MSAD #51 School Board Meeting February 5, 2024

001going to move Let's see we don't have anything on the agenda for recognition I'm going to move to approval of minutes can I get a motion to approve the minutes of the January 2nd 2024 meeting as present presented so moved thank you Megan oh there we go can I get a second second great anuka we'll give it to anuka this one um any questions or comments about the meeting agenda minutes or the meeting minutes January 2nd it's a long time ago last time we met okay can I get a vote for purle of the meeting minutes all in favor great now and Tommy you abstaining Tommy's abstaining he was not here all right now we're going to move to public comment the board welcomes and recognizes the value of public comment and to ensure public

002comment is fair in orderly we follow procedures outlined in our board policy BH and we ask that all members of the public do so as well we follow this policy to help keep the meeting civil respectful and productive we also hope that this allows for all community members who would like to speak to be heard we ask that speakers use the designated Podium when making their comments and speak into the microphone if you are interested in speaking please wait until recognized by myself comments made by individuals are limited to a maximum of 3 minutes at a meeting the clock will be visible on screen to help keep track of time after 3 minutes the timer will go off and comments should be wrapped up uh if you're here to make comment please state your name

003and town of residence before beginning your remarks residents and staff members will be given priority over non-residents our policy allows for 30 minutes total of public comment although that can be modified at the discretion of the board and as a reminder public comment is not a time for discussion Q&A or debate between the board and the speakers rather it is a chance for members of the public to express their opinions in school and education matters and the board will not comment on remarks made by speakers during the public comment period lastly please keep comments respectful and civil that includes members of the audience please do not interrupt or respond to speakers comments we also ask that comments are addressed to myself as the chair and please do not direct comments at or about individuals in

004our schools or community so I would welcome if anyone's here for public comment all right thanks everyone we'll be moving on to some presentations I'm really excited to have Steve Bon Associates here to present a draft concept design for a new school project um you can be welcome to the podium and I don't is there a presentation that um yes we have awesome um and just to bring everyone up to speed as a reminder we've looked a few months ago the school board voted to start looking an an on campus option um we went into an agreement for concept design with Steven blaten Associates and they were bringing a draft concept design for the new school project for the board to have a a first look at tonight so thank you welcome thank you very

005much um we hi thanks uh I have a soft voice um thanks very much we're really very happy to be involved with set 51 again after several wonderful projects on your campus um I was thinking tonight I lived in Cumberland for 35 years over by the fairground and all three of my children went through the middle school and the high school before we got to work on them so when I say how do you like the middle school they don't know anyway um we're really happy uh to to work with the young students uh we have done several um Early Childhood in elementary schools and um we really [Music] enjoy making this space supportive for little people so that they understand what it looks like how you go in what it feels like and so

006the scale of the building and the sense of the building is important to us we want our buildings to be handsome but we really want them to work well Pat Caroll is a landscape architect and site designer who's worked with my office for 30 years and he's been involved in all of the work on your campus and I'd like him to introduce to you uh our ideas for the entire campus and then we'll focus down on the plans of the school Pat Carol uh good evening hi my name is Pat Carol I'm with Carol Associates we're Landscape Architects and as Steve said um we've been involved in just about we've touched just about everything on this campus over the past 20 years or so I think it started with the uh new Middle School we've

007done a bunch of work at the high school Mabel Wilson and now we get the opportunity to kind of complete the quad so to speak of the four corners of the of the grey campus um this is also an opportunity to take another larger look at at the entire campus and look at circulation parking um utilities drainage and and how the entire campus seems to want to work I know we've you know we did a master plan back when the Middle School uh was first uh envisioned and a lot of that Master Plan has come to come to fruition but there are some things that you know I know that Jeff has voiced some concerns in the past about some of the uh some circulation issues and traffic issues internally um part of the original

008concept and it still holds true I think is that you should be able to reach every building on this site in internally that you don't need to go out onto Main Street come down to Tuttle Road and come in the other way you can do that but ideally if you're going from one school to the other especially as a um either either staff or students going back and forth um you should be able to do that internally and I I think it it works to that extent now and and I think it's going to this gives us an opportunity to really kind of address some of the some of the issues relating to that but I think the uh oops um I didn't mean to do that but this is okay um you know the

009real Focus here is on the new middle or on the new primary school and um it was fortuitous that the district acquired the uh initially acquired the uh Wyatt property which is directly adjacent to the to the school um and I don't have a pointer but it's kind of this section of land right in here and we started initially looking at that and realized that um it was just slightly smaller than what it really needed to be and so the district worked through some negotiations with the abutter Mr Campbell and I believe that uh you guys are all aware of uh trying to acquire a a small triangular piece of property that really kind of allows us then to kind of um develop the School site as it as it really needs to be um

010the intent here is to utilize again the the existing circulation internally and so everything all the the major circulation for this for this new school comes in off of Main Street off the main entry uh just to the uh west side of the uh this building here actually um and then and then it comes into kind of the the school circulation around the school itself we're actually proposing um to and maybe I can oops I can't do that uh oh uh help what did I do I don't know what you did where are we here here we go so there I want to go back so then you're just going to do left and right okay that's what I thought I did we make it bigger uh there isn't a way to make it bigger

011I'm sorry about that now you can and you can do this yeah that's what I think I was doing and it went anywhere stay [Laughter] right so this major woo this major entrance here is going to remain as is and as you as you know from probably driving back and forth on this thousands of times currently the driveway comes in and it Loops up tighter to the property line and then across uh we're planning on re rearranging the the major driveway through the site so that we're going to split that parking lot that's out there so there'll be about 80 spaces on the PAC side and about well we have a total of about 90 some spaces Associated on the other side of the driveway which would be um dedicated to the new school so

012the way that would work would be there would be some staff parking staff parking along the uh perimeter here you come in and there'd be there'd be a actually you'd loop around there'd be a parent drop off Zone in this area and then another parent drop off Zone here this is the major Bus Loop so the buses would come in Loop through here and back out and then head over to probably to mael Wilson or come from Mabel Wilson to here um so again we've had got about 90 some spaces directly associated with the new school um there's a uh Steve's going to get into the design of the school itself but the main entrance is here um so it faces out onto kind of all this circulation and it's highly visible uh the playground

013area is in the rear so there'll be a a large playground area in the back back here for the uh be for K and one and then the prek program is in this end of the building and there's a dedicated prek playground that's separated from the other playground um just because we like to the little tiny kiddos like to be they don't like to be bullied so much um and then and then the service area for the school would be here and there's no kitchen in the school that's going to be serviced from the from the kit kitchen and Mabel Wilson they'll just be shuttling Vans back and forth with food um this site currently OCC is occupied by the maintenance building here and that Maintenance building is proposed to be moved if I can

014move this around down to the west side or South side of the uh the high school over here and which is currently it doesn't impact any parking um and the thought here is that it might be a two-story building where you've got access from the parking lot side for vehicles and and uh maintenance Baye and then there might be a lower level that's where all the uh mowing equipment and things like that is is kept that has easy access directly out onto the fields so that would be relocated there um we're also proposing and hopefully I can do this without messing it up here we go there's a series of other improvements that as I mentioned we're we're really beginning to take a look at and some of these have been kind of flushed out

015and others are just kind of I just want to identify just as kind of um to highlight that we're looking at them and they're they're carry some of these are carried in the budget and um but they're all things that we still need to to address so again number one here is the is the school and the work associated with that um one of the things that we've we've had some initial meetings with the town and um they have two concerns and I know the district does too about traffic on Main Street and traffic on Tuttle Road so we've been working with them and they you know what they are proposing that the district take a look at is uh on M Main Street here there's about a thousand foot section of Road of Main

016Street that um that we would widen one lane wide wider than what's there and that would allow through traffic to move by with a turn lane dedicated turn lane and uh Bill Shane is convinced that we can do that within the RightWay and it's a pretty minor widening it's about a thousand lineal feet and um that should solve a lot of the problem that currently exists out on Main Street the second thing is on Tuttle Road um he would like to see again a widening from basically from the fire station down to um to the uh to Mabel Wilson and and the addition of a sidewalk there I think that um the residents on that side of Tuttle Road have been crying for a sidewalk for a long time and this is an opportunity to

017do that I believe he's also um has a commitment from the state to install two of the flashing pedestrian crossing signs on Tuttle Road uh which will make Crossings much much safer and easier for for the students and and residents in the town um again as part of this Improvement of circulation one of the things we're really looking at is is how to better kind of provide circulation drop off for buses and parents at within the campus and that includes really taking a hard look at Mabel Wilson and how the circulation there really works right now it's a little convoluted as you know the buses come in off of the uh Middle School Drive and they come in and drop off here uh parents come in off of this drive by the administration building and

018they come in and kind of Stack up and uh drop off on this side of the building the office is on this side of the building over here so it's not a real clear kind of highly visible location for arrival so one of the thoughts here is to um to reconfigure this a little bit and come in here and provide a Bus Loop that comes across this side so basically reorient the front door to the to the north side of the building so there'd be a Bus Loop here apparent drop off here and then we're considering also reconfiguring some of the parking in the long Tuttle Road here toing provide a again a secondary drop off Zone um on the building side of that parking lot which would help reduce the scale of that parking

019a bit we could get a little bit of landscaping in there and uh it would also provide a space I know you know N9 o'clock in the morning and in the afternoon it's kind of a zoo out there right now so providing more drop off and pickup spaces for parents is um is really one of the goals here um we're also looking at um in order to kind of accommodate some of the parking that we end up losing by moving driveways and so forth around here um and to deal with a kind of a an aesthetic issue as much as anything we're looking at putting that um storm drain bios Swale that's out in front of the uh Pac putting that underground in um Chambers and then parking on top of that and we can

020get about 32 to 35 spaces on top of that that could be utilized for student parking or event parking um and it kind of just cleans up that whole area quite a bit so that's a that's another kind of item that we're looking at uh we're looking at if we need it and I'm not sure we do I did a parking count today and with with the new parking we're proposing here and the reconfiguration over here here uh we're adding about 160 parking spaces to the campus over what's here now and you you all realize that once once the prek school is built there's really not going to be much of a difference in staff the staff is just going to move from Mabel Wilson to this new school and some of the staff is

021going to move from Mabel Wilson down to the to the middle school so um you know it's a pretty generous amount of additional parking we think that you know that's probably an appropriate number but if there is additional parking that needs to happen uh we're thinking that um the area basically just to the right outside the door here uh could potentially be expanded for some additional parking down there and then finally um it's in Steve's budget and I know it's been talked about about several for several years here is is to develop a turf field where the soccer field where the game field is now so those are all items that we're looking at in in we're getting into some of them in more detail than others right now but um they're all supposedly part

022of this project and and hopefully will lead to some pretty major improvements within the campus so I think with that I'm G turn it over to Steve and he can talk about the building to do that thank uh the uh the proposed building is um sort of strange shaped and I want to describe this to you then I'm going to go into a number of slides which show you different elements but I did want to speak to you about the fact that the Fairly unusual boundary of the property impacts the design of the school so it's not just an arbitrary fan we needed to get as close to the U West border as we could the southwest and we needed to respect this border along the current drive through the campus um that has driven

023the design as well as the fact that Pat mentioned we want the um let's see did I just lose my uh good thanks we wanted the entrance to be smack dab in the middle so that's right there you enter sort of in the middle of the school not in an edge and then I'm going to go through a bunch of stuff with you uh as we go through the slides as I just mentioned the main entrance is going to be easy to see and also it's important that this is the office and this is the principal and this is the nurse clinic and all of these have eyes out on the approach to the school um then and as Pat mentioned we wanted to keep Vehicles away from play students so we put the building

024in between them and not only do you not look at a bunch of cars when you approach the school but we keep them far away from each other for safety for noise for pollution all of that stuff we also um wanted to make sure that we had some community meeting spaces and so we put those all over here this is the multi-purpose room that will be used for fizzed this is the cafeteria so the places where the community can come the places where a lot of students gathered together making noise we put over to the side and so that when you come to an event here you come in the front door and immediately hang a right and the students come in and go left this shows you that as students come in and go

025left right around the office and the walls to the office will be windowed so you can follow the students in in general this is the younger students the youngest students prek as you go down this Corridor the first grade peels off and goes up a Stairway to the second floor and the K heads straight ahead and goes to their floor so this is first grade and this excuse me that was K this is first grade upstairs and this shows you that that corner sits over this corner right here and this corner sits over this corner here and that has an important Point all of this is just a little over one story tall all of this is one story and all of this is one story The twostory sits back from the edge around this

026Arc and that's so as these smaller students approach the school they approach a one-story building they don't come into a little door in a big face so we've kept the scale down and there are windows everywhere these are what I call pods on the first floor there are three PODS of classrooms these have four classrooms this one has three classrooms plus a flex space these are the youngest students these are four prek classrooms and these are two Flex classrooms and on the Upper Floor these are three pods of first grade classrooms you you live in a neighborhood of four classrooms that's it there are no long corridors there are no doors after doors after doors so for instance a first grader comes in in the morning goes upstairs right here and lives in one of

027these pods and they can go anywhere in the school but this is home these four classrooms and each of these pods has a small group room each one of them and they each have some storage closets it's the same on the first floor the K have a small group room for each group and even the earliest youngest children the pre they have a gathering space here where they can meet together and dance or sing or cry um now um this is keeping the concept of scale small the classrooms are generous but there aren't a lot of them together we have created an unusual room right in the middle of the school right off the front door and that's because Leanne and Jeff and Scott and I were talking about libraries and little kids don't do

028research little kids go and look and touch and listen so we've created what we call the round room and it's immediately off the entrance and it has Windows around it it has a wonderful round Skylight in the roof and it's just for looking and listening we call it the round room because it's round but it's right in the middle and we hope that it's a meeting room to come together and play with books we have built in expansion of six classrooms on the second floor out over over these classrooms on the end so the second floor only goes this far we can add without doing site work or foundation work or ripping up the campus six class rooms we could do two at a time we can do four or all six at once and

029that's so we don't run into a Mabel Wilson issue with Portables so there's a 100 students stud expansion that could be done relatively inexpensively the foundations are there the steel is there the slab is there at the roof and so you build on top of it we have done it several different communities and it's worked well you can't occupy these classrooms during construction so you build a wall inside right there while there's construction going on above you that's why we have Flex classrooms everywhere so that if we need to pull students out and move them to another classroom temporarily we can is that it for me okay good um that's the idea of the school that corridors are short and then they turn even this long Corridor bends right here so that even though it's

030kind of long here it's broken here and there's an only twostory space in the school is right here with a big window here bringing light in and view out that's the stairwell and then it bends again here we've got some special Edge spaces we've got a staff area we've got a room for itinerant we've got room for Consultants we have speech classrooms one on each floor on the second floor with the older students we have smaller Flex spaces so you can have a smaller group but we also have the largest Flex space which is here with movable walls at two locations so that you can have have any size group studying a project you also if you had a bulge coming through in enrollment you could have three smaller classrooms each classroom in the school

031has its own toilet the earliest childhood have direct access out to their playground so that they can come and go into this playground all deliver are over here far away this is music and art I would like to put Windows here so that as you approach the school you can see what the students are doing and we did this fan design not only in response to the boundary but also because these are wonderful Courtyards which bring light into all classrooms we did this first first at the East End School in Portland where we sped the classroom wings and we've done it now in a school Under Construction up in scoan and they work and I think that's a really good idea to do here okay um as I mentioned we have Flex classrooms in this

032orange they're everywhere that means you don't have to go all the way to the other side of the school to find an extra classroom that's a lot you've been patient I'm happy to answer any questions and um I will close by saying that this is designed for 500 students it can be expanded to close to 600 students I think it would feel very very good on opening day with 425 students it'll be fine it's a small scale school so happy to answer questions I bet Pat is too and thanks for your patience thank you so much I I do think there will be some questions um so I'd like to I know I've had a chance to ask some questions along with the facilities committee um but this is the first chance that the full

033board is gotten a little Peak at what you've been working on so I'd like to see if anyone has some questions to start can I follow up um we in the facility meeting saw the other day can you go to the slide with the outside with the Bus Loop and the so one thing we we asked a lot about was the drop off area and the parking and so I see you did adjust it so the Bus Loop is that a double Loop now in the sense the buses go in one Loop and that new one didn't go in P yeah let me um I'll just point okay um so what happens I'm sorry Loop is here and simar to what Loop Dr and thank you I'm sure they get a lot of use because

034it's almost direct access into the front door to pick up your kids so Bus Loop the bus I think there's about seven or eight buses that will fit in here there's about I think there's 10 drop off spaces parallel drop off spaces and then another 10 that we're parking and in addition to that this is where another drop off space somebody would come in here circle around and drop off along this side of the building too so there's a total of about 20 parallel spaces that um parents could use to and drop off or maybe shortterm parking and then another 90 some spaces that would be staff Park staff and visit a park and then that on the left of the Bus Loop that's an area parents could park and walk in could park here

035and walk in yes so I know we heard that kind of at the facilities committee the other day yes I I you've been very responsive thank you and that's that's where we actually because originally we were trying to maintain the existing circulation here and it was really kind of cutting everything pretty tight up there so by moving it down we don't really lose much parking in here we just allocate it differently within the site and then the high schoolers could park in that number six and the high schoolers can park over here is it equival is it an equivalent amount of parking that they've lost that they gain in the six we we've lost I think there's 50 spaces in here that would be lost M there's 32 here but there's a net total net

036increase of about 160 total on the campus so I mean I depends on where how you want to manage that but um I think Jeff Jeff had talked about perhaps um having high schoolers park over here if it need be we should just remember that we should have about half the staff at mael Wilson that we had so the net increase on the campus isn't we don't think significant although we're growing and we will grow but um I think the people that we may have to ask to walk a little bit more are the high school students from parking but there will be parking for them I I hear high school students like to walk right good for them it's good for you Tom did you uh yes so I have three questions um one

037you mentioned that um in the event of an expansion the first floor classrooms would have to be taken offline um how what's the the timeline for that like how long would they be offline um we did this up in Auburn on a school we designed and built and five years later we added two classrooms and I I think it took less than a full school year to build but to be conservative you would you we have those six classrooms elsewhere MH um we're waiting for an updated enrollment projection and we'll see how quickly the need for those six classrooms is going to come upon us okay so conservatively we would assume that they' be offline for an entire Academic Year right okay right I don't think it would require bringing Portables to the new school

038okay try to preclude that yeah uh the second question I have is about the fiz Ed space I was wondering what that looks like the fizzed space in the cafeteria we have thought about at length and we did a K3 up in Farmington a few years ago and their fizzed space is about 3,000 square ft we designed you a 50 by 60 square foot 300 square foot fizzed space we think that's pretty good for this age and size child 3,000 square fet our cafeteria is 50 1500 square ft it's the same it's the it's literally half the size of Mabel Wilson's cafeteria U cafeteria because the pre usually don't go to the cafeteria they eat in classrooms so you've got four lunches of a 100 students and that fits pretty well one of the things

039I do want to point out is that when I'm going to do this give me a minut when students finish lunch they don't have to go back to their classrooms they go out here and they go along this path to the playground so they don't TR and vice and reverse they don't tromp through the school on the way out to recess or to after lunch or before lunch so part of the reason I ask is um especially during basketball season season uh Court time is hard to come by and I assume that this is not going to alleviate that issue based on the size of the I uh I think that would be an outof scale room if we built a basketball court for first grade down I really do now uh you can persuade

040me if you can persuade the superintendent but um we tried to to keep the scale down that would be a bonus it's you're you're completely right about the AG group um the third question I have um is about the widening and um sidewalks on totle road um I was curious why that doesn't continue down to the um Middle School Entrance it may um we just and I'm gonna go back here um you know we had an initial meeting with with um Bill Shane and Carla at the time and he indicated what he thought was that it should go from the fire station to the to mael Wilson crosswalk he didn't he didn't mention that it should go all the way down to the Middle School Entrance but um you know we do have a traffic

041engineer on our team and one of their charges is to really look at um look at the circulation both on site and offsite and they'll be making some recommendations about that um so um it it very well could get expanded down that far okay thank you other questions can you oh sorry um on this campus Design This what you're showing us is including the potential additional property yes can you show us where that is on the plan and how it would change things if we did not have that property so it's pretty critical to the to the school design can I follow up on that an were you done oh so that parking lot north or on the Main Street side of the school is has um it's a loop and the parents pull through

042for DRP off and the service areas in the back of it but the parking in island in the middle is two like cars this way and cars this way no no there's only okay so so just hypothetically if if that land were not purchased and I'm making light I don't mean to make light of this I realize it's a lot of work but if that became just one one side of parking not the two not the middle and the side could that be sort of again I don't mean to like light of it but scooched over or that that one fan bent more could it could the plan be designed in a way that it if we take away that parking at least part of that that parking do we gain enough to not need

043the pizza slice not without a pretty major redesign of the building I don't think um because the wider wider part both of us down here can't hear if you unless you speak right into the mic I can't I think you're going to lose the opportunity to have dedicated parking specifically for the school it's going to start squeezing a lot of that do you also think it would limit the expandability of the school some of the opportunities that you were talking about expanding if if we asked to scale back um if that land wasn't able to be acquired well as Pat mentioned we'd redesign the school we'd come up with a different design and we would make sure that there was expandability and expanding up on a tight site is more logical in expanding out we

044couldn't do that as you notice we don't want to expand out on this footprint we want to go up but if for some reason that land became not available we would redesign and what would what would we lose I guess why why was this put forward instead of we would uh we try to make parking as as approximate as we can so that it's not a hassle for staff to get in and out and we wanted to get drop off close by because of the age of the children another important thing is the playground I mean we're out you know we're out on the outskirts we should have enough playground and the students coming from Mabel Wilson have had terrific playground uh even though it's now occupied by Portables but I I amum we walked

045this site several times we walked it with Scott and Jeff we walked it with Mr Campell um discussed everything and came to what we thought was a pretty logical proposal yeah can I just highlight a couple things that we talked about on Friday when we saw this plan for the first time in facilities that I that I think are important and the first is the drop off um where you have the main entrance one of the things that you you didn't mention but we did talk about is that the buildings that are at the main entrance are the office and the nurse but also probably the SRO space and how visible that entrance would be to the office and to the people that need to see who's coming in and how there will be sort

046of a locked vestibule um and I I think that that's a really nice thing to to highlight and to point out that as you walk through the school the little littles go straight ahead to pre the middle Littles hang a left and then the big guys go upstairs but how there is a a locked door right because this is a situation where so many you if the kids don't take a bus these are parents walking them in and their booster seats and just how important it was to have this be a visible entrance for school safety particularly for the age group so that was one thing I just wanted to point out that we didn't really get to tonight but I think is important to highlight um and then the other thing was I just

047thought it was very very smart to have the all the facilities on the outer side of the building nearest the parking lot so you've got the lunchroom and the um fizzed space but then all of those other rooms there are sort of the write that the um support if you don't do that stor up but just how how nice of a buffer that was to have that away from the prek playground and away from the um K and one playground and just how all the deliveries are made to one end of the school and not the other and how it really segregates the kids in and not just in a sort of keep them away from pollution and noise but in a in a really nice safe way to have them outside away from the

048cars EXC me I'm sorry couldn't I couldn't hear me security you put the playgrounds mostly on the left side South sunny and there are some mature trees there that we can save sorry I had one other question going back to um the entrance so you're saying that there isn't a lock door to get into the VES that you get buzzed in past that it's not a double buzzer system like we currently have there will be as many buzzer systems as you want we think you should buzzer everything okay just because there is visibility and there will be a microphone and a camera so we like to keep people outside I do want to point out there's an overh here so you can be out of the weather you can be out of the weather as

049you're waiting to get buzzed in and we to add we asked him about um adding this what's it called school safety glass that's very secure um at that particular door at that area yeah I mean I think the school facility when we talked on Friday with um Steve and Pat definit and Doug um definitely has all the features of what you want in a secure building um there's a lot of fail safe areas and lock doors and ways to section off this building keep the public part um things that we're trying to do now at the high school years after because it was you know these parts were built in a different era you've built all these things into the plan which I think is really critical and just the layout of the building on

050the parcel um for safety in so many ways I think is um truly a brilliant setup in my mind I think it was well well thought out um including all the the traffic patterns um and the ways to get in and out of the facility um the best way to use the space uh on the campus um with the part of the campus that that is there and I think the the piece of property that hasn't been acquired but we're in discussions on acquiring in order to make this particular design work um you know is critical you've said that it can be designed without it but it just it minimizes or diminishes part of the design that is probably the ideal one and expandable has the most potential for expansion I should admit to you

051all that the first design we looked at had both K and one upstairs and I wasn't comfortable with that just from experience um I'm comfortable with with first graders just a little edgy about K that would have made the entire building two stories and I wanted to make sure that we had low and then high so that property became important the superintendent asked us how much extra land we needed Pat and I went out to the site paced it walked it off and measured it we met with Mr cample and he seemed amenable it's a really beautiful piece of land it's beautiful over there it's buffered from the Tuttle in Maine and it looks over on the high school that's a nice facade of the high school um it it's sort of glows the red

052brick glows in the sunlight so I think it's um I hope we can build this school and if we need to reduce it we will but our numbers show that we should be able to afford this this is a pretty pretty reasonable project it's 70,000 square feet I just want you to know that it's 70,000 square feet H Aon then demy it's about well and I was just going to clarify I think what you were just speaking to so in terms of if we didn't have that piece of land the two things I think that I've heard you say are that we would be giving up some of the parking or at least proximity of parking um and then looking at more of a twostory all around having to have at least some Kindergarten on

053the second floor as well as first gr that's right that's what I think would happen and um we want to build you the best school we can great yeah thank you I appreciate that um and I don't know that it's to that point necessarily but I did want to ask about the kitchen so I see that there is kitchen space is that just for serving as opposed to Preparing is that yep we call it a satellite kitchen it has its own access from the service area we have talked to the food service director we have talked to our consultant Tom McCardle who does all of our kitchens and they've agreed that they need about 500 square feet and that's what we have so all of the cooking would occur in Mabel Wilson warming and serving

054would occur here okay well and that's great to hear that there's been that conversation with food service that feel like that would be workable Y and his he's very affirmative he says we'll make it work give me 500 square feet we'll make it work okay and the round room is the library uh just a different what's the library yeah well a different yeah different concept of Library you it's interesting since I started designing schools 30 years ago 35 years ago they were called libraries and then they were called media centers and then they were called computer rooms and I think this is a new kind of room this has little alcoves off it with seats like we usually do for the youngest children in a full Elementary School there's a little storytelling Corner this is

055a storytelling Circle it also is a great place to bring in a group of 20 adults after school school and talk about something it's really like a living room and one of the other things that we had talked about too is just the fact that every one of these classrooms will have a a library for kids of this age um where they'll be accessing books you every day and so this create some other opportunities for this space thank you Denny Steve I just want to clarify I think I heard you say that the first RFQ meeting that I attended where we talked through this that was a design that has been somewhat changed with this because you you had more Second Story and this is we had more Second Story go over what that change

056was uh Steve it's also because um in our experience at other schools with prek we have found that prek starts off slow and then fills in and so we urged the superintendent to consider more prek rooms and he concurred so this are changed that expanded so that's one thing that happened and we got more exact boundary information for instance what we thought were too of a triangle ended up being the hypotenuse so um that's what started pushing things around you know in in design and in sight work the more you learn the tougher it gets and did I hear that that the first concept at the RFQ meeting had more Second Story classrooms than this one does it did it had some KS upstairs we wanted to keep them downstairs hey Steve how's it going

057it's been over over 30 years since I've seen you you're a legend in our house so it's uh for for for the good things like the laundry shoot and you're scapegoated for the size of the bedroom that I grew up in but it's uh it's great to have you here um so thanks for all the work um so I've got a couple of questions I think you've answered a lot of some of my initial questions I think you you speak very well about the two stories in the one story but I am kind of confused as to is it just a cost thing and maybe Jeff would know more but why aren't we just expanding now like if we're worried about space and like when you say h we're just going to do one floor

058I'm like why why aren we doing two floors and just building pretty much the biggest that we can get right now um is that a cost thing Jeff is that between I don't know if it's a cost thing or if it's just that we're not sure yet if it's absolutely necessary and the idea that it can be built in in relatively uh inexpensive what you said Steve it would be inexpensive generally in quick to build um if we need it but we're not sure we need it and I think part of it is that we're still waiting for final numbers but even the numbers that we have that we don't think will change that much um those numbers aren't suggesting at least for the next decade that we would need those six classrooms there's a

059lot of flex space built into this design which I feel comfortable with right now if the numbers even if they went up a little bit we're still going to be you know well within capacity um I just don't think it's necessary unless we absolutely need it I think that was kind of my thinking at least yeah we won't be opening full um we we don't want to be opening full there will be I forget what percentage that the current projections are seeing that we'd be at but I think there's also a concern that you would build it too big and then you know a third of the school wouldn't be used you know maybe for a decade or so so I think that's where we're trying to F tune we're waiting for the updated projections

060with some of the um new projects that are coming online in both communities um to assure us and and the voters that we're sizing it correctly for what we know for at least the next decade but some opportunities to expand I think is you know what we're we're looking to do right because we couldn't even if we could expand it wouldn't change the grade levels that we could put in there correct okay um and then you you you talked about speaking with the um like the the kitchen staff have you spoken to any teachers or um leadership at the at the lower level as you kind of designed what type of space we need we met with um Corey and Carol um at length we met with the director of special education um we we

061now have something that we think works and now it's time for us during the month of February to meet with more staff we have a staff meeting scheduled I think within a week or two and so we will be U tweaking this yeah okay it will be tweaked um for instance uh the idea of flex spaces means some of those Flex spaces will will be spoken for immediately by other than a graded classroom which we think is good um but as I mentioned we have a number of small group rooms those are both for special study groups and but they're also for pulling someone out who is being difficult honestly um we do have a functional life skills room for for multi-handicapped we do have a good otpt Studio but we're being very careful about

062other special ed programs we want it to mainstream as much as we possibly can but create spaces where you can pull out when you need to okay all right and then my last question is on the conservative side so since we don't have this land yet this obviously looks great good design um but since we don't have this land yet and I get anxious for stuff that we don't have yet um do you feel confident that if that land were not acquired you could still design something with enough parking maybe not 160 spaces Extra Spaces that we had um that's safe that's somewhat expandable without that land or are you thinking it's kind of this is it and uh yeah I want to urge us to try to appropriate that land I think it's important

063for the feeling of not just the building but the site um I urged sad 51 when they first talked to me about this whenever there's adjacent land that can be appropriate created do so do so be really kind and gentle and acquire it if you can I think it's far more valuable to the school campus than than anything I can think of I remember way back when we were looking at different sites for the Middle School way back when we first did the classroom for the the classroom Wing connecting the Institute to the high school and even when we did the PAC when we were looking for extra land and we looked all of this I think would have been very difficult for the neighborhood but anyway um I hope we can get that land

064I really do thank you I I had one last qu or another question that came to me as we were talking so um right now there's four prek classrooms here it sounds like on your initial design um perhaps there was less prek how and how many Pre-K classrooms do we have currently we have one classroom right now because we have AM and PM so we're hoping that down the road that we would move to a full day model which would require two classrooms yes because I think um you know I know one reason why as a board we um move forward with offering prek was to give that option for families who need it and certainly the half day is a barrier for many of the families in trying to cover um additional care I

065do Wonder though you know it seems like the state is signaling more and more that we will have to provide CDs services for um threeyear olds you know and Maine is an outlier um in state that don't provide those services within the public school system so do we think that this is enough space so um Julie Olsen uh the director of special education and myself um considered what would be a scenario if the state um moves forward with this plan that the commissioner has put in front of the legislature and the legislature adopts that and has students who are three who are currently being served um we would try to replicate the program if the board wanted to in the building um at with threeyear olds now I've said for many for as many times

066as I've been asked that I do think we should also consider private providers and I know there's a lot of people in the community um that can can also help our students I think that's part of a huge discussion around where is prek if the state moves forward what kind of funds are they allocating how do those funds get dispersed um we have to wait for the legislature so I don't think there's really an answer I think the best answer is to make sure that we've got Flex space that's built into this design in the event that we need to expand prek in this building um as a part of a state mandate or you know it's part of a board option that they want to look at um but it also can be used

067for Flex space for other um for other learning needs in the building um and so I think we're trying to do kind of hug both lines there and cover the bases yeah but it does you're right uh and it's it's definitely more space um in the prek area than was originally designed um and those blue spaces I think I can't see from here but I think they say Flex on them no the peach ones oh I'm sorry the peach ones right y so there's six yeah so I mean I guess that was also sort of my related question then if those Flex spaces I mean obviously a flex space isn't necessarily allocated to one grade or another it's for wherever it's needed in the school but um I guess if given that it's in the

068prek grouping if that would be ideal to go to prek again I know that also it doesn't necessarily mean it has to but or it could be another area for kindergarten um there's four classrooms for example that could be a kpod I think there the good thing about this design is there's a lot of flexible space and um you know whoever the principal of the school is can look at the design and work with their faculty around how we best using the space that we're not designating every room and we're kind of thinking about kids and where students are best um served in this building in this facility um so I think we're covering the prek potential need if the board chose to have prek in-house for three-year-olds um who have I APS but um

069again I don't I don't for seee us having a universal ever having Universal prek and that this building isn't designed for Universal um prek whether four-year-olds or threey olds um just a piece that point but um I think those are good questions because that's the state has definitely signaled in the last six weeks um that CDs is on the on its way out the legislature is very interested in the commissioner's plan right now so I think we've been working with that idea up in skaen as a matter of fact we have not only prek but we also have infant care um with CDs facilities surrounding it so we know that these spaces would accommodate the earlier childood ages if they needed to tomby yeah um so with the site as a whole and the Improvement

070plans including the road as well as um the possible tur field there will be a lot more space on campus that absorbs a lot more sunlight and heat um do you foresee that to be an issue I know that the high school in miw currently don't have air conditioning and and could only um heat issues of heat could only get worse in coming years so do you foresee that to be an issue um and also if so what efforts would you say um take to remediate that we would very much like this school to not use fossil fuels at all and therefore we would probably looking at a centralized heat pump system and we would urge you to have us air condition the school um that will make it a year- round facility that will

071make it healthier all the time and um I think it is so important to have classrooms facing sunlight that it's worth cooling them and so I would I would say yes we would hope to cool it your middle school is cooled that was our first air conditioned building ever um and the state who funded that school made Cumberland sad 51 pay for the air conditioning it's still kind of hard to do that anywhere but most of our schools now are air conditioned fully did that answer you yeah and I guess on the on the landscape side do you envision like other Solutions like planting trees um having more vegetation stuff like that yes there's um I mean the site plan right now doesn't show that but and of course I've got to get it by

072Scott who doesn't like trees but SC is here but uh but yes I mean typically trees we use trees for in parking lots and and other places along Street streetscapes um primarily to well for two reasons one is to bring the scale down to more of a pedestrian level and the second is to provide shade to uh minimize kind of the heat island effect from from the parking lots I mean there's also other things you can do you can use you could do kind of light colored pavement to kind of get more reflectivity out of the out of the pavement so that you don't absorb that heat um and so there's other things you can do like that too thank you um so first of all I just want to um say that I love

073the idea of the circle room I just I that warmed my heart and I could see first graders you know the the um I don't know just like like that um marker of growing up where you get to go on field trips to the library or even to M the Mabel Wilson Library so um thank you for thinking outside the box on that one um I had a question on behalf of some community members have you ever considered underground parking as an option see the face you're making it's well weable question we have done underground parking on quite a few residential projects that we involved in and the cost differential between surface parking and underground parking is pretty prohibitive I think we're talking somewhere in the neighborhood of like $20,000 a space to do underground

074parking okay which you know if we're looking at a 100 spaces that's that's a couple million dollars right right there and additional cost so um typically especially on a school project like this it's not really kind of very cost effective to do that is helpful thank you to have an actual price tag per space that's extremely helpful um sort of projecting if we didn't get the land that the bonus land was that an option but that's that is a very helpful figure so thank you um and then my last question regarding expansion um so first of all the the six classrooms would all go upstairs correct so does that potentially mean and somebody kind of touched on this a moment ago that could potentially mean that some Kindergarten like possibly a kindergarten pod would be

075upstairs that could be but I do want to show you that um the first grade is upstairs and you do have um Flex spaces there but you have far more Flex space on the first floor okay so um if you were to add those six classrooms what we might do is say some non-classroom use would go upstairs one of the things that the state fire fire marshal worries about is if you have little kids upstairs and bigger kids upstairs and there's an emergency exit at the big kids trample the little kids so one of the things when you put any young kid upstairs is that's a Stairway leading out and that's a Stairway leading out and that is a Stairway from the second floor which takes everybody down and out to recess so there are

076three stairways what they say is if you're going to have younger students up there you need to find stairways that just they use but there are no older kids upstairs so the the first grade is fine I would suggest that if we ever need to bring some K up we put them in these classrooms right near the stairwell as compared to these classrooms which is a little more cental that makes sense so we would have a way to do that that would be safe now an interesting thing is that the first grade classrooms are smaller in square footage than K classrooms okay according to Doe standards okay A K and prek are a th000 square feet a first grade is 850 square feet so it's fairly significant it's because K's and pre spend more time

077on the floor okay okay thank you yeah I me part of me was thinking if we needed to do that and we return to a a looping or multi-age that that would be a good solution um if we had had to move kindergarteners upstairs but that makes sense too to keep them and I also that's one of the things about scale and I keep using that word it's it's really an important it's an important idea in residential work private residences it's a really important in within a room the scale makes it feel better yeah yeah so this is going to be a school of little kids and so I don't know if there'll be a lot of differentiation between K and first graders they're all friends but the Ks are a little stronger they can

078be upstairs and get downstairs and we only are concerned about that in an emergency right okay building will be fully sprinkled fully alarmed very secure great and then one more question about expansion and I'm sorry because I'm pretty sure you did bring this up at the beginning but I feel like I missed it at least I didn't write it down um BAS based on enrollment projections if it comes back that second third and fourth grade are even more than we thought what are our options at Mabel Wilson right now if we need to expand was that included I'm so sorry if you it wasn't included at the beginning but I think um Steve if you wouldn't mind talking to that that's important also at the midle level um because obviously this plan if approved and

079goes through forward would change the grade configurations of the district we have um we are studying Mabel Wilson now with a 234 cohort um there are things we really want to do like increase the multi-purpose room so that it's a real gymnasium okay at Mabel um we would very much like to switch the library and the front office so that they are vice versa we've already done the design a few years ago and it just wasn't wasn't realized so [Music] um I think the quality of space especially in the old Mabel Wilson needs attention but I do want you to know that we have itemized a budget line item for work at Mabel Wilson and the middle school and the high school because we're working on the security at the pool end of the building

080so we've we've addressed physical plant needs and put it on a line item that we call miscellaneous other building improvements okay I think it's safe to say Steve that all of the things that you were just mentioning are critically important in order to house another building on on this campus there are certain things that have to be looked at in order to free up space in order to secure space in order to make this building on Camp campus work for the long term that it's not just a Band-Aid that we're making there's other things on campus um Pat talked about the road being moved those are things that are critical kind of to the infrastructure and keeping our C keeping this campus a long-term campus um with the land that's been acquired and hopefully the

081land that can be acquired to make this design realized I know that um the the item of money hasn't come up yet and I don't want to put you on the spot but can can you give us an idea just of the the cost the estimated cost of what this facility that you've designed would be and then what would be the total cost if you were to do the other pieces to make the campus work um for the long term that you have mentioned tonight and talked about the facilities we feel that the building itself um will cost slightly over $30 million in construction we think that there is about 12 to5 million in other elements on the campus and then we need to consider project costs not just construction costs such as your Architects

082fees and purchasing land and legal and contingencies we're carrying five % contingency both for bidding and for construction and then for renovations and sight work and other fixes on the campus we increase the contingency because it may happen we have it broken down I didn't realize you wanted me to go into budget tonight no and I don't I don't think it needs to be detailed um but is there a uh an estimated high cost the project cost Max maximum we feel will be under $50 million thank you I have a question if we can go back to may live for a minute and how that's going to be reconfigured um a lot of community members feel strongly about how 4 five is working so well together and there are those who are opposed if for

083opposed to this if we end up splitting four five at maybe Li so given that we've talked about we're going to have a lot of land May aai once all those Portables leave is it within the realm of possibility we could look into what if four or five stays together in May bu Li um architecturally certainly but that is not my call I'm I'm not the administrator I'm I just draw pictures so I'll look at you guys if maybe we can consider you know maybe that's that's possibility maybe not I it just seems to be wor working for five and well could I ask an architectural question to help me answer that so if there was a wing for example I'm putting you totally in the spat right now Steve I'm putting you on the

084spat but it just is a ballpark if you had to add a wing on with 12 rooms at Maya Wilson school would you guess a price or could you come back with one $5 million yeah plus expanding other common areas in the school in order to accommodate a school of that size I think we're trying to keep our schools within a reasonable amount Rebecca's numbers right now show us around 600 a little bit more than 600 as a maximum um for grades two to four the other piece is that in the Middle School building that we currently have 48 by pulling two grades out there would be additional space that we might really not need to be allocating space that way but part of that is being done through a space study that I know

085Steve is working on right now I think my feeling is and I'll just say this um I think fourth and fifth grade is a great combination I think this district has made that work for years and years we have great staff there we have great Administration they've made the 48 model work but there is no definitive research on grade grade spans or grade configurations and many districts configure their grades in many different ways um and I think a two4 school is also a very can be well-led and can be um a building that feel that students feel comfortable in I think it's important that we don't have a school as big as the Wilson school again that's what I'm worried about the most I think that is far more um detrimental than thinking about grades

086grade configurations and spans is having a school with 800 students in it for elementary kids grades 2 to four um if that's the choice five would be sorry 2 to five if it was 800 so if we're doing that that really offsets any you know thinking around what is the appropriate grade span for that school and many districts do many different things look at the state of Maine grade spans are all over the place they're not the same um people have pointed to Yarmouth and said they got rid of the 58 model they went they put the fifth grade back into an elementary setting but I want to remind people that they did a fifth grade in a middle school setting for 30 years in Yarmouth 30 years and they did it well um they

087had an opportunity because they were expanding as well to put that the fifth graders back in an elementary setting but that was because of other logistics that came along things can change and I think um it's all about how we approach it how we present it and how we make it make it work I think the most important thing is and this goes back to the 2008 18 19 steering committee they said keep our schools smaller they're they're getting too big and I think that's the most detrimental part of all that thank you that helps gives me a lot of information thank you great sorry to put you on the spot so this will not be our last opportunity to have questions um about the plans put forward and I know um what's being shown

088on the screen here today just you know showed up um in our uh on our computers just before this so I I want to make sure that the board feels like they have good opportunity to continue to look at what's been presented um to ask questions this is just I don't know we we've asked you to do a lot over the past month or so since we originally hired you to do the concept design and I so appreciate the time that you've spent with administrators um with various committees and they know there's more to come the meeting with Mabel I Wilson is coming up very shortly next Wednesday yeah next Wednesday um we also have the joint meeting with both the towns next week where we'll be going over um some of the similar information

089um as we continue to understand um both what are the Draft plans and what the how we're matching that with the needs of our schools and our communities um as we also talked about we're waiting for the updated enrollment numbers and so we have about another four to six weeks where we'll be working through these drafts asking questions for the refining meeting continuing to meet with the towns understanding sidewalks other options and opportunities um but in March we will be asking um this to come back to the board where one we need to um both lay out okay what is the final plan we want to put forward for an oncampus model and then also um we have to vote whether to move forward with that or the 80 gr road which we have not

090completely T taken off the table yet but wanted to understand what the options and opportunities and costs um were if we were able to be on campus so I know that's a lot to take in um this is really the first time this is being brought publicly and we also want to have opportunities for the community to ask questions and so we're going to be continuing to to lay out different options for input um not only in the board and the school Community but the towns and our community members and so thank you I know it took a lot for us to to get to this meeting today um and we'll be continuing to work through this um until we we get to a point where we feel good about what we're asking our community

091members to vote on so I want to thank you thank you for your time tonight thank you indeed thanks I appreciate it and I know I love a good timeline I wish I had like the timeline to put up again just to remind everyone of of where we we at on the calendar um between now and what we hope is a June um referendum on this so that's just the the higher level plan of of what we're looking for um this year for the the new school project so we have an exciting evening of presentations that was the the first of of two um I am welcoming um Kim as the chair of our Equity committee um to bring forward the draft plan um that's been built on since last year um and I know

092we have other Equity committee members uh here tonight as well um and so I'd like to turn it over to you Kim okay first I have a procedural question um excuse me in our packet was a PDF of the equity plan if I were to add two slides just kind of into the introduction my introduction is that okay or does it have to okay no no that's fine yeah that was just a sample okay so then all right am I still connected around there's gager room okay view slideshow okay so here we are um our newest draft of our diversity equity and inclusion plan so what I want to start with well what I really want to start with is a thank you to our committee um we have Jackie Hayes here representing um especially

093well administration of the high school but also the equity team at the high school Jackie was our liaison um from our district Equity committee to the high school Equity committee which was fantastic to get that feedback um we also had two new members Sarah Allenby and shaa I started to say the last name Shauna Mueller um who are our community Representatives um we also had uh two teachers join us this year which I'm going to talk about in a moment Unfortunately they were not able to be here tonight and uh there was myself and Tim uh there were other administrators including Jeff and Susie uh we have Mari trock who is a principal uh of 4 five we had Kate Campbell who sorry of 68 um we had Kate Campbell a social worker from 45

094and am I forgetting anybody and our student yes Jordan CLE thank you um who was also not able to be here tonight uh I we do have a list of the committee members but um I just wanted to start by thanking everyone um this was a a really fantastic process we all learned a lot we had some f fantastic discussions and um I'm really proud of the work that we've done since September when our committee formed um so to start us off uh as you may recall a draft was presented by Tim and by Jared uh at the time Tim was our community co-chair Jared was our board co-chair they had um come back or come to the board with a plan that over all looked really good I was on that committee and and

095I was excited about uh what we came up with we also did ask for feedback from the community and so over those couple months when people could email us with their thoughts there was a Google form where they could fill out their thoughts um these were kind of the two or the four areas that I sort of saw the most of the most repetition there were other comments but these were the most common um there were concerns about the members the makeup of the equity committee um uh some some questions about how the committee was formed uh who might have been missing from that community and questions about the the diversity or maybe lack thereof of the committee so that came up quite a bit I'd say that was actually probably the biggest source of

096feedback um there was also a lot of mention of similarly the training and qualifications of the committee members uh were we going through any sort of training uh were people on there who had experience had the wisdom the knowledge um to bring to the committee um another one that was really big and actually it was even more so of a concern for the committee itself this was probably our biggest challenge was to determine what our role is and this for those of you who were on the board last year might remember that several of the things that were in the plan were either too prescriptive or perhaps um some of the community felt that they weren't emphatic enough uh so the way we kind of thought about that is are we advisers are we accountability

097Partners or are we an authority authoritative body and that that just sort of that theme came up quite a lot particularly like I said within the committee itself uh and the last piece had to do with overall communication um what sort of feedback we're getting what sort of um how we're communicating with both the community at large as well as with particular bodies so lots of other some little things some very specific some overall but those were the four major categories and then the once we kind of compiled all that feedback and separated it into categories it was a matter of determining uh what feedback really does need to be discussed um certainly if it was mentioned enough times uh but just because it was feedback that didn't necessarily mean that we needed to change

098the plan so really that discernment of what was something that legitimately we needed to re-evaluate so these are this is kind of an overview of the changes we've made um since that June draft um and if you go to whether you're on the board or not on the equity LSC website which is um a link from the district website you can see the June plan so if you wanted to be comparing right now you can um and I'll try to highlight some things as we go through this probably the biggest thing was adding two of the teachers to the committee as I mentioned before we had an elementary school teacher and we had a high school teacher uh both of them uh expressed great interest in in being part of this process and their voice

099es were really really helpful and in some ways that is part of what took us um probably to do more evaluating than maybe I originally thought um which is why we're here in February instead of November but their input was critical and we're very very grateful for the conversations that they brought to the table The Guiding principles section uh in the June draft were uh five or six sort of sentences on the very first page of that grid if you recall and you'll see the Grid in a moment um but we decided to expand the guiding principle section this was another great conversation uh where we felt that there wasn't enough of the the grid made it look very um Stark and we wanted a little bit more heart in the plan itself so you

100could call it a the philosophy of why the plan is the way that it is um includes the things that includes you could call it a preamble um still could be called guiding principles but it really just explains again the heart behind this why this is indeed so important to our district and we feel that that then softens the look of a grid if that makes any sense um we did simplify the grid to four columns instead of six to make it a little bit easier to read we modified the names of two of the priority areas we added descriptions to each of the priority priority areas to make them a little bit more um digestible and uh as you'll see as we go through some additions and subtractions to the um the actual pieces

101of the plan uh we are now referring to the First Column as initiatives instead of priorities because the four priority areas we were already using that name so here we go um do you think it's important for me to read this out loud or can people kind of I'm happy to read it out loud but are are people able to read that well enough okay so we're just kind of going through a little bit of what district policy ACA is um and why that is the driver of the plan um this was an important piece we really felt that we needed to identify in the plan that there is such a broad description of what it means to be a marginalized group a protected class and policy ACA the first paragraph those are the classes

102that have been been identified when we looked into the state of main Department of Education we realized that there's even more so we really wanted to include that just to show that this is a very broad plan when we say diversity in our district we mean that there is a lot of diversity in so many different ways and part of that is what makes this such a challenging thing to do but it also makes it so beautiful um and again that's you can kind of see the heart behind this that we are trying to include as many different perspectives um as possible um um this is a section where we are really identifying that there is a legal component to this even without policy ACA we still have a legal obligation as a district to

103make sure that every Community member thrives but in addition to that we are really wanting to show that we as a district are embracing our all of our kids including the kids that might not be marginalized by definition we want all of our students to leave the world with empathy and courage and so I'm I am going to read this last paragraph because this this to me is is the the part of the plan that honestly I think just kind of describes it the best by fostering an inclusive District culture and providing differentiated support we will see that our students reach their academic potential moreover when students move on from msad51 they will be prepared to encounter or a world that is broader and more complex meeting it with the empathy wisdom and courage needed

104to make it a better place so all of our students will get the attention that they need the help that they need to feel included and all of our students will leave this District ready to go out into the world uh this helps us understand what the role of the equity leadership steering committee is and even though you often see it as LSC we just made it elsc to make this just a little bit briefer um but the the plan is the plan and the superintendent and the district leadership team are therefore obligated to follow this plan um it the pl policy ACA says the superintendent is responsible for developing and implementing the plan and part of that responsibility is tasking us the committee to do that and once that plan has been created and

105uh adopted then that is built in to the definition of the plan that it will be followed so yes there are accountability pieces but we also wanted to show that by definition this is meant to guide the entire district and this is um a small history of the the equity committee That Was Then formed by the superintendent and the board of directors back in 2019 um we felt that this was really helpful because it does remind the community that this was created in the spring of 2019 um more than a year before our country really started to reconcile with racism in a in a new way in a reinvigorated way the district was already searching for ways to make our community more Equitable because some incidents had in fact happened in this District so in

106Spring of 2019 um this was something that was already in place and it's taken us several years to get to a plan and in that time the the work of Dei the the idea of equity has sort of morphed a bit and so what started as a genuine focus on racial Equity is now meant to to show the community that we really are including all of those groups that I referenced above uh does that make sense okay so our first area of priority is policies and protocols and one of the things that I always liked about the initial plan is that it kind of starts small and works its way out so policies and Protocols are almost non-negotiable um even without this plan for the most part we as a district have to adhere to

107these um and certainly because of policy ACA we are mandated to have certain things in place to make sure the policy ACA is followed so this section is you can think of it as the legal stuff um but this this is more um internal than the most internal piece of it is how I would describe this so I won't go through every single element because a lot of them really are the same as the last plan um at one point I realized that really what our committee was doing um is if you're familiar with the Marie condo approach to organizing your home we kind of took everything out looked at it how do we feel about this particular piece great let's put it back in a few things didn't make it back in a few

108things were put back back in but we really just wanted to to not start from the beginning but ident look at everything again individually so um it was quite a process but really helpful and reminded us why each piece was in there to begin with um so there are certain things that as board members you will certainly be interested in um for one thing as we looked at our role of account ability partner versus Authority versus advisor there are some things that we as a committee feel that we probably don't have the authority but we would like to make some recommendations and some of those do involve policies so one of the things that we would like to be doing is discuss with the policy committee whether some of our policies can be updated or

109changed um and under we now have what's called necessary steps those used to be called action steps and the only reason we changed them to necessary steps is because it felt that felt a little bit more of a recommendation whether than rather than telling um the district leadership team especially what they should be doing so a necessary step felt more like this is what we highly recommend um and I am excited that one of the things that we have landed on um you'll see kind of in the middle under necessary steps is an equity audit that is something that we are recommending strongly be put in next year's budget and we're in communication with um with our our Equity consultant Lawrence Alexander as well as some schools in the area who have done Equity Audits

110and that will help us to when we come back next year to understand whether this plan needs to be adopted at all um District administration reporting this is a key area um obviously we need the data so that we know what we're do what we're dealing with um this is pretty much the same as uh last year's Human Resources has been added as an area that we would like to explore how we can achieve and retain a more diverse staff um recognizing that we live in Cumberland North Yarmouth Bain behavioral intervention um we did we moved this up to policies and protocols because for the most part it is uh again more of an in the most internal piece um and we want to make sure that this was something that our teachers uh reported

111back to us that they want to make sure that they have the tools they need when an incident arises uh as well as really digging into how is our how our behavioral supports and are any groups being treated inequitably as as we look at at how students are dis disciplined and finally the plan review um again if we have an audit that comes back with interesting data that shows us that this plan might need to be adapted that's going to really help us but either way there's always new information there's always new things to learn and so that is indeed part of the plan is to review and update as needed academics and programming um the first step is still a little tentative because we do not yet have have our portrait of a graduate

112might be called profile of a learner but uh in consultation with Lawrence that is a really big piece to this because it does speak to the what we want students to experience while they're here and what we want them to be prepared for when they leave and so once that has been finalized then the plan needs to support that to make sure that there is not a single barrier to any child achiev the portrait of a graduate our curriculum um if you notice under resources and notes by the way there are a lot of places where there are links so sometimes we got a little ahead of ourselves and we were listing way too many things uh so the list of 2023 24 social and emotional learning opportunities by school if you were to go

113into that you would see that in each of the four schools there are curric pieces such as um the wax museum is always one that that we love to talk about that every child experiences the wax museum curriculum where they can learn about anyone else um and really is just a a fantastic way to begin that to broaden their worldview so in addition to those builtin to the classroom pieces there are also things that are built into the school day so they are not extracurricular in the sense that a child cannot sign up for them they are they're built into the school day the the classes go to them but they are above and beyond what we might call academics so I would encourage you to look through that because it's a really fantastic list

114of things that we are already doing in the classrooms at all four schools our staff training this was another piece that again our teachers really helped us to understand um what they feel their needs are their feedback was really really important on this so uh it is important to include not only um the behavioral piece in staff training but also simply how to teach sensitive matters and that is something that we are hoping that as a committee we can be more uh play maybe a little bit more of an advis advisory role in that to make sure that our staff training aligns with the content that comes up in the classroom as well as perhaps unexpected incidents education materials uh this again was pretty much in the original plan but we really wanted to to

115have it as its own separate line that books and resources are in the classrooms and the libraries pursuant to policy AJ JJ that uh have a broad representation of diverse populations and what we would like to do is to invite the Librarians to come and talk with us about their process we've heard a lot um the last six months about policy igj but we would like very much to sit down with our Librarians and get an understanding of the books that are in our libraries this section we changed the name this was formerly called student leadership and participation and as you notice that Circle I was talking about is getting a little bit larger we had the internal policies we had the classroom piece and now we're getting to a bigger sense of who we

116are as a district and um that speaks to again those same uh social and emotional learning opportunities these are the ones that perhaps are places where kids could do an addition to their school day we want to make sure that there are plenty of experiences where kids can connect with kids who are like them and with kids who maybe have one thing in common with them so perhaps an identity group um opportunity but also kids who like Dungeons and Dragons and will come from all different backgrounds so we want to make sure that those opportunities Beyond academics are really vast and um again we have a lot of really great opportunities already student feedback uh was another piece that in the feedback from the community that we got uh we would like to hear more

117from more students uh but we also want to do it in a way where the students feel comfortable so we are exploring with Lawrence ways of having um sort of like focus groups but they would be there would be broad representation within the focus group unless a group of students wanted to come to Lawrence and meet with him to talk about about their experiences we don't want to um we don't want any student to feel uncomfortable by being called to us to come and talk to us so there was a lot of discussion on that and I feel really good about how we've kind of landed on different ways to hear from the students student leadership uh this was something that we had in the last plan that we realized we our overreach might be

118a little strong on this this one but the idea is that kids who are already emerging as Leaders particularly freshmen and sophomores in the high school would have an opportunity to have their own uh not really a focus group this would be more of a training group with Lawrence where he would like to see teachers and administrators identify students who just seem to have influence um by their passions by their activities get them all together to talk about how they can be upstanders in the community so we took out the word upstanders because that is a very broad phase and we didn't want to connect it to a particular curriculum but that is the easiest way to describe how how Lawrence would be training them was to be upstanders and if anybody has any questions

119on that obviously any questions at all you're going to have a chance to ask uh and finally student safety um nothing new here although we did break it up into the idea of physical safety as well as our mental health of our students and so we would love to participate a little bit with both the safety and the wellness committees just to see how those policies are are coming together and if there's anything that we can be adding to that and finally is uh Community engagement this was called family and Community engagement and we just decided to keep it at Community because again we are broadening um significantly at this point we are looking at opportunities for continuous learning um particularly in areas that are just really misunderstood right now um that is something that

120is in the future I don't have a resource for it yet but it is something that the the equity committee wanted to put in the plan so that we are actively pursuing ways that we can reach out to the community um obviously with communication within the district is critical we've had a lot of conversations about how to handle Communications about incidents that have to do with policy ACA uh the um Jeff's Jeff's plan for in incident communication now I just forgot what it's called but um that is something that obviously we we need to to make sure that the community has the information that they need and that they understand sometimes they don't need um but in addition to that the ELC website needs to be updated so that will be something we will be

121doing um and working hopefully with the community engagement committee to help us understand how we can better reach out and finally this is a new very very new possible initiative so please know that nothing has been decided uh but we've been approached by both the towns of Cumberland and North yarma the leadership of those two towns to create a collaborative possibly uh statement possibly task force so that all three of us can work together to really Advance Dei in our two communities collaboratively and so it just made sense for all three leadership teams to meet together so that is a very ongoing very preliminary process but we like the idea of putting in the plan just to show that uh there are more opportunities out there in our community and there's the list of people

122so if I forgot anyone it looks like I got everyone um there is our committee thank you again and any questions this link continues to be on the website it takes you uh directly to an email anyone can contact us with any questions or concerns there you go Tim anything you want to add uh I do but I want to invite also the our other committee members here who who came if they had anything to add first sorry thank you thank you Kim you did a great job um I'm Sarah alen I'm one of the community Representatives I just wanted to call out the change that we made to um in the grid the column that we're in outcome and sort of what that means um I can't remember in the previous draft what that

123column was called but we sort of um reworked the structure of of that whole column to look at what the in you know there's the initiative and then if that initiative is um is met or is you know if if we do the best job we can with that initiative what what would the outcome like the perfect um end point be and it would be that outcome so just when you're looking at it it was objective last time and it was objective last time which is seemed a little softer than like this is that what it looks like the outcome yeah yeah so it's sort of like written definitively but it's like the ideal outcome that's that's all thank you thank you uh and thank you Kim I think that was a a really great

124summary of the changes and I really appreciate your your leadership this year um it's been like two years of or year and a half of to get to this point and I'm I'm very happy with where we're at um I think it's a very comprehensive plan we tried to shorten it based off some of your feedback last year um and every time we did it is shorter but every time we did it it just felt um came off as performative like a checklist without any real substance to it and none of us on the committee felt good about it and I think this is something we feel proud of there's no perfect plan um each member made compromises um to their what their personal ideal plan um but I think we also all got wins

125and there's a little bit of each of us in this um and then I think for the public I I I also want to make clear and Kim read that paragraph which I think is right on point to that um this is not just a social emotional tool or guidance or framework this is very much focused on academics and making sure every student receives the support no matter um what their privileges are or what their lack of privileges are um and I feel really good about if we carry out this plan um which I know that you know will will stumble um that the kids each kid will get what they need um and there's a a balance and check for that so um I'm very proud to be showing this and sharing this and

126I'm excited for your feedback too because as we've built in here we we can make it better and we will continue to make it better and there's space to continue to make it better this is we're going to stumble um and there's a lot in here um but I'm excited about it regardless it's a good starting point and I'm proud of it yeah so obviously want to give um other members a chance to to weigh in and ask questions but can you remind me Kim are we looking to vote on this what are the what are the next steps I know we just we shared this draft um that you provide this wonderful overview of and then what are what are we looking to for next steps thank you for reminding me to say that

127um yes I think that for us as a board to vote on it shows that collectively we are supporting it and and by us as a board supporting it we can then socialize it out into the community because it is hard to grasp and it took us six seven two-hour long conversations each um to to even arrive to this point so there's a lot of just just talking to people about what it is so if we as a board are able to vote on it then Jeff and the district leadership team are able to proceed with what they're pretty much already doing but also looking at ways to sub if there's anything new that needs to happen to support the plan I do also want to uh take a moment before I fully answer the

128question U there the only thing in the plan that is officially asking for more money in the budget is the equity audit um yes there is the potential for some programming some speakers things like that but for the most part this does not ask for uh budgetary additions for more risk management or another position to be hired this is working within what we have uh already leveraging what we already have so in that sense when we're voting on this as a board hopefully no one feels like they're they're being asked to to introduce something really brand new that that could be problematic in the future and just to add in um Kim andless this change uh scheduled for vote by the board on March 4th thank you yes yes our next meeting yeah well Kim

129I just want to say um thank you to the committee work um you know I feel like the previous plan one of my struggles with it is that it felt like there wasn't really the opportunity for much work work to be done by the committee in the sense that there were so many people coming to give presentations at each of the committee meetings that it really made it hard to find Space to actually take meaningful steps um to implement these ideas throughout the district um so I really appreciate you know um how it's outlined how the work will be divided between the committee and um the different sort of questions to help guide the committee and the district as we move forward to implement um these various initiatives it is certainly a long time coming

130for sure [Music] um but I'm glad that we're here and I just wanted to add thank you for that um that I don't want to speak for Tim but I know that having been on the committee last year a lot of those invitations were our way of trying to get the data that we might need and we realized it just it just wasn't translating well when you put it in the grid um so in that sense I I think it was really important that that was a starting place and I really appreciated why it was in the plan last year and just the more we looked at it we realized that it it was as you said it just wasn't translating um into the plan and so there's still going to be plenty of opportunities

131to invite people in but rather than making that an action step we're we're just hopefully identifying uh places that that's already built in so it doesn't look like an additional step if that makes sense but um yeah Tim is there anything you want to add about that um no I mean I think a lot of that is also we got feedback of like these are the things that need to be done and then also like you can't do that like you need to you need to work and like why don't you speak with the you know academic support specialist or the librarian um and so a lot of it's also like hey our first step should be having conversations to figure out where we're at um but I think where we shortened that last year

132of just like we're going to invite them rather than like what's the outcome of that invite what would the next steps be and I think to Ann's point I think we we kind of elaborated on that a little bit um and there might be room for improvement with that but yeah it's just it's just the starting point figure out where we're at and not make assumptions of where we think we're at I think for this evening keep going down the line oh yeah um I just want to say thank you all for the presentation for the process that was definitely helpful to hear and I really appreciate also how you outlined that conversation around what is the role of the committee and um just seeing some of the the changes in language that um I

133noticed at least at first glance through the plan and I'll look forward to having a little bit more time to look through it before we actually vote on it but um you know certainly look forward to it being something that I collaborate with the midon as a board member and uh support so thank you appreciate it so I have two things um one did you talk explicitly about logic models as you're going through this process logic models because you've created a logic model um yes yes if you think that I create a logic model then that's exactly what I did so a logic model is a tool that's used in program evaluation where you have an initiative and action steps that are listed here um that are eventually going to lead to an outcome one

134thing that's not included here that you'd find in a logic model is outputs which would tell you it's quantitative or qualitative data that would tell you whether you've achieved the outcome that you're intending to achieve um and I don't think that needs to be in the plan because those things are going to change as you're getting into this but it might be helpful as this work is being approached how do you know whether you've achieved the outcome that that you want to achieve what what does that look like and then to to formalize that in some way I think would be helpful um so and nice job creating one of these things uh totally accidentally I'm across um uh the second thing is this is the same observation that I had back in back in

135June this is a lot of work and you're you're saying also that the only additional resource request here is is for the equity audit so and I I appreciate you simplifying the um the plan but I also appreciate it having who's responsible for what in the initial plan um and so there are going to be a lot of people who are going to be asked to do this work without additional resources so what is that going to look like for them how are they going to get additional capacity to to do this work and I think you just need to be thoughtful about that before we we finalize this plan that's that's great to and thank you this is a a lot of work I'm really impressed anyone I'll just say a big thank you

136and kudos to you all for a tremendous amount of work that went into this it's really clear and nicely laid out which I think is fantastic just because you're trying to communicate something get by it and I think that this does a really nice job um I like the concentric circles of sort of District um moving out through the community and I think that that will will be very powerful in the future so um hats off to you for for including all of that not to put you guys on the spot but we would love student input too I think that one thing that I definitely felt um with the first Equity plan is it just feels so big and it feels like how do you implement this like very specifically with each step and

137with each outcome that you um desire and I think that their breaking it down was really helpful and also showing where it's already being done and providing examples like that is really great um well also um really setting forth like really productive um ways that you could accomplish this I remember last year with the presentation I felt like it was just like a lot coming at me but this one felt definitely more manageable I'd agree with Tommy I feel like with the original plan I know that like some students who were looking at it felt like it like it would be hard to hold the school like accountable to it in a sense like there's no way to know or to like it's kind of like you can say that you're doing something but there's

138the students felt like it would be easy for it to be kind of like minimal effort to put in and then this feels like like this plan would actually hold the school accountable to it because there's like such specific examples and like things that need to happen so I feel like this is this would definitely have a positive student okay you yeah we want to hear we want to hear from students when they whether it's directly or through you guys and on that um I know that the student government is interested in reviewing this the policy committee with the student government so um uh and we would love to actually have a member of the equity committee come and um talk with them as well yeah that'd be fun you know as we sit here

139and we talk about the size of it and in in that feedback is as I said we tried to shorten it and this you know and and when we shorten it to a certain level it's like H this isn't enough I think one of the things that that we should think about as a committee is a lot of the outcomes are kind of aspirational like we have no thought of that these necessary steps are going to lead directly to these outcomes I think they're a first step right like if we were to do a year a timeline of next year this is the sy25 year of next steps and then we're building towards that outcome because those outcomes feel very big they feel ginormous if you got to this point um and so some of

140the next steps are if you read them like you could do it in a couple meetings or they could be combined they don't all happen like we talked about last year so I don't know if it I think on paper it looks a lot bigger than the the necessary steps than there actually might be um but I I do think that we should continue to consider that um and I think that's one of the places where we'll stumble stumble we'll be like yeah that was not realistic for us to get done in a year um but I do think that we should probably be clearer of like do these to to Tom's point about the logic model will these next necessary steps lead to the outcome because I think it's going to take multiple steps

141and years to get to some of outcomes that we're projecting we should be clearer about that so yeah I think the if we were to sum up the ultimate ideal outcome it would be that an equity leadership steering committee would not be necessary at all so um yeah I would love to see that first line under policies and protocols be obsolete because we don't need one but uh yeah it's it's it's things to move forward to constantly and I really love the idea of of selecting students and having that as like it's really like putting a presence in the school um and I think that that that's a great idea right and hopefully that could also be expanded to the Middle School absolutely and you know the the Elementary School uh would love to see

142more action there as well so um but yeah we start with the high school see how it goes I would just add thank you um this is a lot lot of work it's amazing took a long time a lot of boards um but in particular the part about adding the students I like because when you talk about the outcomes and they're aspirational I totally agree with you and how do you measure them well who's going to know better than the students so I think that's great that they're going to be integral part of it just from my perspective couple things I'd like to say first it was great being part of this process um been part of the Equity process since we started but feel like we're finally at a plan that um I think

143that we can move forward with some of the key things that I have picked up on and um just want to again thank every member of this committee um for hours and hours and hours and hours of work but just defining some things we talk about Equity a lot and a lot of people have assump make assumptions um one way or the other about what exactly is it and I think this plan kind of just starts right out with some definition kind of putting um taking the abstract and just making it concrete so that it's not just guess work or question marks or what are you talking about or Equity that you know is in some other part of the world no what does it mean um right here in cand North Yarmouth another piece

144is the student conversation I I just really um I'm glad that that's in there um it's something we've talked about on and off over the last few years we've talked about Equity but we've got to have conversations with students Direct directly and um whether it's an external person coming in and conducting those whether it's internal conversations but asking students directly uh in person what what do you think about equity and what does it mean let's talk about it as an educational piece the staff training piece um I think our teachers added a lot of information like Kim said about what we need to be thinking about with staff training and and making that a substantive part of this plan um the equity audit um I think is is a critical component of that it's a

145way of actually having people that are not here come in who do this for a living um and just look at everything and just say hey here's some recommendations about the way you could be doing things um differently and then affirming things that we're already doing and then finally I think um this plan is a Continuum it's a it's not just oh we're done let's move on it's no it's just it's it's constantly continuing um and I think that's the best kind of plan and it puts that in motion so there's a there's a lot of pieces of this plan that I think are amazing but those are some kind of big ones that always stood out to me so just I have a couple additional um questions comments maybe so the equity audit so

146are we saying that if we do vote on this to approve this as a board that we're also wanting to approve a budget for an equity audit and do we have a cost for that so um Susie Robbins and I um we looked into it and we we I think it's 15,000 that we have put into the proposed budget of course you can you can approve this plan and then the budget doesn't include that item and so it's an unfunded item which is the board's perview to put that forward so you can still approve the plan with the aspiration of doing that it just may not be next year it may be the year after if it's funded but we could could we when we vote next month could we also as a board like

147affirm our commitment to that y yep and and ultimately it's the board's decision what budget you put out anyway okay so whether it has that in there or not or you have changing conditions okay but it it certainly the board's um so by voting for the equity plan you can affirm that but you also are not you know stuck to that because of the budget proc process okay the budget process supersedes that okay if it makes if it makes any difference like there's an exter we could do an external audit or we could do an internal one I think the external would be better right but like you know I think to Tom's point so we could get some kind of Baseline of metrics of what we're trying to get to and what our goals

148are so we could have those I think we just know that we needed some kind of audit and overview and I think it's probably better served to have it external but we could do it yeah I I completely agree and yes and and Tom you made some really good points and I guess in my mind some of the outcome of having the equity audit would provide some of those those items that you were referring to that we sort of might need to to add in here to the Future so I was excited about that um and also the point that we are asking people to do more we may not say it's a it's a budget item but but time and resources certainly are uh budget items and so to be able to consider that

149that we're not just adding on um to what we're asking people to do but um I'm really excited and honor to be part of the board who gets to vote on this next month so thank you um and to have the opportunity to help socialize it because that I I love how that was described um so thank you for bringing that forward and just one more comment I you mentioned the portrait of a graduate profile of a learner yes that is a separate group anuka and I are the board Representatives as part of that committee with Lawrence and a number of other administrators and and staff and teachers so um that I'm excited to have that work underway um and we'll be bringing that to the board as well just the update on that once

150once we get there um so again thank you there's one more thing I'd like to add if that's okay um this is tangent to the plan this speaks more to what is already happening um last at our last meeting we had a nice discussion about what differentiated support means and I kind of skipped over that uh or you know read it but no one asked about it um and we tried to decide whether we should keep that term in which is very much in the school academic Community but essentially what it means is personalized support you know based on what a student needs and some of us parents were having having a conversation and I'll admit it I was the one who brought it up that that sounded really lofty like well there's no way

151that teachers personalize every single student they've got a class of 25 students and does that mean that really like you know one kid can have this assignment and the other kid could have maybe this but a little bit adapted and we were like yeah we don't want to say personalized because that's not what's happening and then we picked up on the communication Silent Communication going on between the administrators and staff they were like yeah that is what we do um so I just want to take this moment and shout out to our teachers because that led to just this sort of aha moment for me that um this is happening already where teachers are doing this they are looking at every single student in their classroom and determining what every single student needs and this

152child might need five minutes more this child might need um you know an extra version of it I mean it's unbelievable what our teachers are doing so I say that as a thank you and to those of us who are not in the classroom watching what's happening or have had a conversation with a teacher lately please know that that is literally what is happening in our classrooms and it's amazing that's what I want that was that was a nice ad thank you okay I think that that concludes the presentation portion still early right and thank thank you um all right so we're going to move to items for Action we have a second read uh I would like to ask for a motion to approve policy ikf graduation requirements as presented uh I would like

153to make the motion to approve policy ikf graduation requirements as presented thank you Ann can I get a second one second great thanks an thanks ANUK do you want to remind everyone an thank you um yeah just um and for those who um may be watching at home the changes to this policy were um made to better outline the expectations for graduation ceremonies for our students and then also to um reflect what is needed um to support our students with IEPs and extended study students thank you any questions comments all right I'd like to move to vote all in favor it's unanimous thank you an okay so we have another item for Action um um it is to authorize the superintendent to execute an extension of employment contracts for administrators can I get a motion

154please thank you Denny second second great thank you would you like to describe what this it is in more detail thank this is a annual um request for authorization of the board to extend the contracts of school administrators uh and district office level administrators um and most of that is governed by State Statute um and we have um so all of your building administrators are in the memo that I put in the board packet um along with District administrators which are included on a contract basis um you'll notice that administrative and supervisory positions um for technology facilities food service and transportation are not on this list because they're on a letter of agreement which is annual and doesn't require board action um that's handled through the superintendent's office so Direct ly so that is your

155list and it is in your board uh packet okay any questions I I just have a question so the aster on there yes um can you can you explain that so we have four administrators um but state law delineates as they do with teachers two years the first two years in a respective role um and then anything after that along with teachers it's the same thing with principles and assistant principles so the asteris in your uh memo denote four administrators who are completing their first two years in their role um it will be moving to um was really it's not called continuing contract but basically it's um their contract roles every year um and that is a different evaluation cycle that we use so I um evaluate um new administrators to the role or their

156supervisor does um annually for the first two years and then after that it's every 3 years per our leadership um plan leadership appraisal plan and the leadership appraisal plan is part of our comprehensive evaluation process that we have for teachers and principes um and school leaders in our district so am I reading it right that those four administrators we have four who are within the first two years they're finishing the first two years so they will be evaluated next year they'll be evaluated um still at the end of this year and then they go into a three-year cycle got it okay because they finish the yeah they'll be completing their second year this year so basically I'm just asking for authorization to extend their contract I'm going into a third year great can I call

157for a vote all in favor great unanimous thank you and thank you all right so we are going to move we had a third item for Action um that we'd like to move to the end um after we go back into executive session is there is there something else I need to do do to officially move that I would probably at this point um if there's consensus with the board you don't have to do anything officially at this point you can just skip that I can just skip it okay all right so on to superintendent report all right all right tonight I do have a um a really lengthy report for you now I'm gonna go really quick and I'm sorry it was I'm GNA talk really fast I know we're getting late okay superintend

158for February 5th uh mayai Wilson school we had we just have had a lot we haven't had a meeting but yeah second graders here's some things I'll skip over a couple things I'm sure but second graders were building actually had a chance to see their projects um they're building gingerbread um schools basically the middle school and mayel I Wilson school they were looking at community and what's in a community schools are in a community and then they built their own um rep replicas of that um younger students kindergarten of first grade have been learning about landscape painting and this will again will be in the newsletter and on our website students in grades two and three have been very much artists lately completing Express impressive self-portraits also at mael I Wilson school it's starting to

159look a little bit like winter this was these were taken maybe a week ago at 45 same thing and we want to thank the PTO again for funding sleds for our ele students um to do some sliding and enjoy the winter weather in science class at 45 fifth graders have been learning about the movement of matter also in fourth and fifth uh fifth graders have been learning about ecosystems in food [Music] chains also at fourth and fifth the Civil Rights Club has learned about the Lunar New Year which is on February 9th which is this week Friday students learned about the origin symbols and traditions in the Chinese Zodiac made traditional good luck symbols to hang on their door to bring prosperity in the new year at 68 uh before the winter break this was

160a few few weeks ago uh Library volunteers uh delivered $250 worth of book donations to the food pantry and they generated $2800 um for the middle school so congratulations to the students for doing that in eth grade uh students were involved in the rubbe Goldberg science project at the high school December uh high school students of the month Noah Allen belet Morgan V Walsh and Lucy Nan also at the high school we have two French visitors um from the Amore Precinct and uh we have a teacher that is visiting as part of an exchange and we have a student who is visiting from France for several weeks at the high school we had um 11 students who participated in the Poetry out loud contest it was a full room during the school day and um

161we had many students uh who did an I'm always impressed by this event the students stand up twice during this event and recite um a a u poem of their choice and um it's just when you're doing that in front of hundreds of people uh I know it could be nerve-wracking and then to remember your lines and then to use intonation and expression um and to be looking where you're supposed to be looking and keep all that together it's just amazing uh every year I'm just impressed uh by the students um so hats off to all those students also at the high school um featured in the paths newsletter this month or actually this quarter Eden sailor is the Path student of the quarter she's the only uh gry student we have this month and

162she is in the carpentry program and the Rangers Rock part of my report Port gy graduate Delaney Nolan won a silver and a bronze medal as a sprinter representing the us at the parapan uh American games in Chile her next goal is the 2024 Paris par Olympics congratulations and also the gly girls basketball team hosted an ice cream social and poster signing party for all their young fans and I know they have many also in Rangers Rock and I'm not going to read all of these great names 31 singers who represented the high school at the district 2 honors Coral Festival in January also Rangers Rock January 18th High School senior Charlie Moore performed with the o o asima I'm sorry Brothers at the Art Center um and I did not have a chance to

163to attend that but I heard it was very well done also Rangers Rock the Rangers representative the high school at the model United Nations conference at Boston University and in the superintendent's uh notebook I am not going to go through the entire progress report but just note that there is a mid-year uh progress update I'll be giving another update at the end of the school year um and just to get right to the point this is what the progress report looks like these are all the items that were presented at the beginning of the year around the Strategic priorities for the year and this um progress report has been updated just a bit to show you the approximate um completion of all these items again we're focusing on items that are in all four of

164the Strategic plan areas including Wellness early childhood education which is mostly the new school project College and Career um which is f focused on academics and writing uh math articulation across the curriculum 21st century the profile of a learner that is being worked on the equity plan obviously uh as a big portion of that so those are all items that are in progress as you can see in most cases uh Midway through the school year another item just want to um bring everyone's attention to is that um this is another series that will be in the newsletter intermittently for the next few weeks on the science of reading science of reading is a new approach that uh the district has been involved in for really three or four years and looking at the the research

165around literacy and how students learn uh with reading but uh so this is a series that uh hopefully parents can read and uh find out more about this approach in another area I just want to call your attention to is the annual report data comparison chart I want to thank um Lissa Porter in my office for doing a lot of work on this uh Nicole Barnes who's our power school specialist also contributed as well as um some other folks in the district just kind of putting the data in perspective for the last 10 years or so um in comparing a lot of different categories I added some categories um today that we have not um put the data in but we will um but just trying to include as much data that gives a picture

166of uh what the district's data I have no idea what that was but I think we just locked out uh what the district's data is and you can go back over the last decade and then look at the data points and how they compare so the next step we'd like to do and um I talked to Melissa today about it is start graphing some of this data so that there's a more VIs visual representation so you can look at something and then kind of look how we've done over the last decade uh with that so that's the next step that we'll be looking at but this will be posted um this week on our annual report page if it hasn't been already Jeff will power school not do that I mean I know Power School

167can do that for you but does our power school instance not graph let's say like average daily attendance for these last few years and all that no it's not something that it will do we just we have to do it manually ourself we create those graphs I don't believe we have that feature that I know of but I will ask that question I yeah I can help you with that if you want but that's pretty simple add-on um that would save Melissa probably a lot of time but she likes making graphs though a really good job with her but we've added some things too um that weren't in the annual report this year um but we'd like to just make sure that we're keeping on top of things like uh parent um attendance at conferences

168uh parent attendance at open houses uh all the stakeholder Sur survey satisfaction data um things like that that we've added there's other items on here that were not on the original annual report that you'll find on this so hopefully uh you find it fascinating and if you find items that we're missing or you think of we're trying to compare this this data as much as we can so that people have a good picture of of what the district's data points look like yeah this is really helpful and it's especially helpful I think to start being able to see some of the trends especially you know preco um all in one place so thank you for for getting this pulled together I think it's really helpful y now we we I think it's been really interesting

169to look at the data where there's places that it says no data um there really a lot of the assessment data during the the covid two years was suppressed or it was not we didn't even have students taking assessments at one point so there's different reasons why there's no data in some of the areas that you'll look at but if you have any questions just let me know is that it uh no I think I have a couple more slides sorry Dojo was a long report um board goes to school um I know we've had some board members um attend the first two board goes back to school um events at the middle school and at the high school um and we have two more coming up Wilson school and middle school 405 um but

170last week at one of the going back to school uh events we had board members visiting um science classes for example at 68 and PE class at 68 as well there's some photos here and finally lean you had mentioned the timeline for the school project I know you can't really see that it's too small right here um but there is a timeline and we'll be putting this timeline out um and some of it is dependent upon the board's approval of different steps along the timeline but you can see that uh the project that was um presented tonight by Steve blat um you know is scheduled for a board vote on March 18th again these can be adjusted um as lean and I keep talking about different steps that need to be taken uh but just

171going to give you the scope of the project um and what's ahead from here so that's the end of the thank you I don't me to rush you thank you okay any questions great thank you we'll move on to committee reports and kick off with our students okay so uh since our last meeting we did midterms we were supposed to have our meeting the Tuesday right on the first day of midterm so that was kind of a fortunate ending um but that went well um and then right now uh the high school is kind of in the middle of selecting courses for next year and with that Tommy and I and a couple other um full IB students talked to the nth and 10th graders during advisory last week about full IB and there's an

172IB info night tomorrow if anyone wants to go to that but I know a couple students who are considering it and I'm so excited so and then this Thursday we have an extended advisory and for 11th and 12th graders in the GCA we have a guest speaker coming to talk about mental health issues and I think that was part of the Kyle Kyle car's Club work that the group that came to speak last board meeting so I don't know much about that because it hasn't happened yet but I will be sure to report my next student report yes um and then for the seniors now that we are firmly in second semester um following following midterms it it's starting to feel weird we're getting our uh weekly emails and we only have 17 weeks left

173until graduation but before graduation um a lot of people are going to need to take exams whether it be AP ni IB and the exam revision revision season is starting um there were a lot of resources sent out about uh study Zooms for studying for exams so that's exciting um also the senior class gift um there's a lot of working behind the scenes on the senior class gift as well as Spirit Week in planning that that will be a week in March um and spirit week's always a really fun week where the whole school really gets to come together um yeah the IB info night I'm super excited for that tomorrow as well as um Sports Seasons are wrapping up um and coming to a close of the regular seasons there's been the senior night

174for BA boys basketball last Friday and then senior night for girls basketball um is coming up this week um and and all the other sports also are having their end of season um Playoffs begin shortly and the swim team has um our regional meet on Friday um and then looking forward to March um one thing that is being done as part of the IB annual theme that was presented to us um earlier um a few months ago which is Food For Thought is that there will be an Oxfam hunger banquet which is um in opportunity for people to really feel um the the disparities between income and hunger throughout the world um and it's kind of an experience where you get given a um a role at the beginning of the dinner and then you

175are um you are given dinner based on what that role is whether it's the bottom 50% um of income worldwide uh middle 30 or top 20 um and that will be happening March 14th Thursday March 14th at 6 o'clock at West custo Hall and if you have questions about tickets um you can email me or Madame McDonald great thank you I saw that come out in the newsletter today and I added that that looks like a great event thank you okay next up Community engagement Community engagement committee has been busy um continuing to work on messaging about a new school and the FAQs are um just about ready to roll will be posted on the board's website when they're ready um we've been talking about some in-person events that the entire committee is very much

176looking forward to and so pending the vote on March 18th about which direction we go in we will then launch into some in-person modes um to be available to the public to both answer questions and solicit feedback on the direction that we're going we would like to begin in person events um at the end of March March 20th being the first of two nights of parent teacher conferences and then roll right into um Foot Loose which is the high school's musical other inperson events um include Little League kickoff in the parade spring Sports kindergarten orientation incoming freshman info nights um and hopefully uh onsite whether it's ad gry or here um for in person like walk the walk the property events so we're we're getting ready and we'll go whichever direction the board says in

177late March wonderful thanks so much yes it's helpful we have we so the timeline up to remind us right thank you finance Tom uh Finance we met a couple of weeks ago and Jeff and Scott walked us through the fiscal 25 uh priorities um to to really get our uh our our our budget cycle going um we are meeting again this uh Friday uh and again next Wednesday we will continue to talk about the budget and Scott will be giving a uh a year-to-date uh review of our fiscal 24 um expenses uh relative to the budget great thank you an policy oh fny uh so uh we we had an update from from you or Jeff regarding the first quarter results and it was going to be at projected to be kind of a tight

178year for the balance of the year and I was wondering whether uh when you'll get a look at the second quarter and do you feel that we're on track uh Visa the budget so I'll start this off and um we've been getting periodic updates at finance committee meetings in uh December we received an update about the first five months of the year and there were some areas where things were were tighter other uh areas where we have some relief to balance that out um Scott's going to give the Q2 update on on Friday um and the impression that he's given so far is that continues to be the the case Scott do you want to elaborate on that at all uh the only thing I'd say is um yeah it is a uh it is

179a tight fiscal year but um we're going to land the fiscal year and we'll be fine there's um as Tom mentioned you know we've got some areas of legal and uh some of our facilities cost um due to some unforeseen incidents at melai Wilson school um uh that we're looking at and that those will actually be able to be covered through some of our hiring process and funds that we have in our salaries and our benefits lines and each year uh in the meeting in June we come to the board because the state allows us to do a 5% transfer from any cost center to another transfer to another cost center because school budgets are you know voted on so early and then you've got you know before you even expend it you know um

180you know quite a bit of the year has gone by so we'll be bringing those transfers to the board in June um to take care of those areas where we think we're um thanks you know a little bit tighter Denny so okay mean over time and while I've been on the board I've been I've been comfortable hearing this information through the finance committee historically has there been precedent to have quarterly updates at the full board meeting no it's it's been at the finance committee level and then usually the finance chair will just report out um a little bit about the financial update and usually the audits also handled at the finance committee level so the auditor um often will come in and do an audit summary for the finance committee and many years we've done

181that I think once I think once I can remember the auditor coming to the full board but that's generally not standard practice great and policy we have two policies um coming for first read this evening the first is um policy be school board meetings and um this came for review with the policy committee um motiv ated by the shift to move Schoolboard meetings a regular business meetings to Thursday for um starting in the next academic year um we would have needed to update it anyway because we were actually out of alignment um previously the policy listed that our regular business meetings were starting at 6:30 as they had been but we shifted last year to move them to six so the updated language um actually takes out any of the specifics regarding time and day

182of week so that if we do need to make adjustments we um don't need to come back and revise the policy and that we will be um following our policy um and then the second for a first read is excuse me policy bde board standing committees and really um you will see that there are not any significant changes to this policy though the reason reason why it's coming for a first read is we are in the process of um working on a new policy that um as of right now it's BDF with a draft title other board committees and special committee task forces may not stay that way but um as a district we only had a committee policy for our standing committees which are um policy and finance and so um we're looking to

183add policies to cover all of our other committees that are considered other committees and then for any special committees or task forces that we need to convene um and in the future we will need to revisit our bylaws as well to make sure that everything um language wise is in alignment across the policies and bylaws and our next meeting is tomorrow I have a question on the Schoolboard meetings um thank you for making the updates to some of that language because yeah it was already outdated I guess I have one question that it reads right now it will hold regular business meetings once or twice a month can say at least once a month so we I think we looked at a couple other policies um in other districts and that was the wording that

184was used so it doesn't box Us in because there's months like February where it really is once right yeah yeah yeah but you're worried that we might not have a meeting in a month I'm only worried that let's just say tonight was a snowstorm and we couldn't have the meeting and we couldn't find a way to reschedule it for some reason then we might be out of compliance with policy okay so once I mean generally we meet twice a month yeah the board meets twice a month yeah yeah I guess and I was wondering to just thinking about you know if the public was looking or if you're if you're looking to become a board member and wanted to know when can I expect meetings should there be more specificity in there um I'm not

185sure the policy would necessarily be the place anyway to get that that's what I was yeah it seemed pretty specific before and is that out a little too specific I I think for a while we were out of alignment with the policy just the way the language was boxed in we've changed times and you know it's the first time that the board is considering another day of the week I think in what 30 years 40 years I think it's always been on Mondays um we don't regret that right I know hopefully there not a reason that it's always been on Monday um but that's we're trying to give a lot of time for everybody to kind of build schedules so okay that's why but I think it's better to use language and um I think

186Ann remind me but our legal council thought it would be better just to keep it at a um AB abstract level and not box ourselves in not have the board box itself in as an aside I also um even though I my term is up and will not be um subject to the Thursday meetings I like that we with a shift now we also aren't running into the chance of conflicting with Cumberland Town Council oh because that's Mondays y yeah and I just know we had to move it a lot for our Monday holidays too yeah um so you might recall that in the equity plan uh policy bde was something that we uh that the equity committee would like to explore with the policy committee and Ann I think you kind of answered that

187question but um the equity committee is one that in particular because it involves more than just the school board um we feel that it's important to protect the ability to have a broad membership um is that something that can be discussed how how do you see steering committees things like that how how might you see that policy playing out is that a question you can answer right now um well currently um there is language in the draft about um a application process for community members for committees where that um is is deemed a good fit you know given the work of the committee um I don't have right now any specifics on that I wanted to check in with Leanne about um how we did that this year so there isn't like a very structured

188approach to it but just saying that there there would that the board would solicit applications um in order to you know to have a a broad um representation well and I guess also just to clarify really quick um bde is the uh standing committees and we're looking at BDF which would be other committees which is where the equity committee currently right so I did notice that in the equity plan actually that it probably should be changed to BDF as opposed to bde um thank you yeah thank you anuka so I have a question too so is my understanding correct it won't be set for either Mondays or Thursdays but it will be set according to the needs of the committee by the chair 30 days oh you talking about the school board oh no sorry

189Monday or Thursdays is for the school board regular meetings that doesn't have to do with the Committees right for school board right sorry I shifted to topic here school yeah and I was wondering too just about should there be some language about how far in advance the schedule is set because right now it just seems really open but we have talked to about them being Thursdays going forward with a draft plan so it says here notice of 72 hours ahead which seems very quick so by practice we we set the board schedule I say we um in our office we set the board schedule with the board chair for the next year um so that schedule is out in public but we've been waiting we we wouldn't send it out this early usually but we've

190been waiting to see what the board was going to do with this policy before we did that but we give plenty of notice to all for all of our regular meetings while in advance of the next school year so everybody's got the schedule um we try to do that before March so anyone running for the board um would know what day it would be and we have signaled our staff I did send out a message to the staff several weeks ago saying that the board was considering um this policy and that the board meetings might shift to Thursdays next year depending on how this policy went um so as you begin planning for next year just kind of keep that in mind um that there could be a shift because it's the first time it's

191it could potentially shift in a long time and also um while I've let the members of the board know this for anyone um watching at home we did also um have the support of the teachers union for moving it to Thursday um so we consulted with them and then regarding the 72 70 72 hours um I mean that language is still in there too for times when we would need to call an additional regular business meeting because there's additional work that needs to be done so yeah that would just be an out of schedule meeting um but you know in by practice we usually put all the meetings on a schedule and keep to that schedule as much as we can um in terms of you know noticing and and getting those things out but

192that is reminding me from a student perspective um if the meetings get moved till to Thursdays I don't know if we've asked the students if that would work or at least when we're looking for new students for next year to ensure that that's something that they're I think Melissa did Melissa she put it out to both of you as well oh good yeah okay I'm I'm personally glad that I won't be here next year for um because Thursday would not work the best for me um with Friday meets for every sport that I have but I'm not going to be on the board next year we can't keep you Tommy I feel like as long as there's like notice and basically we get the whole year schedule it's easy enough to schedule around I mean

193it's nice because it's not like it's at six so yeah sorts yeah and then we did check with or we did provide uh both towns that there might be a shift to so both towns were aware um that there could be a shift in our meetings yeah but we didn't get any feedback on that well and I'm glad it doesn't confli conflict with Cumberland anymore so but yeah speaking of time I know we've been good about not going over nine but after cancelling our other meeting we are going a little later tonight um so are we set with policy any other final questions on the first read all right facility is Christina facilities so we met on January 5th and tried to cover a lot of things that we haven't been covering because so many

194um meetings have been uh spent on the new school so for large areas we went over um the solar project that has been talked about for several years um just got an update from Scott like where are we at um it does seem to there's still conversations going on with the town um and effect effectively it's it's on hold um it's just it's still important but it's not on the front burner um because of all the other things we have going on um the food waste issue slowly moving forward it involves a lot of different groups High School faculty uh student green teams ecomaine and uh Reynolds and we identif we pretty much identified two areas of concern um cost and student training of the recycling and I believe Scott or Jeff you have an

195update um there was a meeting with the the group is that correct that would be that would be uh Denny and Tommy who will give that up perfect okay you're on Tommy okay um well yeah that was a that was a great description but we've had two meetings so far one focusing on recycling one focusing on food waste specifically um with recycling we had um um a representative from Ecom main come and for composting we had and as as well as other um Representatives um and then for composting we had Suzanne Lee who's um uh who works at um the Mitchell Center for sustainability at the University of Maine and she has implemented uh food Waste Systems in a lot of um schools throughout Maine and has done the trial programs and has a lot

196of knowledge um about what works what doesn't work and um how you can be most efficient at each level of school whether it's um a school that has whether the school's behaviors don't necessarily um me like work with the idea of composting or if they work really well um she was a super valuable uh insight and we spent most of the meeting hearing from her and also sharing just um a little bit about our thoughts and how um the information that she shared might apply to the district um and then we have another meeting coming up on the 14th um and then after that the group that is um not the administrators will convene and uh bring a proposal here that's great thank you and Denny if you have anything to add well I I've

197just been very impressed by the energy coming up from this uh you know from the uh you know Bottoms Up situation we have a lot of student involvement we have teachers that are engaged each building seems to be engaged so there's a lot of Forward Motion here and there's some lwh hanging fruit one one of which is to go after uh paper waste which is most of our waste uh out of the schools and you know you can recycle that more than once and you can we can do that that through Ecom main so it's that's I think something that we could tackle and be successful early food waste is trickier as you pointed out because you know depends on kiddos doing the right thing as they go down the line and if the at

198the end end of the dump is food and trash then then you're stuck so it's it's all about uh students doing the right thing once it gets out there then we had the owner of uh of garbage and garden attend with us a gy grad from North Yarmouth really high powered guy I thought and uh once it's clean they can take it and turn it into compost so I think it's really exciting food food waste is a giant issue in the world we waste 40% of our food here in the United States which is is really criminal when you think how many people don't eat and uh then there's all kinds of other climate change impacts because you're uh using up soil that you don't need to use up and so on and so forth

199so it's a really a really great great initiative and I'm I'm proud of the team so far yeah and one more thing yeah garbage Garden I forgot to mention that but um they were also have talked about how they've um updated their procedures and a lot of the issues that we had um that it sounded like we had initially um with rodents and smell and um will um they've implemented procedures that will help that through having liners and um just kind of cleaning the whole thing up that's really exciting thank you for this upate can I just add to it sure if you don't mind um so the what we've done is we created a goal um for the um group and we kind of put this ad hoc group together of people that had

200a lot of energy and um the goal is our next meeting to start creating action steps on moving food waste forward uh to begin with also the recycling and then what we want to do is prepare a written plan which we can then bring to the school board to be able to kind of present what we're doing and then the other part of that um which comes to the part of uh communicating to the district about Recycling and food waste and then communicating to the community on what we're doing so so there's several steps here that go through it and then we'll uh we'll see how things go once we get stuff implemented that's great thank you so did I just hear an ad hoc committee for food waste uh has been will be made

201so it'll break off from facilities it's made and it's moving forward great you can have it awesome thank you I'm impressed it just this topic has been around for so long and it's really moving so thank you students thank you Jenny thank you Scott that's awesome you can have it great okay um next thing we've went over because we hadn't had a chance to really go over it again Scott would have more details but the summer capital projects going forward um good news we stop the U middle school project as far as modular correct we do not need um them until the summer of 2025 yes and um then maintenance that revolving Replacements um that's ongoing uh door Replacements hallways Treads and retraining walls um miw doors windows um I basically got the gist of

202it so um oh yes and two highlights LED lights for the pool and resurfacing the track are two things up and coming that need to be addressed and the high school students are exploring Outdoor Cafe area and there's talk of putting in Windows in that high school cafeteria windows up high for safety but also for light coming in did I miss anything Scott the master of all um we've got a lot of projects planned again for this coming summer so and uh the school revolving renovation funds which you mentioned um mayi Wilson School School the bid went out for the windows and doors that are to be replaced on the building and we're waiting for the results back on that and we're getting ready to um start moving forward on the um High School ventilation

203project for the science Wing as well and lastly I will say we had another facilities meeting since our last meeting on January 2nd no February 2nd Friday and I won't go over in detail because you just pretty much heard um as well the concept design yourselves I would just add that um when we were there we had as was mentioned a lot of questions about the drop off the parking in particular um concerns about that and I would just say that they were very responsive the the plan and that part of it at least um was indeed uh redesigned According to some of our comments or requests so I would just say they've been very responsive when we've spoken so I appreciate that very much great and that's it great thanks Christina curriculum Tom um

204curriculum we met uh two weeks ago and uh we had a a good meeting we were joined by um administrators and teachers from u mael i Wilson and gy 45 to talk about the the science of reading um uh that that Jeff was talking about before um and how they are piloting um different curricula to to um to uh to bring bring that into uh into their schools uh in a more formal way um this included going over the theoretical foundations that um uh are are um that that align with with uh the science of reading um and um you know the different things that they're considering as they're uh trying to implement it I'm I'm sorry I forgot my notes if there are other things that I missed that other committee members want to

205share I welcome you to mentioned well I just my comment this has to do with something I heard a lot about when I was a superintendent which is phonics or not phonics and what's happened uh is that the world of Academia I think uh has has decided that phonics really are important and uh the the you know the the way of doing business before that was do the emphasize them so what our group here is reacting to that Big C change in how you teach reading I'm sure this will be some of your comments Jeff and they're evaluating three different vendors who do it a different way so it's it's it's quite a thing and and and there's a lot of people that yell about it uh you know in in in the world around

206the country about whether phonics or not phonics but I think we're on the right course and have a a very dedicated staff that's putting in a lot of time on it yeah yeah I would just add having taught students reading students that don't have any reading and my own son who struggled phonics you know they were thrown out they were thrown out the door I was in a school where the books when the SE change was like whole language whole reading they'll figure it out literally we were told to throw out books they came and took away the books that were um focused on Phonics and I cannot tell you how excited I am that phonic is back it's not the same as you know Dick and Jane d d d da it's really new

207and improved D and just it's huge so many kids will be able to grab onto that and the ones that don't need it as much they'll they'll get some of it and sail through so it's I'm just applauding the teachers and everyone that previous boards in this board that supported this because it it's G to be huge it's awesome we'll never go back it was encouraging too to see staff from from two schools collaborating on this so there's continuity in a student stud experience as they as they go through the schools great thank you Kim Equity anything else so we have a dra presentation again now yeah I I think we're good okay thank you um ad hoc committee reports I'm assuming there's been some so there was a Dropout committee um that Tim and

208I were there for and they uh reviewed programs that they're um following to address um the Dropout issue which is not huge here but it exists um they're following highet spring Ahead Learning Works and they were discussing further options that they could add into that um cohort program a middle school miw program not program but getting someone from those schools uh to be a rep on the committee because it was clearly acknowledged around the table that the problem of Dropout is isn't just a high school problem it starts far earlier for ass sorted reasons and also they talked about getting um which I don't know if they communicated students yet but maybe getting involved uh bigs and Littles and the teams sports teams um teaching and NHS has to do um tutoring time so you

209can be um hooked into this too and Mr Furbish the uh paths contact teacher he um has a grant recently that supporting these students did I Tim I mean yeah I mean they I think there was some nice dedicated time from the staff to pull out all like the recent dropouts and review the data and to kind of like Kim's story earlier about like what the staff is doing I mean they knew everything about some of these students and who had dropped out and what their stories were and so there was quantitative data but an amazing amount of qualitative data where we can really assess like where are the risks and how far back does it go and what interventions should we try to try to prevent it and what are meaningful interventions so I

210think it's um I was excited just to see like data and get some of the stories and and the background of like just how much care and uh already goes into preventing Dropout um but also like they they stick with uh with so many staff members the ones that we lose and then the ones that we almost lost you know um so it it's a very powerful like committee um so yeah thank you other ad hoc committees Kim uh just quickly the GCA committee we are um in the process of getting a meeting going but in the meantime the calendar has been updated so both in the District calendars page there's the GCA tab is completely well it looks completely updated and also on the GCA website itself um so just kind of fun to

211to go through and look and see how how much that Auditorium is being used right now wonderful that's great other ad hoc committees um sure I'll just mention that so profile of a learner did meet again since our last meeting uh with Lawrence Alexander and again on that committee it includes administrators building principles um teachers and we've gotten to the point of identifying some high Lev themes and I believe the next step is Lawrence working together with Jeff and the district leadership team to put some more uh language around those to bring back to the committee and then ultimately to the board okay I think that's it for committee reports moving on Communications um I'm not going to spend much time on this item I did want to just us as a board to revisit

212our board goals um I did notice what was linked into the agenda is an old draft the our actual board goals are posted on our board page um and just wanted to recognize the work that we put into coming up with these goals and for us to be able to reflect back now that we're more than halfway through the year um I ask mostly to update the link in the agenda but it is just on the main Schoolboard page if people board members can take a look at the goals and maybe at a future meeting we can just touch base about um how our progress has has been this year so what they're up there awesome thank you okay so that was I just wanted to mention that and then we have some additional items

213for Action that I think we need to enter back into executive session yeah we just extend okay and then extend we are going to extend the first executive session that we started at 5:30 um and then should can I do the motion for the next no we have to come out and do that one okay all right so I think for our students our meeting is complete or yeah the meeting's complete and then we just go back into ex okay thank you yes thank you Tommy and Sophia appreciate your time good to seeing you guys um you're okay and then basically go back yes okay and so for anyone following at home a motion and then vote motion and vot and we'll go back into executive okay I'd like to make a motion to extend

214uh the previous um executive session just extending that okay I would like to make a motion to extend the executive session to discuss land acquisition pursuant of State Statute MSA 4056 C can I have a motion so move oh a motion soov okay thank you Kim can I get a second second all in favor okay unanimous thank you