School Board Workshop and Business Meeting 03/20/2025

001e e e March 20th 2025 sorry we good oh thank you uh Thursday March 20th 2025 um can we call the attendance please yes here miss Leon here miss Lindstrom here miss Peterson here Mr rockenstein here miss tarpinian here Mr Trini Huff here miss Ledger uh she is excused to miss Rosina she will just be five minutes late thank you would everyone please join me for the Pledge of Allegiance States all right agenda item 4.0 is the approval of the February 27th 2025 workshop and business meeting minutes uh with no objections we can approve those all right agenda item 5.0 are adjustments to the agenda we do um policy does have one adjustment request so I'll turn it over to frea and then we were scheduled to vote on a suite of five Title 9

002policies this evening um I know you have missed them since it's been a month since we've gotten through that process but um we are going to postpone that there is some discrepancy in the records from the last time that they were voted on in 2022 and so we need to bring them back to the committee to advance new policies out of that committee which will be in line with the policies um that are in existence in 2022 and this is in conformance with the change in federal law that went through which rescinded the title 9 requirements that were imposed the summer that we worked on and so it reverts us back to the prior Title Nine policies that were mostly drafted in 2020 but there was an important Amendment that's applicable to us from 2022

003so stay tuned for all of that again all right so do I have a motion to remove the 10.3 Title 9 policies that would include 10.3.1 10.3.2 10.3.3 10.3.4 and 10.3.5 from the agenda so moved second any discussion can you call the vote please yes Miss Leon yes Miss Lindstrom yes Miss Peterson yes Mr rockenstein yes Miss tarpinian yes mrini Huff yes and Miss rtina yes thank you all right the um so the Middle School coach appointment will be the new 10.3 thank you um all right agenda item 6.0 is a spotlight award recognition 6.1 is the staff Spotlight award recognition so we'll turn this over to Jillian all right so this month's Spotlight Award winner is John Charlo I think he's here all right and the person that nominated him is in the room

004also I believe Matt Townsen all right so this was a this was a really fun Spotlight award I was invited in to get some video and some quotes from the staff um I had the they were finishing up a meeting and I got to hear how they were interacting and uh you can just tell this is a group that really um enjoys and celebrates each other uh it was very impressive but some of the nice things that were said uh about Mr sh Charlo is uh he's very welcoming as he's the first person to say hello when somebody walks in the room and he's great with the kids um that he is the first person to step up to show people the ropes and is there for everybody that needs support and that he puts

005kids first all the time uh and it is clear that he cares about his work he is amazing to work with and cares deeply about that so there's a video on the next slide of some of the staff quotes that's fun uh having John uh as part of our team is um quite amazing um his ability to relate to both the adults and the kids in our social uh life skills program is just amazing um he the things he does behind the scenes um he'll buy things take money into his own pocket and buy things for students um he'll take them to Art Club they don't have transportation he'll set it up um just amazing part of our team and uh so happy that he's being recognized uh publicly for all his hard work he

006always takes the time to help anybody he's available at all times awesome thank you so much does Judge right uh so I've known John for over 15 years and been working in this field with him and uh I'm always impressed with his his endurance for the work we do the work we do is incredibly hard he comes back year after year with the enthusiasm of somebody who's just getting started in this field and really wants to make a difference um it's it's phenomenal and impressive I appreciate John's clinical experience as well as uh his ability to be a friendly face I think that he brings a lot to the table in terms of helping other staff and helping kids move through hurdles and emotionally regulate he's a huge part of why this team Works awesome

007um I really appreciate working with John he not only makes like us as Staff feel super welcome but he also makes the students feel super welcome and he's always that like patient missing piece that gets the kids to come back day after day and he definitely deserves this award John can you join us up have uh sure um I first of all thank you thank you all for having me this evening um this in my opinion is well in part of Lifetime Achi I think here representative of the amazing work our social services do here special services um our go teams our allenes um so I appreciate the recognition that this would not happen if it weren't for the col everybody up here so on behalf of the SLS program the high school special services

008except to conratulations thank you for all you do well that was really awesome I think that's the first time we've had a whole team come like that that was very cool congratulations all right our 6.2 um agenda item 6.2 is our student Spotlight award uh recognition John as part of our team is we're very excited about it yes we wanted to be heard it again um so this is only our second time with our student Spotlight Awards so for this um I will turn it over to Abby our student rep has worked very hard on this with Grace okay so our next student Spotlight Awards if you want to are could you change the slide please it's Matthew and Kay um they were nominated by miss vanesse and miss ship and for Kaye we have

009a little video that's on the next slide [Music] oh [Music] Kay do you want to get your award you kayy did you want to say anything you don't have to it's not a requirement just want to [Laughter] offer yeah do you want to come up to the micophone phone so people we have one board member online thank you um I don't have covid pneumonia flu or strep I just have a c a cough so I'm gonna take off my mask for a second um I just wanted to say that I remember distinctly meeting Kaye for the first time um she was a freshman and she came into the cafeteria and I remember seeing her and going oh she's going to be important um because Kaylee is very selfless understated very warm and welcoming she really

010encapsulates the quote that is falsely attrib attributed to Walt Whitman be curious not judgmental um popularized by Ted lasso for anyone who's watched that show um and I just I think she's one of those people who quietly but firmly holds up the center um and doesn't always you know get all of the glory and the you know accolades Etc um but is 100% um just the backbone of our student body and I'm very proud to have gotten to work with her and she has taught me so much about activism and I'm very proud of her our other student Spotlight award was Matthew fagerland Matthew do you want to get your award now congratulations to both of you Matthew did you want to say anything did you want to come up and say anything I'll blame

011you one bit congratulations to both of you all right um our agenda item 7.0 is the high school winner Sports recognition so for this we'll invite uh Mike leage I think I saw him's here there he is invite him up to kick us off well thanks for having us and just not to waste any time we'll get Right started so with cheer coach Laria hi everyone um I'm Caitlyn larier the head coach for cheerleading I'm joined by our assistant coach Katie Reid and our Junior athletes Laura and epha um we appreciate your support for our schools and thank the athletics department for their dedication which is so vital to our program success um this season has been a very incredible one for our team um we proudly secured first place at three Invitational events this

012season and were Runners up at the class A South smas we also achieved our first place um at class A south regionals for the first time ever in Scarrow history um and finished fourth overall at state level which qualified US for new englands and that is what we will be taking on this weekend so we're very excited about that um I'm going to let our Juniors speak cuz they have something they wrote that they would like to share we are grateful to be here today with immense gratitude for the cheerleading program available at our school this program has been more than just an extracurricular activity it has been a family a source of strength and a platform for growth through cheerleading we have learned the importance of teamwork dedication and perseverance the support from our

013coaches our teammates and the unwavering encouragement from our school community has made this journey truly remarkable reflecting on our season we are overwhelmed with pride and joy we faced challenges headon practiced tirelessly and performed with passion and precision every practice in each competition brought our team closer together and pushed us to reach New Heights our hard work paid off and our achievements this season are a testament to our commitment and spirit and I just want to say thank you again for having us tonight thank you I have arrived now I want to be greeted every morning in my office coach connley with boys basketball so good evening I want to introduce two sophomores to you Oscar gos and Ben Farris um two outstanding players for me in my program I've also had the privilege of

014teaching them in class and health and fiz class and they're two outstanding students as well I want to start first by thanking our athletic director Mr leage um for outstanding support support to our coaches and our student athletes this is my 29th year coaching high school basketball and I'll tell you right now there's no one better his organization his communication and expectations for both coaches and the student athletes make my job so much easier as the head coach so thank you Mr leage our season was a huge success so at the beginning I didn't know you know how we would be we lost eight seniors last year in a regional runner up but it was a very very good season we finished in third place um in the South daa a tough conference we made

015it to the final four um playing at the Cross Insurance Center which is always a highlight for our guys we had two players make first team All Conference Carter blanch and Adam Fitzgerald um which is a great honor but what I'm most proud of was the culture in our program my gu started this process building our culture this past summer we work out three mornings a week for two hours each morning we play Then in games on Monday and Wednesday evenings and then we attended a um go Rush team camp at Tom Thomas College where we stayed two nights we had breakfast lunch and dinner together team meetings and we played many games um so that was the start of our culture we always start that in the summertime with every new team we set

016our team standards at the beginning of the year um where everyone has input on how we want our season to go so I ask all the guys to bring in two team standards they want us to follow it's about an hour an hour and a half session in our classroom before our first practice so we we talk about them and then we vote on five standards that we want to follow this really helped in our team culture also after each practice um and these guys they'll no when I say this we talk about giving gratitude to everyone after practice so after I meet with the guys we talk about what we did well um in practice what we need to work on the next day to get ready for our next opponent each and every

017one of these guys give gratitude to their teammates they all have to we have 19 guys that practice with us they go to every single person on our team and give gratitude that can be hey thank you for pushing me hard in practice today thank you for playing hard defensively you know Red Team Versus black team so this really connected everyone everyone felt as as a part whether they were a starter a guy that came off the bench or a guy that just practiced with us and played in the JV games so we give gratitude which I think definitely helps with our with our culture um and I also want to give gratitude to the school board to our assistant superintendent and our superintendant for supporting the student athletes here at Scaro we appreciate everything

018that you do for your your support so thank you very much coach Manning with girls basketball is the feel good evening everyone um just want to introduce three of my senior captains this is Ellie rumelhart Meg rumelhart and Emerson flaker so I am the JV girls basketball coach I am speaking on behalf of the girls varsity basketball coach Mike giodo he apologizes for not being here in attendance tonight he is fortunate enough to be able to spend some offseason time in sunny Florida and that's where he's at at the moment our girls basketball season was many was one of many ups and downs our season record was nine wins and 11 losses one of the greatest lessons we learn through High School athletics is how to deal with adversity something that is difficult to learn

019in the classroom but available day today in athletics through competition one of our highlights for the season was the game we played at chevis our Red Storm stunned the lady Stags 47 to 44 stopping their five G fiveyear home win streak h a last second shot three-pointer by Meg rumelhart will be a shot this season that none of us will soon forget we entered the southern main able a tournament as the number five seed and went on the road to upset number four seed Thorton academy by a score of 52 to 44 that allowed us to advance to the regional finals for the eighth straight year and play at the Cross Insurance Arena unfortunately we met up against the eventual double a state champs South Portland we did place two players on the AA South

020All-Star team Eva Alvarez a sophomore made the all rookie team and Emerson flaker was selected as the AA Defensive Player of the Year Emerson also selected to play in the MC McDonald's senior allstar game in Bangor that was played on March 9th three of our four seniors also made Senior all academic team and we are all very proud of our team GPA which is an impressive 93.9 five we graduate four players and one manager this year and we wish them nothing but the best in their future endeavors we will miss seeing all you ladies in scab brro gym thank you for having coach McCormack unified basketball hi uh I'm Albert McCormack head coach this is Trey spilman uh one of our uh senior uh Partners uh huge part of our our UniFi team uh real

021quick I'm gonna give the mic over to him but I want to talk we had an amazing season we had a 25 kid team might be the biggest team ever in the nation I don't know uh it's a big team um but we had a wonderful season one of my favorite memories though is actually a loss that we had we played a very competitive Westbrook team and we lost by 28 points I think the spread was 30 so we're okay there but um but got back on the bus and it was uh uh we have these speakers kids listening to music we just had an absolute blast on the way home from a game by just getting a getting blown out and uh the team just had such a good time uh no matter what

022whether we win or lose I love that teams like to play us we like to play other teams um and a big part of that is uh our team culture and Trey here so I'll give uh the mic over to trade just talk about UniFi real quick I think we had one of the best seasons uh during unified this year uh I think the we got amazing helpers with the freshman in sophomores um I want to thank coach McCormack uh for coaching us and uh in just you know teaching the new athletes that have come up uh since the middle school because some of them didn't do uh UniFi before that and I think we're going to get them back next year I hope so um and The Best Is Yet To Come for unified

023and you know this was probably the best season ever I've been a part of but Wars to come and unify is going to be better all across the nation and across main State and wrestling coach Watson hi good evening I'm coach Benny Watson I coach the uh Scarboro gorum Cooperative wrestling team and I'm joined by no one this evening unfortunately all of our senior captains had prior engagements uh overall this season in terms of wins and losses we we didn't really set the world on fire to look at our dual meet win loss record we were 0 and 15 in countable contests uh but we were a very young team we're graduating three seniors everyone else should be returning um the program is continuing to build and that was evident by the behavior and demonstrated

024by the kids I'm a firm believer that the success of a varsity program is is strongly built at the youth level um excuse me a lot of our athletes volunteered their time this year to work with the Wolfpack youth group uh officiating tournaments working tables and just being the big kids that the little kids want to be like we're expecting between gorm and Scaro next year almost 12 incoming freshmen who all have a background in wrestling uh I could talk forever about why I think wrestling is the best sport in the world but Mike told me I have to keep it to three minutes or less um but for me it's about the discipline that it takes and I would never take anything away from any other athlete in terms of what it requires to

025be good at your craft uh but to me wrestling requires the most discipline the most mental fortitude and it's the only sport in high school where you can be ineligible to compete if you don't make weight so you're constantly battling things in and outside of the practice room just to be able to participate and there's no bad pass there's no missed block there's there's no somebody didn't do something else it's you against someone else in the middle of the gym honest and exposed and you either win or you learn is is kind of our Mantra um and that's why I firmly believe that the lessons we take away from wrestling give us a mindset that will take us further in life long after our last match under the light uh so notable achievements for the

026season though we qualified a senior for the state tournament which makes four consecutive Seasons every year post Co when we could compete we've qualified a wrestler for the open division state tournament uh Lola Vance who was a sophomore at Goram high school was the first female to place at a state tournament slash New England qualifier in program history of Scarboro or gorm and she was also the first female to ever earn All Conference honors in our program's history she's also been invited to be a part of the main National freestyle team this offseason which travels the country wrestling freestyle uh all all over the United States so that was a a pretty big honor for us um I you know we're still continuing to make history and so I would extend my thanks to Mr

027leage and to you guys uh you may or may not know but the year that I took over the program was the first competitive season after covid and it was the first season after it had been proposed to be cut from the town budget uh we're looking at having the biggest roster we've ever had next year tons of experience in the room and in my completely biased opinion the best decision you ever made was to keep it thank you coach sing Boys Hockey good evening I'm Eric woring head coach of the Scaro hockey program and have been a head coach for the past four years I would like to thank the school board as well as Mr leage for continuing to allow me to have the opportunity to coach these young men I am joined

028by two senior captains Wyatt ground and assistant Captain Quinn Staples Wyatt is a recipient of a four-year Varsity letter award um it's the first time I've ever hand out that award my career here also he received all academic team recognition and he plans on attending Sacred Heart in the fall Quinn Staples was our Hobie Baker Award winner which um is distinguished for exemplary character and he will be attending the University of Tampa in the upcoming fall um this season we finished 9 and N our Motel was doesn't matter get better last year we won only two games and our goal this year was to improve and we did dramatically and a majority of that was because of the leadership of these captains um they changed the culture in the locker room they changed the culture

029on the ice and we made a huge Improvement two of our wins were in games where we won with less than three seconds in regulation and then we also won an OT with less than a half a second um we were very competitive we took the soon to be state champs to a 4-3 game um early in the season and we also played with we beat three of the top four finishing teams um in our league we lost in the first round of the preliminary games against St Doms but we gave them one heck of a fight and we also had CJ Leal who is a junior defenseman he received all state recognition as defenseman also senior Ryan duess was also recognized for all academics um I'm just very grateful to coach these these young

030men and be a part of the Scaro athletic department and I look forward to what we have coming in the upcoming years just simply because of the work that these gentlemen have done their past four years and setting the bar of what it means to be a scar bro hockey player thank you and Coach schwinberg with boys and girls swimming hi I am Morgan swinburn coach of both the boys and girls swim team uh my captains weren't able to make it tonight one is in Florida one's hanging out at home so we um we uh had a great season again um 26 swimmers um still working on building that building that team and numbers back up um I'm also the coach of the middle school and I actually have 28 swimmers on the Middle School

031SE so this year so um that looking forward to that hopefully we're building the team back up numbers wise um for the teams this year um my boys W uh won seven lost two um they took third at Southwestern and then took third at States um which is really impressive with the amount of teams um and the other teams also get points for divers which we don't have so um we're able to get up there and and compete and they do really well uh my girls uh won four lost five um South westerns they placed six and then States they placed 11th um out of 21 teams with only three swimmers um qualified and swimming so they did amazing um and they always step up for that uh this year we have I mean our

032our practices are very late at night so these kids are very dedicated some of them are Club swimmers also so they will swim their Club their Club practice then come straight and swim with us um we get home at 10 10:30 at night but these kids still do it all and they keep their grades up and they do really well um really proud of this team and the accomplishments accomplishments that they do um and I'm looking forward to another season next year than I'm very pleased to bring up next and I'll just take a quick minute to say that we were able to get restarted our Alpine Ski program this year and um and we had quite a few students participate in that this year and what we call a Cooperative individual agreement with Goram

033high school and so really proud to bring up coach Burns and talk about Alpine skiing this season hello thank you for having me also very excited to have the opportunity to coach this team this year this is Lyla Ferry one of our uh captains um so yes we're collaborative with gorum so I coach alongside sha munachi who's also a scar bro teacher actually um and uh yeah so we score separately but train and share coaching um as for how the season went and all it went really well um we placed third overall for both conference and states and then we sent four skiers to the shootout competition which is the top 10 Racers from every conference in the state of the four conferences that there are um from there 10 athletes get to qualify for

034uh competing at the Eastern High School Alpine Championship which is States across the Eastern United States and only 10 from Main get to go and we sent one um skier to that race as well um at States we had four in the top 35 out of about a 100 skiers and then um we also had three receive an all conference award from uh smas um this is really impressive but um what's more impressive is the dedication to the sport um similarly we're late nights we're up at Pleasant Mountain three nights a week uh we leave around 3:00 we get home around 9:00 p.m. um all of the hours we were just talking about that go into just about two minutes like per race um seconds uh T of seconds hundreds of seconds matter um what's

035really cool about Alpine ski racing is the opportunity to learn from uh your teammates in a way that's really interesting Lyla would like run a drill and try and like formulate this ability in her teammates to um nail down a certain technique um being a student of the sport really pays off where like you learn how to how the ski works you learn C certain technique and then transfer that to speed and how to go faster in a course it's a very intimidating sport um and so it's really cool to see um even though it's an individual sport that team element um supporting each other um I want to thank also the opportunity that we've had I don't think there's been a scar bro coach in the in the last last few years um so

036U relying on gorm for that so it's exciting that I was able to help out um we're 16 students total with gorum but nine of them are Scaro and we have no seniors so everyone will be coming back um and there's a lot of interest from the Middle School level um and siblings coming up of teammates of athletes now um so yeah I think that ski racing is an amazing sport um it provides a lot of life lessons it's really up and down it's One race going bad feels like the world because of how much time goes into such a quick thing so yeah I appreciate the support and also the opportunity to tell you guys about it thank you coach curry with girls into a track hi thank you for having us tonight um

037I have four of my five captains so I did pretty good I have Caroline Benson who did pval hurdles long jump for us she's a senior hasn't decided on school yet Coast Guard Academy or Naval Academy I think oh Air Force yes okay so one of those uh Gabby peler did um hurdles long jump for us and once in a while 400 and Amelia kuso was our top Sprinter this year qualifying for States for the first time in all her four years running um track so that was pretty exciting for her and she is going to continue her track career at UMass Boston this year so next year or the fall this year it will be Maya Marquee was our shot putter scoring at States for us so there's 17 events in track so it's

038a little uh it's tough getting everybody in every event to place but um they were all on the all academic team all my seniors this year they were great leaders to the underclassman um as student athletes building the team to work towards their goals which was hopefully to beat our rival bangar but um they came up a little short four points but they worked really hard for it they did have a great season um 13 wins one loss they came in third at the conference meet um again they were lost to Bangor um earning runner up um from there we had 10 girls go to new englands which was big that was the first time that's happened in a while two relays and two individuals so they ended the season on a great note and

039um I want to thank the athletic department for giving us the tools to run the track program because it's a lot of work um going to USM we got a lot of USM practi this year which was really helpful for the team than running around the hallways at the school so thank you and Coach Vu with boys indoor track and field good evening uh thank you for having us and uh congratulations to all the uh student athletes and teams this year on a great great winter uh I have uh three of my seniors I had 15 this year so lot of a lot of leadership um but we have Vincent Caruso uh Ethan Keller and Sam Asia um last year we learned a lot uh was the first year we didn't win the state championship

040in uh seven years so we came in with a little motivation this year and with 15 15 seniors um they kind of led the way we had a great mindset to start the year um we met in the wait room and I asked them what their goals was and someone raised their hand win the state championship which I expected but uh you know I wanted to find out where their mindset was at and um so once we knew that we just kind of kind of plan the season it's a long long year you got to be able to run your best in February so we start in November so just take a slow slow approach and you know it wasn't necessary about winning the regular season meets um we were 14 and three in the

041regular season um but we qualified the people we needed to for the states and so that's what it really is you got to qualify people in different events to be able to compete in the state meet um and then we had one of our best meets at the um South westerns um we came up uh three and a half points short to South Portland but uh it was it was a great a great effort and um I think it really proved to the team that we had what it what it what it takes to be one of the best teams uh at the state meet and uh that was kind of the launching pad there where we had some some great performances there and that kind of focus and mindset carried over uh to the

042state meet um and uh obviously hope you get off to a good start we did well in the first event but then we slipped up a little bit and two of the events we were supposed to score and we didn't um but then like I said we had 15 seniors and one of our seniors was like the fifth seed and he ended up getting second and that kind of just catapulted us from there and then we had a I think it was a 22-point lead with one event to go and we didn't have anybody in the event and the other team did had had like three so we had to sit around and wait uh but in the end we won by four so it was uh you know winning a state championship is always

043the goal at the uh end of the year and we were able to do that this year um but we learned we learned a lot from the year before that we were able to change this year and um I think those lessons the sen took from a year ago uh they were able to um apply them this year and have a lot of success uh we did have one School record this year and that was Set uh last weekend at the national meet in the 4 by8 uh Ethan was part of that team um it was attakus Mariam Baxter and uh Landon Springer as well so it's always nice to get on our school record uh boards it's very tough uh some colleges records are not even close to what we have um a lot

044of All Conference uh team members and uh also all academic uh Sam and Vin Vinnie were um two of those so we also had uh backer Mariam will Patterson and Landon Springer and uh Ethan was also the individual state champion in the mile and uh we also had the pval state champion and Wyatt Martin um and that I always said the relay team made Nationals whyatt did as well um and whyatt uh jumped 50 five there the six best jump in State history so we had a lot of success this year um 48 total athletes so looking uh forward to what happens uh next year we got a lot of young kids and uh we will appreciate the 15 seniors we had and all they accomplished thank you and I'll just finish up by mentioning

045uh girls ice hockey team we have a what's called a combination combined team with Falmouth Falmouth is the home school for that program and their coaches Rob carrier um they had a season record of five and 13 they had 22 players on the team nine of which were scabber athletes and they did lose to bitterford um in the NPA quarterfinal game so they reached they went through the prelim games made it to the quarterfinal round for this season so they had they had an outstanding season as well the girls ice hockey program thank you very much for having us tonight okay is there any any comments I feel bad I feel like this night always happens on the night of budget and it must feel so good Kate for a moment you're like they're here

046for me [Laughter] thank you so much Mike for bringing everyone together for us again this year all right agenda item 8.0 is presentations 8.1 is eight Corner School presentation so for this we'll invite miss Ann Lovejoy to the podium all right well thank you for having me it was such a thrill to see all the former eight Corner students whether it was Haley q and Miss Abby here so many eight Corners alumni not in my not in my time but yes pardon us Sam we can't leave John out yes I know and uh yesterday morning when we all met as a board with some Town counselors and all the leadership I looked around the room and just um counted at least 13 children from people that were in the room right at the moment who

047have been through eight Corners recently so I look back here and there's a lot of uh parents of a Corners families and it's just a a real honor to to be here so um GNA try not to get emotional because I've never done this before and it's first and last time all right so you can start the slide deck Please Mr Grogan so Mrs Lindstrom I know you like data so I've got some data for you so a corner School U as of today we have 246 students with 14 home rooms um back in 2002 when I took over as principal we had art music PE health and library and in 2025 we still have art music PE health and Library we would love to add World languages we would love to add stem we

048would love to add some other things but that of course has not been possible due a lot of reasons but it's still still in our plan still in our list of things to do um we're very very fortunate to have also a team a student support team that includes special education social workers OT PT speech people our student support team is a growing vibrant thriving team that is looking at the whole student um and not just isolated academics or content areas we have a total of 58 staff members now on every slide or almost every slide one thing we do as a staff and you'll see it if you come into our office is we like to keep track of all the fun things that kids say because the end of the year you always

049say I wish I'd written them down I could write a book we write them down we keep them on the board they're Anonymous but there's fun and they keep our spirits up and you can't make this stuff up so the first one's just really sweet because the little girl says when I grow up I want to work at eight Corners you can change the slide and these are all quotes by students not me you can change this you can click one more time too because there's two more pictures okay great thanks so um so teaching learning obviously is our first district um goal here and so teaching and learning at elementary level is very different than it used to be there's um a lot more Hands-On a lot more playing a lot more um doing

050and trying to do problem solving and critical thinking with each other and not just worksheets and um listening to your teacher there's so much time that is spent interacting with each other with students with each other and um and not just listening to the teacher um teachers parents often say like we're going on a trip what can we have some work to take with us well we could give it to you but the work can't be replicated in a single family trip there's so much Rich conversation there's so much opportunity in the group dynamic there's so little that you can't do on a plane you can keep track of things yes you can read books you can keep a journal you can do a lot of other great things but you can't replicate what's happening

051in the classroom uh we strive to be a very safe and inclusive place obviously um for many many years um we have done 3bs and if anybody has heard kids talk about B tickets or be the 3bs this is what it means every the little B ticket up at the top students earn those by being expected and being expected means that we're being safe we're being kind and we're being focused back when Abby was there it was safe kind and responsible so it's changed a little bit but it's still the same message but mindup incorporating our mindup uh curriculum has changed our language a little bit and it's actually probably a little bit more student friendly than responsible and respectful right to be kind and focused a little bit easier to know so as kids

052earn the B tickets every every um day they come down and vote at the front office and the three little boxes there there's the CH the choices to vote for schoolwide reward is um monthly and they change by the month and um this this month just happens to be create of hair and neon day and mustache day and it's always fun to listen to the kids debate over which one they're going to choose it can be anything from stuffy day costume Day music at recess dime I mean they think they think dance party playing music over the loudspeakers at recess is just awesome and it's so easy and cheap and free so it's so easy to please them it's really great but um every month we change them and we always try to give parents

053plenty of notice so there's nothing that they need to buy or nothing they need to do just show up and have fun and if we do do anything where kids need to have something we always provide extras so that no one's left out so being inclusive is really important and you know it's not a penalty because no one's crying so um on my music teacher Katherine n a shout out to her she wrote a school song and teaches it to all the kids about being safe and being kind and being focused there's hand motions and I triy to get a video clip to put in here for you but we just could not make that work um and didn't want to slow things down but uh every every um month at our community meeting the

054whole school stands up and sings it and even the classroom teachers are pretty impressed with how well the kids know it and they hear them singing it at recess or in their classroom they haven't necessarily learned it themselves because it's all done in the music class but it's it's very sweet and I hope it sticks with them for a long time uh another thing we try to do at eight corners and in Scaro schools obviously is being um community-minded so the first grade team chose to do a food drive for the uh Westbrook animal shelter or animal Refuge League of Westbrook um and so the animal Refuge League came and presented to first graders and told them what they needed and what their what their uh company did their nonprofit did and what they would

055need and so kids made posters and sent newsletters out to their parents and tried to encourage people to bring in food and toys and things for their for for dogs and cats and and other things and so we had a big food drive right around um Thanksgiving and it was all driven by the first grade class and kitty litter does ruin everything the second graders um they also work in the community in the community and they take some great field trips to the public safety building where they get to see or hopefully get to see all the fire engines and ambulances and things like that um this year one class went on the Monday after vacation and we're told this is the worst day to come to the public safety office because they're all busy

056on this day Monday after our Christmas holiday is the worst day for ambulances and safe Public Safety so they were all out doing runs but we did get to see dogs and we did get to see some other things so the dispatch so it was still a great trip but it was just funny like who knew that that would be a bad day to go um the second graders also got to take a fun trip to the Cumberland fair and see lots of animals um many of them had never seen animals farm animals like this cows horses um bunnies all kinds of things especially some of our families who weren't born and raised here it's it it's been it was really a lot of fun to have them see things that they had never seen

057before yeah that um second graders do do um ja in a day so yeah after that they decided that going to the bank was a much easier way to get money than working um these are the kindergarten groups and they do the life cycle of the butterfly and there's a class letting butterflies go um in the fall we did character day as one of our student our schoolwide uh 3B presentation uh presents gifts earnings whatever you call it rewards and so kids got to dress up as their characters okay we did kind of fix it so that it was right before Halloween we didn't call it Halloween they could dress up in anything but yeah it went along so everybody was happy um and then up at the top is a um a lesson by

058our our instructional coach talking about Chromebooks and the proper care of CH Chromebooks and even It's probably hard to see in this picture but even on the board there um it says how to be safe kind and focused with your Chromebook and what are the rules around your using your Chromebook and to be safe and to be focused with it and to not mistreat it um and these are just a couple more quotes that we thought were really funny from kindergarteners and yeah we'll work on that uh geography lesson about Boston being the biggest town in Maine a few more numbers for you Mrs Lindstrom according to niche.com eight Corners is the 16th most diverse uh Elementary School in Cumberland County that is behind most of the Portland schools although not all of them a

059couple of south Portland schools and and a couple of Westbrook schools but we do have about a 30% minority um population percent population and it's awesome for kids to see people from all over the world and from everywhere and it's just such a gift to to be able to have them in our in our school um we had 1,311 visits to the nurse as of today that's 51 lost teeth 638 no nose bleeds and countless other bodily fluids that we won't need to discuss our lunch room our single fabulous lunch lady Chef Teresa who is actually retiring at the end of the month serves between 1070 and 180 lunches every day all by yourself it's incredible uh um when you add up all the EXP experience in our school staff there's over 500 cumulative years

060of experience at eight Corners that doesn't include where people taught other places um that includes the person who started on Monday in our school and that includes the person who's been there the longest Mrs Allen who's been there for over 35 years um 38 of our yeah 38 of our 98 kindergarteners have gotten early intervention services just in the second trimester so uh our our early intervention teacher is the newer position that is focusing just on acclimating kids to kindergarten helping them be ready to learn um and so 38 is a huge number they're finally getting into academics more than just how to be with a group of people because they're large groups um and so that's awesome that we're finally getting into academics and things like that where they're needed um we're the only

061school with title one and I saw Katie I think that's correct right I said only it's terrifying to think if Title One is cut that we will lose our Early Intervention Program we desperately need that to be a locally funded position so it's not in jeopardy hint hint um but you know I I understand why that why it is the way it is but just um in the future hoping that um that title one money can really be supplemental and not supplanting for that position so um that's just my own little two cents on that we did have a 300% increase in male staff members yeah we went from two to six they're going to want their own bathroom one of these days but there's only one to be had for adults so they can't

062have it we have 23 Ed techs both special ed and regular Ed we have one Foster grandparent who's here every day in a kindergarten classroom do have one vacancy currently and that's not even in special ed Mr Ro so good good job thumbs up for you um 19 students um are supported by our multilanguage program we have 196 staff absences in January due to Norv virus flu AB strep covid you name it and yet we still made the school run and never had to close in spite of our almost 30% absentee rate at some point between kids and staff we have zero secure vestibules we have 35 parent parking places and 58 regularly scheduled pickups so the parking lot is tight so the next last slide there um just some more reasons why we come

063to work every day and we thank you for all your support and all that Scarboro town and community and the board parents give to us every day we're just we're very honored to be here very honored to work with your kids and and watch them grow so thank you did that without crying nice job are there any questions or comments for Ann Jenna talking I don't know is Jenna talking Jenna are you talking or is that that's us talking okay never mind well I will just say Ann thank you so much for the data yes you know you were speaking right to me so I love that so much thank you um and yes this is your first and your last time but we're so grateful that you were able to do this for us

064so thank you you are going to greatly miss this is not we'll do it more later but thank you for joining us for this time that's right all right agenda item 8.2 is FY 26 school budget presentation so for this we'll invite Kate Bolton the director of business and finance up hello everyone it's been such a long time since I've spent time with you um I there are a lot of slides in this section but I promise I'm going to go really quickly and Ray can just keep shov along um but we do think it was important for folks to be able to have a chance in this venue to to hear a little bit about the budget proposal before the first reading vote tonight our board has spent uh close to 8 hours this

065week already talking about these things and listening to um our full leadership team present so some of this is going to sound like the same old news to them but it's uh really important for everybody to be able to have access to this information uh so this evening what we're doing is the the board's first reading of the FY 26 um next year next school Year's budget proposal um the Leadership Council which is the the principles and department heads the leaders of of the school department um have put together this proposal and presented it to the board and now it's the time for the board to take that proposal and bring It Forward um through the budget process where it's adopted um through a multi-month multi meeting process all the way into May um we

066will have a a presentation of the combined town and school budget on March 26th that's next Wednesday um and as you all know the school budget is only a piece of the full Municipal budget we go first because we're the best and uh then we get folded into the municipal budget uh which we'll we'll know a little bit more about next week um items in motion is a phrase that we use for um things that will change between first and second reading and uh because of the way that the school budget calender is built there are always things that we know more about by the time we get to second reading than we do when we start um so that uh that long process of a couple of months of of work is going to

067be filled with all kinds of different kinds of information coming in and some adjustments being made by town and school leaders um until we get a final result the Schoolboard finance committee has their first meeting uh regarding the budget next week uh on Monday night Monday evening the communications committee gets really involved um School Board board and Town Council Communications committees um and the school budget proposal will be refined and changed as we go along so it's important to stay tuned and come along for the ride um so we have some resources out there for folks to uh tap into we have a budget book which is a um very long and complex work uh it includes an executive Su summary which is a more encapsuled version of what's in the budget proposal but it

068also has um information from each school and each department um which is I think really interesting and I live it every day so I always find out something new when I um get to read the budget book um it has it has an appendix which has a lot of additional resources that aren't really part of the book but that are back up to it so if people want to go deep on some of the data that's in there there's information there we also have a line item budget detail which is actually the the individual 700 some uh budget accounts with all the information that you need about each individual line so depending on um how much of a budget geek you are you can go deep or you can stay at the summary level um

069and learn a great deal the link that's in here I believe is a live link to the Scarboro Schools board budget page this is where all of our documents for the budget are posted online um on the Scaro school's web page there also um is a budget link on the town's website so whichever direction you come from you can get to the school information there's already a bunch of material posted there now and um there will be continue to be material added each time that we have a meeting or an event that makes any changes or generate any new material oh I did want to mention one new thing about the um the web page and don't go back never go back uh we have um an's example tonight of the presentation that she did

070for eight Corners we actually have video clips of the other presentations that have happened so far this year um so at the moment there's High School Middle School Wentworth um there's adult education and there's um what's the last one Christopher special services um and we'll put ANS up there so what Cheryl's learned to do which is brilliant is to is to cut out those little pieces from the board meeting so you don't have to watch the whole meeting or go looking for it um but since we have that as a resource now we decided to put that on the budget page as well so this the leaders ship Council starts our year by reflecting on our mission vision and values um we develop goals every year to ensure that our decision making and our work

071throughout the year is anchored to the foundations in our mission statement and our vision for improvement budget development is no different so if we flip to the next page um you'll see that we have individual goals for our district for the current year which again are linked back to those overarching goals and we also have budget priorities and this year as the board has already heard we're focused on capitalizing on prior Investments um we're not looking to add any new proposals apart from Staffing that's required to meet our legal obligations um especially in special services this is an interesting slide that some of you uh who have been following the building committee work might recognize um we're good at repurposing material in the school department uh we're sort of like a giant Ruth's reusables uh

072and this slide is is interesting to me because uh as we were doing the work um through the building committee we've learned that a lot of our citizens just don't really know what school does nowadays some of these folks are like my age and they went to school in a different time um I you know got the horse and buggy out every morning and pitched up the pony and and and um yeah no I I actually had a carpool I I I have to say but there are so many things that schools do um particularly Public Schools nowadays that that just didn't happen um 30 or 40 years ago so this is a slide that kind of pulls together some of those ideas that might be quite different today from what you remember as going

073to school as a young person I won't read them all it's still cool though so this chart is a comparison of actual spending in fy4 which is the last school year 23 24 for 13 districts in Cumberland County and as you can see Scaro is pretty much in the middle on overall spending per pupil this data is collected by the Department of Education for every school district in the state and so we can compare um what other school districts around us are doing in a pretty consistent way because the um data that they collect is broken out into the voter categories that each of our communities uses to split up the budget um so because it's split up the data split up in that way we're able to tell what types of spending different communities

074have where their spending is targeted to and so the little box on the right says that Scarboro consistently directs our funding our budget toward those expenses that most directly affect students we are um fifth of 13 District in what we call Direct instruction so there's a bunch of little categories that go together but it's basically class room work and 23% above the state average we're third of 13 districts and 19% above the state average in our special education services but then when you look at transportation and Facilities school and system administration we're at the bottom and we're below the state average on both of those categories or all four of those categories and so you know there's a there's a little bit of a point of Pride here and there's also a really obvious link

075to our goals right so you're looking at those District goals and you're saying we're putting our money where it can do the most good for our students so we kind of like this one in the budget book there's a ton of data here on that subject um there the cohort group's a little bit different but basically the same outcome special services one of our major cost drivers in Foy 26 um similar to recent years we've heard this message before is special services we're proposing to add positions to meet the needs of incoming case students um that's basically our one new proposal this year this slide is a snapshot of the types of programs we have right now and the number of students who are currently receiving those Services you've got a column for the number

076of students you've got the percentage of special education that that makes up and that's what your pie chart is but you also have the percentage of all the students in our uh District who are taking advantage of um those services I don't know if I should Define those but MLL is multilingual Learners it's okay it's good we'll let people figure out their acronyms they're all defined in the book go read the book it's such a good book there we go um so multi-tiered systems of support here's a here's a good a acronym for you uh again back to our budget goals um District goals one of our major goals this year is to um enhance develop analyze improve um any any kind of verb you want to use our multi-tiered systems of support um this

077is an area of concentration for all of our schools right now this slide's giving you a snapshot and an spook to this earlier of the number of students who are receiving support and intervention this year outside of the General Ed classroom but mtss is is looking at students where they are with the goal of helping them to be successful in the General Ed setting in G general education in their classroom it's a critical layer of intervention for students who might be struggling but don't have a disability or don't qualify for special education so um this is an area that the district is just just um passionate about let's say and uh and focusing heavily on uh little note about budget revenues uh most funding for uh education in Scarboro comes from our taxpayers most of

078our non-t tax revenue in Scarboro comes from general purpose Aid sometimes called GPA or state subsidy that's the department of educ in the state of Maine sending money to each School District to support their programs the chart on the left is showing the year-to-year changes in subsidy that's been allocated to Scarboro over the past 10 years and for FY 26 we're expecting an increase of just over a million dollars from the current year it's not as big as a of a jump as we had last year um or the year before where we were coming from nothing but it is definitely uh good news and every increase that we can get in subsidy is an increase that we don't have to pass on to our taxpayers um the state funding formula is notoriously complicated but

079uh most of the increase in FY 26 for Scarboro can be attributed to special education costs that we've had in Prior years that are then reimbursed to the to the districts um and also to the higher number of economically disadvantaged students that were counting in Scarboro um because those students have a a a heavier weight in the formula and provide more funding to the community on the right hand side you're looking at a chart that talks about the percentage of our school budget that's actually paid for by general purpose a from the state and you hear folks talk about um the fact that the state pays 55% of the cost cost of public education K12 education in the state of Maine um that does not mean that every school department gets 55% of the cost

080of their budget what it means is that the state figures out what they think education as a whole costs in the state of Maine across all districts and then funds that at 55% and then divides that out based on the community's ability to pay their perception of the community's ability to pay so in Scarboro right now um the amount that we're expecting to receive in FY 26 is going to uh fund about 12 just under 133% 12.6% of our operating budget not 55% but better than a poke in the eye that's technical Financial talk right there this slide is about Federal funding um a a Hot Topic right at the moment lots of headlines around this subject right now um what this does for you and this is a really teeny chart there's a lot

081of teeny charts in these slides but all of these are um larger in the book and the book is a PDF and the PDF is online and you can use your magic magnifier on your screen um to make it legible this chart talks about um what you could call our risk or our exposure to the loss of federal funds um Scarboro doesn't receive a huge amount of federal funding which you know in some days we thought was a sad thing um right now it feels like a pretty good idea um that we're we're a little bit lucky that we don't rely to the extent that some other districts do on federal funds um the stance that we're hearing from those who lead these things at the Department of Education um and educational leaders across the

082country is that at the moment there's no um legal reason to assume that we are going to lose Federal funding that there's a lot of chaos swirling around but that only Congress really has the right to authorize um programs and funding that we rely on for federal funds so um basically this slide is an acknowledgement we get it we understand there's a lot of confusion and concern um and we're keeping an eye on things but we're not making any proposals in our budget to change uh the way that we think those federal funds will be used for next year major cost drivers these are so familiar to me I think I I could just use the same slide every year um I did add one one this year um Personnel costs our budget the school

083Department's budget is over 80% people um we don't have a lot of spending comparatively on stuff or Services um even utilities um people are our business and so that's where the bulk of our budget goes um I won't read the whole slide to you but basically the um $3.3 million of personnel costs is the amount of increase that's attributable um in this budget to those human beings Anthem health insurance out of all those Personnel costs in terms of salaries and benefits is a is a huge piece that's the largest benefit cost that we have um and uh we don't have our current Anthem rates that's one of those things we talk about with items in motion we'll know what our true rate is before we get to second reading we're currently estimating an 8% increase

084which is uh the tallest increase that we've had in the past few years Anthem is telling us that they're going to have big increases this year and that adds just under $600,000 to the budget um the made uh Paid Family Medical Leave program I was trying to say main paid family and it wasn't going uh this is a new state statute all Employers in the state of Maine are are paying um at least half a percent of all wages to the state for this new fund that's going to create a Paid Family Leave program that people can apply to in another year once there's some money in there um and this is a requirement that's going to add a little over $200,000 to this budget and then lastly we've got the special services needs which

085I just spoke about and we have um in this budget we have nine new edtech positions and a halftime spe position so this is kind of a new chart for us this year um it's the uh difference between our level Services budget which is sort of got a bunch of different names the status quo budget the you know the basic operating budget um the level Services budget is what we call the budget that allows us to do what we're doing today at an estimated cost for next year and uh we were trying to be a little bit more um detailed in how we present that this year so what we've got here is a breakdown of the types of expenses again so that you can see not just what level Services is as a whole

086but what the individual elements of our spending due to that level Services amount um the level Services amount is the first amount that we gather when we start to sit down with our team and it's the beginning Baseline of our budget again talking about what we have now and what it might cost moving into the new year the next thing we have is called reduced level services our leadership team gets together um in individual meetings each school and Department with our central office leaders ship team and we literally go through every single line item one by one and review what's in it today what we need to be in it tomorrow meaning next year um what what are we going to change what are we going to reduce is there anything we need to add

087um and as you see this reduced level Services chart um you can see that what we're trying to do is to reduce as much as we can anything that we have control over to offset those costs for personnel where we know that salaries and benefits are going to go up because they're based on collective bargaining agreements they're based on insurance costs that we don't have control over um the other thing that goes on during this work is figuring out um figuring out class sizes figuring out projected enrollments and how many teachers we have um in each building and where they need to go and and can we afford to move a pos position or do we need to add a position depending on our target class sizes in this case this year we have two

088retirees one at K2 and one at Wentworth and we are going to be able to leave those positions unfilled because of the way that the class sizes are shifting and still meet our targeted class sizes so the reduced level Services budget has a reduction based on not filling those positions so your level Services is not exactly level because you're taking a couple of people away the other thing that's on that chart um which is also on this one so you don't have to go back is uh the prek program um you want to talk about items in motion we have one here um we had uh have just got done presenting that our prek program is is going to be fully covered by a department of education grant for next year so we didn't have

089that in our budget proposal and um this morning we got an email saying that they didn't think they Hader afternoon they didn't have after the work they they didn't have their numbers quite right and that they were uh really only going to be able to support us for half the year so uh needless to say we have a meeting with them next week to talk about what the heck that's all about um but um we may see a little piece of that coming back around we won't see all of that coming back in but this is a reduction the reductions that happen before any new ads are are um are added into the budget proposal then you have the ads and this year um the ads that we're proposing are really just critical positions um

090that are necessary to to uh serve the needs of our actual students actual children that we know are coming um new kindergarten kiddos and also we have a half of a position that's being proposed on the town side and um you'll see if you read all the good things in the budget book that we have a shared services agreement with the town and um it and um instructional technology is part of that shared system the folks who work in it or town employees and the school department pays a share of their um Personnel costs so there's a new position being proposed um for some very good reasons that we've gone through and are half of that person's um cost would be would be reimbursed to the town so the outcome of all of this is

091the budget proposal that the Leadership Council is handing on to the board this evening and this is the actual bottom line proposal and at the bottom you see the little box with the new positions in it in this budget there's a total new investment of $599,000 um which as you can see is a very small fraction of the overall proposed budget and the net new investment um after we re uh reallocate those two positions is uh an even smaller percentage of the overall budget not a lot of new things here we really focused on solidifying and working with the resources that we do have and maintaining them this chart represents the three operating budgets that make up the overall education budget so this one includes adult education and school nutrition it shows the gross which

092is the overall that line total education budget um expenditure increase that's the 7.48% and then it adds in the non tax revenues and shows you the the net tax request which is what goes to the town that's the amount of money that we need to raise in the town um these amounts are going to be included in the municipal budget so when you see that 6.85% that doesn't mean your taxes are going up by 6.85% it's the number overall increase and then it's folded into the municipal budget recalculated with valuation increases and eventually you get to the um the budget rate increase and we'll hear a lot more about that next week next is capital projects um we use the capital budget for our large scale Investments um major repairs um major Replacements of equipment

093um M sometimes multi-year plans and programs going on and uh the capital budget is in in the back of the the budget book there's a a detailed description a narrative description Pages 76 through 80 and there's even more detail in the append section uh basically but what we're seeing here is that we have a section of uh capital budget and Technology we have a section in transportation and we have the bulk of it in facilities where we have multiple different types of accounts that we use um for ongoing large scale repairs and in this year's budget we have two segments to the Capital Improvements budget we have um the equipment segment and we have the project segment and the total budget is uh just a little over 5 million dollar and the funding source is

094that um capital projects can be funded with municipal bonds they can be funded with Reserve funds they can also be funded with appropriating taxes and so that's not something that the board decides it's something that the town uh finance office puts together and they have parameters that they use um it's my that most of the uh capital budget that we have this year will be bonded um but we'll have more conversation about that in finance once we have that all ironed out with the town finance office um this slide is just a summary of The Proposal and this is what's going to be adopted by the board tonight each one of the funds um you'll see has a a gross and an offsetting revenue and then a net ask to the town School Nutrition department

095now for the fourth year I believe has no tax request to the town because they've been self-supporting since their reimbursement model was um first taken on by the the USDA and now uh is fully supported by the state um so between the revenues we raise ourselves and the and the reimbursements we get from the state that program does not need any tax revenue um I think the only other thing we have really is the items in motion which is the next thing and and we've talked about that a little bit oh we got fancy Scrolls I thought I got all those out of there we love the fancy Scrolls uh so this again is just a reminder that this is just the first reading and we have a lot of work to do we're going

096to know more about Anthem health insurance um in the next few weeks we'll get a maximum rate and then in another month we'll know our actual rate um Delta Dental other insurance we're working on renewals with our property insurance um auto insurance workers comp all of those things will be happening as we go through the process um special education costs Chris has the joy of um meeting with CDs um regularly and getting phone calls from folks telling him about their children and how much they want to come to scarbo schools so um that'll be an update that we need um as we go through the process and then the other thing too is that we're we're all all the way collecting um quotes for services we're getting renewal quotes from all of our vendors um

097our facilities director is getting quotes on some of the big capital projects so that we can have more specific numbers instead of um you know the estimates that we currently have um this chart uh is a calendar and look at those fancy transitions I just love those um there's no music playing it can't it can't be mics um so tonight is the handoff of the leadership council's budget to the board starting next week the board through their finance committee and through regular meetings is going to Shepherd The Proposal through the rest of the process um we've already had some in the workshops had some requests for additional data and some things we're going to be taking a look at some questions we have um and uh we'll be taking up that work in the public

098and posting all kinds of information as we go along I would just want to um suggest to folks that rather than take this calendar as gospel they might want to check as the dates come closer if you want to um connect with us at meetings because sometimes times will change um sometimes even dates will change but if you um flip to the next slide right these um these things are all available on the town website and on the school website and if you follow Schoolboard meetings at all you know where our meetings page is everything will be there they they'll also be posted on the budget page and anytime there's an update in the calendar we'll try to get that posted up as quickly as we can and that's all I've got thank you Kate

099all right um for right now are there any questions for Kate on her presentation um I have a question about the prek I have a few questions but I guess I'll we're gonna find more out on Tuesday uh yeah we have a meeting with the Department of Ed folks that are heading up that project on Tuesday and so I think have a lot more information I don't know that we'll have anything to share at finance committee but um what we're looking at right now is is um and and this is all just sort of very vague at the moment is that they have a deadline on the grant funds that they can only distribute them through December and they thought that they could distribute them through the following June um so we have to find

100out what that means yeah so historically they've been able to um have carryover time for carryover funds and um seemingly the department has been contacted and made aware that they will not have the allowance um for the extension of that time frame for carryover so uh we had a meeting already scheduled with the doe on Tuesday just uh to work out the particulars of the year 2 Grant um and the finances for that because as you probably recall last year that being our first year there were some startup costs that were built into that and so we were aware that we would not be expecting the same allocation uh but we're only anticipating backing out those startup costs and so now with the um carryover not being allowed seemingly um we're going to need to

101work more closely with the doe on on um figuring out what that allocation is going to be and um interestingly enough there are only two districts in this position ourselves and Sanford uh because we just happened to be the only people in year one of this Grand cycle um and um I'm not sure that we could have any two different districts in this position uh because Sanford May Fair better than Scaro because they are a much higher state receiver of funds right and so it all goes back to you know general purpose Aid and what's allocated right so the doe is signaling to us we take a look at your 279 because you'll still get that allocation but as Kate and I have talked with you previously you know our allocation uh for general purpose

102aid from the state is somewhere in the order of you know just over 12% right um because we are a really low receiver we're not a minimum Receiver right but we are very low comparatively speaking so if you were a higher receiver the allocation that the per pupil allocation that is within the 279 you would be getting a greater percentage of that amount of money yes that I can understand and I can understand that we wouldn't have the startup cost year-over-year that the expectation would be that you don't have to start a program right brand new for year two so I I can wrap my head around that that the funds were going to decrease because what I can't wrap my head around is a where is the money and not for you like these

103are the questions I would want answers from the meeting on Tuesday H do we sign a document do we sign a contract is there a how does this process typically go as as far as the the current Grant is concerned we do have a contract we have an agreement we made a Grant application like we would do with any kind of a grant and we were awarded that for this year for this year this year we know but we don't have a contract for next year you see because Tuesday's meeting is four Tuesday's meeting was always originally about what is the number of your allocation going to be for this year right got it and um the difference is that we had been led to believe that there would be plenty of money for the

104full cost of the second year as well right which is what we've been telling you've been telling been telling the community yes um I don't um feel a little bait and switch to me I'm really irritated right now about this um and it's not it I don't know if you're if you're anticipating the money to end in December what is the expectation for the district to do when school starts in August and September do we expect to bring 16 kids in and then in December say I'm sorry I mean I know we wouldn't do that but from a state perspective what are they expecting the school district the two that are going to have this problem what is the expectation for us to loal yeah I think they're just saying well y y'all will be

105fine don't worry about it you can have some money and you take care of the rest they don't research our 279 individually they don't recognize that what they respons yeah they they our allocation in in the EPS formula is about $160,000 but we'll only see 20,000 of that right in subsidy so they don't they don't really understand how that works I'm sure um and and that's a good question right we could just say I'm sorry we can't have a prek program because we can't pay for the second half of it but we you know we're just in the beginning stages of of having that conversation right and we just had a workshop where I didn't get the expectation from anyone that they wanted to let go of the prek program right I so I I

106I mean we can have the conversation again as a board and we know more but I didn't walk away from that Workshop thinking that we had a single board member that wanted to let go of the one program we had and in fact we're asking how we can expand and so this is really really frustrating and if nothing else um it feels like a bait and switch it feels like a disservice to the members of this community and that is the message I hope you convey yeah on our behalf and you know respectfully I I'm not you know sure where any finger pointing should happen my um guess is that our state doe is at the mercy of others right um it's a really changing political climate and so I can imagine how that might

107be playing into this bigger picture can can I um just a clarifying question um is it that the money is running out or that the grant has to be paid out by December 31st yes I think it's the second of the two again we don't have a lot of details we have like one email that's like oh by the way um yeah I guess this is a problem so that's you know what we what we hope to learn a little bit more about I need to understand the timeline I need to understand how the carryover works I've got a whole spreadsheet full of questions yeah I think I'm in my brain I'm trying to find the silver lining or the Hope available so I'm well I guess pay out a large chunk by December 31st

108to cover us through June if that's something we've already sort of talked about like could we prepay anything um most of it's in salaries though for the for the staff which you really can't do that you can't prepay people to work because you have to prove that they've done the work um but there there could be some workarounds and it it's really all going to depend on how their allocation is is coming to them to be able to distribute it so do you know where their allocation comes from it's a state program right but I don't know where the money comes from it was it was funded by the legislature originally and I think that's part of the issue is that there's been some discussion in the legislature about pulling back um so I I

109didn't actually get to hear anything substantive listening to public hearings in at the legislature last week there was some talk about it but I didn't hear anything real um do you feel like this should be on our list of items in motion oh yes right now so maybe adding that to the it's already on my list not only is it on my handwritten list on a pad of paper but it's already typed into into a document yeah because I don't think um I mean I think if there's any good news to it it's a small program I mean I don't want to say that we have you know 60 ,000 in our back pocket or whatever the the difference is going to be but we aren't looking for $500,000 either right so it it could

110be something that we could manage um just depending on on how the parameters work out how much they can help us I and I appreciate that and it could be um a 50 Cent increase and I would still be irritated right here because it feels like we were told one thing and we went forward to our community that is begging for transparency and honesty which we are all doing and now we have to go back almost I don't want to say with egg on our face but in state of the community we know we told you these things but now have yeah and it it just doesn't it doesn't feel good and when you're looking at a state program that's going to ask us to fund CDC services or to to take on CDC services

111and CD CDs Services I'm sorry not CDC no we're not we're not offering CDC programs here scy CDs progams and you know we talk about preschool we talk about all these things that get pushed down to the local level this is why people get irritated with it because you can't keep pushing things down with the expectation that we can just keep asking for more and more and more yeah well then particularly as Diane pointed out in a community like Scarboro where you're not getting a reimbursement that makes uh a big difference to your taxpayers um you know that that makes it a heavier lift and it makes it all the more important that we are clear with our our community of what it is that we're asking for and I'm not irritated with either of

112you just to be clear I am very irritated on the other end I I didn't think you were not any pleased yeah no you you you could have heard some some bad words when we got there were there were some some naughty words that would not be tolerated at a corner School you have to take some of those quotes put them up in your office I've already got the banking one on my w I love that there's some really good ones there all right all right any other questions for Kate on her presentation yeah some questions um so in the past of our presentations we had information about unmet needs and things that we elected not to fund and I don't see that in any the workshop materials or any of your presentation today that

113was something the Town Council particularly asked for from us last season and I wonder what they are and why we weren't provided with that ahead of time so that's a deliberate choice on the part of our leadership team um and it has to do with the fact that our level Services budget and the essential Investments that we need to make are already driving our tax ask up considerably higher than it was last year last year at this time we were going to the town with a less than a 5% tax request increase and this year we're we're close to 7% um and the reasons for that are all those cost drivers we're talking about collective bargaining agreements um negotiated increases in Pay um expected increases in benefits so as a leadership team we did go

114through the exercise of talking about what new proposals we might need what we might want and we literally as a team said the this is not the time we're good with what we have as long as we can retain what we have hold on to it and not lose it we are going to be in a good place what I heard last year from the Town Council specifically was they wanted to know what our needs were that we weren't putting forward and I'm extremely disappointed that we're not going to be able to answer that question this year because I know World language teachers have been on that for a number of years I know last year we've deferred a truck uh payment I know we went went without early interventionist at K through 2 I

115know that we don't have worldy language teachers at a through2 I know academic support is in need if you look at our uh our if you look at our Essa data um and we're lagging in certain areas that we have dipped in specifically there's still a CO bubble um where services to intervene would be important and I don't think it's fair to our community or to our town counil to be not clear with them what they're electing not to reinvest in if they don't have the option to even see it hiding what we need because we think we're asking for too much is a strategy but it is not transparent it's not honest about how we get our math scores up for example I I would TR I would push back a little bit on

116the fact that we're hiding anything I really believe that our team has the resources that they need I've listened to a lot of conversations could we ask for something else and more of course everybody can always come up with an idea of something else they could add to their budget that would be great that would be helpful but do we need are we missing do we have a deficit I would say from what I have heard no and I guess I would add to that just you know again I think as a full team we've talked a lot about you know you've heard us say now for three days right like we're really capitalizing on the prior Investments and we say that very genuinely because if we look at the past three budget years and

117the Investments that this community has made in intervention positions specifically um in our mtss we are much deeper in that level of being able to meet that level of service now than we were three years ago and I think you know um you heard our school leaders give their presentations yesterday we some of these positions are still in their infancy and being developed and so at this time to just say let's bring in more people we don't feel like that is the most responsible thing to do we also shared um with the board what our rates are of students who are meeting grade level standards and actually I feel like that is a huge point of Pride because as you saw in the last couple of days depending on what grade level you're looking at

118we're somewhere between 70 and 85% of our students meeting grade level standards and then we showed all of the Cadre of intervention services we have for the students who are not meeting that so I I really just feel like it is important to point that out I hear what you're saying but I still believe that that's information that we owe the public and that's that's information that is being deprived from this body from the Town Council and from this discussion and I don't appreciate it um I also have questions about the capital reserve Fund in the past few years we have funded that that fund that capital reserve fund using a fund balance I believe if I recall correctly I don't see that anywhere in this budget this year we currently have a balance of

119about $800,000 in capital reserves and it was my impression that those funds were being retained to be used for an interim solution between the referendum approval of a new building and the students who are going to need a place to go in the intervening years before that building is built whatever it is or buildings so we do have $800,000 in capital reserves also in the capital budget we have $600,000 which could be bonded for whatever that potential solution may be which would give us a total of 1.4 million which would be a pretty decent amount we can use the capital reserve funds to fund anything in our capital budget right now or we can hang on to them um right now there haven't been any funding sources discussed for the capital budget that we have

120today so this group could elect to use that $800,000 in the coming year or hang on to it I think you mistake my question I'm not looking to use that money from the capital reserve funds that that's money that we deliberately set aside relatively recently to build that fund up right so that when capital projects such as the track and turf come by and other normal regular routine projects come up we don't have to bond all the time we use that money for school buses for example and we're using that money in order to switch some of the way we spend but also to save money for projects that are coming not just the term solution which is going to require more than $800,000 sure but for a number of projects and so I don't

121I would like to know if we're planning to just zero that out and not save for our future needs in this budget and be honest about that as well not if I can help it because I think it's important that we tell people how we're being good stewards of their money now and in the future yeah the message that I've given to the town manager is that we don't want to touch that money we need that I'm talking about putting more money in oh sure we can do that single year that we can from our budget from our F balance Goa fund up so so here's the thing about that you can't budget money and then save it what you have to do is you budget the money at the end of the school year

122you have some left over and then you put it in there so I'm anticipating that at the end of FY 25 where we are today we'll have Surplus and we'll allocate more of that Surplus to that fund until we can continuously uh build that that balance up but we not putting in the budget an amount for next year that we then will save at the end of next year that's not what I'm saying at all saying we using fund balance from last year to move it forward as part of our revenues and historically we've used that to put into fund balance or put into Capital reserves so we're not doing that this year in this budget I believe are you talking about the fund balance that's listed in the revenue section so that's not the

123capital reserve money I am aware of that but is that one of the sources we've used in the past put money into Capital reserves and we're choosing not to do that this year Noor I'm sorry hang on one second can you tell us what slid you're looking at I think she's referring to the fact that we have .5 million as non-t tax revenue that's correct in our general fund operating budget that's the same amount that we've had for the past three years right so what we're saying is that we believe that we have well first of all we have that money in the bank now nothing to do with the capital reserves we believe that year-over-year we'll generate more or less that amount of money at the end of the year plus an amount to

124put into Capital reserves which is what we did last year we had the 1.5 million plus enough to put $800,000 so I I really really really agree with you I have the utmost respect for the idea of keeping that capital reserve fund alive and well continuing to add to it as robustly as we possibly can at the end of every year but I don't think that that really um I don't think that the use of the $1.5 million is going to derail that at all gotcha okay sorry I got there get very we got to have the money for those cute buses any other questions for all right don't go far I'm right here agenda item 9.0 is general public comment is there anyone wishing to make General Public comment this [Music] evening um my

125name is John rabby I live at for State Drive turns out that portions of what I've heard tonight have something to do with what I'm about to say especially the student Spotlight award that was presented tonight uh I don't know if you've seen it but last week the organization of American historians and the American historical Association issued a statement concerning the federal government's current treatment of American History have you seen it you've seen it good for you all right now I have a copy of it on me I I'm going to turn it over to you for your reference um but with your permission I'd like to read some excerpts into the public record may I do that have um about two and a half minutes left okay together the organization of American historians and

126the American historical Association condemn recent efforts to censor historical content on federal government websites at many public museums and across awide swath of government resources that include essential data new policies that per merge words phrases and content that some officials deem suspect on ideological grounds constitute a systemic campaign to distort manipulate and erase significant parts of the historical record recent directives insidiously prioritize narrow ideology over historical research historical accuracy and the actual experiences of Americans it is bad enough to forget the past it is even worse to intentionally deny the public access to what we remember have documented and have expended public resources to disseminate words matter Precision matters context matters expertise matters democracy matters we can neither deny what happened nor invent things that did not happen recent executive offers orders and other Federal

127directives alter the public record in ways that are contrary to historical evidence the result in deceitful narratives of the past that violate the Professional Standards of our discipline When government entities The Scholar Scholars themselves censor the use of particular words they in effect censor historical evidence censorship and Distortion erase people and institutions from history our professional ethics require that all historians believe in honoring the Integrity of the historical record we expect our nation's leadership to adhere here to the same basic standard and we will continue to monitor protest and place in the historical record any censorship of American historical facts now I couldn't help notice that the young lady who got the student Spotlight award tonight represents exactly what our nation's historians are trying to defend now what I hope you do all of you

128is read and study this statement I hope you endorse it and I hope that you communicate that endorsement to the Town Council to our state legislator legislators and to our members of Congress this is serious business and I could cite example after example of what has been done if you have any questions I'd be glad to answer them thanks for your time is there anyone else online motion to public comment thank you very much thank you you got my email just let me know what happens please okay we'll do thank you all right uh I'm sorry so no one okay thank you so seeing none I will close general public comment agenda item 10.0 is new business 10.1 is the first reading of FY 26 school budget so Jenna you ready for your big moment

129my favorite part every year um okay here we go you're gonna hear a lot of numbers coming from me and hopefully I don't mess them up all right so we are looking to move approval to adopt the leadership council's budget proposal as presented for first reading total general fund operating budget is proposed at 7,784 76 I think I already messed it up 764 with offsetting non-t tax revenues of 10,947 47 and a tax request to the town of 59,87290 with offsetting non-t tax revenues of $136,900 total School nutrition budget is proposed at $2,535 247 with offsetting non-t tax revenues of 2,535 uh 1,247 and no tax request to the town Capital Equipment proposed budget is 1,186 and capital projects proposed budget is $4 4,194 th000 for a total Capital Improvements budget of $ 5,380 th000

130oh I think your mic is off Shannon thank you I said awesome job thank you not a single mistake all right do I have a motion to approve the first reading of the FY 26 school budget as presented so moved second second all right is there any discussion I have a point of order sure under our policy DB this is not brought properly before this board um under our policy this budget is supposed to be forwarded to the committee for finance to review it to propose amendments to it and then to for the committee to bring it forward to this board so I have a point of order that we are not following our own policies the reason for those policies is that we this board this budget becomes the board's budget and we have

131not had a chance to vet it through the committee process which is how we do our business and to do any of the Amendments that we normally would do um and my comments today as you I have a lot of questions um that could have been and more appropriately would have been directed to a committee process and then we would have brought it before the town that before the board here for first reading which is the appropriate procedure for this and I don't I it's not the appropriate it's not in order it's it's not in accordance with our policies um and I just want to make sure that everyone's aware of that and there and there's important philosophical reasons for that a we should be following our policies with and be faithful to them um

132the second is because this becomes our budget that we have an obligation to go out and support and we have been deprived of the opportunity um to do that through the fact that the process wasn't followed so help me understand here um I'm going to ask a couple questions um okay let me I'm sorry I have 800 windows open okay um so when did the finance committee last meet did you look at it as a finance committee no it was not ready so and the other part the other part of that is we the first time I saw the budget was when I got the budget book at the workshop this week I do most of my preparation for meetings on the weekends because of my work schedule this week was a particularly hectic work

133week for me and so I was up very late last night trying to go through the budget I did not have the time to review it that I should have had time to I did not have any ability at the committee to do any amendments we were we were not allowed the opportunity to do that because of the lack of process that we followed you know I have lots of questions you know prek investment in the future I understand that the Leadership Council does not I understand their I understand and and quite frankly they have a very responsible um proposal like I like I I don't fault them for that I'm not I don't think that they've done a bad job I think they've done a tremendous job but there are initiatives that this committee

134we choose to invest prek being one of them not I'm not talking about what happened today but I'm talking about prek in general we had a workshop on prek we have a community who wants prek if we wanted to bring forward a proposal to fund prek or another prek classroom we could do that through this budget but we're not allowed we can't do that at this point and now that the budget is made is now at for first reading and we'll go before Town Council next week we have no ability to have any real impact in this budget that we are adopting as ours I object to that um well I hear you yes I hear you I hear you objecting to this um but what about the um between the first and the second

135reading what about the meeting do you have board do you have Finance meetings set up then we do but the cart is already down the road the snowball is down the hill this is going before Town Council next week yes we can definitely make amendments and we will make amendments we always are going to make amendments you know Anthem rates will come in we'll get a fixed number we have to deal with the prek issue the Town Council will have input we will deal with amendments but we haven't had a chance to put any of our own personal amendments or initiatives into it and to have a debate about that we could reject all of them but we haven't even had the opportunity to do that nor will we I'm trying to think through what

136the do you have a request for us or what what is it you're wanting the board to do there's nothing the board can do at this point we could hold up first reading that would be very problematic um because there's a tight time L but but I I I think it it Bears note and I raised this before this meeting just to be clear with everybody this is not a surprise to everybody um this but this is a problematic you know I don't like the fact that I am now being forced to endorse this budget and go out and support it without having had any ability to impact or have any ability to amend it have any input whatsoever into it other than me approving first reading and then doing whatever we do between the

137two which is mostly in response to Town Council that is a problem for me personally can can I just clarify you you won't have the time of the next finance committee meeting to make the Amendments that you'd like to see like a line item or what I'm saying is we have now put into the public sphere a budget we could do that the way that we typically bring forward things through committee is we vet them at the committee we make changes at the committee think about esac you're on ESC things H work happens at that committee changes happen at that committee before it becomes brought before the full board before it goes before the Town Council we have no ability to make any real Amendment at this point except in response to what the Town

138Council tells us to do next week I my mind is I'm trying to think this through because I think you can however I think your point your larger point is that the budget is already out in the public world and now if you if I'm hearing you correctly if you go to make any changes that you were interested in you fra or Jenna or Alyssa on finance is interested in making it if the budget request is 6.8 now it might be 7.0 like you're going to go up before I'm thinking as I'm talking you know this is difficult for me okay you how do I word this so I if I hear you correctly in the past you would have any amendments that Finance had you would have brought it up before you would have

139discussed it at Finance you would have debated it you would have decided yes or no and then it would have come to the full Council I mean I'm sorry the full board but what's happening now is the full board is seeing it and you don't you're saying that the finance committee hasn't had that opportunity and so if you make an amendment now it's going to drive that up and this budget is already out in the public sphere that's exactly right that's exactly right and it could go up or down given last last budget s season is probably not a normal budget season terms of that um there was a lot of discussion and there was a lot of a lot there's a lot of stuff that happened last budget season um I don't remember the

140budget season before that all that well I don't know if we followed our policy last budget season but I didn't care last budget season I was in full support of the budget I did I would not have made any amendments I was not interested in making amendments and in fact I was very vocal in supporting the budget um I'm not sure I would say that this time but it doesn't matter I feel like I've been deprived of my opportunity to have a fully Fair time to vet it with the finance committee and discuss it and then put it forward to this board I think we're out of order I don't think does not go from the Leadership Council to this town to to our board it goes from the Leadership Council to the finance committee

141to this board that's the proper process and that's why because it's at committee that we can actually do something with it we are now stuck with it For Better or For Worse whether you like it or whether you don't like it and this and I'm not I'm objecting strongly to the procedure I'm not proposing amendments tonight I'm I'm not doing that but I am raising as a point of order that this is inappropriate and why it's inappropriate I'm not angry for no reason I'm not making a point to shut everything down just because I am wanting to take out my angst on the world um there's a process for a reason the process is the budget should have gone before the finance committee 120 days before the end of the fiscal year which would have

142been earlier this month and then we bring it to the committee I'm sorry we the committee brings it to the board that's what our policy says and that's why our policy says that so that every member of this board understands why that's the policy there's a reason for it it's not arbitrary so what are what is um are you wanting I'm trying to understand what you're like I understand your you want to make the point like that piece I get but what I'm also trying to understand is what are you hoping the outcome is tonight or what are you what are you what are you wanting the board to consider there's nothing the board can do we have our hands have been tied I am frustrated about that I feel like I dve proper process

143there's nothing that I can do other than vote against the budget that's the only action that somebody could take in this instance and I'm not proposing that all right um I'm trying to think at this point um I I do think we are when you look at the timing that's outlined in the in our policy I do think we move forward with it with this tonight um For Better or For Worse to your point um I I do think that going forward I I'm going to bring up my um Le favorite time in all of my years in the board and it was our masking problem um when I didn't run the process properly and we brought Melissa in and we had a conversation and the thing that's running through my mind right now is

144Melissa saying something to the effect of um the intent was there right and so you carry on so I know that you know I heard you say fora that you brought this up earlier this week and that's correct and I think there are some some people in the room who don't know what the discussion was early in the week when the question was brought up and um you know Kate did provide the history of how this has worked she did provide information that we have received from legal in the past about how policy DB works out and I'm just wondering if there's interest by any other members of the board in hearing about that well sure I definitely think there would be I think that's value added yeah Kate is that something that you want

145to speak to again I I can speak for you but I certainly wasn't you know part of the historical information that you shared not sitting here because I'm no I understand not interested I'm sitting here because I'm I'm gathering my thoughts and I don't have notes before me I did put some things in writing earlier in the week um I will say that we did um have some questions about the intersection between our policy Schoolboard policy DB the town Charter because we're a municipal school department um and how those two intersect as well as State Statute which um outlines and uh and regulates Ates the way that School departments present their budgets and the way that school boards um go through a budget process each year um I will agree with fra that policy DB

146says something different from what we're doing um however um I don't feel that we were disingenuous in doing that because for the past at least 10 years we've used the same process and we've been given legal legal advice that said that the only way to make policy which is sort of a template that comes from msma statute and tan Charter work together and meet those timelines is to present to the full board in first reading and let the Amendments come after um that's not to say that we couldn't change that um but my um my uh information that I provided earlier in the week or when we were having this conversation was that we haven't done that in the past and we've had what we thought was good reason to not do it that way

147I'm GNA forward the email that you sent me to the full board happy to do that I'll do that tonight so everyone can read thank you yeah no that that makes sense to me do you and I have I have it up right now I can send it yeah I think I've sort of parsed it pretty well and if you share the the written information that would be great thank you so the I just want to be sure I understand what you I just want to repeat what I heard you say so you're you're saying that we for the last 10 years likely have not been following our policy as it's written to the letter to the letter however the legal advice you've gotten has said that the intersection of the various things that you

148just mentioned says that the board gets the budget at first reading and afterward the finance committee makes the changes is that what you're saying is that you said that has been our practice yes and based on the legal guidance yes okay and the and the finance committee you know over the years has made some fairly drastic changes to what the leadership Council has proposed um so you know the the fact that the budget has been you know publicly presented I think our stance was that the it's presented as the leadership council's budget it's the you know suggestion the same as the suggestion that the town manager makes to the Town Council and then it's up to that governing board to dissect and and consider and change and alter and do what what they will with

149that um I just want to say that like I completely agree with what I believe what you're saying but I don't it's not legal that it has to go this way there's some consult with legal there's some timelines in there and there is a way to make this congruent it just would require it earlier which would be good anyway I think it'd be helpful to have that Workshop not the day but like the day up practically next to this this um presentation because I have not had an opportunity to really digest it and the workshops run over and we're not able to really ask questions and finish that process so we're still I'm still digesting the information that I had I reviewed I was I was participating by Zoom but that I would rewatched it

150so that I could have complete focus on it which is a lot of time and it just doesn't give us enough time to digest it and to make thoughtful um if I wanted to make a thoughtful Amendment tonight there's no way that I could have been prepared to do that I'm not faulty in you Kate you do a tremendous job of this budget this was a drastically different budget presentation than the ones I've been experienced the last two years so the way the budget's presented has changed quite a bit that was a learning curve for me as well because I'm not a finance person I don't math in public um I'm good with words I'm not as good as numbers and so it takes a lot for me to study up and understand what I'm

151looking at um so I'm just I'm frustrated with the process and then so I did what I do which is read policy because that's my safe space and when I looked at it I was like well there's a reason for that and then I looked at the reasons why and it makes sense there's a reason for that so I would like to see it change in the future um I think that's I think there's a reason to change it in the future and we can have further discussions about that but like I am not thrilled with this budget I'll be very honest with you I am not thrilled with this budget I don't like it um and so I would H likely have made amendments if we were at a committee and I'd had an

152opportunity to review it I do not feel that I have had the time to formulate that any thoughtful manner well enough to craft an amendment and so now I'm stuck doing that at the last minute at Second Amendment when there's a whole lot more stuff that we're going to be contending with um and that deprives I feel deprived of my opportunity to impact this budget and I am supported by the policy that we have so that's that is the source of my frustration and it's not directed anyone individually it's not a personal attack on the leadership team I know you worked diligently and tirelessly for the last four months on this like I this was a tremendous amount of work it's important work and I understand why you made the decisions you do I completely

153get it I'm just saying that I would have liked to have had a place to have input before I am going to be able to oh sorry you go ahead I don't really have much to add I mean I think I think FR really you know she's absolutely correct in what she's saying and how she feels and I I think I'm correct in describing history and practice and so I think you know those two things can exist peacefully together um and you know what we do in the future is in the future right and and we can make changes if we feel that's necessary I I do just want to say that I don't want you to feel um I I hear you saying that you you feel your hands are tied you're you know

154now you're you're done you can't make changes I have seen some very interesting creative um and dramatic changes made between first and second reading by school boards not just town councils so I I just want to offer that to you um as some consolation perhaps and maybe after we get through this B budget season um maybe there's an opportunity because this policy was last reviewed in 2013 so it's likely one that's going to come up to us anyway in policy 0 a great after we get through the 80s and the 90s but I wonder if there's an opportunity for two things on the finance committee one is to look at this policy and maybe go through it as a finance committee and and look at consider it with what your process is right because I

155am it should align with what our process actually policy that for no offense we should never we as a board should not have a policy that we're not following so if this needs updating perhaps Finance can take a look at this and say this is our actual process and then policy can look at the policy so that would be number one and number two I wonder if it's helpful to make a calendar um for the board members because 120 days prior to the beginning what is that actual date yeah like making that actual calendar out and maybe that's a secondary piece to this policy well and I guess I would also add too right like it seems to me that there would be value um you know the finance committee meets year round um so

156in my mind there would be value at the very beginning of the budget season of going through um what are the expectations that the finance committee has for leadership so that we're not arriving at the evening of first reading and hearing you know the things that um uh people are unsatisfied or disappointed about yeah that's a good idea too yeah can I just add um I was actually very thankful that fra brought this to my attention this week um it was like at the very last second but it it caused me to go into the sense of panic like oh my gosh have we been doing this wrong um and then after getting a little bit of clarity on the history from from Kate I felt better about it and um and just like fra

157said I I don't think that you guys meant any harm by it I think you guys spent a great amount of time on it and you always do an excellent job presenting the information um and then just having been in this committee the last few years I it shocked me that I never actually reviewed that particular policy um and I do think it'll serve us I'm good to just look at it and and really tease out what it means for that committee going forward I do I do appreciate it yeah I think there's some lessons learned for sure right but we can always do that we can always do better absolutely all right um is there anyone wishing to make General Public comment well first off is discussion is there any more discussion is there

158anyone wishing to make General Public comments on the FY 26 school budget all right seeing not seeing none um do I have a motion to approve the first reading oh no we already did that I'm sorry um where are we we took a first we took a second we have discussion okay let's um oh can I do a point of information point of clarity one of the Roberts rules points um as the items in motion I don't know if I should be direct my question here Kate but as the items in motion become more clear um is that um should we expect sorry first time on first year on the board um should we expect to have all um numbers for um items in motion for second read or do some of those extend beyond

159second read as well you can't change the budget after reading um well no let me let me step back on that once the board takes second reading the Town Council has their second reading at the Town council's second reading they could say oh gosh we want to make a change to the school budget at which point the town the school board would come back together and um the Town Council has um what they call bottom line Authority so let's pretend that we bring a budget that's $70 million and they say we want it to be $69 million it's up to the school board then to allocate that reduction or that add maybe they're going to add a million dollars that would be great um to the individual budget categories that go to the referendum so

160I'm making this a little complicated but um all of those items in motion that we're talking about we will bring those forward anything that we have we're going to bring for second reading the only thing that might happen after second reading is that the Town Council makes an unexpected move that we have to adjust to we have to we have to um we have to allocate whatever the change is to the budget categories but the super large ones like my head is on the anthem rates like the anthem rates we'll know that before second reading so when you get to second reading you're going to have these amendments that say you know we're going to increase this and we're going to move that we're going to change that um that's all um built into the

161process of the second reading okay which would also include any amendments that finance committee decided that they wanted to make for whatever reason right and um we have guess what we have a spreadsheet surprise that starts with our first reading budget that we're doing right now and then notes all the changes that might happen up and down and then gets to a bottom line for second reading and then at second reading and vote you're you're voting on that new thing with the amends amendments okay and while I have your expertise here here um if the situation with the prek grant is not entirely clear yet is the board gonna have to just make a decision based around that or yeah I think I you know I I think probably I think we'll know enough um

162to to be able to make an an informed decision but I do think there's going to have to be choices around you know are we going to ask the community to Pony up whatever that number is to make it work for another year okay but I think we'll have good data for for that uh choice to be made okay thank you very much you're welcome no don't apologize okay we have three minutes so I'm going to call the vote on this and then I'm GNA ask for an extension of time so can we call the vote Ray for this yes yes Miss Lindstrom yes Miss Peterson yes Mr rockenstyre no mrini Huff yes Mr pinan yes Miss Rina yes thank you um thank you R given the time do I have a motion to extend

163beyond 9:30 any discussion um we we don't have any public comment right nobody was there no okay uh can we call the vote please yes Mr kellerer yes Miss Leon yes Miss Lindstrom yes Miss Peterson yes Mr rockenstein yes Mr trinian yes mrini hu yes Mr Rina yes all right perfect thank you okay agenda item 10 .2 is the power school Mass action lawsuit so I'm going to turn this over to Diane to te up great um so Ray is going to be um bringing into the meeting yep yep um Ray is going to be bringing in um and promoting attorney William shinoff from the France Law Group uh just to give you a little bit of background uh you probably recall in January um being informed that there was a breach of data with

164power school um our student information system this was a nationwide breach that happened um and um across the country millions of students and Educators personally identifiable information um was compromised uh our team here in Scaro worked very diligently and deliberately to find out exactly whose information um had been uh shared and to what extent that was um to move us forward to today um there is uh Jen day our uh technology director was contacted about this mass action litigation um that is happening against Power School um and the district's opportunity to sign on to this and so I will leave the rest uh to uh attorney shinoff welcome thank you all very much okay can you hear me yes all right perfect I will I know it's late there so I'll try to keep it

165uh short and concise so uh as you you you got the background about the issue that we're focused on in this matter uh so my firm we we represent public entities across the country in a variety of matters uh but in this matter we are representing uh school districts across the country that were impacted uh by this recent breach at the end of 2024 uh what we're focused on is the fact that all these school districts uh pay for the services provided by power school and with that payment it's pursuant to a contract uh part of that contract is a data privacy agreement uh in the data privacy agreement Power School makes guarantees and assurances of the level of security that they are going to provide uh for the information that you are storing uh

166on on their system uh and what they state is that their their system is going to be their cyber security is going to be up to federal and state guidelines as a result of this breach what we have learned is that they did not meet the minimum federal and state standards of cyber security so what we do know then is that they breached the agreement uh in in what they promised to be providing you as a result of the services that you paid for in addition to that what we do know is that you overpaid for the services that you provided for because if we take out the fact of the cyber security you were paying for the value that they provided is nowhere near the amount that your district has been paying over the

167years for their services um so what we're doing is is is things so one is we want to make sure that for the time and expenses that were incurred as a result of this breach that your district is reimbursed for that time the second part is we want to make sure that your district is reimbursed for the overpayment for the services provided by power school over the period that you have had a contract with power school the other thing too we we want to provide to as a in what it's called is called consequential damages so this is as a consequence their breach of the agreement is that if your District decides ever to move from Power School to another platform is that you have the necessary funds to make that switch because if you

168do make that switch it's very time intensive and very expensive so we want to make sure that that that funding does not have to come out of your general budget another issue that we're focused on is making sure that they indemnify you in the future because the fact is as of today there's been 35 class actions filed against Power School by students and teachers across the country as a result of this breach and when we're dealing with children the statute of limitations of when they can bring an action is far into the future because they have beyond the age of 18 in the contract that you do have with power school you do have an Indemnity provision however just because it's there does not mean that they're going to honor it we've already seen them

169not honor the terms of the contracts with all the districts we represent so in this U matter we're going to make sure that whether that's through a settlement or a judgment that they will indemnify you if an action is ever brought against your District by a student or staff member as a result of this breach and then finally we are seeking what's called injunctive relief so that's a court order that we're wanting this company to follow we're actually going to be seeking a preliminary injunction due to the fact that many districts are not going to be leaving Power School anytime soon and even if they were going to leave in the very near future uh as I said it takes a lot of time to switch from platforms we want to make sure their security

170today is what it should have been when you had your contract with them so we're going to be requesting that they have to go and report to a special Master uh to making sure that they are complying with state and federal guidelines so that no breach like this occurs because what we've learned this was not a complex hack this was just someone getting access to a username and password that easily could have been prevented and 70 million people's information would have never been exposed um two things I want I want to since I want to keep it short two two questions I want to be able to answer for you and then I'll open up to questions um first um there is no cost your District to be involved in this matter uh we do

171work on this on a contingency fee basis so if there is no financial recovery the district is paying no fees and costs uh our our fees would come out of any recovery if there is any and also we've reduced our fee uh from 40% to 30% the other question is uh the amount of staff time that would have to be involved in this um this this is going to be a mass action um so down the road we will negotiate a a questionnaire that our clients will have to go and complete so our expectation is should only be a few hours of Staff time to be involved in this case so uh with that being said I wanted to open up to any questions that you may have thank you there any I mean I

172have 850 but questions for um hi attorney Schoff do you have any sense of whether um Power School has the financial resources to realistically be able to actually pay out any school districts especially on a mass action basis yeah so Power School represents 16,000 school districts across the country which means that they are getting paid by 16,000 school districts every year for the services they provided um and those obviously those fees can range from $5,000 to a year to over a million dollars a year um but what we do know is po school got purchased by a private Equity company last year for5 A5 billion doar and this is not a half billion dollar case so this is not a case that will bankrupt Power School um there will be districts that stay with them

173um but what we do want to do is make sure that you are appropriately reimbursed uh and also make sure that if your District decides to stay with power school that your information is going to be safe in the future and just to um I was reading through the documents that we we've gotten your documents ahead of time to prepare for this meeting and um it for me this was the first time I've really honestly read about a mass action lawsuit versus a class action and so the way that I understand from reading these documents is that a mass action means that the district each individual District that's participating essentially is suing for their their specific costs is that did I understand that correctly that's right uh the perfect example I like to give is

174a class action's good if you need to replace a battery in a car every everyone has the same damages everyone needs either to get the money to replace the car or get a new B the battery or to get a new battery for this every District's damages are different the amount they they have in their contract uh it it's not a one- siiz fits-all box the other benefit too is power is in control of you the district because you have your own individual action so if there is some proposed settlement and you're not happy with it you can reject we move forward uh in a class action your only option is to opt out and then you're kind of on your own at that point um but Mass actions are also efficient because we consolidate

175all the cases together we do Discovery as one and then we select cases to be the first few trials to kind of give the sense to each side on the strengths and weaknesses of their case okay perfect thank you and do you know in the contract is there anything that's spelled out the time that they should be communic with the district if a breach occurred yes so it depending each state has their own uh contract and each state has their own uh laws that require how immediate um they're supposed to provide notice and so some states they they use the word immediate some say specific days uh what we do know is that they took at a minimum uh 16 days to notify your District all the districts that there was this breach however we

176still to this day they have not provided sufficient notice as required under your contract they have not provided all the details they were required to and that's the issue your own attorney they have notified your attorney general but what they've just did too is they're changing the numbers every day uh so that they're still haven't provided the notice that they're required there any other questions is just just questions about the lawsuit in particular like can I ask about the particulars that led to this issue I don't see why not I mean right questions for the attorney yeah you you said that a private Equity company bought this before the breach that's correct and so were there changes to policy or security systems that led to this or that to your knowledge we we have been

177told uh that school has been since the private Equity company took them over there has been a big change uh there's a lot of one Department not knowing not talking to the other department uh but what I do know from talking with other districts the issues of security um that's been going on for years so I don't think that's a change in power school due to the fact of potential cost cutting I don't think that's what that is thank you and you you did indicate or I I I don't know if you said or if I I do remember reading this in there but I guess you did say if we as a district um want to go in another Direction um with from power school we can include that in this lawsuit as well

178the costs for that is that correct yes that is something absolutely we're going to be claiming and it's not required for that to be done during the pendency of this case got it yeah just as a piece of information for the board our costs for power school are paid for uh by the state does that mean the state would recoup the cost of a settlement I think that's a great question for the attorney that so that would be up to the state the state could the state could go and make a claim for if we if we recover for instance the cost to of overpayment the state could make a claim for that part they can't make a claim for uh the time and expense of dealing with the breach they can't make a claim

179for the consequence qu quential damages that we would be getting for if you decided to change platforms uh that would be something that since that's not money the state has actually paid and and any other damages we we get pursuant to the contract but the only thing that state maybe could get a make a claim on is for the overpayment portion I have some questions so it sounds like you have some information about the from the attorney general about the information that they have have you been coordinating with the main attorney general about this at all there's a multi-state investigation going on between a number of attorney generals and we've we've spoken with a number of we've spoken with not the main Attorney General's office but the other attorney general's offices that are working with

180them has Maine joined that effort yes yes but if if main sues them does that prevent our claim for moving forward no no because you you have the contract with with power school the the main attorney general can make a claim for what the state has paid but they can't go and bring a contractual claim on behalf of your district and it looks like your contract um is eliminates risk from the district so youtify Us in case they get attorney damages or fees um it's a contingent fee so we don't have to pay any money um as a client is there any risk to entering this contract to the district no the only risk would be the time spent uh and there's no recovery that that's the only risk does the state require us to

181use power school there are other districts who use other student information systems but as you know the attorney has already pointed out um transitioning from one student information system to another is not a simple task it's Monument well I would I would I would definitely I can't imagine but on the surface I would say I would imagine millions of students data being breed is also not a not a fast process um can I ask a sorry clarifying question so um I think earlier you had mentioned that this lawsuit would cover us if years down the road someone decided to sue the district if they're you know I think you had mentioned something about kids had longer time that they could come back and sue so if we did not would um so if Maine if

182the state of Main's covering our bill and potentially going to reap all the benefits of getting the money out of the law suit do we have any coverage down the road or would a person Sue our district versus the state they would not Sue this they wouldn't sue the state because you know they're not a student of the state they would sue if anything practically speaking they would sue the district because you provided their data to Power School um but then you would then if you weren't part of this case you would then have to go to Power School request they indemnify you so that's pay your legal fees pay your costs pay any potential exposure um and if they say no that means you have to go take power school to court to go

183and assure they indemnify you and I what we're trying to do is shortcut that issue and make sure we take care of that of that issue now okay and if and obviously if Power School were to magically go out of business in that time period we we'd have nothing to go back to the other information that I would just want to provide to the board is again just a few more details about um the breach as it relates to Scaro specifically so um in scarbro um what was exposed was name and demographic information email addresses and lunch status and um no current student Social Security numbers were breached we don't store those in in power school um and have not done that for a number of years uh less than 90 Social Security numbers uh

184from 2008 and earlier were exposed so we're really talking about historical data um that actually uh wasn't originally in power school it was in a student information system that the district had and when you morph over student Information Systems you always take that historical data with you so um less than 90 Social Security numbers from previous students before 2008 and less than 10 Social Security numbers from staff um and only one of those staff members actually is still a current staff member because all of the breaches were of a historical nature there any more questions for right now okay do I have a mo uh do I have a motion to approve it would be our participation in the power school Mass action lawsuit some second um any discussion yeah I just I this is

185I'm assuming this is correct I'm assuming that Diane you are recommending that we go forward with this it's why it's on the agenda yes yes and you know and again um all of you know Jen day quite well um our technology director and um she is very involved at the state level um and she brought this to our attention um and really asked us to bring it forward to you because of again as you've heard this evening the risks um being involved are very minimal um is I thought I saw Jen so I don't know if you already have the answer to this or not oh so sorry um but do we is our if we were to participate is our plan to stay with power school or are would we plan it out we

186have not made any plans at this time to move our student information system so I have a hard time with this situation and I've had a hard time with this situation and I've heard this presentation not the law suit presentation but the presentation from Jen twice now and twice oh good welcome Jen um I've um asked her twice about that specific question are we do we feel confident in continuing with power school and her answer both times was this could happen to anybody and that piece I am 100% on board with this could happen to Target could happen to power school this could happen to Hanford where I part ways is with the communication that has occurred afterward and the way that this has been handled from the day the breach happened and continues to

187be handled today and that leaves me with zero confidence in power school and so when you sue in my mind when you sue someone you're suing someone because you are planning you don't agree with their process procedures outcome whatever and so you're suing for reparations for lack of a better word and so my struggle with this is that we sue them which I quite frankly think that for my from my perspective that this is taxpayer money so I believe we need to participate but then why are we continuing to stay with them that's the piece I can't wrap my mind around can I can I respond to that yeah so like let me put break it into a completely different thing so let's say you hired somebody to remodel your kitchen and they did most

188of the work that you wanted to but they didn't do all of it exactly the how you wanted it you wanted a double oven and range and they put in an electric an electric one oven and microwave combo and you were like what the heck is this the contract says this I got that you might finish with that contractor because he's three quarters of the way through your kitchen but you might renegotiate parts of that contract to get some money back as compensation for the harm he caused you harm in the legal term in terms of not fulfilling his obligations under that contract not throwing shaded contractors but like it's not when you sue somebody it's not always like one and done and you're gone forever sometimes in contractual when you have a contract with

189somebody that relationship will survive that lawsuit it's really about dealing with um if somebody and you if you make an agreement with somebody and they don't fulfill that agreement sometimes you part ways sometimes you don't because it makes sense to continue but you still re you you think of it as a renegotiation of like you didn't do quite what you were supposed to do and we paid you for this job and now we're getting some of our money back because you didn't fulfill the job that you're supposed to do yeah how are we confident yeah that I can follow just how are we confident they're going to fulfill going forward if they're not doing it still to this day well it does sound like um when William was speak U William was speaking that um

190they were going to negotiate new terms in to cover um security stuff right but they have still haven't been Community Power School still hasn't been communicated oh well I think so there's a couple of things at play here um one power school has communicated um not well and you know we have gone kind of back and forth with them and when I say we I mean pretty much the school district's on a national basis and trying to get answers we don't have all the information and we don't have all the answers and I think that there's uh as William said there is an investigation underway now and I think that investigation is probably going to take quite a while um months maybe a year I don't know um so I think we sort of have

191to wait on that to see exactly what happened when it happened who's at fault did they violate the DPA did they violate you know the terms of our contct contract so things are still really up in the air right now and yeah we haven't gotten a lot of information from them we need to get more information from them to really make an assessment and two I mean I would Echo what um Ry and Diane said in that moving away from a core system like that is a very very uh huge and laborious Endeavor that we certainly could do but I think the question still is is it something that we should do or is Power School viable now I will say that in the past you know I've seen large companies have these types of

192cyber security breaches and oftentimes you know they triple quadruple their cyber security measures afterwards to ensure something like that will never happen again so that's also sort of up in the air is what have they done to fix the you know the loopholes um were their loopholes that they had to fix you know is it a process piece is it a technical piece is it engineering piece so those are still all open-ended questions I really I Shannon I don't think at this point we have the information that we need to make that kind of decision I'm gonna say this and uh hearing about it all it sounds great move forward sounds like the right thing to do stay with them don't stay with them after this I probably won't think about it again because we've

193got Diane to do that for us and Jen's going to do it and that's what we have them for and I trust that they're going to make the right decision Shannon you don't have to like her school you can hate them forever yeah it just feels like where our job you know I don't no you're right our job is to of course trust in Diane and Jen to do the job and I know they will but this is this has been an issue for me before this lawsuit came up Jen and I have talked about this on two separate occasions because I feel like this is our job is also to look out for the students of Scarboro and we yes we don't have and the staff as well and their personal information thank God

194we don't store their social security numbers on our system but how many other districts aren't in that same position and we're talking about an organization that knows this happened and has thrown up their hands and not said a word about it or very little at least and that is not that just doesn't sit well with me but I do also think that like um you know there's other companies in the pond it sounds like but you you we have no guarantees that if this were to happen with one of like if we go through this arduous journey of moving it could happen again and we don't have necessarily 100% guarantees that that first notice would come out day one and we would be thrilled that every contractual obligation has been met and this company's amazing

195they've handled it well um uh so there's always the risk that you run moving to a new company or the breach is worse or they did you know they got even more you know um so I think if if there was some you know I trust the um Jen and Diane to do their job as well but you know I think if if they had flagged this as a terrible company that this you know that there was no future for scar BR they'd be sitting here saying that and saying and this is the company we've selected as the like you know company that this would never have happened with um because it could happen to anyone and yeah who I I would Echo that by saying you know I've been I've been involved in cyber

196security in some way shape or form for 20 plus years and part of the issue always is when you're vetting a company um part of the issue is always going to be are they doing what they say they're doing right because they're only going to give you so much information in their policies procedures in terms of service um about what they do on the back end for good reason I mean I'm very careful too at the town I don't want to tell everybody what type of security systems we have because I don't really want that to be out in the public so they have some protections that way too but in some ways you know it's a it's a leap of faith you have to trust the company to be doing what they say they're

197doing that's the question at hand right now really was you know was power school doing what they said that they were going to do in their data privacy agreement in their terms of service um you know their cyber security um and you know what what exactly did they indemnify themselves against so I think as William you know has has said we that that's still under investigation we still have to find out did their process match their policy we we don't know the answer to that yeah maybe that's the best way for me to under to move forward because it's um I can trust you that you're going to do what you say you're going to do until you tell until you give me reason otherwise and so it this investigation it sounds like will tell

198us if they did otherwise yeah I think so they had hired a company called crowd strike to go in and conduct an audit after the fact to try to figure out exactly what the root cause of the breach was that report I've read through it it doesn't and I don't I don't know if William's still online I I don't know if he has a different opinion that report I don't think really said a whole lot um it didn't come to you know a lot of definitive conclusions and any definitive conclusions it did come to I think it it kind of didn't paint Power School in the best light I think that they probably are now going to have to undergo and this is what this mass action I think is going to force them to

199do they need to have some really deep auditing take place within their company so that we can see did their policy match their process and moving forward as as William said that the other thing that this mass action lawsuit is going to try to uh guarantee is that the process does match their policy that there's going to be you know basically a watchdog um assigned to them who's going to oversee that and maybe go in audit their systems audit their perimeters audit you know their access controls all of that to ensure that that they really are doing what they're saying they're doing thank you Jen Jen thank you for speak sorry this is Lisa um thank you for speaking I'm sorry I didn't mean to kind of flag you when um with no warning but

200I do appreciate you speaking on the subject no I'm glad you did I just couldn't figure out how to unmute myself on my phone that's great for the tech directory that's funny it's kind of ironic yeah all I can think about Jen is your giant candy bars to us this was gonna happen I should have brought them tonight I'll send some yeah all right um for second discussion is there anyone wishing to make public comment this evening no all right um uh can you call the vote please yes yes yes M peton yes Mr Ro yes yes yes yes awesome passes unanimously thank you and thank you for joining yes thank you all have a good evening you too agenda item 10.3 is a middle school coach appointment um do you have anything to add

201outside of what's presented as presented in your packet all right do I have a motion to approve the Middle School coach appointment as presented no moov second is there any discussion we call the vote Please Mr Kell yes Miss Leon yes Miss Lindstrom yes Miss Peterson yes Mr rockingstar yes Mr trinian yes Mr p h yes Mr rtina yes all right perfect passes unanimously thank you agenda item 11.0 is adjournment so with no objections we will adjourn at 10:01 pm thank you so much have a good evening