001pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all all seven attendance for those of you who hadn't heard a long time J board member of 24 years all of duboard passed away so I'd like to do a quick moment of silence for her thank you foreign there is a couple of adjustments to the agenda they're under Communications there's a resignation and under new business school board action to authorize Ken binding two thousand put put a trailer out to bed I guess okay I'd entertain a motion to accept the October 13 2022 school board meeting minutes uh motion myeliness second by Robin any heirs emissions seeing none roll call police yes Elaine yes yes so
002moved and entertained a motion to accept the resignation from Lynn Willette School Board member from Jay with deep deep regret motion by Pat second by Lane does anyone have any comment Elaine served our the J school department as well as rsu-73 as an educator for many years in fact many people in this room who went through our systems were taught by her she was the leader of teachers she was a friend and certainly a huge advocate for kids which she continued with her position on this board um she's Fair she has been a very wise I see her as a mentor and have for many years as a peer educator and as well on the board we wish her nothing but the very best and it's a deep and hard loss but we certainly understand
003and I have nothing but the greatest thanks and appreciation for all she's done for our school department well said anyone else Andrew Lane said Lynn and I started on the border about the same time and kind of helped you each other's hands getting things to Wayne said economy through the end open-minded in trying to find the right answers and do the right thing and she is thank you anyone else seeing it on roll call please very reluctantly yes yes baby yes yes that yes yes and public comment we have one set Patricia I'm sorry Pamela sorry after teaching first grade for many years I should be able to read almost anything I'm here to talk about the book gender queer myself my husband and three other people put in a book challenge for this book
004and it's going to be discussed at the November 10th meeting I feel that people are looking at this book through the lens of how they feel about gender identity whether on one they're on one side or the other but I want to tell you that I'm looking at this book in one way it is pornography and that is a deal breaker from the pornography should not be in our school it has never been in schools in the past and it should not be now unfortunately the person that was supposed to bring me my visual visual aid is not here but this is a picture from the book and it is a person I don't know what gender they identify with giving another person a and that is a vulgar term but this is a vulgar
005thing to have in a high school book um I don't want my children to see this would you want your children to see this this is not right this should not be in a high school Library it should not be in any public library and no matter how you feel one way or the other that's irrelevant when a book has this in it no matter what else the book says or shows or who what minority it gives voice to this is inappropriate this should not be in a high school library I know it has gotten all these wonderful reviews however I use my own brain I make my own decisions and those reviews have no impact on how I feel about this book the way I what I see tells me how I should feel
006about this book and this is wrong okay and if it's allowed into a high school library down the road it will get into a junior high Library excuse me Middle School library and then who knows where it's going to go from there this is not right to show your children children who are exposed to this kind of stuff too early it's traumatic for them I know people who have been exposed to this stuff too early and they definitely remember it in a negative way please do not show this to our children get this out of here this is an inappropriate way to show how other people feel about things than the way we feel to give everybody their own space to express their feelings this is not how we should be doing it okay this
007is wrong thank you for listening thank you board comments none tonight you don't get a choice I don't I don't good evening I attended the Maine superintendents association annual meeting in Augusta yesterday it's a good presentation I also attended a presentation in Farmington with Frank DeAngelis former principal of Columbine High School a couple weeks ago very uh interesting thought-provoking heartbreaking all at the same time um met with Dr Karen Barnes about the ctag threat assessment training that our district will be doing soon I attended a recertification meeting for our area administrators I also had a breakfast meeting with our three town managers and Crystal Flagg in the past week and I've also met with representatives in the main doe to discuss our finances in the future questions comments hello Hondo administrative reports Sherry is this
008on okay it's been super busy however we currently have 383 students in special education this includes 25 students in the referral process it's only an increase of two in the last month I think that's the smallest increase I've written on this paper the referrals are eight less than last month this is also the lowest number of referrals I've written our school psychologists are working very hard to get evaluations completed in order to process these referrals and I'd also like to thank Mrs Mary Leighton she did retire as a special education teacher from RSU 73 and she's come back to complete education evaluation the academic evaluations in order to get these things done she's completing an enormous amount I can't even tell you how helpful that is because it does alleviate a lot of work for
009our special education teachers who would be doing it if we didn't have Mary um currently we have 78 students at the primary school in special education this is an increase of four 83 students at the elementary which is a decrease of one the middle school stands the same at 110 students in the high school is down one they have 112 students in special education at the high school and we continue to have eight students at special purpose schools out of district for their needs that we cannot meet with our programming currently we have three open positions we have one edtech one at the primary school and the life skills and this is open due to a transfer and employee transfer to another position an edtech two in the Middle School Behavior program this is also
010open due to an employee transfer however we did conduct interviews yesterday and today so that will hopefully be filled soon and we continue to have the additional special education teacher position open that you approved at the last board meeting and I thought I was coming to the board saying I didn't have any applicants but I got one today so we will set that interview up soon and my last thought for tonight is I really um I want to thank the special ed staff the teachers the Ed techs they're really working as teams not within buildings but across buildings to support each other and to support their students and they're really it's really inspiring to see what they're doing any questions thank you TJ good evening everyone uh the enrollment at spruceman high school is 403.
011um one thing there's two things that I really want to talk about tonight and the first one is Phoenix time at spruceman high school something that we're doing a little different this year um that we haven't done in the past is uh create opportunities for kids during the school day so that means that we have a student-led clubs that our our students are going to be doing or have been doing for this first little round the next round that we do is going to be in November and it's going to be where students are the ones leading the clubs in and and teachers are going to be helping them it's going to be interesting to see how that goes um also we have time for academic support during that time for our students that are
012struggling so Mondays and Thursdays are student-led clubs Tuesdays and Fridays are academic Phoenix time and uh also on Wednesdays one thing that we're doing now is school-wide assemblies during the Phoenix time they're going to be on a more regular basis so that it doesn't take up the entire Phoenix time also community service activities are being done throughout the uh the school we have students that are signing up for more I I still I encourage the town to send me some more information on who is taking in community service but yeah it's it's going to be an interesting uh time this winter and one other thing we did have an assembly last week where uh we had a senator a state senator and a representative come in and give some legislative sentiments to our envirothon team
013as well as our golf team both for being champions that's what I had any questions thank you Chris good evening and hopefully bear with me is my first time on Center Stage so since the last school board meeting we've had some fun and great things going on in the middle school last week we had violins of Hope come visit violence of Hope is a collection of restored instruments played by Jewish musicians during the Holocaust these instruments 60 in total had survived concentration camps holgrums and many long Journeys to tell remarkable stories of Justice suffering resilience and survival owned and restored by a father and son violin makers Amman enough of she Weinstein The Collection travels to concert halls around the world if she Weinstein traveled to our school with members of the Portland Symphony Orchestra
014in the main Holocaust and human rights Center to tell the stories of these violin violins and their previous owners students right now are finishing up Spirit Week where they dress up as their favorite Disney characters favorite candy country of formal favorite celebrity and favorite villain which I'm sure I'll some will be dressing up like me tomorrow uh they're also making teams scarecrows for our Phoenix time scarecrow contest so feel free stop by check out their uh creativity and the hard work we recently finished up with nuia testing preliminary score suggests that a large number of our students either maintain their spring scores or made gains which is really good the middle school will be hosting their first school dance of the year on November 4th staff have been working really hard to meet the social
015and emotional needs of our students it's amazing to see how much they care for each and every student staff has also been meeting with community outreach groups to enrich student and Community involvement some of the things that they have done and come up with are monthly newsletters distributed and posted to local businesses and Town Offices they are in the process of this process of organizing a Thanksgiving food drive a possible spaghetti dinner family night with cupcake cookie decoration uh Channel 6 News came last week and interviewed several students about their race hate project um student council just recently had the elections and is now planning some fun activities for our school this morning I just got confirmation that in light of recent events the main Holocaust and human rights Center will be presenting on November
01617th to do a presentation on anti-Semitism and hate to our students and parent teacher conferences have been scheduled for November 7th of the 9th and in closing I'd like to thank Mr Albert and the school board for allowing me to work alongside Mrs Lewis this past week this has made a huge positive impact on the students and staff people seem to be positive and not beat about the transition and I will share the best of luck in a new Endeavor and I look forward to working with you guys the staff students community any questions thank you Pat can't be here tonight so Michael good evening starting out with enrollment at our last board meeting we had a 371 students currently we're at 367. so we're down four every week it seems to fluctuate either up
017a few or down a few so next time we talk I'll probably up a handful um been a really successful start of the school year one thing I like to kind of talk about is our kind of our morning time so much as a phoenix time it's uh we call it nest building it's our homeroom time in our classrooms how that works out is up until 8 30 in the morning so the kids start getting about 7 45 have breakfast come to the room it's a soft Landing for students so there's no academics during that time it's a time for some morning meeting time some community building building some relationships one of the things we actually implemented this year with that is during that time also there's a second adult in each classroom so it
018gives those students that just that one other person in the school that they can go to let's try to build as many connections as we can um also still continuing with our PBIS initiative that we've worked on here students are still earning Phoenix feathers earning their weekly Phoenix Phoenix Feather drawing winners um we have our school mascot this year Heather Hyatt last year with a group of students made a giant Phoenix costume uh it's it's got to have 10 000 red feathers all over it so last the end of September we had our First Assembly down here in the gym it was nice to get everyone together and Mrs High have swooped in as the as we call her Phoebe the Phoenix and we drew out our Phoenix promise Keepers of the month kind of
019celebrated them and we're going to continue that kind of once a month kind of gathering everybody to celebrate all the hard work the students are doing um finally we October is fire safety month and I'd like to give a kind of a huge thank you and shout out to Justin shank as a father one of our kindergarten students who came and talked to the entire all the students every class about fire safety brought his fire truck with him so that was a huge hit it's nice to see and then uh in closing we got our building tour tonight so I'm looking forward to uh showing everyone around great any questions I just have one yeah Are You Gonna Kiss a pig this year I don't know I actually I don't know we'll see I have
020some kids they want me to do a cow this year yeah yeah she has a ram I got a problem plenty of things lined up for me I'm sure thank you Tina's not here tonight I really have nothing to report on so we'll go to new business and entertain the motion to authorize interim School principal Christopher Target to suspend students for up to 10 days for school year uh 2022-23 at Spruce Mountain Middle School by Phoebe second Chantal any discussion comments seeing none roll call please yes Robin yes yes so moved and entertain a motion to authorize Norma Jackson Transportation director to put the 2002 GMC pickup truck color white out to bid most of my Chantel second by Phoebe any discussion comments seeing none roll call please yes Andrew yes yes Ava yes Robin
021yes yes and entertain a motion to authorize Ken Vining facilities and maintenance director to put a 2015 utility trailer two Axel's model St 8216 out to bid by Phoebe second Chantelle comments questions seeing none roll call please yes yes yes yes yes okay you have your list of appointments hires transfers resignations calendar there's an added one that we do have a policy meeting November 15th November 10th is our regular meeting at the high school and December 8th also at the high school with a finance committee meeting at 5 30. is where that'll be the next one that'll be an excellent on the 15th High School Finance I thought you said you said policy okay I did Elaine would you like to make a motion to adjourn yeah yeah let's go ahead hi sorry I should
022have done this earlier but I got sidetracked um this weekend as long as well as Friday throughout the day we know about the holiday coming up there's going to be an unusually amount of traffic congested in certain areas with lots of little kids and other children either trunk-or-treating trick-or-treating in costumes some of these costumes might not be well lit considering some of these events happen during the day so I'm asking all drivers all parents all community members please be very careful and keep in mind that there are a lot of very excited children this weekend um as well as this coming Monday this is my last opportunity to be able to address it directly before the holiday so please keep that in mind this weekend everyone drive very safely we have precious cars out thank
023you well said at entertain a motion to adjourn Elaine second by Chantel roll call please yes yes yeah and we've got our building tour and he wanted us uh encouraged to go