MSAD #51 School Board Meeting, June 5, 2023

001good all right so we opened the meeting earlier um we started at five o'clock we had a couple of executive sessions so uh welcome to the msad 51 school board meeting for Monday June 5th 2023 and we are coming out of our second executive session and we'll continue with the rest of the agenda so is there a motion I moved to deny the grievance under consideration and to provide the association with the board's written decision within the time frame set forth in the collective bargaining agreement thank you Jared is there a second a second thank you Leanne discussion and again we are to the motion was to move to deny the grievance all in favor unanimous motion carries thank you okay moving on to the happy stuff recognition number three do we have oh we

002have Carl here I believe yes please foreign hi everybody good evening Carl Francis here principal at the high school very excited to share with you I have a couple students with me tonight um Christopher Gilbert and Adele Weaver you might recognize Adele was on the front page of the newspaper today with the students to look out for in the future so she's kind of famous today and Chris is absolutely famous in his own right so today we're going to talk about a program that I was really excited to learn about in my first days at Greeley High School the multiple Pathways element of our school which really allows students to personalize and dig into things that excite them about career interest and individual interest and Extended Learning opportunities I hadn't seen it that opportunity in

003other districts the to the extent that our students have the ability to do that at Greeley High School and I'm really proud of that and excited about that and I think our new multiple Pathways instructor Andrew first has really taken that to another level we created he created a video to give you the overview and some um feeling around that so we'll we'll share that with you right now and then we'll let the kids jump in um the students jump in to um explore that with you and make sure we can find Geiger room there it is and then they'll talk to you about their experiences so pathways at Greeley High School this is our multiple Pathways coordinator Andrew fresh Andrew first here the pathways coordinator at Greeley High School I'm just here to share

004with you an explanation of what a silo is and share a few from this year with you so a silo is a student Independent Learning opportunity their independent studies that are based off of student interest and student passions and they feature opportunities for students to collaborate to learn from and support community members as well they are credited elective classes and this past year there were over 50 individual silos that took place at Greeley High School The Silo courses from this year represent an opportunity for dozens of deeply meaningful Community connections students had opportunities to work with community members who generously donated both their time and expertise to support them in areas of Interest while also pushing and challenging them to be both stronger students academically as well as more invested members of their Community citizens

005so I am going to share with you a few examples of silos that were worked on this year but it's actually a video made by a student as part of their Silo and video production after that you're going to have the opportunity to hear from Adele Weaver who is an exceptional person and student who's graduating this year but was part of a independent study in music production and was also part of the state champion solve for tomorrow team so enjoy these videos and then Adele [Music] like I never really wanted to go professional at any sports so I never really did that I really focused on the aspects of what it takes to build a team I've been mainly working with Maya who does the filming for the team and editing uh coach Gita who's

006the head coach and while she who's the assistant coach who have been like teaching me all the things I need to know before I go off to college and keep learning so I have that jump start where I want to start and I have that little thing on my resume it says oh you worked at building and you did a good job and they volunteer like what they know and all that type of stuff like Maya's taught me out filming and how keeping stats is important for the team gite's taught me about how being a coach you have to work with your team and not be one of those people who yells and screams at their players every time they do one thing wrong you have to treat them with respect and kindness that they

007deserve and while she's taught me up from scouting to planning trips to managing a budget and all that type of stuff I've learned a lot from these coaches and players in my own [Applause] foreign [Music] I and originally one other number we were like really passionate about Environmental Studies and we knew we wanted to pursue a project centered around that and so um our advisor first asked us to brainstorm in environmental related issue within our community and I think also it was like the amount of information we get that's negative about climate change like on social media is just like overwhelming so what we really wanted it to be was definitely local related to me entirely and hopeful and framed and like you'll get some negative obviously because that's the reality of the situation but

008with every unit there's usually something like you'll get some negative and some positive foreign [Music] [Applause] probably back at the beginning of September when I decided I wanted to get a little bit more of an advantage on like the career I wanted to go into so I went to Mr Kirsch and I was I just asked like what we could do and I started interning with Chelsea Ray who was a personal stylist based in Portland and she's helped me so much through this whole process so I wanted to give her a special shout out she's done wardrobe insulting and personal styling with me all year and was taking time out of her day to help me and then in about November or December I decided to do a big fashion show to as like my

009style of finale so that's where we are tonight I'm very excited to be here I did never think today would come I thought it was just like imaginary up until right now um but I'm super excited especially because it's a charity for best buddies and my sister's been a part of Best Buys for years and I've watched her grow and have a ton of new experiences and just going to like their friendship walks and all their events has been life-changing for me and I'm sure for a lot of people and I just want to finish it off by saying a special thank you to my grandma who's been helping me through this whole process like would take her entire weekend to help me out and I'd go see her right after school and it just

010means a lot to those people to help and she's sitting over there she doesn't want me to point out [Applause] do a really good night thank you so what does the future look like for silos and the pathways position well the hope is that the program will continue to grow with support of both invested students invested community members and of course the school board and School District to help with things like funding which help make it possible to create even more in-depth opportunities and experiences for the students as of now at the end of the 22-23 school year there are already 26 students signed up for fall independent studies so there is a huge amount of room for potential growth and you know the hope is that from from hearing about this and and talking

011with Adele that folks can see both how impactful this can be not just for the students which of course are our priority at ghs but also for the community and community is in my estimation the most important thing that we need to be working together to bring together thank you so much pretty impressive uh and I have a couple impressive people that I'm sure you would like to hear from now so may I introduce Adele and Chris so we're two members of the team who competed in the What's called the solve for tomorrow challenge Samsung solve for tomorrow Challenge and it's basically a challenge to create a stem project that improves the world in some way and so basically what we did for our project was design a new type of filtering system to remove

012pfas which is a toxic chemical that's quite prevalent in Maine and a lot of rural areas from the water supply um yeah so do you want to yeah so we met with professionals at UMaine and Orno and we met with people who work in the field directly and helped the big problems that happen around the world with pfas and they helped us make a prototype that will be used for like underneath people's sinks in like day-to-day life and they helped us test if pfas was in Greeley Waters and it's not so we figured that out they helped a lot with just like telling us how it works like the chemical functions of it um how it got created and how difficult it is for it to be removed but there is a lot of research

013going into it so yeah yeah so we talked specifically to Dr apul and Dr chowdery at UMaine Orono who like basically taught us tons of what we knew about pfas and Patrick keown from emerging compounds treatment Technologies who helped build our prototype with us and help us to sign it and I think this all started when Mr first and some other students wanted to make a project about water and like water Equity I think and so that gradually morphed into wanting to do a project about pfas then wanting to do this solve for tomorrow project and then inviting other students like us to come and help out with it um you can go and talk about like how perfect okay so we got to um the states we won the championship for States um which

014is really cool so we got like a bunch of money that we could use for the school and I think we used it for like whatever we wanted so I use my portion of the money for the Civil Rights team um so that was really cool that we won money for our school that was pretty proud moment um we didn't get to the Nationals but I think what we learned was really important and the work that we did was really important as well yeah I think you said all that needs saying it was an amazing opportunity like started by Mr Hirsch and we did well yeah I'm going to talk about your silos and yours so I think I'm going first for this one so I've done and we'll be doing a lot of silos

015and elos and stuff like that so for silos I've done uh in freshman year I did a project on science communication so over the course of the year I made a lot of short videos explaining science and math concepts to like a younger type audience and then as a final project for the end of the year I entered What's called the junior breakthrough challenge where I made a three minute video explaining a science or math Topic in an easy and intuitive way so that like anyone could understand it after watching this video and throughout the whole year I worked with a like public speaking Mentor who helped me develop my skills on explanation and like delivery to a camera and everything like that and that was really amazing and like after publishing some of the

016videos online I got amazing feedback from people saying that like it really helped them to understand things a lot better and that they love my explanation Style and I've also I also plan to be doing a lot more silos in the future actually just last week I met with a physics professor at USM uh Dr Paul mccrosius who does computational physics stuff and I'm going to be meeting with him over the next hopefully year to work on projects in physics and maybe write papers and yeah that kind of stuff I've also done a whole bunch of elos especially in like science and math and I will be doing those next year so so far I've done two writing classes at colleges a ethics class over the summer at USM a math class at USM discrete

017math and next year I'm planning on taking calc C at smcc and I believe computational physics at University of Maine or now depending on how schedules work out so I've been doing and well we continue to doing a ton of Extended Learning opportunities and those have been super duper important for me because like especially going past what Greenlee teaches in math and science stuff it's been amazing to like have the opportunity to be able to do more and really fulfill my interests so I did seller projects since I think junior year and the first one that I did was about fashion because I wanted to make my own fashion thing so I learned a lot about how to run a business and I made my own business and it was pretty cool but it wasn't

018what I wanted to do so this year I did a music silo where I worked with studios in Portland to help me learn how to do music production audio engineering and like how to work in a studio and I got really good success in the music industry for like a year um like yeah in a year and so I got to work with like the professionals and I have an internship with this song licensing company called Fulton Street music group and they're based out of New York LA and Nashville and Maine um so I don't think I could have done any of that if I didn't have this opportunity with Mr Fish because like I don't know the walls of Education go so far out of school too and that's how you get um like

019a step up where you want to be in life and I think even if you don't know what you're doing in life Pathways is a really good idea to like figure out what you want to do and what you like before you go to college where it's like the big deal um so I mean yeah I don't think I could have done it without Silo projects long final shout out for your support I really appreciate this uh it's it's an incredible opportunity for our students to explore their areas of Interest beyond our impressive curriculum and um thank you for your support I appreciate that thank you comments from the board I I had nothing to do with that and I feel very proud that's that's amazing I'm humbled and jealous of some of the things

020that they're doing uh yeah I I have a lot of students that I went to school with who um really found their spot I guess in life with these Extended Learning opportunities Silo projects I think that there's a lot that can be gained through these that maybe you can't find in conventional conventional curriculum opportunities but yeah I think they're good thank you two thumbs up I think it's interesting how you're already saying when like in the past tense schooling yeah thank you to Mr first I think we met him on one of the board goes back to school days in his huge office okay thank you for all that everybody okay moving on to number four approval of minutes I looked through these and I think we can take them as a group before I

021hear a motion I did have one edit Jeff for the May 18th version at the bottom this is moderator struck Meier recognized board of directors and then the next line says that I recognize Vanessa those two things did not happen although I wanted them to because I was going to thank Vanessa and the finance team for all of their hard work but those didn't occur at that meeting so we should strike those so other than that do I hear a motion I'll move to accept the minutes from uh at all three meetings April 24th May 1st and May 18th as amended as amended thank you Mike I will second that I think Kim for the discussion all in favor you unanimous motion carries thank you moving on to public comment there's people that would like

022to speak Step Up introduce yourself share anyone new okay we're seeing none we'll close public comment and go to presentations number six on the agenda first up is our athletic advisory committee it's not a bad luck oh it's double why you set that up yes I can give you a little update on where we are in the world of Athletics uh congratulations are in order for our girls tennis team who this afternoon uh earned the title of Class B South uh Champions and they will go on Wednesday to take on Dover-Foxcroft Academy for the state championship that is to be held at Bates on Wednesday and the remaining actually every one of our teams earned a playoff berth in the spring so that's great work on behalf of everybody there and then uh baseball and

023softball open up tomorrow as well as boys lacrosse and then girls lacrosse opens up their playoff bid on Thursday and track and field is still competing they're going to finish their rain delayed meet tomorrow and uh if Mother Nature allows and they too are in the hunt so good news on the on the sporting front hi I'm Eliza Miller and I'm chair of the athletic Advisory Board and tonight David Spyro and I are here to introduce you to four more outstanding high school students which we have been working with this year the advisory board's been in place for about 15 years but we were quiet during the pandemic so this year we got restarted with 11 members and we have coaches and community members John brubecker Baker is here in the audience and School Board

024member Tom McGinnis and for students so um in a second they will share the what we've been focusing on this year and let's see I'll just we've got Charles Siegel Audrey Cohen Shaylee O'Grady and Maya vickerson so thank you for letting us um come and share our efforts tonight hey everybody uh like she said I'm Shaylee O'Grady I'm on the girls soccer team and I also am on the Nordic skiing team and I'll start you off with social media um social media has been something that's always been on our agenda this year many individual teams have their own account as you might have seen but we were working on this year to try and get more of those clips and photos shared to broader accounts and shared with our community so we've been figuring out

025the best way to do that we were lucky enough to meet with Connor Grant who was the founder of our Twitter account which by the way follow our Twitter account and Instagram um and she kind of gave us tips on how to start it up again because it's hasn't been very active for a little while and to give us a little bit of a new perspective on things so yeah we have five students as of now volunteers who are kind of they organized and split up the sports in our current season to get coverage on all of them and they're only improving from here thank you uh yeah I'm Charles Siegel I'm on the cross country team and the tennis team and I'll give a little brief explanation on the differences between teams and clubs

026at Greeley um and the main difference is that teams are MPA sanctioned meaning that the teams have a district hired coach and that they adhere to MPA rules which include season dates and student eligibility while clubs aren't necessarily affiliated with the school and they most likely don't have any eligibility requirements and there's also little things like MPA Sports don't allow you to compete in events on Sundays while a club may allow that and yeah the list of Greely teams and clubs are going to be added to the website shortly in terms of new athletic offerings at Greeley the sailing team has been reinstated as a club and what what this means is that they're now able to be qualified for certain regattas and they're now recognized as a school sanctioned club with sale Main and

027the national affiliate and also starting in March there is a boys volleyball club which practices took place after school on Mondays and Wednesdays for a couple weeks in between the winter and spring Sports Seasons and there's normally a great turnout of practices with typically around 10 to 15 people showing up hey guys I'm Audrey I'm a junior and I'm on the swim team so basically we've been kind of deciding what we want to do with the money that we get from our sponsors so we have three boards with our sponsors on them out on the field in the gym and then in the pool so these sponsors get renewed every two years and when this with this money we kind of we want to include all sports we're not just directing this money towards one

028sport so what we've done the past and kind of this past year is um money for Iron Ranger shirts so if a student is on a team for all three seasons they're an iron iron Ranger and then for weight room equipment that's for all like all teams access and then in the next next year we're um spending three thousand dollars on huddle which is a live streaming service that will benefit all sports um and kind of help teams be able to look over and review their films from their different games so yeah hello I'm Maya vickerson I'm a sophomore and I participate in field hockey lacrosse and Nordic um are athletic participation participation rate this year for students with 65 and then although there are kids playing out in outside leagues and sports students tend

029to feel more represented within our Sports um as student athletes we are offered student athletic leadership opportunities such as the Western Main conference that I attended last November it was a great experience where we talked about Athletics in different schools and different aspects of sports such as appropriate spectating behavior and team sportsmanship in September there will be an athletic leadership conference specifically for women which will give female students the opportunity to meet with other strong leaders in the state at the conference students and coaches participate in various skills training and have the opportunity with the opportunity to meet professionals thank you students and do you have any questions board please it's really exciting that you're going to be able to live stream starting next year and I can add to that a little bit the

030Huddle program not only does it give us the opportunity to live stream our games that are in the gym and on the main game field out there but it's also a statistical analysis program that all of our programs will be able to do so even if you didn't have your game live stream you can give them their film uh for instance field hockey doesn't necessarily play on our game field they can send their film to this company they'll do all the statistical analyzes and also kids can make a highlight film if you want to play in college you can you can have that right at your ready to be able to send that out I think by and large they really like watching themselves on TV so there's that aspect of it too so the

031coaches can manipulate it and be able to you know pick out particular plays and whatnot or a segment of our offense or defense and share that it's really big in football but it's something that expanded to all of our Sports and uh through the athletic advertising we have we were able to pay a significant portion of it the individual booster groups will then supplant the rest of the money and then all the teams will have access to it so that's a real big boom for us so and and that'll be available just whenever a game is occurring you could watch it live or go and find the recording correct and it's gonna we already know we did our homework get a link to our YouTube channel so much like what you're watching right now that'll

032be a seamless transition so great for grandparents people sitting at long meetings who may have to miss yes events going on do we have a interactive flat panel available for the coaches because I would think that would be super valuable for reviewing game film and plays and to be able to write over it you know play it pause it you should have been here when they go in our classrooms that is that they have access to that yes yeah cool I think that would be helpful program itself has within it the ability to do some of that yep and um so if people want to share things uh for social media like who should they send them to if they wanted to get them posted on Instagram or Twitter that's the sixty four thousand dollar

033question and for old folks is there a Facebook account the short answer is yes and that's generally through our boosters so that's I'm glad you asked that because I think that's one of the things we've wrestled with is how do we who do we want to reach and how do we reach them the the individual teams do a great job of uh making little highlight reels and whatnot uh the rest of us maybe outside of the high school realm uh it's a little bit more of a challenge for us to get that information so that's a great question and that's something I know that our inquiry reminds you will be able to figure out for us okay thank you very much thank you something on Facebook that people won't argue about maybe that would be

034good so moving on to our next presentation another important one uh 6B which is our Equity plan we're just waiting to get on just um I just need to get on the student Network Jason do we have the idea it was in the packet yeah it should be in your your e-packet you can choose I've been having trouble you want me to send it oh hi because I know I wouldn't be able to certainly read on that I don't mind no I appreciate it'll be the live version Equity plan yes you got it there we go okay thank you all right can everyone see anyone see my emails no we're good um well I thought we had a pretty good presentation but then we saw the student presentations today so lower your expectations for sure

035um I'm Tim Valenti I am the parent representative and co-chair of the equity inclusion committee and this is the draft Equity plan that we have this year this has been the the the main goal um for our committee this year but before I start I just want to thank everyone we'll probably do a bookend of gratitude but just to start uh thank everyone on the committee the school board all the uh the parents and students that participated in this and gave feedback and engaged we learned a lot from it and I think it it made for an overall much better plan and something that the community could be proud of but this is just a first step can I fill the screen I think so thanks I'll just add thank you members of the board

036this is a big honor to present this today um I also want to thank members of Prior committees who worked very hard to pass a policy ACA diversity and inclusion and education and citizenship in a global Society a lot of work went into putting that together and policy ACA provided that the superintendent is responsible for developing and implementing A diversity equity and inclusion plan for review and approval by the board also that based on the diversity equity and inclusion plan the superintendent shall report progress annually on achievement of the objectives of this policy to the school board in the annual report this year's Equity leadership steering committee was charged with assisting the superintendent in the development of a plan pursuant to policy ACA and we are honored to present this plan to you in the

037first read the equity committee this year was the largest of the the boards committees there were two board members on the committee myself and Kim Vine thank you Kim uh two parents including Hannah Berry as well as co-chair Tim Valenti a student representative Avery Olson who was part of the conscience of the committee and asked some excellent questions and gave us prospective of the students who are most impacted in many ways by this policy our director of academic Services Susie Robbins Jackie Hayes Greeley High School assistant principal of student services who couldn't be here tonight but is watching as we speak Marie treble Greeley Middle School six to eight principal and Jeff Porter superintendent our goal today will be to summarize the key highlights of this policy to take any questions anyone might have today

038and then also at the end of the presentation to reveal it or to present an email address where anyone could submit questions or comments and um or or any feedback I'm also reminded seeing a someone who played a very key role in this process I guess I missed because I'm trying to look above my glasses and into my glasses but Katie Campbell of course Greeley Medical Middle School four or five a social worker who's been on the Dei committee I think since the beginning and who was uh another conscience of the committee and someone who was just excellent overall to work with we will then look to take any questions or look at feedback that we receive and to incorporate any feedback into another draft of the policy or to submit this policy for a

039second read and with that we would like to jump in okay so this draft diversity and Equity inclusion plan is pursuant to msad 51 policy ACA this plan provides a framework for the equity lsc's oversight function whereby the LSC the equity a leadership steering committee monitors to ensure that the districts that the district is meeting the goals of policy ACA and reports to the board on all important related initiatives importantly this plan is intended to help the equity leadership steering committee and the board to hear directly from student groups teachers building administrators parents and other stakeholders to monitor progress and to be respectful I would say one of the most significant and repeated points of feedback that the committee received from the community was to make sure that we're hearing directly from students teachers and

040others who might be impacted by the by the by this plan and we wanted to make sure that being able to get steady and consistent feedback was not dependent on individual relationships that one committee might have you know the certain committee members might have with certain students or certain teachers years year to year we wanted a systematic process to make sure that the committee was aware of activities that were happening in the community related to policy ACA that the committee was aware of any um either grievances or challenges or aware of to what extent the school was succeeding in being an inclusive community or to the extent that there was any discrimination taking place or any opportunities or to address a lack of equity or any other challenges we wanted this to be formal and

041sort of systematized so that the equity committee could be aware could receive feedback and then could report to the board and so in this way it would be the opportunity for the board and the public to be really be aware on a constant basis of what's happening in our school system it is recommended that the plan be reviewed at least annually with the goal of working towards best practices with any recommended updates to be presented to the school board and we suspect that next year will be an interesting year as we actually put the plan into effect there'll be a lot of work involved on this committee but I think we're going to hear a lot and learn a lot and that'll give us a basis for continually updating the plan as necessary to be

042up to date with best practices all right so how did we get here so we've been on an arc this year the first phase was determining the content of our plan we reviewed other plans our District's goals the work of last year's committee and went on a listening tour speaking with parents staff members and equity and inclusion experts including our very own Lawrence Alexander we focused on our first meetings deep diving on content areas such as student engagement response teams in an equity belonging inclusion showing up in data taking all the information together we began prioritizing elements relevant to our community the initial draft was almost twice the length it is currently so it's pretty long already so twice is a lot um and after a number of rounds of feedback from our team and

043the district's leadership team as well as Lawrence Alexander um we have narrowed it down moved some elements elements to upcoming years and made a comprehensive plan we believe is worthy of the ideals of the community of the committee our students in our school community however it's not finished yet so you'll see right now that everything I just talked about are all the check marks we're here in June 5th on at section four and tonight we'll present that and we'll currently have and requested feedback from you the board staff students and generally our community uh we'll we'll post our revised draft and then hopefully soon submit for your approval so we are going to be soliciting for feedback over the next couple of weeks and we will we'll summarize how that will happen at the end

044of the presentation but right now is the is the official first read so just a reminder going back to policy ACA what are the what is the mission and vision of policy ACA helping all students to become productive citizens in a global Society by creating leaders and Global Citizens prepared to thrive in a changing world understanding that the 21st century requires an education that prepares students to live and work in an increasingly interconnected world ensuring that students progress academically understand diverse perspectives and contribute to local and Global communities and expecting that students communicate with diverse audiences and Bridge Geographic linguistic ideological and cultural barriers the board is committed to providing a learning and work environment in our school unit which is sorry inclusive and strives to eliminate barriers to inclusion and success for all students

045and employees policy ACA states that the likelihood of success for a student or employee should not be predetermined predicted or limited by personal characteristics including but not limited to gender race religion age social economic status or place of birth in addition the main Human Rights Act prohibits educational discrimination on the basis of sex sexual orientation race color national origin ancestry religion or physical or mental disability and then this plan provides for the oversight to ensure the district is achieving the objectives of policy ACA and so one of our goals here was bringing the ACA to life and translating what we've just read here into tangible actions and measures for us to evaluate our success So the plan is divided into four sections there's policies and protocols so for each of these it's the section to

046the extent that these relevant areas uh overlap with our work as part of the equity leadership steering committee so there's um policies and protocols academics and programming student development and participation and family community and engagement and there'll be a lot of work involved with each section this plan recommends that the equity leadership steering committee chair or chair is appoint one or more volunteers from the committee to help oversee each of these sections all right it was really important for us um for us not to be siled and for this to feel like it wasn't just equity and inclusion was it one area if this is actually part of how the school was systemized so I start off with policies and protocols um so this is how we structure elsc and it essentially defines how the

047district and the equity leadership steering committee will engage at a procedural level um so first it's the the first priority area so we have a table here that has the priority areas on the left then the objective of that priority area the action steps that we will take in then the timeline or frequency so sometimes you'll see that it'll just be for next year sometimes you'll see it's going to be annual sometimes you're going to see details in terms of we do this in the fall but that's generally when it happens who's responsible for it and then any additional notes to it so that's how we read the table from left to right so the first one is the elsc and the composition of that the objective is essentially the purpose of the elsc and

048then the first action step is how we select those members we are recommending a two-year term because as we kind of learned this year a lot of the the first part of the year is just getting to know each other getting to know the work transitioning from possibly the last team and you don't want to be rushing for that goal at the end of the year you know you want to be able to have enough time to implement it to see it through um and to yeah to see it actually come into action uh the next year um the other thing is we're recommending that there's broad stakeholder representation we really benefited from that this year including representatives from the school board parents building administrators teachers student representatives and other relevant staff particularly as it

049pertains to the goals for that year the chairs of the equity committee will appoint volunteers to the various buckets that we have from the the committee itself so we will appoint or the chairs will appoint who is going to oversee policies and protocols and the other parts of the petal of the flower and then the equity chairs is what and as well as the school board and superintendent and other Administration will determine goals for the equity team to work on that year the second priority area um is the annual report to the board so this is the main mechanism of reporting that the superintendent has on the on our progress towards policy ACA and the um this is where we will Define the goals and objectives in collaboration with the school board chairs and superintendent

050and where the superintendent will report out every spring um as part of this the equity committee is tasked for coming up with statistically relevant information that might be available or Consulting on what might be available for the district to work on and to evaluate for the end of the year in the annual report and the equity committee at this point will also make suggestions on data they would like to see at the end of the year and in the annual report so the superintendent's update is kind of like um if we can be updated at any point but we were kind of thinking at this point was um just an update from the superintendent to the equity LSC on um on stuff that might not fit in the annual report or might be in the

051annual report but it's almost like a the the practice to the annual report it's probably more inclusive and stuff that may not have made it um to rise to the level of the primary objectives of the annual report but it's an update on some of the key initiatives the districts is is running towards the policy ACA and one quick thing yeah sorry I probably should have said this in the beginning you'll see a lot in this plan that we envision a meeting next year a typical meeting to be a lot like a board meeting where at the beginning of the meeting you invite the public to come up and and address a public comment and then maybe have different student groups or other members of the community present for public recognition and we could Envision

052having relevant student groups building administrators members of the administration there'd be one or more groups invited to each meeting and the first half of the meeting might be them presenting to the equity leadership steering committee taking some questions from the committee asking questions of us sharing any concerns they have with us and then the second half might be discussion by the committee or other other activities and then in that way we are hearing from you know what is happening in the buildings what what's the student perspective what is the teacher perspective the administrative perspective and then that becomes our notes for our updates to the full board and so you'll hear that sort of throughout the plan correct thanks Eric um and then so moving down to the coordination with superintendent response team one of

053the biggest pieces of feedback we received this year was was the kind of two points of purpose um for this committee which one was how do we engage in the policies um and kind of the the proactive um uh aspects of daily school life and also the reactive um and so I think this is one of the biggest challenges because we didn't want the role of the committee we weren't sure if the role of the committee should play in terms of like how we might interfere with school staff or functions but we also wanted to be an appropriate support because there's a lot of content knowledge on this team so what we decided is we're available to consult and respond to incidences related to policy policy ACA at the request of the superintendent so essentially

054if there is a relevant issue that the superintendent feels that the committee could be of service then they um that there would be members of that of the committee that could engage in that then on the other aspect more of the proactive the annual policy review we have written in space for there to be meetings between the policy committee and the equity committee to assure that both whatever policies have been created new or old are in alignment with the what the goals of policy ACA we don't want anything conflicting with each other and then there will also be space where the equity committee will recommend policies for consideration as relevant as well during those meetings then there's staff training so this is also space to make between the equity committee and the director of the

055academic Services where the equity committee will have an opportunity to to consult on potential trainings or um or to perhaps add supplemental trainings to the already busy training schedule as it relates to the policy ACA or the goals for the year academics and programming so our programming academic and social is a key action that we take in meeting our strategic plan and so we wanted whatever work was done by this committee to align to our District's strategic plan or the portrait of a graduate so the first portion would be to train the committee the first action would be to train the committee on what our District's strategic plan is and what you know what the expectations are for a graduate and so that makes sure that allows each Committee Member is aligned and we're all

056working towards the same thing and then at the beginning of the year we will Identify and discuss any gaps in alignment between the district strategic plan and the goals of policy ACA and hopefully at the end of the year in the up in the superintendent update those gaps can be addressed then their curriculum review this is where we will provide space between the equity committee and the director of academic Services um to uh to where we get bereaved as a committee on how School curriculum aligns with the goals of policy ACA again just to make sure that there's alignment and then the same thing with educational materials so this is where school librarians are to be invited to present to the equity LSC on the representation of diverse populations authors illustrators and educational materials so

057this is space that we make every year between the equity committee and building Librarians or volunteers or irrelevant educators okay so on to a student development and participation we were amazed just how many programs already exist which are I think in further into policy ACA and diversity equity and inclusion and this first provision school-based curriculum opportunities K-12 this is the objective of this section is to Monitor and update the board on building level curriculum opportunities that are already in existence designed to support the goals established by policy ACA so the building administrators would each be invited at least annually to update the equity leadership steering committee about building level curriculum opportunities supportive of the goals of policy ACA such as Anti-Defamation League training camp Kiev civil rights team among many others and this would include

058any changes from prior years so this is a it's a way to just to understand what's actually happening in the building and in the school system and then if something is if a new program is being proposed understand what we see in that program and if there's anything that's being dropped to understand why there might be good reasons for all these things but this is how we actually keep abreast of what's actually taking place pursuant to policy ACA a more comprehensive list of the current and past curriculum opportunities supportive of policy ACA can be found on by following this link on the list of msad 51's physical and emotional safety practices and this plan calls for this list to be reviewed and updated at least annually in preparation for the superintendent's annual report to the

059board the next section which I think is one of the most exciting parts of the plan and one actually that I think Avery had a lot of impact on is student feedback so how do we monitor the student's success in meeting the goals of policy ACA through surveys and student group feedback and I would say how do we monitor our success generally in being an inclusive place an inclusive environment and one that is free from discrimination so there's an annual stakeholder survey and this calls for us to coordinate with the the administrators of that survey and to invite them to I guess share any relevant feedback that would be relevant to the committee and also importantly we want to solicit student groups directly by coordinating either with the group heads with their teacher advisors or

060with their building administrators and invite them at least once a year to present to the equity leadership steering committee about what they've been working on and what questions are concerned they concerns they might have and to take questions from the board as well so this could include for example the ADL student leadership team at the Gridley Middle Middle School and and we understand it's going to be reinitiated at the high school as well the Civil Rights team Student Government reps the Gridley High School Dei committee and there's and other Greeley High School leadership student groups such as gender and sexualities Alliance best buddies grow up sources of strength Club Youth Court among others I think I think another part of that um to this student representative model is having different facets of the school community

061that we can get thinking about being Equity minded and sort of kind of kind of assimilating ourselves into the school the the community as a whole and kind of meeting the needs of that to that point there was a a section I think this next one that was inspired by this point so under student leadership so objective would be to positively impact the Greely Culture by training student leaders and the principles of being an upstander and being an upstander is among other things it's being recognizing and and being prepared to stand up to bias-based behavior you know when you see it and setting a good example and we we don't have a definitive plan under this but we are recommending that next year's Equity leadership steering committee take the time during the year to further

062explore whether there could be some kind of training offered um to various student leaders whether it be sports team captains or members of the Arts or leaders of student clubs or Student Government groups and essentially just to um as Avery was saying spread some of the um knowledge of diversity Equity inclusion but just generally just have more people in leadership positions in the school be sensitive to what's going on around them and if they see either bias based activities or bullying to know what to do in those situations and be in a position to stand up and if we can identify the right training that we think would be well received by the students we think that could be a win-win did they leave anything out on that an additional component is is student safety

063and this is a big focus of the of the district and again as part of the superintendent's um presentation to the equity leadership steering committee and in preparation for the annual report we like to just review the list each year of the physical and emotional safety practices and understand any new initiatives or any initiatives which have have fallen off or practices that are no longer being employed and lastly a question that has come up is just to understand behavioral intervention strategy make sure that discipline is being policy is clear you know expectations are clear to the community and make sure that discipline is being applied equitably and then I would say that there's a lot of emphasis on the committee about understanding sorry forgive me restorative practices which is not my area of expertise but

064it's an area that is increasingly being used throughout the school and when when applied properly almost ensures or is more likely to ensure Equitable outcomes and this is just an area that I think the committee wants to learn more about and to make sure that the and help the board learn more about as well okay so finally family and Community engagement there's a lot of good work already being done in The District Parent University is typically offering uh programming that I've participated in the last few years which is very interesting and some of it has often been Dei related and so we would recommend that the equity leadership steering committee reach out at least once a year and coordinate with the the chair people of the the PTO or Foundation 51 to see where there

065might be opportunities to work together in communication we'd like to establish mechanisms for updating the community on activities of the equity leadership steering committee this could include you know doing a better job of updating our website which we were a little derelict on this year having formal mechanisms for receiving feedback as a committee either just so that people in the community know clearly other than just reaching out and emailing someone they know what's a formal way to to give feedback or to raise concerns if they might have them and then generally we want to oh sorry and then there's lastly we just want to coordinate with the administrators of the annual superintendent stakeholder survey and to invite them to present to the equity LSC and to take questions from the equity LLC particularly about any

066questions that are related to the missions of the of the committee and again we'd like to thank very much the 10 members who who worked very hard on this plan it was a lot of work I think everyone on this committee was extremely committed to good outcomes for our students we don't always agree on everything but I was extremely impressed by the way that everyone came together and and worked well as a team and it was really quite quite a group and enjoyed very much working with everybody lastly questions or comments from anyone not here tonight or suggestions recommendations please feel free to email us at Equity LSC at msad51.org and on the subject line just say Equity plan all the members of the committee will see that and you know we tried to do

067this as succinctly as possible there's a lot here and you know we wanted to make sure we got all the details out but thank you for bearing with us on this and thank you again to the fellow committee members and we'd be happy to take some questions now to the extent folks have them they leave anything out to them I just had one question um he was very clear in my head he left and it's coming back okay here we go um there it you know what it's not there so I'm gonna think about this and maybe I'll come back it was here and then it was gone I'm sorry while you're thinking about it I do want to come back to a point that we made back in the introduction I don't know how

068to work on Mac but uh um it is recommended that the plan be reviewed at least annually we suspect that actually implementing this plan we're going to learn a ton over the next year and that's you know this here was sort of putting our heads down and getting this plan in place but the nature of the plan is to actually learn from the students learn from the teachers and learn from administrators and stakeholders and that is actually going to tell us a lot about what might be needed in future plans and that's kind of what we appreciated about that's that's actually very related to what my question was that fell out of my adult brain we have explicit a section of student feedback which is really well developed iterative good detailed uh which which section

069Mike the student feedback um could it could we add in a similar section on staff feedback as well just to be explicit about that and flesh that out a bit more because I think it's really important for that to be very very clearly part of this yeah and we talked about that a lot my my guess is it's in here somewhere but it it will make that very uh make that very clear because it's something we talked about a lot Mike so the answer is absolutely yes I would just like to make the point um one point and then one question um one point I think it's great a great idea and I hope we can support that any way we need to to have student training involved to get them involved would just make

070it just Blossom and Bloom and it would really cement it in their lives that it's not a separate issue it's part of everybody's life so great that's awesome um my question though is you brought it up at the end about communication and how to make it so everyone can see the questions and the answers and so one question I had um not to dig up any old bones but you know social media and Facebook just kind of rip into when their incidences or whatever do you have any specific ideas or plans on how to specifically address social media when it takes off and any thoughts or future thoughts excuse me do you mean something that's related specifically to when so like when something happens yeah and and Facebook or social media just blows up with

071it yeah specific steps like okay what's what do we do so we spend a lot of time and I'll I'll try to answer it but I'm gonna I didn't invite Kim or any of our colleagues or Tim to to jump in also we spent a lot of time thinking about this year in terms of what exactly is the committee's purview versus the administration's purview and Jeff has simultaneously been working hard on this and so you saw there were a series of emails in which he posted essentially a Communications um a set of communications guidelines and expectations and essentially what level of communication is appropriate and when and in fact we actually during the year had some you know consultation with some parent groups with some um and was I guess religious communities but also people

072who are I guess spend their full time focused on this area who have offered to be available as a resource for Jeff for the administration to reach out to to consult in terms of when you have a sensitive situation how much how much disclosure is called for where whereby you can protect privacy but at the same time reassure the community who might have questions or concerns about issues and and try to to the extent possible have a have one source of information as opposed to rumor flow on social media it's not easy this is something that school districts across the country are wrestling with and trying to figure out in real time and I applaud Jeff and the administration for getting out in front of this and trying to lay out a plan so when

073actually things are blowing up we have we have guidelines to fall on and then going back to something that Tim referred to under policies and and bear with me in protocols is the the equity leadership steering committee is available to be a resource to the administration sometimes there could be specific members of the committee with specific expertise or relationships who could play a role and be helpful sometimes it could just be a more formal role of the committee as a whole but we're kind of here to be used as the the superintendent things we get to the extent thinks we can be helpful it's the best answer I would have does anyone want to add anything to that so if one of the one of the goals um would be in a year to reduce

074bullying or social media the impact on social media I think there would be a certain level of content knowledge hopefully on the team a member or two that would have some kind of area of expertise in that but also there we've discussed profession like having internally on the team professional development or resources for the team that would have access to so if the superintendent response team did reach out to us we'd have the some amount of expertise to give consultation in those events um but you're right like I think and there there's no perfect answer to that I think um I I think it's it's the expertise that we have on the team we can't pretend that we're experts in every element but we we can find answers and I think that the plan sets

075up for that can I add to that yeah uh so I just want to re-emphasize that the recommendation by our committee is that next year's Equity LSC team would have would designate a community a member of that committee who would oversee policies and protocols another person would oversee family and Community engagement and so sort of the understanding would be that that person under policy and protocols or depending on the nature of it the person under family community engagement if they're seen that things are spiraling out of control and do not feel that the district is responding appropriately that would be an opportunity for them to go to Jeff and say okay let's let's check in about this um and so that's one of the things I really like is that it it spreads that out

076so that someone from the LLC committee is always thinking that way you know always has that on their radar okay how are we doing in our policies how is is this being met or do we need to revisit this um and that's just their lens that they're looking at everything through so it's maybe more implied maybe we can specify it better but does that make sense that there would be that representative from the committee who would kind of keep it in check and can I add one more thing yeah and for anyone listening at home Kim Vine is not just a member of the board but she was a member of the committee who helped write this plan so yeah please guess um I just want to acknowledge what you said about the student leadership

077because to me that was one of the most exciting things that a conversation led to and I want to give Hannah props on that because we started talking about these great civil rights teams and um you know just other opportunities that kids have to go to a specific Club to try to change the world and make the world a better place and so many kids are on sports teams they're they're doing band they have these full schedules and just kind of say well I don't have time to go to an equity meeting or a Anti-Defamation League meeting or whatever um and and Avery also contributed to that saying that sometimes it's more just to be able to say that you've gone to these ADL meetings and then you get frustrated because you're not really feeling

078like you're creating much change and so the idea that we could rather than ask students to come to that bring it to the student leaders and um and really create that culture so that it's part of our DNA as a district starting with these student leaders who by definition have influence and have the respect of their peers and so I just know for me that that process of of this isn't working great to what could we do I found to be one of the most satisfying parts of our of our meetings and I'm really excited to see how that happens in the future I also want to point out that um another aspect of the student leadership thing is we're also trying to be diligent about how much student leadership and in training and all

079this stuff we actually shove down uh kids throats because I think that could end up backfiring and you know no one's going to want to do anything and the whole system breaks down and then I think uh the flip side of that coin is if we don't do enough kids aren't going to care and you know we have the same same sort of thing that occurs with that so oh go ahead I had some questions for Avery since you I just okay go ahead so while he was already there um thanks to the whole committee but especially Avery who's now already graduated but came out um today to be part of this and you you mentioned something earlier um wanting people to come out of this or out of their experience greatly being more equity-minded

080what what is what does that look like for you if you came back you know a few years from now and walked back into the high school or the middle school what what would that feel like um I think I think a lot of that is kind of having a cultural context for the world and kind of seeing how that's played out and especially in sort of the the socioeconomic status of where we are and kind of how uh how that how that's led to the development of our district and um and yeah and just being able to uh identify and acknowledge the systematic sort of discrimination I don't want to say discrimination but if I had a better word I'd say that and just being able to uh acknowledge it and account for it

081in day-to-day life thanks Amber I have some other questions I love Vanessa go ahead um so and and I think sort of back to the point you are making Avery um just about like how do how do we accomplish that what would we measure in a few years from now of what that looks like and and feels like yeah that's one of life's greatest Mysteries and that's I feel like what we've spent a lot of the last three years discussing in uh in this committee and I I think I think we're still moving forward towards that I think a lot of this uh the initial phase of this was just um sort of of structuring of figuring out a way to get to that point um figuring out how we can get I I think

082a large part of this um of this program here of this uh this draft is has a focus on feedback and I think that's that's what we're really looking forward for and I think that's uh that's kind of how we'll answer that question so if anyone has anything I I know I'm not I'm not understand it's been a while since I've been a student I do want to add something that that Lawrence Alexander mentioned several times which is remember kind of the values of your of your district and sort of we kept coming back to the goals of producing a 21st century graduate and I don't I would hope that someone you know we talk often about being a very homogeneous Community you would hope someone would come out of here feeling comfortable in their

083own skin and talking to anyone from diverse backgrounds somebody from whether it be different races different religions um different parts of the world and be able to talk to them with respect and feel comfortable just basically being all one another as people and at the same time to be sensitive to either discrimination or bullying that might be happening certainly in the broader world but also in the school it just I think it one thing if there was one issue that we all bonded on very much from day one it's that we all agree that this should be an inclusive environment where people feel very comfortable coming to school every day and can just really focus on learning and focus on growing because they're not worried about being bullied or worried about having to um like

084really just that and so we don't know how to necessarily solve all those problems but that's why feedback was so important because we wanted to know quickly if there are problems in the school we don't want them to just fester and then pop out on social media or somewhere else we want how does the school board you know sitting up here actually keep their finger on the pulse of what's actually happening in the school and then be in a position to respond or try to be helpful so so one one other quick thing um to Lance point so yes feedback is there and there are a lot of intangible stuff that we talked about and what what Equity looks like here and and Beyond but we also talked a lot about the quantifiable aspects how

085we'd find um how we what measures can we are we capable of right now what surveys can we take advantage of there's spaces throughout here where it talks about different measures we want to look at there's a whole thing about the behavioral tracking that we do some of the stuff that we talk about in the superintendent um annual report but also the report to the equity committee is a lot on measures that we have and what data do we have available to assess whether or not we're being Equitable throughout throughout our district and if our policies are Equitable as well and there are a lot of tangible ways to do that that's one of the expertise that I brought to this and I feel like there's a lot of our conversations around how to make

086it feel something that's actionable and something for Jeff and the committee to respond to as well okay I just have one quick question on the first two um I'm I'm confused at the select team members um isn't that a chair uh role okay and then the second one says the chair of the equity LS shall appoint volunteers isn't that also a chair role a school board chair role yeah if you look look under oh okay do you see where the second bullet point uh so the first book okay so yeah the first bullet point we have the responsibility of the school board chair right so we currently can't do two-year terms we it's our recommendation at that point um and then the the other aspect is who's going to oversee those other buckets um of

087the the you know of the of the pedal essentially and the equity chairs are allowed to do that that's internal of the team once the members are selected who would who should we assign to you know family engagement or student leadership I think that is still done by the board chair didn't you select all the members of the committee or my career I'm not I'm not reading it though same way you're reading it Vanessa I think this is like um who within that committee is going to be in charge of like the policies and protocols that Kim mentioned yeah I think they well I mean they divided themselves into subcommittees to work on this whole thing so the chair would still select everybody on that committee that that wouldn't change yeah okay but within those

08810 members or whatever and end up being then they can divide themselves so the chairs would divide them into the various but it could be a consideration I would think as you're building the equity committee thinking about so the school board chair who is putting together the Committees might be thinking about okay I want to make sure I have a balanced Equity committee so that perhaps it sort of naturally lends itself to those four oversight positions right you would naturally want overlap on other committees as well such as policy yeah I think we should make it pretty clear that it's the school board chair that elects both of those and the subcommittees can it just seems like they're it's a it seems like it's giving more um autonomy to this committee than other committees so

089you want to be succinct across the board that we're doing the same thing and selecting the same way this isn't like a a separate committee that can run independently on its own and you guys did a great job through these policy and protocols but it's kind of feeling like it's running independently outside of our regular school board rules I see your point if the chair chose a person that they had in mind for overlapping policy and this Equity committee you would want that to carry through with actual people that have made that happen yeah I don't know how you would word that in conjunction with chair input or something yeah I think that makes sense they should agree yeah if there's any recommended language please uh let's discuss it but because you get the same

090thing with like academics and programming you would want that to overlap with whoever's on curriculum I would think because sometimes I mean depending on who the chair is it will this isn't going to supersede already the chair rolls and it kind of feels like some of the language and you guys did a great job and there's a lot of details in this and I do appreciate everything you've done but um especially in the policies and the protocols there's a lot of language that seems like it's superseding the chair role and already what we have established curriculum is also one that kind of came to my attention yeah so I understand you're creating that structure within the committee but it is still just a committee and so the curriculum has their own committee and if the

091chair chooses not to have anyone engage with Equity committee they can choose not to we tried um and I know exactly what you're doing you see where I'm going with yeah we tried carefully with the language to say look this committee has no power over other committees okay and so we would we would use language set like for example curriculum review so action steps in coordination with the curriculum committee invite and and maybe even that it's we say in coordination with but there's no obligation of the curriculum committee yeah it kind of feels it's meant to say to to invite the um like in this case the the director of academic support to brief the equity leadership steering committee on how School curriculum aligns with the goals of policy ACA um and if we see

092anywhere in here where the language makes you uncomfortable I know you've been on policy committee like certainly this committee is not meant to dictate to policy but at the beginning of the year uh the co-chairs could review what's on the agenda for the policy committee and and certainly make any suggestions or ask any questions but it's it's where I feel like it's outside of the scope of what and this can I know this is a draft and it can be tweaked but it just kind of feels like it's superseding the curriculum committee may have the curriculum committee could decide they have a completely different agenda than what you're suggesting that we they may decide we don't need to meet with you at all definitely what I would say is we agree 100 with what you

093just said in spirit so I would suggest as you're reading through this if any of the language is overstepping that to let us know and where we write it yeah everything I mean I think everything else is wonderful it just seems the policies and protocols seems the expectation is already driven and where the Committees haven't even been formed and that's where I feel like we already have those rules and structures in place this is not meant to impact or to enforce anything on other committees but just to to really it's for the equity leadership steering committee to understand what's happening in other areas that might touch on equity and to be aware of it and to be able to then give feedback to the board but I I we specifically tried to make that clear

094and so if any as as a fresh pair of eyes reading this if anything is sounding like it's overstepping we want to hear that to rewrite it because that was not the intention no but it is it you guys I know put a ton of effort into it but it just seemed heading down that path no we've been in this world in this in this document for a long time so it's really important that we get as many people to view it with those eyes and because as Jared is saying that has we've been super tried to be super sensitive to that as well to a point where I think that we've a lot of feedback we've gotten is where we have been like no that's overstepping like we can't do that so we've we've

095definitely as a committee tried to pull back so it's really important that you that you raise that and and that's the tone that you're getting in some elements and I'm not gonna beat a dead horse but review the policy companies annual list of policies for review I don't feel like that's an equity committee's responsibility at all they could say oh can you review this but to review the list of policies that Jeff might have set forth working with a lawyer that we need to come up with because of State statutes that have expired um that's like that's the the type of wording that it's like I see where you're trying to go with it it's going to create conflicts I believe steering the ship sort of exactly in certain areas yeah and it is a

096public document I know because I'm on the policy committee too so I see it but the list of policies for consideration I forgot if that was the list of policy um for considerations are driven by the state statutes that have expired right and the chair of the policy committee yeah but it's available for yeah yeah we have that list you Pub you had it in the beginning of this yeah I don't think it's not posted publicly I think they've been put on I think they did so it's it's public yeah right so it seems like that that's not your job as Equity no I think I think to be clear we're not seeking we didn't put that for approval it's not like the policy committee needs the equity committee's approval for anything to go it's

097the invitation that the equity committee is there to support to make sure that like we aren't the policies that are being created are not being are not conflicting with anything the equity committee is doing and vice versa that could it also goes both ways as well and so I think it's just more in the the spirit of collaboration for the plan yeah but to be clear it's providing feedback or suggestions it's not meant to be um it's not meant to to govern but just to point out either observations or recommendations or provide feedback that being said I think we should take a close look at that if the policy committee never reached out to that essentially we would not be following this plan um no it's that's not not intensity it's it's um you know

098annual policy review provide guidance on on policy through feedback to the policy committee this is meant to be able to be one way from the equity committee to the policy committee and the policy committee can can take it or leave it um uh you know um candidly I had trouble you know even you know thinking of how would the equity committee even have the expertise necessarily to know where to where to make suggestions on this but what happened at the beginning see and that's where like you have we already have a policy committee especially selected to deal with different policies I wonder if to start do you see what I'm saying yeah I wonder if so just declare to clarify it is is to just the the plan should only go as deep as to

099say that the equity committee should reach out to meet with the policy committee for a discussion yes and leave it at that that's the intention so I would just say we would welcome we could take a crack at making that tighter but I would also welcome feedback on the language so again for someone reading it but you know for the first time how is it coming across to you if it's coming across like it's dictating too much then that means we need to improve the writing the language so we could just be key words too instead of review you know collaborate or as a resource or something so that there is a clear delineation that Equity is a resource for all of us and yet doesn't dictate certain things yeah I would agree I think

100it boils down to the word choice then if that's not what you intended then just change a few words to what you were just saying instead of review it will be more clear what your intent is yeah you've got the expertise in this area so we'd be happy to just coordinate with you on some language or get suggestions on it I think the spirit of this plan is it's an advisory committee that advises on a lot of areas is also a resource for um for a lot of stakeholders and I was just going to mention the superintendent situational um plant protocol that we have in the district office so each of us in the district office is assigned to an area we work together as a team but if there's an equity issue I think

101um I can't remember who asked that question um when something's coming up and it's flying up on social media Christina asked that um what do you do if we have an issue we might consult with the equity committee and say this is something that needs further conversation we need help but also the other way around so it kind of works in Reverse it's really opening the lines of communication and acting as a sounding board which is I think the verbiage that we put into the plan it's it's really to be a a resource for the community that's what we want hearing from people making recommendations but Vanessa's right it's not to supersede the policy committee or the curriculum committee or anything like that it's a kind of a resource and advisor advisory is a good

102word probably could integrate that more yeah others questions tough yeah so I have a couple of comments um and it's been a long day my battery's draining quickly so I will do my best to articulate them well the first is um I commend you all this is a ton of work uh um so uh kudos to you for for that you've also created a lot of work for future Equity committees no no judgment there just an observation my second comment is um I see a lot of things that I really love in here like data and transparency and evaluation uh so it totally aligns with my minority Tendencies and I think it's good for the district my my comment though however is I urge everyone involved to be really really careful regarding the responsible responsible

103reporting of demographic data there's the potential to do a lot of harm to students if we're not really careful about how to report data in aggregated ways or disaggregated ways or certain groups are a race or if um we're looking at intersections of different groups and we end up with small ends and it could identify certain populations all these things need to be be done very very carefully and I want everyone involved to keep that in mind going forward yeah time's a great point and the uh we almost put a reference in here to be clear that we on the one hand we wanted you aspire to have objective measures to know is the is the school being Equitable and and are we doing our due diligence and so forth but the reason there's not

104a lot of meat on the bone here is because you're right there is a very limited data pool and uh it was said uh often and resolutely that we we have to be careful uh and that there's a limited amount of data that could could be of use um that may change over time uh and so we've put some reference in there but I just wanted to tell you that that concern you raised was echoed loud and clear on the committee I don't know if Jeff you want to add anything to that but uh no we did talk about it on several occasions but I think it's good to say it out loud publicly that there is a lot of data we just it's suppressed and we can't use it because we you might have

105a small group obviously Tom knows a lot about this uh the data world and how that works and we have to we do have to be really careful and sensitive to that Tom just on that point if you if you think of any language that we want to put in there to make that clear feel free to shoot it to us but sure I've got some ideas based on what you said thank you did you have another question too that's all thank you okay and I really appreciate how many different perspectives you are not just with all the like wide variety of student clubs that you chose to include but also with the um with the the plan about having public comment meetings and talking about having different members of the board parent student members

106of the community volunteers because I feel like for diversity and equity and inclusion it's really important to have a diverse array of perspectives that are looking at it to create a plan and to Institute policies so I feel like it's a really great great part of this this plan that you've put forward and thank you for doing that awesome thanks that's the part we're most excited about so I appreciate that you appreciate it thanks did you I apologize if I missed it did you cover that Lawrence has taken a look at this we yeah I believe we have and we had a green check on he was actually pretty excited about it okay and um you know he said to make sure to really talk about the four areas that it covers and how it

107ties back to our our plan and our mission and vision and that's what I tried to do in the beginning and I may have kind of botched it but uh yeah I think he was pretty excited about it that's actually what his words were okay yeah my only other question was just what you had ended the presentation on um was you know how how can others engage with providing feedback I know there's the email address you know obviously anyone watching along tonight can see this recording but when will this be um PowerPoint be made available or the plan um and what is the timeline for collecting feedback are there other venues other than just directly reaching out to provide feedback I assume the plan is now public and that it's I should have double checked

108but I don't know if there's a link on the agenda that accesses it is public okay it's now public um I just I can answer a couple of those real quick like the the short-term stuff is tomorrow the staff will get it okay um they haven't seen it because it was literally being worked on this afternoon so when it wasn't available yet but the staff will get it tomorrow and then it will go out um in our newsletter on Thursday and then we will I would assume and I I probably need to consult with Jared and Tim but I think social media having a link out there as well would be important did you say Facebook I'm sorry no well it is actually it's Instagram and Facebook yes um and so the feedback will then

109it'll be taken from all the various parties and then collected and then the the leadership that would the existing Equity leadership team will take in that feedback and make a revision I'm just trying to think through like the timing yeah I mean if everyone came back and said you know this is perfect and I think we already have some suggestions but if everyone loved it um great um and we you know this could be first read and June 20th could be second read if there's feedback on it I think we would aspire to do sort of one more turn um and kind of post that again publicly to be out there over the summer and then we would just recommend that the the next Equity leadership steering committee take it up in the um you

110know take it up in the in the fall see what else there is to add what feedback has come in over the summer I mean it'll all be captured on that on that email address and uh and then they were presented to next to next year's board essentially Tommy and Avery how important do you think it would be that students are made aware that this plan has come out and that they feel that they have an opportunity to read it and review it uh I think it's very important um considering that student representation is a large chunk of it I think students deserve to be aware of how different leadership responsibilities will change and yeah sorry and I also adding on to that I feel like as you as you make more people aware of

111the work that's being done it also kind of invites them to like engage themselves and contribute their perspective so I agree with Avery so for example at your next Student Government meeting something like that would you say hey guys you know take a look at this we'd love to hear your thoughts um I mean yeah I mean absolutely I definitely would I think that um but also it should be done more widely throughout the entire school as well because I think that um like you want to try and reach everyone that would be interested because I really see this as a learning opportunity for either the high school Dei team that um remind me who runs the high school it is Jackie I know she's on it yeah I don't know if she actually is

112she organizes it yeah for students to not only read the plan and give their feedback but to also understand how what an equity plan even is um and so if they have concerns over you know what's missing they're they're learning this process of of government and Civic um you know just lost the word but Civic processes uh I think that could be a really valuable tool for um for the high school and maybe not until early fall which is when we're planning on on really presenting this again um having had feedback but I'd love to see some sort of student Like official learning opportunity does that make sense well I think that's a job for Tommy I said Avery but Avery will be up the road somewhere so I think that uh this a link

113to this plan would probably sit well in a morning announcement spreadsheet that can get around on the TV screen yeah I love those actually those are good TVs my sister designs those so oh really they're very very well done I know we have it the uh in about three hours at the end of the agenda to do the secondary discussion of the timeline um but just I really appreciate the the thoughtful way you thought the thoughtful you've thought about oh my God I'm not loading right now um about the timeline how thoughtful that did you this whole thing has been thoughtful and then detailed and really well done and the timeline makes a lot of sense to me what how you describe that Jared so I'm just wanted to note that do we really need

114to talk about this again I think that makes a ton of sense if it comes back everybody's just like this is great sure let's do a second read and potentially adopt it that's probably not going to be the case I think there's been enough feedback uh we can certainly talk about it again on the 20th and think about whether we want to adopt it but more than likely it's it would be a great thing to then sit with over the summer have the new board orientation uh cover it even 15-20 minutes as part of that orientation and then adopt it there and I'm mainly saying that because then it's not my responsibility second that I think that that's been our working assumption I think if we uh I don't know if there's only so much

115we can ask of Avery after having officially graduated but we if we have enough somebody's comments tonight I think we can this committee can get into a new draft and then uh and then we'll see what comes in over the next few weeks and then I think we would try to leave this in a slightly more advanced condition and that would probably be what what sits out over the summer yeah unless everyone you know writes in tonight to say you know Bravo there's there's the Mona Lisa that always happens at the Mona Lisa of Dei plans but yeah I think we're on the same page yeah yeah uh comments from others we might as well move up that discussion to right now uh which is 12b equity plan second read and timeline that others have

116thoughts on that I lost I think I would appreciate if we you know fix it up from comments now and what you get in between and then if we have any time on the 20th to look at it briefly but then letting it rest I think over the summer because people will be rested and have new thoughts perhaps I think that'd be best what Mike was saying and when you were you were planning to collaboration is good my fear is that it never then gets adopted I fear that it will be even if Mike and Vanessa are not here likely error thank you very much um I want to say to the committee as a whole thank you for all you did and for tackling the one of the more touchy subjects in our world

117these days and putting so much time into it it was the largest committee and I think probably had the most meetings as well and the time dedication was huge I only sat in for the first three meetings the first meeting I was like oh my goodness what is going to happen and by the third meeting I got off that call I think I had a tear in my eye because of how you guys were working together so thank you thank you for everyone who joined tonight and this was a real real honor and a real pleasure thank you very much thank you board okay moving on to 6C Jeff stakeholder survey results please all right before that happens um I'm gonna head out all right that's that was the the reason I showed up I

118don't I don't know when the next time I'll see you all will be maybe never um it's been a great time working with you all um especially the equity committee I shouldn't say especially it's been equally um amazing to work with each and every one of you and um yeah I just want to say thanks thank you very much [Music] go watch my graduation speech you had an excellent speech excellent is it I'm I'm curious is the is the ceremony is the commencement ceremony ever going to end up just like as a YouTube video it does get posted yeah we post it okay yeah you can go back and look at other ones I don't know when it will be posted but it will be posted to clean it up and I would say it

119was an excellent speech something about failure blah blah but I know you aren't referring to the board great the superintendent um all right well I know that everybody is exiting for a break do you want me to wait or do you want me to just keep going um can we keep going or people need a bathroom break bye Avery all right we'll take a quick five minute break all right we're gonna take a five minute break get we get to use that slide that says Ford is in intermission all right welcome back all right please oh welcome hack welcome back to the second quarter of the meeting that's true um second quarter yeah take out the popcorn this is a stakeholder survey summary um 2023 and um we provided surveys this winter provided we sent

120them out why do we administer these surveys basically that goes back to our mission statement and making sure that we are true to our mission statement this is just one way of finding out what people are thinking in the feedback that they give us this is a 360 degree feedback sought on different key areas of the district in our schools we surveyed all students grades 3 through 12 who wanted to participate all of our staff across the district and our parents and Guardians it's the first time since the winter of 2020 when these surveys were administered and we're using 2020 as a comparison for the most part but 2023 is the new Baseline so I'll be showing you comparisons except for the parent and guardian survey which the questions I'll change in 2020 um and

121we didn't it was hard to compare um from 2020. and we tried to focus on the questions that have the greatest leverage um so just kind of giving you a baseline on why do we do these even more data is important we need people's input even if we don't agree with it and I think that's a really important part of it and this comes from Fred Perdue he's an author when he says when you turn over those rocks and you look at all the squiggly little things underneath it you can either put the Rocks down or you can say my job is to turn over those rocks look at the swiggly things even if you what you see scares you so there's some things in these surveys that might scare you they might be those

122squiggly little things under a rock but we need to put it out there and acknowledge it um and go from there so in this report you'll see that satisfaction was determined at 80 percent and it is somewhat arbitrary but 80 percent is generally considered to be like the Baseline for satisfaction and so strongly agree and agree we're considered part of that satisfaction so anything eighty percent or more was considered a positive response anything below 80 percent was considered to be an area of concern so green flagged items you'll see those in this report 10 or more of a gain and satisfaction responses over the previous survey if we have those results or flag green and anything that was a drop in satisfaction of ten percent or more over the previous administration if we have those

123results was flagred and you'll see that in just a moment so the stakeholder responses we had 2 stakeholders respond to our stakeholder surveys which is the most that we've ever had since we started administering these surveys back before the pandemic and the closest that we had was in 2018 we had just about 2 400 people respond so that's 40 47 percent of all of our stakeholders is 36 percent of our parents weighed in which is the most parents that have ever weighed in on this survey 928 so if you go back and look our staff it was the most number of Staff members that have ever weighed in 71 percent uh 305 staff members weighed in it was not the most students that have weighed in but it was very close we had 57 percent

124of our students grades 3 to 12 weigh in which is 1220 one students we actually had more students back in 2018 but just just a few more so we in other words we had a very good response so for students grades three to five again I'm going to start with satisfaction 80 percent or above is considered positive satisfaction these were all of the areas and I'm not going to read through every single one of them but these were the questions that were positively responded to by students in grades three to five and the yellow areas are drops from 2020 of more than 10 percent so you'll see that even though those are positive still 80 percent or more it's on the low end and it did drop you know more than 10 percentage points my

125teacher finds different ways to help me learn and I feel like I belong at my school so again that was a drop of just 10 percent I feel like I belong to my school but again there was we're using a consistent guide for here for for all these results and those are the two that came up but again this entire list is 80 or more so these are positive responses from students in grades three to five we had one area for grades three to five that was below the 80 percent Mark um and that is I make choices about what I learned and that was 74 of the students in grades three to five for the older students secondary students in middle school and high school grades six to twelve these were areas that were

126again satisfaction eighty percent or above again I'm not going to go through all of these if you see an asterisk next to a a question that was asked that means it was just for high school students so my school provides a variety of classes to meet my needs was only asked of high school students that went up more than 10 percent over the last Administration in 2020 with the same question so we had 82 percent saying that they were happy in high school and I will say that over those three years we have made a consistent effort to build in more electives that are accessible to more students in our school at the high school so that it it may be a correlation it may not be but these are all areas again that are

12780 satisfaction or more you can see there's a number of areas that students including my school respects diversity 83 percent it's on the low end of that 80 percent but it's still in that range um I'm feeling safe at school that's another one that um I think stands right out 86 percent um so you'll find that on again um satisfaction that's below 80 percent one that was a a gain of more than 10 percent from the last administration of this survey what I learned in my classes is preparing me to be successful in college career military and or life again low it's on the below 80 percent list however that is a gain of more than 10 percent so just kind of showing you it's still low but it seems to be improving and then

128the other one um that dropped by 10 over the last administration of this survey harassment and bullying are treated seriously 63 percent of the students responded on that and it was 73 percent three years ago um and then the high school only questions the grading and evaluation of my work is fair exactly where it was three years ago 75 percent just slightly below that 80 percent satisfaction and then my school is well maintained 69 of students said that and again those were two High School only questions so the staff survey I'm going to show you those results but I'd like to say a couple of things before I show them to you um I think it's important to understand when some of these surveys were administered one this this particular survey was administered as the

129other ones were during the midwinter months we have had Staffing shortages about making excuses but just giving you a context a lot of Staffing shortages still continue this year finding Ed tech for positions finding custodians Food Service workers bus drivers and even a couple of teaching positions that are specialized have been a struggle this year overcrowded conditions obviously as everyone knows we were also in the midst of a collective bargaining impasse with one of our bargaining units which has about um this point 75 members 80 members to it school property or the school project had failed back in November so there's a lot of uncertainty in this survey was given I think three months after that um there's been a lot of national scrutiny of schools and teachers and Educators over the last year as

130we know actually in this District more than a year but it's really been a huge conversation on the National Arena in the world of Education and also the Merrimack College teacher survey of 2023 found that the teacher satisfaction level had actually gone up from 10 percent to 20 percent this year which is a horrible statistic teacher satisfaction levels only a few years ago were incredibly a lot higher than that so it's it's just tell us a lot about the profession in general and where people are 35 percent um saying that they're very likely or likely to leave the profession that's a national survey that's not our district but I think some of the results will show you that are some of our staff probably feel the same way and at the state level 55 percent

131of current Maine teachers have considered leaving the profession since 2020 um and they we're seeing the lowest numbers of uh people going into public education uh across the country indefinitely in Maine for Teacher education right now so that means that we're we're not going to have the level of teachers going into the profession that we've had in in other decades so I think covet had a lot to do with it the pandemic I also think there's you know just a lot of politics and education right now that's contributed to it but I definitely wanted to give you those before I show you the staff results so again this is a list of 80 percent or more satisfaction I was um even though there was there was 10 percent drops in some areas like I'm proud

132to be a staff member in msad 51 it was still 89 percent it has dropped 10 percent over the last three years but it's still well within the positive margin I have a clear understanding of our school or Department's goals that drop more than 10 percent but still within the positive margin District communication is communicated effectively to me more than 10 percent drop there but still within the positive margin superintendent makes efforts to be visible and engage with students and staff that drop to 80 percent which is on the low end of positive margin superintendent articulates and promotes a shared Vision that promotes the success of all students 86 percent but again it's 10 dropped there student and staff safety is a priority in our district 10 drop from 2020 down to 81 percent so

133a lot of and then you'll see there's a question that we didn't have in 2020 I believe the current and projected overcrowding at Mabel eye and the Middle School are issues that need to be addressed 95 of our staff definitely who responded said yes absolutely so those are the positive results below 80 percent for staff we had a lot of areas that quite frankly dropped you'll see on the 2020 column those would have all been over the 80 percent threshold and now they're not they're below 80 percent um for everything from resources and Personnel that we have enough of those to District education special education supports staff members being given feedback that one is very clear giving feedback through regular performance reviews we actually put that on hold for the entire time the pandemic was

134going on except for probationary staff but everyone else we did not do performance reviews during the pandemic any formal ones unless they were absolutely needed and that's for obvious reasons we had a lot going on and the state actually allowed us every District in Maine to do that District curriculum down quite a bit from 2020 I think we've really been working through a lot of curriculum issues especially around essential standards because of the pandemic professional development we actually suspended a lot of professional development for about two and a half years that's probably a one of the reasons you'll you're seeing such a low score there District or school and Department information has dropped quite a bit and how staff look at that work schedules and collaboration again you know during during those two years um

135we did have we did have to obviously limit collaboration a lot of that has returned um school and Department information is communicated effectively um actually that's duplicated um that's on there twice sorry about that and I have a voice in matters related to school Improvement that dropped quite a bit and more below 80 percent for staff um you know many staff saying that they don't feel confident meeting the needs of students who are either not motivated to be at the level they need to be or are Advanced so not feeling as much confidence there HR administer their own administrator showing concern dropped a lot over the last three years or being able to carry out responsibilities the superintendent and school board's ability to look at the ability to balance the community's ability to fund the

136schools with what students need dropped quite a bit and then staff reporting that their area is clean and well maintained went down 10 so those are areas of low satisfaction with staff and a lot of those areas dropped 10 or more since 2020. we come to parents and Guardians the 2020 results we changed a lot of the questions and we also did not administer we changed a lot of questions since 2019 and we also did not administer the survey in 2020 to parents and Guardians because of covid we had gotten the other two in and then this one we had not gotten to and the pandemic kit in mid-march and so we never administered this survey so you'll see that there's no comparison from 2020 but you'll you'll see that there's High satisfaction in a

137lot of areas from parents and Guardians nonetheless satisfaction that's over 80 percent I think just 93 percent of our parents and Guardians are saying that their children are happy overall or they're happy with their school and they're proud of the school district and they feel welcome in their child's school so those were really important to see and I think the attendance piece especially considering the pandemic 98 of our parents and Guardians saying it's you know attendance definitely matters and I'm sure that has a lot to do with the hybrid model and and all of that too parents and Guardians also had high satisfaction in academics curriculum even homework on the low end of satisfaction with 83 percent but still satisfied with the amount and difficulty of homework um feeling safe at school was 93 percent

138parents reported that their child School respects diversity 89 percent um so a lot of a lot of areas again a lot of satisfaction areas for parents and Guardians over 80 percent parent conferences technology school facilities being well maintained um reading updates and parents feeling like they're connecting with Communications at the school and District level and that the school staff is responsive um there's also um like the staff said there's there's a high percentage of parents and Guardians saying that something needs to be done about the overcrowded conditions um at Maple I Wilson School ngms 86 percent below 80 percent parents and Guardians um noted um feeling safe on the bus even though don't have some of these results there were similar questions in 2019 that we can probably unpack for you we didn't have those

139available tonight but that I remember being one that's been consistent after school sports opportunities that one surprised me a little bit uh 45 percent of parents said they weren't satisfied with sports or after school Arts programs at this point and also below 80 percent parents and Guardians said School administrators they did not feel responsive to their questions or concerns at 67 percent so just to give you a summary of the areas of satisfaction overall from all three three stakeholder surveys um safety seemed to be relatively an area that people were mostly satisfied with belonging in connection to the school getting help students being able to get help at school clear academic expectations and learning targets again there might be a lower area among the surveys but generally speaking people were favorable respecting diversity technology availability

140clear behavioral expectations and follow through from the school challenging thinking skills and District communication all seem to be areas of relative satisfaction areas needing further study or review staff morale as you noticed overall bullying and harassment um preparation for College and Career although there was one high area there from parents but there is enough low areas from the other survey results so I put this on this list school facilities just overcrowding general cleaning cleanliness I will say we've been down several custodians and we've been increasing our square footage with modular classrooms consistently for years so that one didn't surprise me after school programs as I mentioned Sports and arts bus safety and school level responsiveness for some areas there might be some areas also as you're looking through this that you think should be added

141to the list and I'd be welcome to hear that feedback this is basically our first pass through all this so generally just to give you a high level summary of the percentage of Satisfaction by stakeholder group if you took all the questions as an aggregate for students in grades three to five not surprisingly they were very support they were very satisfied 92 percent satisfaction on the questions that were asked for students at the secondary grades 55 percent for staff it was 40 percent and again this is all the questions asked and the general level of response when you look at all the percentages and then for parents and Guardians their General satisfaction response was 86 percent overall so how are we going to use these results and how do we use these results we regularly

142measure students staff and parent attitudes this is a desk a metric in the district's annual report you'll note that if you go back the last two annual reports there is nothing there that's because we did not administer these surveys however if you go back more you'll see that we did include the results of these surveys in previous annual reports and we will be doing that with the 2023 annual report in December helps monitor Trends and proactively respond the leadership team has reviewed this presentation and now we're making it public and sharing it with the board but this is important information in what will be even more important and this is what we had before and we don't have necessarily right now is that we had three years running of data that we could look at

143we had more than three years but we would look at always the last three years and what what was going on was there something that just seemed to be year after year a concern or year after year was a something that we were excelling in helping to inform future strategic plan priorities absolutely this is something that has come up during the strategic planning process and the annual priorities that are set forth I've already looked at this in the leadership the team has and we've identified a couple areas I think we need to pay more attention to and if the board agrees as we're developing priorities for next year those will be some areas that I like to focus more attention on marking progress and making changes in the site Improvement plans those are the school

144level and District level plans that are tied to the Strategic plan for each School in each department is required to have one and these will also be part of their plans as they're developing them and principals and directors start developing those plans actually they start developing those plans a couple of months ago and then we continued doing that throughout the summer and working with staff they work with their leadership teams in their building to to develop those and that is the end of the presentation I know it's a lot of data a lot of information this data will be provided to the entire staff tomorrow um this link will be going out in a staff update I send out it will be going in the newsletter on Thursday this presentation and it will be um

145you know available on our website as well so be in several different places um I think the caution I would good and bad on these surveys is that we have not administered these for three years so it's been since 2020 and then one of the surveys we haven't administered for four years which is the parent Guardian one so I think I It's always important to look at consistent data from at least two years in a row and see if generally we're getting the same feedback or things moving along or are things areas of concern but I think this is really good information it's given me an insight into things there were a couple things that surprised me but generally speaking I have to say they're I didn't I wasn't that surprised I kind of saw

146some of it coming kind of knew it was there and I think the response rate was very encouraging we didn't hear from a small group of people we heard from a lot of people and that to get 47 of all your stakeholders when you're talking about parents and Guardians students and staff that's huge that's like that's enormous that's enormous so I want to thank everybody who weighed in because that that is I don't we've never seen 47 of all stakeholders um that's huge but anyway that's that Vanessa please um it to do it by um school buildings yeah my questions it might help a little bit to fine-tune where um the discrepancy ours because I um I don't know if you took that or have that information but you do Yeah we actually that was

147the first aggregate we did was by school and um so that information has been given to each principal and each principle um the expectation is that they share it with staff and that they use that to work on sips okay going forward we weren't planning on making the school level data public because we're starting to you know with one of our schools we only have two grades we're starting to drill down to you know how much is really Anonymous at this point with some of the some of the responses especially with students with our staff we're dealing with smaller numbers so that's why we're not we're not doing that there's also some quite frankly sensitive questions that if we were to make it public we'd have to redact certain questions that are more sensitive or

148about individuals or even a group of people no I just think um that's good to know that you do have it by school we do and yeah if the administrators are handling it in that manner I think that's appropriate communication at this point yeah and our ministry is in the past when we did this three years ago they work with their building leadership team to share those results talk about them what are some things we want to work on what are some things that we want to get more data or another Trend Data before we do anything because we definitely don't want to alarm the community that everyone's unhappy there could be just there could be just a focus area right now where it's weighing more on the negative side whereas in the past it

149hasn't been right on the other hand I I think it might be important for the public to see what the climate is particularly at Mabel eye because it's impacting their kids um how the parents or the staff are feeling the stress I don't know how we could communicate that without revealing some data that would not be okay to reveal but it could be added to the timeline on the new building website we could add that survey results showed that it's information about something we've created it's there it's how people feel so I if we could find some way to share that whatever that is I mean I don't know what that is but I suspect the overcrowding is having quite an impact yeah that's I mean that's a large staff I mean we have 120

150people now that work in that building or so um for almost 800 students so it's start you know it is impacting and it's starting to spill over to the middle school now we're starting to hear staff at the middle school talking about crowded conditions and we're seeing it obviously as the fourth and fifth grade keeps inching into the sixth through eighth grade Wing upstairs each year we're seeing that and it's when you have one facility that's overcrowded it starts to impact the entire District um with as we know from a lot of different angles so um you know the information is is there I just don't think it's available I don't think it's it would be relevant for me to publish that by school for the entire Community that's why we do the district-wide one

151could maybe you offer like a summary of of this different schools that the tenor of the different schools some way to communicate the results you mean the staff the staff results or um probably the staff in general but even the kids must be feeling the affected maybe lie and yeah I just wonder if there's just some way we can get if not the data some summary of this is how they're telling us they're feeling there might be some questions um from each school that are common questions that we can look at and then I mean we have all the data so questions that might be able to get to that point if we were to pull some questions out because we asked the same questions obviously of the only questions we didn't ask obviously were

152the students some of the student questions were different but every staff member got the same questions at each building Tom's topic of the bit to ask you this I can tell I'm thinking the same thing as you Christina of course I say my piece about you know being responsible about you know demographic data reporting but my mind goes to all right we need to see the group differences here because I think it would explain a lot um I mean some of the questions it isn't just the like the the school or the building that we have we have years of service we have the primary position um that the the respondent uh has so like is this like there's there's some plausible hypotheses here like is this set dissatisfaction driven by yeah the attack situation

153when we know who who the Ed techs are responding well we don't know who they are we know that they are edtechs responding to the survey we know that they work they work in facilities or whatever their their role is um I think understanding where the dissatisfaction is coming from can um lead lead us in the right direction for how to solve these problems or or where to go next to get additional information because because it's one thing if this is a uniform level of dissatisfaction across the district because that's its own set of problems or if it's targeted within a particular building or within a particular role that's a different issue so I I agree with Christina I don't need to see the numbers but to know what some of those key findings are

154and to so we know what types of interventions the the district could be exploring I think that's important and and ultimately the staff themselves I think want to understand how the information is is being used I mean yes as a board we do as a community I think it's going to be really helpful so even if we're not disaggregating for um the purposes of sharing that out even adding some bullet points on these are the various ways that we're looking at this information in in what actions that you know you're planning as Administration um to take by looking at the information in that way yeah we do take this very seriously but we also don't want to rush to judgment and I think some of the conditions I share with you are halfway through were

155important for us to consider too we know that you know there was a huge collective bargaining issue obviously going on at the exact same time we're administering these surveys so we knew that was one of several factors that probably had some sort of um impact on this so we have to we have to consider those things the overcrowded conditions um obviously we're in a we're in a situation with a lot of other districts with staff shortages still we're asking people to do a lot more um and we don't have enough people to do the work and so I mean there's going to be a lot of reasons for this I think if we can continue seeing these results next year I'm going to be more concerned that if if things start improving in some areas

156I think it's so I think that's I understand that and for quantitative reasoning but I think there's also anecdotal total data I I totally hear you that um especially the issue around the collective bargaining uh Discord and the timing of the survey but the collective bargaining Discord is also in and of itself an anecdotal data point and a pretty significant one of Staff morale problems so um while I I hear you that it's important to have a longer uh series of data points to have a full grasp of the situation I think we have enough to know that there's a problem and to know like so like this last page of how are we using the survey results to start to think through and maybe you said this and I missed this that of ways

157to start to Grapple with this and really start to Think Through how to deal with the issue of low staff morale because to me it seems like it is a problem and this is not just one specific data point we have quantitative data that has matching other anecdotal data we've seen Mike can I springboard off of that because I think for me the one that is the most concerning is I have a voice in matters related to school Improvement 44 um I think that if teachers feel that this survey is not enacting change that literally addresses that um that line um it's it it confirms um why they feel that way so I'm wondering if it's possible to to make it very clear to staff I mean I'm envisioning a task force a sort where

158teachers are able to to meet with us or or to really share some more anecdotes as Mike was saying um and I don't know if they feel comfortable doing that in a face-to-face situation where it's not Anonymous but that's a problem in and of itself too um I I just fear that if teachers see that overall they don't feel that they're being heard and then this survey sits for a year and I'm not saying that that's what you're suggesting but if it just feels that way if that's the perception then that number is going to be even lower next year um so I'd really like to for us to to talk through how we could address this much sooner well another year let me let me just say a couple things that might help with

159this conversation just a bit I haven't really tipped my hand yet um I think you're going to see this in a strategic priority document for the board as looking at our staff morale and staff Wellness Etc the other pieces I've already talked with the association about co-hosting some sessions with staff early in the fall we feel like it's useless right now since we only have two weeks of school left and no one's going to want to participate at this point in the school year but in the early fall we'd like to we've already agreed to jointly host some sessions with staff and hear staff and be able to do that so that's something that we're already we've already discussed great thank you yeah that's really helpful and yeah just I think being a little more

160explicit on how you're planning on using them um I think we'll go a long way so I've one specific question the summary Slide the numbers looked a little off I was expecting to see the 6 to 12 student I thought their overall results were very positive that's going to be my last point but for some reason that those numbers at least on the student side yeah you were just on the slide okay yeah I'm gonna I'll take a look at that again my interpretation is this is that this is the percentage of the items that were 80 or above yes correct that is correct okay that's right because I was then going to talk about how much there is to to celebrate on the the maybe I should erase that slide you could sell it

161right away that's why I yes your explanation makes sense I'm sorry that is that Tom's right that is what it is um be areas there were very few based on what was included that were below the 80 even some that were below were an improvement yeah but for are you talking about students six to twelve six through twelve yeah about half of them though if you look at these These are below 80. about half the questions they were asked they're not asked as many questions okay um so about half the questions I think there's like 21 22 questions um you know half of them were below 80 so that that would make sense okay okay 55 but yeah they I the areas in which um you know education's being individualized you could really see that

162coming out yep um in these results yep yeah and that's an area I think that's you know we're starting to move in the right direction um it takes a while questions about too specific um uh lines one is the the district and school provide me relevant professional learning experiences do you have any insight as to why that is so lower or maybe you can clarify what that I really do think that we put we put so many professional learning things on ice for three almost three years um that I I truly believe that has a lot to do with it there's so much of our professional development really was around you know I mean for a long time it was around coveted conditions and always having to answer questions we'd have we had district meeting

163after district meeting with staff for a year which were heavily attended they were optional for staff that I hosted with the administrators and we would have you know an hour and a half of so many different questions and concerns and people asking those questions those were our professional development for quite a while and um because we were having such as staff shortage we were not sending anyone out of the district during the pandemic so everybody's professional learning especially conferences those kind of things committees that people were on we couldn't find subs and we needed our teachers in the classroom so we put everything we froze everything that was professional learning so I know that that you know we have definitely moved back in that direction this year we've been sending people out again but we

164still have staff shortages and I'm sure that we have times that we just can't do it um and the other piece is I don't we haven't done any comprehensive um strategic planning in our district around any of this for a while we continue working off of a plan that was developed years ago so I think that is part of it um and I think that is part of the sips as well so I feel like that one is one that you not to counter it but to explore I mean there's got to be data about who was able to take advantage of of professional learning experience I mean perhaps you could come back and say so actually by the time this school year was done this percentage of Faculty was able to have these experiences

165and maybe maybe that number would go up right at least um you know for looking at that Hard data so yeah and I think it yes I agree and I think if there's some certain areas that you would like to see you know okay are we are there issues at the primary level the secondary level high school level Middle School level and certain questions that like that I think that would be helpful to know and we can certainly put that together the other one that I didn't fully understand is the superintendent and School Board take care to balance the needs of students with the community's ability to fund the schools what um does that mean that like budgeting wise we're being too conservative or we're like what what I think if you if you what

166I'm interpreting how I'm interpreting this and if you look at three years ago 92 percent of the staff were very positive about the board and the superintendent's ability to balance those needs 66 that's a huge drop and you know what I don't know what that's telling us um except that people are not as satisfied the staff isn't satisfied with the budget um either saying the 700 modular classrooms and we haven't been able to get a building yeah it's probably if you're unhappy with the overcrowding or if you're unhappy with total spend you're going to be dissatisfied with that so that's so that may be part of it is the our inability to collectively as a community get a new school we're in charge of that obviously yeah not very sizable budgets right so that would

167be a question I would love to somehow um directly ask um during that the fall or something especially by then the budget will have passed um you know we've made these Capital Improvements all the be really curious to hear for the next budget cycle if possible I don't think any of the information about this year's budget was available at the time of the administration survey because they think it was February if I remember correctly so I hadn't even presented the budget yet right and of course we present we this budget and the board has supported this budget we put a lot of new positions in right for next year so a large expenditure larger expenditure increase than in other years so that's I'm just thinking if we don't get if we do another survey presumably

168the same time of year right for the 23-24 school year we wouldn't see um the the numbers until after the budget has already been voted on and that might be one and and granted we're never going to be able to give teachers as much as they want and need but I would love to somehow have an uh an update on the the teacher satisfaction with this year's budget before we start next year's budget does that make sense yeah I mean I think yeah I I would I think if we had given the survey a few weeks after we did we might have a different answer there okay maybe I don't know um I I also think that you know we have to remember we're also coming off of the three-year Mark of just everything up

169in the air and and so many things that were not available um and I'm sure the perception is that you know we should be having more money that are put into the schools and and I I think that's just a perception sure some of it is perception others okay thank you Jeff so again I the last thing I want to say is um I think these survey results are good discussion starters and I think for you know I one thing that surprised me is I thought parents and Guardians would be less satisfied after all the stuff that has gone on the the hybrid approach obviously being out of school for three months three years ago all the coveted stuff that we had to deal with and I think I would give a lot of kudos

170to our staff our administrators for basically opening the schools back up as quickly as we could this year and getting people in open houses events I think parents feel are feeling more connected and I was actually surprised at how high those numbers were and how many parents responded that's a lot of a lot of responses um so it's it's relevant but it has to be taken with a grain of salt I think the stuff that could be actionable immediately would be the differences between the buildings but even that you have to I mean miw for instance is the most overpopulated at 150 capacity so these sort of things weigh into that of course but yeah a lot of factors a lot of factors involved and regardless of what we publish uh to the public you

171know Jeff and each building principle is responsible for these survey they know the details and trying to improve them okay moving on number seven we have a public hearing about the adjoining land acquisition I think Jeff has a presentation and then we'll open it up for public comment yes so this is the um the other ones on the agenda first it's funny because that we flipped them the other day okay so the adjoining land acquisition is the first public hearing why are we in need of this land obviously the referendum vote failed that back in November um the board approved a short-term facilities plan for five years and then the long-term uh long-range plan needs to be updated in a couple areas and I'll I'll show you that in just a moment sustained enrollment growth

172again this is just um not information that's new to you um we've shown you different things like this around enrollment but you can see that the K-5 enrollment continues to go up and will continue going up and then leveling off as we get closer to 2032-33 whereas the Middle School enrollment is going to climb steadily over the next couple of years to three years and then study off and then the high school enrollment will continue climbing as we know that that enrollment will continue going through the districts so the ballot question um is adjoining land purchase and funding do you favor authorizing the school board to purchase 2.38 acres of land in Cumberland Center for 756 thousand and this will be a 700 000 um issuance for a bond ten thousand for an option fee

173um that the district has paid already and 46 000 from The District's Capital reserves so 756 000 total price for the land and for anyone in the public who still would like to see where this land exactly is we'll have this posted on the website this will also be the newsletter this week so we'll be getting this this presentation out but you can see where the property is exactly 2.38 Acres here's a closer view a lot of this property is wooded and the good thing about it is there is no structure on it so it is purchasing the land itself which is very valuable to the sad considering the proximity that it shares with a fence I won't go through all this but this is um you'll show that this is a good piece of

174property the functional value to the the sad the actual site has all of the ability to hook things up utilities um you know this is a high demand area of Cumberland Center um and uh you know the soil conditions are good we don't have to worry about that that's always something you want to look into these are some photos um this winter of the particular site and then with the facilities plan that was approved by the board a year ago I would recommend amending your facilities plan tonight there's an action item to include for this particular acquisition acquiring property abutting the main campus as a component of your facilities plan and so the red ink is what I recommend you include in your facilities plan relieving overcrowding and congestion providing more open space and Outdoor

175Learning opportunities and then the second component that's linked to your facilities plan um you'll see that the renovation of the maintenance in the field house we have made renovations to the field house already we've added bathrooms to the field house three bathrooms however we have a safety issue with the field house and that we have maintenance equipment this has been something that's been in your facilities plans since you approved it if this land was acquired this could be one possible use of the land to add something onto the maintenance building and use the field house as a field house and you also see under um renovation of Greeley High School we'll need an update to add the science Wing there and that's for the srr f project which will be the other presentation but I

176just wanted to show you that as well so those are recommendations for amending your facilities plan that are tied to this piece of property in the acquisition okay thank you Jeff questions comments from the board should we talk now about the long-term facilities plan or should we talk during the items for action um why don't we do public the public hearing and then we can come back to it we can take the item for Action out of order just one it's 2.3 Acres it's not enough to build a new school just one thank you for saying that nope nice thing to have but not a good spot to put a 100 000 square foot building correct good point another questions comments from the board okay so this is a public hearing I will open it

177up for public comment if anybody would like to speak Step Up introduce yourself okay all right seeing that I'll close that bring it back to the board for the questions comments okay and I'm happy to take item nine a out of order if there is a motion I'll move to amend the long-term facilities plan as presented thank you Mike is there a second second thank you Jared I heard okay comments on that any concerns I do have a comment uh not about the additions I think the additions are really good and I think they make a ton of sense and they're necessary my comment is that I think we should consider dropping the terp field uh in priority level because the other things seem to be significantly more important in my humble opinion personally I

178would think to drop the turf field out of it but I understand that there's differing of opinions there and I know there is a third tier of priorities is that right or is it just a one and a two um there right now there's a one and a two and not a three so everything was I think the way it was approved back in May something was either a one or two it used to be threes there were there was a three at one point but it there hasn't been a three since it was approved so if you would like to amend your motion mic then we could vote on that part of it I'm so I'm not I'm not Falling on My Sword right now unless it feels like there's others who would agree

179with that sentiment I wanted to raise that as I'll fall on that sword it just surprises me to see it on that list we have so many other needs right now it's it's not a need it's a luxury which maybe we go for it sometime but it chills me to see it they are listed next to the other items I don't think it's a two I'd like to make recreate threes I'm not saying never I'm just saying yell not now not I don't want to talk about that me too thank you um we competitively are behind compared to every other school in our district athletically because we don't have a turf field in our sporting events are shortened due to the lack of a tour field okay but I will counter that with turf fields

180are not necessarily proven to be healthy I have a lot of questions I don't want to rush to spend all that money I want a lot more discussion before we go there so I'm not saying I'm not going there but I we need to do those other things I think it needs out of respect for the Athletics here in our district this has been kicked down the can down the road repeatedly and I will let Tom take over and speak in terms of this but I think it's um not something that should get dropped yeah I think that the health and the environmental impacts a different discussion there is a need for a field that we can use at a greater frequency that we're currently using our Fields it's a it's a problem that our

181teams can't use a field for like two weeks because we've gotten a ton of rain um it puts us at a competitive disadvantage it it's something that our our peers have and I wouldn't consider that a luxury then I also think that a turf field is probably the most important thing to the kind of like sports section of the student body and oftentimes people um I mean not that the students should really be totally taken into account when talking about um like long term site Improvement plans but I think that when looking at a turf field a lot of students say well why are we putting forward a 70 million dollar school when we don't have a turf field obviously that logic is very flawed but um I think in terms of the students at

182our field is probably a or the top priority for them I agree people may like it but there's like and love and want and then there's need so I'm just saying the needs are tremendous for the next few years can I suggest something to the chair um I I think um Beyond this um the recommendations I made it might be a facilities committee discussion to talk about the prioritization of this because I think there's a lot of components that could weigh into this and Bring It Forward of course the board has the purview to do anything you want right the words out of my mouth I think I also think the facilities committee may want to Hash this around a little bit yeah I think that's a good suggestion as the outgoing uh terrorism committee

183um two weeks left uh I I think that's a great suggestion and one where we can move to there we don't need to Hash this out at 9 30 tonight I agree I also think there's an environment committee that hasn't kind of gotten its feet on the ground yet it'll have some say on it next year that's one of the reasons you have to advocate for these sorts of things that that we created that yep I've spent a lot of time with the athletic advisory committee and also with the boosters on this subject we've done a lot of work around a plan uh budget um address many of the issues around concerns around safety of the field the environmental impacts of of the field the lack of usage Etc and I would actually suggest that

184um the athletic advisory committee and the boosters be able to come in and do to the board and do a presentation on the turf field and maybe answer questions that they have we've had a number of experts that have come in and talked to us on this and if there's a lot of concerns we should probably hear that so I don't think it's anything that's going to be solved tonight I think there's a lot of varying opinions and it comes down to prioritization I don't I don't think anybody would say that we never need a turf field it's it's a matter of what comes first and um assuming nobody wants to make a motion to amend then we'll just move forward okay so sorry I know it's getting late I is this unrelated to the

185turf field I have a question about one of the additions here so just more broadly this is a temporary document that that kind of moves we could you know change it again next week Liberty document yeah yes is a living document yes um so we can approve these changes right now um but say the vote does not pass in favor of this would we come back and amend this uh again so that you know maybe acquiring a property a budding the main campus is not really a yes part of our plan it's a fluid plan and um and the facilities committee can make recommend usually the process is facilities committee would look at this at least once a year and then make any recommendations to the board if it wanted to the only reason I

186wanted to put this in front of the board the whole board tonight was because we have this public hearing on acquiring property and that is yet to be in the facilities plan and I just wanted to make sure it was in the facilities plan or the board fell that should be in there but tip quickly that would be the process that we would use I would argue that even if it failed that that would still be relevant for the foreseeable future to try to acquire land that came available at a reasonable price assuming yeah I would second that okay others concerns questions coming who seconded the motion I there was a motion but I don't know Jared yep Mike and then Jared and I'm part of the facilities committee I mean currently we'll see after

187uh June when somebody Mike Leos and we're reconstituted but um I would also want to see as part of this like an overall plan for the campus itself especially if we are acquiring property um considering Fields like what does that look like for this physical space if we are able um to either make changes with the property or without the property and whether a turf field is would be designed into those updates for the campus so I think that yeah that would be a good facilities committee discussion um is so if it passes I would think the facilities committee would begin discussing where to go from here others okay uh so we are voting on the Amendments as presented to the facilities plan all in favor you know okay I'll opposed okay Vanessa is dissenting

188but just to make it clear we did not remove we didn't reorder the turf field nope okay I just wanted to make sure that was I just complained there was no action okay all right awesome and Christina complained with me thank you I can't justify my now no I just wanted to make sure you don't have to I was just clarifying you can if you want we know why Tom explain [Laughter] I think Vanessa made it clear when we when we decided to put this on the ballot Vanessa is still opposed thank you for the clarification was thinking okay moving on to number eight we have another public hearing for the school revolving Renovations funds for ghs yes and this um will be on the ballot as well June 13th and by absentee obviously and

189this is the srrf which is the school revolving renovation fund for Greeley High School science Wing um and as part of this project the state is providing the district if it's approved by voters alone in the amount of one million dollars through the state's zero interest rate for loan forgiveness and the Maine Department of Education will forgive almost 48 percent of the one million dollars up to 478 thousand three hundred dollars and then the remaining amount of 521 700 would be at an interest-free loan for 10 years so half of just about half of it would be forgiven and the other half would be at an interest free loan and again I already mentioned this and I already had this slide up before but just to remind you um this would be something we the

190board just approved to edit the facilities plan and include the science Wing there we didn't have the science Wing in there okay thank you Jeff um questions comments from the board before we open public comment okay this is a public hearing so I'll open it up to the public if you'd like to speak Step Up introduce yourself Tim still doesn't want to talk okay seeing that I'll close public comment bring back to the board for their questions comments concerns okay and this was just the public hearing do we have to do anything Jeff you don't have to do anything okay all right so moving down the agenda to item s good okay can we approve any of these positions on block or should we go one by one no I think we can take them

191as a block but Jeff will run down through them um so 9B I am happy if you guys are all agreeable to take that as a block and then we'll we can discuss them as a Blog to approve the following set of professional positions together as a block okay thank you Leanne is there a second second thank you Mike so Jeff can you take us through those quickly well we have a lot um so um we have a grade uh GMS six through eight seventh grade ELA teacher um we had six candidates uh interviewed we had actually 24 applicants for that position um and we're bringing forward the candidate that you have um who has an experienced teacher for ELA out of state actually and a couple of these you might see as familiar names

192we have a gms68 behavior teacher we had one applicant and one person interviewed this is somebody who is um familiar to our district and worked here before and we're thrilled to have her back um next position is instructional strategist for grades three to five again another familiar person you probably um see have recognized the name we had eight people apply for the position and we had three interviews and we were pleased to be able to hire back somebody who was actually in this exact position so the last two people were in their exact positions told us they tried something else and love Greely and I'm not I'm quoting love this District so much they couldn't wait to get back um this next position is a grade three one year only um this is for a

193leave of absence we had a teacher request a one-year leave so this position will be filling in for this position we had nine people apply for this position we interviewed three people and have the applicant in front of you next position is a continuing grade three position and for this position um we have somebody that's moving to the fourth and fifth grade school so we had a vacancy in grade three we had 20 people apply for the position and we interviewed three and ended up with this teacher who has several years of experience the next position is a resource room case manager for grades six to eight I'm very pleased that we have filled this position this position has been vacant for almost a year now and we were not able to hire someone during

194the middle of the school year people don't like to switch positions during the school year very much we had 10 applicants for the job we interviewed three and how and are hiring an outstanding special educator very pleased next position is a grade 2 continuing position at Mabel I Wilson school we had a resignation so that's why there's a vacancy and we're hiring probably a familiar name as well this is a person who has been filling in for most of the year as a teacher for us when we had an unexpected vacancy and she was in edtech for many many years before that I got her teaching degree we're really pleased with her she's a great staff member a wonderful person Exposition is the the new position that the board approved through the budget process mtss

195coordinator which is response to intervention for tier 2 and 3 academics um and we had nine people apply for the position uh interviewed three people um and again this is a new uh position that you put into the budget thank you the next position um is uh 2-3 literacy Specialists we have both of our literacy Specialists um are have opted to um go back to the classroom next year at Mabel I Wilson school and be classroom teachers they're both very excited about it but that left two vacancies for both of our literacy specialists k1n23 and so we open both those positions up after transferring the literacy Specialists to classroom positions we had 10 people apply for this the 2-3 literacy specialist position interviewed two and hired an experienced teacher as you can see next position

196again is the K1 literacy specialist as I mentioned we had 14 people apply for this position interviewed three and end up hiring again someone with um a few years of experience who has been a classroom teacher and is moving and I think that is all of them unless I've missed somebody I feel like I missed a couple of them oh yeah we have yeah we did miss a couple of them we just grabbed those mm-hmm we have alternative education at the high school ghs alternative education we had a retirement for this position we have a teacher who's been actually in this position since we created it several years ago at the high school it was a new position at that time and he's been in the position ever since but he is retiring and we

197hired a wonderful new um all fed teacher to to move into that position who is a teacher in another district and I don't have that information in front of me I'm sorry in terms of how many people applied for those for that position I the four was that the the that was the high school altered position yeah it said the form it says four can I ask a general question sure just I just don't know um literacy you mentioned the literacy some literacy specialists need to be replaced because some others had moved into the classroom so our literacy Specialists certified teachers necessarily or just happened to be here many many are I mean um allegedly it depends on what the role is but most literacy Specialists have a zero nine two certification by the state

198which enables them to be a literacy specialist specifically but most of them also have a general education certification and both of these Specialists had also been classroom teachers years ago and so are just returning to that certification area got it okay I apologize I am looking still looking for that information on the other positions which I'm not finding I had a question about the GMS grade the ELA teacher I apologize if you said this and I missed it I noticed that the proper credentials for Maine are missing and there's something about um reciprocity yes sure but there were 24 people who applied so I have to believe that if this person right this is a really uh good good applicant very experienced when they come from out of state there's usually a period of time

199where the state has to review all the credentials we expect that the person will be certified okay but we have to note that the certification is pending okay um it is not done usually what Maine will do is there might be a course or two that an applicant has to still fulfill for main standards even though we have reciprocity with other New England states that often is the case we find with applicants coming to Maine so those are things that we always vet out before the interviews and then I discuss it with the applicant during the second interview and make sure that they understand usually the the administrators already talked about it with them but our HR specialist reviews that as well and then I review it and then Scott reviews it um as part

200of the HR role so is it contingent on the licensure absolutely they have to be certified it's possible that that could not happen and the state allows State considers conditional certification as full certification to work so as long as a teacher can get that conditional certificate even if they have a course they have to take within a year or two for reciprocity reasons the state considers that full certification and we've never had an issue with this we've never had an issue with it I was going to say we issue a contract based on the fact that it's you have to have your certification right in order to start the job well and I'm guessing it's pretty low risk in that sense but just the fact that 24 people applied for that position and someone who

201technically doesn't have their certification yet I presume people must be pretty excited about this guy this person is a very phenomenal Community yes and we do hire people from out of state sure yeah we actually hire many people from out of state and we go through the same process with their certification some of them have applied for certification previously to Maine so they already have it when they get here but most people don't um is is what I am so the next position is um I mentioned High School alternative education we have a high school math position as well we have a retirement in math and I don't have the information in front of me in terms of the number of applicants sorry I can't read from there we had 11 applicants for that position

202and interviewed four and um very pleased with the applicant that we had at the end so the next one is High School science this is a science teacher and a neighboring school district and we had a resignation of a science teacher in science there's three different certification areas for science so it's sometimes hard to finagle that so we did some internal shuffling of our science department to make sure that people were within their certification areas we're able to hire an applicant to teach the ninth grade physical science which is the position that we hired for so an outstanding applicant I think the kids are going to be excited about all these people I'm telling you I was really excited the next position is a nurse 0.8 and we had a nurse who was a 0.8

203for a one year only and that position was opened up and we are hiring a different person than the person that was in the position that person's leaving going to another district and we're hiring a 0.8 nurse and again this is a continuing position one we've had in our budget so we had I don't know how many people applied for the position we had three people that were interviewed and one more position we had a physical education um vacancy at the Wilson school and this is a maternity leave we have somebody out for one year um and we just ended up finishing the paperwork on this person so I don't have the rest of the information but how an outstanding applicant who was wanting a one-year position just kind of see if going back to

204the classroom this is an administrator going back to the classroom is something that I think he's wanted to do and he was excited to take this one-year position to kind of find out if this was a long-term peace but really had missed the classroom right at the 11th hour today literally level Towers so I don't even have the details in front of you and then they were an athletic director or that was just one of them yes but also a certified as a PE teacher was a piece right yeah and we review the gms68 special education Behavior position we did the resource room in the behavior yeah I did that right at the beginning and that was somebody who's coming back to us uh who had been in this position for several years left us

205went to another District um two years ago and is returning and really wanted to come back to her position again okay okay great so thank you I have no questions Kim asked my question uh Christina I just have one question um where are we at would it show up here someone we were hiring to do Communications for the board around the new school oh that would that wouldn't be a staff position that's just an agreement letter that we have with that person and hiring them and it's on a per it's like a fee like we pay Lawrence Alexander so it wouldn't come before okay I didn't think yeah that's just part of your a contractual matter not a staff position other questions comments concerns I just had a general question about any patterns that you've

206seen with with staff turnover I mean as we looked at the surveys earlier are you seeing that reflective in an increase in in staff turnover um well we had an unusual situation we've had a couple teachers leave halfway through the year um for their own reasons personal reasons that happens um we've you know I can't say that there's any particular area um that we've had staff attrition in I mean we have not been able to find people easily for Ed Tech positions we still have vacancies that are open right now that we've advertised for for next year and so we've been more aggressive in our advertising this week actually you'll see a lot more aggressiveness in our advertising um it'll be in the forecaster a huge page ad huge um can't miss it you'll start

207seeing stuff on the high school e-sign as you drive by you'll start seeing that we're going to be doing direct emails for to all parents and asking hey do you have a few hours you want to do this that or the other flexible schedules but I can't say there's one staff group we have a lot you know all staff groups have been there's certain positions that are just much harder to fill right some special education teaching positions are really hard to film we don't get a lot of applicants that's across the board that's anywhere you go yeah it was nice to see some large applicant pools for some of the teaching positions yes yeah some of them are starting to rebound um you know from uh pre-covered if that's say it say it say it

208so just our facilities positions our custodial and Facilities um uh we have one more person to hire and we filled all our all our openings in that area so so that's been huge we actually attracted three dental hygienists from one office and hired all three they have to I will already vouch for them they are like the best players they're the best cleaners thorough because one of them cleans our office and my office has never been so clean we even had a little doily in the bathroom I was like I was like wow so we're on there he went into some dentists is there a dental office that is going to be extremely angry with Scott now we're predatory on the hiring so and they're just thrilled I don't want to visit they were like

209we can't wait to I mean one of them I think told the other two call Mark yeah it's so cool so how come the um the nurse is 0.8 it's been 0.84 as long as we have that position in place probably five years ago it's been a point eight we haven't increased it okay for for all the people watching at home uh who want to explore the district's employment opportunities where should they go they should go right to our website there is a huge um we're putting aren't we prominently putting more on our website yes but you can go right to our website in fact I could pull that up if you wanted and actually it'll be on the reader board too where to go I realize we're getting into hopefully the second half of

210his knee with regards the last facilities position um is there ever any sort of uh Pursuit with perhaps a student who is in financial hardship or something where is there is there ever an opportunity to hire a student we we have hired students in the past and there are some restrictions based on um age and work you know work that they can do with power tools Etc so but no we have done some of that in the past and actually some of it works also through our um alternative Ed as well sometimes okay we work we work through that sometimes as well as well as some of the senior projects and other things that go on oh sure I mean if you can get it yeah so yeah no we we look at all those

211things and in the final position that's available is a maintenance position that we put in the budget and um we're just looking to advertise that in another week or so and get that out there so so all of the districts um positions that are open um and um you can see those on the district website anybody can go right to there go to District go to employment opportunities and you'll see the listed positions you can click on what are whatever is of interest and you can actually apply right online and it tells you what you'll need to be able to make that application so is there anyone that would like to apply right now serving I can fill your name out for you serving schools is another area serving schools another area we advertise conflict

212of interest I was gonna say that's great whose main Vanessa you can yeah Vanessa Mike was encouraging me to apply for choral director parole or coral Coral we don't have a parole anything else on this before we vote we're going to take them all as a block all in favor unanimous motion carries thank you and we should make a note on the minutes that these were presented out of agenda order um for all those people playing along at home and matching it up to the minutes did you also make a note in the minutes that we voted on the um what we talked about just in executive session yes that's in the notes okay yeah yeah okay moving on to superintendent's report number ten well you get to hear from me again peace and next

213time I'm not going to say anything what it's a God made a comment so that won't happen all right super tense report I'm sorry this is somewhat long because there's so much that's gone on over the last month Harper therapy dog um got into the middle of things at the high school and received a new vest and the color was chosen by Mr shaffer's alt ed class Mr Schaefer is retiring as I mentioned that's why there was a vacancy and much love by the students but anyway Jade was also retired or at least her vest was retired she was the former therapy dog wncw is featured in featuring some of our students lately Adele Weaver was here tonight um it wasn't end up wmtw but it was a Press Herald that featured her we also

214have had other students featured for sports reasons scholar athletes Luke Jackson and Ruth weeks and this particular segment the gorilla lacrosse players volunteered their time to help teach the local Littles or so the younger students how to play lacrosse I'll be able to carry on the tradition early in May high school debate team members received recognition at the main House of Representatives so these were students from the high school who are involved in our debate team and the debate team has been on a run getting all kinds of accolades the high school best buddies team participated in the best buddies walk in Portland they raised close to two thousand dollars for the best buddies organization part of their resource consumption unit IB geography is examining waste production and processing at a variety of scales this

215was an on-site field trip that the students were involved in so I actually could learn more about this Canadian colleges I don't know when the last time Canadian colleges I guess they come I'm not sure they come every year but they were here this year and they were recruiting students there was actually a number of students that were very interested in attending a Canadian College and obviously we heard tonight the first annual Pathways showcase featuring a lot of The Silo projects you saw Liam's presentation at the beginning he's the first student on the left an Adele's presentation Adele was here tonight high school students volunteered at the Cumberland North Yarmouth kids triathlon they were wonderful role models of leadership and kindness way to go Rangers we see this a lot with older students younger students

216or best buddies we've had a lot of those connections reform this year congratulations to the Juniors that received College book awards and I honor roll recipients they were all honored at an evening of Excellence held at the High School also had an IB program graduation we had three students who graduated from the IB diploma which is a two-year rigorous program where students basically just take IB courses and receive a diploma on the IB program so it is a very rigorous program and every year we usually have a few students that end up graduating and it's a big it's a big feat it really is at the middle school congratulations to GMS 6-8 students who attended Maine's National History Day contests our students have been involved in NHS for years and years and it's just it's

217a great program fun program the kids enjoy it of the six projects submitted the results we had a lot of first place winners and we had a second place winner as well that's a huge feat in the National History Day World a lot of great presentations as usual getting into history and I love seeing our students involved in history every student um all six of these students qualified for the Nationals in Washington DC so they go down to D.C present their project and then can go on from there so it's um our students are always doing well on this I'm I've always been very proud of this program including a board member yeah board members kid oh I I didn't I didn't want to mention anything but if somebody else wants to mention it um

218Jared should get a chance to grow we want to say something I just you know um Kathy Kearney got one of our our middle daughter involved in this several years ago and we made a huge difference for her and um you know we we missed Kathy but this um this group did fantastically this year it's an extremely well attended program you know with schools throughout Maine and really absolutely cleaned up this year I mean just you know first place after first place and you know second place in there but we just uh really cleaned up so it's a terrific day and um one of our students or I should say one of our groups of students also won the Margaret J Smith um women's history award which is a very prestigious award in Maine as

219well Greeley Middle School participated in the Elementary District 2 music performance that's another area we always seem to excel in Greeley Middle School also helped the PTO filibust phillabelli for the Cumberland food pantry Governor Mills visited GMS 8th graders as part of the student study of government and Civics every year the governor of Maine whoever the governor is has met with our students whether virtually or in person almost every year I should say so they've we've had really nice meetings in governments was very patient answered many student questions while she was at the art center and she even had a photo with a group of students in the back of the GCA as they were gathering around her and I think a funny moment was one of the student asked about her security detail and

220as she was answering she was looking for her security details which was not in the room [Laughter] so they were in big trouble gms68 drama club held a school-wide performance of Herky jokutson for students and staff at the GCA I did catch some of their play it was it was really cute well done um and um I think the students just have had a lot of fun especially performing for their fellow students too Mr caswell's 6-8 PE class A lot of fun during their circus unit we definitely wanted to highlight this because the circus unit is a big draw for students at the middle school at Mabel I Wilson school first graders donated and used over 200 boxes of cereal to create a chain reaction bringing to life how one act of kindness can set

221off a chain of kind acts I miss this for some reason I don't know where I was I must have been at a meeting or something or I don't know I don't know where I was but I was like how did I miss that Mr Coco Puffs I think I was at oh I was at the Drummond of Woodson thing that day um conference but yeah this is I heard it was a great event I was sorry to miss it the GCA was a packed house for the third grade choral concert huge success thank you to Miss Jen Caton for continuing to organize this wonderful event always well attended kindergarten screening was different this year actually instead of having students come in and meet with just um a staff member or just having a select

222team of Staff members that conduct the screening every single staff member at Maybelline Wilson school was involved in kindergarten screening and they did it all in one afternoon and within a two and a half hour period And so parents were welcomed in there's different activities and stations and staff members we're all involved in screening the students it was actually very festive you know people hung out at the library they met with Administration they had their screening there was the PTO was there it was very exciting very festive kids got pictures I actually think it was a huge improvement over case screening and it just felt like a big Festival actually when I was over there it's very exciting a couple of responsible third graders have started taking care of miw's gardens I don't know why

223they were doing that but I did mention one day I was like the gardens don't look very good and all of a sudden they just started getting taken care of it was amazing nicer weather means that our kindergartners get to write outside this is something they love doing is decorating um the sidewalks and the pathways with chalk a picture was taken how many months ago oh it was just taking it was just taken five days ago we're in the middle of June winter I know June winter is still here and then the Rangers Rock Encore Edition well here it is graduation 2023 um so I want to thank Jason record for having stayed on stage and Shake bitty hands I said get ready for your handshaking your hand's going to fall off um but uh

224you know just an exciting experience um just such a neat event and um I it's my it's really one of my favorite events of the year um just seeing the kids and it was a great day and actually even though we're inside because of the rain it was comfortable in there and it was it was very well attended and thank you to facilities for I'm sure you know leading up to that having to switch venues is a huge Undertaker I'd like to give a shout out to Don Foster and his staff for the unbelievable amount of work and the high school staff Sarah Bailey is the graduation coordinator but you know Don and his staff just kept moving things around and improving things and getting it ready it was just a great event and even

225ran shuttle buses they ran shuttle buses and be you know their staff did because they also have bus licenses bus drivers as well and did they keep driving that night through the night for Project Graduation Senior Walk was held during a nice day that we had last week Friday afternoon it's this is also one of my favorite events of the year just watching all of the students in the entire district and all of the staff members you know crying hugging whatever it just really excited to see the seniors marching through and we have a lot of parents that also attend and are welcoming their seniors senior parents that is and just as they go through the whole campus it's we started this a few years ago and it's just been one of the highlights of

226everybody's week when we have it it's just everybody loves it High School junior Maddie Yates from North Yarmouth placed first in the 2023 Statewide Maine Country Music Hall of Fame high school student guitar competition I think that's so cool to see that we have young people that are into the country music and uh and love that stuff I think it's awesome it speaks well for for Maine actually High School community service club they're always active they're always doing something love reporting on them I know Tommy's been involved in that quite a bit they went to Prince Memorial Library showed those roots who's boss I don't know who wrote this I actually did write it I think Melissa wrote this one they removed weeds and plants and they put some new plants in their place whoever

227whoever wrote that um well one of your board members here Leanne condura participated in the board um actually I didn't say that right board Day program at the state house and also met with Governor Mills and other board members do you want to say anything I it was a really nice way to spend the morning I hadn't ever been to the state house and sat through sessions and and really had the opportunity to you know spend I don't know 20 minutes with Governor Mills and people asking her questions and you know getting insights or whatever it what's happening in other districts and the challenges that are being faced and it was just I encouraged next year for others to consider going need experience yeah yeah really new experience um it's playoff time as Mr Shapiro

228mentioned um so you know I only put a couple teams up here but we have playoffs I think um and also good you know good job to the teams that um have really worked hard this spring and have had some uphill battles as well congratulations to the Greeley boys track and field team as David had mentioned as well for winning the Western Maine conference and congratulations to the girls track and field team for coming in second at the Western Main conference and the information that I had we didn't have it in time for the superintendents report the girls tennis team which is which is awesome that they won the Western Maine as well High School Madrigal singers sang the national anthem to an open session at the main House of Representatives we might as well

229just move up to Augusta our district they were the invited guest of Representatives Graham and Moriarty and then other information in my superintendent support please I'm just reminding people to vote for just about please do your civic duty to vote three items that are impacting the sad on the 13th of June of course the budget being one of them and then Susie Robbins wanted you to all to know this is her report that this will be our allocation amount for our Essa programs these are federal dollars that come into the district so we're set to receive 115 537.27 and federal funds for Title One Title II and title four Title One is we use for literacy instruction at Maple light Wilson School Title II is professional development money but we also have the ability to

230move that to direct student use which is what we do in our district so we actually transfer the title to money to Title One and um are able to supplement more services for students who need extra support and literacy and then title IV is um safe schools and we can use that money for actually we transfer that money as well to Title One we have been transferring it we're able to do that so supplement literacy so our title money really goes to our literacy programs in our district um and uh basically that's what I just told you it covers about half of the salaries and benefits for literacy the two literacy positions at mabelight Wilson School and that's the superintense report thank you Jeff questions comments from the board tell me one thing it it

231feels weird to see the the like poster board of class of 2036. I don't know that just seems so I know the fact that kindergarteners now are coming in and they're going to be the class of 2036 that's crazy that means you're getting old yes exactly old enough to remember when the class of 2000 started kindergarten and everybody made such a big deal like whoa this is the first graduating class of the 21st Century I'm old enough may I ask a question about the um the title One funds based on covid are those funds um are you noticing that the kids who maybe were in kindergarten first grade during that horrible awful time are is that kind of the where a lot of that money is needed that needed the most or we've traditionally funded

232those positions using using title money anyway and then we supplement the rest of it with um you know General budget money so we have those supports in place no matter what sure but we have been seeing and I think we've shared some test results we need to share some updated ones now that we've done another administration of our um I ready scores and we'll do that Susie can do that for you in the early fall but just to show you that kids are catching up kids are making those gains and we're seeing that it's getting it's improving a lot the instructions definitely working yep others okay moving on to committee reports Vanessa Finance anything um nothing we have one more finance committee coming up for some transfers of assets with Scott and just go out

233and vote uh Jared policy please um because I've been promising Tommy up for a while that we would get jic uh past um we have there's enough comments in there that I think it it had to go back to policy committee uh tomorrow um I guess depending on the shape of that after tomorrow we can figure out if it's ready to come back for a second read or if it's technically first read and and then goes to Second read of the first meeting next year I don't know but we'll the changes are small enough that um I guess we'll just have to see what we all think so that's coming up tomorrow and then there's that's really the only update okay thank you policy that we just can't seem to land started that policy back

234in April of last year I think or March yeah it's not the dress code yes yes yeah you did yep I will say we got some good feedback at first read and I think we've done a good job actually addressing some of the concerns that we did there so it's I think it's in good shape did we put on that agenda the um thing for the nurse nurses so that no policy yes yeah all right moving on to facilities Mike yeah really quick uh there also go vote uh on the land acquisition that will be a very uh important part of facilities discussions going forward um uh the only other thing is we had a meeting myself Scott Jeff and Jason with revision energy about the solar project to get quite a bit more information

235I thought it was very very useful they walked us through how they can do quite a lot of the work and how this could work for our district so more to come they'll be coming back to talk to folks and um in the coming weeks months probably into the summer uh they're going back and working with Scott on a few things but uh yeah that's clicking ahead and Mike on camera here in this public meeting are you willing to be on the solar committee as it moves forward as a parent yes I am actually I would be willing to help with that good um the facilities meeting we had a couple weeks ago I was away at the time would you we'll talk about this more on the 20th but would you mind giving giving

236giving us the punch line on a new school possible locations yeah um so we walked through uh we we received a number of um spots of land in the two communities and did a pretty thorough vetting uh long and short of it none come close in terms of value proposition in terms of even just straight possibility uh as compared to 80 Gray Road so going forward 80 Gray Road is by far Head and Shoulders whatever analogy you want to use the best option we have in front of us I think it was it was good and to go back out to the community to ask to see if there were other um pieces of land to look at and we did but after all that 80 Gray Road uh the facilities committee looked at and

237determined was by far the best choice Leanne do you agree I I just want to say that um I was really happy it was one of the things that we had heard from the community is you know wanting to do another um give another opportunity through the RFP and other processes to see if there was other land that existed that we really could consider um and I I think we're going to post some more details on the timeline that's been put up that tries to give a comprehensive review of all of the different um times that over the past few years we've gone out and looked for land and what that has how that's played out and and where we are today um and I know that the the other item that and I don't

238know exactly where it it fits is just like what to look ahead for like so what what's next we've done this RFP we've done this review now how to how do we move forward to get a solution for these space issues and and if we are saying it's 80 Gray Road Again what how do we go back out to the community and talk about that effectively um so I think I don't think it necessarily has a spot today but I just know that um there's probably a lot of questions that have been coming up around that one of the other things I did want to mention before when I the question I asked Governor Mills was around you know School construction you know it's expensive there's this list it only comes up every five years

239um how our schools and districts you know supporting um these Capital Construction costs and it did put me in touch with his with the states Scott who's that Scott Brown there's no money right well and just reiterating the the timeline so the list to get um there's there's a very thorough process at the state where every five years the list opens back up it doesn't open until next year correct it's another year until um applications are actually due so so 2024 the call for you know applications from districts for school happens your application is due in 2025 um decisions are not made until 2026 even if like what your rank is on on this list and I think there's been dozens and dozens of of schools and projects that end up on that list and

240only the top handful are even put into consideration so it was just a reminder and I know we've talked about this 2026 we would be the year we would even find out if we came close to qualifying for those funds so it's just reiterating conversations we've already had but just a good reminder of what that looks like for a funding source and with I mean the other thing around that was that with um and I'm sure they talked about this is this with the cost and the increased cost of construction there's even fewer projects that are that are getting approved because of the debt sealer Debt Service limit um and uh yeah and last time I believe we were 64 on the list uh so we didn't even rise near the the top yeah and

241thank you Lynn and really sorry Christina one last thing related to that um uh folks maybe in the community saw the email from uh Jeff uh about the construction that's about to go underway um this is uh construction season at Ms 8051 uh Scott Pullins Heyday uh so we have significant amount of projects with the uh module new modulars getting built on your foot around and such so a lot of work will be happening this summer sorry Christina oh no the question I just want to follow up to clarify um so you were referencing the the letters that went out to identified landowners do you have interest in making your land available to the school whether through donation or sale um and that produced no viable options no viable options clarify okay no there's two

242different things though we had the RFP that went out to everybody and we got what four submissions from that and the architect reviewed all that and then based on the work that Leanne did that started at a list of 301 I think total properties that were over 10 or 12 acres depending on which town and that was whittled down to maybe nine letters that we sent out and we got no response from any of those nine so we've we've checked all those boxes and you just heard the punch line that there's exactly zero that are better than 80 Gray Road or even viable so the perception that there's all this land out there we've checked we've tried we've rechecked it's not there well it's there but people don't want to sell it or it's not

243viable or it doesn't check all the boxes I mean it's cool it's not available you know if it's three miles away from three-phase Power well that that's prohibitive in itself right there significant cost increase yeah roads that go between like this just strict and maybe that that spot in the corner of one of our communities um due diligence was done I'd love to see that specific report um however it's written up you talked about adding it to the timeline I think it should also be put out separately to the community social media I mean I think that that's a really important point and I wouldn't want to just add it to the timeline and then hope that people kind of notice that I'd love to see it highlighted somehow yeah it's a good idea just

244a couple paragraphs describing exactly that yeah um we have we have the report that's uh being presented with the Architects so yeah uh from Tyler barter so we have that information so and my last question was um I don't know if it's facilities or not but the survey we talked about um are we doing it when are we doing it so June 20th uh I will ask you folks to commit to 80 Gray Road or not um and I think that's appropriate to do this year with this board and not kick that can down the road that also allows us to plan um and put into place the marketing plan that um that we've put together with re-engagement which comes engagement and Outreach right um five hours because that comes back like 12 months or

245so you know starting to communicate um and so the framing of the survey given the new information that we have exactly one option that survey has to be updated a little bit and I've talked to Tom about this a little bit you know doesn't ask it doesn't make sense to ask questions that we don't can't possibly have a solution for like do you want it in Cumberland you know we just don't have that option so that'll have to be updated and then based on that new framing with exactly one choice we add some context and then still try to get as much useful information as we can we could put a question that says do you have 10 acres of land with three-phase power sewer water and are willing to sell us at a reasonable

246price or preferably donate I'm not even kidding yeah put that in there seriously I'm not kidding either but the problem the only problem with that is at some point we have to get married we can't just keep dating forever you know it's trying to get married but the offician said no [Music] curriculum Tom please uh we have a last meeting of the year next Monday we're going to be talking about changes to advisory at ghs and then also um I think we're also going to be talking about curriculum as it relates to upcoming strategic planning did you I heard a reaction over here when I said changes to advisory at ghs that I would definitely say is a contentious Topic at the high school along with the the 10 minute early start but um I

247feel like I don't know if all of you know about the new advisory planned but it's definitely I wouldn't say popular not popular hmm okay there's more to come on that yeah I will say it was just introduced too so I think some more details need to be flushed out with the advisory yeah I guess not popular is too broad a statement but there's some some pushback from students yeah our students being engaged in any of the the changes or giving feedback into any of the changes for advisory uh students yes so I don't know that level of detail because that's a high school piece but I know the staff worked for a long time on this proposal and then got voted on it as a staff okay so they went through a whole process

248to do that there was some feedback Tommy you can correct me if I'm wrong from students but was it Student Government yes and provided some feedback okay yeah yeah it was we Mr Francis presented the plans and then we talked about what we preferred okay thank you yeah and I think yeah I think there was a difference there between what the students preferred and what actually was voted on by faculty and staff I think there's definitely a difference between what students want and kind of what staff wants um yes because I think that a lot of Staff see the ranger support time is kind of like wasted time currently but I don't think that's felt by all students more to come yeah pretty good all right moving on uh Jared as Tim said I think

249we've said enough for one night okay I'll leave it at that very good student reports Tommy so as was said in the superintendent's report there is a lot that's been happening um and almost too much to talk about but a list of a few things as said uh playoff season the end of the year with a lot of big projects winding down I know that all sophomores right now are doing a history project where they choose a part of American History specifically in the 1900s and do a research paper on their chosen topic that is the final for sophomore the sophomore US history class and then throughout all other classes there are also a lot of kind of culminating projects and exams finals week is next week and for the high school we have four

250days of finals and then a makeup day and then obviously also graduation was last weekend and uh it was really weird like a lot of the Juniors um were there and we talked after thinking that it's going to be really weird next year for us to be there um not watching but actually graduating and then also um Inkwell the high school literary and art magazine was published um and there was a publication party at the high school a couple weeks ago and the the book itself um is at the library and also can be purchased from The Inkwell Club could I ask what was your pick on American history in the 1900s last year when you took the exam I did the effects of post-world War II policies on suburbanization specifically um Levitt towns that

251were constructed in Pennsylvania New Jersey and I'm kind of furthering and doing uh a similar topic for my history IA for IB history awesome yeah I was just curious yeah it's interesting thank you Tommy questions of Tommy um not a question of Tommy but um there's going to be a space next to Tommy and I mean Avery's name plaque is still there but I I think he's he's maybe said his goodbyes and so has that process I know I think Jason you handled that process and I I don't handle that process I've I've seen the emails um uh it's gone out Carl I thought you were handling it no Christina is Christina interview committee yes Thursday yeah there are oh that's right there's five applicants I believe so there's a wide array of people who

252are interested in the position and as Christina said the um interviews are happening on Thursday okay okay stay tuned I'm gonna find out more about the five applicants I didn't know there's that many okay is that more than usual no that we Bob anywhere from one to ten okay it really depends on the class it really depends yeah so is it for juniors only uh it's Noah sophomores this year's sophomores so they can be the junior but have we ever discussed like changing the structure of that it's too bad no offense to Tommy and Avery but it's too bad that it only is one kid that gets that experience have you ever talked about opening it up more and like a cycle or anything no we haven't would you like to talk about this I'm

253sensing you want to talk about it's just a great experience for the students to get exposed to such a thing and it's just too bad that it comes down to one kid per class that's all yeah I know that um uh Carl Francis had talked about maybe a different way of selecting the student maybe working with student government more so that maybe that could be part of the conversation as well yeah that's something that we talked about at our last Student Government meeting yeah um like the selection process just kind of having the students be more involved in that process um so I think it's on the table definitely and there's other forms of government so students can go be a page up in the legislature in Augusta if they want to um and I

254wonder if the Town Council or the select board ever bring student on the student voices or younger voices they should they definitely have visitors who are students but I don't know about that part all right moving on uh ad hoc committees Wellness um I wanted to mention that just as it relates to staff morale Jeff and I have talked a lot about Wellness in general and you know that's one of the reasons that we've sort of revived that committee and it's been they'll be spending a lot of time on it next year and specifically the wellness portion and how it relates to staff and making sure that our staff are utilizing everything that they have available to them like as part of our benefits package and health insurance and that sort of thing and Fran

255is on that committee and she's passionate about that sort of thing I just thought that was worth mentioning others for ad Haught I was just going to mention with Wellness as well um we touched on that that's being covered but going forward um it was agreed that nutrition would be a focus for next year yep for the GCA um just quickly I was able to have a an informal meeting with Jennifer Fox um so I we had been trying you know to get something together all year and it happened that she and I both had a window of opportunity so we just sat down just to mostly make that connection one of the things that came out of it is wondering and I apologize because I meant to ask this but is there any sort

256of like a a use contract if a group wants to use the GCA do they they have to agree to certain things and they there is there's a there's a use of facilities of the GCI on our policy page and it's got all the rules around the use of the GCA and actually I was working with Kevin Rollins a little bit on updating that the other day he came in and talked with me about some additional pieces so yeah so that that does exist okay good Jennifer had some thoughts on that so it'd be great to to bring her in on that but yeah it was a great meeting we've that she was she was a great find but yep she is speaking about the GCA one thing that I forgot to mention my student

257report is there will be a concert put on by Charlie Moore who is uh a kid in my grade who's a very talented musician and he put on a similar concert last year on the last day of school and it will be happening again this year uh June 15th at 7 pm at the GCA so I recommend all people to come it will be a lot of fun as last year's concert was really amazing and this it's a concert that benefits the uh substance abuse um like prevention organization and yeah definitely I would recommend anyone who can make it to be there thank you Tommy and there's and that reminded me that on Wednesday the middle school is putting on a fundraising concert um I want to say the ocean conservance yes it's ocean conservation

258yes but I don't remember exactly what organization but yes it's around ocean Conservancy course Middle School chorus teacher Miss Perkins last concert and I know my eighth grader has had um her for her his entire chorus uh history here at the at the middle school in the four and five and so um he was excited that he got to have her through all all those years but um I hear she may be sticking around for four or five a little bit but um maybe not but um it's we're just so glad that we were able to have that experience with Miss Perkins as well as our students and and family so yeah we're sorry to see her go others for committees anything okay moving on to Communications just one item the board calendar um Jeff

259has put that out more as an FYI is that right uh yeah just um just as an FYI so people were people like to know when meetings are usually in advance so um I know Mike is particularly interested in coming to public comment and Vanessa want to hear from you Vanessa will be here so I wanted to make sure that they had that schedule but um anyway we were looking at I had tried to change this already July 3rd is not supposed to be new board orientation okay I had already checked that off it's not happening um Monday July 17th just if you wanted to know would be the um the only July board meeting um we usually have one in July just for appointments of staff is it worth mentioning the changes to finance

260to accommodate the absentee ballots removing that whole process up oh next year yes in this calendar thank you Jason um there there's been a lot of discussion over the last couple of years about moving the District budget meeting um up earlier in May so that we can accommodate um or the town's going to accommodate absentee ballots Because by the time we have the District budget meeting most years absentee balloting has already started or usually a week behind so Scott and I worked on a schedule that would with drama Whitson making sure this was all permissible but moving everything up so that and talked with both managers to make sure this worked and they were thrilled that we could hold the District budget meeting earlier which means that we push back the whole budget cycle by

261a couple weeks instead of presenting the second week this is not the right version of this for some reason this is the 2022-2023 calendar no wonder this is the wrong calendar all right in my packet so anyway it pushes things up and the and the reason we're able to do that is because of the change in the state statute before we were Bound by the statute of that the District budget meeting had to happen within a certain number of days prior to the referendum so that's now being changed in State Statute so we could accommodate absentee voting so it wasn't some something that the district was doing it was a it was a state situation that we had to get changed so yeah so I think um this will help out both towns and voters

262a lot more but it does just push up the whole cycle which is okay by the time I present the budget or in early March next year we may not have all of the information but we never do anyway so we'll just have to make sure that we catch the board up as we get information I think this is right just that the headers wrong read 23 24. yeah I think the rest of it is the header about good man that hopefully the rest of the dates are correct but that's a nice change and hopefully it'll be even state law soon right it may be it still would be a year out um even if it was but we'd like to get ahead of it so the District budget meeting would be the ninth but

263this would be dependent on the change in statute we'd have to have a change in Statute in order to change his calendar because of the days and how it falls okay we'll have to check that no it's yeah because it's it's so much because we have to have so much time between the District budget meeting so we'll have to drive the change in the state statute I'm pretty sure that the state statute is going to change it seems like it was on tractor okay other things for communication two very quick things first uh importantly just want to wish everyone a Happy pride month uh June is pride month so happy pride month uh second just again I I'm gonna harp on this if you haven't voted please vote uh you can vote until Thursday absentee

264uh absentee early and then if you don't vote before the end of the day Thursday you can then go back on Tuesday and vote in person so please go vote others for communication anything okay do I hear a motion to adjourn thank you Vanessa thank you Jared for the second all in favor unanimous motion carries thank you