MSAD #60 School Board Meeting

001um hi guys elva can you hear me yes thank you i believe yes where's the actual camera right here hello oh i was kind of hoping we could see ourselves but you see pretty much the whole room uh yeah i see two different sections of tables okay all right i just we switched around the uh layout yeah to make it a little i can see part of like the head table and the one that would be to the left of it okay okay so you can't see kate but she's hard right to you so she can't you that's okay that's okay i think it's all right i think my view is sort of from the podium or where the podium used to be yes exactly okay i think we're good almost doesn't happen i don't

002have anything so did they come up so velvet could be here okay from out yeah i know is this right cannot the flag of be united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation god indivisible with liberty and justice she's going to read the public input the first public input session is a 15-minute session with each person having normal 10 minutes in which to make a statement a second input session may be held at the end of the meeting if allowed by the board chair the speaker will agree with his or her name address and reason for speaking public input is designated for district residents court chair may grant non-residents the opportunity to address the board please note that statements involving certain subject matters such as personnel cannot be made

003during these public sessions public input can be made in person during board meetings and or submitted by email through the link at the top of each meeting agenda found on the district website emailed statements will be read during the first input session at the beginning of board meetings okay uh do we have any people for public input tonight okay i see two hands one of you like to go first right my name is jamie weber i'm from north berwick and i'm a resident and an employee of the district i come here tonight to thank each and every one of you on the board for your hard work the last 19 months has been very challenging for everyone but perhaps even more for those of you who have patiently listened to the many voices in our

004communities paid attention to the growing scientific knowledge around the coven 19 virus and experience and considered the safest way to get our communities children back in school full-time where we all know they learn school subjects best that is the only piece of work that's not the only piece of work you've done we've been elected by the people to make important decisions about our most precious resource and their education in an unprecedented time and you've done the job i know that i represent many others who could not be here for a myriad of reasons when i say thank you for doing this work under trying conditions and for considering the needs of the children in school as you did this work you deserve more than just my accommodation you deserve thanks from all of your constituents

005thank you very much good evening my name is elizabeth chassis my husband brad and i are raising four children in this district and i'd like to thank the teachers faculty and administration for how hard they've been working for our students i'm here tonight to address the glaring lack of kindness and respect i've seen within the m760 community to be frank this behavior is often not only rude but a downright racist and homophobic this is unacceptable i urge the administration to take this misconduct seriously i also would like to remind the parents that our children are watching us and learning from our actions at our last school board meeting i was horrified when a parent in attendance made a homophobic remark about the gay prize leg the following week an 8th grade student was physically assaulted

006by a classmate who didn't like her gay pride flag this is unacceptable lgbtq plus students in our district are being verbally attacked at school they are being called gay slurs they are barked at and they're harassed in the hallways this is unacceptable this is unacceptable in our schools and it is unacceptable at our school board meetings parents please do better teach your children to disagree without being disrespectful and please teach your children that hateful homophobic and racist behavior is always unacceptable again i urge the administration to take all instances of racist and homophobic behavior seriously hate has no place in our schools and all of our students deserve to feel safe within their community [Applause] thank you anyone else okay thank you thank you moving on to minutes of the september 16th meeting they are

007very well ready there's a lot of a lot more information in there that i usually don't see so very appreciated wait a second oh one second okay all those are approved how you doing over there did you uh approve yeah yes thank you okay all right next is maine school board association delegate nomination so this comes up every year we need to have a delegate from our board to be participating with the named school boards association there is a conference coming up as well so we can start with just the definition and so can i just give my little pitch again for the value of this conference so for those who are new i guess you're the only one here but um and elva but um it's i've been able to attend a couple of

008times and i have found it incredibly valuable uh there's all sorts of workshops i haven't looked at the outline for this year but it's everything from the sessions on how to be a new board member how to um you know a lot of diversity equity and inclusion work there's stuff that's um going to be covet related special ed a whole just everything the whole spectrum and um usually the keynote speaker is like like mind-blowing and fascinating a couple of years ago there was one on um like poverty in schools and how we don't recognize it and you know just that whole piece but also how to help kids kind of succeed regardless of that there was one year that was on the keynote was on mental health there's just it's just a very um rich

009couple of days of programming so i would say anybody who is able to attend i highly recommend it and then the deal with the delegate is that we need one delegate and one backup delegate um that was that the point of that is to agree on the um the uh help me with my wording here articles that they're voting on yeah the resolutions the resolutions which we have a link to and it's whoever decides to do it i can fill you in on the process i won't bore everyone with that here so there's two pieces too there's the um the delegate so we do need someone to represent us but it's a virtual conference affair so that makes things a little bit more simple for folks who would want to attend and that it's uh

010october 28th and 29th 23rd 23rd and 20th yep um and so anybody that wants to attend canada so it's it's a lot more flexible it used to be in a faster and it's a little harder for people to get away so um yeah does anybody have a desire because they're also doing one for school board chairs but that's a different thing i volunteered [Music] i will touch base with you after because i've done it once live and once virtually and um nomination for the school board so just i mean i think for the actual conference like more people can attend so i don't like alva and i i'm trying to blank on who else we're missing victoria yeah so i don't know if they if they're interested but um yeah so jen can sign up

011whoever's interested and then you'll get the links and all that so put me down as a baby if you would i will re i'll forward the link just to the conference information and to all of you i put for the cheaters okay right next american rescue plan okay so we just need to update you as to how we have determined um how we're going to try to spend the four million dollars that was allotted us to the american rescue plan um that is basically we spent we took a bunch of time working with all of the schools talking with um parent parent-teacher organizations um staff the whole bits and pieces of it to try to figure out what's the best use of the funds to support it the money that is um allocated to us

01220 needs to be set aside for educational recovery so we've got some pieces on that and then the bulk of it actually we're doing things like um ventilation and really um windows window repair so the the funds are being sent out office breaking down a little more clearly for you hold on we specifically got four million we did yes yeah and yeah um so our um what are the parameters for that no but i was just going to say this time they wanted the focus on educational recovery and that continued ventilation and air quality so that was those were the areas of our focus yep so we actually are focusing specifically on um math increasing math coaching throughout the district because we've done a lot of work on the literacy aspects of things providing literacy

013functions for the district then we're focusing alongside that with our increased support to our mouth so that we can raise up our increased quality of math education that's a big piece of it we also are giving a focus on um social emotional learning we've had a lot of it's been a difficult 18 months prior to that we've still had some issues anyways and so we're really focusing on trying to help bring our students sort of to that level playing field in that aspect and um so but the major funding is going to um the ventilation system throughout the district we're going to upgrade the ventilation specifically at the middle school because that is in the dire need and as well um we're going to be looking at all the honeywell trolls that were put in

014it's been about 15 years since all the honeywell pieces have been put in so we're going to upgrade those as well throughout the district and then we're going to do window replacements in fuzzy norfolk elementary school hanson and normal is there a potential of continuation of expenses without revenue looking at hiring staff that after this year after that so it's a three-year cycle approve that budget so the funds are good for a three-year period with what we've put into place we're hoping we'll be able to that we will meet the needs that we have within those two two to three years based on that the presentation um and then we may have to make some decisions about whether or not these are things that we want to continue or not um but our goal is

015to set a good ground and be allowed and to be able to move people to a place of um moving on without this position can we make sure in the budget process that those positions are like i know four million money versus yes yeah and that'll actually be a completely separate package similar to how we do with like our special education local entitlement or our pieces with the um the esea funds it doesn't even sit within the budget itself no it's not and i'm asking this because i've looked through my safer grant when the government gives you money yeah you have you know you know you're a person for that position you pay so much every year you know the percentage is different than at the end it's all you right and and that's these

016are a little bit different in terms of everything's excuse me being paid strictly through the grant and then we have to make some decisions at the end of that period as whether or not this they have met their their goals right because our goal is not to add necessarily perspective to shore up everything and we have to make some decisions about where the other piece that i think we've talked about or have been asked about what um expectations are asked of us in order to receive these sounds regarding um ppe and all those pieces we do not there there are questions that are asked of us regarding are you implementing the safe standards that um are recommended by the federal government regarding safe schools so masking is a recommendation you know and all of those

017pieces so just just to put it out there it is not mandated we don't receive the funds because we met but we do check off that we do follow up to safety but then i just want to clarify that for everybody um so this is really just informational for you guys to know that this is where we're focusing our funds and we'll talk about it down in the budget season i mean you'll see some of these things that have been maybe on our list of um particularly in the buildings like in terms of our um yeah our facilities just to say we can take that piece off of our facilities because the ar coupons are going to come out i think it's important for us to have a breakdown and when we get into our

018facilities and finance committee spreadsheet that shows us where that money is going yeah my two cents is i just i i do i worry about you know the still the recovery from the last couple of years and i just want to make sure that we are you know if we have the opportunity to fund some help for that sooner rather than later i would i think that i think we have a a short window to sort of catch that before it starts to become a more permanent thing so i just i'd like to see us do as much as of that as we can and and one of the and and that the social emotional and the and there's a piece here academic i i didn't talk to you about but it's um we actually

019have someone working space our goal is to have someone working specifically on after school programming to support that just enrichment programs to bring kids back up to speed because we have had such a lengthy um sort of gap for our kids so any and all areas just to bring students back to the table and increase their get their skills back and forth do we need to vote on i mean once you come up to plan specifically um it is actually i'm set to go in terms of everything so you can vote and say that you know you guys approve the spending on the ventilation system on the windows and on the um educational recovery project that would be great it is an actual total of four million eight hundred four million eighty five thousand eight

020hundred ninety dollars and eighty seven cents as well i will personally like to see it yeah that's why it's reimbursement models so we have to spend the time so we make the application they approve the application and then as we spend funds for reimbursement and it's i mean this obviously is uh informational for you all because we've done two other of the answer funds um already but i'm happy to share that with you i'm actually gonna post it on the website it's on our website as well just so that people can see it it's always good to do so we'll walk on that later together okay oh right along with that that's your timeline oh yeah denise is coming up everybody um so i can't actually believe we're talking about budget if i'm being perfectly

021honest um our audit for fiscal 21 uh the last part of the field work for the authors begins with a week and a half and uh we're working on getting our hands around 22 and here we are going with 23. um so i believe sue handed out um the timeline to everyone i also think i don't know if this is true chris i'm going to try to present the board meeting you have to join the board during the meeting yep there she is amy you're going to need to do the same thing um so actually we have kicked off this fiscal 23 budget season already with our administrative group we had a meeting on on the 28th of september to do some goal setting and um a general overview of what we were looking at

022this year um so that's really the beginning where we all the cost center managers really try to start focusing on what next year might might look like and what they might need they're looking at you know facilities they're looking at staffing they're looking at all those things um the next thing uh the week of november 29th that's the next big thing for us in our timeline here it's when all the cost center managers come in and present their budgets to me sue and audra and again we have a a litany of questions that we'll we'll go over with them again addressing things such as projected enrollments staffing facilities um anything else that that they've come up with that that's a need um revised budgets are due back to us so after that meeting the cost

023center managers go back and anything we've talked about that they need to follow up on finalized quotes anything like that gets done in the month of december and december 22nd they are to submit their their final version of their cost center budget um friday january 28th that's when i have to have taken all of these budgets put them into our financial software uh process payroll estimated medical expenses all of that that is um that goes to agra on january 28th we take a first look the three of us at after everything is put together the big numbers what does it look like now how much is the budget looking like we receive our subsidy information on february 1st and we will also have a cost center meeting with all the administrators on that datejust to

024just review and revive revise our budget by the february 11th we hope to have our first draft budget finalized and have the fed the budget binders that you get each year with all of the cost centers and all the tabs to you by february 18. or excuse me yes november 18th we then have february vacation this is always a tricky time fitting in the facilities and finance committee because we get the subsidy relatively late in february like february 1st we need a little bit of time to work on the budget after that to see where the revenue and expenses are falling this year we talked about um let me back up last year we had some presentations to this committee during um february break and in our conversations this year we're feeling kind of like

025people actually need that break you as well as the cost center manager the principals people need to take that time because they get so little of it so what we thought we might do is present to the facilities finance subcommittee the week of february 28th the beginning of that week we can work to define the times and times of day and what works for everyone but we're thinking that that presentation during that period of time would be a good time thursday march 3rd audrey would present her budget and turn it over to you to be the board's budget and we would also have the budget workshop q a where you get to go and ask questions of all the cost center managers we then follow that up with four weeks of budget discussion focusing largely

026on what the big topics for the year are and we want a final draft for approval on thursday april 7th after that the information goes to the attorneys and the following week the board would need to have another meeting to sign the meeting warrant and call the budget validation referendum that's those sheets where everybody signs in the same spot and they have you know a multitude i think we did it electronically this year so we may be able to do that again let's see we then deliver the warrants to the three towns we have the district budget meeting in the in the it says the gym that's a typo that should be the theater i imagine and that's thursday may 26th and then the vote by the public is on june 14th and i'll refresh

027my memory is this the year we're going to take the hit on the state subsidy did they did they push it out so we didn't lose as much last year no i think what happened this past and for fiscal 22 the governor increased the amount she was sending to schools because we had already developed our budget and the amount we were receiving was not planned on that's the money we returned to the three towns so i anticipate next uh fiscal 23 is going to be the second year of the biennial budget for the state so i anticipate that the 55 would remain um so i don't at this point it's very early but at this point i don't have anything that's telling me that that's going to be reversed all right right are you interested

028[Music] because it looks like here it's only that one meeting but we must have other meetings when had you guys been what was your meeting schedule like so it is for this aspect remember its facilities and finance so for this aspect it's that one week we meet two or three days yeah it was like two half days i think last year and that was when the 28th of february and then we do have the building aspect of it well actually the building community's a different one yeah because you're all the building community yeah can you like put me on the b list for the finance part like i would be if i can it's just a long way off and if i can make it work i would be interested i don't know who's i

029know it's one of the half days it's it's the march 10th through the march 31st that's right but that's like what we're looking at if it's joined in nothing and it's a couple of half day meetings um if victoria doesn't want you if you love me i can deal with that i don't want to keep doing it but if somebody else wants to give it a try all right lots of fun to come thank you okay you lost schedule there all right next we have let's just play the updates for you [Music] file type i've saved it as okay thanks okay so um as you all know there have been hundreds and hundreds of pieces of legislation in the last year um and they affect the district in many ways this one is um a

030change in legislation that affects um what's called the participating local district um it is uh if you go to the sec the second page the first page with information on it what is the pld so the plc is an optional retirement plan offered by the main public employees retirement system it's offered to those staff members that do not qualify for the teacher plan so maine state retirement has um a plan that teachers must belong to and they take a percentage of income and it goes toward their retirement and they do not contribute to social security administrators most administrators all principals superintendents food service adult ed those people all are required to participate in this plan in addition to ed text 2 and 3 and then you have other administrators such as the technology director the

031facilities director me my staff we don't qualify for that plan so the district many many years ago decided to offer this plan for those members that couldn't qualify for the teacher plan in the pld the employees contribute to this plan in addition to social security and the the contributions are on a pre-tax basis um currently um employees contribute either 6.75 or 7.5 based on their age they have two different plans right now based on retirement age and these earnings go directly to a plan in their name the percentage that they contribute is determined by um the main the main retirement system they cannot say how much they want to contribute or change it if they participate they tell they they contribute what the retirement plan makes similarly we are assessed a fee that goes to

032the retirement system and it supports the benefits that all for all that participate but it does not go to our employees accounts it's not a match it goes to main state retirement to support the administration of the plan and any other expenses that they have it's we don't get a report or anything as to what it goes to but it goes to them and then they decide how to spend it so um just that's an important note this is not going what we pay that eight percent is not going to our employees um if you go to the next page do employees join the plan all new employees are given the option to join this plan if they meet the requirements based on their position so as i said before certain positions must contribute to

033the teacher plan and others are qualified to participate in this one they're given detailed information when they complete their new higher paperwork and they have we'd like to see them within a week but they have up to 30 days we can allow them to make their decision about whether or not to join the plan the decision to join the plan is a one-time irreversible decision as for any time they work for us so if they choose not to participate then they can never join in again and if they leave and come back they are held to their prior decision as well so it's it's a lifetime irreversible decision similarly if they participate and they come back they still must participate and you cannot opt out you can't join for a little bit and say you

034know what i don't really want to do this so the changes there was a legislation recently that allows an exception to the one-time election requirements that does not conflict with federal law this new law permits any eligible employee who has declined membership to have another opportunity this november to participate so basically they're giving these employees the option to say you know what i've changed my mind i do want to participate um that there are some of the differences the contributions for these employees joining under the exception would be made an on an after tax basis so normally when you contribute to retirement it's pre-tax so the government doesn't tax you on it now they tax you on it when you take it out of your retirement plan later this would be taxed now it comes

035out after the fact so it doesn't have that preferential retirement treatment in addition um if we uh adopt this exception starting in fiscal or starting in 22 probably november there would need to be an annual open enrollment opportunity for anyone who still declines who has less than five years of service so you have up to five years on a rolling basis to say yes or no and once you make once if you did that in year three then it's still binding and all the rest of it all the rest of that's the same it's it's three you have five years to say yes can you open an enroll during that time or is it any enrollment it's only to get in there's no getting out there's getting out and you said um that the money

036is now going to be cast it's yes so what happens is you um when you have pre-tax expenses you don't pay federal tax on the amount of um deduction that is a pre-tax so if you contributed to the 403 b plan option we have in the district that anybody can participate in or if you contribute to your main the teacher plan it comes out so you have your earnings of a thousand 100 comes out and you're taxed on 900 in this case you would be taxed on a thousand and then the hundred would come out um is that just for the people that are joining now under the exception yes so we would now have to keep track of two separate lines pre-tax after tax and have to um it's all a manual process so

037spreadsheets about how many years of service when did they join what year are they in how many more do they get like it's it's a complicated thing just to make sure we don't miss anybody right that nobody slips through the cracks so so is it like a roth ira where you are not taxed at the end because you're taxed at the beginning um i don't my guess would be yes because it's considered after tax and that's usually this is the only way the irs would allow this is if it was after tax so my guess is yes but it doesn't work like a like a roth ira in that what they do is they count your years of service still they they it's almost like a quasi retirement plan but it runs alongside social security

038and is a little different it unlike a roth you don't put aside um ten thousand dollars and then the ten thousand dollars they pay out you and you know 200 a month they take your three highest years of earnings do some calculations about longevity and things like that and come up with a money in amount for you so it functions a little differently and i'm not exactly sure in all the fight you know the peculiar the particular details if somebody left and came back in a different role it depends on the role so again if they qualify for the pld then they have to maintain whatever choice they made okay regardless of okay if they were if they left after year two and came back in year four they would probably be able to still

039have a year to say yes or no like one open enrollment period um so and i have a question on the cost okay so next slide okay i'll let you go over first yeah so um similar uh to um the main state retirement system where we have to contribute a percentage of people's pay back to the retirement system the state has to cover the employer side 100 um years ago maybe eight years ago now and i'm not exactly sure we started having to kick in a certain percentage for those people similarly here we contribute um toward this pld retirement plan i included the the increase in rates just to show you that it is not a level thing you don't get charged eight percent and it's eight percent for a long time um most years

040it goes up some years a little bit some years a little bit more um and then what we try to do is in the next chart is try to ballpark what our exposure might be if we adopted this plan and the trouble was it's based on wages so the eight percent is a charge to wages so we have you know the range of wages here so what we tried to do is break it down by category and come up with an average wage based on these different um employee roles when we did that we got an annual cost so we took the average salary and took eight percent of it to come up with the annual cost then we have the number of members that are eligible to join but have not they declined the

041first time and so if they were to take advantage of this um exception we this is the potential cost that's basically the eight percent of the total correct so we had all 126 staff members qualified but do not yet belong potentially a 350 000 cost and it would be this year it would be only part of a year because if they elect to do it now we've already had a couple months it would be like two-thirds um but it would be something that we would need depending on how people enrolled if they all enrolled and we signed them up then we add that to next year's budget when we're budgeting for payroll so but it's not retroactive it's they just get paid from now on correct and this is legislation so this is not optional

042right like this is happening one way or the other this is um this is an option and what had to happen is the main state retirement system had to approve this exception so their board said yes we will allow the school districts to decide what they want to do and the next step in order for this to take place would be you would have to approve it for our district if you want to take this and put this into you know in place we would need to do a formal vote and i'd get some wording and we would do that next meeting if you don't want to implement this then there's no action to be taken so this is really the one that you get to decide how you want to how you want to

043be what do you know off the top of your head what percentage of eligible like the this is these are the eligible employees who have chosen not to enroll do we know what our percentage of enrollment is of all eligible we have 55 currently participating which is a per out of what that's like one-third if you add everything up right approximately yeah let me give you so this potentially this represents the other two thirds of eligible people in this pool so we have 181 people that qualify and thirty percent participate are we contracts like obligated to do any of this at all i would say this i you know everybody is given the option up front to participate and um we also have a 403 b uh retirement plan option that they can contribute to

044in addition to the many options that are outside of school um one of the reasons people contribute both to 403 b plans through the district for example is because it comes out of their check pre-tax this isn't so and all of these people are eligible for that yes every single person in the district is eligible i don't know a lot about the maintenance costs of these plans but eight percent seems high having none of that go as matching right it's a it's a similar concept when we get grant funding and we pay people with grants i think the percentage we pay is somewhere around 22 so we do we you know we we pay for positions out of grant funding when we need to but ideally we're doing other things that don't have that percentage

045attached to it this i mean i don't know what it costs to run such a plan but um i i would agree that eight percent that doesn't directly help our participants is is a lot but i also don't think how is that fair teachers administrators whatever have to participate so they have a different plan though right eld you don't really get a pension with access to medical coverage and you're like a real retirement plan um but they but they don't get a second chance right they are required to participate right there is a rule that they must participate i'm just wondering where this is coming from because these all these people were eligible to sign up for it when they were first right right we all know the back door about the legislation i don't

046know the backstory of legends yeah that's that is i think it's a little bit um about timing because we just negotiated the contracts and we didn't incorporate this into the negotiation process so so this doesn't you know again the teachers for example that were just that just finished their negotiations don't participate in this portion of it they are required to participate in another plan that's offered by maine state retirement this is really for afl cio members that union with the custodians and the and the drivers this is central office staff this is technology staff the food service staff and ed tech ones actually um are under this plan and not the other is this the one time we'll only see this right now we make a decision right now with or is this something that

047could come up against in the contractual negotiation aspect nope this um this is one that you have to implement by november 1st i believe it's gone it's not so long that they're looking to perpetuate but they're giving you the option now to decide if that's something you want to do i think they were already given the option yeah well there's other options that they can take advantage of if they want to uh that's it for that eight percent that's a big impact in our fiscal budget for eighty percent that doesn't go to them that would be a little bit different it requires us to track these people individually um put them put in open enrollment yes give them the information it's not just hey do you want to sign up this year you would need

048to provide documentation give them information about what the plan does how it works like it's it's an open enrollment period where you have to provide lots of detail i assume that they are i know how in depth you are i will assume that this is your will and all they can't sign up for this oh yes when they when they're hired you don't do it you're done yes yeah because it isn't irrevocable it's one of the things that gets pointed out specifically um unlike medical insurance where you can decide now and if you know you decide in a year you want to join again you can or if something happens and that you have a major life activity or you know you get married you have a child you're you can't change your plan at

049that point as well this is different when i found this that i had to deal with from my work that well uh i couldn't be president that we didn't have a choice it was the legislation it's being implemented so now so this is a two-step thing and in order to for it to be in place the main state retirement board had to approve it and the local school district boards have to approve it if not then it is not not accepted as a as an option so a majority of local school boards or like so not every school board belongs has a pld for example marshwood does not belong to the pld they did not sign up i don't have one at all i know that in 2006 we were already under a consolidated pld

050where they kind of had us all in a big group anybody that had signed up um the any districts that are part of municipalities like sanford or kittery portland they have to do whatever the city does so that may be that the town of berwick is doing it therefore you have to or you have to offer it anyway um i think i have talked to there was a threat on the business manager listserv and one of the business manager it was adam from auburn he was asking what is everybody doing out there there were three responses from school districts that were from very far away that said they were doing it they were smaller schools he got no other responses and i haven't had anyone return a call to say yes they were doing it

051the most i've heard is that if they're part of a you know as a city then they are waiting to see what the what the city councils decide yeah i would struggle with the i mean i think it's good that we offer this plan i just kind of struggle with the cost given that that doesn't go anywhere in the district right would love to be able to help out employees with that but right so there's no matching and it's and it's in addition to social security so it's you have to contribute your 7.65 to social security and or to fica and you have to contribute um seven you know six and a quarter seven and a half percent top of that and you think there's about 130 people who aren't on a plan now but

052do you have any idea who might be interested well so what happens is this is this is taking a snapshot right now what happens next hiring season when we hire 70 new employees it means we add whoever doesn't join at the time of hire to a five-year open enrollment cycle so that you know it just it this number is is big but it it can grow it seems like a strange piece of legislation what are people feeling as far as do you want to vote for it till next [Music] done and we have a chance to do it before and the state's not funding most of it anymore um and you know that's a lot of money now for equity i feel confident that we have retirement options for everybody um and in addition again

053everybody's welcome to do things on their own whether it's a rather an outside annuity or whatever it is but um you know again the 403 b plans for example offered to everyone regardless you all could join the 403 ranks if you'd like [Laughter] um but yeah so you know again i i think i am feeling the same um not that you need my recommendation but none of this money goes to our employees directly yeah it's just a convenience fee and if you just you know you could have you know zero people of these 126 everybody could say no again but everything you know you have to kind of keep it rolling and new people come in each hiring cycle and where it's coming after the taxes and theory they could take the six percent and

054put it in the account that's doing the same thing right [Music] oh hello what are your thoughts i'm still thinking to be honest with you i i had some of the same questions about um do we know who might want to you know uh up even though they've said no in the past and we have no way of knowing that not really i mean we i suppose we could ask but it's not it would be something where you would want to give them information so they could make a decision even like a survey might not give you accurate results because they don't necessarily have all the information we're a time-sensitive crutch yeah that's three-week window we have too that's a small window i would rather if if we want to help out the employees give

055them something directly that they can put towards their retirement rather than the next labor negotiation give them some percentage just for that i mean it wouldn't be required to use it for savings but yeah that and that wouldn't be in a huge administrative yeah i think that man hours to track this are going to be crazy yeah because you know each pay you have to make sure that the that people who are supposed to be pre-tax or pre-tax and post-taxes post-tax so it's really deep diving every payroll in addition to the annual um open enrollment so this this 300 k figure does not take into account any additional labor you might need to to manage this no okay okay all right thank you for your thank you if you ever found out who initiated the

056legislation i'd be interested let me see what i can find out on that yeah thank you denise thanks all right i'm pretty sick we are collecting all plans updated plans from the schools and departments so we report that out at the board meeting following october 1st just to provide information to you that we have received the plans we don't share the plans because they are safety related plans and they have confidential information in them so to date all schools have submitted their annual concurrence page which talks about any changes they have uh the middle school because they were not housed in the middle school last year has something they have some areas that they're going to focus on this year as they go through safety and some of their committee work and we are still

057waiting at this point in time on our transportation safety plan it's been a little busy in the transportation department so they're they were focused on getting students to account school covering bus runs so they're looking at their plan right right now so that's where we stand as far as our safety plans okay we've asked amy to join us to provide us with an update and we have a few other updates to share as well as your presentation we did share about our presentation earlier today just so you have it it may be easier to look at it on your computer than see it on the screen it came via i shared it with you yeah it went on as a google slide yeah so it says 10 7 21 board meeting it was shared as

058a google slide niece is on it oh that's the pld plan but it feels like um did you get that and amy are joining okay are you there yes but this is this is in an email i'd like to look at it are you going to share your screen amy i'm trying to all right so what is it echoing i heard okay so i i'm gonna kind of mirror the last presentation that we had to give updates on each slide um i'll also give a covet update um kind of like across the state again how we focus in state level county level community level like last time and then also we looked at our vaccination rates last time we'll go over that again we'll talk about outbreaks in the district right now what that means

059and then also do another piece on pool testing so here we are still in red high community transmission across the state and pretty much the whole country this is our case trend over the duration of the pandemic as you can see it's you would like to think it was a predictable high low high low we wish we could kind of keep scrolling and see what the future has for us but we can't quite do that so um i mean as of right now looking right at the edge of the hill that we're currently in it seems to be somewhat leveling off but kind of looks like it wants to go down it's hard to tell but that's where we are right now this is the table from the main cdc which shows the case rates

060for the past two weeks and unfortunately the last time it was updated was on 9 30. like they updated every two weeks so it's almost a couple weeks old and we have had a little over 5 000 cases confirmed cases in the state of maine in the past 14 days 646 of those belonging to york county which is about 12.8 percent of the total i believe we were up near 20 the last time we were here i'd have to look back at my notes this slide is also from the main coven website their vaccination dashboard according to this 74 of eligible residents in the state of maine have been fully vaccinated up from 71 since the last time we were here with about 65 and a half of the total population being fully immunized then

061we can zero in on new york county our eligible population is about 74 fully vaccinated up from 70 and 64 of our total population is fully vaccinated again the only eligible age bracket is those age 12 and up here are our three communities their current vaccination rate lebanon 56 up from 54 since the last time we saw this slide north berwick 82 up from 79 and berwick is at 57 up from 56 percent and lebanon and berwick really are still the only two towns in red in the state i think there might have been one more i'd have to go back it might have been one more county way up high but yes you're right the dashboard has also added a feature of their vaccination rates for youth by sau sad 60 we are in

062the 45 to 49 percent that well and it's not fully vaccinated it's those youth who have received at least one dose that has not changed since the last time so was that just in the eligible children 12 to 18. yes 12 feet and then this is a new feature that we talked about what's coming and it's here on the main state vaccination dashboard is the breakdown of school employees who are fully vaccinated and this is our page and also central office staff they categorize them separate and this was tasked to districts from the doe to collect this data central office staff send out a de-identified survey once a month where staff members respond to the survey are you fully vaccinated yes or no in what building you belong to there is no proving of the

063answers through this method and then moving on to what our cases have looked like for the month of september and i put a side by side of what things looked like a year ago september 2020 and what they look like this last month september 2021. in 2020 our the date of our first case in the district was on the 18th and then this year it was on the 5th starting from when school started we did have some summer cases those were mostly athletic in nature so this is just the beginning september 1 when school started in september 2020 for the whole month we had a total of three cases last month we had a total of 47. 42 of those were students five of staff in part we have a lot more people back in

064our buildings and the cases across the state were a lot higher than where they were a year ago our school is currently in outbreak status our noble high school noble middle school in north berwick elementary school our next slide what does outbreak status mean so outbreak status is determined by the main cdc once a facility so a school or a business or other entity has three or more pcr confirmed cases from different households so two positive siblings wouldn't count that would only count as one household case and those cases have to be reported within a 14-day period so if we had two positive pcrs at the beginning of the month and then the next month we had another couple they wouldn't meet that criteria when talking with the cdc and in the sop a school

065outbreak does not necessarily warrant school closure and can be evaluated on case-by-case basis what would most likely cause a school closure for the cdc to recommend a school to close would be if they were concerned of like one area of the school say tr um one classroom had 15 positives they might say whoa whoa we need to pause we need to take a look at this last year when we started this adventure we were a lot of us were under the impression once you hit outbreak you closed down two weeks go revoke and as we trudged along they're like oh no that's not the case anymore you guys can stay open you just keep distance you keep masking you keep cleaning all the things so what in that case like outbreak status doesn't really mean

066anything i mean they if they want to keep you under a little bit more of a microscope i'm not quite sure but yeah and it's they are the ones to call it the back of my head i've got another school that i'm like hey that one might be coming down the pike but i can't i'm not the one who can call it so but yes we just keep doing things and here we are i think i forgot to mention but the sop had been updated we're on number eight version eight and that's standard operating procedures yeah that's what that sop stands for there was that there was some shifting of sentences paragraph structure they eliminated some of the tables that were unnecessary due to restructuring paragraphs but they also change the table that we had

067viewed last time which broke down the exceptions to quarantining this is a more user-friendly version at the top you kind of choose where the exposure happened and then down the left hand side you see where you fall are you fully vaccinated have you had covet are you in a full testing program or are you at your school universally masking i do think it's a little bit more user-friendly for sure what was this version number eight yes it is um can we post this on this cool website because this answers a lot of questions sure we've sent it out a few times but posting it yesterday in the minutes of this meeting as well and then again i think these are some things that we've reviewed already about pool testing how it's run [Music] we should

068participate and participate and so what are we offering that we haven't yet we are we put out another survey was the last ask that we had that survey went out i don't have the results of it but i believe we talked about it at the last meeting and it was very similar number wise percentage-wise of participation then the first one you sent out no 30 anymore right and they also changed the state changed it now we don't need to necessarily have 30 percent commitment right but we don't know but to make it worthwhile the more the merrier so if you only have a few per class joining it only really places those individuals in the exception bracket i think it's exception i believe the majority of the respondents were still not on board or interested

069so are we not i can't figure out why i mean i don't understand why people wouldn't be on board but that's not for me to figure out but as a district i don't know why we wouldn't offer it to at least the 30 that were interested i don't think we ever reached the 30 threshold in each building the first or second survey no we did not um one of the schools and where the second survey wasn't much better in the name of public health it makes perfect sense to detect asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic cases that we wouldn't normally have caught in the name of education it makes sense to help keep kids and the class in class for those it would only be those again who participated so i just looked back last week we had

070407 responses 53 said no 46 said yes so when is that not enough that was only out of 407 but so it has to be 30 it doesn't have we don't have to meet that threshold anymore but again if the two kids for class signed up it would only benefit them which isn't to say it isn't a good benefit to them it's not doing what they what they intend for to do and we don't think that it would keep them in school and it would keep them able to play a sport after school but they would still need to quarantine one in the community so no going out to eat no playing in outside of school sport or activity the there would be it packaged up in a nice box it does seem like it

071would be a seamless venture and surely beneficial across the state there's been many speed bumps i would say there was there would be a staffing issue we would need to hire someone to begin the program maintain the program administer the program there's a confidentiality issue that's been that has happened in several schools of course if there's a positive pool the next step is that that classroom that pool each participant needs to be tested with a rapid test and there's been some experiences in the state where there's no way to keep confidentiality you know one student doesn't make it back to class they pack up their things they leave well they would have to anyway if they tested positive right but they wouldn't be in school and then boom tested positive and then had to leave

072but now i know it's either now or tomorrow morning when you don't show up to school i mean it's not i i understand no i certainly actually i mean i don't really transparent with the good the bad the ugly yeah so it doesn't come as a surprise it seems to me that people that are unvaccinated and play sports and want to keep playing sports would want to participate to me that would be a driver i would think but then right now is you know according to the chart the vaccination is the golden ticket to not have to quarantine in any of the circumstances home exposure school exposure sports exposure right we have the lowest vaccination rate in the state for a district but people also don't want to quarantine or step out of sports or

073school so the reason why we included this slide is we know ongoing conversation about your your feeling and your recommendation about pool testing that's really why it's back up here amy's provided the confidentiality has come up for a couple of districts um there is a staffing piece that would likely have to go with this because our nurses are very taxed in the schools the younger students it would just have they'd have a learning curve so you definitely need some guidance and support in addition to teachers in the world we have heard that um while some of these companies say that they're going to be able to support with staff sending staff it hasn't really happened for districts some it hasn't there's really been no pattern of it's the early group that signed up that gets

074the support not the late group it's it's kind of a mixed bag about where support is coming so what you know you've expressed an interest in exploring this and so so that's the update was for that and as denise pointed out our our vaccination rights are as a district are involved lower than some of the other districts is there any plan to have any clinics in any of the schools vaccine clinics yes we had the two i believe already i'm working on having a regular employee each building is nurse is kind of orchestrating a flu clinic for our employees and then also we will be open to more open vaccine clinics i do know that the sanford location the mass vaccination site that was open over the summer they've reopened yes as well so that's

075another close site to go to they're only open on tuesday thursdays and saturday two days is from one to seven weeks thursday from one to seven and saturdays i think it's eight to four as well as local pharmacies close by in maine in new hampshire they've got it rite aid walgreens cvs but yeah of course and then another thing to think about too is when the younger population it gets approved for them about having vaccine clinics offered for them as well if we have any sports teams affected by positive cases and half of teens now quarantine dirt we have since school started we have because it's rampant and stanford yeah sports teams go just got a text saying how many cases stanford has had recently and it was other past how many days in three

076days just about since just at the high school stuff okay but i will say this i noticed a lot of kids got vaccinated up to the first round of course they're not fully vaccinated yet so the second time it happened i do but kind of forces some of those families that if you want to do sports right so looking at kind of what masking has done to help us quarantine wise we pull up a high school situation so a situation where we had 35 total close contacts 26 of those were masked in a classroom so nobody had to miss class or be out of school 10 of those individuals were already vaccinated so they had to miss nothing and then out of that 35 9 for bus exposures which lands us in a different category

077they would have to quarantine from everything but two of those individuals were vaccinated so they didn't apply to them and then for what it would look like in the elementary level we have so case at an elementary school we had nine post contacts four of those occurred at lunch so that was a full quarantine five of those were in class so last year we would have had to go remote with the whole class now we zeroed in on a six foot radius that included five closed contacts but we were masked in a classroom so they still get to come to school and let me tell you there is no software for coveted in schools this is my spreadsheet child are we seeing uh transmissions within our school like are these cases are we cracking them

078back to be able to say that you were exposed and now you got it from most of it is i speak with the parent and she's it's funny because they'll be like i just tested positive i'm keeping so and so out and then two days later we find out the student's positive so a lot of those conversations they the families know kind of who they got it from outside of the school there's been one case that two positives were close on the bus and i know where one of them kind of probably got it the other one so it's hard to tell like you don't know where you picked up a head cold or you know but but that's actually the very first one we've had when we haven't been able to tie it to

079a community versus the in-school transmission and these are just my observations not the epidemiologist so yeah no one has said to us you have transmission in your school thank you so i guess i don't want to push fuel testing conversation but it's come up a few times so do you want to have a more thorough discussion right now and make a recommendation or continue to consider that i feel like i'm on my own on this one but i mean personally it it's i don't understand why we i mean i would want to see us do it and continue to explain that you know here's how it works be very transparent um here's the process here's the commitment and here's the you know the potential benefits how just have to do with catching it early and

080time in school and on the field and you know maybe we give it till christmas and if we really don't have any increased participation then we shut it down but if we do i i just i i feel like with the low vaccination rates especially it's just an opportunity it's just another tool that we have to keep kids in school more and participating which is my goal to boost the vaccination rates well that would be ideal priority number one absolutely 100 absolutely on the other side i well we saw it from last week but i was saying that the numbers it means 200 people are interested that spread between everywhere i don't think it's worth the time to do it because we've only got such a small amount i don't see there's been two sets

081of things being put out for this and if the number is still that low i just don't see the benefit in it you need a larger group of people to be able to show anything other than individually which they can go through the pharmacy and get that test uh i just don't like the idea of having to get an extra person on staff to do it either and i like that this year looks more normal that feels very different i mean it's not normal if you have to quarantine important aspect to kind of think about what you're saying the amount of participation that we have yes i like the fact that we offer to people to be able to do it but it comes with a cost so if we do offer that but we

082only get five people that are interested but we have to pay for so many to do it is it worth is it worth paying this person to do this job for five people to be involved thank you for saying it i think that's kind of where i'll come up i would love to be able to offer another tool and there are toolbox for them but it just the pros versus cons you know i don't think that balance is helpful do we know for the people that responded do we have any idea what age group the kids are represented at well it's i mean i don't have it broken down they were of the ballpark of the nose well i'm more interested in the yeses i don't think he knows so all right so i'm just

083going to give you by the schools because it'll be easier for that um 20 who said yes the knowlton school had i said yes lebanon elementary hanson's all in love 20 i said yes so those are and then i'll sit back if i'm gonna be here really quick then the rest of them yes 31 in northbrook north north park elementary so and then so the middle school was 43 who said yes and the high school um a little taken away there um who said yes so i wonder if we moved to um i wonder if we moved to offer the testing if we get a different reaction then do you want to do this if you said we're offering this you are welcome to sign up i wonder if that would be a different response

084than a response to a survey that people might be interested in doing it and if they're not going to terminate them i'm not going to find a way to work a position like that alvin did you want to say something yes if if we were to pursue this and get the ball rolling rolling could we do it without hiring someone additional and as more people perhaps were to catch on to that then look at hiring someone the onboarding process is one of the most labor intensive pieces of the puzzle and we would we don't have the availability for that to even start it have you talked to other schools that are doing it to see if they've hired someone because i know there are schools that are doing it successfully yep there are some schools

085that have hired additional staff and there are some who have not it might depend on student population workload how many buildings medically fragile students that it probably depends on a lot of things what are going on in a building if it's doable for a nurse or a team i know that some administrators probably play a role in some schools um there might be teacher champions who jump on it's different in every area who would actually be administering it i know the students will be doing it themselves but would we be looking at the teachers orchestrating it every monday morning in the classroom setting the teachers are most likely the administrators overseeing the process making sure the right students are the only ones swabbing themselves collecting the tubes labeling and then they get collected by another

086person school-wide for the bigger packaging and paperwork side of it so would one person actually be enough to cover the whole district i don't know i feel like maybe one person would start off as the administrator and have to figure out consenting [Music] how many consent forms are obtained and inputted into the system and they would have to figure out scheduling for each building different days of the week shipment dates and then the uh the administrating piece of it as well there would be more than one person but there would be one person who would have to start from square one and delegate out would this person have to have a medical background or could it be an administrative program manager necessarily that would have to happen and again at the point it would get

087to having a positive pool i do believe the the school nurse would have to jump in and either train or do the binax now rapid test administration in the classroom again taking them away from the students that we need to serve on a daily basis sure i think it's a good tool i think logistically not a good option for us there isn't another option of just sending home to every single student before as opposed to the online survey and just saying are you an argument and then following it from there because we we truly have not had a real representation of the whole parenting world honestly it's not something you know i'm not trying to be i don't i'm not trying to belabor this but it's just there's that question of when we actually receive

088the um more interest if we were actually directly sharing with folks similar to what kate's saying you know do we put it out there not that we're starting it but that this is we need to make a final decision yes or no would you be involved because we've only had 400 responses it's not like the entirety because it's really kicked out i mean we could put it out there and say if we have over 30 we're going to do this we need a response yes or no and then it would start whenever and if we get the 30 percent we proceed with staffing and do it and if we don't then we could just be a little bit more passionate about it instead of putting it on to make that money um what was your

089question grant i was wondering if it could come out of the cove four million probably not for the windows no i mean there's there's certainly uh wiggle room in some of these that we might be able to do something with them i'm not i'm not going to say no to that i think we could probably try to work around something i'd be interested to see too how long it took across the the grade levels because i keep thinking disruption too like i said i mean i know this year isn't normal but it's closer to that and then something like this i feel like uh at least at the elementary grades you know they're going between their their extra subjects and you know especially over the lunch and recess and there's so many different things that

090you know holds their day too how much time do you think you would need to um on board somebody well hiring currently has been a challenge for many positions so i couldn't really say and that's that's a good that's a good point here we still have a lot of openings that are not built and it took us quite a bit to fire for our nursing position recently i mean that's just the reality of the everywhere across the board the timing of it i think the timing of it would land us to when all of our students are now eligible for the vaccine which is a golden ticket out of any quarantine they're going to have to get vaccinated we're close to the point that 5 and 11 yeah so i mean yes it's just our

091rates are not so at that point yeah i mean i guess the people that want to participate and do it for the quarantine reasons can get vaccinated and want to participate have the choice well do we want to vote on it now send out papers first and then see here right i mean do you want to just collect more definitive information the next meeting we can find out we can talk to some schools some of the elementary schools to see how long it's taking now that they've been doing it for a while how long it took when they started to get that information and then do a paper copy yes or no piece so we can come back with those pieces of information for the next meeting i think that's a reasonable approach i think

092it makes sense yeah here's a question like say uh younger than 12 is eligible to be vaccinated tomorrow uh do they are the kids also looking at having two shots and so would quarantining be after the second shot so are we still looking at a few months i believe it's going to be a two-door series it's just going to be a reduced dose for that age and then it would be the two weeks after your second dose that you were two weeks after fully vaccinated yeah okay but the two doses are how far apart again for five years 21 days you get one today you're 21 days well 500 is the only one that's going to be an option for the kids okay so my point is that either way we're still a couple months

093out from under 12 year olds being fully vaccinated right but you're also probably a couple months well we can we can post an anticipated position yeah yeah doesn't mean we have to have right right i think more information is such a good tool i agree with the way things are now we don't have enough participation to use them kind of because we're clocking more information i i would just say amy sue and audra what are you guys do you guys have a recommendation you're the ones that are in the school every day there's a ton to it it's an additional piece of work honestly just to be just to be fair about that part of it um i look at amy we look at amy every single day and what we're dealing with right now

094and adding to that plate is not something we can do so that's just the reality of it and that's across the board with all of our school nurses so we really just need to be thoughtful in what else we're asking um again and what the payoff is ask the questions but the reality is is this really going to benefit us in the long run i don't know that and when we sit in your in the superintendent meetings so far i don't know that it's actually made a huge amount of difference for them so we can talk to them again tomorrow morning because we talk to them every friday and maybe we can get some feedback that says yeah it makes a difference i don't know that i don't know i don't know well the piece

095that the nurses would let's be honest the nurses would have some thing to do with this along the way even when we would hire and especially going into the room's financing the positive pool this year i can't even describe the the workload that our nurses are facing right now it's you know in a normal year with our normal visits and our our normal medically fragile children which are getting more and more that population is growing and then adding the covered not only the you know the contact tracing the phone calls it's the the answering of phone calls and emails from parents which we are more than happy to be some voice of compassion and help for these families who a dad's been hospitalized and going on the ventilator and what do i do now i

096can't even go see my husband how long does my son have to quarantine from school it's it's um it's a lot they're hanging in there they're doing an amazing job and i'm super proud of all of them so i just want to say that well maybe it sounds like you just keep us posted see what yeah um you know some parents that that want this to happen and have to explain and it gets sick you know it's still very serious even with young children they can get very sick and have permanent long-term effects on them just me yes and in the name of public health that is exactly what it the intentions of the program is supposed to do find cases early isolate and get them out of class this is sort of a related

097question but with the work level that you and your staff have has right now um do you need more help just anyways yeah we have um we had filled our float nurse physician with an exceptional nurse and she had an accident and broke her ankle oh unfortunately for several weeks wants to come back as soon as possible and i will find something for her to do if i can we have two substitutes beyond that with other jobs so you know availability isn't on a short term notification is an issue but we rely a lot on our principles on our secretaries and on our teaching staff to pick up where we leave off well we train them and what we can to keep an eye out for our kiddos that need it for sure worked on

098hard on building those relationships our co-workers so more substitutes would be great and our float nurse is typically based out of lebanon because of the two physical buildings and there being a lot of staff the population in there is pretty high so when our float nurse is not being utilized elsewhere for a nursing absence she's housed the lds and that's been a big help to taryn over there who she's she's got a pretty heavy load having a another body over there might be helpful too but who wants to be just right now you see what they come back with find a decision in two weeks we'll just keep this a part of our regular update and yeah okay thank you amy thank you thank you thank you for what you do every day do we

099have anything else you just wanted to similar to last year just provide updates on attendance attendance just for your information so for staff attendance during the weeks september 27th to october 1st we had a low of 88 and a high of 94 of attendance and then this october 4th to october 7th we had low 90 attendance with a high of 94 again our student ranges for the two weeks were a low of 86 in a building or two and then the high of 99 in the texas so we'll just keep presenting that information and just you know it's important to share that with you that's but i can do that right now so now we're on to um employment sure so we are are nominating willian barry for noble middle school special education he is

100coming with a master's degree from southern new hampshire university and a current or previous position center for the center for autism and developmental disorders so that is our newest recommendation for you for a teaching position we have to vote you do need to vote we need a motion second okay somebody will make a motion i'll make a motion to appoint mr barry of our okay and then we have one resignation we'll also need a motion on that elizabeth mulcahy who is currently the behavior interventionist at north berwick elementary school and she's residing for personal reasons and bringing that forward tonight for your i'll second i have another and i um this is something that uh if i can if i'm getting the history of it right uh sometime like right before covet so when steve

101was still here um and sue this may ring some bells for you so there's somebody that i know from outside of school world his name is michael bartner he works for revision energy and he i believe met with you guys it's basically they're putting solar power plants in for school districts around the state um and he got in touch with me sometime last year it was all blur i said michael this sounds great i can't do this right now um and so you know we've sort of kept in touch and um i would like to have him he really would like to present either to the board or the facilities and finance committee i mean personally i'd like to hear what he has to say it kind of strikes me that it might be similar

102to the gentleman who came and talked about lights for the parking lot and so he did just get back in touch with me i would love to just either say yes come to the come to a board meeting you've got 10 minutes or put them in touch with someone but just as a quick um i i'm not going to do the summary justice but basically they have small solar farms around the state um that you you sort of they're like small local um cooperatives almost so we're not buying into it although there there isn't another option if you actually have land that you want to put panels on that's another option but the the main option that they're looking at different school districts i believe anybody that participates is within a a pretty small radius

103um they recently got biddeford rumford brunswick on board there's there's school districts all over the state he's using biddeford as an example that they are going to save over 58 000 in the first year and over 20 years they'll save more than 1.3 million there's no upfront cost i don't i mean i don't know a whole lot more than that he did give me the whole thing but i i haven't retained all of the details so um i'd love to either have him come and present to the board the whole board at a meeting or um to a committee he it sounds like when he met with steve or sue he did reference you i don't know if you were part of the meeting but um that like i guess steve was interested and then

104i mean this was literally like february 20th or something over your february thank you and literally yeah is this this is a different person than who we've been talking to correct correct i would say i've been contacted by a number of people when they opened all of these solar farms or some sometimes they are projected to open them right like they want to get people to sign on before they actually do it um this is one of the one of the people that has reached out um we were also chatting with another uh gentleman who gateway works out he lives in acton um and they wanted to take a more in-depth view of it uh with the main regional service center we've been having some presentations from some folks about the solar and um you

105know there are differing opinions about walking in the district for 20 years and some people say there's no cost there's no downside to it other people are hesitant to do it so it's on the surface it seems like a good a good thing i just i haven't honestly had time to dig into any of it which is why it's you know over a year later and i'm still haven't really given him a solid answer because there are some other things that we kept having to do yes but but i would like to you know that's interesting so should i put him in touch with you i think he may maybe it was you that i don't know i wasn't involved in the front emails from other people offering things um and what i really i

106tried to do was we got in touch with this gentleman from acton and he gave me a presentation on it but i i honestly don't have time to like know it yeah yeah i must sign the district up for something that i'm not aware of like all the ramifications and so i have pushed him out a little bit to say we need to get into this but with the regular operations with the coven stuff with the 10 you know up to how many 10 cloving grants that we're dealing with and school construction i just didn't have time to dig as deep as i would like yeah so this might be actually something that we our facilities and finances would be talking about that was my first thought was like maybe a first pass because as

107i'm looking at your original email from february um i have that information denise we were all denise and i and and [Music] um and then we have this other gentleman that we've been dealing with in some other past season they're all there's all these angles for all of it so i think if we can talk about it with the facilities and finance committee to say how deeply do we want to get into the house certainly solar is a great way to go we're certainly not wanting to stay nobody but like it is it has been a little bit yeah what it's been a little busy yeah i know all right honestly we've talked about we actually pushed this last gentleman out we're like look we're just gonna do what we need to do for the

108next year yeah give us the time well i mean we can't yeah and that i that's absolutely like that's what i keep telling him like i this seems great nobody has the bandwidth right now so should i what should i what are you guys what are you go ahead and just send them to send them to me okay and then we'll we'll circle the wagons a little bit okay great thank you well i have been informed that on tuesday night the northbrook report of selectmen wanted to oppose the bond issue [Music] but um the reasoning was um they're they're not saying that all the improvements and the lebanon school are great they're fine with it um but they think that i'm kind of paraphrased i don't want to speak for that one but the way

109it was explained to me they think that if we just had done the lebanon school by itself then that would have given the district enough debt that we would have then had more state funding the year after we might not have had to get as much funds and they're concerned about that how much it's going to increase or early tax so [Music] lebanon pretty much has yeah for themselves even but we knew that but it's okay yeah see i'm sorry say that again lebanon what lebanon there are certain people on the select board that are not going to support it and have voiced that what's do they have a plan b for the schools let them go just let them fall in and we haven't heard anything about we definitely have space issues in addition

110to uh facility issues at lebanon elementary school so if it doesn't pass we will certainly be needing to have the community again and start coming up with how to address those concerns has no space we're up against it question okay that's why it's all free yeah it's also right because lebanon has a building that's fallen down and hurricane milford have built-ins that don't have enough space for our kids or within the next year we'll probably have enough space for our kids like i said they don't they don't they they're not saying this work doesn't need to be done but maybe it could have waited one more year or something how much you went out did you know how much it went up between the first year we had it started not as high and then

111within a year it went way higher and within a year it's probably going to go even higher i think this is about like accessing it's it's a strategy like i think their their belief is that had we looked at one town only the following year we would be who would qualify for state support because right now there's no whether that's accurate or not it's part of the child because there's there's a nice long list of likes go ahead and just clarify that a little bit so i spoke with scott brown who heads the construction side of things at the doe of the state um i believe the last list of approved schools was fiscal 18 so three years ago there is not even an application to get a school on the next list yet he

112anticipates he wouldn't commit to this but when i said another two three four years out he said that's probably right before there's even an application once you submit an application it takes about a year for the state to vetted and gets you on the list and then approve it so you're looking at probably six seven eight years before we could even potentially qualify and he wanted to stress how many school buildings there are in the state and with limited resources even if you think your building is in bad shape they have buildings from the 1800s that are still on the list so um it's just it's it's a longer process than just in a year the state will have money and i just want to make that that's what i was told when i was

113investigating that thank you yeah that's kind of part of our reasons we're trying to push it out we're running out of time and we're getting enough whether we do it or not we already have yeah we're going to incur more because if we don't have any more space in our schools then we're putting more trailers around our schools to make space in our schools and that's an annual thoughts that we are just throwing money off the window floor and that was good well we worked on that yeah we just uh kevin moore just found out that if you have a thousand square foot modular or a building that's temporary you need to sprinkle it so that what you're talking about you have to run the lines so what's the usual square footage of one of

114them well so if you think about how do you think the the cottages or the one that's actually at the healthy school that's what do you think do you remember you don't remember daily probably like 40 maybe i don't know i think it is so what kevin was thinking is we're either going to have to figure out the squiggling aspect of it or we put smaller modulus in and have a little you know a little trailer city instead of using the ones that cottages are uh grandfather so they don't have to do but those would definitely impact them that's very well because they're bigger than that so yeah there's just a lot more um than that parameters yeah and then if you don't have that spring the water in there and they're further out from

115the school then you have students further out from the building if they need to use the bathrooms yeah so there are some safety issues and concerns with that too yeah there's a lot of pros and cons and that's kind of why our recommendation is to go for it because if it doesn't pass then and we didn't feel like you know just doing one building and but you have to have the whole district to prove it so if we're just doing levitt and why would burke and north korea vote for it they feel strongly that if they supported lebanon that they would that the town would support lebanon because the need is so great there um and then again it's this whole profit in their thought processes is that that would provide us the ability to

116get on the list but as denise has explained the list is actually not even existent at this point it doesn't look like it will be for a couple of years so that just pushes everything out great and we can't afford to wait seven years for the population of that what they can't get but yeah it's it's really very different perspectives about going forward that's awesome and i think we have to do what we think is best and then hope that the voters will support us and if they don't we'll have to like figure it out again you know it's like if this is a constant constant thing from the get-go the price is outrageous in my mind yeah but a lot of that price is out of our control market values on a lot of

117things has increased drastically just from when we started when steve again when we started this i want to say the figure was 30 million but i don't remember i was talking about that's whatever the focused in my head yeah and now we're at 50 and that was just a year you know and covet doesn't hurt that process and i mean it's going to cost so much do from one school the price for the other two it's going to be i i don't even see that being feasible i think the project was if we hit the approval in november the project would start i don't think it would start next time it wasn't it was going to be i think 23 yeah by the time it would be able to get started i had to go

118through all the process of getting and in with the planning boards and all that stuff so you're looking at least a year out already yeah so i mean there's still the possibility that we have to throw some money out the window for um cottages or hopefully it passes do we send employers out or something yes they're coming and then we've got a hearing on the 21st of october yeah we did three we went to each count and did three things i went with two of them and the participation level was not high one of them we hadn't done and then the other one we had one two three outside it was probably anybody else have any others yeah sorry uh how is it going for the masking breaks across grapes right so you know everybody's

119definitely taking the time during the day they made sure to just send out communication to encourage the masking breaks and what i would say here it's so nice to see them outside yeah it is it's really nice to see them outside but the weather has been great so that they're taking breaks and we have not heard there have been any issues at any of the schools with with breaks we haven't heard from parents that there are issues we haven't heard from students there are issues um so i think that that has been addressed and thank you okay so i think transportation just an update on transportation um just a few things that linda wanted to share out and we have a driver who will be fully licensed sometime in november so that's really great news

120we have a number of drivers who are dealing with some health issues at this point in time we have a few that are out for medical leaves and those time periods vary depending on the situation we are starting activity runs on tuesday november 2nd we usually run activity once much earlier than that but it has been very difficult to um figure that all out with all the shortages that we've had prior to schools two weeks before school started two drivers resigned and one of the bus monitors had so that caused us to have the incredible trouble that we had at the beginning of the year so that pretty much everybody in the transportation office or in the garage that were certified to drive were driving so brenda was driving everybody was driving yeah the mechanics

121were driving um jeremiah was driving there was driving right they needed to address some of the shortages by consolidating and deconstructing one of the elementary runs in berwick and reassigned those students to different buses and then they needed to add a shuttle to the middle school so that's currently what's been happening they're actively continuing actively searching for drivers there brenda is particularly concerned because the licensing changes at the federal level with the training up mandate more training necessary so she's very concerned with that part and how much longer that's going to take to train the goods or maybe that comes in for that um she said that wednesday we had a little bit of just timing adjustments that we needed to do with the late start her release which we always have to do she

122feels like that's going really well at this point in time we have had a lot of trouble the last three weeks i would say now getting our athletes to games and we have charter buses when we've been able to even at that point um aaron moore lauren shane they've been spending just days on the phone trying to get buses or putting one out of the vans [Music] um parents have been asked one or two a few times to drive um their students to a game really try hard not to do that but when there are no charters i mean we have exhausted everything from cj trailways and portsmouth have you tried other schools yeah yeah right yes yes so they're just yeah so it's definitely a work in progress uh hopefully you know just with

123that with the constancy of the advertisements out there i know brenda was on a facebook there was a facebook post with parents uh expressing their concern about the fact that we didn't have transportation and they had to bring their students to an athletic event brendan got on the facebook page and just said we really need help if anybody can help us so she got a few inquiries that way so she's working with those um two people just to see if they can start a process of training yeah i have to say this but do we need to look at their pay again uh we'll be talking about it in their um in negotiations i mean yeah i mean they're we're we're good but we're not we're not the top anymore and we were for a

124little bit um and then she shared with us an article about just what's happening in the school bus driver world across the nation um and it's honestly the mean age of most of the drivers around the country is like 57 58 so we're looking at the reality of people are just aging up and also uh it's hard like the job is really hard and we we know how our teachers are feeling about being back in school and everything work you know being what it is of the drivers are struggling just as much like 18 months basically of it being very a different structure for a while and the kids coming back full on on the buses there are people that have chosen not to drive because the medical concern also with the fact that your

125buses are at not capacity but they're pretty full as opposed to what we were doing last year so there's a lot of there's a lot going on with us and there's you know the commitment is strong i mean not not requesting personal days they're very you know the sick time obviously is what it is you don't want anybody coming in and driving but they're really being cognizant of taking time or scheduling appointments or different things not when they would have passed maybe at a different time i think everybody appreciates the fact that they are we are so short staffed in that department not so much no no and we do have parents that are continuing to ask you know like i'm gonna be i'm gonna go away i'd like to have my child on two

126different buses and that's really really hard because if you have to look at contact tracing and a student or one bus in the morning at one in the afternoon you could be potentially knocking out two drivers which we may not even be able to run and then hurt a lot of students so we're really trying to hold the line on that if there's a major emergency or an except you know incredible hardship we're looking at those cases but you may get feedback that we're not honoring you know so some of those not being as flexible as we've been in the past it's uh yeah sorry and you know you pray that whoever does have coconut is sitting in the back of the box instead of in the middle of us because it impacts us literally

127you have to think about where is this person sitting and how does it impact the world around them and hopefully they're not behind the driver you know that's that's just that's that is truly how much of that um we're almost there in the front seats empty like yeah but if you have broke if you have right yup okay there we go anything else our athletics are doing very well oh yes our football team is this has been one of their best seasons they're ranked 18th in the state currently let's see the field hockey team our soccer teams they're all going into open tournament at the end of the seasons the field hockey team played last night against a second-ranked team in class a and they went into overtime so they really held their own for

128that which was great the soccer um the golf championships are saturday we have two students michael billing and cheyenne coocher who qualified individually for the boys and girls state championships homecoming week all of these varsity sports that played or competed won their matches was fun it was a great week yeah the fireworks were fun at halftime so that was nice and let's see the co-op volleyball team the mobile stanford co-op volleyball team that was in biddeford this evening i don't have a score on that um and this is their tonight was their senior night so yep so we're moving right ahead cross country's still going well fall cheer had their senior night so that's that's our news where are we at on our students good question well that's the that is one question um this

129has been a different kind of meeting that we've had in a couple of weeks so um i think there's been um i think it's important to have someone yes no we don't agree with yourself right we don't disagree i think that we honestly know we're we're grateful for um the way that this meeting was conducted tonight so we're hopeful i think and we'll look at aj and we'll say just the last thing is we wanted to talk a little bit about um our our meetings being either live or we we are going to make a recommendation at this point in time that the next couple of meetings we um tape and in 24 hours after the meeting put it on the web put it out we have noticed that on some fridays after meetings we

130have um some activity at the high school at our upper levels and so we're just kind of looking to get back into our more um consistent routine and uh therefore would like the next couple of meetings to to not be live that is okay how do people feel about that a good idea who's causing disruption but also people that people miss the meeting and they don't have a chance to watch it live people watching any time yeah and they're always recorded anyways so so even the live stream is then available after that um but we've we've seen a lot of um unfortunate ramifications on the following day at school and we would like for that to be the case i yeah i mean i do think it's too bad because i know there are a

131lot of people who can't make it for work or other reasons and i feel like it's sort of depriving them um but maybe a temporary only for a day though right you guys are talking about right yeah well i think i think it's been a nice added advantage for our residents to be able to watch these lives because a lot of our people that want to pay attention to these have our parents set up kids in school that have kids that they need to try and get to bed at a certain time they can't come and sit here at our meetings until 9 30 at night so being able to sit at home and watch it while they get the kids off the bed is very beneficial to them um i don't like what i

132hear that takes place the next day yeah um but i think that has to do with what's taking place here right we can control that here by doing a better job of controlling it at this level and i would say currently at this moment in time i just texted chris to ask me yes how many people are on there's only six tonight yeah so things have definitely well what were we at earlier um i don't know i can ask them that so and three of those folks that were on were three administrators so there's three you know and that's a that's more of a typical thing i think we became um the lack of a better word reality television a little bit so um awesome let me see if he's typing so moving he's listening

133to me oh um he said there was 116 was the highest ever during the mouse city and i do know also that staff have been able to you know participate or listen and so i mean it's it's really a it's up to the drums of the board right we just wanted we wanted to put it out there because it was one of those things that um um had caused some issues i will i'm going to say one more thing just on the behalf of chris um he's live with us every thursday night if we did record it he wouldn't have to be live with us and he could just like have a life on thursday nights not that he can't give it to somebody else but that's just mine i would be interested to hear

134if anything happens tomorrow after the meeting we've been tonight yeah i would imagine that i think well that's kind of where i wanted to go with it is we had two really rough maybe three really rough meetings here and i think that's what involved the activity the next day we've done this for a while now and we did have many activities after our live stream videos before i think i i think that we should continue doing what we're doing and do a better job of controlling what took place here so that we don't have that blowout the next day and i would expect that to today's meeting you probably won't have many i know that yeah so i will say that my i actually the the chris thing chris um [Music] is actually fair i

135think we should probably look at the whole live versus recording um and maybe look at it more holistically and long term and decide i agree that we need to do a better job of running meetings and i also like we need to do a good public access for board meetings but also what's reasonable we're now out of the covet emergency we're open for in person so maybe it's just a good time for us to look at you know what's our like i feel like since we since covet started we've had tv stream tv stream stopped live like we've gone through all of these things so i feel like with the technology and where we are this is just a good time to say hey what's our what do we want to do for stream broadcasting

136of meetings what's the best for staffing and long-term you know the overall and if it's a 24 hour and then posting it that makes sense but i feel like we should look at it as like what's what what does the board want to do as far as broadcasting meetings right and that's that's a great point so um and we can check in tomorrow with the just what's going on around us in terms of the other districts if they're just recording and putting up or if it's online it just depends i think on each each town um and so like bc tv had been with us but then and they really i think i'm not sure if they ran it live or if they just they just recorded it no they were alive with it whether

137it's live or you're watching it the day after there's no audience interaction yeah right so it's really not a big difference and it i mean the idea is that if you want to participate live we are open here yeah second thank you guys thank you guys for coming and listening [Music]