MSAD #51 School Board Meeting Sept. 2, 2021

001oh nice work mike all right welcome to the msad 51 director's board of directors meeting i will say that i am confused on what day it is because today was day two of school it's thursday it's a confusing week so um september 2nd 2021. um this evening we do not have any recognition besides the fact that school is open and we have welcomed all of our children back into school our staff is here and we are continuing on tuesday so i just wanted to recognize that we have accomplished and completed the first week of school except for our pre-k in kindergartners next item on our agenda this evening is approval of minutes do i have a motion for the august 16 2021 so moved and the second second any discussion okay all in favor thank

002you next we have our public comment section of the evening and i just wanted to uh remind people of the purpose of our public comment last meeting we had a resident that chose to use our public comment for recital of the pledge and the lord's prayer and i wanted to remind everyone that the reason that we have public comment is to comment on the business of the board and and that is it it is not about um using that as a performance space i really would like to make sure that people understand that this is a meeting for the business of the board in the public and that public and that it's not a debate or a conversation we welcome um constructive comments that will help the board more fully understand the speaker's point of

003view and the issue that they are bringing forth to us so i just wanted to remind people of that um we also will be sticking to three minutes and ask that you state your name and your place of residence not at address but just town so i welcome anyone that has an item that is directly related to the business of the board to approach the podium and speak is this on okay perfect lori batchelder north yarmouth i'm not here tonight to discuss the merit or my personal views on the equity inclusion work being done i'm here to discuss the motion on tonight's school board meeting agenda to move the elsc ad hoc committee from a special committee to other committee and a motion to amend the bylaws and bring membership appointments to other committees in

004line with standing committees which means the chair makes the appointments it is my understanding that the board was given their agenda packet only two days ago it is my understanding that the board is typically given very little notice about any agenda item and many times are asked to make be ready to make a discussion or vote on an agenda item with just a few days notice i do not believe the board has the adequate time to make informed decisions on such a sensitive and highly charged topic as equity and inclusion any move forward any movement forward needs to be carefully considered and parameters in place even though i'm only one one person delivering this message i speak for many many members of this community that we want a committee that is made up of members

005with diverse opinions members that may embrace the path the equity committee is currently taking members that oppose the current path and members who are somewhere in the middle this is the only way we can ensure all views are being represented on a committee that is making such important recommendations to the board as you've heard in many for many of us in the community there's a feeling that the committee is not diverse and that most if not all the members have the same viewpoints and ideology this does not seem very inclusionary to me continuing down this path is only going to divide our community all of you board members represent and my children and i'm respectfully asking one of you as my representative to make a motion to table this agenda item table until the board

006is given adequate time to understand the full undertaking to change the designation of the elsc to other committee table until details regarding committee member qualifications composition and terms have been outlined as far as i know the board has not adopted any stipulating parameters for other committees table it until after until it is understood how this may change the scope of the work for the equity committee which clearly states the elsc scope is to develop an equity plan with focus on racial equity table it until we can ensure a board a broad and diverse membership in the last few years the current ad hoc committee has been unsuccessful in its current operations as did nothing but divide this community it is time for a reset it is time to hear from community the community you serve

007it is time for you to move this community forward in a way that represents all of our voices not just the ones you put forth by voting on this tonight without any guiding principles you're putting the cart before the horse so please motion to table this agenda item thank you hello i'm kerry cinquette of cumberland i have three students in the msad 51 district and i just wanted to first say thank you and hats off to a tremendous start to the school year we're all very excited about it i'm also here tonight to offer my family's support for the work done by the equity committee we believe that creating an anti-racist and inclusive community is morally right and consistent with the msad 51 mission of guiding students to attain their personal best we further want

008to show our support and trust that the committee and board chair have the best interest of our district in mind as they select new members in our beautiful and peaceful town it can be difficult to recognize the inequities that many throughout our country and here in our town suffer these inequities do exist and we are thankful for the work of the committee to address them thank you my name is brian o'connor i'm a parent of a seventh grader and a sixth grader in the district they're here with me today and i'm sad i'm sad from watching all the horrifying things happening in the world and seeing people hell-bent on making life harder i'm proud to live in this community and i'm disappointed to see the wheels of white supremacy and motion right here in my

009own hometown i'm disappointed to see biggest bigotry disguised as concern for process i trust this administration i trust the school board i trust this equity steering committee to move forward with this critical work as it's laid out it's clear that much work much listening and much careful consideration has gone into making this community stronger and more diverse please know that this committee's work has my support and my family support and i thank you so much for the work that's been done thank you i'm gretchen mccloy i live in cumberland i have two boys at miw i first want to thank you for the vote last month to approve masks in our schools i work in education and my husband is in healthcare and we firmly are very supportive of our students wearing masks as long

010as it's needed i work in a school and i can't tell you how relieved i was to know that at my school everyone would be masked also so for all of our educators thanks on all of our behalfs for helping to keep us safe a quick point on equity as i said i work in another school and the equity work is difficult and hard in every school district and i really appreciate the work that's being done i also know we've struggled to find a way for all voices to be heard and i just hope that as we move forward with this equity work we can create spaces and places for good dialogue to happen safely that's not necessarily in this forum i love speaking in public but this is a hard thing to do for

011a lot of people and the voices we want to hear are maybe not even even to be here at these settings so thank you thank you good evening board members and student representatives my name is will sacks i live in cumberland and have two boys at gms i'm here tonight for one reason only to urge each and every board member sitting before me to put the children of msad51 first when it comes to child health and mental health matters and appoint a board-certified actively practicing pediatrician as a district physician i want to be clear i am not here to litigate the past or demonize the action of last year's board i am also not here to debate whether or not appointing a board certified actively practicing pediatrician is an expert identified best practice predominantly followed

012by our peer districts that evidence is clear in the correspondence i have sent to the board along with other concerned parents there is no debate the american academy of pediatrics and the american medical association have spoken as of our peer districts who dutifully follow this guidance and apply common sense regardless of the membership of the pandemic response panel this board must recognize that this pandemic is not the only health and mental health issue facing the children of msad51 athletics related concussions diabetes drug use mental health sexual health and gender gender identity come to mind along with many more when this district makes policy decisions impacting these matters our children deserve a clinician who will advocate for them with a profound and meaningful understanding of what they're facing an understanding that can only be gained by

013treating children all day every day lastly i'm speaking to each board member personally if you have school age children or grandchildren if that child was sick or was going through the toughest health or mental health moments of their lives where would you take them would you take them to your doctor or like me julie and most parents in this district would you take them to their pediatrician is it because like me when the most important people to you on this planet need medical care you want to know that you are speaking with an expert expert clinician who has dedicated their professional life to treating and caring for children and works in a practice where every colleague has made that same commitment i am here tonight as a parent asking you to apply the same importance

014and same standard of care to my children and their classmates as you do to yours thank you hi everyone my name is katie i'm going to i live in cumberland this is one of my two children in the district um i'm going to read a letter from a friend who couldn't be here tonight and also add my words of support of this specific letter dear members of the msad 51 board of directors i'm writing in support of the equity committee and tonight's action item of making an other committee of the board rather than ad hoc committee if it would not mean bringing my second and fifth graders with me i would be at the meeting in person i encourage you to remember the importance of the leadership part of the full name of the elsc

015it is my expectation and that of my children and family that the committee will provide leadership on equity leadership is bold not everyone will agree with decisions made and there should be an opportunity to hear from those who disagree but i trust the board chair to appoint committee members who will actually move equity work forward i fully expect that this will include continuing to prioritize equity in the overall goals of the school board and setting a specific goal of adopting an equity policy before the end of this school year i hope we will not prioritize the comfort of dominant cultures whether defined racially by gender sexual orientation identity etcetera over progress for our students thank you for your consideration and thank you for your hard work to open schools five days a week this fall

016from my perspective and that of my kids everything has gone smoothly and they are happy to be back sincerely annika hall of cumberland and i add my two cents as well and would just really underlie underline the idea that appointing people who actively don't support equity to the equity committee is foolhardy thank you thank you hi everyone um like everyone uh i'll start with my name i guess uh sarah allenby i live in cumberland i am a parent of two maybelline wilson kids um just to start a quick thank you for a successful start of the school year i'm here to show my support for the equity committee and our district's ongoing commitment to equity work i agree wholeheartedly with katie's statement about the need to have folks who support the work on the committee

017doing the work um in addition i would add that with some confidence that one of the reasons why this auditorium isn't filled with people um sharing their support for this work is that i think most people in our district would honestly be shocked and horrified that this is even in question that teaching our kids to treat people equitably and to treat everyone in our district equitably is even um being debated i've been following this since the beginning and it still boggles my mind that this can even be a matter of discussion on another note i am a jewish member of the community and i'm disappointed to put it lately that the first day of kindergarten falls on one of the most important days of the jewish new year it's hard enough that our kids need

018to miss these days in school every year which every year my kids do and it's just the way it is and that's understandable but i appreciate that apologies were issued and i would just ask for more awareness in the future not just for jewish families but for any other religious minorities um there's a lot of important observances that deserve just as much attention um or consideration as christian holidays lastly i'll just add that i'm appalled that when i asked one of the board members to put on his mask when we were inside the building tonight he met me with an eye roll that's not how you treat uh your stakeholders it was disrespectful and i'm called for and my six-year-old can wear a mask i'm sure that you can do it too without needing any

019eye rolls thank you [Applause] hi my name is mary carbone i'm a resident of cumberland um i wanted to start by thanking the board for requiring masks for all individuals it was a smart decision that will keep our students and faculty healthier and will help keep our schools open for five days of in-person instruction i would also like to thank the members of the equity committee for their commitment to creating an anti-racist inclusive community it is not enough to encourage students to live by the golden rule or treat others as you want to be treated i'm a teacher in a different district and as a teacher when i give students an assignment i don't just say turn in a good assignment or you know what a good report looks like i give clear and explicit

020expectations so that students know what good means and what good looks like teachers students and staff need to know what it means and what it looks like to have an anti-racist inclusive school environment the work the equity committee is doing in this regard is invaluable and long overdue i wholeheartedly trust the equity committee and the board to appoint members who will serve all our district and its equity goals thank you for your commitment to our students and the long hours you spend serving our community [Applause] is there anyone else from the public that would like to speak okay thank you to everyone that showed up tonight and shared your thoughts i know this is a busy week so thank you for coming second day of school so moving on we have communications um and the

021first item under communications is board delegate to the msma fall conference and i'm gonna look at kevin because i remember last year you were the delegate and i wondered if you wanted to share a little bit of your experience i do remember that last year there was a long meeting you see me winding up to get ready um yeah if i guess i've been on the board a little while uh so i'd always heard about this conference it was the first time that i went last year and it was shockingly long but let me begin with that piece of it i think it was a friday it was a fantastic conference and there were a number of things that uh within our board we do not get exposed to there were some folks that um

022they came in and spoke to the group on a number of topics there was uh the most poignant speaker and and you may have been there as well was the judge from new hampshire speaking about uh about his son and the need to focus on mental health in our in our students and in each communities and i it had a profound impact on me anybody who's interested in going into this this is not throwaway time though i think that as you look through that that agenda you're going to find things that resonate with you um that ability to uh to invest your time in this i think serves the board well and serves any individual well who participates i don't know if that's what you wanted but no that's great i mean i would i

023would add as being the representative for you that it's um also then voting in the state um on the state motions that they have for the state board goals so also everything else thank you ann and kevin both for that recap and also for attending those two years so in our packets there was a document that had a link to the items that were up for discussion and for voting um within that so what we need from our board is is a is someone to volunteer to attend that evening and be a representative from our board um do we need to have that tonight or can that be offline okay so by next meeting if anyone is interested if you could please email me and let me know so we can pass along the appropriate

024um paperwork and everything that needs to go along with it does anybody have any questions yeah mike when is it well i don't think it was on the thing but i don't know what it is oh it wasn't no well that wasn't very helpful exactly um i don't know if it's tough my head but i will get back to you and let everybody know i think you should commit without knowing no way oh i found it you have to click through it's saturday october 23rd okay anybody else have any questions okay i forgot it was a saturday i just remember getting lots of text from you saying it's still going a lot of coffee okay um anything else for communications um i did have something to add go ahead i just wanted to take a

025moment to address the public comment that happened at our last meeting august 16th last school year became widely recognized that i do not participate in the pledge of allegiance and i will continue to sit until our country is free of discrimination and bias and until every person has access to the same privilege and opportunity that i do i will not change my stance no matter how many times members of the public may take my picture sitting down or do things to set me up just remain seated um to question i won't change my intent because i am dedicated to our board to our community and to our country as james baldwin said i love america more than any country in this world and exactly for this reason i insist on the right to criticize her

026perpetually i also would like to address the fact that the lord's prayer was recited during a public school board meeting as tyler had already mentioned i asked for everyone to consider how they would feel if it wasn't a christian prayer instead an islamic hindu jewish or any other non-christian religion our duty is to serve all students to study all religions and all experiences i respect everyone's individual beliefs and i acknowledge that religion and spirituality guide a person and help them make sense of the world our country is not a theocracy churches and state are separate which we need to respect as a public school district thank you man anybody else have anything they'd like to share for communications okay so moving on to presentations we have a presentation from superintendent portland porter for girly girls

027green update oh yes i'm gonna put it up on the screen grab your mind i'm going to wait for it to go up on the screen what's up yeah i think i did pick that one it's here on the screen it's here down so as the board talked about at the last meeting asked that the administration brings forward an update to the greely goes green plan each and every meeting for the foreseeable future so tonight is the first update to the grilli goes green planned since it was adjust excuse me adjusted a few weeks ago by the board so i'm going to be giving you today's update for september 2nd do you need me to do anything i'll start to get it up on the screen if you want me to put it on some

028other setting let me know thank you so for the update i'm sorry for those of you in the audience that can't see this right now but basically the overall goal of the greely goat's green plan this is just a summary of what has already been discussed and approved basically the why is keeping kids and staff in school in person full-time the entire school year that is the overarching goal and obviously there's plenty of sub-goals that come underneath that health and safety academics and social emotional health are the three pillars that support that why but that is the why for the 21 22 school year and the how is layered prevention so the center for disease control talks about having multiple layers of prevention and helping to make sure that our students and our staff are

029staying in school full-time and are out of school as little as possible for quarantines or having to be a contact race doing contact tracing and and certainly to make sure that we're not closing any of our schools to in-person learning for any any period of time this year so in order to do that our district obviously this is just summarizing what the board has already approved has looked at a layered prevention model which is many aspects of keeping students and staff safe and ready for learning so the layer prevention mitigation strategies we have many and again this is just a review asking everyone to daily screen before they come to school consistently incorrectly using masks for as long as we need to do that and in the plan obviously i'll be bringing a formal review

030to the board of specifically about the mask wearing on october 18th if not before if necessary physical distancing the cdc recommends pool testing if not distancing we are trying to distance as much as possible in the classrooms but we are not locked into distancing if it you know detracts from the learning process and that's the message that we have given our teachers that if it's getting in the way of learning in your classroom then by all means don't do it if it makes sense to distance and you can do it feasibly in the classroom then by all means do that as well so it really depends on what's going on in the classroom at that time but our district is opt and opted um as the board obviously approved at the last meeting to enroll

031in pool testing the state no longer requires that we have a percentage of people who are interested so we can have any number of people interested and we can still go ahead with full testing no matter what what the numbers are so that's that was a good change from the state from last year so that's the pool of testing today i sent out a letter to all parents and guardians and staff asking if they would be interested in giving consent if parents are interested in doing that they should look at that letter and we have the the links now in the letter for both binex testing and pool testing and as soon as we have we've given that a few days and we've got things set up then we will will begin pull testing conceivably

032in the middle of september is the first date that we're looking at cleaning sanitation and ventilation we've talked a lot about that over the last 18 months and we continue to to work on that hand washing will continue contact tracing is continuing but there's a lot of new incentives as i introduced at the last meeting about how people can not be in close contact or if they are close contact not be quarantined the department of education has approved a bunch of new ways that students and staff do not have to be quarantined this year which is great news for obviously keeping us in person every day by next now testing so if they're symptomatic students and staff and students and staff that have symptoms during the school day they can ask for a test if

033there's consent given by the parents to participate in the binex now testing and we have that link as well for parents who are still thinking about it in the letter that went out today as well that's also in there it's just a quick form letting us know that you consent to it if your child's not feeling well we can get a rapid test and get results within an hour so that parents are not having to do that and students aren't having to quarantine for 10 days and finally vaccination rates the department of education is requiring and actually they just sent it out today that we now post or report i should say all of our vaccination numbers and i do have our latest vaccination uh numbers for step students and staff that i'll be talking

034about in this presentation so again briefly just summarizing data and metrics for adjusting the plan these are the areas that we would be looking at if adjustments are being recommended so at every board meeting i will have some sort of recommendation at the end of this presentation or this update to the board whether or not there's a an adjustment that needs to be put forward or not things that we look at are current guidance from the department of education and the cdc in maine community transmission data consultation with local health professionals and that's the superintendent's covet advisory group along with other professionals and other representatives stakeholders we have 20 people that serve on that advisory group covet cases associated with the district quarantines associated with the district um mscp 51 staff vaccination data and student

035vaccination data and then once we get full testing up and running we'll be also reporting on our full testing data and it will just be numbers but basically numbers of any positive cases that we identify through pool testing and then the number of participants as well and that would be it so no none of the information that we're revealing has any identifiable data but it's just information that we're using to assess our own district's metrics and again um just for the pub more for the public and we'll be posting this on our website obviously this presentation and every update that is done for the foreseeable future will go up on our website under the greely ghost green link on our main site we'll take you right to all this information this is the full roster

036of the people that are serving right now on the greely ghost green plan we have three external medical professionals one was added just since the last meeting in trying to to get external medical professionals on our in our group to make sure that we are hearing from those in the health care field as has been asked and i won't read through all these but most of them are from the last meeting and shouldn't look any different so as of today september 2nd i'm reporting the update to the board um there has been no change in state or cdc guidance department of education guidance at this point so this is a chart you'll see at every update i do for the foreseeable future at every meeting i'll be putting the same chart together unless we have

037other data that comes along that's helpful and i'll certainly report that but there has been no change in state guidance since last board meeting the county transmission status has changed from moderate to high if you go back there are just make sure that everybody knows it's low moderate substantial and high so this is one of four areas that the federal cdc has determined for cumberland county we were at moderate and now we are at the high range as of this week um the number of coving cases in msad 51 and we start with the beginning of the school year we don't go back to last year if people are interested in looking at the 110 cases or so that we had last year we have them archived on our covid information dashboard which is located

038on our website under the really goes green copitt information that you can go to our link and get all this but day two of school and we have no covered cases that we are aware of and no quarantines i will clarify that if there were quarantines prior to the beginning of school that were in the community we do not count them as part of our district and i know that there are some students in our district right now who are quarantining as a result of something that occurred during the latter part of the uh of the summer and we don't report those that that is not something that was part of the school year or happened it happened before the school year student vaccination data as of today and i'm going to i'm going to

039talk about this for just a minute because i think it's very important the state registry has estimated that our student vaccination data for all eligible students ages 12 to 18 is somewhere between 85 and 89 percent they just i believe that the registry pulls the information um from covid shots fully vaccinated students in that age range from our two towns and that's how they receive or get their estimate they get their information in turn from all the providers who are authorized to provide the covid vaccine so that's where that estimate comes from so i want to talk about the fact that our estimate from the state and the fact that our raw numbers in our district as of today are discrepant and they were actually quite a bit lower um even a few days ago

040when i first put out this presentation to the board or a couple days ago and as school has begun we're getting a lot more response from families i did put out a plea this week in another letter asking for parents to um obviously it's optional but to please provide the information if they're comfortable doing so on their child if they have been fully vaccinated so those numbers went up from the 30s at the middle school in high school and now they're up in the 40s our nurses continue processing the information and we put it and we log that information into our our database our student database so i expect those numbers will continue rising over the next week as families are providing that information to our nurses so i do believe that the the percentage

041is probably closer to what the state is estimating as they've been pulling provider vaccines so i think hopefully by the next board meeting i would be very surprised if those numbers are quite a bit closer to the 85 to 89 but i just want to stress that we don't have that information yet and we know that there'll be families that won't be comfortable providing that that's fine there's incentives obviously that families have to weigh about providing that information to us at this point the staff vaccination data we've been able to get um that information from our staff we've been back for a week already um and again it's optional staff do not have to provide this information to us but there's incentives for doing so and we've had a lot of staff that just wanted

042to come forward to make sure that they gave us that updated information we've also processed our new staff over the summer and so that's why these numbers had to be updated within the last few days for new hires and also people who have retired or or moved on so our 77 percent of our staff in our district have been fully vaccinated those do not include temporary employees substitutes coaches seasonal employees that's just our our staff members that are here with us each day so we have 403 staff so district-wide district-wide is any department that serves the whole district transportation custodial maintenance the district office we have a number of staff that work in all of the schools a whole group of staff that work in all the schools such as our psychology psych department our

043school psychologists and psych providers etc so 64 of our district-wide staff in our district are fully vaccinated at the high school 80 percent of our staff are vaccinated again this is based on the on the information that uh staff are giving us uh gms six eight seventy three percent gms four five seventy nine percent and mabel eye wilson school seventy percent i think it's fair to say those numbers are probably higher than what we have here again because it is optional and then full testing data as i mentioned we will start posting that data and i'll start providing that data updates once the pool testing program begins in mid-september so the superintendent's recommendation so in the end it's my recommendation to the board but i just want to say that the advisory committee the advisory

044group that we have that i mentioned earlier has a huge part to play in my recommendation and i take their their advice very seriously we've already did have a meeting about a week ago and looked at the topics that you're seeing on this slide right here first of all i asked the advisory group for advice on setting data benchmarks that was something that the board had raised and again remember this is a rolling recommendation so just because something isn't recommended tonight doesn't mean that two weeks from now at your next meeting i'm not recommending something different but this is as of september 2nd the advisory group advice and these are summaries this is not uh trans uh transmittal of everything that was talked about but feeling of the advisory group was that not at this

045time there was a feeling that the delta variant needs to run its course at this time there's a lot of reports right now that the delta variant could be at some point exhausting itself in the united states as it has in many other countries we're kind of one of the last countries in line i think for some of the variants so my recommendation is based on the advisory group's advice not to set any benchmarks right now in other words there was discussion at the last board meeting about if such and such percentage of students at the high school and staff at the high school were fully vaccinated would that make a difference in recommending no masks i'm just giving an example but i think that's one that did come up and again my recommendation tonight

046is not at this time doesn't mean again we're not constantly looking at these recommendations and and we will be at every board meeting removing the masquerade requirement um again the advisory group advice at this time is that we should be following the cdc advice on this the delta variant is there's too many unknowns at this point still and based on the metrics and data review including the transmission [Music] status of of moving to a high status in cumberland county that was certainly concerned and the fact that we don't have a full accounting of all of our vaccine data yet adjustments to the greely goes green plan so based on the advice of the group there were no other adjustments that the advisory group gave me and i took their recommendation again there was a lot

047of discussion about the delta variant especially from the physicians who serve on that group they were spent a lot of time explaining the delta variant and the context of public areas and public places and the importance of of masking and finally another the last topic that the the group briefly discussed was parent information nights sometimes they're known as open houses we've been calling them parent information nights for a while now in our district in whether or not those information nights should be in person or remote they're coming right up um all mo actually all of them are in the month of september um so we obviously wanted to get um i need to get some advice on how we're going to proceed with that the administrators are looking for more advice on that as well

048and at first our conversation was mixed whether or not there were other ways that we could provide the information nights whether it was staggered in person but at the end of the conversation um you know the advice was and again i think um even the doctors who had kind of talked about what what does this look like um we're certainly recommending along with pretty much most if not everyone in the group or most people in the group that in-person events of these magnitudes should not be recommended at this time as a precaution i also checked in with neighboring school districts right in our immediate vicinity and asked them what they had planned to do about parent information nights open houses and they were following a similar path that we were that they did not they

049were taking precautions that it was not worth the risk and if there are other ways that we can do this um you know i think that was our plan so we have been offering and my recommendation is really more of a what we've also been doing is to offer a lot of meet and greets a lot of teachers have been doing that over the last couple of weeks where they can do that without inviting huge amounts of people in they can stagger people in and out of the classroom in small groups and we have had a number of teachers at the elementary level who have done a meet and greet we've also given tours many tours i believe at mabel i wilson school at least 70 tours now have been given for parents that have

050asked for a tour to go see the classroom to go to walk with the principal those have been granted and i want to give special thanks to our administration for making all those possible into our teachers who have come in before the school year began and also have done a lot of meet and greets in the month of august so i think a lot of that for anyone that would like to for a parent that wants to see their child's classroom with their child come into the building there are opportunities to do that just please contact your child's school and again i've given you the why as to why the recommendation is that we do the remote parent information nights this year um supplementing with the meet and greets and tours for those who would

051like to see do some sort of in person so again the the delta variant is a concern came up from the advisory group and we've been able to come up with other ways that we can do some in-person ways for parents um to be able to come into the building and visit um and um and not have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people in the building at the same time which we do don't think is advisable at this at this point in time and then finally the next uh really goes green rolling update will be at your next board meeting which is on september 20th prior to the september 20th board meeting there'll be an advisory group meeting which is already scheduled for september 9th with the 20 people i had mentioned earlier so

052and i put that photo there because that's actually we're doing virtual meetings with the number of people that we have in the advisory group i felt that was the wisest course and it fit people's schedules better because there are different times we'll be meeting at five o'clock uh actually for this next meeting so that is my update um this evening thank you jeff i was part or impart of the advisory um group so i've was part of this whole conversation from start to finish that got us to today so i wanted to open it up to the board who may have questions um so i don't know the best way to just go down the line tom do you have anything um i do the first question that comes to mind is about the advisory

053group i know that we had some emails going back and forth about this but is there an opportunity for us to view these conversations i know i would feel more informed if about my future decisions if i knew what what was going on in these discussions do you mean like a recording of the meeting or yeah man i don't feel any need to contribute but just to hear what people are saying i think would be valuable yeah we we discussed that that was the first item basically we discussed after introducing each other and um basically the the group felt that a recording of the meeting wasn't necessary it was an advisory group however they felt strongly that minutes should be taken and we do have minutes of the meeting um that we have available and

054we'll be sending those out a person taking minutes was moving so we didn't have them available right away i do want to mention though that if you are interested in viewing the meeting during the time that we are meeting anyone is allowed to do that so you don't have to be a board member you'd be a public member of the public you just need to let us know so that we can provide that information for you um so as with any meeting that we have committee meetings they are open to the public so that is one way for people to um participate or observe in in those meetings and are the the way to access it is that made available so if you want to access the meeting you could actually attend the meeting if

055you're as a board member or the board is asking for the advisory group to go back and revisit this topic i did ask the group and they opted not to do that i felt minutes were sufficient but if you're asking i think he's asking how do we get how does people get the information to attend um we if you just um email frank parentis and she will send you the link to the meeting and that's open to any member of the public okay thank you jennifer um i guess i just have um a question about the pool testing and at this point what numbers of of people do we have opted in and you said that there we don't need a certain number but is it um do we have enough that it makes sense

056to have all of the nurses time consumed by it and my other question is what would the pool testing data look like that you'll be reporting good questions um so we won't know the pool testing often until probably the next board meeting i'll have that do we know as of like today how much we have because we've kind of had a couple weeks to go to get people um so the letter went out today uh we didn't get the actual consent link until today okay for parents that was a couple weeks ago that was the buy next now one okay so um parents if you want to be enrolled in full testing um you do have to fill out both that's with my next testing and pool testing both those consents have to be given

057so we didn't get the consent link until today so by the next board meeting on the 20th i should we should pretty much know who's participating and actually we'll be starting pool testing prior to that is our first scheduled pool test so a pool can be as low as two people and again it's not confidentially revealed there's no information that's revealed on any of it and it can be up to 25 people in a pool a pool can be a class it could be an advisory group at the high school it can be whatever it is but it's the set a set group that's always tested and it's set and tested each week primarily at the same time and day um so i will have that data for you at the next meeting but we

058did not have the live link from the company until uh actually last night today okay and i believe and i could be wrong that the link that went out included the high school but in your presentation it went k to eight we did include the high school and that is an error so we we're trying to see if there is high school interest um our high school nurse and the nursing team actually asked me to reconsider and just put it out and see what we get for interest in high school so especially for unvaccinated students that would be a very good possibility an option for them so so essentially the data that we're going to get is that there are over the la like in a two-week period we're going to test 500 students we

059found covid in 10 of those students so something like is that the process yes that's the kind of development i was just wondering what kind of data that we're shooting for that is the kind of data we're shooting for i think some of it i've talked to the nurses they also want to get into it and say well maybe we should be reporting something else too that would be helpful i think to understand so we're getting the right data out of it so that we we're making the right choices we have two nurses on our staff that are coordinating helping to coordinate the full testing for the entire district all the nurses are participating and obviously helping out but we have two points of contact in our district two nurses that have taken this on

060and we'll be we've increased their hours in order to make this work we're also getting a significant amount of help from the state um and from the company that they've contracted with so and it is free to any student and any um staff member in our district to participate so we're really encouraging people to do it it's a free test every week to see make sure that you're free of coping basically thank you um the only thing i wanted to mention um before we go further down the table is that during the meeting we talked a lot about what are those metrics and it came up a lot last time about what are the metrics that we're trying to hit on and as you can see from the recommendation there wasn't a recommendation for metrics

061and one of the things that really stuck out to me in the conversation was that we can't separate community spread vaccinations um those type of that data as well from our district because it's all one big bubble so if we only look at high school vaccinations as a metric to reduce or to remove masks we're really not looking looking at our full community and so one of the things i'm hoping is that we can work with our towns to make sure that everyone in our town is accessing vaccinations testing if they need to because if we just look at our students and our staff then we're looking at a small bubble and not looking at our communities as well so that was just one thing that really resonated with me during that meeting go ahead

062thank you so just two quick questions uh but first off i i do like the composition that you you have for the group i like the the number of medical uh professionals that have joined especially folks that have first uh you know front line understanding of how these spread they've been in emergency rooms and they've seen that i think it's i think it's very strong to augment what we have in the district um you made a comment when you head up this slide about the the percentages of staff and you um had said there are incentives to re report what are those incentives yeah so the incentives for staff for anyone really in uh in schools staff or students is that if they're vaccinated and they become a close contact for example they do not

063have to quarantine unless they obviously have symptoms but if they're asymptomatic they do not need to quarantine that's huge that takes a lot of at least at the secondary level takes a lot of people out of the equation and quarantining and i know quarantining last year for for many students especially if they got into an athletic team and then they're quarantined multiple times during the year um this is this is a big this is a big incentive for people not to also pool testing is another one full testing if if we have if somebody is enrolled in pull testing that's another way they can get out of quarantining if they're asymptomatic and so i i think those incentives alone have really helped to move the dial so that we don't have people rotating in and

064out of our schools this year like we did last year so when somebody comes on campus as a substitute or as a coach what protocols do we have in place for for this short time folks so we it we treat those folks the same way it's optional if they want to give us that information but if they do give us that information they will also if they are in contact with a positive case they would not have to quarantine or like you know otherwise be out of work well i mean outside of the the reporting of that do do we have any protocols for do we have a have we continued with the regular substitutes as we did last we have resumed our regular substitutes um because we have all of our staff well we

065had all of our staff for most of our staff last year but um because we have our staff back and we have all the students we could not make it work with long term subs as we did last year so we have resumed all of our daily subs and again a lot of our daily subs have already given us their vaccination information that's not included in the data i gave you but they're giving it to us independently so that's good but if they are a daily sub could we mandate that they give us that as a condition of being a substitute for the day we really can we anybody who works in schools at this point has to be optional unless the board the board does have the authority to say that for the district

066but at this time i i have not put that forward as a recommendation but the state has said the commissioner of education has said that a school board has the authority to do that the state is not requiring it right now thank you peter uh i don't have any questions just i can see with the uh and probably more specific at this point would be the high school that i can certainly see given the incompleteness of the data that at this point in time we we really have no choice but to go along with the superintendent's recommendation we just don't have enough solid information and to put on top of that as i say today we've got 600 new cases in the state so again i think until we get more solid data in the

067high school the recommendation that came tonight is legitimate the second thing is i am a little taken aback that the district-wide percentage of vaccination is 64 percent in a county that my understanding is is above 90 percent and the overall district of 77 percent now again some of this may be reporting but uh in my opinion that's not terribly acceptable in my mind given the level of education and the demographics that we're dealing with in cumberland county but again that's uh my opinion i i think if there's any kind of a mandated thing that's got to be something from the governor there's nothing that uh even though we could do it in the district that's uh that's putting too much of a burden on the board and i don't think it's our case but uh

068it is disturbing that's all i have thanks peter mike i agree completely with your opinion peter uh the vaccination rates are incredibly disappointing um i actually would be in favor of making reporting mandatory i have emailed the commissioner of education and governor saying that they should do that i think we can if you said we can do it i think we should consider it i think reporting is not burdensome to work in a district you have to be fingerprinted you have to report all sorts of things this is not difficult this is a public health issue fda has given full approval of the pfizer vaccine so reporting a vaccination i think personally i don't know why it's optional um that's not i don't know um the uh that and i'll stop there um so going

069to more specific issues i agree with keeping the parent info nights remote but i'm interested if there's been discussions or thoughts on specifically parent-teacher conferences those are small group settings those you know judging by cdc recommendations such small groups masks seems like that would make sense to have that in person i do think that that would be really wonderful for parents to to meet their kids teachers in person this year have you even thought to that i will be that will actually be a topic on the next advisory group because we start parent conferences in october for some of our grades so i will be asking for advice so that we can get out in front of parent-teacher conferences next so that is a topic i already have on my list for the next advisory

070group it's important that we um i bring something forward for that awesome um other i get this is somewhat random i guess but i just wonder if we've given because we're still using the same traffic flow from last year especially with miw uh but last year we i think had a lot more uh parents dropping off is are we sticking with that and having the bus drop off in the library spot it's just we are obviously yeah it worked better and we actually got good feedback um from parents that um instead of coming into the miw gym and there was always you know you know safety issues and it took a long time because you had to show your idea if a staff member didn't know and then obviously just the whole piece with covet

071and having so many people coming in and out of the building and making it just a lot more sustainable obviously the first week is is hard because you know we're trying to get used to whose number is who and getting that flow going again but it should get better but yes there's a lot more kids running the buses our buses are it's a very different situation this year with busing a lot of the parents are have resumed transportation on the bus this year as well i'm one of them and i couldn't be happier the only thing this is very minor but um we should think about making our little dice here a u i i feel like jennifer stewart's down there but i couldn't tell you if she is so yeah and it's hard to

072hear also yeah well i agree we also need another seat so when madison joins us we have enough room so oh yeah also on one floor it's okay we um we're working on it thank you mike ann um i also think that we really should consider making vaccination status required for all of our staff again echoing what mike said that it isn't burdensome that if you are going to be working for the district you already do have to provide additional information um and then i guess the only other thing that i wanted to speak on was masking and i i know that you know we've still gotten some feedback from families who would prefer that we aren't masking especially at the younger grades and i understand the difficulties of it um that it it does

073make it harder for our little learners perhaps to read people's facial expressions and feel comfortable in our schools um and they don't want their children to have any harm from that or start to fear school and i support masking and at our at our younger levels i have a kindergartener and a second grader and my approach with them and i'm hoping that this would be something that other people could also agree to is that you know we're not wearing the masks to keep ourselves safe we're wearing the mask to keep you safe and that this is just something that we're doing for now it's not something that it isn't something to be fearful of that we need to have that empathy we need to come together as a community we can't all be individuals who

074do our separate thing because we're in a community together so i mean just like even how tyler said how we can't just look at our school information we have to look at the information in our whole towns you know that because we are going places and interacting with each other and going to the library and town hall and whatever whatever the place is so there's a place when [Music] those strong individual rights i think really need to consider how does that affect everyone else around you thanks thank you jason [Music] i think if if vaccinations are one of the main drivers for how we make our decisions here then i think it is reasonable to look at the data on on a building basis building by building basis and specifically with the high school i

075think that that's a reasonable thing to break out and i'm hoping maybe jeff can break that out and continue to follow it that way and present it that way because i think if we are able to take off the mass at some point i suspect that it would be a reasonable thing to start with a high school um [Music] given that uh everybody there would be over the age of 12. so i'd like to see that data and follow that and i think it's reasonable to establish metrics now especially for the high school and sort of a goal if we get there what are we going to do and lay out the data now and not sort of just wait and keep moving the goal post as far as the advisory group just for the

076sake of transparency i think it's reasonable to have those posted and recorded and make them fully public and just let people see what's being discussed there's no reason not to have that out there i'm disappointed that there isn't a pediatrician on that committee um however i understand it is difficult to get doctors to um put in their time and and volunteer in such a thing i would not be in favor of mandating the reporting i just i i understand the varied opinions here i just find that to be a slippery slope and especially if the state isn't mandating such a thing i think i think uh making something more strict by a lower governing body sort of opens us up to uh issues and um regarding uh cumberland wreck scott i don't know if you

077can talk about any plans to help with the pickup procedure there or i know you and you've you've talked about that with pete and if we can make that any better as far as allowing parents to come in if they're masked and pick up especially in the middle school which is essentially empty do you have anything you can add to that to help that process be more normal yeah i i don't at this time pete and i are still discussing that yeah that's all i have thank you thank you vanessa hi i'll be quick um i echo mike um teacher conference in person i'd really would like to see that this year because it is in a small group setting the other thing removing masks for those that are vaccinated i think we have to

078be extremely careful because our middle schoolers do not not all of them are eligible to be vaccinated so if we allow the high school we have a lot of children that cannot be vaccinated they don't have the choice now they're intermingling with students that are vaccinated they remove their mass my child who's not able to be vaccinated has their mask on so i think when we get to that point it should be school-wide district-wide that we remove all mass for everybody and not just segregate high school middle school elementary school and i would like to see a pediatrician on this advisory board i think that's crucial to build the confidence of the community and a clearer definition of where our students need to be thank you all right so i guess my first question is

079what data we're specifically talking about to make an informed decision on uh what mask like the mask mandate um av are you asking me yeah okay i think um so that was the discussion that the advisory group is is should there be should we set a a marker now um for for example masking you know and again i'm making up an example here but if 80 of the staff and the students at the high school for example are fully vaccinated and we have that on file is that would that be a marker that we would use in saying that the masking could be removed in combination with a county transmission data status that might be lower moderate i'm making up an example but you know that would be the kind of thing so the advisor

080group chose at the last meeting and they're meeting again they're going to be meeting i think frequently for a while um not to decided not at their last meeting anyway not to pursue that doesn't mean that it won't be an agenda item it will be again it will be a rolling agenda item um and it will be um asked again if it's if it's something they want to consider so um you know i that's that's i think i'm gonna leave it to them give me some advice on it um and um and then and see where it goes all right so in regards to making it mandatory uh that staff and students or at least the parents of those students update the district on vaccination status i think it should be mandatory i think in

081order to make an informed decision on sort of where we go in terms of masks in terms of social distancing that we need that data to uh to move on i also want to see uh mass breaks a part of sort of the daily schedule like it'd be nice to say have maybe a 10 minute break in the middle every of every class to go outside take a mask break get it off your face and i think that might help relieve some of the stress especially with the younger grades that comes with wearing a mask oh i want to respond to what avery said so i think at the high school obviously there's not a built-in natural break during the day to go outdoors except during lunch right now i know students can eat outside

082all the other grades in the district have a built-in even the middle school 68 has a 10 minute kind of outdoor time to be outdoors and that was changed a couple of years ago so that kids were getting fresh air etc that was natural break so the high school is the one that doesn't have that unless they're going out unless students choose to go outside to eat so that is something i can bring up the high school as well and see if there's other possibilities but i think in all the other grades i can safely say that kids are outside at least once once a day i just want to say that 10 minutes isn't enough of outside time i know i agree i agree and um we can do so much better than that

083we need to use this time to change the way we look at being outside while on campus and i know that mike williams is committed to doing some of that work i know that there's a grant that's been written at the high school to improve a club that's maybe partnering with teens to trails in portland there's so much more opportunity there so although i know that there's so many other things that happen throughout the day we've got to be able to specifically with mass be able to get kids outside more often i'm going to say that probably every time we sit here does anybody else have anything else to say regarding the really ghost green update so i just have a question please quick question the three foot distancing if that comes back are we

084able to accommodate that now yes we are we're set up to accommodate three foot three foot distancing if the cdc state whatever required or the governor required it or whatnot if we had to go back into a situation again where it is required we are set up for that we have enough teachers in enough space built into our current plan that we can do the three-foot distancing tomorrow if we had to well tomorrow's not school day but tuesday tuesday we we can do that we have a few places very minor areas at the middle school in the high school where we would have to probably adjust some classes to make sure that we have the three feet but both schools did an amazing job making sure that all the schools did an amazing job with

085the three feet but those two schools are you know they they looked at everything and at this point we left um some of the allied arts classes a little bit higher um if you know knowing that we can adjust if we had to okay great thank you okay tyler i'm sorry one more thing here i know we're only two days in but do you have a sense anecdotally about how the plexiglass partitions were received in the eating areas i was down at the middle school today you're talking about middle school well it's at the high school too well the high school i think is a little mixed feedback avery you can certainly speak this better they can go outside there's a lot of outdoor seating at the high school and a lot of kids are

086eating outdoors right now at the high school and there's actually three different areas you can eat inside and then there's the whole outdoor area so right now it's there's a lot of options at the middle school because of the constraints of the land right now and just where the cafeteria is situated kids are eating primarily in the cafeteria there is plexiglass on the tables i was in the cafeteria today just to kind of see how the kids were doing i'm not sure the plexiglas was was the reason that they they wanted to sit with their friends and right now um we're just i think at that school they're just trying some things out with seating and we always do that at the beginning of the year to see how things are going so i think

087it was less about the plexiglass and more kids wanted to you know start eating with their friends and stuff like that so those are decisions that are made as the year begins that was my sense and i did ask some kids about plexiglass and they didn't seem to it didn't seem as daunting as i thought either when i was thinking about it i'll follow up with the middle schooler tonight yeah you should get in here don't worry avery i don't know if you have any comments about the high school lunch yeah so um so there's the biggest problem with the plexiglas is that you can't hear the people uh next to you like you know i know that it's supposed to sort of create a barrier but if someone's across from you it's near impossible

088to hear them uh through four layers or two layers of plexiglas and i think with the masks and you know the just things being as they are it'd be nice if at least there were holes drilled or something like that to let something through because uh it makes interaction hard during lunch time yeah i can't say that the middle school students had trouble when i was in there speaking to people on the other side of the glass plexiglas but um yeah well i think it's you know we're we're working it through i will see if it's it's working or not i don't know scott you you are you've had a lot you've been asked to do a lot um with this topic so i don't know if you have anything to say either no i

089don't have much else to add to it jeff i think everybody's talked about it so but uh again we're just trying to keep students safe and um you know that's one more measure that's uh trying to accomplish that i also think it's important i i recognize this today during my daughter's um kindergarten screening is that there's although we learned a lot of how to do things last year in covid land this year we have everyone back and so everything may look similar to the way things were done last year but now we have twice as many kids and so one of the things i was told was that they're at the middle school working on trying to figure out a schedule for al all of the outdoor spaces so that there can be a rotating

090schedule so that kids aren't just playing at a field but they can also access the playground that stuff is just getting figured out and so we are only on day two and so uh there's we're learning i'm i'm hearing that there's a lot of things to be learned even just in in two days so um there's still still some things in progress i guess and i think trying to be very cautious at the beginning is the way we wanted to start the year and if we need to you know pull back on some things later we can the other thing just to remind people is that we run two different schools out of one facility so the middle school is really two different schools and two different programs so we have five lunches that are

091in that building we start lunches very early 10 30ish and just go right through and it's just a very busy very busy building and so we we've had to take precautions just for that the number of kids the sheer number of kids that we've got as well so um we also have seven portable classrooms now on the school grounds at the middle school and it is you know there's a lot of land at the middle school behind the middle school for play um thankfully but it does certainly cut into some of the land that we have had at that at that school so okay anybody else before we move on all right so next step is superintendent's report and jeff mentioned that this might be long but it shows what's going on like the good

092stuff of what we've all been waiting for to be back in school so it's exciting yeah it is exciting to share this i will say overall that we've had a really good start to the school year i'm really i've been out and about for the last two days um and i i really have heard very positive things from just about everyone um and um i know we've had some bumps and hiccups as we always do in any given year around certain topics and certainly transportation is challenging every year at the beginning because we're trying to make sure especially the little ones are getting on the right routes and drivers are getting to know kids and where they're supposed to be getting off and picked up and it takes it does take time especially with the

093younger students so we always ask people to be a little patient with us in the first week or so of school so that we can iron those things out but overall i have to say we have had a very good start the first two days um and so i do have a lot of photos as tyler mentioned um we had a lot of um really positive activity on the campus this first photo was just all the fourth and fifth grade students arriving to meet their teachers on the playground yesterday for the first day this is yesterday as well mabel wilson school students arriving off the bus and being greeted by all kinds of staff that were on the sidewalk you can't see and some music nice musical tunes as well at the the wilson school

094very festive as kids got off this photo right here is of the high school um right in this room um all the classes had meetings over the last two days class meetings with mr gray mr hand and mr shapiro i'm sorry to interrupt are we supposed to be seeing the uh the photos behind us well i think we are sorry no thank you thank you for for telling me i didn't even notice can i is there another way for me to get it on there dark i'm not sure [Music] what is that thank you um yeah it's a blog dirk so it's hard to share but i'll try it's on blog post oh [Music] electronics if we can't figure this out in a minute or two i think we will move on because we do

095have a lot left to our agenda all right jeff you're up there me too okay great i think that's the last one though yeah this is a this is a preview one so at this point i'll just i'll just continue so we'll get out of the way so no i'm talking about that it isn't no no that's not the right one and jeff you can say you you usually post things yeah this will be follow along tomorrow yeah i apologize it's not on the screen what we will be doing is um posting this blog on tuesday we usually post it the next school day and make sure that people can can see it as well i apologize it's not up there we'll have to figure out make sure this gets up there but anyway i

096have a bunch of photos from the beginning of the school year i just want to remind people we have free breakfast and lunch as well for all students we'll have more information coming out in a letter from the food service department over the summer we had a lot of a lot of things going on on the campus obviously to get the campus ready um for the school year we have a lot of our staff that were here camp friendship which is a program for students who are in need of extended year programming tutoring credit recovery programs our custodial and maintenance staff which is supervised by don foster in karl rove deep cleaned every nook and cranny of our our district we had 11 modular classrooms that were getting prepped and placed on the campus of

097course the transportation facility was um being completed or it's actually still being completed right now but pretty much i'd say a couple weeks away from being in move in status and i want to give a lot of thanks to at the transportation garage to phil blake who's the supervisor of the transportation department and larry lair who's a mechanic and rachel swenson who's the assistant transportation supervisor director down there as well as scott poulin who's director of operations and has overseen all these amazing projects that get done magically within you know pretty much nine weeks each summer and so the photo if it comes up on the screen is of the three of them at the new transportation facility i will be showing you um at a subsequent meeting photos of the new transportation facility which

098we share with public works in the town of cumberland and that's a joint effort as you know and also to show you some videos of how the transportation facility actually works it's a great new asset to our school district and i think it will probably end up saving money in some ways even though we'll be obviously paying debt on that and i also like to thank the technology department which is supervised by dark van curran for all of the cleaning of devices every device in this district technology device deploying of new devices we've got hundreds of mounting tech equipment in the modulars etc etc it's just a lot of work and finally i'd like to thank our district office staff which works all summer including our support staff and administrators and our administrative team and

099our buildings and in the district for working all summer for staffing placement schedules planning closing our budget year out opening a new one there's just a myriad of stuff that goes on each each summer scott do you have anything you want to add about summer stuff or no just it's like a hamster wheel and it never ends we just every summer it's pretty busy so it is a busy place um and also on the blog i'll have photos of um all the additional learning spaces that we've added thank you for the board support on having 11 modular classrooms on our grounds between the middle school and mabel i wilson school the photos will show what the interior of some of those rooms look like i just snapped a few photos to show you an example

100a huge amount of work on the exterior to get grass going tar rehab the outside and inside of these buildings so they were they're really in great shape i actually end up talking with i would say vast majority of the teachers and staff that are working in the modular classrooms throughout the district and we now have 21 modular classrooms in our district and all seem to be pretty pleased with the way that they came out and our good learning spaces for kids so yeah and scott would like to add something yeah just that the person who did an incredible amount of work this summer was dawn foster on ensuring that all that sight work got done that working with skiaby to ensure most of that was set and in place you know the contractors that

101we worked with everybody from doton to story brothers i mean to story uh mike's story um it was an incredible feat this summer and also technology ensuring that we were getting all the technology devices in there um there's everything from phone internet alarms um you know there's um trenching that has to be done for a sprinkler system so it's um it absolutely is incredible what happens over the summer here and um you know and i don't want to minimize the work that those folks have done yeah i'm just throwing some of the thank you scott i'm just throwing some of those photos back up since they're on the screen behind me now for folks that like to look at them again i'll be putting this out so that people can have a chance to look

102at all this i'm just moving on real quickly we had a home football game it's the first time i believe in three years just trying to remember when the last one was we've had a co-op team with falmouth and all the games um prior to kovit were played on the falmouth field but we um we negotiated this year thank you to david shapiro a.d who negotiated with falmouth to make sure that we had at least one home game this year on our campus we have three varsity students from gurley who participated in the falmouth team so we had a huge turnout this was last friday evening right here in our field it was a beautiful night actually it was nice and cool and sun was out in the until the lights went on when it

103got a little darker it was uh it was a great night it was nice to see all all the people that came out especially the students to watch the game kind of looked more like a normal football friday night under the lights and there's another photo they played south portland that evening and basically it's whatever team you can get right now to play football so i think it was great that the south portland team was able to get up here i like to welcome all of our new staff we have a lot of new staff in our district this year one of the reasons we have so many new staff is that we because of our greely goes green plan we hired 10 additional teachers this year for one year only for teaching and i'm

104sorry this link isn't working it will work when the blog goes out people can click on it and see photos of all of our new staff and the positions that they are in um and then for a spotlight for the really goes green um i wanted to spotlight um a staff development workshop this week one of the three pillars obviously is social emotional learning this year in our fourth and fifth grade staff the entire staff participated in several sessions in fact i participated for a good portion of that time in community building and community circles and focused on the topic of belonging and every child having a sense of belonging in the classroom which is something we do every year but just a really an extra emphasis on those best practices for social emotional learning

105and it was really well done great job being led by katie campbell allie waterhouse and carol mcarthur at the 4-5 school class of 2022 well this is our senior class you know madison's not here tonight but class of 2022 right before school began many let's say probably half the class was able to get down to scarborough beach and just enjoy a few hours together at scarborough outside at the beach beautiful day just connecting and kind of getting ready for the year we know that senior can be hard anyway but to you know we want to make sure the seniors feel supported and we know that high school has has been hard for a lot of kids and just want to make sure that we have a good senior in place for this for this group

106um and then outdoor learning we've have all kinds of things going on and again thank you to scott and our maintenance department for making sure that keeping track of the stuff and keeping up with it we have tons of picnic tables and thank you to avery olsen our very own board school member student school board member for making a lot of benches we have park benches that were paid for by federal funds picnic tables made by avery and then we have regular picnic tables the pavilion and the and actually these spaces are being used pretty much the first two days constantly we also have the amphitheater and so there's a lot of options and tons of tents so these are good grade tents that won't blow away in the first win these are army grade

107tents these are the ones that will last so we're really excited about it and they've been really well utilized and finally i'd like to just say the teens to trails and tyler actually was participating in helping with that i think mike williams as well participated in helping the high school to um to secure fifteen hundred dollars for a teens to trail grant so that was awarded this week by the department of education that will get us started on getting some of our teenagers outside on trails during the school day and also well mostly after school hours through club through a club but i think it's a great way to to get that uh interest going i just want to interrupt and say that dan westhoven did all of the work for the grant during the

108summer when he was not even here so we he shared that with us and that mike and i are here to support him in whatever he needs going forward but he did all of the work for that over the summer thank you for saying that dan did a great job with that grant in writing it and he will be implementing that grant at the high school so we're really excited that we can get going on that with some seed money and again these are just pictures of outdoor spaces and again over the last two days they have been well utilized i'm really excited to see kids and teachers out there and finally i just added this tonight because i just found this out an hour ago congratulations to heather gagan she is one of our

109pe teachers here at the high school she has was just named today actually state's high school pe teacher of the year by the maine association of health physical ed in recreation and dance so i want to just thank and congratulate heather for that for that distinction so um anyway that's my update oh i had a couple others people ask me about this so i want to make sure i it's not on my blog um our preliminary this is very preliminary and i'll have an enrollment uh report for the board at our next meeting but the first two days i always caution people not to hang too much hat too much of your hat on these enrollment numbers but we have as of today our enrollment is 2 100 students for the district 608 students at

110the high school 468 grade 6 to 8 327 of grades 4 5 and 729 students at mabel i wilson school again those numbers will shift over the next two weeks part of it is record records between districts when kids move and things like that so it'll be a couple weeks before we have some more solid numbers but that's our preliminary numbers i have been asked to report on staff vacancies at this time we still have a number of staff vacancies mostly due to late resignations and mostly educational technicians so we have 11 vacancies currently in the area of special education [Music] we have a bus driver that we're still trying to fill i think at this point some of these are in process some of these aren't we have a custodial position that's still um

111we're still looking for um and a food service worker um and a we have an i.t position as well that we are still trying to fill so those are the vacancies that we're starting the year with um and again we had a lot of late resignations i've checked in with my colleagues educational technicians um have it's been challenging to to keep positions filled in in so many districts in maine right now the labor market is really good and so we're struggling to fill those and then every time we fail one someone else resigns and i expect that those that will stop at this point now the school has started but we were having those right up and through you know even a couple days before school began and then immunizations other than covid so these

112are immunization compliance i am i just want to say thank you to all of our families who pulled through for us we had 60 over 60 students who were not up to date on their regular immunizations not covet in order to start school the state law changed this year and requires that students cannot start school on the first day unless their their immunizations are up to date and that's a state law and philosophical exemptions and religious exemptions are no longer allowed in in maine unless a student is on an iep and then there's some waves wavering that can happen but that has to be done through the iep process so anyway we had six over 60 students that were not compliant in compliance two weeks ago and i'm thankful to say that today it's seven

113and we are working with a seven so to make sure that we get those kids to school so individually so that's my report thank you okay moving into committee reports kevin finance thank you nothing uh nothing profound to report uh we continue to look at everything and continue to take a look at all the warrants that come before us and um uh yeah that's uh that's where we are great thank you and policy i do have a couple of updates this evening for policy and the first is that um myself policy chair tyler mcginley um and superintendent porter met with legal representation from drum and woodson this week virtually regarding policy aca diversity equity and inclusion and education they've had a chance to review our policy and found that the draft we had initially presented

114had a lot of language that would be better served in the equity plan versus the policy so the policy will be going back to the equity committee for some rework before coming back to policy we will keep the public updated because it seems like we might have a shift then in how we involve public input that it might be more input for the plan though still wanting to provide the opportunity for input on the policy and then i also just wanted to comment on the vote to change communications and equity leadership steering committees from special committee ad hoc committee to other board committees um this is really just a house pleading process all of last school year policy committee had reviewed all of the policies relating to the board and our work and um at

115the time we just didn't know that there were some additional policies that could serve us and could help us clean up things until tyler had gotten some help from steve bailey so we'll also be working on implementing bringing in a new policy hopefully for board advisory committees bdf and at this time the work that our equity leadership steering committees and communication committees are doing are more adequately defined by other board committees this change does not affect um anything about how the committees operate and um it's again just really a matter of cleaning house um i have a good question so within the policy the other board committees just so i have a little bit more clarity um is appointed by tyler or the executive chair if it is to move to be a standing committee

116and currently right now we re-vote correct so i wonder if we can keep this conversation or discussion for when we do the motion okay i just i just don't want to get lost in that okay that's okay great all right that's fine i didn't know when it would be appropriate thank you tyler just quickly uh as the the acting chair of the communications committee i just wanted to say i completely agree uh with what ann said about the housekeeping process oh man i'm tired that this is a housekeeping issue uh so similar with communications that's all i wanted to say okay thank you and did you have anything further no no okay uh curriculum we do not have that anybody from that committee represented yet we are finalizing our committee assignments on the 8th when

117we have our retreat so we should have an update from that committee i would hope in early october student reports avery yeah the first two days of school have gone well everyone's happy to be back people sort of accepted sort of this you know masks you know after having a year of being with them and you know everyone's happy to see people they haven't seen in 18 months awesome thank you okay moving on into items for action the first item we have is to appoint our district physician do i have a motion so move and a second second thank you i'd like to open this up for discussion as i know this is a topic that has been um gone around and we've had some public comment as well so would anyone like to speak

118regarding this jennifer okay um i would like um either you tyler or jeff to speak more in-depthly about the process of of how we use the the district physician and um really kind of get into the details i think it was brought up in more detail to the board on where we lean on on the district position at this point and what decisions are really done just by the nursing staff or the administration and i think that would um help the community sure i'm going to ask jeff you know more of the intricacies than i do yeah i'll start and i think scott would also he also works closely on this topic and i'll ask him to also talk about it but our the district position in most typical years uh before cove anyway was

119a resource to the district um who we did not call on very often um because it was primarily for if there was a question that the nurse had about a prescription that they needed just to get some general information about um if there were questions about um we utilize the physician for things like um you know um air flow in a building or checking on a concern or complaint from someone about some sort of a health issue we might consult with a physician but generally speaking the physician was just someone that we use as a resource when covered 19 occurred our need to rely on the district physician grew exponentially and we needed to have somebody that we were able to have as a resource on a very regular basis um and when i say

120regularly i mean weekly and sometimes more than once a week we were calling on this person to attend meetings the the issue with the district physician is that most physicians are extremely busy and they are not available except for a very brief consultation so the district physician's role in the last 18 months has been one that we have needed somebody more available to us providing advice it's not decision making it's advice to the nurses to the administration to myself in making uh decisions or making recommendations um around health and safety and being a resource um for us so um i will say that the the role of the physician has changed um quite a bit in 18 months i think when the pandemic continues to wane the role the physician will probably revert back to

121more uh what it it looked like prior to the the pandemic and not needing that physician as much as as we have uh needed that person in the last 18 months but scott i'd like you to weigh in as well because you've had a lot to do with the health team in the last year about the position that we're recommending or about what the physician is actually the jennifer was wondering if i got it right the role of the physician you're correct on that jeff and um you know there are not physicians lining up to um do this work we were fortunate enough to find somebody at the 11th hour last year when we lost our district physician who came in and filled in for us and quite frankly did tremendous work over the course

122of a summer so that we were able to open school have cohorts and advise us through the school year the district physician is not a decision-making position and as you know from last year i facilitated the health team and many of those decisions were made by the district at the recommendation of the health team and at the doctor and others so so while some people have been you know faulting the position that we've had at times we know that that's been out there um uh dr chuck dr size has been amazing to work with and has uh not really taken compensation for this position um and so when we look at the three thousand dollars that he felt that we should pay him something um that's a really minor cost for the weekend week out

123constant help that he gave us in order to keep students and staff safe last year so so that's that's you know we shared a lot more um on that and where we're at um he's done great work with our nurses the nurses have never had that kind of resource before that he's provided we've had physicians in the past who have been much like what you've you've talked about jeff and um you know our current position um is the physician for falmouth bonnie eagle and baxter so um uh you know we we quite frankly last year had to truly convince him to join us in order to help us yeah i think i mean obviously um you know with the discussion about the advisory group um we moved in a little bit different direction with the

124health team set up this year that we wanted to have an advisory committee directly to me and we also streamlined a lot of decision making in the district right to the district office this year not that we weren't heavily involved in a lot of decision making but because there was so much minutia of health decisions and contact tracing and things like that we needed a health team internal health team set up last year this year it's different and we're able to bifurcate a lot of things out and get some external more external assistance so the district position is now one of four physicians um that the district is consulting with truly um as part of the of this advisor group and that is where the bulk of of the advice that we are getting now

125as well as our two rns who sit on the group and we have a group of five ras who work in our district two of whom sit on this group what i saw from our last advisory meeting was that the physicians were all aligning together with where we were heading and what we were doing so there was no discourse between the physicians they were pretty much reinforcing what we were doing jennifer did that answer your question okay does anyone else have any comments or go ahead kevin sure thank you so a few of these and gentlemen thank you for weighing in i think that that that definition of the role is critical because what we're talking this is i mean the way that this motion is written it is the district physician and health officer

126and of course i i think i've asked you two gentlemen and anybody else that'll pick up the phone what is that role so some of those things like writing a prescription for an epipen to have uh in a building is one of those roles in discussions that we've had i've asked that question would we have arrived at a different decision last year with a different district physician and really the answer was no because we followed what the state's regulations were and what was absolutely quintessential to the opening of school this year was to ensure that we were prepared and we had the options that we should have for the community to be ready to go to three feet and it was not an outcome of the physician i uh it was funny i looked at

127a number of the videos from last year of when dr desai weighed in and helped us to understand uh the decisions that we were making and the very first meeting the gentleman was a rock star and everybody thought that he really cut to the chase and helped people to understand very profoundly but then when his feedback was continue to stay the course not change that that's when the perception of the district doctor changed in my opinion so i i think that you've done a couple things that are solid i think that he has served us well i think that you have uh brought on some other subject matter experts in your advisory team and and i think i'm looking forward to see how they will work in concert with each other with the five rms

128on staff you know can i just say one more thing and it's more actually off of the topic a tiny bit but i know that several people have made comments on the board and i i thoroughly agree with the comments that we should have a practicing pediatrician i will say that we have made efforts to get a practicing pediatrician on the advisory group i have struck out um more than once in trying to persuade um very reputable people to consider the task but i'm very pleased with the uh with the physicians that we do have on the advisory group they're very um you know renowned in their field really they've dealt with covid many times over and have an incredible wealth of knowledge about covid and public health and so i don't i know that

129there's a concern that we don't have a practicing uh pediatrician in the referral group but honestly the caliber of the physicians that we've got including our school physician uh and the other three physicians i i don't have a concern at this point that we don't have enough solid medical advice that we're seeking thank you jeff mike yeah thanks tyler um you know i i've struggled with this um i appreciate the um appreciated the letter from the community uh from a number of parents uh is very well laid out and very clear and uh thoughtful uh specifically the notion on uh how we need to have a board certified pediatrician i appreciate that point i think it makes a lot of sense and i think it's something we should continue to strive to do i appreciate

130that you've reached out and tried to get a pediatrician on the committee jeff something i hope we will continue to try uh the one thing i just want to note um i mean i know we uh and again another appreciation uh that the gentleman said he didn't want to look backwards but i mean i think we should uh consider that you know that the ad hoc committee was um contentious and at times problematic um i wasn't happy a lot of i don't think many people were terribly happy with how it went out went over and so i think that uh i was actually one of the people who asked the question of dr desice and i didn't appreciate it but that being said um the notion that i don't i don't agree with that there's

131many places in our country even made where there aren't board certified pediatricians care what they have are people who practice medicine and doctor decision practices um he handled the initial meeting quite well um came back after uh the committee improved but you know that should acknowledge that that was just a series of meetings didn't go terribly well uh and people are right to not be terribly happy but where we stand now and how we go forward um dr decis is incredibly qualified and generally kind and smart and so i i don't have a problem voting to approve him i do think that we need to continue pushing forward and looking to get a board-certified pediatrician but in this instance i don't think it should be a hang up for us thank you mike one quick

132question um during these advisory team meetings are the other three doctors will always be present so we've only had one meeting and um two of the doctors were present because the third one um i literally we picked him up this week so he agreed to join the group and will be joining our meeting next week so we'll thankfully have a full roster of health professionals okay thank you anyone else jason not being on the ad hoc committee i found it helpful to hear from jeff and and scott during the sessions that we had there about this doctor and it's kind of a really tough situation to find anybody that's willing to dedicate that much time for uh three thousand dollars so i think really if we want to get serious about changing that position i

133think really you got to talk about changing the pay in the process a little bit and again also what i heard was that the decisions really came down to administration and this board and the doctor was just advising that said i would like to hear more diverse presentation of the data sort of on both sides and the opposing views and even if he doesn't agree with it to sort of dispute it logically with facts and why certain things don't make sense and and also i think that ideally would have somebody that was a pediatrician but again acknowledging the pay and how hard that is to get somebody to step up i understand that's all i have thank you avery yeah so i think that even if we did have a practicing pediatrician that that that's

134a very demanding job and they may not be able to put forward the dedication or the time needed to properly advise the district and the superintendent thank you avery i'd like to say that it was very helpful to hear how the district uses this physician position that rhymes and it's different than i think what a lot of the public has expected out of that and i also think to assume that every pediatrician is better prepared for covid than a family practitioner is something that i think is is not something that would be successful for us no pediatrician knew exactly what to do with all of this so i think a family practitioner that has years and years of practice is is something that we should acknowledge i do acknowledge the concerns that were shared with

135us i've had many conversations i agree with much of what mike said that we appreciate um a lot of what has been shared and it's a difficult position um to be put in but i do think that um dr desai is the right choice and i do think that balancing that out with other professionals um specifically meeting as often as we are is really a good answer to those concerns so unless others have yeah and i mean i only had one quick comment that hasn't really been said already and that is um i guess even though i will be voting to recommend charles desai as our doctor that doesn't mean that i didn't really sit down and listen to the people who told me we need someone different um it's not it's not quite so

136simple as that and i wish i wish that it was i um concur with that can i add one more thing yes please yeah i just want to let people in the community know and and others know that i i personally am very grateful to dr chuck for the work he did for us last year we were floundering in july and this gentleman came forward and helped this district immensely and i want people to know that i am thoroughly grateful to dr chuck for stepping up and you mean july of 2020 right not this joy when when kobe was first out and i'm just thoroughly grateful to him so thank you thank you scott okay so moving back to the vote all in favor [Music] we should clarify that this is a an ongoing this

137is just for a time frame also that we're approving this it's an annual right and it's not just stated so just to kind of understand that oh because it's not stated in the recommendations that you're saying so the language should say that this is an annual um position yes we have we have to bring it annually um it hasn't always been brought annually and i will be honest about um that part that we haven't always had a physician that we can bring to you annually it's sometimes been a practice that we have been using um and not a physician necessarily so it's whoever has been kind of assigned to the district um but yes we even practice we should we should be bringing forward annually and we certainly will be okay thank you so moving

138to item b do i have a motion you could read the motion or i can move okay do you want to sure why don't you read it okay uh to clarify procedure for membership i moved to clarified procedure for membership appointment of other board committees in the board's bylaws to line up with language for steering committees standing committees standing committees there we go thank you in a second a second thank you so vanessa is this motion um where your question lies yes okay go ahead so when it comes to changing the communication committee and the equity committee leadership steering committee it is now going to be a standing committee that the executive chair will appoint people to that well it's a little confusing and i will tell you that i've spent a good amount of

139time digging through policies and bylaws and being on the phone because this was a this was a vague area and i'm glad we found it so um our bylaws and hopefully people have read those but our bylaws have a section where it states standing committees it also states that understanding committees the the board also has um other board committees which is defined as the board also appoints representatives to serve on other on other district committees essentials to the operation of the district including but not necessarily limited to curriculum and facilities so so it's it's standing but it is a separate so it's it's different in that it's not considered a standing committee it's called an other i wish there was a better term we did ask if we could call it something different but based

140on the bylaws that we are given that is the term that it is um falling under well and also when this previous board reviewed the bylaws we also went through that trying to see if there was any other way even before this issue obviously if there's any other way that we could delineate the differences between the committees besides just other and unfortunately it wasn't so it's going to the communications committee essentially will run parallel as if it's the finance committee and be governed underneath that okay that's different so that that would be a standing finance and policy okay other would be curriculum and facilities and we are recommending or voting tonight to add communications and equity to that other category and who appoints those people to those other so regardless of any committee whether it's

141called other ad hoc or standing the chair appoints any board members to those committees it happens annually at our at our retreat so that's one of the confusions about this is that this doesn't change any sort of appointing it just classifies our committees in the correct way under our bylaws and it also recognizes and i think this is important that equity is not a task-oriented committee as of right now equity committee has been looked at as an ad hoc committee so it is my belief and i i believe the district also supports us as a as a board we voted three different times to continue to have equity part of the strategic plan so that so when you every year it will come up the board can can choose to to do what it would

142like to with those committees with the ad hoc committee with ad hoc now during this process i also did realize that we do not have an ad hoc specific policy that we can re that we can go back to as a foundation on how these um committees work so during my conversations with maine school board association they have shared a sample committee uh sample policy with us for those ad hoc committees which is something i've passed along to the policy committee that i would recommend that we um adopt so that all of our committees have a foundation on how to move forward how it's reviewed how the board manages or interacts with those committees and so forth okay so the ad hoc committee when is that going to be coming up for vote to if

143we continue to do that um that would be up to the policy committee i'm not sure what they have in front of them as far as when that would come to us for a first read i know it's it's um you know something that we'd like to get to sooner but there are some things that had changes due to statute that we have to address first okay so the communication committee the equity committee and what other ad-hoc committees would be coming up for vote for the with the board for the year to either continue those committees or stop them that's item c isn't it no so so item c is when we're going to talk of when we are voting about those two if the board wants to review other committees in the future once

144we have an ad hoc policy in place that's something that we can bring to the board all right perfectly i'm sorry it's really confusing you are not asking the wrong question i've researched this and i've looked at it multiple different ways and i just want to be perfectly clear when we change a policy like this and by laws okay thank you awesome glad i was able to answer your questions anyone else that would like to speak or uh have concern feedback about this motion so the um the equity committee how what has it been the last two years it has been a while it hasn't been really allocated to either of these because it hasn't had we don't have an ad hoc policy so it would be a special committee but it hasn't technically been

145adopted in either of those places it was a couple years ago it was created by the board it was appointed by the board as part of the strategic priority process and when the strategic plan was amended at that time it was the board chose to create this this group so it's it's been kind of on an ad hoc basis uh informally through the strategic plan but by your bylaws it really has to come up annually if it's going to continue being a buy going to be a ad hoc group is that all you had jason um well i just i think i'm frustrated for an unofficial committee it's had a quite an effect on our community um i agree that the committee's definitions need to be cleaned up and and but this this part of

146it is just a small part of it i think that all committees and the way that they're formed in the way that they're maintained and the memberships are assigned and members chosen it needs a bit of an overhaul and i think that the way that the system is is made right now with essentially all of it coming down to the chair is terribly unbalanced and undemocratic and even if you just look at the anecdotal evidence of what has happened in our community i would say that this approach doesn't help [Music] and before we move forward with this i would say let's make it part of a greater overhaul of looking at the entire process and not do this now wait until after the retreat and after we talk about goals and i can't imagine why

147a couple more weeks is going to make a difference given that the equity committee has apparently been functioning for two years as not a real committee i just don't know why this has to be done right now and i think it needs to be part of a larger process to make things appropriate so that there's some checks and balances in place i just don't want to keep doing things in this town that divide divide divide because they're so one-sided i think good legislation should be almost gridlocked so that the things that move forward are well balanced and have solid input from both sides okay so first can you please put your mask on appropriately over your nose thank you and secondly this is a response to making sure that we are doing things correctly i

148have heard from so many people in this community that they want to know how these things work and so i have had to work on this for the past well for a while now and this is this is why this has been brought up now we are actively setting committee membership assignments next week by the board we are asking our committees to meet and report out to the board for work that's being done on a daily basis in our district waiting would further push this committee and communications committee and other committees for instance on special committees in a place that was consistently in the gray area so waiting in my opinion is not appropriate and why i continue to to ask the board to vote on this i just wanted to note that the notion

149of a special committee or an ad hoc committee um is not exclusive to the equity leadership steering committee by any stretch of the imagination just an example the outdoor learning committee was created as an ad hoc committee and it helped drive the expenditures of a couple hundred thousand dollars of some i think really good projects ad hoc and special committees aren't just random things created they're explicitly denoted by the board as a priority at this time to create a committee to work on an issue but noting in not creating it as a standing committee and i don't i'm not i wasn't on the board at the time of creation of this but that it's not necessarily something that should be there forever and so i think that's where the differential is i agree with tyler

150that it's time to clean this up because um the the bylaws around here is i mean the fact that there's nothing connected to it i don't think that works but there's this notion that the equity leadership steering committee was some random committee that had that had major consequences oh my goodness that's an exception that's not true uh there are many committees that were created by edict of the board this was one of them and it gave advice to the board it gave put out notice and has meetings and so on so forth so that's the only thing i wanted to add thank you mike can i i don't know um you know i mean i i understand and appreciate um the frustrations though i wonder is it really people feeling upset at the equity committee

151as a whole or at the statement that we issued in june of 2020 and we issued that statement because we live in a predominantly white community and we were witnessing just more horrific anti-black trauma that happened so close to each other or at least in terms of news release and us as a committee just felt like if we can't say something about this like why are we even here like what what is the purpose of us starting this work if we don't if we don't point out these everyday occurrences that need to stop peter well oh way in i i don't really have uh really a difficulty with with this particular motion uh you know the what is it item b yeah yeah i'm fine with that i i think one of the things that

152we did last year is retreat and we had main school management that worked with us and we really hashed out you know really a lot of issues that you know we really didn't have a chance to during the year and i think we hashed out the june 2020 thing and uh i think there was some thing is that strategically and everything it was the right thing to do if we had had it to do over we might have done some stuff with the language but i think it was just useful in a more informal thing for the board to hash this stuff out and i thought we did a good job with that last year and i just think with the with three new members on the board that this stuff is is that i

153mean i don't have a problem just uh as far as is the second one uh delaying that a couple weeks so that the whole board i think will get to the same point at the end but i think it's important for the fact that we've turned the board over and everything that i'd like to have some this and other stuff hashed out and kind of a more informal thing where we can you know again uh not be in the fishbowl but at the end of the day we'll probably at the same place i i just think i wish we'd have been able to have this retreat in august where we could have got a lot of this stuff done uh we didn't but i think on the i'll vote for item b but i uh

154i would like a little bit more time for the total board to have some discussion on uh the other one again i think we'll end up at the same place but again that's just my humble opinion thank you peter and kevin i just like oh i'm sorry oh covered in vanessa oh please i just wanted to address um anne if item b could have in item c is just trying to understand the language and how it changes and how the committees are run and how so it's not it could be we could be talking about an item c b athletic advisory ad hoc committee so it's just more clarity around changing a bylaw moving into the items sorry i got distracted i think i can probably weigh in on that a little bit so standing

155committees so policy obviously um is in finance are your only standing committees us a board of directors though in maine has the ability to add any number of committees to standing committees you could have 20 standing committees if you chose to have them but i know over the years this is when it's come up the board is stuck with those two and then everything else is it used to be called regular committees until legal counsel a couple years ago told us that's not the right word use other so standing committees and then other board committees became the other operative term and then anything that's beyond that has to be an ad hoc or temporary committee and a lot of our ad hoc committees were created through the strategic plan board sanctioned we also have um

156and i just i'm just doing this for informational purposes only i put it on the screen for the board we have a lot of committees in this district um probably more than we need but um and some of them right now are dormant um just because of other priorities but um just to kind of give you a flavor of you know these committees most of them are internal uh committees or they are external community committees or they're just staff groups that meet um you know inside our district and don't involve people outside they're just groups of like staff like all the phys ed teachers meet and all of our nurses meet et cetera librarians but then we have um and these are color-coded for a reason we have the yellow which are the board uh

157committees um which the you know these are actual board committees and then we have the green um which are admin committees that have been set up um and they're for the purpose of getting work done some of them were created through the strategic plan but primarily our admin groups or admin committees that are run by the administration doesn't mean just administration are on it we have a lot of other people um but they're not actual board designated committees so i i kind of just wanted to show the board that that you're the kind of your jurisdiction is the yellow um and what you choose to put into standing committees and other committees and then everything else becomes an ad hoc group and i know it is confusing especially if you're new to the board like

158why do we do this um and um and the board can make a decision and say we want more standing committees the the biggest and just to answer vanessa real quick the biggest difference and maybe the only difference between standing committees and other board committees that are designated are that stan are two standing committees have to post their agendas and take minutes and post them for the public and other board committees don't need to do that and so i think that's why there's always been this kind of discussion how many standing committees do we have in our district those are formalities that we have to do with those two groups we can you know a committee can choose to or another board committee can choose to do those things they don't have to um those

159two standing committees you do have to you know post and take minutes that's kind of the biggest difference thank you kevin now those standing committees are also the only ones required under statute your state statute yes thank you i i think that that's an important distinction um it's really the only only requirement look i here's where i struggle since you asked um is is just this when we are looking at a policy as this board we have a first read on that it goes through policy we have a first read on that we have the opportunity to to spend additional time ask questions poke holes is appropriate come back and and make a decision as a board i don't think bylaws are less important than policies because if policies govern the way that we do

160business in this district bylaws govern the way that we do business as a board and so to echo a few of my colleagues i i would say that piece that we've got a retreat coming up we can continue to to understand this to continue to understand the impact without having the perception of trying to rush something now i this could be any committee so this just happens to be uh one of the committees that has drawn a lot of attention in the community this could be any committee that we were looking to make this distinction i just want the same uh rigor put to the way that we govern ourselves as we do within the district um you know with equity in a in a perfect world equity wouldn't be a committee at all it

161would be a way of thinking it would be the the right approach to being civil in our communities but that isn't the case and there is additional work that needs to be done and i'm fully in support of that group continuing to do work my only uh additional question is what becomes gained other than transparency which is you know no small task what else becomes gained by changing the distinction because if i read the bylaws correctly it doesn't seem like special committees and task forces is a bad definition for any committee it's just uh reappointed annually it does not in my opinion diminish the great work that the committees can do so yeah i mean now that the superintendent's covet advisory group is an ad hoc group that's only the board created it basically for

162a year and if we you know i hope that we don't have to have you know as much as these are great people hope we don't have to be doing that a year from now um and that would be a an ad hoc group that we just wouldn't wouldn't be bringing back to the board for before approval so our review but [Music] right i understand what you said i can i comment to that i mean i think just looking at i mean obviously i understand that i have the opportunity of looking at maine school management association board advisory committee's policy bdf and you don't but um you know it does say that unless given a new assignment by the board an advisory committee shall be dissolved promptly upon completion of its task or shall automatically

163dissolve after the board has received the committee's final reporter recommendations so i think the issue with like equity and even with some of our other committees like communications is that there's always tasks that it's not necessarily one single task it's not like the calendar committee when uh or when they were looking at earlier release wednesdays or something like that and in my opinion that's why um it's different and should should be moved out of that way and and if i may i i'm sorry go ahead it's i i think you're spot on with that ann it's it's not like stacking wood where you know when you're done it kind of looks a little bit pretty and everything is all set that distinction of a special committee again in my opinion this one absolutely meets that

164definition as responding uh to what's going on in the community and i think that in terms of the mandate behind having that committee it's profound it's necessary i just by changing the if the only concern is that it gets dissolved if the work is done i don't think the work is going to be done i think it continues to evolve it continues to be necessary it continues to be a priority so under whatever the heading is i think it would be well served my concern is having this in front of us today and you know that that ability to retire back and continue to look at that with a very finite timeline and come back together as peter said where we can talk about this as a group and land on the right solution and

165it may be exactly this and i am in favor of it i'm just concerned about not doing it the right way okay um so the the only thing i would like to add to the kind of the differentiate between the other and task force is exactly that equity as a district we have um said multiple times and as a board and i understand there are new board members here that have not made these votes but that we have voted i believe three different times to include equity as a continued strategic priority and if we don't acknowledge that in our committee work in our bylaws then it does look like a task and it does look like we might be checking a box at some point so that was that was my um thoughts in regards

166to the dif to the different kind of buckets that it could fall into i don't believe anyone else has any discussion i'd like oh sorry because we aren't we are voting on this in two different chunks so i want to make sure we're staying clear on what we're voting on first right okay it will be i guess it will fall under the sea okay so if any if no one else has any um oh jason go ahead so i'd acknowledge what mike said about special committees and what ann said also that you know a special committee has a specific task in a time frame and i would argue that this equity committee in the way that we've done it and the effect that has had on the community in a positive way has not worked

167so i would i would argue that it should be dissolved and that we look at starting over and include diverse thinkers that believe in the goal and have the same good intent and argue about the path to get there because both sides of this equation i've had deep discussions with both sides they agree with the goal i don't believe 99 percent well i i believe that 99 of this community agrees that equity is a normal goal what is debated is that the path of some of the approach taken so far actually helps from a psychological standpoint this great debate on how we get there so i would argue that to move forward with this is the wrong approach you should end the special committee and form a new one and i would likely change the

168name slightly and focus on different things inclusion i think is a good word anti-bias is a good word but you come at it differently from a psychological standpoint um that's it okay but then there's also people who say the equity leadership steering committee is doing an excellent job and is long overdue for being in place so you know there's going to be people who like it and there's going to be people who don't like it and to say that we need to scrap everything that's happened i think is short-sighted and also that's not something that we're voting on tonight and we can talk about that at our retreat and and just to clarify i wasn't evaluating the committee right that's not what we're here to do that's not that's not at all what i'm doing

169um mine it was just simply the procedural piece yeah that's exactly what this is it's procedural thank you do we have uh so we've done we've done a vote and we've done the second i think we've had uploaded no we haven't voted can we make an amended vote to table this oh hold on jennifer let's go ahead and move yes go ahead jennifer we're still in discussion okay so um i tried to research this on my own i really don't i feel as though i don't have enough information to vote on this i've kind of looked into the information that we have on the website in in everything and i don't feel really prepared for this and i'm not sure if there's more information that we can have to kind of um sort through this

170on on the vote b that we're doing what are your additional so okay so i guess how this will affect i mean we're talking so much about the equity committee but how will it affect i believe what jeff had had said is that the the committees that will be moving to the other committees there are there isn't a need for any um sort of minutes or um i'm blanking on what the other posted so standing committees but i have great concern with the facilities committee being put into that category especially with where we're moving with the facilities and the the magnitude of that work the communications committee i believe that should have that transparency too um so i'm i'm not sure if this is where i can gain that knowledge and i you know that's

171all i have i guess i would just quickly respond to any committee um or the board itself can just say we really want that group to do that minutes and much like it was discussed with the advisory group that i have that you know there is a feeling that should revisit the recording of the meetings um it doesn't preclude a group from doing that it just doesn't it's not required that's all that's the difference um and currently right now with other committees you've got curriculum facilities and then we um we left off negotiations because that is another committee that we've always had right and that's just a and it is task oriented it's very tax-oriented yeah so those are really your other committees and then your standing committees are your two course policy and finance

172so those are kind of your core committees and now we're saying the board has got to decide do you want to move other groups into other and out of ad hoc relationship to the board okay so since the motion has been second we're going to move forward with a vote madam chair yes i'd like to make a motion that we tabled this in the following uh article uh b and c add both of these to our uh our retreat schedule to discuss and then look to reschedule a vote on these on the september 20th meeting okay second okay so all in favor to tabling having a discussion at retreat and then um bringing back these votes based off of our discussion on uh september 20th you can ask for discussion is there any discussion motion

173to table is non-debatable oh beautiful [Music] thank you peter okay so all in favor just me and and i'm opposed all right thank you for the discussion this is confusing i appreciate that we have an additional time thank you so we will then move on to item d which is approval of professional positions do i have a motion so move and a second sec any discussion i have one question um in the board packet that we received at the it was stated that the person um that we're hiring is under contract with a different school district and where does that stand at this point so when that happens i work with the superintendent of the other district that's sending to us and we negotiate a timeline that's appropriate has that been completed it has been

174okay any other questions or discussion are you all in favor i'm sorry thank you okay and then a motion to enter executive session and please read the motion madam chair quick question uh do we have to do two of these votes or can we vote to enter executive session to discuss both items uh we do have to come out of executive uh for each topic you have to uh come out you you don't have to vote to come out but you have to vote to go back in for a different uh topic i i kind of feel like rules should be updated yeah that's i moved into executive session can you read the whole thing to discuss property acquisition pursuant to state statute mrsa 405 6c thank you another second second and all in favor

175thank you i'll give you something set up for drinking or something kevin i'm glad you've got friday i don't know maybe we do need to pray okay so we are back to vote to enter a second executive session do i have a motion i recommend that we vote under executive session to discuss labor negotiations with the msad 51 school secretaries educational technicians and library technicians pursuant to state statute mrsa4056d thank you in a second second okay all in favor great thank you i don't think these guys you