001I think we're good to Awesome. All right. Hello. Welcome to the January 8, 2025 school board meeting. Um, will you all join me for the pledge of allegiance? I >> pledge 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. Thank you. Item number 3.0 on the agenda is the attendance. Um Diane, we wait. Cheryl calls the attendance. No, Dian Ray calls the attendance. >> Miss Jacobs >> here. >> Mr. Kellaher >> present. >> Miss Lindstöm's absent. >> Miss Mau >> here. >> Mr. Rockens here. >> Miss Tarpenion >> here. >> Mr. Penny Huff >> here. Miss RKina >> here. Miss Clarrett >> here. All right. Um, are we going to turn over to Diane for
002a brief moment? >> Yes. Um, uh, this evening I wanted to, uh, take a moment to recognize a few outstanding, um, educators who unexpectedly passed away recently. Uh, the first would be Elizabeth Cummings. Um, she was a long-standing administrative assistant in the district. um had been with us for 25 years. Uh she spent her first four years uh as a special education administrative assistant and has been um the administrative assistant in the facilities department for the last 21 years. Um she died from complications from um cystic fibrosis on December 12th. Um, on December 19th, uh, we had another staff loss, Justin Stebins, uh, another, uh, 20-year veteran here in Scarboro. Um, he served, uh, in a number of capacities during his time with us, uh, as world language teacher at Wentworth, the high school, and
003at middle school at different points. Um, he's also the former SEA president. He had served as middle school chorus advisor and most recently his full-time position in the district was as a middle school tech coach. Um he passed away unexpectedly due to a medical event. Um these are huge losses for us as a district and I would ask that you join me in a moment of silence. Thank you, Diane. This has been an incredibly difficult school year in terms of the amount of loss that our students and staff um have experienced. Um I really um am thankful of how mindful you've been in guiding the staff and the students through this and incredibly difficult period. Thank you. >> So, moving to uh the next agenda item, which is 4.0. Um, can I would entertain a
004motion for approval of the December 18th workshop and business meeting minutes that were in your board packet? >> So, moved. >> Second. Call the RO. >> We can do we can hands show hands. >> So, show hands that shows unanimous. Thank you. Um moving to item number uh 5.0. This is a non- action item. Um in your board packet you will have noticed a list of res resignations, retirements and new hires um for your consideration. Um moving to item number 6.0 which is our adjustments to the agenda. I do have one adjustment to the agenda tonight uh which is 7.0 and 7.1 the spotlight recognition which we're going to move to next week which is our next January board meeting. Um, I would entertain a motion if people would approve moving that spotlight award. >>
005So moved. >> Second. >> Show of hands. So yeah, it's unanimous. Are there any other adjustments to the agenda? >> None. Thank you. >> So moving to the now item 7.0 that is the superintendent report. Diane? >> Yes. Um, good evening. Uh, not a whole lot of new information to report whereas we are just returning from break. Um I we did receive a lot of really positive feedback about um the a two-eek break at the holiday. Um I think that uh families and staff um very much appreciated that although I'm sure that parents were very excited for school to start on Monday. Um uh if we take a look at uh the enrollment, we have our monthly enrollment report for you here. Um, interestingly, um, our enrollment has increased 12 students, um, as of December
00631st as compared to November 30th. So, you know, I know that, um, our numbers, uh, are continue to be stable, but there is a little bit of fluidity from month to month. So, I just wanted to note that to you. Um, moving forward, uh, again, uh, we had a snow day yesterday. Um, and so that is our second traditional snow day. And so this is just a reminder that we have one more traditional snow day before we move to asynchronous remote days. Um, I was reflecting back on that and since we had um made this change to the calendar a few years back to have a balance of um traditional snow days and asynchronous days. We've never had to use asynchronous days to date um for this purpose, but I am a little bit nervous
007that it is only January 8th and we have used um two of the traditional days. So, I would just remind folks that if you haven't taken a look at um the asynchronous expectations or procedures um as a family, it might be time for you to sneak a peek. Um that is on our uh district website. Um the other uh couple of other just pieces of information to let you know about um and you know certainly Cresie may talk about this more when uh committee reports come, but um just um letting you know that this is the time of year uh where our high school students um have visit time um to take a look at CTE programs um at both um WVRC in Westbrook and PATHs in Portland. Um, and I have to tell you,
008um, there's just so much robust programming and options and pathways available to our students. And so that's super exciting. Um, and so, um, PATS was supposed to be here yesterday to meet with interested high school students. And so we're rescheduling that. Um, but, um, W um, RBC um, will uh, that will take place on February 4th. So, even though those are two set dates, they're really super flexible about um you know, offering students opportunities to learn more about their programs. Um related to programming, I'm just going to kind of wet your appetite a little bit um and not talk about this much other than to say we're going to add this to the agenda for next week. Um the high school is considering um building out a new pathway for students um in um the
009form of a STEM endorsement um that high school students might be able to take and they're really excited about coming and talking with you about that. Um we want to have conversation with the board about that in advance of um the program of studies discussion that you get every spring because we feel like um you know this is a significant ad or change um if you will and so want to make sure that we're getting uh the board's input before uh that is fully developed and fleshed out. >> Excellent. Thank you. That's exciting. And I look forward to that. >> Absolutely. >> All right. For the chair's report, I am not your chair. I am moonlighting as your chair. So, the chair did not leave me a report to share with you other than So,
010I just wanted to say happy new year to everybody. Happy birthday to our chair who is um off on a grand adventure. Um and I expect that she will be joining us next week to lead us fearlessly on. Um and with that, that's uh agenda item 8.0. We'll move to agenda item 9.0, which is committee reports. Starting with the community outreach committee. Cassie, I think it's Cassie this this time or Charlotte. Sorry. >> Charlotte, it's Hasha Charlotte. >> No wonder you were looking at me again. Uh the community outreach uh committee recently uh met uh prior to the um winter break and thanks to Cressy there's a recent article or upcoming article in the Scarbor Living that highlights the post referendum committee and gives the community a snapshot of the work that they'll do. So
011thank you Cressy. Um we're going to be sending out the survey for the community forum again. We are really looking for more input from the community to better understand what our forum should be focused on. So you'll see that I think in the district newsletter and then um also on social media. Um, our senior citizen dinner celebration planning is continuing to take place and um be excited to uh host our staff spotlight at our next meeting next Thursday uh 700 p.m. and um honor one of our lovely uh staff members in the district. And our next committee meeting will be at 6 pm um next Thursday. turning to the curriculum committee. >> All right. Uh so we met on Monday uh at 5:30 uh discussed the main throughear assessment um which we learned was an
012optional uh test provided by the state and that the district has some flexibility in how they um how they roll that out. So, some of the middle school is for sure using it and they use it as another data point to make decisions about where kids are placed and uh it's just it's just another um piece of information for them. Um but it is designed to be um super flexible and not required. Um we uh also discussed the some of the curriculum changes that are in um they're they're working on right now. The math group met on the 7th, although maybe not. They were going to meet on the 7th. Um uh I didn't even um that was in my notes from Monday and and so apparently they're going to reschedule. Um so decisions from
013there will be forthcoming. Um and then the visual and performing arts groups will meet next month. So more information likely to be coming in in March. And then for the comprehensive needs assessment, uh a form is being developed right now. Katie is going to bring it back to our group at our next meeting and we will look at the selection for community members mostly looking for people with some sort of education background because that is an important piece. Um and then we meet next on February 2nd at 5:30. >> Awesome. Can I just uh clarify one piece? Um so the main throughear assessment is not an optional test. It is required by the state. What is optional is if we choose to do winter testing. >> Oh, winter testing. Okay. >> I just want to
014make sure that I'm clarifying that so that we don't get phone calls like why, you know, like oh, >> I don't want my child doing that. Um, >> you did say that. I I couldn't I guess I couldn't differentiate. >> That's okay. >> All right. Yeah. >> Optimistic. Yes. Thank you. >> Thank you, Jillian. >> Mitchell, you have a beautiful finance report for us. Thank you. It took took a very long time. Um just like a long time was our meeting back in December 18th. Um so excuse me if I forget thing or two here or there. Uh we essentially continued our discussion about um budget line item transfers and how and when they should be reported to the board. We covered a few different policies, which ones can be either cut or condensed all
015put together. Um, and then we also kind of discussed some upcoming changes to our current budget with open positions and outside contractors that we've been needing to use. Um, other than that, it was just a couple final updates to the calendar to align with town leadership and our next meeting is the 27th. >> Thank you. We give the negotiations report. Um, we've been in contact with our partners at SCA and our first um kind of substantive meeting is going to kick off on January 20th. So, we look forward um to engaging on uh with them on the new contract uh for our special our special ed contract, which has a better name than that, but that's what I call it. Um, moving to our policy uh report, uh we have a very had a very
016ambitious agenda tonight that we uh just finished prior to this meeting. Um we did make it through the majority of the policies that are on um that. So, we ended up having the opportunity to get the feedback from the finance committee and do some sub very substantive review and changes uh to propose uh to the board um for the f for the finance policies or the annual budget or the school budget depending on which policy you're in. And um I look forward to presenting those. Um we're going to not present them at next meeting only because it's a week from now. Um, and I want to make sure that uh we give plenty of notice for people to review them because we are going to likely be move we're going to be moving forward with
017a recommendation to to actually strike most of these policies out of our policy book and condense them into one policy. So yeah, so I we we worked closely with the finance office. We heard the feedback from the finance committee and um I look forward to bringing that forward shortly. Our next meeting is February 5th. Um we are going to kick off um with we're going to work on the school calendar which is always a topic of interest for people and we're also going to delve into I believe the social media policy and the public concerns and complaints and complaint policies which I believe may be of interest to members of the public. So we're welcome anybody to join us for that. Other than that we'll go through the under discussion um and keep moving forward.
018Happy to take any questions. >> All right. Um that is moves us to the next agenda item which is 10.0 the leazison on reports. Do I have any leazison on reports today? >> Oh yes Cy Diane and I were at the vocational and and technical education where we got updates from pathway paths and um WVRC. So again they're recruiting they're trying to recruit more women into some of the trades. So that's something that they're really focusing on. They presented um DVRC presented a video to that they were going to use to recruit students. Um their um paths is also assessing you know where there's demand for their programs um and you know to make sure that they keep their programs relevant and that they have students um you know that they adjust programs that aren't
019you know where they're not getting good recruitment. So what else? Um that is all I remember. Anything else Diane that you would add? >> You can hit the head. >> Okay. Okay. >> Very good. >> Awesome. Thank you. That's a super super exciting programs. >> Yeah. >> Um moving to our item agenda item number 11.0. That's the student reports. >> Okay. At the high school last month, the National Honor Society had a food drive and over 450 pounds of food were collected to benefit the South Portland food cupboard. And there was also lots of band and chorus events. There was the holiday cabaret. It was held on Friday, the December 12th in the high school cafeteria where lots of individual people or small groups of students could like showcase their talents to the community. And
020on the 19th, Mr. Moer and a group of 20 students visited the six senior uh living communities of Skyro to provide entertainment by caroling for the communities. And looking ahead at the high school, um midterms run from the 20th and then semester 2 starts on the 26th. Uh, I don't have much because school just started up again, but before winter break, Pleasant Hill had their students participate in a holiday around the world activities where they learned about Hanukkah, Christmas, Quanza, and more holidays, including some history and traditions, which fosters early knowledge of different cultures. And here are pictures of students making crafts relating to these holidays. >> There any questions for the students? That's a great report. >> All right, moving to item agenda item number 12.0, general public comment. I don't see anybody members
021of the public here to make comment. Um, if there's anybody here online, please still indicate. And seeing none, I'm going to close public comment and moving to agenda item 13.0. I would just like to share with you that I'm happy to to be your chair for an agenda that is this smooth. And with no objection, I will close the meeting at 719. And I want a record for that.