and and meetings with all of the colleges to do that. Um, and sometimes we have schools that are great partners with us and that and there are some schools that are like, you're on your own, right? And so that is not yet a perfect two-way street and it is not something we've perfected, but our transition coordinator has really helped support some of that work and I hope to see that continue to grow. That's awesome. Okay, thank you. Um I just have kind of a um it's probably a double-edged sword question. um how are we supporting our edteexs and the people who are working on the daytoday on the front lines with the students. Um, we've had some, you know, I mean, I know as as child care provider, preschool up to sixth grade, you

038know, kids have hard days. And how how are we as a district supporting our our employees who are on the front lines? Yeah, I I would say all of our employees are on the front lines, but we certainly can't run Absolutely. We certainly we can certainly not run our district without our ad techs, right? And my department would not function without our ad techs. So we literally could not open the doors, right? Um, so you know, a few things. I think that we're trying really hard to provide them more professional development than we ever have through our edtech series, which is why I placed that on the slide. I think that is really important. The more professional development we can give our staff, the more equipped they are to handle all disabilities and the nuances

039of students who walk through the door, right? Because no student presents the same, right? Or, you know, you say you have a student with autism. Well, what does that mean from a textbook? So, we need to be able to give the real time, you know, strategies and support. So, I think professional development is one way that we're supporting them. We also are um giving more team time on our early release Wednesdays for the actual teams of people. So we have the K12 professional development happening and then team times for like the life skills team or the behavior team or the resource room team to be working together on their case loads and looking at the data and um looking at you know what reading program are we using, what math program, how's their behavioral data

040looking and those pieces to collaborate together as well. Um and then certainly the buildings are doing climate and culture work for all in their building to support the work that's happening. Thank you. So, I feel like I I need even more education on special education. I'm trying to to uh to educate myself. What does it what would it look like to be a school with a high special ed rate or, you know, a higher percentage like the rest of the state? If so, if we didn't have these tiered systems of support and that means there would be more children identified as special ed. Okay. So, what would that look like for our district if that was the case? Wow. Um, that is a tricky question. What it would look like I I think I'm I

041think I'm going to answer your question correctly, but if I go off here and you meant for me to be here, please redirect me. Um, we would have much higher case loads. we would have many more students who were accessing. Um, so like students who you all probably envision have a one-on-one right now because of their level of safety or life skills needs would likely be in groups of three with one adult. Um, we would have students who generally now probably work in groups of like three or four in a reading group would likely be in groups of five or six, seven, eight because they would have a higher number of students on their case loads. higher and less interventions prior to getting there and the staff ratio would look different because ultimately how do

042you staff that number of of students that are identified? I mean we have really good interventions. We have good staffing and um we are able to do the pre-work prior to so we've laid the foundation so students are then entering the special education with the baseline that they need to show that they are they truly have a disability in an area rather than getting into special education and trying to figure it out then. Right? So they're not entering sort of a group that they're trying to navigate and figure out which area they should go. They're able to enter into the proper instructional group at that time. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. That was a good answer. So, um, so the goal then is to make sure that someone is not identified as special ed who

043actually does not have a disability. Absolutely. Okay. We never want to violate somebody's free appropriate public education or for the, you know, the acronym FAPE. We don't ever want someone to feel that we have. When I first got here, there was sort of this, which has now been 12 years. I'm getting older by the minute, right? But we we um there was this idea that getting into special ed was like getting through the golden gates of special ed. And it was very sad to me that we the people felt like they had to get to special ed to get services. And you shouldn't ever feel like that as a parent, right? You should be able to get really great reading instruction, really great math instruction, really great behavioral support regardless of what plan you're on.

044You should be able to be on an MTSS plan or RTI plan. You should be able to be on a GT plan, an ESLL plan, an IEP, or a 504, or really just be a tier one in the classroom. And you should be able to get really great instruction by any educator who's trained really well. And if you need, you know, different instruction than the classroom is able to give you, but you don't have a disability. You just learn a little bit differently. You should be able to get that by a trained educator. And you shouldn't have to fight to get through the Golden Gates of special ed. that that and be labeled something differently. Then if you do in fact have a disability, you should have access to a trained special educator to to

045get the services that you need as a child with a disability. Certainly, right? But that's the distinguishing factor. And we have great people trained in MTSS to work with our students who don't have disabilities but just need something a little bit different. Thank you. That was really helpful. Really helping. Thank you. Um, I know we have more questions maybe on this side. All right, who's next? Um, it was a great presentation and I appreciate it because I feel like I'm in the boat with Kim, but I feel like I'd learn a lot more about it. So, with that said, I know you mentioned staff training in regards to teachers, edte in those positions. Do you have a rough idea how much hours of training or days of training like bus drivers get or custodians or

046people that work in the lunchroom people and especially particularly I would think bus drivers just because they're by themselves technically with some of these kids. Um so is it annual training? Is it just one time? What does what does that policy look like or what does that what do we in practice? So, our bus drivers don't get um a lot of extra training related to our students with disabilities, but they're not by themselves on the bus necessarily. So, any student who would require additional um interventions because of behavior or communication because they're needing specially designed instruction related to their behavior or their communication or some disability. they um the IEP team discusses whether or not they need an add additional adult on the um bus, the regular ed bus or whether they need specialized transportation

047and and if that's the case, they have a van. So, um those people have training like this the edte who ride the bus or the teachers or whatnot that are riding the bus with folks. Okay. So, Scott, I don't know if you want to answer that differently since you're in charge of the bus drivers. Great answer. Okay. All right. Um, yeah. I I guess I just know I'm just thinking and maybe I the whole bus driver thing just kind of it feels like a contained environment but separate from itself and yes, there is someone on there but it's it's a rowdy environment sometimes and I just I feel like that I didn't hear that we got a lot of training for the bus drivers particularly and I think that concerns me. Yeah. I think we

048always want the bus drivers to stay driving the bus. That's their job is to keep their eyes on the road driving the bus and that if there's a student who's struggling, somebody else is on the bus to help that student who's struggling. We don't want the safety of the other kids to be put in jeopardy by the driver taking their eyes off the road in any way. Yeah. Okay. So, it sounds like we should they potentially could get some more training. Well, one of the other things is my network. Uh, one of the other things is is there also has been training done by some of the uh, staff at MIW with our bus drivers on behavioral issues on buses. So, that's taking place. Uh, the other thing is is that the bus drivers also

049get just regular training. We have inservice days and then we also it's what they used to call the rodeo back in my day where they go to um there's a conference where bus drivers are allowed to go to a conference for uh, you know, for driving skills etc. Okay. So, and then the other I think I mentioned the lunchroom staff and the custodians. Is there any training for that staff directly or I'm assuming there is it just didn't No, I would defer to Scott on that one. Okay. Custodians get training on material safety data sheets and things of that nature that they need. Um, with food service, they get um training in food safety. Okay. Um, I think you would answer the other questions I kind of put notes on. So, thank you. Um, I've

050had several experiences where um the child on the bus, the child from school with an IEP has had a plan for gum and they get on the bus and the bus driver is like, "No gum." And so the bus driver didn't have any idea that the child had that in his IEP. And so how do we how do we make that match? Yeah, we have I mean we work pretty hard to at each of the buildings to work through that. I don't know if that was a subbus driver or if that was a miscommunication. So certainly if there's a specific case that we should follow up on, I'm happy to take that feedback or the building's happy to take that feedback because we do try to work on that. I don't certainly want to get

051into specifics tonight, but um certainly I mean Scott oversees the bus drivers supervis supervisorywise and um certainly I think any of the buildings would be happy to take that feedback and I'm happy to if there's a case that we need to follow up on specifically. Megan, Jesse, I'm okay. Thanks. I'm good. Okay, Katie, you're good. Okay. Um, I just had one additional question. I know you talked about the embedded professional model and I know through my three years on the board, that's come up a few times about how we're investing in that. And how unique is this to our school districts? So when we started it um there was a couple of districts um around us that worked with me to start just they had a couple of OT's that they embedded in their functional

052life skills program. I am not aware there could be I'm just not aware of other districts that have any functional life skills um any social workers or speech also embedded. So, I don't know of any others, but I do know that there are a couple of districts um in Cumberland County that have some embedded OT's in their life skills program. That's great. And so, I guess a follow on. So, students who need those services, would they have to be going elsewhere to get them or is it just like a No. So we have um we have building based clinicians as well who are servicing students. But um so for like an example, you might have a student who has an IEP for behavioral disability like an autism or an ADHD or um a anxiety or

053depression or something like that. And they may have a social work services that is 2 o'clock on Tuesday, right? That is their ordered time. And that student might actually need social work four times between now and two o'clock on Tuesday, but they their scheduled time is two o'clock on Tuesday. and our social workers in the buildings work really hard to make themselves available those four times between now and 2 o'clock on Tuesday. But there are 14 other kids that also need them between now and 2 o'clock on Tuesday that have scheduled times that they're also trying to see when our when our embedded professionals are able to be right there, right available, working in the moment, pre-teaching stuff, processing what just happened at recess, working through a peer conflict. Nothing's bubbling up at that point.

054Nothing's waiting on the burner till 2 o'clock on Tuesday. And our providers that are in the general millu are able to be getting to all of those other 14 kids that are lined up at their door and have their scheduled appointments because the embedded professional is working with our students in those wraparound programs. Great. Thank you. Sure. Okay. So, I just have one more thing um which is thank you from the bottom of my heart. Um my brother I just want to share this quickly. My brother um was diagnosed with ADHD when he was 17. He was one of the first kids. This was in Southern California um or mid 80s and by then school was was a late diagnosis. Yeah. There was nothing. He was always the bad kid, you know, the bad kid

055in the class because he was never diagnosed with it. And flash forward to however many years later, I was a teach uh you know came in to help with the classroom as a parent and there was a little boy who reminded me so much of my brother and he had a sheet of paper with scissors, glue, a pencil, things like that. And each time he did a step, he would take it was velcroed and he would take it off. And I just sat there and my jaw dropped thinking about what a difference that would have made for my brother to have that very simple thing. And this boy was so excited to do the project because he, you know, could do that step by step. So when I was asking you earlier what it would

056look like, um, it's because I wanted you to be able to say that publicly. what what a difference that makes for a kid to be able to function in the classroom and love school from an early age. So, thank you. Thank you for your support. Absolutely. I do have a question. So, I I want to be upfront and say I think all of the services you talked about are totally worthwhile. My son got MTSS and he needed some help and he doesn't need it now. So, awesome. It the system is working. But since we're going to talk about the budget, I know we have a lot of people here who are very interested. So special education services is 10 million out of 50 million, right? It's 20% of our budget. Sure. And so I know

057there's folks who are going to vote the budget down no matter what and they've said so. I know there are folks who think there's a lot of fluff in this budget and have said so. And so I want to ask you of that $10 million, what's the fluff that we can cut? What what kids do you think we could cut services for? And would would would it be detrimental to those kids? Um, I personally think that we need to support all of the kids in our community, not just the high achieving students and not just the athletes, but everybody. So, is there fluff we can cut? And if we cut that fluff, is it going to have a negative impact on students? Yeah. Um, so I don't think special education is fluff, and I don't

058think it's an area that you can cut. I think that, um, our students with disabilities do cost money. We also get a higher return on those students when um we get money back from the state. And that is something that Scott can talk about way better than me because I don't do the budget on that end of side of things. Scott is able to talk about that much more fluidly than me. But every dollar that we put in is exactly um Kim's story. add is our students deserve the programming that we give them and the law requires us to provide demonstrable programming for students adequate programming for students to make demonstrable progress and that's what we provide them. We're not providing Taj Mahal programming. We're not providing students you know um glitz and glamour. We

059are providing students what they require to access their education. And um for a student to access their education, it may look different for me to access than it looks for Tim to access. And Tim deserves what he needs in order to access his education. And if that's costs a little bit more money because Tim has a disability, it is his right as a member of this community to have what he needs to access his education. And I feel very passionately about that. And as you can see from my data, we are not overidentifying students. We are not placing students into an overbuilt system just to sort of cash in to charge more money to our taxpayers. We are really being thoughtful about who requires specially designed instruction and who requires an IEP and those are

060the students who we are providing services to and students who don't require services like your son is accessing general ed supports through MTSS. And so there isn't fat in that budget. There just isn't. And um Jeff has worked very hard and challenged me at every corner um to reduce the budget and we have reduced that at every corner that we can possibly reduce it in the area of special education and I don't know of any fat and I think that our students would suffer if we cut more in special education. I do. Um, I I I think that is a decision for the board to make and I appreciate, you know, the support that we've had and I think that if cuts were made, it I think Kim already asked that question. What would it

061look like? It would look like higher case loads. It would look like less supported students. It would likely look like more behavioral episodes. It would it would it would look like less specially designed instruction. It would look like less progress. That that's what it would look like. Thank you. Of course. Thank you so much. Really appreciate. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. So, as we move in to the next presentation, which is really the the kickoff of the budget section, I do want to note for those of you who didn't see the the nice copies of the budget by the door. Um they're over there if you would like a copy. Um I do have a sign-in sheet if you do want to comment during the public hearing. So, how this is going to the kind

062of the flow for the next I don't know however long we decide um we're going to have the budget summary presented by Superintendent Porter. We're going to have the public hearing which will consist of um a similar format to how we do public comment. The the difference will be we'll be taking notes, listening to questions throughout the comment. Um, and if there are questions that we can respond to tonight, we will try to, um, if possible. Um, but I always welcome everyone to email the board questions at any time, anytime throughout the year, um, but especially during budget season. So, um, if you ask a question and we weren't able to answer it this evening, um, please also, uh, I mean, a lot of things we may need to take back. Um, and please also,

063like I said, never hesitate um to email us. You don't need to wait for a meeting. Um, but I'm so glad to see everyone here. So, I will now hand it over to our superintendent to do the budget summary. Thank you. Um, so this is my last um presentation on the budget this this season. Um, and it officially gets turned over to the board tonight. um through your decision, whatever your decision is to vote to adopt the budget in whatever form. Um this is the recommended budget summary. Um but I'd like to thank um the finance committee um Kimbine um Sarah Rose and Sean Thirstston. I have we have so many committees. Did I did I get that right? Um and then I'd like to um thank um what's that? You got them all. Thank

064you. I thought you said Adam. um like to thank uh Scott Puland, our finance um director, and Christine uh Gerard, our finance manager, um for their amazingly um hard work on getting all of this together because we're talking about a lot of moving parts. So, here's our summary. Um these are adjustments. U just want to start uh this evening. Um, every time I do the presentation, initial presentation on the on the upcoming budget, um, I start with a place and then there's things that move and the finance committee helps um, with these items. Uh, these are major items that have moved some way or another um, since March 6th. So, we had a health insurance increase. We had budgeted 10% for health insurance for all of our uh, staff members. um a 10% hike uh

065aggregate hike and um we ended up coming in with 13% from um the main benefits trust and um as a result uh we're up 203,000 more than we initially um had budgeted. So generally we're usually pretty on target. Um, but the trust this year had a shortfall and they were trying to make up that shortfall and the uh increases went up more than than were expected I think for most districts. In the legal line, I had uh recommended initially that we increase our legal um line by $50,000. We have brought that down at half of that, 50%. Um so we're um now recommending that when looking at budget to actuals I think um we feel comfortable uh increasing that line by 25,000 instead of 50. The next line um we were going to replace um

066one of the vans. Um we have not replaced a van since we started purchasing vans back I think in 2019. Um and um this is the only van that we have with a wheelchair but it is rusting out. However, it is still serviceable. Um and we had put a lease purchase amount of 46,000 in um over a three-year period. Um we've decided to forego the van and we will in the hopes that that van will get through another year. Fix the rest. Yeah, we're going to fix the rest. We already did but we're hoping that it will get through another year. So we are delaying that lease purchase another year. We also have an existing um lease purchase on a van um from previously that um we are the last year is next year and

067we're going to um try to pay that off with year-end funds. So that would save 67,000 um on that lease purchase. So that's an amount that we'd like to take out of FY26 and not have it there. Initially um I had advocated for and um and so did actually Julie Olsen um and others an edtech 3 and Mari Trabelock um in advocating for a new um edtech 3. We do not have uh any support staff for our ESOL um program which is our English language learner program. We have a teacher um who is a coordinator, a K through 12 uh coordinator for the district. Um and that is the only staff member we have for our ESOL students. Part of the issue is even though we have an increase in ESOL students um that person,

068that teacher is now teaching a course, an ASL course, a sign language course, um as a language requirement at the high school for kids that are interested. We have 35 kids that are interested. Um and we have even more kids that want to do it next year. So, we're opening up a second section at the high school for for ASL. She's the only qualified person in the district who can teach that course. Um so, she will be spending, you know, almost half or 40% of her time now teaching high school um courses um and needed support. But uh we have found another way of uh producing um or helping with those services in the district. Um and we'll be working with a leadership team. Mar Troelcock will be working with a leadership team to to

069put a model in place that we had initially considered um and then went with this um at the end of the day and now we're going back to that model. Uh the next item is maintenance contract services. This is really more of a budget to actual. Um, we look at all of our contractual services. Um, and is there any um, leeway in those lines from year to year? Um, Scott was able to do that with his laser vision that he goes through the budget, every single account, every single number, looks to budget to actuals and found $10,000 since March 6 that he um that we do not need to have in the budget. Um, I had initially recommended um a new position um, which would be a 0.25 25 um full-time equivalent um which is

070a new position added to a part-time position at the middle school. We have a half-time teacher right now. This would add 0.25 um to make that teach for threequarters time. This is due to rising enrollment at the middle school. We now have almost 60 students 6 to eight over a two-year period. We've not increased language um uh teacher services um at that district more than just the halfime that we increased this year. and we have more kids coming in next year. So, this was to cover that. However, um we are transferring a teacher from the high school for one block a day to help with uh covering a Spanish class at the middle school. And we looked at class sizes and we feel it's not ideal. We feel like we can um make that work

071for another year. We went back to the principles with this is the second time we've gone back to our school principles and directors and asked them to start um you know whittling away at their budgets. Um I can't remember the amount that we had asked last time but I think it might have been 20,000 total in the first round. Um we went back to them and asked them um to come up with another 10,000. So that's 10,000 total um from the school principles and directors. Custodial supervisor. We have a custodial supervisor that is um that we had in the budget. We had a person in that position. The position's been vacant um for a little bit and we decided instead of filling that position, we decided to remove it from the budget. Uh we have

072a director of custodial and maintenance services. Uh but this is a night more of a nighttime supervisor. Um we also have started moving to a new model where we have lead custodians. Um and so um we want to move in that direction more and we're not going to fill this position. Um Scott again took another look at budget to actuals um looked at our utility lines, looked at what we think will be increases in inflation and felt comfortable taking another $20,000 um remove $20,000 from utilities for next year. And then we have a regular education edtech three. Um, and this was a hard cut. Um, all of these are hard cuts in some ways, uh, at the high school. Um, helping with intervention support at the high school. However, the high school has come up

073with a, um, a different model that there will we're looking at as we reorganized some services. Um, and we uh are I'm recommending at this point that we remove that position from the budget. So there's a net adjustment even though we had an increase of 203,000 that was not in the budget on March 6 because of the health insurance um overage from the what we uh thought we were going to have for health insurance for 10% went to 13% and then those um those reductions were at a net uh adjustment reduction of $167,60 since May uh March 6, sorry. So, I'm not going to go through this, but you'll see um what we did is we updated these numbers. They're slightly updated. Um and if you go to the bottom of this page, um you

074will see that we're at 7.12% on expenditures. We were at 7.49 uh uh 7.47% on March 6th. And so we were able to um because of those reductions that I just showed you, uh we were able to bring the expenditure budget down to 7.12%. And again, thank you to the finance committee spent hours working with us around some of these priorities as well. Um and then I've just kind of redlined areas that we've removed um or that we have made uh changes to the budget on the other side. And I know it's small, so it will be posted that matches the one page. It does. Okay. Yeah, it matches matches your one page expenditures and your um revenues on the one pager. So, there's been um questions about our legal lines and you know, why

075are our legal costs um so high um and what are you spending your legal money on? So we um did our own internal review and then we asked our law firm for a free accounting not we didn't pay them to do it a free accounting of the services that they provide to us. Um so we did not pay them to do this and I want to make that very clear. Um and we went back two fiscal years basically the fiscal year we're in and we went back to uh FY24 which was last year um and looked at all of our um our what we're spending. So, we spent $244,647 uh in FY24, which is 2023 24. And you can see that the the lion share of that amount is um was spent on labor. Labor

076is collective bargaining and any sort of um labor related actions such as grievances that are brought forward or um things that might go to the labor board or anything along those lines that are brought forward by the association. So we had 59.3% of all of our legal expenses uh in 2324. Um if you recall we had protracted protracted negotiations with our edteexs um which was part of that year the first part of that year and then the majority of that was really the teacher negotiations which was about six months of FY24. Um there was a lot of costs involved. We also had a number of grievances um that were brought forward during that period that um adds up to that 59%. You can say see that we spend just under 15% on student related issues.

077Um that's um any sort of um issues that are involving students in our district that require some sort of um legal review. Um about 7% on finance. Um so good job Scott. You don't really need a lot of support in that area. only using 7 7% and that's usually around um our budget documents and making sure our warrants are in order things like that um usually pertain to that that category. Employment related which would be our staffing anything beyond negotiations, grievances, labor board, any of those things. Um just regular employment um related issues that come up personnel issues would be in this category it's 18%. And then special education um you can see is 0.8%. 8% that's a tiny bit deceptive. Um I will tell you because um in the world of special education if

078something goes into a legal situation um sometimes th those pieces are covered by insurance carrier. So um in this case in this year there were a couple of issues that were covered by insurance. So you wouldn't necessarily see that on here. Um Jeff just to clarify it's three this year it's 3.6 right percent. Are you looking at the I'm looking at the right year like Oh, I was talking about 23 24 this year. Sorry, I'm in FY24. Okay. So, now I'm moving to FY 25, which is the current year um that we're in. Obviously, we haven't completed the year, but we've already spent um $146,558 um to date. And um you can see again the labor the negotiations um grievances etc is um lower percentage 47.3%. Um that's because we did have negotiations going on

079with the um teachers union um for the first several months of the school year. Um but because we have not been negotiating we the board settled that contract back in January um that obviously those expenses really went down. Um, also we haven't had as many grievances um this particular year. Um, student uh issues are about 26%. Um, finance 5.8%. Scott, you're just going right in the right direction. Again, around the warrants and anything that keeps us solvent. Um, employment around 18%. Um, again, those are personnel issues that arise. That really hasn't changed much in the last year. Um, and then special education, um, 3.6%. and again pretty uh minimal in terms of uh legal um services for those. So that I those questions have come up um and it was raised um by the association

080president at the last board meeting. Um there were some comments that were made um by the association president. um two weeks ago in in this public meeting that were factually inaccurate um around legal costs and initiation of legal uh activities. And so I wanted to make sure that people understood where this is coming from and that the MSAD51 does not initiate never has never will probably initiate any sort of legal action. We respond to legal activities. We do not initiate uh legal activities. I've sent a letter to the association, copy of the board of directors, and a copy of the leadership team of this district. Um, and I have uh that letter went to the association president outlining my concerns with his factually untrue statements. FY26 budgeted revenue, the revenues have not changed since March

0816. So, you'll see that um our revenues are remaining consistent. If anything changes with state subsidy and that would be state money, not we're not talking about federal money. This is general fund. Um we have gotten no word of that. Generally what we receive for revenues um the lion share of it is state uh subsidy amounts. In our case it we're expecting 16,824,564. I will say that a large percentage of that state subsidy uh goes to help us with special education programs in our district. So the 10 million that Jesse was referring to um we also get a lot of assistance from the state and helping us to pay for those services. Um students in our district who are special education depending on their disability um we get they're weighted um more than other students

082in our district. So, we get funding from the state to help with all of our students. Uh, but for students that have special services, depending on their disability, they also will be weighted a little bit higher and we will get more money uh for those students as well. Good news on the tax um front. I'd like to thank both town managers um and Scott working with those town managers um and kind of working over and over again to make sure that we're looking at the the school portion of our taxes and getting a really good accurate estimate. I had told you back in u on March 6th that taxes u would be around 5% in Cumberland for the school side of things um which would be a$124. So, in the weeks since then, um, town

083manager Sturgis has looked at the the growth in value in the town, um, and estimated now that that, um, the mill rate would decrease um, for the school portion. So, now we're instead of a$1.24, it would be 86 cents for the school portion, which is now 3.7% increase on taxes um, as opposed to the 5% that I had presented on March 6. So, that generally happens. is we generally see a movement down on taxes between when I initially present it and then when I do this presentation. So what that means is um for every $100,000 of assessed property value, not your market property value because our all of our market property values are way inflated today, but the assessed property value that the town gives you for your assessed value, it would be $86 per

084$100,000. So that's a um hopefully you can do the math. And North Yarmouth the picture is even a little better. I had estimated uh we had estimated 4% of a mill rate increase in North Yarmouth. Um working with um town manager Barnes uh in North Yarmouth. Um she was able to give us a more of an a number at this point that I think people will be really happy with. um or $1.9% increase on um the mill. So again, that would be $38 per $100,000 again of assessed property value, not market. So good news on the tax portion of it. You can see the history uh of our expenditures and taxes over about the last uh 10 years. You can see that our our taxes um our tax portion on the school um 3.7% in

085Carmel and 1.9 in North Yarmouth. Um we have generally been um lower than average, lower than our regional uh competitors on taxes. Um yes, our expenditures have gone up over the last three years postcoid. Um and we had uh expenditures that were lower before that. we've had to make up the difference in different places. We also have growing enrollment in our district which continues to grow which means you're adding you're adding teachers. We have modulars u things like that um that we're we're taking on. So um our expenditures have gone up but our tax rate really has not uh changed significantly thankfully um over the last three years. So here's some regional comparisons. People always want to know how's re how's our district doing compared to others. So we have about a dozen districts uh

086just right around us in this in the Portland area um that you can see um and it is an order. So you can see that on the expenditure side of things um we are um higher than more than half of our competiting or competing districts. However, when you look at the tax side, um we're on the lower half of the um the districts around us. So, uh and North Yarmouth has got the lowest tax effect except for Brunswick, which is u at 1.8%. North Yarmouth is at 1.9% but Cland's right up there. 3.7%. Uh only Falmouth at 3.3 and Cape at 2.9% um are just a little bit lower. Scott, is that just for this year? That's just this year. Okay. And some of those school districts, you know, like we have a new teacher

087contract, right? So, a number a number of those that are below us were ahead of us in paying their teachers and we're just now catching up. So, it depends on the cycle. Yes. some of that time. I was just thinking the same thing. Yeah, different schools are signing teacher contracts at different times. That's a that's a great point. Yeah. Yeah, that's a great point. Here's another way of looking at um regional comparisons. Um the finance committee asked me to throw in some more districts to compare to. We usually compare to our um you know to Yarmouth and Thalmouth at least because they're right on either side of us, very similar in demographics. Um, and there's two ways to look at per pupil cost, and I think they're both critically important. First, you take your the

088gross budget that we're looking at. In our case, it's 53.8 million. Take the gross um amount for the proposed budget and you divide it by the number of students in the district. That's how per pupil is calculated. And that's what we call the raw per pupil um comparison. So, if you look at uh the raw per pupil with um the other districts, we're at 24,000 just over $24,000 uh per student. In Yarmouth, um it's 24 25,451 and in Falmouth 26,478. I would say that those comparisons are are pretty good comparisons considering our districts are similar in demographics and in many other ways. Look at Freeport RSU5. Um the per pupil cost is 21,986 in Windham Raymond 21,926 and in Great New Glouster 19,572. However, there's another way that we also look at per pupil and

089that's taking out all of your revenue including your state subsidy. State subsidy offsets taxes. We know that. So at MSAD51 we get 17. we have 17 uh just about 17.2 million in revenue. So you've got to take that out. If you net that out, you have a tax assessment um that now is at 36,663453. Now you can adjust your per pupil cost down um taking that revenue out. So in other words, this is the actual um assessment that is going to the towns because we've got revenue included. So when you do that for MSAD51, um, our per pupil cost dropped to $16,412 per student. If you look across the board and do the exact same thing, take out revenue, um, Yarmouth is at 20,127, Falmouth's at 20,691, Freeport's at 21,169, Raymond and Windham are at

09014,528, and Grey New Glouster is at 11,861. So, you can see that there's um different ways of looking at those per pupil costs. Here's another way of looking at uh raw and adjusted. Again, the raw is without revenue taken out. So that would be in blue and the maroon is in taking uh revenue into consideration. That becomes the adjusted uh per pupil. So just kind of a visual way of looking at what I just showed you in the previous slide. Um and you can see that um you know where we stack up with the raw numbers we're below uh Yarmouth and Falmouth and again we're a little bit higher than Freeport, Windham Raymond and Gray and Gloucester. Then when you look at the adjusted per pupil um we're below um again Yarmouth Falmouth and Freeport

091and we're slightly above Windham Raymond and then Great New Glouester is kind of an outlier there. I've shown the slide before. I usually don't show it until now, but just to remind people, we do get federal money in our district. Um, we get about 918,000 or we're expecting that much in the current year. We do not have any numbers. Sometimes we have numbers by now, but surprisingly we have gotten nothing from the federal government in terms of forecasted money for next year. Not really sure what that means. Um so anyway um and then the year the year before that 919,000 we we got almost the exact same amount for two years um in terms of federal assistance. So um we do have a backup plan. If we do not have federal money, it would require

092a board vote um to go ahead with the backup plan. At this point, indications are that even if um the state of Maine were to lose all of its money, um and we did not get any federal money um that um it would probably be in court and there would probably be an injunction is what I would expect to happen, which means litigation would go on for a while. In the meantime, we would be receiving federal money um during the injunction. Um, and I also just want to say, um, and I, it's been in the paper, and I'll just say it out loud, that we are not a defendant in the lawsuit, any federal lawsuit. Uh, we are not a defendant for, um, with the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice has named as

093a defendant, the state of Maine Department of Education, and not our district. So, either all of the f all the federal money out of Maine is gone or all of it stays. Um, depending on that. So, it is not just a local piece. And I've said that pretty consistently, I think, from the beginning that this is a a legal issue um constitutionally under the US Constitution. There's no relationship between the federal government and a local school district or a local municipality. The relationship is between federal and state. And so um Department of Justice confirmed that by naming as a defendant the main department of education food service enterprise fund. Um this is what we are estimating. Um we're obviously two months away and food services is dynamic. Um but we're estimating um that uh and

094this is again outside the general fund. This has nothing to do with taxes. Federal money doesn't have any impact on taxes either. This is this is um money that sits outside the general fund. So year to date, our net estimate is 287,412. Um the actual a year ago was 299097. So not too far off. Um so that number comes from looking at our revenues that come in and then our expenses and seeing what offset. So that's a positive uh distribution at the end of the day for both years, which is good news in our district. So it's a selfsufficient uh fund that sits outside the general fund. Capital projects um this does require um having capital reserves. We have um this community has supported capital reserves. Again, capital reserves are not part of the general

095fund. Um they sit outside of the general fund and have no tax impact or no tax effect. Um these are areas that the um the finance committee has um I think we discussed this a little bit. Um we didn't get into it this year with so many other priorities. We are not looking to do a lot this summer with capital projects uh because of the one campus project and the new school starting. Um but these are some areas that definitely need um our attention and have been on our list. Track resurfacing. The track is getting super old um and needs to be resurfaced. We've known that for quite some time. We have an additional twounit uh modular at GMS um that is going in for enrollment um which is part of the budget and this

096work uh besides the lease purchase uh of those two rooms is sits outside of the general fund and that's to support the site work ramps um sprinklers electrical technology phone security all that that gets um those two rooms up and ready for students tile replacement. We have replaced um some common tile in the hallways at both the high school and Mabel Eye Wilson School this summer. We'd like to continue that, especially that huge long hallway down high school that goes from the gym all the way down um past the library. Um that's a welltraveled hallway is old and we'd love to get that tile replaced. It's chipping in a lot of places. Same thing with Wilson School. We started tiling um and there's a lot of areas on that especially in that first floor um

097where the first grade wing is and some kindergarten rooms like to get some more tile done there. There's a lot of chipping that's going on there and continue painting. Um we did a lot of painting last year. Um we had a company come in and just we hadn't really done any painting for years. Um and just getting all those classrooms and common areas and continuing with that. uh we won't be doing nearly as much as we did last summer, but we'd like to continue what we started. And also through the SRRF project, we were able to do 40% of the windows and doors at Mabel Eye Wilson School. They're just almost done now um from that state money that we've received. Um but we know that there's windows that need to continue to be replaced.

098Um and we need to um continue working on that. Obviously, we can't get them all done in one budget cycle, but just as a continuation of what we started. And finally, um we also received state money, as you know, we were hoping to do this project last summer, um which was to um use that. I think it was a million dollars that we were awarded in state funds. Um half of about half of it was forgiven by the state, the other half was at 0% interest. Um, and it will rehab the science wing. All the HVAC fixtures at the in the science wing at the high school will be rehabbed. So, we're excited. We just received the bids yesterday. Um, and we are taking the low bidder and we'll be bringing that to the board

099at your next meeting to get approval so that we can move forward with that contract um, and make that award so that we can get this done this summer. And finally, a budget summary. So, if we wanted to say, and I hate to use this phrase, but bumper sticker, this budget, here it is. Salary and benefits. Um, this is a, you know, an investment. The board has made an investment uh in personnel this year, which is, uh, significant investment, very much support that. We need to, um, be supporting our staff. Um, the teachers contract was settled. We're in negotiations with the ed techs right now. Um and we've also um settled other units in our district um recently. But this is a big um because of inflation and helping our staff to keep pace with

100with the economic conditions. 87% of the budget increase being proposed is goes towards salary and benefits. The budget is responsive to continued enrollment increases are we continue to grow as a district as we have since 2015. New proposals are balanced with thoughtful reductions. So, this wasn't just add add. It was add add. Take a look at where we're at and make some decisions about um things that we needed to also reduce. Uh there's a backup plan as I mentioned for federal funding loss. Um there's a greater percentage of this budget that's going to directly to the classroom. The state average is 68% of a budget goes directly to the classroom. We have been flat at 72% for a while, probably five or six years, and we're now um we're increasing uh to 74%. Which is

101thankfully to the board in in making those investments. And finally, the school tax effect for the school portion of a tax bill um that you get from municipality is um below the rate of inflation and I would say well below the rate of inflation at this point. uh Cumberland 3.7% and North Yarmouth 1.9%. So good news to this community. And finally, these are the budget next steps. May 8th, Thursday, 7:00 uh in the art center will be the district budget meeting. Very important meeting. And on Tuesday, June 10th, uh is budget validation referendum. By the way, the budget meeting again for the second year in a row is two weeks earlier to allow for full absentee balloting in both towns. And then on Wednesday, June 18th, um, and you'll notice it's a Wednesday, not a

102Thursday. Um, and the reason it's not Thursday is because it's Junth on June 19th. So, we would not have a board meeting on a holiday. So, Wednesday, June 18th, is when the board would certify the results of the budget um, validation referendum. Thank you. Um and again I want to say thank you to you and Scott and the finance committee um for all the work that was done which also then includes the other administrators who I know were asked multiple times to go back um and make some pretty hard decisions and and um budget cuts um within our programming. Um I know that you know a lot of detailed work and and going back over and over again these numbers um has has happened and um we we do feel that the school budget itself

103is pushed up. We know you know towns they have a little more time than we do on this budget. Um, which is why, you know, tonight our item for action um is to be able to vote to to send this to Warrants for the district budget meeting on the 8th. And so I just want to give the board some time to ask any additional questions before we go to the public hearing. Um I I know um that a lot of conversations have happened to be able to get us find more ways to to save money. um so we could absorb some of the health increases that have happened over the past few weeks. Um I know I have a couple additional questions, but I also want to give um other board members a chance to

104ask any additional questions they may have, especially on some of the changes that have happened since the last time we reviewed this. Can you send this out? Yes, I will send this to the board this present. Yeah. I the reason I don't send it out prior to the meeting is that we literally are still working on it prior to the meeting. It's just really hard to see from here. I know. I'm sorry. Get it done. Thanks, Tim. I know you have a lot. I know you're like patiently waiting. I was looking this way first. Okay. Not seeing. Okay. Um, so I have so many thoughts and questions. Um, but some this might not be my only swing at it. Um, but from a process question, I know we're going to have the public come up

105tonight and provide feedback. I know we'll all have questions here, too. So, what if there is work still to be done based off the feedback that we hear tonight, either internally here or from the public? What does that look like from a process standpoint with where we're at? That's a great question. So, we have the warrants prepared based on the information that the finance committee deliberated on the other night. However, the board always has the ability to um make a decision at this meeting because you're voting to adopt this budget. So you can make a motion that is different from what is being recommended by by it's I'm recommending something but I really work with a finance committee to get to this point. So we would make a motion being like we approve this budget

106if we do such and such and such or you can you can actually I mean technically you can put out a different number than the one that is being recommended. Okay. Now, I will say what and I will have Scott I'll defer to Scott on this because he handles all of the paperwork. The warrants are done. Obviously, we would have to adjust the warrants before they're signed if the board makes a different decision than the one that's being recommended tonight. Scott, do you want to add anything to that? Because you do all of that paperwork. Yeah, the um the war the warrants that we have um have to be posted in the community seven days before the May 8th meeting. So, uh, and so that has to have time for a meeting of the board,

107okay, to go back in and readopt and call the, uh, meeting, adopt the amounts, and then that would also affect the warrants for the referendum. And so, there would be work that have to be done. So, you'd have to do a fairly quick turnaround uh, in order to do that. Um, and the warrants then gets countersigned by the council and the selectman. Um, and those have to be posted 10 days prior to the budget validation referendum. So, okay. Okay, that's helpful. And then, so one of the things that's I look at this and I I seen a lot of school budgets. This is like very for this type of district that we are and then you hear some of the expectations of I think the narrative of luxuries. I think I don't see a lot

108of that in here. I in fact I see more I'm concerned that we we don't have money in certain areas and I also I also would question more of like we're spending that money that's appropriate but is it impactful money? Do we need to look at ways to spend that money? But like let's for example a better technology system or a better you know better this better not that not necessarily a shift in money. And so um I guess I guess one of my questions is for Leanne in the sense of we seem to be the end of a chain of events that starts from the town and in the in the sense of we're growing enrollment right. we we take on a lot of the burden of making sure that our students that we

109can support the students based off the decisions that are not done at this table. And so you work with the like the various town managers and select board chairs. Is there a like conversation around how they are part of this challenge and how they can support some of the tax burdens that we're forced into in part because of that? Because I don't I don't want our kids like if we talk about special education to suffer because we want to develop downtown a bunch of town houses but no businesses down there that like help supplement or like like help us from a tax impact. So like what like what sense do you have from there? Is there any movement for support that's not just in this board but outside? Or is it on us? That's what

110I feel like I've been talking about since I got on the board. We need to versify our tax base. I mean that's just how the only way that we can alleviate pressures on individual. And do you feel like they're on board with that? I think there's in Cumberland there's more opportunities for development that is commercial. Yeah. And I know that those are conversations that happen. I don't know how quickly any of that works. I I do have the sense, and I live in North Yarmouth, um that there's not as one, there's just not a spot that's as good other than maybe downtown that would be like a commercial hub. Um so that those have been the conversations that I always come back to. the only way that we're going to alleviate the pressures on individual

111homeowners is to diversify how we tax. It just it just frustrates me in the sense that like this is one of our our biggest assets here, right? Like school and yet it seems like a lot of the time for us to relieve some of the burden which we have to do. There is a burden on our taxpayers. It has to be at the expense of our greatest asset and not something else. And so that that's my soapbox kind of thing as I think about this. I do think there are there are savings. I want to be I think we have to be sensitive and we have a responsibility to do our due diligence. So that is here's my actual budget question. So this is really detailed this 60 pages. But um Scott like some of

112this are still roll up like there there's still rolled up expenses in some of these line items. Like if I you could break a line item down probably even further than it is. So does has the finance committee seen anything more than this? Like have we gone even deeper into the budget to say like we don't need to spend $40,000 on these Clorox things. We can spend 40 like $20,000 on the generic brand or something like that. like have we gone to that level of detail in the budget in the finance committee to to find savings that way? As questions have come up, we have so as questions come up, we have a detail for every one of the schools and we've gone through those spreadsheets and talked about those items and um you most

113of those items that you're talking about Tim, it's really starts at zero in the schools and then comes up from there. So especially a lot of the things in technology, a lot of the things in supplies, equipment, and things of that nature. So okay, the more things that roll up are more to have to do with staffing than it is a lot of the widgets in the district. Okay. And then my last question is just from a rollover perspective. What I know I mean I dealt with a lot of schools that had certain grants that you had to spend like I honestly spent one day spending $60,000 in office supplies because we were going to lose that money and it was a horrific day once. And so like potential for rollover if we don't spend

114everything this year and let's say things are cheaper, we find ways throughout the year. How can is there any way to like put that back or how do you typically what's your philosophy of putting that back into next year's cycle to make sure that like that money is not just a this year thing that we can roll that over and put it towards so next year our expenses our expenses go down. Yeah. Actually, the finance committee and the boards over the years have actually talked about that same thing, Tim. And so, if there is fund balance at the end of the year, which there usually will be fund balance, um what we look at first is paying off some of our debts, like some of our lease purchases, so they don't carry forward and that

115you pay off and you aren't paying interest on those leases. The other things we look at, are there things that we could um uh look at that are capital items? So much like the municipalities, the towns, if they have fund balance at the end of the year or they collect extra excise tax or whatever it is, they'll put money into a capital reserve account, which is what we do. We do the same thing. And that's how we fund the the infrastructure repairs to a lot of our schools. The other thing is if you have a fund balance, which you should have, all right, and we anticipate probably having a fund balance um cumulative at the end of this year of about $2.5 million, but that's cumulative of several years because we've moved money to capital.

116Um so if we have 2.5 million, that 2.5 million is going to go to offset the debt service. We have a plan to use that over a three-year period. And I think there's a video of me online here somewhere that's that's talking about that on how we literally take that fund balance and stare and apply it over a three-year period to when our debt service drops off in 2031. So we're softening that impact over a period of years and bringing it on like walking up a set of stairs. Then we start walking down the stairs after that. So So that's what we would do with that and that would be the recommendation. Okay. Thank you and thanks Leanne for letting me go. No, no. And and that is the intention of our next joint meeting

117is to have that longer term planning conversations just so we can understand what is being planned in the next you know five years. I mean none of these projects uh appear overnight. So there's definitely information that I think can be shared to be part of this and that's something that's been planned through the whole school project. I mean we picked our heads up. We looked out over the horizon and said, "How are we going to softest it soften this impact of this debt and get us to 2031 when our debt drops off?" So that was purposeful and a plan to do that. Yeah, I uh can I just respond to Tim for a second too um about the you know kind of at the end of the day we are you know in some ways

118taking it out on education. And I'm not saying it the way I want to right now, but you know it this is a long process, right? And there's a lot of decisions that are made. Um, and this is a very attractive community. People want to live here. People want to build their homes here. This is a good school system and it has been for a long time. Um, and yet we these are if you look at the reductions. So the reductions I just showed you was only obviously part of the story. The board knows that on March 6, these were also reductions that we um put forward 1 just over 1.2 million. Obviously, some of it is retiring debt service, but there's also staffing adjustments and reductions that we've made to this to this um

119budget um along with uh many other items, technology, books, and software uh that was already made. Um and so, you know, we have to make those efforts to balance things out. And I'm not saying that you we shouldn't do that. We should always be looking at our class sizes. We should always be looking at those pieces and that's important. Um but I I think we've gotten into a cycle to get our expenditures down over the last three years to even 7.12% this year. Um and I think it was 6.8 uh% last year. We've had to make some pretty tough decisions, too. Again, part of the process. Got to make tough decisions. Um, I think some people would argue that we probably are going a little too far in that direction uh in order to get

120those expenditures down, but we have to do that and we know that that's a reality that we're that we're dealing with. So, um, good question. I just want to say, yeah, and one thing I wanted to add to that that I think we talked about at the March meeting but didn't talk about as directly tonight is we continue to have increases in enrollment. And so a lot of the adjustments are that we, you know, our class sizes have have gone up in ways that we've had to add new teachers to accommodate the additional students. And a lot of those students right now are in the middle grades. And so that's why a lot of what we're seeing um in additions is at the middle school, including the uh additional um portables. I never want to

121use that word again. Um modular. sorry that word either. Um and so that we're we're continuing to find need to find ways to support additional students and of course we get additional state funding because of that. That's why our state funding numbers are going up where a lot of other districts they're having to cut because their student enrollment is going down which means their funding is going down. Um, and I know since our March meeting, you know, the work that I've been doing to try to better understand, okay, what else can go, it really is, we would have to make programmatic changes. Like we would have to decide that a type or way that we're running programs right now that we are going to change that. And in my belief, that's not something that we

122can do in the next week or two. Um, I appreciate so much the finance committee. We've had a lot of turnover on the board. Um, none of us are in our second term. Um, which means we haven't also had consistency on the finance committee. And I'm really hoping we have this finance committee for another year because I think that will also help better to continue to dig down understand these numbers and if we are thinking that we need to make programmatic changes because the of the continued rise that we need to start that conversation now for next year. This is not a like this week, next week, by the May 8th meeting. This is we need to have that conversation now to start saying, okay, if we are needing to come in at a certain

123place next year, what are we going to have to do over this next year to get there for next year's budget? And and this is on top of the fact that we're already needing to make programmatic changes because of the grade configuration. So that is work that I mean there is so much work these administrators um the work that they are putting in to get us ready for two years from now is extraordinary because we are reconfiguring every little human that's in each of these buildings are going to be of different ages and there's different programming that has to go along with that. Um and they're being so thoughtful to get ready for that. Um and that's coming the two years is going to go by very quick. So, they're already thinking about that, but

124programmatic changes for me are the only way that we're going to see be able to move these numbers down in a way that's appreciatively different. Can we find another 10 or 20,000? Probably. Yeah. Right. Um, are we going to find another $100,000? Not without reduction in force or programmatic changes. And we're we've already and we've already done some of that already. Some programmatic changes um are in those initial reductions that um that we showed you back in March. So these were just additional reductions to those reductions that we've already made. But I appreciate Lean you saying about the administrative is we only have 13 administrators in the district and they are actually doing two jobs right now. So they're they're spending a lot of time not only working on the day-to-day stuff that they always

125do, but getting ready for the two years from now. We have this whole timeline of things that must be done. And one of them is to reconfigure and reinvent all of the grades spans prek through 8. And that is not simple. You start with a a generic roster. And then we start making things work programmatically. Um and then we've got to bring all of that to the board. and the finance committee is going to eventually get that. And by the way, Kim, I don't think it's going to be this this year. Um, we are it's a bigger job than we thought. So, we're now thinking September. So, um, that's all in place. So, I appreciate you saying that. That's really important. So, other budget. Um, I have a question. Yes. So, um I missed out

126on last meeting, but I know that the plan um of or the discussion of the plan to move the high school English teacher to the middle school was discussed. Um and I was able to watch public comment as well as the stance of Sophia, um the fellow student rep, whose viewpoint I really do share. um because I had the specific teacher in my eighth grade English class and I could speak for hours on her abilities and talents which so clearly to her students especially would be much more much best targeted and utilized by a higher age group of students. Um and so I was just kind of wondering assuming of course that this is still an action that someone could speak about the importance and necessity for some clarity on my part. Yeah, that's that's

127a great question Katie. I can't talk about the specific people involved because it's personnel right now that we're still working through. However, the need for um that piece came from we have a leadership model at the high school um and we talking FTEES in the world of education. So full-time equivalent and we have 1.4 full-time equivalent teachers who get released for a block um to do leadership work in the in the school in the high school. Um, and that was a model that years ago was put in at the high school. Um, the high school principal at the time recommended it and the board supported it. I supported it. Um, but it takes teachers out of the classroom for those six blocks basically because each one is a different content teacher. So, this um budget

128calls for pushing those teachers back into the classroom for one of another word. um they are reassigned back to teaching during that block that they would be doing leadership work um with the principal and assistant principles. So instead of doing that, we're now paying them a stipen to do it outside of the school day, which is a less expensive model. And because we have the capacity now at the high school with 1.4 teachers going back to the classroom um during those blocks, we can reassign a teacher um to a different building because we have more capacity. So, I don't know if that makes sense, but it actually it increases teaching time at the high school by 0.4 and I'm talking all these points, but um it actually had allows two um content teachers to be

129in the classroom beyond what we uh had before at the high school. So, it actually increases capacity in the classroom. Okay. Thank you. Y questions. Jeff, could you remind everyone or just sort of spell out it's 73% of our budget goes to the classrooms. Is that correct? Uh just just under 74. It's very close. Just under 74. Yeah. Okay. So, the other 26 plus percent, what is included in that? So, it's it's pretty much everything else. It's debt service. It's technology. Um it's transportation. It's um it's not food services that sits outside. It's custodial maintenance. Um it's uh the utilities um turning on the the heat and everything else that goes into the district. Um it's any sort of um capital small capital improvements that we make the summer projects or whatever things to get

130fixed um around the district. It's the legal cost. Um pretty much anything I guess you could call it I don't want to call it overhead, but anything that keeps the place going. Um and um that's that's the 26%. So you could argue it's even higher because that classroom has heat. Yes, that if you want to put the heat in it, yes, you can increase it. Yes. And that that child gets to go to school to get to the classroom. So yeah, you could manipulate those numbers a bit. Um okay, thank you. Other questions? I have kind of a Sure. comment statement. Um, go for it. So, I've spent much of the I'm going to kind of read it a little bit, so apologies. Um, I've spent much of the last week to 10 days fielding

131questions from North Yarmouth community members, and there are a lot of questions. um questions about the turf timing, questions about the increases in salaries for administrative administration and teachers, and of course the impact of the Title N disputes. Um the community as a general, this is my personal generalization, wants the district to know that they support the kids and the teachers and that they feel the district does a great job, but they are struggling to finance it. Um, I have worked on the budget and I've asked questions. Jeff and Scott have answered every question because I told them I'd ask a lot. I assured them. I warned them. Um, I have asked for more trimming at each meeting and they have been thoughtful with the responses and sometimes convinced me that more trimming was not

132appropriate in that location. um as a committee that we have worked to keep the cuts away from the classroom, the kids, the teachers, and the supports. Um we've considered what are things that we would kick down the road and if we're kicking it two years down the road, let's just pause that. And what um personally um it kind of piggybacks a little bit on what Tim was saying without collaboration. You know, I would love for the full board to have the opportunity to take a deep dive into the budget. And I only say that because more eyes and more questions and curious to see what other people could see. you know, we kind of hit upon that as level of reasonable. Um, I would also like to talk about raising revenue to the towns of

133Cumberland and North Yarmouth. We need businesses to help offset the rising taxes. We need to be apprised of the developments so that those potential students can be included in the outlook. um to the district. I'd like to think about how we can increase our revenue by renting out facilities more, especially with the addition of the turf field. Um personally, I cannot increase my rates in tuition at my child care by 6 to 8%. I will simply lose colum clients and my clients are my kids. Um, and to note, this year I have five kids that are going into kindergarten and the other five are going to a public prek program. So, for the first time in probably 15 years, I'm rewriting my program. That's my thought. Thank you, Sarah. And I appreciate all your questions,

134by the way. Other Jesse. So, the one thing that I I think we could save money on, not this year, but going forward is so looks like we spend like $2.2 million on um utilities. Basically, it's mostly natural gas and electricity. Um uh and I happen to know some of our buildings are pretty old. I know our new building is going to be built to a pretty tight standard. And so, I think the new school will be pretty energy efficient, but I know several of our buildings are incredibly energy inefficient. So, you know, I think that should be a call to action for us going forward is to, you know, I don't think there's $2.2 million of savings. We still got to pay those utilities. But, you know, I'm sure if we do a blower

135test on the pool, there's a ton of heat going out the door. So, um I know I helped write a grant for the school to get some technical assistance from the state. They're going to do that for free. They'll give us some findings. So that hopefully will come back to the board and we'll be able to spend spend some money to save money going forward because I think you know that's just a reoccurring cost. Electricity is not going to get cheaper. Natural gas ain't going to get cheaper. So it's 2.2 million this year. It's going to be 2.4 next year. It's going to keep going up. So if we can lessen that going forward, um I think we should put that on our to-do list. Yeah. And we appreciate the grant um and the uh

136the committee that worked on that in the town. We appreciate that that audit is taking place, scheduled to take place um this coming week. So, thank you. Yeah, we really look forward to seeing what opportunities are there. Heather, I I just wanted to make a comment just sitting in on the from an outside perspective over the years being a town resident for a very long time um and not knowing what Scott and Jeff and the finance committee does when they go through this process and kind of kind of broadened my perspective when I was there in the meeting and kind of went line by line and kind of got a better grasp of where all the costs go. Um, so I felt a lot better after I sat through many meetings and many hours and

137many of my own hours researching it now that I felt I had more data and access to the data. Um, and I think as a school district, these two people do a very good job answering all the questions and trying to find every little ounce they can to still meet the child's needs and understand that the taxpayers and, you know, us up here, all of us have to pay that bill as well. Um, so when I looked at the numbers, I looked at things that aren't really tabulated together because In my brain, most of how the budget is written doesn't make it easy to to like digest it very well. So, one of the areas that when I look at it, and I know we have zero control over this, but a large percentage of

138our budget, I mean, I didn't go I got through most of it before this meeting, but I didn't get all the way through. So looking at like MIW and uh GMS 4 through 5, the cost of health insurance for the district is somewhere like around 15% of the total budget for MIW is healthcare and 16% for GMS 455 is healthcare and we have no control over that. We don't get to make a decision on that. the it's part of I mean Scott can probably talk to it more. Um but it's tough to stomach that when you don't have control over that much of your budget. Um so right there we go. Were you right? Yeah. So 7 million 58,110 for healthcare. That's a lot of programs we could help a lot of kids with. And

139I understand that our teachers need healthcare. Don't get me wrong. That's very important. Um, but as a community, I think if we can spend this much time looking at the budget, I think we can also re outreach to our representatives and other individuals within the state and the country to try to alleviate that issue. Um, because it affects all our local businesses. It affects our school. It affects all of us. So, I think it's a big chunk of change that would love to go down. And that's not the only thing. There's a lot of things like you said that are mandated from either federal or state that we have to do. For example, the the newest is the um the leave act which required um both fiscal years we've had to put new money uh

140into our budget to cover 50% of all of our staff members leave uh into that new main law that just was passed a year ago. So these are and and this happens all the time. there's new regulations and laws that we we have to follow and we have to put money into the budget to cover those. So, uh so at this point, yeah, we had 167,000 um added this year and we added uh the same amount last year um for the 50% of the to pay for this main law. And the employees pay another um side of that. basically they're paying and I think we all know this it's it's essentially a tax a payroll tax um for our employees but then we pay the other the other half from the district. So these are

141things that are real things and these are things we must do. Um and there's so many of these kinds of things in the school district budget asking about the 26%. I we could give you a huge list like workers comp and liability insurance. Liability insurance went up 40% from this year to next year. 40% increase in liability insurance. I know all of you that have health insurance and auto insurance, all of them are going up. Everything's going up. Districts are like people. Our expenses go up, too. And that's where the 26% is. We're dealing with all these inflations on things, too. So, good. These are these are good points because there's so much that is not controlled by the local districts. Um, as you mentioned, the MEA health plan is a very rich plan and

142it doesn't afford the ability to do HSAs, uh, health savings accounts or anything of that nature. And it's a plan that's basically, um, union run. And knowing being a resident of Cumberland County, and all of us are, that's a state-run program. It's based on state rates for this is my understanding. There's probably some more detail to this, but as a community, usually the Cumberland County, we have lower insurance rates than the rest of the state because experience ratings. There you go. Um, so we pay through our healthcare the rate for the whole state at that point than not based on our county or regions. There's certain regions and stuff that it goes, but it's part of an overall plan. Um, it's it's a it's a great health plan, don't get me wrong, but it does

143have a cost affiliated with it and 13% this year, right? Yeah, that was the same from my organization and professionally. I work in health care costs and helping control those. So, we could geek out on this sometime of what we're doing at in Maine. Yeah. And the way in which we've the way in which we've controlled our health costs here is the contribution that we'll make to certain plans other than single or adult with child. So, to full family plans, we make less of a contribution. To adults, we make less of a contribution. So, we pay less to those plans. and our our interest has always been ensuring our employees and our employees children. So we've managed to control our costs by what we contribute through the bargaining process. But yeah, it's enormous. We face

144it as individuals who need health insurance and we also face it as taxpayers. Absolutely. And to add to that the retirement system, the Meepers retirement system. Um yes, Sean, I don't know if you got that far, but Oh yeah. Um yeah that's uh that is yet another thing that legally we have to cover and especially in collective bargaining when the raises come in the retirement benefits are adjusted as well accordingly. So, um I'm going to go ahead and ask the question that has been going around and just, you know, call out the elephant in the room. Um because as we talk about places we have cut, it has certainly come up several times. Why are why is our superintendent why are district leaders getting a similar raise as to what the teachers are getting? Um,

145so I I don't I don't feel comfortable asking Scott and Jeff to defend their own raises. Um, so instead I just have a couple of of questions. Um, how many on the district leadership team have their PhD? Two, right? Uh, yes. I think we have we have Dr. Selby, we have we have three and yourself. Correct. I don't. No, I work I've worked on mine. I do not have it finished. All right. Is there It's okay, Jeff. I don't have mine either. I haven't finished mine yet. Is there a pay scale like there is for teachers? So, if you have a PhD. Okay. So, there is no pay scale and there's no steps. So, administrators don't get steps like teachers. So when we talk about service, yeah, when we talk about the aggregate um teacher

146increase for next year at 7.9 just under 8%. Um we are not talking about the steps that teachers will get during those three years of the contract. So administrators don't get steps. They don't get education u credits for having education. They just get a cola increase. So um that's something that's important to note. And I I'm a big proponent of our teachers getting well compensated for what they do. They have very difficult jobs, but our administrators have very difficult jobs as well. And um to not give them at least the cola increase, the aggregate increase that we would give teachers. Um and historically that's the way our district has operated. It is not a new thing to give our administrators the same um increase that our teachers get um from year to year. That that

147is not. So, it just happens that the last collective bargaining was higher than than normal or typical. Um, but that does not mean that we shouldn't keep pace with the same percentages for our administrators considering they do not get steps. Teachers get steps. So, for some teachers in some years, it's going to be well above the 8% that they're getting for an increase. And again, they should get it. They should get that step during those three years. And I support teachers getting these raises. Um, you know, teachers are not, no, no educator is well paid in for what they do. Um, and we could defend it all day long. I'm I know I'm not everyone's going to agree. That's fine. Um, education is a public function. It is a it's an important function, but I

148we only have 13 administrators in our district. We have 435 employees. We have another hundred temporary and seasonal employees. So, if you count those in, 535 folks, 13 people that operate this district. Um, and so, and they work year round. So, they don't just work. Uh, you know, and teachers, honestly, I was a teacher for many years. By the time June 15th came around, I needed a I need a huge break. Okay. Um, they're both hard jobs. They're different kind of jobs, but um you know I I support the compensation for administrators at least matching the cola or aggregate increase for teachers from year to year. So and I know that's hard you know for people to hear that. Um but there's also been years where our administrators and our teachers have taken low increases

149in during COVID. Um and that you know part of it is inflation. We all know what the reasons are. Um, so I I also don't want to point out this is, you know, this is not typical either. But if you remember, an education or school system is labor intensive. I mean, we're not um a corporation. We only we're working with people. And so people are what we have. We don't have the big machines or anything like that. We are people. So if we want to invest um in a better education for kids, you got to pay your people. Can I can I jump in with a just a So I appreciate this coming up. I kind of disagree with your philosophy. So I but I don't necessarily disagree with where you're at, but it's based

150off this. We gave the teachers that percentage raise to equate to. It's like almost a market increase to like sit at the benchmark of what our other competitors or other local districts were. like it's a fair we tried to get them to as like Jesse was alluding to to what they what our uh what's standard in the market. What is that like what our administrators are making would you say that to that 8% gets them to where other administrators locally are because if not then if I mean if that's the case then I understand that we all so you're still say they're below at that benchmark. I think that's we we do comparisons every single year to check in with what other administrators in fact all of the superintendents in this area we put in

151for a spreadsheet and put in what administrators are making in our area for the current year. Yeah. Um and if we have information for the next year. So, you know, we're we're not high, we're not low. I'd say we're in we're in the hunt for everybody after the 8%. We're in the mix because I think the 8% is what scares people. But I think it's it's like if you if we've been paying them low and it takes 8% to get to the point of where they should be getting compensated, then it takes 8% to get them to that point. And that's kind of the philosophy of like we do have good administrators and we do have good leadership and consistency in the administration. Kind of like the finance committee is what will make a stronger

152district. But I wouldn't just give 8% because the teachers got 8%. Like I would give it based off where the market where is deserving. No, I should have. Yeah, I think that's a really important point and when we look at that, that is the that is the case. Okay. That is the case. We look at the market. We look at what the teachers have made per percentage and I can say it is we're right in the hunt when we do that. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And I think just making sure everyone sort of understands sort of the process of how the administrative contracts work is there's um because the the timing is not with our our budget, right? They have to be um signed or issued if approved by the board. Um it's there's a statutory

153deadline for administrators that's earlier than teachers. Um and so for principles it's March 1st. um assistant principles, etc. Um and um for those that are probationary, and then it's February 1st for everybody else that's continuing. And so the the administration, they they do the other like principal contracts and then the board had voted for me to work for for our superintendent's contract. And I did the exact same thing that you're asking. I was like, "What? 8%?" Okay. like how does that compare and then yes asked for the comparators um and we are we are not um I was actually surprised where we were okay couple more questions what time did you get to work today Jeff um it was before 8 and have you left not yet I haven't gone home how many days a

154week is that typical Uh it's usually anywhere from 1 to 3. So last night before this week yeah for the last night. Yeah. I mean the building stuff. But you know we all do this because we enjoy it and we like the work. Um and we know we're making a difference. So I I think every ministry will tell you the same thing. I think every teacher will tell you the same thing. Um you know and it's a choice, right? It's a choice you make and um it's a it's a really good profession for that reason. And so I How often do you take a vacation? Uh when I can. He needs more. So do you would you say you work pretty much the entire summer? I work most of the summer. Yeah. Yeah. And a

155lot of the administrators I mean what we do for the administrators because they need they have to have mental health as well. Um and quite frankly we have them a combination of in the office during the summer and also working at home and then making sure they're taking vacation time because that's the time that they can take it. Um, the school year is extremely extremely busy. And over the weekends, do people answer their emails? Oh, yes. In fact, I've probably got a few from administrators right now. Yeah. I get responses. I will sometimes email Jeff, you know, 11 o'clock at night on a Saturday just when I'm thinking of it and I get a response and I get angry at him like, do not be checking your email. It's Saturday night. There's also mental health

156emergencies that we get calls on our telephones, on our cell phones over the weekends uh fromuh for students. Um we have this new student system. We have administrators that are all set on those things. So yes, our administrators do I mean they don't there's no confinement to the work if that's what you're asking. The job is the job you do it period and we never talk about this so and I wouldn't have brought it up otherwise. Well I you've made him very uncomfortable. It is I will say it is not a comfortable topic. Um because it's one thing for you to advocate for Marie, for Julie, for the principles, it's another thing to to think about your own raise. And this is not an easy thing to address. So um there are times I think

157we've got you at a bargain and you could probably make a lot more someplace else. Um yeah. So I grew up I just wanted to get a sense of that. five minutes from here. So that makes a difference, too. You kind of want to give back to where you came from. Can I just add to that? And that the loss to our district would be huge. You know, if we're getting you in a bargain and you left, all of that institutional knowledge leaves as well. And I don't think that that can be overstated. You don't get overtime. You're not able to flex up and earn a little more, right? I mean, you're just you're a work machine. So, I think I appreciate Kim you bringing this up because I think it's easy to look at

158that number and say how how could you ask for that much, but I think it's a whole different thing to look at the work being done and the work being done in comparison to other admin in our state. I think it's important to bring that up. Thanks. Other questions? I just want to add one thing. Um I I don't remember which finance committee meeting we had, but there was a line item at the beginning of the budget season for some other position to help with administrators and compliance officers. Yes. Yeah. And we definitely pushed that forward, but all that work that I mean there's a reason why all the administrators asked for it, right? I mean talk to that for a second. I just that was a compliance um coordinator because we have um this

159is a district where there is a higher level of litigation on certain certain situations and there's a lot of federal and state laws around investigations of Title N um or discrimination, harassment, bullying and you have to follow those those investigations very thoroughly and um you know if there's any misstep at all there there's an issue um especially if there's a threat of a lawsuit or whatnot. So, we have to make sure that we're following all those. So, there's times when administrators, that's all they're doing for a week. They're not really leading their school. They're not involved in instructional uh pieces because they are tied up in an investigation that literally can take one, two, three weeks, a lot of their time because it's very complicated and it's very serious. Um, and you know, they'll do

160the they want to do the work and do it right and make sure that they get to the end of it. So that's what that position was. Another administrative position that really we should have brought in probably a couple years ago. Uh was another elementary assistant principal into our district. Right now we have only two administrators for a school of 740 students. That's the Wilson school. We now have another administrator that is a one administrator for uh just under 400 students. The state average is 250 um to an administrator. So, we're we're definitely above um on our administrative staff at the elementary level because of rising enrollment and we really haven't done anything to correct that. Uh and when I say we haven't, I I haven't pushed enough and advocated. Um and I think, you

161know, that's it's an area we're going to need to look at. Anyone else on the board? Okay. Thank you for everybody who's been here patiently listening to our conversation. Um I have a sign up. Did anyone not get signed up that wanted to speak during public comment? Okay. So we are going to run this similarly to how I do typical public comment with the exception of if there's questions that come up that we think we can answer after everyone's done speaking, we we'll try to address some of them. Um, again, please always feel free to email with additional questions as as they do arise. Um, so the board welcomes and recognizes the value of public comment to ensure public comment is fair and orderly. We follow procedures and our board policy, BEDH, and we ask

162that all members of the public do so as well. Um, we ask that speakers use the designated podium when making their comments and speak into the microphone. Um, I will go through the list of names. Um, a clock will be visible. um on the on the screen and you'll have a maximum of three minutes and when the timer goes off please try to wrap up your mark remarks. Um when you come up just again state your name and town of residents um before beginning as a reminder this is not a time for discussion although we're making an exception to answer questions at the end that we typically don't do during public comment. Um so we'll not comment during the time of remarks but we may comment after. Um, lastly, please keep comments respectful and civil.

163We are neighbors here. Please be kind. Um, that includes the audience. Please do not interrupt or respond to any of the speakers comments. Um, and please just address your comments to myself, the chair. Um, and please do not make them matter about other individuals in our schools and communities. And any anything on the contrary, I may um stop the comment. So, I will start with the list. And we have Oh, this is a different timer. Look at that. I know. I'm very I know it's a little smaller. Um f first on the list is David Nunan. Good evening. Uh I just want to say uh I wrote stuff down to be succinct. So, I have a daughter who is on a 504 at Gley High School and in the GT program while in the middle

164school. So, I understand the importance of special education. Uh, I wrote this down just from listening uh real briefly. As of April 10th, inflation is currently 2.8% and cost of living adjustments are currently at 2.5%. Um, I wasn't able to attend the first two budget meetings as I was working my second job. Uh, it's tax season, so it got me thinking about my taxable income. That got me thinking about my real estate taxes and how they are now 10% of my taxable income. So more than the 8% that Shirley talked about last year at the at the board meetings. Uh so I looked at the town's mill rate over the last few years. And I apologize in advance as I'll be citing lots of numbers and percentages. So 2023 $21.204 20 cents, 2024, 2215, 2025,

1652325, and with the uh based on the school proposal and nothing else, $24.11 uh for next year. That's at least a $2.91 increase to the mill rate for those tax years of 24 to 26. For those that may not know what a mill rate is, it's the tax, it's the rate which we pay taxes for every hundred,000 uh,000 to our property is worth. So for a $300,000 property value, this would equate to an $873 increase for over three years of your taxes. For 400,000, it's $1,164 over those years. Uh the impact, the school's impact on mill rate is 39 cents, 59 cents, 75 cents, and now 86 cents, which is down, which we appreciate. The impact on my family has been felt h hard as our taxes have increased by $854 the last two years

166or 11.9% with this proposal will rise at a minimum of another four% to 16% increase over three years or at least by another $375 which would be about $1,29. That is more than five times the current inflation rate. This is not sustainable for my family. I'm sure it's not sustainable for most of the families that actually live in Cumberland as well. MSAD-51 is asking for an increase of their budget from 47 approximately 47 million to 53 million over 12% increase from 24 to 26. And nothing I'm going to say here is personal. So I want to make that clear as I feel the school has treated my family very well since 2015. However, the pro propo proposed increases to salary are very out of line with most of the professions which actually average between three

167and 4% annually. So, I mean, we went through the numbers here. What's not shown here is the over two years the percentage. So, instead of 9.6, it's really 18% over two years uh for total regular instruction. Honestly, going down the whole list is is, you know, not necessarily fruitful. People can do their own math. What I would propose to remedy this and the taxpayers's concerns are an annual cap of 3 to 4% increase to all salaries, not the 7 to 9% that's proposed. And I have another like 45 seconds. Sorry. The Is there a question in there that you have for us? There there's not there wouldn't be a question. No, you're welcome to submit your comments. So, if you can wrap them up, that would be great. All right. Um yeah, I just have

168I'll summarize uh just be by saying that uh for not the seven until we my whole point of this proposing this 3 to 4% increase cap on salaries over the next couple years is until we truly know the impact on our taxes for the uh new school in Turfield project. I think that's fair and in line with the average wage increase for the state of Maine. And I did talk about to your point the budgeting between how sads can't uh and the town council basically don't talk uh or are two independent government governors and to compare us to Falmouth and Yarmouth isn't necessarily fair because of the fact that their town council oversees that as well. Thank you. I appreciate it. Bill Young. Howdy. Uh good evening. Bill Young, uh Hedro Drive, uh local dissident.

169Uh just given that moniker last week, uh I'm here to speak uh to you about giving our seniors in this community a tax break with regards to the everinccreasing cumulative school budget. Most of the seniors in our community have put their kids through the system, have been supportive of the SAD for years. Personally, I have been paying taxes in this community for 43 years. It is time to give our oldest citizens the understanding that these yearly school budget increases are becoming unsustainable for them. The town of Cumberland understands this and offers seniors a tax relief program because they realize that bringing more residents here also caused more liability. North Yarmouth officer program, but I have to say it's impractical and awkward to use. We also feel the seniors should not have to foot their part

170of the bill for the turf field. The SAD never sought outside sponsors that would have lowered the cost, possibly all of it. The referendum only passed by a few votes and we feel the turf bill would not have passed had it not been attached to the new school proposal. We also understand that the true meaning of community means and we think this means this to all the people in this community. This generation of residents most living on fixed incomes should not be taxed at the point about of worrying about staying in their home. They've paid their dues time to give them a break. Please consider having a serious conversation about this issue. We also would like to thank the finance committee for allowing the taxpayer payer group to attend the meetings and allowed to ask

171questions. One more thing. I would hope that when Tricom meets that all three parties have a very serious uh talk as a community going forward trying to slow future tax increases. We realize that development has not aided your ability to hold the line. It is three it is a three-pronged issue. I have spoken with both town leadership about this very subject. Also, lastly, uh, speaking with Megan Lickler recently, I was told there was, uh, no budget at all for advanced trauma supplies, and in light of seeing tonight's savings, I'm in hope she would consider seeding the project with some funding. Thank you. Thank you, Bill. Michael, Michael Swat, North Yarmouth. Um, first of all, I want to thank the board and particularly the finance committee for their work on this uh project, this budget. Uh,

172you shouldn't feel ungrateful because I think the taxpayers are grateful for the work that you've done. And I think even seeing what we saw tonight was a movement in the right direction and and certainly appreciate that. But I can still see and hear the same kind of hesitancy on the part of the board members uh that we in the community feel. Uh these are tough times. This is absolutely unsustainable year over year over year in a cumulative effect. My background is in in running businesses three times the size of this district and understanding budgets and how to address them and approach them. Some of the things you talked about tonight are right in line with with what I think needs to be done. I think we need to roll the entire school budget back to

173zero and start rebuilding it with what's required. We heard the reference to the the new state law to pay for some of these programs. We've heard uh for leave act. We've heard other comments about how we have to pay for health insurance. We need to roll the whole school budget back. I think over time there's a tendency propensity or likelihood that the school budget has grown. We've offered more programs than we're required to offer both on the regular programming as well as special education. Hence, we become this magnet for people, but we also have people who want to stay here. It's not just to support the people who want to move to this community with children. I remember my mother saying one day, I'm on a fixed income. and I'm like, "Would you please be

174quiet? We're all on fixed incomes and and most of us are." Um, but I think what's happened here over the last couple years, I'm new to the community. Uh, I think the board has lost credibility with the community. You've heard some of them mentioned tonight. The turf field, the the inability to move the community to accept a building on Route 115, a Grey Road, which is up the street from me. Yeah. The turf field, it's a want, not a need. And you're going to hear it over and over again without seeking any outside funding. Just today on social media got brought up again. So I'm gonna I'm gonna continue to to move along and wrap up. You know what those things are and you know the things we're going to be facing in the future.

175We have rusting buses. Why? I don't know. Lack of uh deferred maintenance. Uh we have other areas where we have legal fee increases. I think there's some things in the legislature regarding municipal bonds that could have a negative impact on our budget. And I appreciate the ability to reduce this to the ridiculous to how many pennies this is for our for our mill rate, but the growth of the budget for the school uh continues to be unattainable. I would also point out that many people have come to our our group. I I'm a member of the taxpayer association and uh expressed interest in seeing some of the waste in the school department abaded. And I think possibly some of the members of this uh finance committee have heard them as well. And so I'd like

176I'd like those uh to be addressed. But I think the the most important thing is to roll our budgets back to zero absolutely to zero and start rebuilding them. That's what you do in business. And I appreciate this is all about people, but a lot of businesses are about people as well. And find out what we absolutely have to provide by fed, state, or some other regulatory body. And they rebuild the budget. Thank you. Thank you. David Mcofflin. Thank you. Uh I want to echo what uh Mike said about the board. Um I've said it before uh when I met with you three years ago. You're all volunteers. You put a lot of time in. I've seen that particularly recently with Kim attending our meeting, taking notes, and listening carefully. So I want to preface

177that. Um Mike made the comment that and build it too that this is not sustainable. It's not sustainable. First of all, I take this sheet here at 7.12. It's not 7.12. It's 9.2 in my mind. Let me tell you why. You're putting the debt service in there which includes the principal. Yeah, it's an expenditure, but it's not an expense. So if you look at the actual operations, the true operations, you're increasing 9.2. That's from 8% the prior year. I think 8.1 inflation's running 2.4 in colas. So you're talking 383% of inflation. That's not sustainable. It's not sustainable today. Um we called for strategic planning three years ago. It's not been done. I'm talking to towns on the strategic plan by the way because I think they need to be part of it. You know, part

178of it is you got you got to stop the flow and there's no development policy in this community. Leanne, you made a comment about we need you said we need to diversify. Yes. I mean, you and I talked about that our revenue stream. The problem is we can't. I'm a community banker. You're not going to recruit businesses. If you want to recruit a business and put tech u title technology down on Route One, the only opportunity you get for development, you're going to have to give up 10 years of taxes to get them there to create the jobs. You're not going to get businesses in here. You may get a takeout Chinese place in North Yarmouth, but that's the limitation of it. Point being is I don't think the revenues are going to do it.

179you want to focus on development, you better focus on the 55 and tell the two communities to stop the development because it's increasing the tax burden. You can't bear that anymore. Um, I looked at Cape Elizabeth a little bit. We're running 9.2% on operations. They were 2.5. Uh, Fmouth is 4%. Uh, Sarah, you made a great comment. If I charged 8%, I'd be out of business. You're charging the taxpayers n.2%. 2% when the people in the audience are making 2.4%. That's a hard pill to swallow for them because they're at their limitations. Now, that's a challenge. I'm not critiquing the board. I'm just saying it's a challenge you face. Um, a lot of other towns in our in our state face. It's a common challenge, but the reality of it is the bottom line on

180it is we can't you can't sustain 9%. Mike was right. I like to see a 3% across the board reduction in costs. I took a look at the maintenance and facility department. If I compare them to other peers, it looks to me like we're running two to three million more in operations on similar site. I don't think that is completely but that number is so big it makes me want to look at the budget very carefully and go through it. The on the pure analysis, thank you for the pure analysis. I'm going to take a much deeper look at that. I saw one a while back and I thought we were much higher up on the scale of cost than what I saw. If that's if I would strongly suggest you push that peer analysis.

181If in fact that lines up that we really compare favorably to our peer, the community needs to hear that. If not, then we need to line up to our peers. Yeah, we you didn't get the loud uh buzzer that Pardon me. I know there was no buzzer, but you wrapped up perfectly. I did lean over and I saw five. I was like bracing for it. But and I'm with a tax group. Kim, you came over. There's a lot of talent on this group and they're more than happy to step up and help out on any of these things. Many of us have experience in dealing with um major cost cutting. I've dealt with it a lot over the years and how to affect it and so on. So um thank you. Appreciate. Thank you, David.

182Surely before you start the timer, our minds can absorb what our butts can endure. So, do we need a brain break? If I were in the classroom, I would still be doing this like every 20 minutes. I would have close your eyes. Touch your nose, your eyes closed to re-engage your brain. Do that maybe. Yeah. All right. Need a bathroom break after this long night. Um, first of all, thank you. Thank you for coming forward with the numbers. Some of what I'm going to say now is a little bit irrelevant because I wrote this yesterday without the numbers today. Um, so thank you for getting it down. a little bit more. I stand before you tonight with three requests. First, I ask you to change how you build your school budget. Yes, this is something

183you h have within your power. You should not be building a new budget simply by starting with last year's adopted version. That approach lacks a solid foundation. There was a time not so long ago when school board members sat down with principles and department heads to have them justify their budgets. While they weren't asked to speak to salaries, they did discuss staffing levels, student needs, curriculum, and professional development. That process helped the board truly understand the district's priorities. You are the f fiduciaries, all of you, not just the finance committee of the people's money. You should know where it goes. Building next year's budget based on last year's without knowing how this year's money is being spent is like asking an investor to buy more stock in your company without showing any financial data. And

184yet the district continues to ask for more. Nearly 11 million in increases over the last three years. And you keep saying yes. At some point you need to say the people can't afford that. bring it back with a 3.5% increase. You are the board of directors. Please direct. My second request is that you sharpen your pencils. In fiscal year 23, there was a positive difference of over $866,000 between the proposed and actual budgets. In fiscal year 24, the dis difference was over $760,000. That's more than $1.6 6 million in two years spent differently than what the voters approved. Where did that money go? I think we heard the answers to some of that in the superintendent's presentation, but still it's not what the voters approved, which brings me to my third request. Get a handle

185on your fund balances and all the spending and revenue outside of the 11 mandated cost centers. I can't tell you what your fund balance was at the start of fiscal year 25, but I do know that at the beginning of fiscal year 23, it was over $9.2 million. At the start of fiscal year 24, it had dropped to $8.7 million. This is from page 16 of the fiscal year 23 audit report I sent you earlier today. Do you know what your fund balance is now? Where is the accountability for that money? How does the public know and have a say in how those millions are being spent? I've shared many of my concerns with you already. For example, your substitute budget. Oh, [Laughter] no. And Shirley, I really appreciate your emails. Um, and I know

186we got one as you referenced earlier today and so yeah, thank you. I appreciate it. Terry Terry Maloney. Can he show up? Okay. Mike Mallalerie. Mike Mallerie. North Yarmouth. A whole bunch of numbers here. Numbers like this give me a headache. I'm a retired fireman. I would I did a small business fixing people's house. Accounting for me was I make a dollar. I try not to spend more than 99 cents. And that was it. I got a number for you though. 261. You had a a slide up here that showed the increases from 2015 on. 261 is the percentage that my tax bill has gone up since 2010 when I bought the house that we're living in right now. Judy and I bought that house. 261% equates to like 17% increase per year on average.

187Now, if you take into the fact that it considered that 80% of that tax bill comes from the school department and not and the rest comes from the town, that's still 28%. And I'm going to say the U word again. It's unsustainable. Um, you guys were talking about how costs are going up. Well, costs are going up for me, too. And I just want to have you guys, as they as they were saying, think about all this stuff when you're going. I get that you're advocating for the school department, but if the people can't pay the bill, you won't have any money. And so, for the rest of my time, I'd like to yield to anybody that didn't get to finish what they were saying if they want. Thank you, Mike. Appreciate it. So, that's

188everyone I had on the sign up. Okay, so I am going to close. Um, why do I keep forgetting the name of this? The public hearing. Sorry. Geez, maybe we do need that uh brain break. Um, I did want to give an opportunity if there was some specific questions that we feel that can be answered based on um, what our um, community members shared. The one thing that I know that I've looked at and I I think at some point we've had a slide. It is really challenging when we're doing community to community comparisons because what we have that a lot of those communities don't have is increased enrollment. And so when we're just looking pure like percentage increases year-over-year, yeah, they they look high. It is higher than um inflation um and some of

189that is due to the fact that we have more children too. And a lot of the other districts aren't facing those enrollment um increases in the same way. Okay. And I I thought we had a slide at some point that sort of compared enrollment numbers over time with budgets over time. We do we do have a graph um that's not in this presentation that we can share out and put on our on the page because I often forget that when I look down I was like geez like look at these percentages and um yes how are we competitors but I think one difference that we do have in our community it's not just that we're doing the same thing year-over-year it's that we've had we have more students that we're serving as well which has

190what has increased the budget right and I And I think to to further piggyback on that, so we have obviously two sides of the budget. We have the expenditures, we have the revenues, and the state recognizes that when your enrollment is going up every year that you there should be an offset and that's why that is a major factor um that goes into the state um subsidy and that's why we've continued to get state subsidy to offsite offset the tax side of the budget. Um, so even though our expenditures are going up and a lot of it is because of enrollment increases over the last 10 years, the state recognizes that as a an an immediate thing that needs to be rectified on their end. And so the state EPS formula does um take that

191into account. So I I think that's a really good point. Even though our expenditure side's gone up, our revenue side from the state has also increased remarkably I think over the last several years. Um I mean we've got 1.2 two million uh this year. It was one million last year. I think it was a million before that or close to a million. Um the state recognizes that when you have more students, you need more money to support those students um from outside. So even though expenditures do look higher and they are because of that, we're also getting that uh increased revenue to help on the tax side of things. So, I was taking notes and uh as finance chair, I'm going to go ahead and address and answer some of the questions that came up

192because they were really good ones. Um, so Michael and Shirley, um, you both brought up the the zerobased budget, which I think is really important. And I I did that where I took every salary benefit. You know what we were talking about before that legally we have to have our debt service um and I created a column that was fixed costs. We we cannot adjust that. We are committed to those. Now you could argue that we could cut staff positions but that's the last thing we want to do is a reduction in force. So I took every salary as it was. Um, on top of that was costs that we can't get around, but maybe we don't know the exact amount. So, energy costs, um, how much, uh, in special ed because you don't always

193know exactly who's going to come through the door and what their needs are going to be. That in and they're rough numbers and I haven't updated them yet. And your computer's about to fall and my computer's about to fall asleep because it's really old because I can't afford a new laptop. Um that came to 90 just about 95%. Um of our budget was things that we you know you have to put in and maybe you don't know the exact number but you have to put it in. So it was that last 5% that we were really focused on in our finance meetings. Um I also want to address as David mentioned there is a lot of talent in in that um the group the taxpayer group and in fact um one of you I won't

194say who um brought up a really good point that I then was able to bring back to Scott and that was how we ended up being able to reduce the maintenance services budget by 10,000. Um and so we are listening to you and you you do have very valid points. Surely I am very committed to um being able to have more quarterly reports being able to look at you know year year to date uh where where are we at this quarter compared to previous quarters and I'm really looking forward to the accounting program um being able to do that and I'm hoping that I get reelected so that I can do that. Just gonna throw that out there. Um, the maintenance on the vehicles was a great question that was brought up and I brought

195that to Scott. Um, and Scott, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe what your answer was is that main state police use us as an example for other districts on how to maintain our vehicles. That's correct. When we have a state inspection on our vehicles, rarely do we ever get a vehicle taken off the road, unlike other districts even close to us that have them removed from the road. and um you could pick up the phone and call the state police inspection and you you'd get an answer on that. So, we'll look at that. And so, keeping that van um out of the budget was uncomfortable. Uh so, I appreciate that, you know, given our high standards for maintenance that Scott and um Phil, correct? Yes, Phil. Were able to to say, "Okay, we

196can you use some duct tape and keep it on the road for another year." Not literally, but you know what I mean. Yeah. It was literally what it was was a running boards on the side of the van and the real issue is the wheelchair lift that's on the van not working properly and we've tried to make changes to that and fix it. But, you know, we'll see what happens in the course of the year. So, we're hoping um and and that is sort of a kicking the can down the road because at some point we will need another van. But, I was grateful that we were able to not have to do that right now. And um hopefully there will be another lease purchase opportunity or something coming up. Um, as far as waste,

197there were some interesting things that were brought up. The rest of the board doesn't necessarily know this. Um, but I hate to say it, I think that they were misunderstandings, overwhelmingly misunderstandings. For example, there was a question of toilet paper being thrown out. And when in fact happened is that the maintenance department was not able to use them because they were the wrong size. rather than throw them away brought them down to the transportation department but left them near the dumpster. They were not throwing them away and bus drivers have been taking them. They've been putting them on the buses and using them as um paper towels or you know went to cleaning up messes. So those rules are getting used and I appreciate that when somebody sees something they say something because that's important

198to ask. Um, Kim, it was also that there was a delivery to the middle school of paper towel. We could not get it up to the door by the side, so it was set near the dumpster and it was being brought into the building and it was being delivered. So, there was a perception that that was somehow going into the dumpster caper, I guess, that we were throwing out paper. Yeah. Um, so those are the types of things we want to hear. Um, because if someone sees something, it there. I am confident that there is a reasonable explanation um to that. But if there wasn't and if Scott said, "Wait a second, what just happened?" I believe I believe in my gut as a taxpayer beholden to this man's numbers that he would call that

199out and fix it. Um I genuinely believe that. So, as a taxpayer who has to go home tonight to a even more grumpy taxpayer, I trust that Scott is is on top of these things. So, I just want to communicate that to to you that that I took those concerns. Um, and the last thing is surely you brought up the idea of, you know, the overages. Um, and uh, you know, some quick calculations. It's around one and a half percent of the budget which when you consider that we are putting together this budget months before the year is over and trying to look ahead and anticipate what costs are going to be coming up and Scott does that year after year after year to come in under 2% is pretty impressive. Um and that fund

200balance overage, whatever you want to call it, we have been very prudent with that. And to bring up, you know, to what you asked earlier, it will go back to the taxpayers in the sense that we've been saving it towards this new school. So um every question that has been brought up has been valid and important and I share the same kinds of struggles with you again at we are all taxpayers here uh for this district with the exception of Scott and Jeff but I have never once and I please know that I say this from the heart I have never once felt that Scott or Jeff is advocating for an overage because they don't have to pay for it. I genuinely do believe that they are looking out for all of us. So, yeah,

201we've got some real problems in this town and we want to continue hearing about things that otherwise we might not know about. And I believe even if I don't get reelected, I believe that Sarah and Shawn um are you all would be in very good hands with Sarah and Shawn coming back next year. And I think they have a sense of maybe some areas that as a finance committee we could dig a little deeper. Um, and we found that out when we were forced to come up with $200,000. We realized, okay, there are some places um, and maybe that was a good thing that insurance came back high because it forced us to say, okay, we really got to do this. Um, and there's more that we can do. However, this budget, I can tell

202you again, looking you all in the eye, this is the the absolute best that we can absolutely do. And and I I I don't feel great about it because I never feel great about the budget, but I feel good that this budget is solid and we have not put anything in it that doesn't belong. There you go. Was there other questions that came up that we thought we couldn't answer? I think the facilities one I could speak to a little bit. Um, in comparison to some of the surrounding areas, I mentioned this at a previous meeting. In our facilities budget, there's things that are contained like the leases on the modulars that we have that are not in our surrounding communities. That's like $700,000 in leases on. The other thing is is that we have

203school revolving renovation fund bonds in which we saved 50%, you know, it was free money, 50% of it. We're paying for 50% of it in low interest money for basically renovations to our facilities. So that's carried in the facilities budget. Then when you take the energy projects that we've done and you add those in, which are also in the facilities budget, I can get to that $2 million number fairly quick. um that people are talking about. So just with those additional items that appear in our facilities budget that don't appear in our surrounding neighbors um uh budgets. So those items can't be put in debt service. They have to be put in facilities by the state's 11 cost center format. Thank you. Okay. I just wanted to address something that got mentioned uh the per

204pupil cost and I think it's really important based on enrollment to take a look at that and I I appreciate that you brought that up and you were going to dig into that further. Um, one of the cost exercises I did was take our per pupil cost based on what's in the district's data uh, information that we have that's posted on the website. And then just ran over to a CPI inflation calculator and typed in everything and I based it on 2024 because that's the data we have and then went back to 2015. That's the data we have. And the highest year inflation adjusted cost didn't include this year's proposed budget, mind you, was 2019. And it's flatlined or gone down and kind of curved up a little bit since then. From 2015 to 2019,

205you saw a significant increase per pupil cost, but since then it's it's been a steady line. I don't like to hear because I want it to go down, but that's what I'm seeing. That the per people pupil has been consistent. Yes. Right. Which accounts for the enrollment, right? Yeah. Because you mean from if you put a dollar in Yeah. you you put a dollar in and what it's worth, you know, it 24% increase over five years from March 2020 to March 2025. Today, you put a dollar in 2020, it's worth less, right? So, it's a it's a huge jump. And can I say one thing? Sure. Okay. So the public comment and I think what we have said too is really emblematic of the fact that I think two things can be true at once

206that like we've worked really hard the finance team has worked really hard to cut the budget down to something that is usable and responsible at the same time. And this is not sustainable and like we need to find another way. Like we can't keep doing it the same way because our environment has changed. And so like what's in our like there's a lot of stuff that's not in our control like as a board. It's not. And so we can focus on those and deflect on those and those are reasonable things for context. But what I heard from some of the responses are it wasn't even necessarily specific to this year's budget. it was like a different way to operate around it and like giving us our giving ourselves a little bit longer of a runway

207in the be like now like you said now we should start right now for for next year um and and work with the program teams who are like thinking about how they will adjust their programs and what impact that has on budget and all that and so I would say like the finance team I think didn't really start typically the to the finance team doesn't start meeting all that frequently until like November. Is that right? Like January. This year was a little bit later, right? Because we had transitions with like leadership, but like I think it's late. Like I I I think that that finance team given the times that we're at, we cannot continue to do that. Also, from personal responsibility, I attended zero finance meetings this year. And so I've been in touch

208with finance and I've been in, you know, but like I could go and see all the numbers in great detail at any point. So it is available to the whole board and to like the you are the board of directors and we have these opportunities to review it. I think that like I call on all of us to be much more engaged in the normal subcommittee meetings than we probably have been. And so I'll start with myself on that. we can't we can't continue to like I think we've done a great job with this budget, but could we have done better if we had done a little bit different strategies? I don't know. So, um I just appreciate that fact of it's not even just a a pick at this. It's more of just process

209and I do agree that I think the the two communities and the tax fun taxpayers group has been hugely vital and like a check and balance. So I just appreciate that and I think we should do it differently. I think we need to really approach this differently and I think everyone here probably agrees. Yeah. And I think the continuity piece is going to be important. So um we I mean there was a lot of turnover in COVID, right? like the board is new and I've been just so impressed at the work that everyone has has put in and to have continuity for finance for next year is going to be an an extra asset um for us um as a district. Um, so if if you really like uh Thursday nights uh in the Geer

210room, um we have a full slate uh ahead of so May 8th, actually I lie, May 8th is not in this room. If you come here and it's empty, go to the GCA. Um and if we if we pass this tonight, um then the well I think we have to have that meeting on that day bylaw anyway. um is the the district budget meeting, but then on the next Thursday we have the joint meeting with the three towns where we're really going to have more of those longer term conversations and I'm really interested to hear what they're, you know, what their plans um what they're looking out ahead at and how that impacts our district. So May 15th and I do think is that in the Giga room? Oh, Cumberland Town Hall. Look at that.

211Cumberland. Cumberland Town Hall. Okay. So, um I will ask the board. Do we Oh, Katie. Um for reference, first budget. Do I vote? No. Right. On the on the budget. You can vote on any Yes, you can vote on the budget. Okay. Yes. Okay. Great. The only thing you don't vote on is personnel uh or anything. You don't go to executive session. Okay. Sounds good. Or personnel appointments. Okay. But everything else. Thank you. Um, does the board need a stretch or bathroom break? Can I just ask one one quick me question? If this doesn't pass tonight, what happens next? Um, at this point, you would still have to be within the 10 days that Scott was talking about. So, that means the finance committee or the board, seven days before the district budget meeting, which

212would be the eth. So they would have to meet and get the and get another budget adopted the week prior to May 1st, right? So that week that last week of the May 1st is a drop deadline for getting everything posted in the community for the May 8th meeting. So So the I would recommend that either the full board at that point or the finance committee acting on behalf of the board and then the full board um look at you know what other adjustments need to be made to the budget prior to that. Got it. Thanks. Wondering sort of like procedurally what Yeah, it would be extraordinarily tight to do that. Sure. Are we put in one other plug? So, there wasn't a question, but I heard a lot of people say this is not

213sustainable. We can't do this yada yada. Um, and I think there's a perception that the board is just like throwing money at Jeff. Um but the reality is that more kids are coming because we've got a good school and that makes our taxes go up, right? So like there are more people moving here. And so for Cumberland, we have a comprehensive plan that we're doing this year and so it's going to dictate the next 10 years of potential growth in the town. So if you live in Cumberland, please be engaged in our comprehensive plan because maybe zoning needs to change yada yada yada, right? like if you care about seniors, advocate for seniors in the comprehensive plan because our job here is to fund the school and students. And there's more students and that falls

214on all of us to pay for them, right? And it sucks. But so we're doing what we can. We're trying to save money. I keep pitching that we need to use the co-op to save money. Like saved 10 grand on a Bobcat, you know, like we're doing what we can. I'm like we're doing what we can but we got to pay for these students and it falls on all of us and that sucks. So, please be involved with the town council. Please be involved in the comprehensive plan because we can only do what we can do and you got to take the other avenues to try and make change. And so, there's a 10-year plan. So, please fill out the survey when it comes. Only 30% of people do. Please show up to meetings. Please

215advocate. Okay. Thank you. Yes. And controlling health care costs is another important one. All right. Any Any other? Okay. All right. All right. So then I move to call and approve the warrants for the budget meeting and the budget validation referendum and to authorize the notice of amounts adopted to be approved in be approved in for presented to this meeting and that a copy of said vote be included with the minutes of this meeting. Is that the correct motion or do I have to read the whole thing? Close enough. As presented. As presented. That Kim was reading it as Okay, so Kim made a motion. Um, can I get a second? Second. Thank you, Jesse. Um, any other conversation or questions before we move to vote? Okay. All in favor? Okay. Okay. I know we're

216in this really straight line tonight. I know. Okay. Okay. All opposed. Your hand raised. I can't see you, Sarah. I'm sorry. I really We are in I know we need to get this a little more angled because it is hard to see. Okay. So, So we have a number of documents to be signed now. Now we have some work. Okay. So motion passes. Can I make a comment? Is that boss? Um I think it's just really crucially important for people to speak up and to show up. And I want to say thank you to the many many members of the audience from North Yarmouth. Good showing guys. Um and also from Cumberland. I really appreciate you guys being here and speaking. Um, it's excellent information that is crucial for us to hear. Thank you. Thanks,

217sir. Okay. So, can I get a motion to award the contract to complete the earthwork for the artificial turf on the Gley campus to RJ Granon and Suns, which submitted the lowest bid in a competitive bid process and to authorize the superintendent to negotiate and sign said contract. So, move. Thank you, Jesse. Can I get a second? Second. Thank you, Megan. Great. So, um, I will review kind of where we are today. So, this is the second part of a two-part bid process for the turf field. The first was the the surface itself, our really our PAS free, no infill um, solution that we voted on last month or the month before um, which has been ordered. And then to follow that was earthwork that needed to be completed. The process that was used for

218that there was a qualification process where there was three biders who were qualified. All three submitted a bid. The lowest bid was R.J. Granon and Suns. Um we did take a look the initial bid um came in a bit higher than we were initially anticipating. Um and some of the reasons it came in higher were um additional things because of the location that the field is in. There's some other work that was planned in that area as part of the project um that involved the the move moving of earth in this earthwork project. So there was a few additional things um that were included as part of that bid beyond just the surfacing of the turf field. One of the other things um that had come up while we were looking at our field space

219um for this project was there was a higher level of arsenic um that then we expected that we have to we had to create a plan for um that needed to be included in the art earthwork project that needs to be moved and made safe um on our campus. And so there was a couple things that weren't initially accounted for. Um if you recall our budget for the the project had a line um for the the turf field project that was 2.5 million um that were supposed to cover the two parts of the project. Uh the turf itself came in lower than the what we had budgeted for that part of the uh artificial turf project. the earthwork came in a bit higher because it was things beyond just the work related to the field.

220We did take a look at what was included in in the bid. Um, and we were able to look at some lights that were initially included in that project, that part of the project that we didn't need at that time or didn't need to be included in the earthwork. Um, and so that brought our bid down and just conversations with the the lowest bidder just on some of the assumptions. So that brought the bid down to 1.8 million um and so the two adding the 1.8 million um plus the cost of the turf uh which is around 800,000 um puts the full project. So that that one line um again on the bid the budget was 2.5 million. It brings it in at 2.5 and why can't I have one email you have here? Thank

221you. Um now I can do the exact numbers. Okay. So it brought it to um Oh, you don't have that number. Where's the other number? Are you looking for the total? The total. So, yes, you have it written down. No, but I will. So, the contract that we're approving, the contract you're approving, I can give you the total is 1.8,555,434. Yes. And then this was stuff that was moved around. Okay. Okay. And so we did move so the of the 1.8 8 million. 212,000 was for sidewalks, utilities, walls, and stuff. Okay. That was stuff that was not originally in that wasn't originally in the budget that was then added to this contract. Um that really was in another area of the budget. Right. So, up until So, we got this bid in last week. We've

222had conversations with our architects um with the lowest bidder um to make sure we understood all the assumptions and so we were able to get the earthwork to 1.8,555,434 8,555,434. Um, which is includes work beyond the turf field that is part of the rest of the project, but it still gets the line of the budget that we originally planned for for the artificial turf to that 2.5 million. So, that is the earthwork contract that we have on tonight's agenda. Um, and we're asking for a vote so we can get that part of the project started. Did I hit all the points? Yeah, I think the only Yes, you did. Um, so because when I we when Leah and I first saw that above budget, we were kind of alarmed. But I think understanding why we

223moved some of the things that were part of the other project into the the field the turf earthworks earth works side of it made sense. Um, the other thing about this one, so there are two things. The other thing about this one is like the drainage and the work that's going into it is is should probably we should consider being completely separate from like the turf surface itself in the sense that like our playing field needed drainage. Uh the arsenic is an issue as as Leanne said. Um and I think it just makes for a much safer plane service regardless of what's over it. The other thing is, and I think it's more in context of what is going to be presented a little bit later, is the impact of the economy and tariffs and

224other estimates that we've gotten has um led to like I think eating into some of our bid contingencies already. And so the 1.8 that we have right now towards this, like approving it now, we like we've already approved the turf like that's gone. That approving this now I think eats up that 1.8 so we don't have it later on in another bid process. So, I think there's an aspect of this of of the of this vote that's kind of putting towards the timing of which that we do it because if we don't vote yes tonight, then we probably aren't going to be able to do the put in the field in time for some of the fall sports. And I think that's something to consider. Um, and then the other thing is that like until

225we I mean we could wait because we're getting close on some of the budget situation like some of the um I'm tired. Since we're getting close, I think that we haven't gotten the full bids yet or we haven't sent out bid for the new project. Like it's this is one way for us to control for some of the unknowns that we're going to get in that bid return for tariffs and stuff like that. Now, I will say that we've attacked that and we have put in a bunch of contingencies and I feel much more comfortable than I did and we can get to that a little bit later, but like that is a thing like if we spend this now it's or if we say yes now it's we're going forward with the project but

226we've lost one avenue for us to protect ourselves against the unknowns. That's the only other thing I But we weren't drawing out of the big contingencies for to move this forward. I think that was something that was important to us um for this project at this time is that we weren't touching the big contingencies for the turf project that we had budgeted for. Um yeah, and this this conversation is fresh because all of um we had our meeting last night um with the building committee. Um and there's just work every single moment going on to get us ready to put the full bid in next month, including they're looking they're actually drilling into the roof at MIW just to make sure all of our specs hopefully don't put Yeah. not another hole just to make

227sure that we understand the conditions so that our estimates can be as close and conservative as as possible to make sure that um we can keep this project on track. So and and I should add the building committee after a lot of debate and discussion all felt comfortable with where we are projected to be and for moving forward with this they all recommended to do that. we didn't have anybody like push against but I just it you know it's a thing on the table that we should have to consider the whole context of the project. Thank you. Yeah and I I would just add one quick thing is that the building committee also um looked at a number of items for reduction to the overall project at this time um with the idea that some

228of them might be add alternates later instead of part of the base bid. Um and so those items were already taken up by the building committee and as factored into that um because of those um if you call them tariff guard or inflation guards that were built into the the school project as recently as within the last week to make sure that this is a really um protected budget um in case of economic circumstances. There's like pro a lot of financial protections in this which is good. Um, and so some of these are pulled out in order to make sure that that happen. Any other questions? I have two overall questions. Sure. Not specific, not specific. Um, is there a barrier to sponsorship? Um, for like for the turf field, but couple of people mentioned

229it. Oh, yeah. Um, so there's been a lot of conversations around what other things that we could be fundraised for and there is potential for sponsorship. I know we have a policy related to that. Yeah, there's definitely sponsorship opportunities. Okay. Yeah. But we have not to be clear for the record, we have not been approached by anybody to uh have this field sponsored. And in fact, I think there were some swings and some misses in previous years to do that. But the the rumor that was referred to today and has been on Facebook is I don't know where that came from, but it is false. Like obviously we would have take we would have loved to have done right what Cape Elizabeth did, right? Um but Hannerford already has their Cape Elizabeth field. But we

230we have not that has not that has not occurred. I can guarantee you that from my standpoint and from what we've discussed we've had a lot of push back on that. That is just not Yeah. We have not turned down any No. No. I mean I do question like I think we could fund raise a lot like harder and be like we can do that even during this period at that point. There are opportunities that we're always doing that for. It's not this is not Yes. There's not bells and whistles and flashy lights that we're adding to this project. Um, it's a field that kids can play on safely. That was the priority and other things that are nice, which includes a scoreboard that people can see. That's going to be separate. Yep. Not. Yes.

231Can you go back um to the what's happening with the drainage because it sounds like that is I just want to hear you say it again to make sure I got it right that there there's work that would have needed to be done regardless and this will be beneficial. Yep. To have this work done. Yeah. I mean I mean like I am a very open proponent like I was not for keeping it all in one package. So like you I am not like this turf apologist. I've never been that. But I will say like the playing surface that we have and when we've looked at drainage drawings and he's we have um this incredible person on the design team that has all the historical records of where our drainage goes to make sure it doesn't

232hit into your neighborhoods shows where our runoff water comes to and why our field is as unplayable as it's been. And there are like I you know we can question the timing of when we do it within this project but regardless it's a safety issue in terms of the how the field gets ripped up. It costs us a lot of money to make sure that it it is maintained and um taken care of appropriately with all the water that comes down. So we would have had to do the drainage at some point with some money someplace um to make sure that that field was playable. And that's independent of the surface that we put on it. Well, and the cost. I mean, a lot of this is the discovery of like high levels of arsenic.

233Yeah. I mean, that's that's definitely part of it, too. So, um yeah, I mean that that's again that's why I partly I think it should be separated from the surf the playing surface that we put on there because that I think brings down the whole project in itself. But the majority of the cost of the project is actually just improving the surface of that they um and not even just the surface like the grounds of where they play and where we require them to play. Yep. Sidewalks, utilities are synchro. Yep. So more than half of that 3 million is going Yeah. I mean 800,000's on the turf and 1.8 is on Well, more is on the actual Yeah. The actual turf came in under budget like 20% under. Yeah. And that will benefit neighbors by

234um Yeah. I mean, I think there's elements of the drainage that would like how that connects into the rest of the flow, yes, will benefit neighbors in that, but I think the the biggest the biggest benefit honestly I think is just the usability of that field and the safety of their players. I mean, like on like Yeah. Yeah. A safety from like being able to stay on campus to Yeah. the the surface as you Are there other questions? Okay. All in favor? Um, not that this portion. Well, you can stay. It's not executive session. No. Sorry. We'll finish our vote. All in favor? Great. All opposed. I'm trying to look. Um, our meetings have the public comment times otherwise. No. No. No. Yeah, it's a different format. I know it is different. If you come

235from council, it is a different setting. Okay. Where are we? Teacher contracts. Teacher contracts. Is there anything? Do you want to make a motion? I'd like to make a motion to uh approve continuing teacher contracts for 2025 2026 as presented. Thank you. Can I get a second? I would love to second that. Oh, Megan's Megan's got a second. All right. Okay. Uh in your packet, um there are 21 teachers that we are recommending uh for continuing contract. That means that they are going from year two to year three. Um and so they are no longer going to be probationary at the beginning of the 202526 school year. Um been recommended by administrators. I also um visit the classroom um of each of these teachers twice, a minimum of twice um along with other administrators, but

236obviously uh their principles and assistant principles do the supervision and evaluation. So, we're very pleased to recommend um these 21 teachers uh to the board for a vote tonight. Great. Is this number pretty typical? Um this number, this one is actually a little higher than normal. Um it was postco I think was when we voted for um some of these positions. So, this is you probably a little more typical atypical. Okay. Um the next group that we'll be talking about is more typical. Okay. Great. But on this one it is a separate vote. Okay. Any questions? Do we have this list? Yes, you do. It's in your board packet. It should be in there. I don't think it is. It is not in Oh, hold on. Okay, I've I've got it for you. I think

237reply all to Melissa's email. Yeah. Um, so the two votes are for based on a list. That's the same list, right? It's the same list, but it's two different votes because um we have teachers that go from year two to year three, and then we have teachers that go from year one to year two, which means they stay on probationary. I'm sending it to you right now. Okay. Thank you. I don't mean to be It's just another question. I just have another question. Do we have it is a good one? Yeah, here he is. Our board packet is extra full tonight. Uh there's a lot of documents in there. Um and I actually have to send this individually too because it's a personnel item. So take a minute. Okay. Um while you're doing that, um

238can I table? You want to go to the second? Okay. Um, can I have a motion to approve policy a school calendar as presented? So moved. Thank you, Jesse. Can I get a second? Second. Thank you. That was You have to give me those first and second time. That was Oh, sorry. I was trying to give you time and then I like So, it's Jesse and then Sean. Okay. Thank you. So, would you So, Anukica provided notes. Thank you. Uh, so this revision puts into policy our more recent practice of notating prominent religious and cultural holidays. So that language is in there now. So there's state and federal holidays and then we notate religious and cultural holidays. So they're just people are aware. Thank you. And I know this was added a few years ago

239um just to ensure that when things were being scheduled for on days that um may have been prominent religion and cultural holidays um that they were reflected on the school calendar because we really try hard to not schedule um important other important things either happening during the school day or after school during those days. Um so I appreciate that the policy was updated. Does anyone have any questions about the update? We're approving the policy on the calendar. Correct. Yes. You ready for if I take a vote? All in favor? Okay. It was unanimous. How about we take a five minute break and you'll have a chance to if you want to look at that list as well. Okay. I just send it to you. Okay. So, we will take a fivem minute break. Thank you.

240has to sign these in the exact same spot on every document. So there's multiple copies here. And the first one I'm going to send out to the district. So make sure you sign in the same place of Oh, so I can just start signing here. Yeah, just sign them all. Sign the top one right there. It's so hard for me not to do. [Music] The struggle is real. I'll stack them. I put the um so many clip on the last one. You just don't even have you know like you were trying to We'll see how it goes because the last one's going to be the first one. Have that problem. So, did the document get sent out? I didn't get it. This is good. I like the superend. He reminds me of everything that I

241missed. So, the next that will be coming down the warrants. Bring it out of stack in a second. Thank you everyone. Thank you. Same place. New document looks almost exactly the same. Not very long. Right now you sign it for the next one for the other. So we're going to docuign next year. I wish we could. This is like an old statue. This is old school. So we need a new statue. No, we know someone. We know someone. Christine and I are warmed up. Asking if we were still going. I think she can come by. She's coming back somewhere. I was there. I know. Oh, she was talking all about you. You were you were Oh, Kim, you did high on her list of things to discuss. She said that you stuck it out. I

242did. It was awesome. And that you were great. Thought you enjoyed it. No. Oh, yeah. She signed their Ukraine. She said that. She told us everything. I like your pen, Sean. I suppose my signature should try to look the same. Oh, my signature is like it look I don't think any of our signature Did you steal one of my pens? Is that what you're saying? Did you pick this? Who's Somebody stole my pen tonight. I don't know where it is. Oh, they did? Yeah. That's funny. Somebody stole your pens tonight. I swear there's an extra pen over there. I swear it doesn't look the same at all. It's just different. Any of us have My signature is very fast. I caught up to you. I'm trying. I'm trying. I know. Got it. There. I'll make

243a copy. That's what I'll do. What's my name? These are the best. I've sampled my name. They're not that good. The square ones, right? They're like little and square. There's not enough peanut butter. Wait a minute. She's not working tomorrow. I know. I know, right? So mechanical at this point. That's why I was like, "Okay, wait a minute. What is my name?" For the muscles. What are you doing for softball every day. Every day every day. Um yeah, but it's good. It's good to me. And then um I'm going to see I think there's two H is done twice on that one. Sarah Hose initial. Have you started looking at All right, we got to get into better order. I did. All right, good. Sign that one. Everyone should have this spreadsheet now. Let's see.

244I see it. Those are different. Did you get hopefully they did some big pepper? Oh, it's coming to the meeting at this point. She's got to sign now. Gosh, doesn't she have to sign now? Oh, she does have to sign. You missed us. Although she didn't vote, so technically, but it's better if we get more. Oh god, that is a mistake. It's dedication. She came She came in all redfaced and just won. I don't know where this You can still sign all the documents. You do that. Well, Christina, it's really nice of you. Am I cold? It's so good to see you. That's so funny. You want your name tag? You're going up there. Okay, that's good. Okay, so second year people who are going it says it says those people are all going to

245continue contract. Okay. And so those are the ones we're having. Yes, we're having the second year celebration. Depends on the year, too. We'll have nobody. We only have two next year. That's it. Um, so yeah, everyone should have it in their their email. Should we do the superintendent report and come back to it or it's up to you. Yep, we can do that. Okay. So, we are going to go back to the motion and we can combine them if we want, right? Uh there's two different motions because they're two different Okay. Uh, so we need to have two. Yeah. Proation. All right. Let's let's try this again. Can I get a motion to approve the continue the continuing teacher contracts for 2025 26 as presented? So moved. Thank you, Jesse. Second, Sean. Thank you. Any

246questions? Hearing none. All in favor? It's unanimous and she not yet. Is she here? No. Okay. I think she'll abain. All right. And can I have a motion to approve the probationary teacher contracts for 2526 as presented? So move. Sean, thank you. Can I have a second? Second. Thank you, Megan. Um, other questions on this list? Okay. Hearing none. All in favor? Great. All right. Unanimous. Now we'll move to the superintendent report. All right. This will be brief. Uh principal for principal for an hour. Second grader in Miss Zimmerman's uh room one. The principal for an hour. Have to go to classrooms, meet staff, and even see the kitchen downstairs. Fourth graders learn the interesting facts um from Main State auditor Matt Dunlap. He shared examples of how the government has helped people with things

247like standardized sundials. Well, that's a new one. Um, longitude for ships to sail east and west and child labor laws. He also donated a new main state flag to GMS. Now, is that the flag that was not voted by by the voters? I don't know. I actually saw that. That one's popular for some reason. I see it everywhere. Gorly Middle School 45 um celebrated Jackie Robinson Day with visits from Girley High School uh baseball and softball teams in Portland Sea Dog's mascot Slugger. Slugger loves Gley Middle School. Special guest um chef and educator Chris Toy came to GMS 7th grade and um obviously helped the students make some food. The lottery. Eighth grade ELA participated in a Socratic seminar discussing the short story The Lottery by Shirley Jackson. Power of Belonging Assemblies. Um there's actually

248three assemblies this week. Um GMS68, GMS 45, and MIW. I was able to slide into all three of them for a few minutes. Um and you'll see um today at 68 the pictures on the bottom. I know they're so far away. Um but you'll we had many staff members dressing up in these um inflatable um cartoon characters and um having a a race across the gym as one of their their fun things. Students of the month at the high school. Um this theme this month was open-minded. So, congratulations to these four students for um for their um actually a student of the month for March. Appreciating their own culture and personal histories as well as values and traditions of others um and seeking to evaluate a range of points of view and are willing to

249grow from experience. Spanish immersion field trip. Uh Margaret Carell's Spanish class explored all things Hispanic in Portland last Tuesday and did a field trip. Thank you. And for Rangers Rock, uh we had eight students that attended the premier teen mental health conference in New England yesterday. And I think last year, if I remember correctly, there was a snowstorm at the beginning of April when they were supposed to go. Um and they didn't end up going. So, it was nice for them to be able to to get down there this year. Um they actually won chapter of the year um for Cal Cares of all the chapters in New England. They actually uh won the chapter of the year for the most active chapter. Rangers Rock West Piper is representing Gley at the main shrine uh

250lobster bowl this summer. Part of his involvement is uh fundraising for the shrine hospital. Congratulations to Wes. And spring sports are underway. Uh whether it's snowing or not, it's underway. And just a reminder, we have a one campus project web page. keep it updated. Um, and uh, also looking for the planning that's going ahead. So that's on our website. So hopefully I kept it short enough given the hours. Yeah, absolutely. All right, moving on to committee reports. Okay. Um, so let me try to touch this without it yelling at me. Okay. Um, starting off, we have some spring sports. Awesome. Clearly, um we have a lot going on. Baseball and softball just had their opening day and um I think lacrosse did too as well today. Um and from what I've heard so far, don't

251quote me, everyone's won. I don't know. Maybe not maybe not boys lacrosse. I know I know girls did. But um and then saying goodbye to seniors that happened. We now we know that they're leaving in like on like some of the IB students are leaving on like May 3rd because they have to study for their exams which are coming up really really fast. And so we're kind of just like hanging on to the last few days of them being at school with us especially with break taking a lot of those days away. And so I'm going to brag for her while she's not here to stop me. But um Sophia got into UCLA and she has posted her commitment and she's really excited. Number one public school in the United States. super big deal. 9%

252acceptance rate. Smart kid. Um she's also gonna watch this and be like, "Tatie, are you kidding me?" I'm so excited. But um yeah, so if you see her, congratulate her. Um and yeah, end of quarter three check. Gy's Got Talent. That was awesome. So I hear. Um and then I missed the Jackie Robinson day for Mr. Taylor's class, but um but I also heard that that was awesome. And yeah, I think everyone's just locked in for quarter four. And oh my gosh, I got my junior privileges today. Pretty cool. Growing up. Yep. So, what what are um Can you tell people what junior privileges? Oh, yeah. So, it basically means that as long as all of my grades stay above an 85, um I can leave school for study halls. So, a little bit of

253freedom. Yeah, you'll take it right. Very cool. Um, and yes, Gley does have a lot of talent. I was able to go that and I was so like sold out. Um, and it was incredible what we the talent we have here. So, very cool. All right, moving on. Uh, community engagement. Bringing it back. Yay. wanted to see I was like we wanted to see if Megan wanted to comment from last year on community engagement go back and it's not April 1st anymore I mean but I mean you've been doing a lot of work there's been some community engagement can I just make one quick plug here yes um the groundbreaking ceremony for our new school will be on June 12th rain or shine at 6 p.m. And it is going to be a party. A

254party. There will be the jazz band. There will be cake and balloons and speeches and shovels and children and it's going to be amazing. So, you'll hear more about it probably a lot more about it probably from this lady. But June 12th, put it on your calendar. I've heard it's going to be very exciting. It is going to be very exciting. I heard the children will be doing the earth work there. That was we'll give cannot confirm nor can I tiny shovel. Is there a labor law? Can we write that into curriculum? Just saying. All right. Kim, finance, have you been busy? Uh, I think we've covered everything. The one thing I will say is that I want to apologize to anyone who tried to attend the meeting on Monday. Uh we moved it to

255a remote meeting partly to um help me out because it was the day before tax day and it was hard for me to get away from the office. But unfortunately, Tuttle Road lost power um literally moments before the meeting started. And I think that that resulted in some people either not getting the message or trying to log in and not getting in. So I just want to apologize if that happened because it is never ever our intent to block someone from attending a meeting and I'll be in touch about when our next meeting is. Yeah. Yeah. That was a very unusual day for sure. Thank you, Kim. Policy Jesse. All right. Absence. Uh we got two first read policies here people to take a look at. The first one uh policy BEA. So that's schoolboard

256use of electronic mail. So this one came up for review as a result of the Supreme Court Lindy decision and the changing social media landscape in the last 15 years since this policy was adopted. This policy was all about friending. Um uh so the linky decision points to the importance of individual board members making clear on their social media pages uh and posts that they're speaking in their individual capacity and not on behalf of the board unless explicitly authorized to do so and offers some example language that could be used by board members. additionally points to the importance of providing links where information can be found on the district website or any other official platforms uh when sharing board related information on social media. So encourage everybody to take take a look at that let

257us know if there's anything gives you heartburn. Um can I can I ask a couple questions? Um, so was most of the changes suggested in here is this from are these things that you that came from Drummond Woodson or or like a example policy or were some of these um generated from the policy committee? A little of both. So Drummond Woodson had some suggestions and then we we softened some of the language uh and then there were things we wanted to take out and they said we should probably keep some of them in. So there's been a bit of a bit of back and forth between the two, Tim. Yeah, it a mix of both. I mean, I think they were had like specific recommended language with what we should say on social media, too,

258and we were like, eh, like we kind of gave a little bit more flexibility to some of that stuff, but like yeah, most of the stuff that they made input on was um was agreeable. like it makes a lot of sense. But there there we I think we softened it to to Jesse's point to to be a little bit more flexible, but good for the time. Well, I there's language such as like board member shall and now it's such as. So, yeah, we give an example, but we're not saying you have to use that, but Well, I appreciate having this because I know this has come up a lot at least the past three years of me being on the board just about like what we should and shouldn't be doing. So, it's nice to

259have some guidance, right? school board. The the policy is entitled school board. We did talk about that and it was just schoolboard related because I don't think we could do anything like that. Yeah. But Oh, yeah. Sean, it is try and speak on our behalf. Any other This has come up. I'm just saying this has come up and I think we should talk about addressing this um maybe going into next board year is when we have committees where there are community volunteers um just guidance. I think that would be helpful. So I think that's something just to take note of just so people know. Yeah, good point. Uh any other questions on All right. So our our second first read is policy JLCD administering medications to students. Uh so this has been in process with

260the school nurses since the end of last school year. GHS nurse Erica Zapperus uh met with the policy committee to review it in March. Uh and it's been reviewed by Drummond Woodsome. The changes reflect language updates, statute updates, and some related forms that are now available on Power School. There was a lot of talk of how to link those things. Um, so yeah, if there's anything in there that has questions about or wants to weigh in on. I have a question. Yeah. Um, does it include supplements like a lot of the um It does. Yes, it does. Supplements andor homeopathic remedies. Yep. Yeah, it's pretty exhaustive. We spent a lot of time talking about Yeah, there you are. all these things. Uh, and then one other note besides those. So, other updates, we formalized the

261referral from the policy committee to the building committee to undertake the process or processes and make recommendations for naming the new school and associated naming. So, building committee is going to take that on, punt it back to policy, who will then punt it to the school board when they've got names for things. Yeah. So far, it's Valente Elementary School. So, we'll vote on that next week. First read first. Can I get a second? You got Exactly. I've cleared out. So, you've picked up my only All right. Okay. Thank you, Jesse. um facilities. Jeff, do you have a presentation that I shared with you a couple hours ago? I shared a I shared a a short presentation to walk through it. Um okay. So, we um met yesterday as a I should be there shared valenti.

262There I am down there. Um, so, uh, we met as a building committee yesterday, as we talked about, to go over the latest numbers that we've gotten, um, from the estimator, which finally came in. Now, they've been with the design team for a little bit. Um, and I can kind of see why they delayed giving them to us right now because I think they needed to work through some of those numbers. So um opening up I think before we kind of discuss those numbers I think mostly for the public but for us too it's important to remember that we the word contingency and what that means here. So we have built in contingencies within this budget. So we had a 5% project contingency and also a 5% um bid contingency as well. And we've used

263these or we're using these as just like just in case cushion. It's one of our many forms of a security blanket that's been built into the estimate, right? Um and so it is possible that actual costs in the budget um are tracking under our budget, but when you include the contingency, they go it looks like we are over budget and that is what is currently kind of happening. So we'll get to it in a minute. Um, but we have fully kind of expected to use contingency. We hope not to use all of it, but like it's would be surprising to not use at least some of it. And the other big thing um, and Sean could very well talk to this as well, is that there are layers of contingency within the budget. So, for

264example, we have that 5% project and we have the 5% bid, but within certain line items or from certain like subcontractors, we have contingencies that are built into those line items as well. So, that when um if if you actually looked at the total percentage of contingencies, there's probably a lot more built in than just those two 5% ones that are in there, right? Um and even the estimator probably put a a contingency when they gave us the estimate to so that the estimator is somewhat safe. Um so there's there's multiple layers of contingency. So in our original proposal as you see here um we're we're budgeted or allotted project allowance is 53,492,000. Right. In March after the first project estimator, we were a little bit above this, but our you could see our contingency

265stayed the same, but our estimator was saying that like some of the materials picked or the stuff that we haven't moved to add alternates, everything we were kind of asking for put us over the allotted amount. Then April 16th happened and what we were given um most recently was a much higher number at 55,755,258 and that kind of set off alarm bells for I think anyone who had seen that of whoa we're over 4% including Jeff felt that and Scott felt that. Um and so we we went deeper into the numbers. Now, we expected it to be higher because the estimator was going to build in somewhere between a 2.5 and a 8% tariff contingency. We've heard various numbers based off of estimators, but it was some some place around there. Um, and we ended

266at about a 5% um tariff contingency. So if you look at our contingencies here um right now built in because the whole thing doesn't get the 5% contingency. It's really just like the one project that that um around the the new school build right now about 5 million. We have in in tariff contingencies just over like 5,800 not tariff contingencies all of our contingencies that include tariff contingencies is probably close to $6 million in just contingencies which makes up that uh which is a bigger portion of the overall project cost than we had before. So our contingency money has gone up but that so has now the overall like project um costs if that makes sense the total. So um even though that we can you go to the next slide. Even though that you

267since our um are the we had to account for the tariff tariff contingencies and confusing economic times. Um, we wanted to bring that money down a little bit to make us feel safer. Um, I think we have the contingencies even if we didn't do this to probably be safe. Um, but we didn't feel good with being over as much as we were. So, Scott and Jeff and the design team did a beyond admirable job of reviewing the budget and getting looking for potential cost savings. They were really creative and flexible. So, I'm going to go over some of those right now. So, as you know that um we the building committee really heavily advocated for parking and one of those parking spots is um over the you could describe it better but it's in front

268of the GCA like parking over that ugly pond kind of area pond in quotes area everyone knows um and so that actually is disproportionately impacted by the potential for tariffs because it includes like this plastic casing that comes from China, I think. And so for about 30 spots, we um we would have to spend $500,000 on that. So what we're going to do because we think that parking and the location of it is extremely valuable. And even though I think that is very expensive parking, the location of it is just it's location, location, location. So right now that's in our bid alternate. It is possible that like we look at other parking solutions like we could look back out here but like there are other spots because we don't parking again is a sensitive issue

269for us. We don't want to lose that but I think by the time we get to um when we see a little bit clearer picture of where our bids come in we can kind of decide on parking. So right now that is moving over the parking over the pond is moving to bid alternate. Then, um, we are going to save $275,000 on, um, not putting in the MIW windows and cafeteria doors. Um, and Scott, you're welcome to talk about that if you want to right now, but I think most of the the biggest problem windows in MIW were replaced already this year. Um, and um, when we brought this up with staff yesterday in the building committee, they felt completely comfortable with where we're at and we'll replace those. kind of part our typical like

270facilities plan. So, and just to mention one of the things that we didn't initially include that is in part of like the base budget is I mentioned the roof earlier and how it's being drilled into um because that is part of um the MIW project um is to replace that roof which it's going to be. Yes, the whole roof that there's the things that were cut, which is why I really when I saw that big number come out or being over budget. I was concerned that we would have to eat into things like that, some like real big structural issues or academic related issues. Um, but I think this savings that we're going over right now do not hit any of that. Um, so the roof is still there. Um, we're replacing the whole roof.

271There's hopefully no more leaks. Um, and I think all the rubber that's going to be used in it is made in America. So, we feel good about that. Um, all right. So, then there's the maintenance building. I think we are scaling back on the windows uh that we're going to put in. We were going to put in a very very Steve Blat likes to say a very, very, very good window and now we're just going to put in a very, very good window. One less vary. Um, were we also reducing the number of windows? Yeah. Yes. And reducing the number of windows, too. Yes. Um I still think there might be room to play with there because we're going to change the siding of that as well because the siding that um is anticipated um

272is steel and I think there's some tariff concerns around that. So they're looking at alternative siding options. It's just little aluminum but just it's aluminum sighting and most of that's made in Canada. So yes. Yeah. Yes. These are the things we're dealing with. Um, okay. The field lights. I think this is still um I think this is not a definite no. There's a lot of things that we have to kind of adjust for, but right now there's this opportunity right now to since we have field lights over it, um they've been adequate. Um they're not necessarily where we want to be long term. Um, and so we are going to hold off from replacing just really the like the it's almost like the the light fixtures or bulbs that going from like a 30 what

273is that candle whatever to 50. Um, we are sticking we're sticking to what we currently have but we are going to do all the infrastructure around it so that when we want to switch or have the money or we want to do external funding or something like that we can easily do it. it's already plugged in to to be able to do it. So, um, but we are going to save a good amount of that. Um, and I Yeah, this is one of the things I mentioned in the earthworks. It didn't need to be part of that correct budget and we didn't want to have concerns at that phase about going over, so we're holding it. Correct. Um, and then, um, this is we've been able to kind of negotiate around the turf and, um,

274reduce some of those funds. I didn't ask too specifically about what they did to kind of reduce that, but I think they they've we aren't spending as much in that. So, the total cost right now that we that we've been able to reduce pretty, you know, it took a day for them to do that, but it's pretty quick. Um, is $800,000. And then if you go to the next slide, the rest of that um we think that we are going to try to close the gap with some potentially of our um bid contingency. So that's that closes if we add that plus the 800,000 in reductions, we're now back to on track and below budget. Um, it's important to note that the actual like project costs are below what we've anticipated at it. It's really

275just been the added tariff contingencies that have put us over that. Um, so I think with all the insurance that we have in the contingencies and the layers of contingencies, I actually think we're doing pretty well. I feel much more comfortable than maybe this kind of shows um because that we had to kind of eat into some of that. But I'm I'm hopeful that the I'm hopeful that the tariff situation resolves itself between now and by the time this has to get built so that we can we can put this money back into where we need to. But right now, I feel confident and comfortable where we're at, much more comfortable than I did earlier this week. And so so did the building committee. So this is just where we're at. And these numbers change

276every day. We just got a new set of numbers kind of today just like a couple hours ago that we'll like be digging through in the budget committee uh subcommittee of the facilities of the of the billing committee will be diving into to see what else we can kind of save or um potential potential areas of of warning and and concern. Sean, who's in the audience now, has been incredible of finding things and explaining the contingencies upon a contingencies and he's got great uh spreadsheets. So, we've really valued our community members and that's also to note that um our committee members who are in the community who um are architects and been, you know, project managers on school designs have also feel comfortable with where we're at with the budget. They all I sent an

277email to them around explaining all of this and they all feel good and the our reduction rationale makes a lot of sense. So, um that's where we're at. So, if you see anything that like whoa, we're way out over budget, we're actually doing okay. Yeah, I Yeah, thank you for putting that together. I know we met until late last night. So, a couple other just context things and then of course if others um especially others on the the building committee have um things to add. So we are three weeks out from putting um the bid out for this. We had eight um qualified biders. Seven or eight. I feel eight bids. Okay. Um which is is really good. Very good. Um that is a nice number to know that we're going to um hopefully have

278some pretty competitive bids for this. Um and our work work is happening like every day to continue to refine and understand um where there might be more opportunities before the bid package is put together to make sure that we're going to get the the best bid possible for what we need and yeah the amount of work like I said the drill the drilling into the roof um just to make sure we have the specs right with the right materials. I mean, the number of pivots that have had to been made just over the past couple weeks to make sure that materials aren't going to drive up these bids. I mean, unfortunately, things um have been changing pretty often. Um but we're also talking we'll be talking with legal about ways to protect ourselves um through

279the contract um if there's tariffs put in that don't end up needing to be paid. Um, so we're just looking for other opportunities because we'd rather not spend taxpayer money on tariffs. Just saying. I mean, I don't want my taxpayer money spent on tariffs. Um, so we all voted no on that. Yeah. Yes. Uhhuh. So, um, what did what did I miss, fellow building committee members? I don't I think you I think you summed it up. Yeah. I just want to echo the fact that I think everybody's contributing a lot of their time, effort, and energy, and it's much appreciated, and I think we're lucky to have the community members we have and their skill set because it's added a lot to the project. It has. Yeah, it's been really nice and it's fun to

280listen because I know nothing about this and I'm just like, no, it's been so interesting. Yeah. Um Tim, do you are you okay if we put this up on the website? Yes. I mean, we could clean. We'll have Melissa do that. Can we change the red? Sorry. Yeah, I didn't. The red was really bothering me too and I had to I'm pretty good at Google Slides and like the I was in the series forever and I was where is the color just for this? But yes, let's change the red to something that's crimson maybe. I don't know. Yes. Oh yeah, that great at maroon. Maroon. We love the maroon. We can do that. Other questions, Kim? So, uh, it's my understanding that this essentially the same school is being built in Scowaggan right now. And

281how is that going? Is is that going according to plan, according to budgets? I mean, obviously things were in place before tariffs, but yeah, my understanding is they're going to get that in. I mean, they had it all bitted out and everything and they so they're they're they're stuck to what is part of those contracts, but my understanding is that they have not been impacted significantly by that, but that school is coming along. Yep. According to budgets and everything else, yeah, he's he's usually on budget. He bragged about that yesterday, but also we all had to knock on wood. So, yeah. Pretty sure they're getting all their ad alternates for that project. So yes, they had that much room in their budget. Yes. And it sounded like they were doing more beyond what they had

282the alternates. Yeah. Yeah. It's a good sign that we have that many competitive biders because I think our our understanding of the landscape is people are dropping out because they don't want to build right now. So hopefully hopefully people are hungry as you say if they're willing to bond it. But yeah. Yeah. Yep. So then the bids come back in June. Yes. Yeah. So we have one more tentatively scheduled meeting between now and when the bid goes out and that's uh two weeks from yesterday. So is that the 30th? What did I say? Uh I don't have the calendar in front of me, but it's 30th. Yeah, the 30th. Um so if we'll be reviewing the budget again between now and then. Um, and I, you know, it's, we'd have to do something pretty quickly

283if we're going to make any kind of changes, but we will do our due diligence on it now that we have the detail budget, and we'll let you know if anything changes, but right now it looks good. Thank you so much. And yes, thank you for um there's been a lot of work that's gone into uh working to make this a success. So, thank you. Curriculum. Oh, can look. Hi, can I tag on to that before I do curriculum? Yeah. Um I don't know if this goes in announcements are here but I did message some of you and I don't know who else you've told yet but um there was a bill um put in to extend the bond the the loan from 25 a year to 30year um with the help of um the

284honorable gentleman sitting up there and um it passed this afternoon um 9 to2 out of the education committee. Good. So, great news. It's looking good to head to the floor and um but yeah, there was a little bit. So, if you hear anyone if if um Greg E, am I saying that right? Greg Ee testified to it as did Mr. Porter. Thank you very much. Um you might if you review the um committee meeting you might see a little blip that occurred something about tableabling it but at any rate a few flip-flops and it's all set it's passed so just scroll farther along in the okay whole video it's out of committee. Yeah. And there's no fiscal note attached. So that's always Yes. We that was Yeah. Yeah. We made it very clear at the

285That's being born by the local. That's great because that was pivotal in our plan of financing. So Yep. You didn't know I could do back flips, but apparently I can't. So I want to add that so to give you all a relief to to know that that is on its way. Yeah. Thank you so much. We very much appreciate that. I know, right? Yeah. of these. So on to curriculum. All right. Now put your other hat. Exactly. So on to curriculum. Um so I talked about the March the last meeting March 31st at the last meeting. So I won't go back over that. Um I would want to follow up though that the one of the major topics in that was um presentation about the potential of considering uh world languages at the lower levels

286and it's a long range consideration but we wanted to get that going and um the young lady graciously did a wonderful presentation on that and just to follow up on that we did get um or certainly I did and I didn't I'm sorry I didn't even notice who else was copied on that on the committee but we did get a email from uh 10 or 12 um language lang language teachers who are very much in support of exploring that idea. Great. And that was important because that was one of the things we didn't know for sure when going into it like well is there support for this in the in the in the faculty. So at least we know that there is now. So that was great to hear and I apologize if you didn't

287get it. I can certainly forward it to the rest of you guys. Do you want to follow up on that or um Awesome. Uh, I did not get that email, but I also have not been getting many emails that are coming externally from like anything. So, that might be why. But, um, and then, oh, right, I'm meeting with some high school Spanish teachers and um, one of the French teachers about just progression and seeing um, what they might want to do, what they might want to see. hopefully get some like good answers in case I ever end up in a presentation up here. So then I can like have something to say about what they think about it because obviously they see it firsthand. Um. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. That's great. And that's it except that

288our next meeting will be May 19th at three on Zoom. Great. Thank you. Appreciate it. Kim Equity, we met last week. Uh Mari talked about the stakeholder survey, things that leaped out um to her that perhaps should be on our um meaning the equity committee's radar. Um so that was very helpful and I apologize because my computer died and I lost my notes so I can't tell you everything. Um and my brain is shot now. But uh it was very helpful to to think about the survey from the standpoint of what the committee is looking for and where the equity plan is at. Uh and um we also had a good conversation about maybe um changing some of the questions next year uh being a little bit more pointed. Um one of the the budget

289items that did not advance was for a survey. I can't remember if it was a company or consultants but to work with Mari on the stakeholder survey. U we did not advance that through the budget but it is something that she is looking at now that she has a better idea of what information and data she wants to be uh gathering and and how we can how we can make sure that I'm just going to say what Julie said every child is able to access their education um exactly what they need. So that was a good conversation. Thank you. Appreciate it. You did well even without your notes. So any other ad hoc committee reports? I went to the park and wreck park wreck and park the show. I went to the show. Um the

290actual committee name it. Yeah. Parks and recreation advisory committee. I got it right. Um, and uh, we talked about the Twin Brooks master plan and the fields on the Gley Road side of that are MIW like uh, or MIW are um, district kind of owned and responsible. So, I am leading a subcommittee on that team to kind of go over those uh, recommended changes and approvals. And so I will bring that to the board at some point. But there's a lot in the master plan around parking and improving really like the our our access to baseball and softball fields because we have limited access to that right now. Right. So that's been that's like the big part of the master plan on that side. So um I'll be working on a good deal on the

291master plan that'll propose to you pretty soon. Great. Can I ask about that? Um the the the the road on that side to the fields. Yeah. Is that town owned, school owned, paid for? The road going down to it like the gley and then the little like dirt road that goes down to that. I don't know. I think it's bad. Let me just let me cut to the quick. I mean, I don't know how anyone gets to games or what. It has massive Yeah. holes, potholes all the time. It keeps happening and it's like, ooh. I mean, if we've got all these visitors coming to our games there. Well, they usually don't make it there. They end up on the other side of Twin Brooks. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But, um, and then they end up

292driving back around, but by the time they do get to that parking lot, it is awful. And the parking specifically, I'm really glad that someone's focusing on it because it's kind of just like if you get there, you get there. If you don't get there, you're on the road. That's kind of it. Um especially with like and obviously we have kind of baseballs and softballs flying all over the place. Cars get hit. It's not great. But yeah, thank you. Yeah. Pretty sure we're on the hook to pay for that. There's a comp plan meeting where they talked about it and it's like we've got the 99-year lease and we're on the hook for it's like us or the little league might want to pay for it and I was like the school not going to

293pay for it but maybe little league's got money. We had the lease on that property and then we relocated the fields when we did Gley Middle School and part of that project that was state funded was a fields down on Gley side of Twin Brooks. So, um, my guess is we're going to have some responsibility on that. Yeah. I look I actually looked at the the deed. Did you read all of it? Yeah, I did read all of it. I'm pretty sure we're on the hook to pay for any improvements. How does a co-op play into this? Maybe they build fields. Yeah, the town the town couldn't sell it to us because of the covenants on the deed, but we they were able to lease it to us. Um, so we were able to move

294the fields there. little institutional knowledge. It's good. Yeah. Um, a couple other ad hocs from me. I was not able to attend the athletic advisory last week, but there's a draft guidelines for the use of Hutchinsfield that it's going around. Um, so that will probably at some point come at least to the administrative office. I don't know if this would come all the way to the board, but it's being worked on. Yeah. Um so that and then also talking about yes what are what are the things that um some fundraising could focus on related to the the fields is and the turf field is is definitely being discussed. Um so I need to get an update of what was what happened last week. Um I just want to do a little plug. I know Kyle

295Cares was mentioned earlier. I know the 5K is coming up. Oh, there's I love that you can just like scan the sign out there and and do a sign up. So on your on your way out in the dark if you want to sign up for that race, you can just scan the QR code on the on the banner out front of the school. Um I unfortunately won't be in town that day, so I can't uh join join the 5K, but it was a great turnout last year. Um and a nice fundraiser for that organization. Any other ad hoc committee? Uh I attended my wellness finally and we had a nice discussion broke out into groups about uh what the committee's been working on and potential website updates. What would be helpful for parents? What

296would be helpful for teachers that's wellness related. Um so yeah maybe some website updates coming in the future. All right. Anything else on committees? So, moving to communications, I did just want to mention we have um the next two weeks off from from board meetings. I mean, you you might have a committee meeting, but regular board meetings, but May 8th, tell all your friends, tell firsttime voters on May 8th that they can come and go to the district budget meeting and raise their little card up. Um it'll be at the GC, right? There'll be some seniors. Well, this will probably be their first opportunity to vote. So, um and that meeting is at 700 p.m. It is a little later just to make sure everyone can attend. Um so, remind everyone, you know, that that's

297happening. And then we do have the joint meeting scheduled for May 15th with the towns. And as we've been mentioning, real focus on that conversation is some of these longer term planning conversations and also shared services. Um and yeah, and then the next week we have another schoolboard meeting. So you didn't get enough tonight. You have a few weeks off and then Oh yeah. So speaking of school board meetings, now my term is up. Um, so it depends on whether I get elected, but uh I my understanding is a meeting was moved to April 15th, which is tax day. So I was wondering if there was any way for next for next year. Oh yeah. Well, so we were trying to get away from the Thursday. Do we want to just make it a different

298day of the week like for that week? For that week, the Monday. It's the week before April break, but it's also there are holidays. Well, and it's the budget. So, keep in mind what happened this week from a budget perspective. Like, is that always the meeting where the board approves the budget? It is. It's it we looked at moving it to like after break, which would be more comfortable. We can't get the absentee ballot uh I mean the district budget meeting in in time and then get the absentee balloting. We used to do that back in the day when before we had to worry about um having all those timets lined up, but now that we have absentee balloting, we can't we have to be respectful of that piece. We can't get away from it.

299Okay. Well, the 15th is my husband's birthday and the 16th is our anniversary, so if we could bump it, that would be appreciated. Um it sounds like the 15th's out. So, well, I not necessarily, but just If if I could just rip him off. Yeah. Is that is the day before tax day any better, Kim? No, not necessarily. But but what happens is is when we submit the last return, we go out and then I'm very tired. But whatever it needs to be, it needs to be. I'll have Melissa work on that. Okay. If there's another option, that would be lovely. I know. I wish we could do it. Might not be back next year. Um, yeah, it's nice running on a post. Um, great. Okay. Can I have a motion to adjurnn, please? I

300move to return. Thank you, Christina. Can I get a second? Megan, all in favor? Yay. Thank you. I know this was like Good job, Sean. Yes. Way to stick it out. Yeah. A marathon.