001good evening and welcome i will be calling this meeting to order this is the scarborough board of education's regular business meeting for october 21st 2021 and it is 7 p.m could i have the attendance please sure mrs giptis here dr gill here miss casalonas here miss leighton here mrs lindstrom here mrs scyther here mrs turner here miss skiftus here and miss pertullia thank you very much at this time i would like to invite our special guest up to the microphone to join us for the pledge of allegiance of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice agenda item 4.0 is adjustments to the agenda are there any adjustments this evening no adjustments for this evening thank you agenda item 5.0 is
002public comment on agenda items is there any public comment this evening seeing none in person do we have anybody signed in on zoom okay i will go ahead at this point and close public comment for this evening then agenda item 6.0 is bus driver contract update and i will turn it over to nick who is our negotiations chair yes so um good evening everyone it's exciting to be able to present one of our contracts as you know we've been working on three of them this year and this is the first to come to full settlement ratification from both the sca and the board so i just want to go over some of the details of the contract i didn't want to do a dramatic reading of it because nobody wants me to do that and
003you can always look at it online but i did want to highlight some of the key points in the contract and different things we're able to add that we're excited to be able to share with the community so just as a quick overview uh this is a three-year collective bargaining agreement most of them are in fact i think all of them are right now um the cba which is collective bargaining agreement that's what that stands for i hate it when people put up acronyms and don't say what they are um is retroactive back to july 1st so there will be a pay i'm going back to our bus drivers to make up for the difference between that and now so that makes the full term of the collective bargaining agreement from um july 1st 2021
004through june 30th 2024. many of the changes that are in the cba were made to align the contract with other agreements um there as i said there are three separate agreements for different hourly groups and i've listed them out there our educational support professionals our transportation group and then when we most recently started as in uh two days ago are custodians and food service workers so um you know we really wanted to try because the history of each of those documents is a little bit different we want to try and align some of that terminology so that they can be as consistent as possible um one thing i did want to highlight in the overview is that we took additional time and some and worked with our council to actually go through the document the
005transportation's the first one we've done this with and uh through a lens of diversity equity and inclusion and take out some of our gender-specific pronouns changing heats and cheese to vase and then also adding in new holidays like juneteenth and then changing columbus day to indigenous peoples day we felt that was an important thing to um acknowledge in this document and as the documents move forward and go through their next refresh over the next one to three years depending on the document you're looking at we hope that those changes will carry through so some areas of focus i just wanted to point out as we work through um the work year had previously been defined as 177 days with the assumption that the the student year is 175 days and that puts two days in
006there for professional development um it was actually the sca who proposed that we change it to the number of student days plus two days because they recognized that the student year could change and so i thought that was a really responsible and good thing to add so we put that in there um one thing we were excited to add to offer to our bus drivers was a little bit of an addendum when it comes to overtime so currently what happens with overtime with our bus drivers is that you know there might be a weekend trip that's scheduled that they volunteer to take uh and if they do that they'll get overtime because they work their full week so they may get some overtime pay but what can happen sometimes in the winter as we all
007know is we can have a storm day and then all of a sudden the day is canceled and now i've given up my saturday and i was going to get overtime but now i don't because i'm less than 40 hours and so one thing we offered to them is we said if it was supposed to be overtime pay we're going to pay with the overtime rate it seemed like a fair thing to offer it also encourages our bus drivers to volunteer for those weekend and off hour duties which of course are very important to our students and students come first so we're excited to be able to offer that to them so that they can depend on a certain dollar amount if they volunteer for those extra duties we aligned our benefits across all most
008most notably we gave everyone 100 dental they did have 90 so now they got 100 covered dental uh health insurance was aligned with a law specific to eligibility with some changes it's been three years and spoke to this document and we all know that health insurance has gone through some different changes in those times with regard to who's eligible and who's not so we made sure that our contract aligned with the law sick day accrual was increased to 13 days per year which is pretty standard for our school year employees uh in this and this particular grouping and um we increased the maximum up to 130 days it had been i believe 120 right diane it was 100. i'm not exactly sure yeah at this moment i don't that's okay i there's a lot of
009these documents but i'm pretty sure it's 130 i know it's 130 days in the other contracts we're trying to move toward that alignment again um personal days we increase from two to three that's pretty consistent across many of the other cbas and that's where they're all kind of moving one of the things that we worked at starting with the teachers contract that we were glad to add here is this idea of reasoning for our personal base and so when you look in the past there was actually a form you filled out to take one of your three um benefited days that you had to put in why and the end the union had argued with us and said that shouldn't say they argue they rationalized that is it really necessary to ask me why it's
010a personal day and it's a very good point if it's one of your three days then you know you shouldn't have to give a reason so for those three days that they're given in the contract they can take those and it's their personal time they did not need to give us a specific reason um additional days past that um there's a form to fill out and those are at the discretion of the um the superintendent so clothing this was interesting in this particular contract um there was history to this that i don't completely understand but all i'll say is that in the old contract there were specific examples about the types of clothing that people should and shouldn't wear and to be honest i can't think of another word it just seems silly and it
011seemed kind of unprofessional that we would treat our employees and say you can wear this and you can't wear that so we all agreed to change it to professionally appropriate attire i mean i think that's a pretty standard language in almost every employee handbook i've seen and so we thought that you know bus drivers need to be treated with professional respect and it just seems silly to list things out they can and can't wear so we were able to change that and bring its maturation up a little bit if you will uh the management rights section is a section that specifically talks about the board and the district's right to allocate their resources and and people as they need to to run their work to run their facilities and so we've actually been aligning that
012management right language and all the contracts and then finally the grievance and discipline section you know we've talked with the sca a lot about this and what we all kind of agreed is that it really shouldn't matter what contract you're part of if something happens or if you have an issue that you need to grieve that process should be consistent it's easier for our administrators it's easier for our employees and it makes everybody and puts them all on equal ground so we're happy to do that as well and then it comes down to the money so um i wanted to share this because this is the approach that we have been taking in negotiations with all the contracts we've been working out of the last year we wanted to take a consistent approach that first
013started off with what we did with our teachers contract and to use the cohort of districts that we put together there to evaluate all these different cbas and so i wanted to take a minute to go over that rationale so there's many ways you can put together a cohort the way we chose was we chose a series of metrics that are designed to evaluate and kind of rank and also look at comparatively different districts and so the the sick the five criteria we looked at was overall enrollment the size of the district it's geographic proximity to scarborough we all know that maine is a very diverse state the further away you get away from southern maine the more it changes we looked at nichi overall scores we looked at nichi ratings and then we also
014looked at average household income just to characterize the community a little bit so we did a combination of student criteria as well as community criteria and so these are the districts that we came up with obviously scarborough is there and there are seven others um that through a combination of these different criteria with the districts the board felt close most closely represented scarborough and so we've been consistent in the cohort of districts that we've used to look at our salary and decide what adjustments we wanted to propose and make so um yeah and so looking at salaries themselves so basically we wanted to assess each scale and the transportation contract is only one scale so that makes that a little bit easier but we looked at the low the high the range of the of
015the scale to see how it compared to the other districts and then we took a very very specific and purposeful two-step approach to this first we wanted to make a market adjustment and make sure that we were aligning if necessary our group or the different groups represented by each contract we looked at with how it compared in the cohort and try and get it up to stuff with where those were where it would be right now before we started looking at cost of living increases so that was second because really a cost of living increase should be pretty consistent if you think about the cost of living increase and adjustments is a set percentage when you look at it in financial literature so we really wanted to make sure we were separating and understanding the
016difference between that market adjustment and then the cola that we put on top of it and so i had to put this in here because this this always kind of made me i always wonder about this and this this um working on this contract certainly brought it back to the surface for me so all of our bus drivers require what's called a cdl license which is a commercial driver's license i don't need to give you an education necessarily in all the details of that because i don't know it but what amazes me is you can drive a winnebago but you can but without with a regular driver's license i can go buy one right now from seacoast rv and off i go to god knows where but you can't drive a school bus and i
017guess that's good because we won't make sure our children are safe but a cdl license is a hot commodity and there are many things you can do with it and so as we looked at this particular group it became clear to us just how valuable a cdl has become so i want to put this slide up because i it always amazes me you can try winnebago with a class a license and so what we discovered in short was that our bus drivers were underpaid compared to the other districts that we looked at um by not a small amount and so we were able to work within our finances when the structure of the money that we had available and we were able to in the first year offer a 2.25 increase per hour to our
018bus drivers um and they were very grateful for that um we were glad to be able to offer it and it was not just out of the goodness of our hearts it was it was from that data from looking at the objective data and making sure that we were doing what was right for that group under certain professional licenses and that they have to have and then we added a three percent cola for years two and three so that once we make that adjustment we can keep up and make sure that we're keeping it in alignment as we move forward um and so that's how the transportation contract uh ended up and i'm proud of it i think the sea is proud of it and i think everybody should be happy that we're able to
019compensate our bus drivers for the valuable work that they do thank you nick does anybody have any questions for nick please just one um on the i think you said that we increased the personal days from two to three and then the bullet below that was said they do they only need approval if they go beyond three so are the personal days beyond three unpaid or how does it because they're only allocated three days right then you're shaking your head yes okay thank you other questions saying nick thank you so much and and i'm sure that there are interested members in the community who will find that overview very helpful in addition to it being helpful for us so thank you for putting that together for us tonight agenda item 7.0 is a motion to
020enter into executive session pursuant to one mrs 405 6d for the purpose of discussing the 2021-2024 educational support professionals contract to return to public session do i have a motion so moved second all in favor look at that look at this wow we could do that okay and so for the public um we will be back after our public our executive session um but by all means feel free to scoot on home we will be back i can't even believe you did i was like what i don't even know what to do with myself which yeah okay we are back uh agenda item 8.0 is new business agenda item 8.1 is the meeting minutes of september 2nd 2021. do i have a motion to approve the meeting minutes so moved second any discussion seeing none
021all those in favor oh my god that's unanimous thank you all right when will you turn agenda item 8.2 is a motion to approve the 2021 to 2024 educational support professional contract do i have a motion so moved second discussion seeing none all those in favor okay thank you that was unanimous uh before we move on to agenda item 9.0 which is adjournment for this evening diane yes thank you april so we would be we would be remiss if we didn't take this opportunity to acknowledge that we have three departing board members this evening um april sarah and nick and um you know i i just wanted to say um to each of you that i so appreciate having had the opportunity to get to work with you over the past two years out of
022the three years out of your term i feel like i've gotten to know each of you in such a different way than when i sat in the audience and just watched these meetings as a as a school employee and it is so apparent that the commitment that you made to the district over the time that you've served um and this was a volunteer job um and and if i were to even think about the number of hours that we have spent together collectively um it's really been a lot so i just wanted to make sure that um you know on behalf of you know the district that that i wanted to thank you and i know that jeff has things that he would like to say as well thank you diane yeah to the three
023of you i know it's um i know i just started in july but but i certainly know what it feels like to try and um uh work through a pandemic and and so first of all just the challenge of board membership right now and and getting to know each of you a little bit uh since july i've just been so impressed with your leadership um the three of you and just the the your your focus on the needs of putting kids first and putting the community first is just so obvious to me coming in um from another community too and watching um boards legitimately and and understandably struggle um through some really kind of unprecedented challenges that um you know you're the first in in school boards to really handle so it's been really impressive
024to to be a part of and just to feel also welcomed at the same time when i know it's like my last interview i remember asking how are you doing and the answer was like we're falling apart you know but yeah so that but the honesty and just and and then also just being willing to um to just really focus on the needs of the kids through all that has just been really impressive and and recognizing that we're always learning and growing and and focusing on continuously improving and i just think that's a a legacy that that you'll leave on scarborough and and with your time um it's it's it's really uh really impressive so thank you thank you nick or sarah you have anything you'd like to say i always have something to say
025i actually didn't i didn't prepare anything but what i'll say is you know i was reflecting on our um on our retreat the other night and we were talking a little bit about how far and where far we are from where we were and i'm not going to pretend like you know this board did all the work alone we did that work with everyone in the district and you know when we came in and we were elected three years ago i mean the district was on fire in some ways there was so much going on there was so much turmoil and there was so much um unrest and suspicion and i feel like we brought the stability that we said we were going to as a team all of us that are here and um
026i'm excited to see where it goes from here i'm excited that jeff's on board i'm excited to hear more about what happens with our primary schools and the direction that that's heading and um i think the district's in good hands and um i wish you all the best and it's been quite a ride and it's been a heck of an experience that i will always remember and cherish so thank you i uh i've had an emotional week and then like usually when i start talking i get emotional so i wanted to avoid that but i did just want to say thank you jeff and diane and everybody else um having been a student in scarborough it was it's been an incredible experience to see how how the operations of the district from a different perspective
027and i'm so proud of the work that you guys do and the community that i grew up in and that i live in now and you guys should be very proud of yourself and and so thank you for giving me the opportunity to do this and and for all your hard work oh boy um i will also lead with thank yous um thank you to the co staff that isn't here um kate and todd and the people upstairs who spent a million hours onboarding us and answering our questions and attending our meetings and making sure that we were in a place to make informed decisions um that is invaluable to a school board and we are so lucky to have that support from the administration and the staff um i have to thank matt and
028the kids because i could not have done this without him uh and that's there it is shoot all right and i will keep the rest short and sweet it has been a pleasure and thank you with that uh agenda item 9.0 is adjournment and sarah would like to do the roll call one more time so diane could you please call the vote do i have a motion to adjourn some yes dr gill yes miss catalanos yes miss leighton yes mrs lindstrom yes mrs turner yes and miss skiftus yes thank you everyone you