MSAD #51 School Board Meeting Oct 18, 2021

001all right welcome everyone to the october 18th 2021 board directors meeting for msid 51 thanks everyone for joining us this evening our first item on our agenda is recognition and i'm going to pass it over to our senior rep hello um we would first like to begin by acknowledging the land that we are gathered on today and the lands that our schools serve are the territory of the wabenaki people as we work together to educate our future leaders we recognize the importance of honoring the indigenous people their knowledge and their collective support of one another as all of us cumberland and north yarmouth residents live on the land of the abenaki tribe we can self-reflect upon what we can do to recognize and support the native americans that still face discrimination today and educate ourselves

002on the history of the land we live on next i would also like to mention that if you are leaving early or not staying till the end of the meeting please go down to the football field and support our seniors it's the girls senior night tonight and it's blackout hence school colors and all black but go show our seniors some love thank you madison and thank you to um ann for bringing this statement to us and i think it was 2019 and to our past chair kate for adopting it um we have a little bit of an interesting evening because we have someone joining us um virtually so we're going to have to pause on um he's gonna be joining us at 6 50. he has double booked this evening so he has been able

003to find a pocket of time within his other commitment to dedicate to us so we're grateful for the time that we are able to get from him so because of that i'm going to shift the agenda just a little bit and and move public comment um to after his presentation so between now and um i'm sorry so the next one is uh i'm also confused by what's going on obviously so the next item is approval of minutes do i have a motion for september 20th so moved that was in harmony um thank you and a second second any discussion okay all in favor i'm gonna abstain because i was not you all right so we're going to move on jeff would you be all right to do your we probably can't do that yeah yeah

004we've got 15 minutes so okay so i'm doing this as we go here so let's do a public comment we can um pick up public comment after um our time with lawrence so if anyone would like to approach the podium we'll start there just as a reminder it's three minutes and i will interrupt you unfortunately if i have to to tell you that your time is complete are you ready for me i'm ready okay my name is shauna mueller i am a parent of a fourth and a fifth grader here in the district and i'm here today just because i want to support the equity initiative of the district um i think that it's worth sharing some of the positive things that have come out of this initiative in the last couple of years and

005so i was fortunate to be one of the parents participating in one of the early day-long training sessions that occurred a couple of years ago where there were administrators and teachers and staff and students and community members all together talking about issues of equity and opening dialogue among one another creating relationships and out of that grew a project that i was involved with and another parent stacy and principal sally mclaughlin where we worked together to create a program to bring more diverse books to maply wilson's classroom libraries we also got the support of foundation 51 we applied for a grant back in the spring of 2020 that was awarded in the summer and then over the course of last year despite everything else going on um that grant went into effect and there were a

006bunch of new diverse books showing um you know not just civil rights related black characters in books but you know black families being black families and or being families rather so um i just wanted to convey that that is a success story that would not have happened were it not for this initiative and it was really wonderful that principal sally mclaughlin worked with us and really brought her expertise and teachers leadership in the school to make sure that that was a successful implementation and was coupled with professional development where some consultants came in to help teachers think about the appropriate ways at developmentally the right stage to talk about race with the kids so i just wanted to end by sharing that principal mclaughlin shared with me that the feedback from the teachers who participated

007in that professional development was really overwhelmingly positive which i was surprised that any professional development creates that kind of response and i think she was surprised at how positive it was as well so i'm just going to share with you one of the quotes from one of the teachers who participated and then i'll sit down and let you get on with your evening this quote is from some participant some teacher participant i think that was the best professional development workshop i have ever been to in our district and probably one of the best in my entire career so thank you very much thank you hi everybody my name is nick whiston i live in cumberland i'm here mostly because i'm the co-chair of the equity and inclusion leadership committee here and i mostly just wanted

008to say hi there's four board members now on the committee which is awesome and i am available it's been really good to do the work the past few years i'm always available if people want to contact me people at home our emails are on the website under the strategic plan and i'm glad that we'll get a chance to hear from lawrence tonight i've just done one workshop with him it was really good not related to this district in any way but it was awesome so i'm glad that jeff you're recommending him i was excited when i heard that i think he has a lot to offer to help you all the board and our district pursue the goals of of your board this year and our strategic plan so i just mostly want to say

009hi thank you all for your work it's been a rough couple of years in many ways but you all been awesome and it's been great to watch at home as you steer our district through some turbulent times and also a huge shout out to the teachers in this district we're working extra hard so thank you all and again please follow up if you have questions always happy to talk to people so thank you all and we'll look forward to hearing from lawrence thank you good evening my name is kim vine i live in cumberland my first child started in msa 51 in 2001 and my fourth child will end in 2026 so i will have a quarter of a century as an msad51 parent um and um somewhat ashamedly i uh for the very first

010time in september actually stayed for an entire board meeting rather than just listen to the comments and leave and i hope you understand the spirit in which i say this it was the most boring two hours of my life i just wanted to go home and be with my family and i mean that in the best possible sense because what i observed during that meeting was all of you poring over documents and data and it was just so clear how big a job you all have not that i didn't know that before but really sitting through a meeting uh helped me really understand uh what resources you're working with and just all the different decisions that need to be made so i challenge other people to spend two hours just observing a meeting sometime the

011second thing i wanted to share is that when my oldest was in fifth grade she was beginning puberty ed and the nurse had a parent meeting and at that meeting she said i just want you all to know that what we're covering in puberty at is facts we're not here to teach values we're here to teach facts and i felt myself actually physically relaxed a little bit and i realized that that was something that had actually maybe been on my mind and i didn't even realize it and the more i hear and i've talked to other parents everything with equity and inclusion i think that that is part of the concern is i think that there are parents out there who feel that they are their children are being taught values and not facts when

012the values are consistent with what you're teaching at home you're thrilled because then the school is reinforcing that and making your job easier as a parent but when you are concerned that those values do not line up with something that you might want your kids to know that's when you get defensive so i am very much in favor of equity inclusion i am so glad that my children are are learning that here and that i can reinforce that at home and i guess i just would hope that as communication and dialogues continue that um sorry that perhaps things can be presented in such a way that parents don't feel that their children are going to learn something that is counter to what they already learn at home i think i'm out of time but hopefully

013i made that clear thank you for all you do thank you hi good evening i'm keith bublow i live in north yarmouth i have a junior and seventh grader in the district i also have two who graduated i'm here tonight joined by a number of individuals including parents and students and on behalf of several people who are unable to join join us in person tonight to welcome lawrence alexander of carney sandow associates we support the continued conversation around equity and race in our schools and the steps the administration is taking on this important issue after jeff's newsletter his last newsletter i listened to an interview that mr alexander gave last summer and in it he made what i thought was a really simple but important point for our community to understand and i'm paraphrasing here

014but he said that it's up to the majority culture to fight for the rights and the well-being of those in the minority for example it's up for the majority male culture to fight against sexism and patriarchy it's up for a majority straight culture to fight for those of us who are lgbtq and it's up for the white majority to fight against racism and inequality it's on us that's our responsibility we accept that responsibility and we want to be allies in this endeavor so we're ready to listen and learn and help where we can so again thank you mr alexander when he gets here for meeting with our school board this evening we look forward to this work and welcome to maine thanks good evening jason curry ms 80 51 education association i've been teaching here

015in the district for 24 years all of it here at the high school and i got the chance this morning to experience something completely different i went to the elementary school and i volunteered i had a magnificent time greeting students as they came to the door helping hand out breakfasts and serving them in the library and it was just an amazing experience for me i loved every single minute and the staff that i worked with in that building it was it was stunning to see the generosity the kindness the care that they gave to every second grader third grader kindergartener who came through those doors these staff members are bending over backwards consistently regularly and sadly i have to say to the detriment of their own emotional and physical well-being quite frequently we had a

016listening session with the chair and the superintendent and many other members of administration and the community on thursday afternoon last week and some of those elementary staff told stories of of what they're going through and and how hard it is to be in their position at this moment despite the joy that they get every single day from doing what i essentially did as as a happiness tourist this morning i would ask the community ask the members of the board ask those who are concerned about other issues to take a little time and think about the people who are taking care of your pre-k student think about the people who are there for your kindergartener your first grade student your second grade your third grade student fourth and fifth as well all the way up but

017particularly at the younger grades and think of what they're doing for your children every single day think about coming to the school going to central office going into monitored lunches think about going in to be a greeter think about doing everything and anything you can to get some of that joy that i experienced this morning but also to give relief to the people who have been bending over backwards for longer than any of us can remember thank you so i think what we'll do is we're just going to pause unless anyone else has any anyone else like to speak in this moment i don't see anybody jumping to the podium so we are going to um just pause for a minute we're going to welcome lawrence in a few minutes dirk and kevin are going

018to help with technology so your patience is appreciated while we set this up while we're waiting for the setup i i just want to provide a quick intro lawrence alexander has worked in several districts in maine over the past few years and right around us yarmouth and windham raymond he's worked in kennebunk he's also worked in uh worked for the maine school superintendents association given a keynote address to that association as well he is well known in the circles of equity leadership and was fast to respond to a message that i had sent him if he was interested in consulting or at least meeting to talk about consulting with our district so i really want to thank him for putting forward some time and energy into this district he has a very busy schedule carney

019sandow is an organization that he works for and has been around for a long time they're generally a head hunting educational agency or association that looks for um independent school executive directors but they also have a lot of other areas one of them being equity and and um lawrence um actually heads up the uh the equity division of carney sandow so i'm happy to you know recommend him this evening to the board and you'll have a chance to hear from him he's going to do an intro and then answer any board questions there are questions from the public that were submitted as well and i've given those to lawrence in advance of the meeting and he'll touch on some similar themes or that he saw through the questions so i don't know if he's online

020yet but i just want to welcome him to uh meet with board this evening and hopefully answer as many questions as he can in 20 minutes thank you [Music] hello [Music] hi laurence can you hear me i can hear you awesome well welcome uh we just finished up a little bit of public comment um jeff just gave you a little bit of an introduction so thank you for joining us this evening um i will pass it off to you and i know we have a short amount of time so i want to take advantage of as much as we can sure and um certainly when the partner in this with you all i know that jeff has both shared kind of a scope of work and uh maybe a little bit of texture i actually

021just jumped off of a session i'm leading maine's cultural competence institute with a couple hundred main educators who are leaning in throughout various districts around the state asking the questions about what their responsibility is to the progressive recursive inclusive work of making our schools more habitable for all i lead the diversity equity and inclusion practice at carney sandow and associates i really believe that this work around equity inclusion and belonging is part of our educational promise and so i think while there are communities who ask um why are we or who are we to do this work you know uh as a son no two public school um graduate a first generation college student myself i wonder who are we not to do this and so i'm sure that the community has raised some really

022good questions that might be helpful for me to respond to to perhaps help you all grow to comfort about whatever is next for you all but i am excited uh to consider this work with you all grateful to jeff and his team for getting us to this point and i know how important your time is thanking thank you for allowing me a portion of it thank you lauren so i'm going to open it up to the board i've already had a chance to speak with lawrence when i spoke with him with jeff so please ask away mike yeah thank you so much for taking the time lawrence and for your interest in working with us i sincerely appreciate it uh just a really basic question i would love if you would just explain your process

023of how you would start your work with our district yeah so uh i have a colleague who says that the map is not the territory so uh understanding that uh you know jeff and i uh in the team have really uh developed and socialized what we feel like is going to be a good approach to uh do what i call operationalizing the work learning about where your school community is is really important you know for instance if we were talking about curriculum many schools nicer work in new hampshire as an example a lot of the public schools nice to work in new hampshire as an example a lot of the public school metrics towards student progress with i to the s.a.t and so what's the degree to which a community reckons with that the s.a.t

024as a state standard wasn't normed for a group of students that is reflective to the students that it is applied in terms of measuring to what extent have they reflected on the ways in which the ap program don't provide cultural mirrors and windows for every student and so that is a place that they were yeah in terms of challenge you all know your district best i would very much want to know what the history of progress relative to these areas of work are but i certainly wouldn't start rogue i'm pretending as if the map was the blueprint and of itself it would really be a partnership with you all learning about where we can start well not where we can start fast so some uh pretty um important immediate community surveying and partnering would be

025really important thank you who else would like to take this opportunity to ask a question ann hello thank you for joining us tonight i am also excited about the possibility of you partnering with our district i think the thing that i struggle with and wonder if you could speak to we have people in our community who very readily can see the divide between say socioeconomic class and those issues in our district but for whatever reason don't find the same value or the same treatment regarding races and especially anti-black racism and so i'm wondering how you suggest we start that conversation yeah that's a good question so i will name it i was in northern new hampshire so not equivocating with where you are in maine but for state new hampshire that's 96 white i think

026it's important relative to social economic status the majority of the students that i work with and i spent 10 years as a college counselor um the majority of students i worked with needed financial aid for college were not black kids they were white i think it's actually a community that can understand the challenges to access to equity and inclusion related to socioeconomic status should and can grow to understanding that there are systems and opportunities that are not available to all and without equivocating about socioeconomic challenges race too presents a barrier to participation and access for all so i actually see an opportunity to create an inroads because these are already folks who are understanding that not everything that's available is accessible and not every classroom that i'm in is equitable i think it's folks who

027can understand socioeconomic disparities who can appreciate over time how racial divides to present barriers to access the next thing i would say that is that folks who are seeing education as a way to lift themselves and their children out of potentially socio-economic doldrums reckoned with the proposition of education if you look at any reverse design thinking all of the characteristics of 21st century education have everything to do with cultural competence and global citizenry it's actually for white students and their families incumbent in a predominantly white state if they're preparing their students for a 21st century education the global citizenry in a community that's bereft of those influences and experiences to not just prepare for life in their community but to prepare for life out of the state of maine which is going to be far

028more diverse than when they're in i think the weather vein on a lot of this points to uh the idea that we're doing this work for people of color and disagree i do just fine by myself i have six kids we do just fine this work is actually placed for me and as one who's educated in predominantly white species this work is presents a high value proposition for white families and white families who struggle around socioeconomic access thank you i'm just going to go down the line vanessa do you have anything you'd like to ask okay thank you jennifer um thank you for taking the time with us lawrence um my question would be or just to get your insight on how you have worked with communities i think our our school and our district

029in particular has a need to really engage the community around these discussions and during the process that we're putting the work plans together and kind of in the details and how would you foresee engaging our community yeah i i am particularly uh open [Music] and adept um looking for demystifying some of the misunderstanding around the work i think and by the work i mean the work of equity inclusion access and belonging um there are some who feel and are maybe too polite to name it that it's anti-white that it's political that it's a zero-sum game and i just don't see it that way i think that if you are an educator and if you want your children to be educated then you're asking yourselves what's the value proposition of our education is it to prepare

030our students to stay in our homes i want all my kids out of the house every last one of them and and do we want maine students and main young people to only remain in maine now we know i did a presentation with the island institute and we talked about literally the connection between uh schools and the workforce and so for me engaging in those details is to say listen if you want your way of life to sustain education not politics not racial divide is the way we meet that gap and in maine people can probably feel that there's a real concern about their sustainable economic future all i want to do is place this work in a place that's practical so to answer your question i would really hope in this way to present

031as what's authentically true for me to be inviting of all those questions potentially the ones that seem insensitive or unpopular to ask those james baldwin says that not everything that's faced can be changed but nothing can be changed until it's faced and i just think that there are some really good folks in your district who are not opposed um to any of the work but maybe have questions either that have not been answered well before or they might feel impolite to ask but i think not the devil but the angels in those details thank you kevin thanks for joining us tonight um you know i plan to steal your comment immediately where we can start well as opposed to where we can start fast i'll try that out in the morning um but one question

032to that so this is um we're a community based uh of two towns so when we talk about beginning well your vision i i'm talking about some of the other districts that you work with how unique are some of the conversations and your facilitation style working in this unique community when you think about different communities where you've worked different solution different conversation walk us through that it's a good question so i'll i'll name a couple of practical areas so take curriculum and take hiring let's let's start there each community has its own third rate it doesn't take long before you discover it and for many of us they're well known for some in for some districts in maine that'll go unnamed it was all about hiring that somehow trying to reflect on our practice not

033control an outcome to see if education might be enriched if we had a more diverse faculty staff population there's some people who feel like that is affirmative action that is a quota etc real field temperature from the kid from jersey city my the first black male teacher i had i didn't have until high school and it's okay to laugh at the following um i didn't have until high school he was a music teacher and his name was mr jones right it's probably not a stereotypical black role or name to have and he's the only black teacher i had before i got to college you kind of get the idea is that when we talk about inclusive hiring and again you're talking to someone who's worked at three schools all that were predominantly white as a

034college counselor it wasn't my students of color alone benefited there were plenty of white students who otherwise would not have seen a man of color in a role of consequence in their schools so i then metaphorically speaking didn't show up conspicuous by my presence and not by my absence in their future white kids not kids of color to answer your question some communities hiring is somehow picking a scab saying that there's something wrong with us or we have an agenda so some it's hiring in curriculum there are some people who would feel that cultural inclusion is somehow dumbing down or watering down the educational product they hold in diametric opposition academic excellence and inclusive excellence and by the way many of the current presentations of academic excellence are bereft of women as authors and as

035protagonists and consequential figures so even if it was just just on sex it's inherently sexist much less than on race and so to answer your question succinctly in those two areas i am not worried about individuals as it were i want to learn about functions and what functions in spirit starting well are um i call them easy wins and high hurdles and i am um i'm not naive enough to think that anything is an easy win but in a community what's that thing where we feel like our community is ready we can start well there where can we name and know and be aware of a high hurdle and then we get there over time so it's that i call it that cultural anthropology to learn about a community first because recommendations and recommendations are

036are just that what a community want to do is far more important to me thank you mike you're good uh avery yeah um i guess my question is what does equity mean to you what does the word equity mean to you it's a good question equity for me is fundamentally different than equality so that is either um pleasing or disappointing to some people depending on who they are uh equalities says that everyone gets the same thing i don't believe in that equity uh for me means that everyone gets what they uniquely need so take reduced lunch yes i believe that everyone should eat of course but free of reduced lunch recognizes in a matter of equity that some of our students if they didn't come to school wouldn't eat it's not a zero-sum game in

037choosing some over others but equity for me points the weather vein and the directional arrow to those who have the greatest need i believe in equity around learning differences if a student is dysgraphic or dyslexic or has a developmental learning difference i believe that equity says and we know that we've gone from pulling students out of a classroom to the inclusive classroom where students are together i don't believe that all students learn the same i believe that they can all be successful equality would say that everyone can be successful with the same tools equity asks a question about what each student needs and so you get the idea that i can go on equity is not partisan and it's not divisive but it recognizes that no two of us are the same what does every

038student need if i'm a student or a human being with a physical disability and you say to me everyone can walk the stairs that's equality misapplied equity is putting in a ramp thank you madison um what are some examples of things you want to bring to our schools and community to support equity and inclusion it's a really really good question i don't want to bring anything solid um i want to know what you all feel you need there's nothing worse than getting things you don't want a couple of holidays at the house christmas has gone wrong i've learned it as a parent so um it's really in answering your question it's really a partnership about really learning what you're ready for and what is gonna what's going to succeed in your community and then there

039any number of things are possible examples are because in my line of work i do consulting for educators around inclusion cultural competence i also do a lot of work around retained search so i help a lot of hiring communities around creating a process not that determines an outcome but that makes a a more possible inclusive pool so there's a number of things we we could do what your community is ready for is very important for me to listen to understand then partner with you to do is that paradigmatic shift from being the sage on the stage to the god on the side i want to be the god on the side and i need to be able to learn what you need and are ready for thank you jason um i struggle with this topic

040um having been brought up you know we were taught sort of be colorblind be agnostic about the whole thing so this uh shift to focusing more on it uh i struggle with so um i guess i don't have any question except i'll uh i suspect we'll be in a workshop together and i look forward to learning more well listen i i appreciate that and and can i appreciate you um because that's um some real public vulnerability so thank you for that i'll just relate to you and experience uh or empathy i i full-throatedly believe that the ethos behind not seeing color ultimately means great things about a human being i want to be accepting of everyone and care about everyone sticking my neck out for everyone regardless of their color i know i i know

041and i believe that's what people mean i can share with you an experience i have a lot of kids um my daughter leighton who's eight she's a gymnast and i love new hampshire by the way so there's no bag on new hampshire but the anecdote is important i think to start our conversation and this isn't a workshop but i like you um my daughter was five and uh she was starting kindergarten literally playing in the sandbox with a little white girl who was just noticing skin color and she told my daughter my beautiful brown baby that her skin looked like now you'd say the darndest things i think it was the name of a show once anyway i'm good with that i wasn't worried about what a little five-year-old girl said and her teacher really

042rided the ship and was great but it was the little girl's mother that was the problem i learned great restraint a couple years ago she ultimately when this incident was shared about what her daughter said to my daughter i expected any number of empath empathetic um disappointed responses in her child she asked what's the problem she only spoke about what she saw because clearly this was a young girl he's five but i'm talking about her mom who's clearly older than five who probably grew up not seeing skin color indifference and who couldn't understand why her daughter's comment hurt my child so much a child who would go on to as many people of color have we call them microaggressions have a number of those didn't say and so in seeing color it's not about dividing

043us but in that awareness making it actual actually possible to knit us together not asking anyone to take responsibility for the unique experiences that some of us go through were born in different skin but believing that it happens that's important i believe that people who are not who are differently abled who are female who are of different backgrounds different than mine i believe that they're having a different human experience based on the way they're born that's the goal thank you lauren so we have one more board member i know we're we're going to be respectful of your time yeah okay yeah so thank you first of all thank you for uh for your time tonight um so my question is um so institutions educational and and otherwise um are a lot better at talking the

044talk than walking the walk so they're they're good at you know putting out their values but maybe not living up to those values if you're guiding an institution or school district for example um how would you help them move from equity work that's performative to equity work that's meaningful i i love it um i think they're and i'll stick with these two examples um when when does your hiring algorithm change you know and i'll just be specific because i know it's at least a relevant main example i didn't directly do the search but i worked with the team doing some implicit bias training and they made it hire you all familiar with rsu 21. and uh dr terry cooper is a superintendent black woman from charlotte north carolina first black female superintendent of history that

045was not an easy conversation right because they actually as a district walked the wall and two years later are still reeling from the backlash of actually doing it they made a decision though and i'm proud of them that they weren't just going to talk about inclusion they were going to do something about it and by the way they didn't fix the fight or rig the election what they did was reflect on their process to be more welcoming for and i know maine culture for pfas for people from away and so i know y'all um so that was demeaning it i think the other part in curriculum again is really going to be challenging you know how do we take on that idea of academic excellence as dictated by maybe the s.a.t program the ap program

046our statements of um our vestiges and palaces of academic excellence and see inclusive excellence as part of it now for me you couldn't pick a better state than me because look at your institutions bowdoin kobe bates humane orono and farmington i know your places um your highest institutions of education are literally predicated on 21st century skills and habits on global citizenry you don't even have to leave your state to find more culturally inclusive progressive institutions around academic excellence but i think to your point when we're actually walking the walk we're prepared for the vociferous voices who oppose it i think if we don't start well then we find ourselves on uneven footing i think succinctly our work together puts you in a good place and on good ground with good footing to do good work

047thank you thank you so it is we're four minutes past our time with you so i want to be really respectful of that thank you so much for joining us um i hope everybody was able to get some good insight to work potentially with lawrence um i feel very lucky to have you join us this evening so thank you so much i will listen thank you all so much i'll talk soon thank you lauren [Applause] nice work dirk and kevin it worked um so [Music] for his presentation yes i just want to make sure we don't have any more public comment before okay we'll give you a minute or two should you see if there's more public comment yes well yeah is there is there more people that would like to speak okay thank you

048mike that's an efficient way to do it thank you everyone for hanging out and attending you're going to want to go to the eca mobile to airplay so before we move to jeff's um presentation uh i will open it up for communications i didn't know if there was anyone peter go ahead yeah i just wanted to note briefly that during the discussions we had at the last meeting with regard to parents notifying the district on on vaccinations i probably said a few things that were probably inappropriate and i do apologize as i say the i also while i've got the floor want to acknowledge the passing of general colin powell uh he was a the latest in a string of soldier statement statesmen following in very big footsteps of both general george c marshall and

049dwight eisenhower he would also unique as a public figure and willing to acknowledge the public mistakes he may have made and he was in general uh a very good man and uh in my own humble opinion i think he would have served as a very good president that's all i have to say thank you peter very much mike do you want to share uh yeah really quickly i just wanted to let folks know that on saturday at 2 p.m at prince memorial library we're going to have the third installment of what's called the community listening project we held these two of these gatherings in the spring and felt like it was really productive we put it out to all folks in both communities and had some really great conversation and good turnout so we have

050part three uh and it's um i'm really excited because it's it's not just me now it's actually a full-on partnership with prince memorial library and they're phenomenal and uh way more competent than i am so that's awesome but the topic is um on creating a more inclusive community and so it's truly just an opportunity to come join in a conversation and bring ideas and thoughts and discuss around this topic so hopefully folks can join saturday at 2 p.m outside at the prince memorial library hopefully it will be nice out if it is pouring we will reschedule thank you mike and thanks for leading those and finding a partnership so it sustains itself so thank you anybody else have anything for communications okay so moving on we have had our presentation from from lawrence and then

051we'll move on to superintendent's report for the really gross green update yes i have this presentation and then a superintendent's uh update so you'll have to listen to me for a few minutes so tonight my update is slightly longer than normal around the greely goes green plan this was designated as a formal date for just giving the board a formal report as to what is going on with the ggg plan and give you as much information as possible as well as some recommendations for any changes to the plan but i did want to just say prior to starting i wanted to also say what peter had mentioned earlier about general powell i think that is that is something we just found out two hours ago and just want to acknowledge um you know his passing

052as well i think losing some good people in this country in the last uh few months um and then the other thing i i've had three i think now three meetings phone meetings or video meetings with lawrence alexander and um i love all the shoes behind him and i i did ask him about his shoes at the last meeting we had and he said well that's because he has so many kids they didn't know where to put all the shoes so well they're clearly sneaker heads too i mean they're they're nice shoes so for his kids so tonight um you know i'm here to talk about the ggg plan um we are more than six weeks into the 21 22 school year and obviously the overall goal for the school year and this plan that

053the board adopted several months ago is keeping kids and staff in school in person full time through a layered prevention strategy that simply means that we are looking at all kinds of mitigation strategies not just one or two or three but as many as we possibly can and we have um implemented all of these um and now you're getting a formal review and just to review this is the data and metrics that we have been using since the very beginning this was board approved and i'll be giving you more information on all of this data as well so this is also the advisory group this advisor group has now met several times they meet in advance of every update that i have provided to the board and just about everyone has attended all of these

054meetings so this is a well-attended group of people who are serious about giving very serious advice about a topic that is of great interest to many people and also finally a reminder about the three pillars that we are working on this year through the ggg plan which is health and safety academics and social emotional health and i think there's no particular order especially with academics and social emotional you could flip those easily if if you wanted to so some highlights before i talk about data and recommendations highlights from pillar three color three is um obviously the social emotional health during the first six weeks of school this year there have been all kinds of things we could have reported on that are aligned with the ggg plan but just some of the more notable ones

055and just some highlights at pre-k to three mabel wilson school the school changed its schedule this year so that there's nothing that starts before 9 15 in the morning and that includes allied arts rti any sort of groups where students are leaving the regular classroom setting and that's for responsive classroom morning meetings now responsive classroom is not new to mabel wilson school they've been using that approach for years and years but they got they did some retraining um some updated training for their teachers and staff this year um and made it a priority um not that it wasn't before but really highlighted that priority for all students in the school at the very beginning of each day at gms 4-5 the civil civil rights team is again hosting what we call the i'm your neighbor

056welcoming library it's a collection of picture books around immigrant and new american experience and this is around community building and making sure that all students feel a sense of belonging in the school again around that emotional and social health and that is a traveling cart that goes around the 4-5 school in gms 6-8 twice a week advisories are meaning to engage in community circles this is a relatively new thing around the community circle piece although they have been done in the past they're being done very consistently this year they're structured and facilitated opportunities where students literally pass a talking stick around and students can talk and talk about you know what where they're at that particular moment in time and also the courtesy of listening to others and just kind of understanding what it's like

057again to transition to working in and living with a group of people during the school day at the high school this has been gone for a little while but it was brought back principal gray put a 10-minute mid-morning consistent school break and snack back into the schedule this also gives students an opportunity to go outside if they want to walk in between their glass blocks in the morning kind of get some fresh air and i would encourage people all students to do that during the winter because winter is a great time to get some really great fresh air and the sources of strength and this is a photo that's next to it um wellness training uh has been um really pushed this year with students and it's really around finding your own strength everybody has

058strengths everyone every single person and finding those in emphasizing your strengths instead of your weaknesses and this is just a human condition and it's a human it's human nature for all of us to find things that we don't do well this program is around finding things that you do well in in not dwelling on the things that you don't do well sources of strength is a program that's being used in a lot of high schools in maine right now and we're very thankful that we have this program and we have trained our own staff has been trained to facilitate and at the district level many of you are aware that we have a mental health community partnership with both towns of cumberland and north yarmouth it's been going on for about a year now and

059this has been an amazing partnership we have a group of people that work together and have put on an amazing amount of outreach events and for parents and for community members and i've linked that in if anyone is interested in this presentation will go out and be put on our website and go out publicly so these are just some photos of things that have been going on i think again we often talk about the data we talk about what's next or with the recommendations and we don't we sometimes fail to see the actual people behind the decisions that we make and this is just a tiny tiny example of some of the amazing things these are things that have happened since the first day of school this year these are not things from last year

060so these are photos taken anywhere from the first day of school as kids are walking in to maple i wilson school the functional life class at the high school getting outdoors and using their artistic talent to pull testing and what that means at a primary school so the ripple effect program is a photo that you'll see on the right on the top um to our sport programs that have been going on seamlessly really our athletic events and in so many of our teams have really had a great experience this season and you know whether it's in the playoffs or before just being back together on the field consistently we've even had field trips those are high school students on the bottom in the center that this is something that they couldn't do last year but

061we've brought it back we have a class that goes to portland and actually look for historical landmarks and take notes so it's really exciting to be able to offer these things again and then that final picture on the right is senior sunrise madison would probably i know madison's in that photo i'm right in front and there you are and the white sweatpants that's me right there [Laughter] so they got up real early it doesn't look really in this picture but you'll see another picture later he got up early very early and uh came to school on a weekday um and to start their day so these are there's real people behind the decisions and these are all related to social emotional health in terms of getting back into a routine getting back into those more

062typical activities maybe the pool testing one is this is a little bit of exception but trying to normalize the fact that even our health and safety practices are something that that we can all do so the data and the metrics that we've got right now i've kept the previous updates on there so you can see the difference we have had no change in state guidance however i will say this this morning the superintendents all had a briefing with dr shah from the cdc in maine and dr shaw did talk about that there will be changes in state guidance coming probably at somewhere around the half year mark and that we should be looking for those changes but that the state is looking to um and i want to put words in anyone's mouth and i

063want to preempt but to say relaxing some of the some of the recommendations that have been in place for a long time for the last 20 months i think there's going to be a general change in some of the ways that we're expected to to handle things through cobot so that was a good conversation um that dr shaw preempted the superintendents and just said stay tuned and i guess that the message i want to send about that particular piece is that you know a lot of people assume that you know even the recommendations that i'm making tonight to the board for approval are things that we have to live with for the next school year for the rest of the school year that is completely untrue um you know as i continue to go to

064these state meetings i know that there are things coming and i also know that there is changes despite the situation or current conditions there's just there are things that will continue reviewing and changing and making recommendations and i'll give you examples tonight of things that have already changed here in the district we've had 15 cases i believe it's 16 now we did have another case that came in after i sent this out so we have 236 individuals who have been exposed to covid in our district that's 65 from about a month ago and we've had 84 individuals quarantined or 36 percent of the total exposed now last year you would have seen 236 quarantined in that number so what the two things are happening vaccination for older students and for staff and pool testing we

065are we have about 55 now of our students enrolled in pool testing and and we have reopened the enrollment and actually expanded and extended the enrollment to november first because we have more parents asking us to do that so the the pool testing enrollment um as of right now and this does not log in additional um folks or families that are opting into pool testing we have 1 148 students registered or 54 and that does not include our staff that are enrolled in pool testing over the last few weeks which is about a month that we have been doing pool testing in our district we have found three pools where there was a positive case so three positive cases three pools a pool can be anywhere from um 10 students eight to 10 students to

06620 22 students so those are the pools that we have in our district um generally our pools are much less than 22 students but we have three pools and when that's happened we've come back and retested everyone in that pool and be able to stop any potential transmission in our schools i think that's a positive thing it's also positive to see how many pools that we've had in this month where we have had no positive cases at all so i believe the pool testing is helping um our district also this is good information for uh everyone this there are some concerns about the the number of staff that were vaccinated um i think part of it was just reporting and the timeliness and getting documentation were a little bit i think more stringent in our

067district with actually asking staff to give us a copy of their vaccination card instead of just sending out a survey so our numbers have been certainly i think are more accurately reflected now as of october 1st we have 80 um five percent of our district level staff which is um anyone who works district y k-12 transportation food service custodians maintenance central office any of those areas are vaccinated i'm sorry we have 73 percent in that area 85 percent in the district overall 90 at the high school 80 percent at the middle school six eight eighty four percent as middle school four five and eighty three percent at mabel i wilson school so you can see those numbers are certainly up um some of it is we had new hires um that we had not um

068yet logged into our system and then we've had staff providing that information ever since so we'll continue giving you monthly updates on staff vaccination numbers as report by law student vaccination counts also again i don't think that they are actually accurate right now i think they're below what they really are but this is again we're asking for actual documentation but in october you can see that those those counts certainly went up for just voluntary submission and we're not requiring that of course we're not requiring any any submissions of staff or students so this is all voluntary students recommended adjustments the superintendents recommended adjustments as of today these are recommendations i'm making to the board to consider for this evening again this went through the advisory group the advisory group met last week and discussed all

069the setting data benchmarks again the advisory group said it is not time to do that dr shah this morning in his meeting in his briefing with superintendents also said no metrics should be set at this time and that the state is actually working on metrics that might be helpful to districts as they as we continue to look at that specifically talking about masking recommendations etc so again this is a fluid process and i want people to know that this is not something you know yes we're october 18th does that mean we're going to be unmasking for the rest of the year we don't need to be if that is not the conditions that we that we need to be under right now as of october 18 that's where we're holding removing the mask requirement like

070i said we're holding on that and not recommending any masking be lifted at this point one specific question was asked at the advisor group around high school students and high school staff do they need to be continuing masking at the high school and the answer that we got from our medical doctors who are on that group is emphatically yes we should continue at this time music concerts and drama productions we have not had music concerts indoors and we've not had any drama productions for the last 20 months so the advisory group looked at the recommendation i that the music department put forward which is 25 audience capacity in the art center which is about 130 seats and again these are recommendations today those are recommendations that might shift um at some point those those that

071number could go up that percentage and i would expect it would over time but right now we're starting conservatively but at least we want to have live performances the music department actually put together that plane and put it forward to the advisory group and that was um it was given the green light as an advice to me to put forward same thing with winter athletic events for spectators we are allowing spectators to be going into our gyms for the winter for winter athletic events and that's been a huge conversation the cumberland county superintendents met last friday and we discussed the issue and as a county have agreed that spectators should be able to go to our winter events which are all indoors of course except for a couple of them which is skiing notably and

072just following the same capacity limit for example our high school has 1200 capacity at in the gym so that would be about 300 spectators we haven't figured out how to make that work or if that percentage is actually the percentage that we would start the winter season with which we have a few weeks before that it actually starts but right now we wanted to set a a you know kind of a baseline as to what we would be thinking about so again i may come back to you with a different recommendation in a couple weeks but right now we want to get the ball rolling so that we know we have spectators coming to our events and we can start preparing for that and make sure that we're all all set with that and these

073are all recommendations that the board will be considering tonight if you choose to move in that direction this next slide is around administrative adjustments these are just adjustments that the board doesn't necessarily need to approve and i'm just putting it out there that these are things that we've already made changes on athletic players wearing face masks that was made by the cumberland county superintendents association um and um and that was not something that i'm asking the board to make a decision on because it involves actual players um and you know our procedures right now if you continue with this plan is that everyone is masking anyway we would ask players to mask as well uh even while they're in athletic events in our facilities um plexiglass and cafeterias scott and i met scotland and i

074met with the nurses and with dr desai who's our physician and um it was i would say unanimous that it is not useful to have plexiglas in our cafeterias they do they have no medical value i think there was some discussion over the summer that they might have a value when everyone was looking at them and now there's there's some more information that's come back saying they really have no value at all so we and actually they're a detriment um because kids are going around them um so it was just something that we thought was a no-brainer let's get them out pe classes using the pool um we have not offered pe classes going to the pool for the last 20 months we have a pool we're very fortunate to have a pool and in

075discussing it also discussed it with the nurses but administratively we decided it's time to resume um swimming lessons um in the pool we have it and we should be using it with safety and when there's you know obviously kids being mass until they get into the water locker rooms we believe that we can reopen locker rooms again with safety considerations in place the locker rooms have been largely closed for 20 months and this weekend we will be holding a homecoming dance outdoors mr poolen i'm going to give you a huge amount of credit because i don't know how you pulled off finding some dance floor in a big tent but you did it and so we will be holding an outdoor homecoming dance i believe rain or shine because it has a tent and it's

076a huge tent and so i think with safety protocols in place again and expectations um we were administratively able to go ahead and make that work so those are just examples of things where we're evaluating things constantly we're continuously looking at things and whether it's an administrative decision or it's one that needs to be approved by the board putting those things forward as they happen the other piece of the recommendation tonight to the board and this is for your consideration if you adopt this plan you're adopting the red plan so the red plan is something that the leadership team has worked extensively on in trying to put together something and be prepared for those days that come up where we have a class out because they have to quarantine and we've had a couple of

077situations already where that actually has happened because we had that prior to pool testing starting already there might be cases where we have a snow day that's considered a red red day in the calendar there is a provision that says the first two days are traditional snow days or weather days the rest of them are red days so this pertains to those and then if there was and i don't expect this to happen but if there was a situation where a school had to be closed for a significant covert related issue for some reason again i'm not seeing that happen but if it did we want to be fully prepared this also prepares for situations where we have and this is more likely where we have a covert relative related matter where the teacher is

078in in the classroom some of the kids are in because of pool testing and they didn't have to quarantine and some of the kids are out and because they're not vaccinated and they're not in the full testing program and how do we handle those kinds of situations um and so this chart is actually an abbreviation of the strategies and then our attendance uh protocols for all those kinds of situations um that could occur and again i'm hoping that some of these will never occur and i don't expect that the whole school might close but who knows we want to be completely prepared when these kinds of things happen there is an entire red plan i won't go through it but it's linked in this presentation you can see that as a far more detailed it's

079not a long plan but it gets right to the point and it helps our staff especially our administrators and making sure that we're staying where we need to in terms of our processes sorry that's not what i want to do okay so we're going to let's see i'm almost done severe staffing shortage limitations on the success so i want to i want to highlight this i think it's important for the public to know i've put this out a couple of times that the success of this plan rests on our staff but our district is currently operating at a what i consider to be a severe staffing shortage it's not unlike many other districts in maine or across the united states and it's not unlike businesses and other organizations in our society right now that are

080not able to find enough staff we are in the same boat the area that we're struggling with the most are educational technicians we currently have 16 vacancies in the district and they're all in two programs functional life skills and behavior in our district we have had to move our staff around in order to fill some of those areas what grade level is that at or is that just it's across the board all of all of our functional life skills heavier or middle school heavier or high school heavier i would say all of them and what we've done in some people you may not notice it if you went in to a program is we've had to move staff yeah so that you won't potential changes but we're still down in those programs as well but

081we have moved in order to critically make things happen and in order to do that we pulled staff away from other areas in our district but the shortages i think if i had to you know name it it's probably a little bit more nuanced at the middle school right now and we have um and part of it is our functional lives program at the middle school is our biggest program it's four to eight so some of the things that the district has done is we've hired edtech twos for the first time um we have not hired dead tattoos in decades in this district and we just started opening that up we've hired two edtech twos over the last few weeks we have hired for the first time probably ever or anyone can remember anyway lunch

082and recess aids for two hours a day we had one start today we have two more in the process of starting soon we have decided to rehire permanent substitutes again we had hired them last year we had not hired them for this year and went back to just daily substitutes and we have opened that back up we've hired four in the last couple of weeks the edtech educational technician contract has been reopened just to see if there's any other possibilities of retaining and attracting ed texts substitute incentives um we're looking at substitute incentives or substitutes for daily substitutes staying with us for a certain number of days that we would provide an incentive again that's that one's in the works having students in all of our schools eating in the cafeteria one of our schools

083right now there aren't students eating in the cafeteria we just started that this week slowly be very slow and gradual plan at the wilson school and it will take a while to to move but it is a way to reduce potentially some some duty coverage and reducing expectations around some of our academic offerings in our district we have no choice but to triage when we absolutely need to when we do not have enough staff members so i think it's important for the board and the public to know that we are not operating at full staffing capacity and that we have tried many different ways and with very limited success so we've had to go in different directions to fill some of the holes the the feeling the the success of that is just starting now

084it is you know we haven't had lunch aids in place we haven't had permanent substitutes in place until just now um and we just hire two at tattoos so we'll continue to do those things and we have them advertised continuously advertised but i just wanted to make you aware that that's where we're at and then staying current um the faqs on our website um are very current in fact they were just updated um last on friday and then the greely goes green unabridged version is not completely updated for tonight but will be and it depends on whether the board approves the recommendations that i'm outlining and we'll make sure we update the plan so the next advisory group meeting um is scheduled for november 9th and the next update to the board will be on

085november 15th that is my presentation thank you jeff so we will be voting on this um in a bit uh so we will save our discussion for that and so sorry but you're up again for our superintendent's report so the superintendent's report tonight a few areas that we're looking at here i'm not able to present this any bigger i don't believe um so i'm really excited to be able to say this and we've put this on social media but and i know this is only one metric and certainly it's open for certain certain questions and discussion but um you know usual news and world report has been around for a long time and they've been doing um you know uh rankings of schools in the united states at all levels include including colleges and so

086they are it is widely respected as a marker for um accuracy and success so i'd like to uh just convey my congratulations to girly middle school 6-8 they joined the high school for 2021 as the number one ranked school in the state of maine on the u.s news and world report gms 4-5 was number eight so we have three schools in our district in the top ten um mabel wilson is the grades are too young to be counted in these in these metrics [Applause] there is a link in there this will be my blog that goes out new transportation facility and i'm going to have scott help me with this one because this is also very exciting so we have a new bus garage new transportation facility at the drowned road many of you know

087that our old garage was very outdated and some changes needed to be made so i'm gonna not sure i can get this link open is this the hurricane in the bus washer yes it is well i'll come back to that in just a moment we'll do that last actually and i'll go through the rest of it air quality testing mr pooley might want to talk about this one too uh we i've we've gotten a lot of questions we put it on our q a um around air quality testing and do we do it and i think it's just a general topic that's of concern to a lot of people during covet especially we do um regular air quality testing we have for years and years and years and we do it on a regular and

088consistent basis multiple times during the year so the links to the results of our latest air quality testing including there's what's called a covered swipe or something like that let you talk about that well there was some white samples that were part of the testing this time it basically looks for um you know cobit on the surfaces and the schools and that was a wipe sample that we had done and the other parts of the air quality testing a lot of people you know we hear from people you know do you have hepa filters do you have other things in the district the real the real area of concern is you need to maximize the airflow in the building not necessarily you know restrain it with hepa filters etc you want to increase the airflow

089in and out of the building and so that's that's one of the areas that we've done and while the air quality tests represent all the particulates and the co2s and other pieces the other thing that we've done in the district too is we've done actual flow tests to ensure that all of the hvac units are operating at their maximum capacity so so we've got a good flow of air going through the facilities speaking of air is it freezing in here yes it's very cold i don't know if the if the temperature was adjusted but it's freezing it's freezing okay that's just how it goes this is how it is okay maximum airflow facilities all right well it's working right here it's a good airport that's all part i mean you aren't in any kind of

090energy saving mode in the district you're in a maximum that's a bummer okay so sorry it's on purpose that's on purpose on purpose everything's adjusted to its maximum flop um inkwell 2021 the high school does an equal magazine and they did have a pause on that during i believe last year a little bit and so they um i have links in here in my blog but it's really an amazing piece of work their editions are just so professional so there's links in here i really encourage people to go and see that you can go to the high school website and look at it but you know great work to the students at the high school who made sure that they were bringing this back this year and then let it go by the wayside and

091our advisors susan edmond and bobby livingston are teachers here that have been advising this group for a number of years ripple effect i know that anyone with students in 7th and 8th grade already know this but the middle school 6-8 after not being able to do that last year was able to offer not the overnight trip that we usually do but at least daytime trips and the 8th graders current 8th graders missed that last year it's a seventh grade program and able to get the seventh and eighth graders uh out on cow island uh mari tribalcock and jason la riviera were really instrumental along with our coordinators that go out as well our staff coordinators and all the teachers that went out with students to make that program work and we're really grateful to the

092the ripple effect program there's a lot of photos that the middle schools released and they're all in this blog as well but it just it's amazing and and truly i think wonderful to see these activities back at the middle school and having all of our students participate in those and again these will be on my blog that goes out tomorrow or wednesday the daphne sprague diversity collection daphne spright was an educational technician she passed away about a year ago and one of the tributes to daphne who was a huge supporter of of books of diversity of just anything to do with students in building kids up was there was a team at the middle school who put together the daphne sprague diversity collection at the gms library and it's a wonderful collection of books that

093are on display right now but also be catalogued throughout the library after the display goes away and all the books have a sticker that says the daphne sprague diversity collection so it's a wonderful tribute to daphne it's a wonderful woman egg drop at the middle school this is something that is an annual ritual i don't think it happened last year i don't believe it did but sixth grade students in science create a uh a wonderful creation where they don't want the egg to drop as they release it from the top of the balcony i had a chance to go over and watch a number of these fallen and most of the eggs survived um how did your egg do i i didn't do one but i watched the kids um as they were kind of

094it was kind of fun and here's kids watching uh i took a picture of kids taking a picture of the event uh because it was kind of fun to watch the reactions like oh what do you think does that one break or not um just kind of guess and then finally i mentioned this earlier but senior sun sunrise is a great photo of just kids getting up really early and going and watching uh the nice sky and getting their day and a lot of the members of the class of 2022 have this experience and again these are all kind of things that are starting to get back into some more typical events and activities that the district is kind of known for in our district so it's really nice to highlight some of the things

095happening not all of them we have so many um and i want to go back very quickly and this is scott's favorite part is to look at the bus garage and scott and i actually did a tour of the facility at one point probably a few weeks ago and took a look at and we encourage board members if they'd like to do that we can arrange for you to have a tour of the new transportation facility which just just opened for occupancy we'll put them in the bus and go through oh we should put them in the bus we went in the bus to see it i'll show you that in a minute it's housed with the same building as the town of cumberland public works want to thank the town of cumberland um for

096partnering with us on this important project so we're able to pull resources and funds to modernize the transportation office and you'll see scott there with phil blake who's in the middle he's the transportation supervisor and then larry lair who is a one of the mechanics and drivers for us and larry is standing next to one of our brand new school buses that we got in thanks to the board for approving that and to the voters for helping us keep our fleet up and running this is an aerial view of the actual finished sed bus garage and combined cumberland public works building you can see that plenty of green space in the front and lots of parking in the back we never had sufficient parking for buses they were always crammed together and now there's plenty

097of parking this was right before the buses moved back from being at the fairgrounds this was a few weeks ago but the arrow is showing the old bus garage you could barely get one bus in there to work on it and buses have to be worked on we have 25 buses and they need work a lot of them need work a lot so i'm constantly putting them in and out of that the facility so this is what we have instead and you'll see that the bay on the end is the wash bay on the right the two bays to the left of the end are the transportation bays for the sad and the rest of the public works bays this is the transportation office again which is a few weeks ago before we're starting to

098make this slow process of kind of getting everything in there's a lot of stuff to move these are the bays that the sat is using you can see buses comfortably can get in and out of those there are doors on both sides so that the buses are not having to back out this is a utility utility area that's up there's some a lot of storage up on those stairs as well and this is our exciting part right scott so scott and i took a ride um and this is uh you'll enjoy this video hopefully maybe not this is a bus going through um say how much water you isn't there so many gallons of water or something that's a crazy amount there isn't it is crazy and it flow it catches up underneath the bus

099so hopefully we won't uh get into the situation of uh you know the rusty um cross members that we have underneath a lot of existing buses we can get them washed off and taken care of so um and there's also lifts going in those bays which we haven't had the uh privilege of having before to be able to get the buses up in the air yeah that's important um and i just wanted to mention though that bay with the washing is shared with the town of cumberland so it's not just ours so all the public works vehicles go through there as well but i would encourage if you want to have a visit we can arrange for a visit down to the new facility so you can see for yourself awesome thank you can you

100visit include a car wash uh well let's see uh now i did inquire about that if anybody can get a car wash but i was told that is off limits did they finally give you your busing license what's that did they finally give you the bus license no for you to drive i've been asked if i want to get my bus license because we have a class starting you definitely should you think so i'm wondering about my time but i would like to learn i think i think that that would be like really that would be a way to show the kids whose boss you know the superintendent driving your bus that would be scary i don't know i think i'm not sure who would be the boss in that case all right thank you

101so much jeff that was all that was an awesome report it's so nice to see that things are happening again and life has kind of returned to slow but in a different way than there was it's it's we're getting there um okay so we will move on to committee reports first is finance kevin well we continue to make sure every dime is being spent appropriately looking closely at warrants and asking the right questions at the right times we are going to be scheduling a finance committee meeting over the next two and a half weeks and we will be in touch with the committee members to ensure that those dates work awesome thank you and policy we had our first meeting of the policy committee right before this meeting and we were able to review our

102title ix policies and chapter 33 policies both of which had changes to the statutes so we should be bringing those um to a first read at our next meeting and the policy meeting will also be meeting right before board on the first great thank you curriculum jennifer i'm sorry uh peter for his facilities uh we'll be discussing those more in executive session and uh depending on what comes out of it we will be scheduling future facilities and probably finance committee meetings together thank you okay now curriculum um we have not met yet this year and we will or this school year our first meeting is scheduled the first week in november awesome communications mike our first meeting is tomorrow um equity leadership steering committee and do you want to give an update yeah that's fine

103um we had a meeting [Music] friday friday thank you like we just had it we have four students who were able to be in attendance which is just wonderful and we reviewed the phase one work that had been completed and where we're hoping to go with phase two thank you student reports avery uh everything's going as usual vandalism seems to be on the decline in the high school bathrooms so that's that's what's going on thanks avery um i believe that's it so we will now move into items for action so first looking for a motion for first item a vote to approve hiring lawrence alexander i would like to recommend that we approve hiring lawrence alexander of carnie santo and associates on a monthly retainer agreement to provide equity support in the 2021-22 school year

104as recommended by the superintendent thank you in a second i second thank you and so open it up for discussion um if anybody would like to ask any remaining questions or share any thoughts jeff what was the cost to do this so the cost is it's a monthly retainer um and it would be one thousand dollars per month for ten months so ten thousand dollars um it includes an in-person um some sort of in-person meeting or event whatever we're holding that that month plus all consults in between those meetings during the month whether through video phone call email etc thank you anyone else just a question based on that is that a retainer plus meeting facilitation or is that the cost that is the actual cost there's no other cost so it's ten thousand dollars

105for ten months that's the end that's the cost thank you anyone over on this end okay and then i did want to if that's okay yeah please you know i um [Music] it's always great when you get a lot of feedback from the community about um challenging discussions and you know i don't keep track but i do read each of those and i thought that it really shed a lot of light on it on a on an interesting situation and being able to have that conversation uh with mr alexander tonight i know it felt like a conversation not just a a a push of information i thought is very telling um i think you can pick up immediately how strong the gentleman is as a facilitator not talking about not telling but putting out the

106right questions and and asking and some of those other things that he said were far more compelling as a one on 10 11 discussion tonight and uh i just got to tell you i think that the gentleman will be an asset to this community and i think that um there's a lot of things that that i look forward to hearing from him in the process thank you i just want to say that i feel like we've kind of hit the lottery with him and i think that we have found lawrence in a time where where he's going to get very busy because i think all schools are looking for guidance in the way that he's providing and to know that he was available when we spoke with him last week was it was really wonderful

107to hear and to make his time available this evening for our board to ask questions um i i feel very lucky and i think that our students and our staff and our community will benefit greatly from this relationship with him so seeing no other discussion i will ask all in favor thank you for seeing unopposed thank you so much the second vote is to approve the adjustments to the greely goes green plan do i have a motion so moved and a second second now open this up for discussion or questions mike and then jason are you okay mike yeah thank you um i have a couple um i think quick ones um just to clarify i saw you listed um about the the change in cafeteria eating in the cafeteria and that's in response to

108staffing shortages is that the driver of that decision what else just folks had reached out and had asked about why that decision was made is there any concern regarding covet about larger groups such if you talk to that a bit more so at the high school in the middle school that we've been doing that since day one and that had nothing to do with staffing shortage and at mabel i wilson school some of it does have to do with supervision of students in classrooms which we're currently doing and teachers are currently supervising that uh classrooms right now however um part of it is that we're also trying to normalize um the lunchtime at mabel wilson again like it used to be and for kids to be able to see that we're not going to have

109all students in a grade in the cafeteria we have one grade that has almost 200 students for example so we're going to slowly the administration at the school is playing to slowly schedule classes in this week they're getting their feet wet with just a class at a time a couple classes at a time and then slowly go from there but it's being done in a way that keeps cohorts of kids away from each other while they're eating so if they're not in we don't you know we're not dealing with a contact tracing part so they're in a different part of the room um but some of it's staff shortage but some of it is just it's time to start you know moving this moving along you know and just reintroducing things that are more typical

110for kids to see and eating you know in a cafeteria even though it can be loud and noisy it is one of the hallmarks of being a student in in any school but in elementary school and kids i mean there's this energy that's just not there right now and um yeah so we're trying to slowly normalize everything um high school middle school have been again since day one have been students have been eating in the cafeteria even our fourth and fifth graders who are not vaccinated so have been eating regularly in the cafeteria so they're really for me it's um the vaccinated unvaccinated situation or peace and component because we've been doing this in fourth and fifth grade and we've had no cafeteria transmission that we know of um we don't feel like this is

111a this is something that it is a problem i don't feel like it is that makes sense um the situation with lockers at gms um has there been thought to because i know are they available to students to go to or they're they're discouraged from going there and dropping their stuff off in between what was that again like so the lockers at greatly middle school because a number of folks my daughter included have backpacks that weigh like 30 pounds because they're carting the um the laptop back and forth as well as a large binder um and potentially other books and as well um so is that just the notion of like they need to have the laptop both at home at school they need to have the binder the same place and they have to

112carry that around all day is there a possibility to utilize the lockers is this just something we're stuck with so mr bilcock is not here but she would be the best person to answer it my understanding is and i don't want to give the wrong information my understanding is students can use their lockers they're just not allowed to use their lockers all day long so in other words if there's stuff that they is that am i getting that correct yeah and they're not locked so they can essentially use them they're just encouraged not to go to them every time they go to a different class in other words go there in the morning drop things you really don't need off get them at the end of the day but not visit those lockers you know

113constantly during the day i believe that's what mari had told me was the plan okay one more quick one uh so appreciate that you did a flu clinic um hope it went well i weren't able to make it i'm interested uh i really you had mentioned before about doing a coveted vaccine clinic especially as we're seeing the inklings that this may come down hopefully in the next couple weeks that uh ages 5-11 can be available for a vaccine hopefully we can do that and do you know about how far in advance we could let folks know if we're going to do a clinic yeah we are planning to do a clinic you know i can say it's 100 right now but it's looking likely that we will be providing at least one cova clinic for

114students 5 to 11. clinics will not be if the fda approves the emergency release of the pfizer vaccine for 5 to 11. it would not be until november 4th is what i have been told clinics would be able to be set up through the schools through a provider not really us doing it as a provider coming in starting november 8th is the information that we were given this morning so the main cdc in the maine department of education are working with providers throughout the state to partner with districts we already have a partner we've used this partner prior to and offering clinic space and we'll go with the same one and we will be providing uh hopefully providing clinics just as we've done before for five to eleven um basically as soon as we can

115and we had a meeting with the nurses this morning um scott and i did and julie and talked about that a little bit more so it's in the works we're discussing it thank you jason um i'm curious if other board members are interested in breaking out the masking of the high school and making an option optional and if so i would move to divide the question anyone i am and i was going to speak to that so i believe that we should carve out the piece for the high school and removing the mask and and also considering removing the mask at the seventh and eighth grade level since the vaccines are provided and fully available and i think in the report that jeff had that we're seeing that the numbers are of transmission is very

116low to nil in the high school and i think we need to to give these kids a better opportunity to learn with the mouse off sorry to take your platform but so i would move to divide the question then and we break out the whole really goes green plan break out the high school as mask optional and then seven eight uh mask optional and then the rest of the plan okay so just i have some other questions so can we do that yeah can we have it let's finish discussion and then we can move to an alternative offering if possible okay i was curious you know i've heard from the community how difficult it is when students have potentially been exposed or are sick and the process of getting back into the classroom that their

117home buy next now test results aren't being accepted that they need to have a doctor's note supposedly that some people haven't needed a doctor's note and just you know it's hard to get testing if there's any way that we can um make that smoother that we could be providing the you know do we have enough binex tests that we can just test everyone and if it's negative okay they they can stay in the classroom if they're not symptomatic so great question um we the nurses um we actually had a meeting this morning to discuss this was on our agenda with the nurses um to discuss and um obviously there's a lot of questions about this from parents but we're also feeling a lot of questions and concerns honestly from our nursing staff around our our

118practice on in this particular area so we are currently following the the state's guidance on all of this including doctor's notes now there are some districts that are not following all of that and we have been following you know the process for doing that this was asked of dr shaw this morning he answered it his answer was districts can have some discretion in this area if you feel that you can in meeting with the nurses today to discuss you know is there some potential for using our discretion on this practice one thing and i i was going to mention this during the presentation and this is something i i just got a phone call today from the cdc just telling us that we have an outbreak at our fourth and fifth grade school which i

119am sending a letter out tomorrow i'm required to send it out as public information so one of the things that when we discussed this we felt like the outbreak there is likely and i'm using the word likely because we never know 100 percent likely school transmission that has occurred in some of our cases recently that we didn't feel changing procedure at this moment was the right way we're meeting in three weeks and we're going to review it again and see if doctor's notes um is some is something an area that we want to review again but right now we're going to continue following what the state has for guidelines on that at least that's you know that's up to the uh to the board through the gg2 plan if you wanted to amend it but

120at this point i wouldn't recommend that we amend that and i think our best practice in following state guidance is part of the plan um and we want to continue doing that at least for now all right i'm sorry yeah go ahead i just had a related question then is if there's anything if we are gonna you know follow those additional steps can we have better coverage of um the class the class materials that that our students are missing in order to have those tests like you know so we have all this live streaming technology can we use some of that even when we're not like fully read in those other situations that we have outlined in the plan where we could be meeting um our students needs better so that they're not falling behind

121and struggling to catch back up yeah i think that's what the leadership team attempted to do with the red plan um so it has scenario all the scenarios like when some students are out because they have they're being quarantined um and you know what what do we do next for some students when the teacher's in some kids are in some kids are out um so that that red plan does attempt to kind of answer those questions that we've lingered had lingering questions around all of that i guess like maybe lowering the threshold like how many students need to be out before that is enacted um i mean that's that's a good question i think when we do um like for example pool testing not all of our students participate some students are out if we

122have a positive case we've had that three times happen now and then we have some kids and that's where that plan applies i think you're talking about a student who happens to be out because there is maybe transmission or they are exposed as a close contact in the community yeah okay that's for those cases we you know the family and the nurse and the teacher are supposed to be working together on that and then if there's a concern beyond that you know if a student is out for an extended period of time we've known of cases where kids are out for for a while for a few days and we're trying for cases where that's the you know happening we talked to the nurses today about making sure with their administrator there's a plan for

123kids being able to return how do we do that we cannot provide we're not allowed to provide by next testing not supposed to for kids that are symptomatic and it didn't occur in the school so in other words if somebody can't get a test their child is symptomatic they've been out the nurse at school can't provide that test now if they're sick at school or a staff member's sick or a student is sick and they develop symptoms at school they can get a binex test if parents get permission but we don't have enough supply that supply is also there for pool testing when we get a a positive result so um we have been told by the department that don't use binex testing that way is it possible to advocate you know at the state

124level for uh for districts to receive more by next testing so we can i think it's a supply issue okay yeah i mean that's tough i've heard that yeah that there's just problems it's also i mean i'll be quite honest i don't think the nurses have the time to do it anyway if we had a lot of students coming in right now our nurses are are extremely stretched and one of the things that and i'm just being really honest and this is something i'm putting into communication tomorrow we've had some parents who've been pretty upset and have been uh you know pretty vocal about that with the nurses and quite honestly the nurses are just doing their job um trying to keep the community as safe as we can and just following the process the

125protocols that we've got in place and you know i'm going to try to reinforce that tomorrow in the communication that goes out yeah i think it's also important too that parents need to contact the pcp as soon as possible too because that's one of the their primary care physician because that's one of the other delays is that when parents wait it's that much longer to get the doctor's note for the student to be able to come back so that's one of the delays that we've heard as well thank you so peter i know you want to see me i just wanted to add to what was ann was saying we had a cold in our house so we went through that experience of trying to get a doctor's note um and i will say that

126i 100 understand the need and trying to follow a process but i don't think it's a sustainable one for our physicians for our parents who are waiting days and days and days to get an appointment to get a note that they may not even get because their kid just has a cold and they're not prioritizing that at the pcp office and kids being out of school again so i do think i understand and we were able to figure it out personally for our family but it was a my kids were out of school for a week so um we're all going to get colds and we got to figure out a better way because this one's not sustainable and i totally understand the position that the nurses are in because they have to follow what

127but if there's ways to adjust that i would love to hear it because i don't think it's sustainable peter a couple a couple questions on the uh 25 percent uh my understanding again you folks are going to renew that in november again taking a look at it uh we'll look at you mean the the 25 for performances events and all that stuff and the uh and the athletic events right yes well i mean it will be up for review when we have the next advisory group i mean i know the execution of it would be you know just impractical but i mean obviously now the local arts organizations most of the major ones now if you have proof of vaccination you can you can come in so i mean i i think again it's probably

128difficult to enforce at this time but i mean if somebody has been vaccinated i i just think the 25 percent is a little arbitrary but again i understand you can't have somebody at the door checking uh checking ids but i do hope before things get too far that we can take a look at that now regarding uh clinics in the school i assume that uh these students have to have parental permission right yes so they do we just can't walk in with the nurse telling her like we did the sock vaccine roll up your sleeves and and go no in fact i believe the clinics will be after school hours but we'll be hosting um and the the you know provider whether it's northern light or whatnot would be our provider kind of like what

129we did before but students can sign up um so we're not sure i don't know the details yet but i'm envisioning that it could be like that um and then as to the 25 peter so the the music department when they put forward the plan they also put forward smaller events in other words not having necessarily the band in the chorus together so smaller group of kids that means you know you can easily have both parents and to watch the kids and um and and things like that so it's it's not you know we're not having a hundred kids in here and only a few people get to watch um it was the pla their plan was you know make sure the events are smaller the concerts are smaller so that all parents can come

130and can watch will we be able to uh live stream those also um well i mean i think we can try to do anything we certainly put a lot of stuff on youtube and i think the idea is has been to put concerts on youtube um so that's it's certainly possible we have certain kids that are up that opt out of things like that so we'd have to check all those permissions but it's not a lot of music rights as well okay copyright and we'll weigh in on the masks later right i think the time is now in the gym did you want to mention the gem that holds 1200 people so 25 of that's pretty yeah i mean for the gym so it's just reminding me that it's you know we're talking about 300

131people that we would still be able to get in with 25 uh in the in the gym i mean i've been to different events and yeah we'll have 300 people and other events there's you know only a scattering of people it really depends on what event it is in the gym but um you know again we're this is all being this is ongoing um the superintendent's county superintendent just got finished talking about this whole issue of winter athletics on friday and um and kind of setting some baseline so this is all very kind of new recommendations that are written too i think it's good that they're talking about it and we're not doing it december 1st or no and i will say that we're definitely having spectators um in events that that's a given um

132we're definitely having winter sports all of them there's no sport that's off the table that was that's clearly the mpi is very supportive of it and it was really up to the the counties to decide the reason we even discussed it was that the county ads came to us and said what do you think first before we even get you know far down the road talking about it as a group and so that's what we ended up as a as a county now the spectator limits or numbers are up to each district to figure out um but the players and their masks that was a county decision that's not one that we made okay thank you jason did you want to offer a recommended vote yeah uh so i mean we can amend the existing

133motion or i can move to divide the question that's what i had proposed so move to divide the question to break out the mask for high school as optional as well as a separate question four seven eight optional and then the rest of the what really goes green plan as that would is a second so do we have a motion to make the greeley high school mask wearing optional sure okay so second second any discussion so again this is for high school mike do you want to go first avery i'll let you go first okay um so it i mean this is covering both so i don't have to speak both times but as the parent of a sixth grader and who is sharing a school with seventh and eighth graders who is not yet

134vaccinated hopefully will be in three weeks and whose current and her younger brother is in third grade who's not vaccinated yet hopefully will be in three weeks and who's currently with their grandmother who is dealing with multiple myeloma which colin powell just died from complications of covet um i am vehemently opposed to lifting the mask mandate at gms and i think it would be it would be i know i'm saying i'm speaking for both because i didn't want to say it both times it would be optional correct we're not saying everybody has to take the mask off it's the same thing um yeah no i don't think this is the right time i think let's get through and get the kids vaccinated and let's absolutely address this by the november 16th board meeting thank you

135avery yeah i want to speak on optional masking at the high school i think that at this time when students see each other outside of outside of school no one really wears masks and as as i guess it's hard to to cope with that like students still get together despite covet i haven't seen like anyone wear masks when students get together and i think that wearing masks in school is just a formality at this point rather than a precaution and i think that yeah it's i don't know how necessary it is because i think that like students if some students are sick they're going to get other students sick even if you know we also have to consider the teachers and some teachers can or did not get vaccinated so it's not i know the

136students intermingle without the mask outside of school your immune system is much so much stronger than what the teachers would be so i think i mean everyone knows where i'm going with this i think it's just too early right now and yeah i think that that's a really good point that i didn't think about i think another sort of place to meet in the middle would be something like maybe making study halls optional for masking study halls tend to be silent so there isn't a lot of projecting there's a lot of communication between teachers and students and i think that it wouldn't hurt to remove masking or make it optional for something like study halls or at the very least let kids in the high school get close enough so they can talk to each

137other or sit beside each other to talk to them i mean there's very limited basis that you guys can talk to each other but okay that's not go ahead peter peter i uh going to be very careful that i don't like the last time run into a pc landmine but i just think until we have decent statistics out of that high school i mean if i saw today that we had 95 percent of vaccinations among and this is the high school i would be the first one to jump on the bandwagon but as long as we're not getting any cooperation from the parents and the students about getting statistics i don't feel comfortable as a school board member voting for it without some concrete information and uh i want to do that but i can't

138do it on the basis of of all this and i think certainly not in the middle schools until again we get into a vaccination program with the other people and i mean it goes against every grain in my body because i really uh definitely with the high school want to see these kids off with masks but you know i you know the numbers aren't there and it's uh and it's too bad but the blame is uh uh on the reporters okay and um i mean i was just gonna say that i think you know one thing that makes us so complicated is that we're a public institution it's our job to make sure that we're keeping the public safe and um you know worst case scenario if we did have an outbreak and or more

139cases and more students got sick and a student died then what are what's the community going to say and would they take any action against the district for not doing everything that we could to protect their student it's a unfortunate position to be in because i think you know like avery said a lot of the mask wearing at the high school level in particular is is a formality and and how that affects you um high school students on on a daily basis and it's just um i don't think it's as simple as saying we make mass optional at the high school that it is just too complex and that being said i also just wanted to throw a note in that peter i wasn't being i wasn't getting on you about your statement because it

140wasn't politically correct i was getting on you because it was a it was a statement let's just stay focused on the vote right enough okay kevin just a just a simple question jeff what's the recommendation of the advisory committee the advisory group and that includes students parents three medical doctors our physician was not their school physician was absent at this meeting they all um i believe there was not anyone that said that there should be a lifting of masking at this time um so i feel like we have you know 18 people i believe were at that meeting who were saying that this is not the right time right now not yet not yet and the other thing i want to say is i did get a message from the association a few days ago

141and they said a majority of the association membership were surveyed and have a strong desire to keep the mandates in place including masking and um i think that's important and someone mentioned the staff as well we have to consider all sides of this situation i have had teachers personally personally reach out and say their job is i think that it just shows a lack of humility on our part if we're telling the district in this case what to do for this decision now we look at this information again in a month uh we're coming into again a challenging time of year in terms of health on a on a good year so i i would i i'm inclined to follow the guidance of the advisory group i want to also just add one thing about

142that one of the doctors who's on the advisory group made mention of referring back to the the data that we've got and one of them is county transmission data which is high right now still in cumberland county and saying that that is always a metric you want to be very cognizant of because schools do not operate in a vacuum and so i thought that was always a good point that he's made he's made that more than once so i was just going to add that i have attended the advisory groups and i will say that i'm beyond grateful for the medical professionals they come out of surgery to come and attend our meetings they are very dedicated to making sure that they are passing along the information that we need to make these decisions and

143i also just want to recognize that throughout this evening we were able to celebrate some things that we are doing again field trips and doing music again and winter sports and having people be able to come and see their children playing i do not believe that now is a time to mess with the system that's making that work so unless anyone else has any further discussions on this first item for action we will go to a vote so this phone is again making masks optional for the high school all in favor all opposed thank you jason did you want to make a second motion uh we may as well follow through on uh breaking out seven eight and then the rest of the uh greely goes green plan jennifer had asked for that so let's

144do that okay so a second um second okay any discussion i feel like i guess i would just like to say that i bring this forward because we should have this healthy discussion it feels now very tense up here and very attacking and i think that's a shame i think that we should have these discussions and question the information that's brought to us and that we as a board should be looking at it and making these questions and i feel like it's very tense here and very um i don't know not very welcoming so i find that very disappointing i'm not saying that we all should agree but i feel that we should have these discussions and challenge the information that's come forth and that's what my job is and it's a shame that this

145is kind of the approach that it's being looked at that way so um that's what i'd like to say tyler yes um i i completely agree jennifer i have no problem whatsoever bringing this up i feel strongly about that and i feel strongly about the issue and i'm gonna share it strongly so it's not an attacking on anybody personally for bringing it up it's my opinion and i feel strongly about it that's the only reason why i came across strongly from me just speaking for me i am absolutely not opposed to folks bringing this up bringing anything up to be honest with you um so yeah yeah thank you mike and if i can echo that mine isn't an attack either but it's if we didn't have to wear a mask i think that that

146would be delightful and when i look through the extensive get to green plan that we looked at things are moving in in the right direction and i would hate to have anything derail that that potentially could be within our control and when we do have a great i think that we should ask the question as we committed to when this rolled out the first time but i would always have a hard time acting against the the the advice of the medical professionals that are comprising that group thank you jason and then tom uh i'd just like to explain my vote because to me high schoolers or kids over 12 can be vaccinated so that would be all of high schoolers and 7 or 8 does not come within that group so for me i'll be

147voting backwards of what i did with the high school i just want to explain that sort of the logic there okay uh tom uh i i just felt like i should explain my vote and also my my silence i don't want my my silence way over here on the other side to seem like hostility um i think i haven't spoken up because peter already articulated everything that i wanted to say um i would love for us to be able to make masks optional um at the high school um but at 54 vaccination i can't in good conscience vote for that um so i'm really hoping that the next time we meet we can revisit this again i think it's great that we're breaking this apart into the high school the middle school and and the

148lower levels and i hope we continue to do this at future meetings thank you okay so all in favor for making masks optional for uh girly middle schools uh seven through eight okay and those opposed thank you so we're going to return to the recommended vote i'm looking for a motion for that so moved do you mind reading the whole thing just because it does have i don't have the script so somebody else thank you uh i i move we vote to approve the adjustments to the greeley goes green plan including the red plan as presented by the superintendent thank you and a second second thank you okay any further discussion okay all in favor i just want to say jennifer thank you for your honesty and for the other board members for making sure

149that we're all communicating in this awkward setting as best we can okay so our next item from you didn't ask for all of those like did i no i'm sorry uh what did i do you just said all in favor all in favor all opposed i apologize okay so now we can move on to uh the next item for action which is uh annual repo approval of msad51 emergency plan i vote that we approve the msa 51 emergency plan as presented second and any discussion here okay well actually since i was the only board member um at the safety committee meeting i feel like i should at least say something um we had an energetic and productive meeting about a month ago we're meeting again on thursday uh and i think we recognize that the

150uh the current plan is adequate for our needs right now but there's a lot of work to be done that i think is going to happen over the next year um including some um some uh steps to make our plans more user-friendly for the people in the schools so i'm optimistic that it's going to be a good productive year thank you tom okay all in favor and any opposed thank you all right and the next item jeff do you mind giving us a little bit of background yes there's a letter in your packet from susie robbins director of academic services and she is recommending tonight for the board to suspend the professional educator evaluation system which we have in our district for a second year now last year we got a state pass to go

151ahead and um basically it was taken off the table by the department of education um because of the the covid uh issues and and not going forward with our evaluation system except for probationary staff members this year the state department of education is given an option to every district to decide if they want to take the evaluation system which is of all of our staff that we have in our district off the table or not we have a collaborative group of members of the administration and the association that met there's a group that's already in place and susie robbins facilitates that group they met and discussed the issue and recommended that we suspend we go ahead and suspend the evaluation system except for those who are probationary staff members in our district um and that

152there's still fall goal setting spring reflection peer observations are encouraged and performance evaluations would only be again for uh probationary staff so um those that's pretty much how we left it um for this year or that group left it and um recommending it to the board so the board has to then sign off and say yes or no they agree with that for this school year i don't expect this to come up again next year but because of the continuing pandemic the state did give that as an option jeff did is this something that you would say maybe takes a little bit of a couple of things off of people's lists for stuff absolutely okay um i will say it takes um well it takes things off the list for staff um in terms of

153um there are different components that go with a formal observation um there are meetings that go forward before and after that the administrator it takes a lot off of the administrator's plates administrators are doing a very different job right now in on many days including doing a lot of substituting and filling in and quite frankly are not going to be able to get to the evaluations that are needed in this year especially with the staffing shortage i think just taking this entire thing off of people's plates this year is really needed i hope we can keep finding those things all right so i had a question um can you remind me what the appraisal year is so appraisal you're every um teacher for example is on an appraisal year every three years so an appraisal

154just means that they have one formal observation at least one formal observation where the administrator goes in their room and these are this is only for uh teachers that have been teaching here more than two years okay that's actually three years until the end of this year state law just changed it will be two years and so that's an appraisal here and then anyone who's probationary in their first two years um gets appraised um you know more than once for the first two years up to three three times or even more depends on the staff member and the administrator thank you okay so do we have a topic oh sorry i think we're just doing we're doing discussion before we have the motion go ahead uh so reading the memo it sounds like the the

155plan in place it still keeps in the good formative evaluation like goal setting and reflection stuff like that right before we approve this i really want to make sure that we're not taking away anything of value from our teachers where that they might really need in a what's been a trying time do you see anything here that if if it's not required or it's not included this year that teachers might feel like they're losing something so before we implement this a really great question before we implemented the current evaluation system probably three four years ago that we have maybe five years ago now we we put in a whole new system for evaluation of all our staff we had heard from some staff members that they had not been evaluated enough um and that there

156was no regular feedback to them um and so that was something that you know we obviously wanted to make sure that we had in place so i think one thing is that we're basically taking our schedule for um you know appraisal for all of our staff and we're just keep moving it this will be now the second year that we've moved that schedule that'll be two years out from people that would have been afraid last year would have been praised this year now they're you know that everybody's kind of moving out two more years so if if nothing else i think the feedback that teachers get um i'm not saying that you know everyone loves having an appraisal year um i you know just i think it's all over the board it really depends on

157where someone is in their career um if some you know teachers are looking for new feedback maybe they're in a different role it really depends but i think overall i don't want to i don't want to speak for uh teachers but i think overall just anything we can take off their list would be great and i know that i don't know if you want to recognize jason curry because he's jumping out of his seat a little [Laughter] jason could you speak on payoff of all the teachers i would love to try i can say that this year we've had all professional development opportunities that aren't in-house professional development frozen and so some of those opportunities are ways that teachers meet the evaluation towards appraisal system so it would be super if we could have that

158appraisal system frozen rather than proceed if we're not going to get those opportunities to do professional development at conferences and and other virtual opportunities even and instead not not have those opportunities so if we could progress simultaneously with the opportunities to reach our evaluations and also the evaluation system and if we're not going to get the pd opportunities don't move us forward in the evaluation system thank you yeah jason's referring to outside conferences professional development and we've had to freeze that not necessarily because of cove but although it started that way because we needed to make sure that excuse me our staff were in the classroom our teachers were in the classroom this year after um 18 months of kind of disjointed education because of the pandemic but it's also the second big reason is

159we just don't have enough staff either and we are constantly pulling people to cover classrooms so i think there's two reasons why we've had to go that route this year now um and i think it uh certainly what jason said makes sense as well is when we don't we're not providing all of that that does go hand in hand with some appraisals okay so we still need a motion do we have a motion anyone like to give a motion i recommend that we vote to spend most components of the p-e-p-g system for the 21-22 school year as outlined by the director of academic services second thank you any further discussion all in favor any opposed okay thank you so much so our last item a motion to enter executive session i'll move uh to enter

160executive session to discuss property acquisition pursuant to state statute m r s a 405 6 c second thank you all in favor thank you any opposed right you