School Board Meeting

001so the people at home are not able to hear the mic in the room we can like hear it but it's not very clear like it sounds the same they're all on yeah and we can hear them max if you can hear us say something hello but it's like not the way it's supposed to be showing oh god you know what you probably can do this better than i can i don't know i have the body i have like the body of a 95 year old woman like i can barely hear or see or do anything cheers it sounds the same and then you can hear is it the speakers in this room that are turned down i'm watching it on but there are [Music] okay but we can't hear the people from home and

002in previous meetings we've been able to hear everything through the mics so my question is yes you were coming pretty through pretty clear diane uh mrs either is it possible for you to be unmuted like miss nato is because we can hear her really well when she talks um i don't know that's my only suggestion you hmm [Music] so zoom people i am new to myself so you should be able to hear me now um the ite um personnel is calling to figure out for some reason we can't get the zoom on it here it's just the power cord for this red line this so is our connection then the zoom is not working through the room [Music] actually yeah that might be the key all right okay somebody on zoom hello hello i'm talking

003can you hear me oh they're applauding yay oh there we go okay now can you hear us through my mic through my in-room microphone yeah you i can hear you excellent lovely [Laughter] this is either future self so i wonder if one can you hear now okay so you were all muted just a second ago that's why we couldn't hear you this computer i was getting i had mine on and the rest of you did so the feedback i think because this is the main computer running it we need to have this one stay on so the rest of you can continue to hear us this is working and can someone else just give us a mic check from zoom land testing how's that perfect okay i think we're i think we're okay okay sorry

004about that everybody agenda item 2.0 is attendance diane could you please call the attendants i would love to mrs giftas here dr gill for now yes here this is leighton here mrs lindstrom here mrs either here mrs turner here mr bennett here miss giftus thank you and we and i apologize i did the pledge out of order agenda item 4.0 is adjustments to the agenda are there any adjustments to the agenda this evening seeing none agenda item 5.0 is public comment on agenda items uh this evening i do not see anyone in the public who wishes to make public comment if you are on zoom and you would like to make public comment at this time please raise your hand you will have three minutes to address the chair um please keep your agenda please

005keep your public comment to items on the agenda and i will let you know when your time is up and i ask that you please respectfully wrap up what you're saying and with that i will turn it over jen ladd i will promote you and jen you should be in and when you're ready you can unmute okay how's that good perfect great thank you um also just as a matter of um i don't know if it's possible for those of you in person in the meeting to turn on your videos but i know that that is always helpful for the rest of us to be able to see you at least on zoom it may not be an option when you're there in person but it would be great if it was thanks hold on

006jen thank you for that i don't we don't we didn't know that you couldn't see us at home sure we will we will see if we can get that fixed thank you i would say go ahead with your public comment jen and then okay all right great thank you um i just you know as always i just want to start by thanking both this board and all of our teachers um for just the incredible work and effort that have been put into this year the more i think about it the more i just i'm just so deeply grateful um for for all that hard work including all of our other staff i just i really can't even imagine um but um beyond that i just wanted the point really that i wanted to make tonight

007was that you know i've i've made comment to this board a number of times over the past few months and emailed with you guys and um just you know gone back and forth and it has been made crystal clear that this board is steadfast in adhering to state guidelines in terms of all things pertaining to how our schools will handle kovid this year and um also i you know heard and can appreciate what it may feel like to not be a public health professional but perhaps be in a seat where you feel like you are being asked to make public health decisions and i'm sure that that is incredibly hard too knowing no good way out of any of this really i just ask you to at the very least now to please be consistent

008in that adherence to the federal cdc guidance state cdc guidance and state doe guidance that are all now saying it is okay and safe for our kids and teachers to be outside at a minimum just outside without having to wear a mask if they choose to do so if someone chooses to keep wearing a mask that that should be totally fine by all of us um and if you know if raising that point perhaps makes you think or and worry about the risks to our kids um again pertaining to covid i would just remind you as i did in february that the symptoms for all of our kids are already here they are already suffering from this disease and it may not be the clinical symptoms of the covid or coronavirus itself but they are

009suffering and we now have that documented as we've learned through the building process the committees that have been set up at each building i read in detail the summaries from staff and the committee on some of the challenges that um our students have are facing this year and they're really significant they were really troubling really significant all all grades k through two notably behind in writing um notably behind in social and emotional learning and a whole host of other things i know that all that information is available to you guys too but anyway i i just um you know i i just i feel so strongly that this could be a really bright spot at the end of the year there's not a lot of the school year left and that allowing our kids to

010to play freely and be with their friends and see their friends smile my son um he lost a tooth last week and he was really excited to show his teacher but he was really nervous to take off his mask at school just to show her that which is really important for somebody in that age and i just think of you know all those little missed opportunities like that and we can't go backwards that's for sure but um i just ask again that you you allow this to move forward in scarborough as it is in so many other communities in our state and around our country and as we've been informed as safe by by the agency is that we've looked to you all year for this type of guidance so thanks thank you jen we

011did have one email public comment sent to us so i will take this opportunity now to read that into the public record it says dear board i am writing to advocate that we remove the mask mandate on children especially while outdoors it appears that this has already been done for middle school and high school sports so it would be logical that kids would not need one at recess or any other time when they are outside given that we can take our children almost anywhere starting monday without a mask and the outdoor mask mandate has been lifted it doesn't make sense that school is the only place these kids need to wear a mask while being outside to quote one of our kids i wish we didn't have to wear a mask because i don't remember

012what my friends and teachers faces look like thank you ethan and sarah mcgrane is there anyone else who wishes to make public comment this evening freyla tarpinian i will promote you to panelists thank you frayla you should be able to unmute is it okay to have my video on too sure um thank you very much for the opportunity to serve on the dei committee i think this is the appropriate time for all agenda items if i'm not mistaken yes so um as you know we're hard at work meeting to review the data from the surveys that you sent out so that we can create recommendations for an action plan for this board's consideration i really appreciate that you recognize the importance of this work to help make all of our children have a safer more

013robust educational experience this works really invaluable and since we've started our work we have naturally also addressed some current events at our schools that are impacting our community um this context is essential for us to discharge our duties effectively but since this is not technically within our charge i'm asking you to conclude in our charts to propose changes that would allow for us to raise awareness of the work happening in the district it's so important for us to work within the authority that you grant us and this ability will help us do our work better most significantly this will allow us to communicate more effectively with you and the community so i'm just speaking on behalf of the proposed dei amendment to the charge and i thank you for your time and attention thank you

014very much is there anyone else who wishes to make public comment this evening seeing none i will go ahead and close public comment thank you to everyone who spoke tonight um i think for the time being shannon just asked if it was better if everyone who's in person hop on the zoom link i think since we're not broadcasting to the people at home who are using zoom that that's probably the best thing to do for right now but i do think we all have to stay muted because otherwise we're going to get that reverb thank you shannon agenda item 6.0 is the k12 doe framework update and at this point i will turn it over to sandy so diane has been very busy with this work and she actually is going to share the slides

015tonight on the progress that has been made perfect thank you diane sure so um for those of you who are not aware the department of education updated their framework for pk to 12 in the state of maine as of may 14th and so this evening the goal here is to update you on those changes in the state um knowing that here in scarborough public schools we are still taking in most of this so that as we move forward we can think carefully about how this will apply to scarborough public schools so what i've done here is highlighted the major changes um and then i'll also talk with you about uh the significant pieces that continue to remain in the framework so um [Music] to to begin one major change is up until now there was

016an expectation that adults would maintain a six foot distance from students and that has been lifted and the expectation for adults is the same as it is for students to students at this time and so it is expected that a three foot distance be maintained for adults masking and physical distancing as written in the framework are um are no longer required for time spent outdoors but there is a caveat there because contact tracing is still required and so um we'll talk about that a little bit later and i'll also talk with you a little more about what pool testing is in greater detail plexiglas is no longer required in front facing spaces or when physical distancing can't be maintained so that is another change uh school libraries again we've spent most of the year really

017exercising a lot of caution in terms of book selection in the use of our learning commons spaces for students and so one of the pieces here is around just um you know attending to seating areas for spacing very minor change uh there is no continued recommendation for distancing at bus stops uh that was something that was in the initial framework and again something that we relied on families and students to self-assess moving forward visitors and volunteers will no longer be excluded from schools so that is something that we welcome as we look ahead field trips will become allowable moving forward to the extent that they are planned carefully and health risks are considered um in terms of as we look ahead to having performances again formerly the distancing requirement was 14 feet between a performer

018and a member of the audience and that has been dropped down to six feet and another welcome change is um the use of locker rooms can be utilized again and so uh you know that may seem minimal but if you are a middle school or a high school student and you have pe class uh you probably appreciate being able to change into other clothes and that had not been something available to our students um i'm going to spend a little bit more time talking to you about something called pooled testing which is a new risk mitigation strategy that is available to all districts this came out a couple of months ago but with the new framework they have incentivized it for districts and for families as it pertains to their students and so again the

019things that i'm sharing with you tonight we have not made decisions about we're really just providing information points of information at this time so as it relates to pooled testing and the incentivizing that i've mentioned districts who choose to participate in pooled testing which again i will explain and have at least 30 percent participation will no longer be subject to any distancing requirement and so as we move ahead and uh consider that for the fall uh that would if it was something that we as a district signed on to would eliminate um the need for us to consider what is that maximum number of students that can fit in this space the harriman work for example that we shared with you recently the one caveat whether you're in pooled testing or not in pooled testing

020is the six foot rule for eating or drinking is going to continue to apply and if you have talked with your students or with anyone involved in the schools that is probably by far one of the biggest hurdles for our leaders and our our staffers to solve in terms of pooled testing families who opt in for pool testing for their children um would eliminate the need for their children to have to go into quarantine if there was a positive case in the classroom um obviously that is probably a bigger thing at k to five where our students don't have the opportunity to be vaccinated and we know that at grades 6 through 12 there are many families that are choosing vaccination for their children and any person who is fully vaccinated is not required to

021quarantine but for those unvaccinated persons participating in pooled testing would eliminate the need for future quarantines and certainly i can think in my own head about a number of individuals who have had multiple 10-day quarantines this year and so that certainly has had an impact on many families and on many staff members so um here's my little tutorial on what is pooled testing um pool testing only happens if parent provides consent to participate in the program again for us not to have to follow that three-foot distancing we do have to meet a threshold of 30 percent um but again i'm just providing you information on how it would work students would be test people participating in pool testing would be tested once a week again the goal of regular testing is that you know this

022is a mitigation strategy and an ongoing surveillance measure that has been proven um to work in places with low prevalence of covet 19 and there are other states before maine that have been utilizing this and so some of the organization that's involved is you know you need someone to be in charge of overseeing the testing program someone who is the logistical person again you know these might be the same person could be multiple people that that's a local choice and then you need someone observing students school nurses might be helpful in doing this and that might be one one place that we might look if we chose to do this we might also take a look at who might be specimen collectors it doesn't necessarily have to be the school nurse it basically enables for

023that regular testing um this slide says every student every week again it is not necessarily every student it is the students that have gotten that consent to participate um it's a self-swabbing uh situation i have a short three-minute video that i'm going to show you in a minute so that you can visually see because i think i i certainly am a visual person and i was trying to imagine what it was like myself but it basically you know a student has a swab that's you know kind of the size of a q-tip if you've had to have a covid test certainly i think i remember when i had my first one and saw the size of the swab i was a little overwhelmed by that um and so that's not the case for for this

024program and um so students self-swab they um collect all of the swabs into one tube and they test them as a pool and um and a courier picks up the specimens and the district gets the results back within 24 to 48 hours and you know the goal is that the pools come out negative um if there is a pool that comes out positive then the individuals in that pool are given a rapid test uh those are again if the school if the district signed on to this those would be given at school or parents also would have the option um you know to have that done in the community by another provider um again it's done by trained staff nurses or specimen collectors this kind of just goes over that this is the place where

025i want to show you this video this oceanside verbo is about to become the backdrop for an unforgettable vacation memory [Music] [Laughter] to this um here we go [Music] so do all right so that's that's basically the overview of that and so i will get us back to the slide um and again i just felt like that would be helpful so that people could get a visualization um you know again if this was something that scarborough public schools decided to move forward with local decisions could may be made about where's the best location to have this happen because you know some some districts might choose to have that happen in in a regular classroom other schools might designate a central location that students filter in and out of to do so um but you know

026as you can see there it's it's basically a 10 minute activity once a week that would happen if we look at the next slide again in terms of participation guardians would sign a one-time consent form to off their students into that pooled testing it is seen as a mitigation strategy and another layer of protection to help us know if there is any covid present um and it is a relatively quick way to detect anyone who might be positive especially as we think about the possibility that you may have asymptomatic individuals who might not know that um that they have the virus and again um this is a mitigation strategy which is endorsed by the cdc and you know guidance has been issued around the safety of doing this and also it increasing the ability for

027continued in-person learning without that start stop of quarantine it is free for the for any district that signs on to participate and so we would be provided with all of the materials all of the testing that would be conducted that are sent to the state lab would be provided at no charge the cost to the district obviously would be in the time and perhaps staff designated to help move this forward other pieces that are still in place in the latest doe framework update obviously we are still going to continue to ask everyone to continue to self screen on a daily basis that is a way that we ensure that folks who are on site are safe to be here as i mentioned earlier there is the requirement for continued six-foot distancing for eating and drinking

028and for mask wearing indoors and so although um you know the mask mandate is being lifted in the state by the governor beginning tomorrow i believe um that mandate has not been removed for schools as it pertains to indoors and on transportation hand hygiene is another strategy that we will continue as well as ppe as another mitigation strategy um you know in specific situations so when that um in our you know in our in our current environment when a teacher might have to provide hand over hand assistance to a student for example they might have an additional layer of ppe they might wear a shield in addition to their mask and so that will be something that would continue continued discouraging the the sharing of personal items and so if you know students have math

029manipulatives we have been really cautious about making sure that everyone has their own supplies and would continue to do that and then as it regar as as it pertains to busing i literally took the language off of the framework because there is some vagueness there and um it is to minimize the number of students on the bus within reason and so um that is very helpful for us as we consider the interpretation of that um and i'm being facetious there um our next steps again as i said at the beginning of the presentation we're being very thoughtful about consideration of these framework changes as they apply to our day-to-day work with students and so there's a lot to be considered here one change that is going to be made immediately is that masking and physical

030dista is in regards to masking and physical distancing as it applies to outdoors and at the k5 level after thoughtful consideration and and certainly um superintendent prince can talk about this more because this was um you know some thoughtful conversation with our building leaders and also consultation with some of our surrounding district partners it was felt that continued use of masks for less structured recess um when when it's difficult for students to maintain distance or to self-regulate and so our principals really want to make sure that our kids are able to enjoy recess we have to maintain that somewhat of a distance still and our principals want our kids to be able to safely enjoy their recess however we are in agreement to elimination of the requirement of masking for more structured outdoor time so

031for example the weather is getting beautiful we have a lot of teachers who might be taking their students outdoors for some outdoor instructional time certainly that would be an appropriate time for our students um to be unmasked for those activities um and and you can see that at six through twelve um we have eliminated that requirement and again the difference there really was arcade of five schools provide more opportunities for very large numbers of students to congregate and you know i will just say in part of our conversation with our principals yesterday one of the things our principals were just um very mindful of is you know everybody wants to keep everybody safe and our principals said they understand what the science says but we also don't want to put 100 kids into quarantine at

032the very last few weeks of school we have i think just over 20 days of school left and if we think about the number of days that is for hybrid um you know it's about half of that and so um that was um the request that they had made sandy i don't know if you'd like to speak to that anymore the only other thing i would say is if a classroom teacher chooses to take that class outside to read a book or something like that you know 20 kids or 18 students then the principal principals felt that it'd be okay to take the mask off because it's much more manageable controllable and usually it's a more organized setting than just playing on the playground so that's the only difference that i can think of that

033would add to that throw my mic on here thank you diane very much for that does anyone have questions or comments um for diane and sandy at this point leanne i see your hand up and then shannon i'll go to you i actually have a bunch of questions about the data and the numbers diane and i hate to put you on the spot but going back to the 30 percent how does that factor in for like the high school in the middle school where we have so many students who may be vaccinated do they count towards that 30 or is it 30 on top of those that are vaccinated so that's really a very great question and also um is a great example of why we're being thoughtful in thinking this through that is one

034of the questions that we have sent back and are waiting for more guidance on and so i would love to answer that question but it has not been answered for us as of yet but it is a great question right because if if if people are taking the steps to make sure that they're fully vaccinated um i too am really curious about how does that 30 calculate in is that for unvaccinated individuals and so our nurses have been capturing lots of questions this week um and fielding those to our state nurse consultants great um which may go into the next question of if we're looking at the lower levels is it based on 30 in a classroom or in a grouping [Music] how would that work right i think my understanding from the webinars that

035i've attended and and the faqs that i have read it's not 30 percent of each cluster it would be 30 overall but again i really want to know how the vaccinated piece fits in but if you look at the literature at face value it's you know 30 of your overall site and that includes students and staff so staff can be included in that okay um because i had read it a little different so this is good that it's an overall and not building specific right so again you know we are continuing to um dig in and get more questions answered and that's why we just really want to be super thoughtful about this and make sure that as a decision does get made that we feel like we have all of the details up front

036great thank you you're welcome go ahead my question was actually the same as lance so you answered it thank you other questions or comments my only comment would be to the communication piece um you know being able to educate our community about what exactly this would mean making sure that they can make an informed decision for their family you know whether to opt in making sure that people feel like they have enough information to make that decision that's going to be a big lift and so i'm sure that as more information comes out you know you'll be able to answer those those questions confidently but that's going to be if this is something that the district chooses to pursue so that we don't have to adhere to those distancing regulations which obviously you know could

037really make things a lot easier for going back to the fall um [Music] my brain is just click click clicking because there's there's a budget component that we're trying to figure out and you know i'm sure there's a hiring component and we don't want to miss this opportunity to hire um the potential staff we need but if the community is really eager and opts into this decision then we may not need all of those staff and that changes our our thinking around you know those hires and our budgeting so this is this is exciting news in terms of it just gives us some other thing to think about and another avenue but there's a there's there's some urgency there too yes absolutely okay i think we can move on if there's no other comments agenda

038item 7.0 is a finance update on the fy 22 budget and i will turn this over to sarah thank you and i think dan's just gonna bring kate in um and then either kate will share a presentation or uh or if diane has it she could share as well but um we're just gonna go kind of briefly through a presentation that we've covered before um just give everyone a little bit of an update on where we are with uh the second reading tonight kate when you are on i will let you take it away and i think kate will address your question in april about you know the 12 staff that are currently in being paid for plan to be paid for by the sr3 director awesome thank you now don't don't let me forget

039to come back around to that as we get through this process i was told earlier this week that when i was coming in on zoom from outside of the meeting i was coming in really loud you are am i that is still true i'm i'm not really sure exactly what to do about that because i'm talking in my normal voice so i i will try to modulate a little bit here um step away from my microphone i don't know you're fine kate you're it's perfect kate yeah you're good i'm um i don't want to shout budget numbers at people it's bad enough you have to listen to me in the first place um so i think who's driving the slide deck is that you diane yes awesome okay so uh i think and i hope

040that a lot of this material is going to look really familiar to you all but we did want to run back through what has where we started with the budget the school board passed our budget proposal the leadership council's budget proposal on march 18th in first reading and this is the way that it looked and the the numbers that you're seeing right now are for the operating budgets um general fund is our k-12 budget that the citizens of scarborough vote on and then we also have adult ed and school nutrition budgets um the capital budget isn't represented here but that will come up a little bit later um and then if you want to go to the next slide diane um as pretty much as as soon as we put the budget out there um

041we started to think about the elements of it and and share those with the public this slide represents uh the elements of the budget that are um reflecting back on fy21 fiscal year 21 is where we are today this current school year and uh we wanted to make note that we had some investments that we had made due to covid in fy 21's budget two school nurses and a special education teacher and that we were hanging on to those for fy22 because they are still critical uh playing a critical role in our district um it also points out here that there's 23 bus driver positions we didn't add 23 bus driver positions but what we're saying is that we have the full complement of positions available to us to fill um unfortunately we seem to

042be going backwards a little bit with that we were down five bus drivers and now we're going to lose another two so um we're still not really making ground but we have the budgeted funds available if uh is it saint anthony is going to send us some bus drivers we've been leaning on him a lot this week the budget that we have our original proposal removed some of the coveted funding um i should do little quote marks with that coveted funding that was added in fy 21 and it restores some positions that we lost in fy 21 because we were we were reducing our original budget ask by about 2 million before we got done with the budget proposal for this current year and then it adds two and a half positions um a half-time

043social worker at scarborough high school to address some of the social and emotional needs that our students are facing coming back from the pandemic environment and it also adds to special education at tax at the high school to address some changes in state legislation that allow our special education students to stay in high school longer for for more years the five classroom teachers which is highlighted in yellow were actually not officially removed but removed in conversation from our budget proposal right at the very beginning because we learned that we were going to be able to use federal funds to to fund those positions i think if we can go ahead diane we should get into budget adjustments so between first and second reading in in any budget year there are changes that take place typically

044it's because we get new information about outside costs for example anthem rates anthem health insurance is a huge driver for a budget and we don't typically have those numbers at the time of first reading so in in this slide you're seeing a sort of a summary of the various reductions that we've taken in the general fund operating budget and the adult operating budget and also a big ad to the general fund budget because we had a too low projection of what our debt service cost would be in fy 22 and so as we were taking away expenditures that we have projected we also wanted to add enough funding to make sure that we were covering those costs efficiently i should point out at this moment that all of this information is in the supporting documents

045that's attached next to the board agenda i believe the board members all receive that in an email as well and it's about 30 pages of detail but there's a couple of pages that are in a really nice blue color that basically go into a little bit more detail about what these individual reductions represent in our budget so what we're looking at here is a net reduction in our expenditures of five hundred thousand dollars this slide talks about revenues and um we are uh increasing our revenue estimate so the combination of i should get april to do her her math formula chart the combination of expenditures versus non-tax revenues is what creates the school's tax ask which is the bottom line that we request from the town for the budget overall so what we're doing here

046is we're increasing our non-tax revenues we got the revenue estimate for adult education school subsidy which was up a little higher than what we had projected and we're also increasing use of fund balance here and what that means is that we've got projections out to the end of fy21 and we were able to ascertain that we had sufficient extra funds left over or we will have as of june 30 to apply more of that money to the fy 22 budget and again reduce our request for tax dollars this slide talks about capital improvements and that's the the capital budget is a separate budget um but it's also part of the school's overall tax ask some of the items in the capital budget are funded with tax dollars some are bonded some use reserve funds but

047in this case we're looking at items that would go to the tax tax request and we have reduced projects for several reasons one because we've got tighter quotes on some of the items that we're actually aiming to do so we're able to say oh that's actually going to cost us less and we know that up front we're also deferring some projects that were proposed that we're just going to put off some of those things we'll be able to accomplish a little bit of them incrementally in our operating budget and others like the clinton drive paving will just be deferred until we feel like we can take that on again so we have here a reduction to cip expenditures we also have a reduction based on the funding source for cip and again [Music] the capital

048projects can be funded with tax dollars they can be funded with bonds municipal bonds that are sold and they can be funded with reserve funds and the town finance office with the town manager typically are the ones who assign the funding source based on the type of expenditure so we don't really tell them what to do but in consultation with ruth porter the town finance director and myself and the town manager we determined that the reserve funds the school impact fees that you've heard a lot about would be a great use a great source of funding for our long-range planning ask in our capital budget so again what that does is it reduces our reduces our need to ask for tax dollars for that expense so here you see a net reduction to the capital

049budget which also goes to the bottom line this uh slide is a summary of all the changes reductions to reductions in a small ad to the original budget proposal and sarah layton has the pleasure of reading a very long and complicated um motion for you that says you know here's what we're reducing in each of these budgets here's what we're adding in each of these revenues here's what the new numbers are going to be but the bottom line result is that we've been able to from first reading reduce our request to the town for tax dollars by 1.4 million dollars and you know that's gone a long way to helping the town overall achieve their tax rate goal um of an increase less than three percent so we're really pretty happy about that okay can

050i just jump in here for a second never mind maybe you're going to show it right now am i oh i was just going to say like when i talked to kate earlier and this can obviously change but so you guys are aware i think where that puts us combined with town council is well under three percent i think it's somewhere in the range of like two to two point five is probably where we'll end up so so you know still a little bit of work to be done between now and their second reading um but but good news thanks sir i didn't have um an official tax rate comp page which is the sheet that the town finance office does with all the elements of the budget including you know county and um all

051the various reserve funds they have they have it's a very complex chart so we're just a little piece of that yet but the tax rate proposal that was shared at town council finance committee yesterday i believe was 2.76 and that did not include any additional subsidy school funding which is i think the last slide that we have for this presentation which is the good news that came in this week so all of what you're seeing here came before any addition of school funding from the state this is just a snapshot again of what you saw in the beginning of the picture of the first reading and this shows you where we're landing with second reading and if you're looking in all of those exciting 30 pages of backup details there's a chart that that actually

052um i couldn't fit on the slide and have anybody see it but there's a chart that shows the first reading and then the second reading and then the change so that's kind of helpful as well but what it shows you is that our net budget or our tax ask for operating is down below 4 which is a pretty great number for us i think i figured out my talking problem i think i'm talking in my podium voice i have a podium voice you know i'll i'll just have to come get in the room with you guys and wear my mask and that'll make it better so this slide is about the additional subsidy that was um the information was released to us just this monday uh subsidy is the name that we use for general

053purpose aid which is the money that comes from the state of maine department of education to fund k-12 schools across the state and so the governor has a proposal on the table with the legislature for a supplemental budget which they're calling a change budget proposal or budget change proposal which would add funding to the overall state budget and deploy it in many different ways and one of the things that the budget proposal change proposal does is to allocate more funding to k-12 education and i don't know if you saw some of the press releases in stories in the paper and information that's been flying around this this week but uh it's it's a celebration because there's been a statute on the books for i don't even know how many years now that says that the

054state is expected to fund 55 percent of public education k-12 education in the state they've never made that goal never reached it they've come close a couple times but this budget proposal actually does that and in doing so it provides um a big chunk of additional subsidy to scarborough uh it's 977 million billion that'd be great 177 000 um and uh it was announced and the numbers were given to us on may 17th so that's the great news the not so great news is that the legislature has to pass this supplemental budget and i spoke with folks at the doe who know things about how the legislature works and their response was you know don't hold your breath that it's it looks good but you need to go ahead with your budget process and so

055what's cool about this is that a statute already exists to help school districts and towns deal with the problem of having the good problem of having additional subsidy come along after their budget has already passed so i've given you on this slide the language that we would use to signal our intent of how we want to allocate that money there are three ways that you can allocate additional subsidy under the law in the state of maine one is you can spend more money two is that you can use it to reduce the local tax rate by applying it as additional revenue to your budget even though your budget has already passed and three is to create a special reserve fund that's for school capital projects and um there are some there's a whole other statute

056that that covers the development of a school capital reserve fund and what that is and how that works um but it's tied in with this statute that says this is one of the allowable uses for additional subsidy and as long as you as a board and the town council both vote to apply any additional subsidy that comes along in one of these ways and as long as we allow the voters to know this when they go to referendum in june we put it right on the referendum information where we put the rest of the budget numbers that we post then we don't have to go back and have another referendum and say oh gosh our budget has changed um so i'm going to pause for a minute here and and suggest that this could probably

057be a topic of conversation because i think it's a great idea to do a split of some of the funding going to lower the tax rate and some of the funding going to a capital reserve fund i think a lot of other people share that that's kind of a cool idea but we have not had an opportunity for the board to even discuss this as an action item so i know the action items before you right now are the second reading of the budget and i think everybody's pretty clear on that material but this is all new so i want to give you folks time to have a discussion about this thank you kate questions or comments for kate my one oh sorry i'm in person alicia i'm like looking at my monitor so i

058just didn't understand kate are you saying we should have a discussion now about about this um subsidy um well i'm not directing you to do so but um i'm i think it would be a fine idea because what's going to happen is that we're going to need to take some sort of action on this if we don't take action and i by we i mean you if we don't take action on receipt of additional subsidy and we pass the budget as it is then the budget goes forward to the council we can still take action at a later date but if we don't have it incorporated into our second reading and the material that goes to the voters then it would simply the revenue would simply come in as excess revenue and go to fund

059balance so we wouldn't have made a determination about what to do with it it would be just the same as if i put in the budget that we were gonna get five thousand dollars in revenue from selling a school bus and oops we sold two school buses and we got ten thousand dollars it would just be excess revenue which isn't a bad thing because then later on you could use the fund balance to lower the tax rate the next year or build a reserve fund the next year but this would immediately affect fy 22's budget does that make sense yes shannon thank you i just i have two questions um the first is what happens to um well i want to speak to the point that you said that we would send information to the

060voters but what happens to the absentee ballots that have already been mailed well the absentee ballots go out before the budget order is posted that's kind of the way that it's always been the absentee ballots cannot be returned until that order is posted and when i say the budget order that's actually the the town council's statement of what the municipal budget looks like and it incorporates the school's budget and there's a separate sheet that shows the different school budget categories that's posted at the polls and it's also posted online um so it's a it's a um it's always been kind of a fraught question it's like why can i take my ballot out when there isn't even a budget yet to vote on and and the shorter answer is that we won't take your ballot

061back until there is a budget for you to vote on gotcha i guess i thought that you i thought i interpreted that we would have to mail every voter something so that doesn't sound like we would need to do that no we would only need to indicate our intentions on that same sheet that's posted at the polls and that's posted online to guide the voters when they vote a referendum you know if you vote in person then you can see the thing posted up on the wall but if you vote absentee then one hopes that you can look at it online um good job um i have one more question i'm so sorry and this is more towards the capital improvement um piece so one of the things that has been sitting in the back

062of my mind that worries me a little is that we put off the um paving of clinton drive and we just do patch ups but in the long run if we if we keep doing that i feel like we're spending more than just doing the work and having it done um so would this be with the would the paving be something that could be in in the capital improvement could we use p a piece of that capital improvement fund to do the paving is that something that you're thinking like along those lines um i wasn't really thinking about quentin drive um specifically i think the thing that was in my mind um was related to the way that the town has been talking about creating a capital reserve fund which in fact they just did

063yesterday and the conversation there has been mostly around what they call soft costs or planning costs engineering costs for projects it's just recently become well i don't know if it's become a law or a practice or a guideline but the sec and the irs have said that you cannot bond can't sell a municipal bond for planning unless it's immediately attached to an existing project so for example if we were going to build a new building tomorrow and we had some engineering studies and some you know architecture drawings that we were going to do but the building was on already approved and ready to go you could bond that as part of the whole project but if you're just thinking about or planning forward for a building that doesn't really exist yet like our k2 situation

064you either have to use local tax dollars or you have to use reserve funds and i i i call that one out because we're actually using reserve funds now we're using the school impact fees for that so this type of account would allow the school department to have their own fund for things like that planning studies engineering things that are not eligible for bonding or for and would have to fall to the local taxpayer to fund so when you when you say quentin drive i think um my feeling would be that we should put clinton drive back on in the budget next year and that it should be bonded just can i just edit that i think to kate's point this is all kind of new information and we haven't had a chance to really

065process it as a finance committee so although i i guess i'll speak for myself personally i'm supportive of this model but we'll have to meet as a committee to figure out how it actually works in practice like how do we decide how those funds are used what goes in and what doesn't so a little like more to come on that but i you know i think as a first step this is great and it's also in line with town council's practices and so they're supportive of it as well which is always a good thing right so yeah absolutely and and sarah you know to your point the board will have to vote to establish a reserve fund which means that the board will have to um create the parameters for that and of course you're

066working under a statute that says you can do some things but not other things but it would be really clear up front and kristen was talking with me about this earlier that you know we would need to have a workshop and we would need to talk about what is a reserve fund and what our intentions and how would we use it what's the process but we don't have the subsidy yet either so we have time um we would signal our intentions now about creating that fund but we wouldn't actually do that work until we actually had a framework for what it is and what it means for us thank you very much that's helpful yeah and sarah's right this is all new stuff we're sort of going oh cool we could do a thing so

067kate is that um language language that you recommend and support the what's on the slide yes um it is it is the correct statutory language for this board to take action in the event of additional subsidy um the language is actually provided to us some years ago by both drum and woodson and main school management in a in a time frame when this and when a similar situation was occurring when the budget was increasing at the state level and we were in a position where we thought we were going to receive more subsidy and in fact the board at the time actually voted to allocate that subsidy in in exactly the same way and then of course the bad news was that the new subsidy wasn't sufficient to actually give us any more money it

068because we were minimum receivers and we were well below the level and the money that was put into the state level budget was not uh anywhere near as large as what's being provided this time so we never got any new money but we had the intent at the time to use it in in much the same way thank you so much kate that's really helpful uh i would just add um to kind of refresh everyone's memory that we did ask for you know a sidekovid fund in our f why i'm muted who's unmuted in our fy 21 budget we had asked the town council if we could you know set that additional i think it was 533 000 into that side account um and we had kind of said if we don't need to use

069it or if we receive federal funds you know we would be invested in returning that to the taxpayers and so here we are in this exact position where we're finding ourselves with additional subsidy hopefully if this passes legislation um and i think that this signals our intent to to um you know make that right so i think that's great it's a great point i guess my only process question for you april is how we because it's not on the agenda we can loop it into the second reading but i just need some guidance on how to motion for that sure i think when we get to new business for fy 22 budget um make all of your emotions um as you would for us to approve the fy 22 budget and then at that time

070you can also make a motion for the count for the board to approve um the establishment of a reserve fund based on the statutory language that he presented okay got it thank you welcome at least that one doesn't have a lot of numbers in it are there any other questions or comments for kate before we move on excellent thank you so much thanks kate thank you moving on agenda item 8.0 is a dei committee update um and the agenda item is a review of the charge and we do have a slide for this um i had posted um the original charge that we had approved back in december and i believe that the dei uh representatives from the board have an amendment to the charge that they would like us to consider um and so

071at this point i will turn it over to shannon to kind of frame this conversation and and discuss the potential change to the charge perfect thank you um as you already heard we as a committee um well let me say this first dei work as a whole is very um cyclical so we have instances where we're moving forward and we're making um and then work happens either nationally or in the district or locally and we we have to come back and kind of sit in it for a moment if you will and talk about it and then we continue to move forward so it's not um it was explained very well to me the dei work is not a straight line you don't just start an end there's a lot of coming back and and

072discussing things but as we have seen as a committee um or it was not in our charge to do that so um we wanted to include this but be really careful in the wording and how we approach this because we wanted to be sure that um we are within our parameters which is that we're providing recommendations to the board of education what we are not doing is carrying out policy work we're not initiating investigations we're not um disciplining that's really a role left to administration and not not to us so our role is to review the data as it stands to review the data and then to make recommendations what we want to add is a line about raising awareness of work happening within the district so that when we do have work happening um

073around us and nationwide that we are able to discuss it so before i open it to questions and comments from the rest of the board i this wasn't an action item for the agenda when we set the agenda and this kind of evolved over the course of the week the board did receive this updated charge a couple days ago and it was posted so we've all had time to see this ahead of time um but at this point shannon i would ask that you make a motion to approve the updated charge and then we can have discussion of the of the motion sure so i would i make a motion to approve the updated charge of the dei committee second okay now we can have discussion nick i see your hands can you hear me

074yes i think that's a guess um so the additional line that you that is on your slide to be added to the charter is is i actually wrote it down earlier um from uh the public comment received about raising awareness of the work happening within the district i guess the the line feels a little bit vague to me and so i just kind of want to know what it what is the intention of that line what is the work that's happening in the district that this committee specifically is going to raise awareness of and to whom um diane can you um i'm gonna i'm gonna look to you to help me a little bit the problem we're having or not problem but the situation we find ourselves in is that work is happening in the

075district that the committee wants to discuss and wants to have conversation around as it relates to dei work i think for lack of a better i i think that diane so eloquently put it earlier it's almost like when you buy a new car and you're out driving around and you see all of these instant you see the car everywhere you go it's kind of that's kind of what's happening on the committee so we we have work that we're trying to do and we're trying to get to the place where we provide recommendations but there are events occurring around us that require discussion and thoughtful approach to i guess is the best way i can say it so our awareness um if necessary because it is within our charge if we we could provide recommendations and

076raise awareness to the board so one example i would give you is the letter that was written on behalf of the administration and the um civil rights club and the the board in regard a few months ago in regard regard to event that happened in the community so things like that that have occurred that uh that that's work that the district did that we then discussed in the dei committee meeting um so the awareness would go could go to the would really go to the board because that's our charge right our charge is to bring things directly to the board so we want to be mindful of that and stay within those those lines and parameters so i we would not i guess answer your question in a long way we would not be deviating

077from that charge i can probably provide another example and i wonder if that might be helpful so for example um at our dei committee meeting last week a group of students from the civil rights club shared with us an education piece that they had provided to their peers at the high school as part of advisory and so there are members of the dei committee who because they are not school personnel might not have awareness of that work happening and yet um as as members who are aware of that that's important for them to know about what are the things that are already happening so nick it it was really difficult and and you know what you're pointing out is was reflective of that difficulty because i think it's a really fine line of what the

078committee is trying to do um the the focus of the committee is what what the charge is currently however i don't i don't think it's fair to ignore some of the realities that are occurring for example when that racist incident occurred in our community and it impacted our school community i think it made sense for the dei committee to discuss it and to then make a recommendation for a letter to to be written however there's a very fine line between that and what would be administration's role and so we've got to be really careful about that um [Music] but for me as a member of the committee i think that the data is one thing and that event really put it into context and the discussions um of people with people on the committee helped

079assist me in understanding and so it's like you want to flush out that data a little bit but not overstep our boundaries and so um i guess it doesn't seem right to sort of ignore everything that's going on around us that that that could be impacting our students and staff members if it involves an issue related to dei right because that's why we're there and yet at the same time um try to do the broad work so we're trying to focus on the broad work but there are examples occurring in our community that need require attention and this is the committee that's committed to assisting in that work so i i may i just say something and follow up really quick because this has been really important feedback so my question comes from a place

080of concern and this is not easy to talk about so i'm going to be very maybe overly careful with my word choice and what i'm about to say so there's a distinct difference between raising awareness of work happening or using emerging events to it to be new sources of data for the policy work that this committee has been charged to do there's a very distinct difference between that and um you know the the fear of ignoring the realities that are occurring and this committee becoming a pragmatic response group to basically mobilizing and stewarding the response to events that come down the line those are two very important things one is policy related and one is procedural and i think the procedural piece is something that is a board sanction committee we really need to try

081and avoid and so that's my worry about this is that um you know this line raising awareness of the work happening in the district is is is pretty i don't want to call it innocuous because it's very powerful but that line doesn't say anything about responding to emergent events in an operational way and some of the explanation that you just gave alicia does suggest that and i'm assuming that's not anyone's intention but i think we need to be careful as a board sanctioned committee that we don't drift too far away from our principal charge which is using the data that we have and the data that we discover through daily events to inform policy which is what the board is primarily charged with doing so i i that the importance of this work cannot be

082overstated however its place as a board sanctioned committee can be overstated and i think that's that's my principal worry if i'm going to stop talking because i think i said everything to say yeah no it's totally understandable and we um if i was being honest we struggle with that too because we it's profoundly important that we don't overstep our our charge and our boundaries and what we're in what we were created to do but how do we how do we do how do we have these conversations without um update we have to update the charge to have our conversations because otherwise we're completely operating outside of our what we're created to do right and when we created the charge originally we knew what we were doing with the data we had no idea that there

083would be work happening outside of that data that we would also need to need to review and discuss too um to your point i mean i like the idea that it's data we're discovering i mean that's essentially what we're saying but the end result is that we are the next bullet under is that we are only making recommendations to the board so we do not step under over administration we do not step over the board we provide recommendations only to the board i'm going to go to max then sarah and then i'm gonna put myself in the queue too um so i didn't actually ever receive like what the updated charge was so i'm not really sure like the exact wording of it but um like based off the conversation i personally think that it's

084a very good idea i'm not sure if i share the same concerns that mr girl has dr gill sorry dr gill um just because like the purpose of the group at least from my point of view obviously you have your charge like review the data but also like it's created with the intention of obviously diversity equity and inclusion in order to improve on those conditions you have to have conversations about them and if you're not being allowed the room to have conversations about just like specific cases that have come up in the district then the work is never going to get done in the first place so i personally think that it's fine the way it is but um i'd probably have to see the specific wording of it which i have not seen so

085that's just that's it for me i will get that shared to you max in just one second while sarah's speaking thank you max it's that bolded sentence it's the second bullet that's what we're proposing adding perfect sarah so i think the way that you guys have described what you're trying to do is i'm completely supportive of i don't think that extra bullet actually is represents that well to me the way i read that was um like you want to be more trained like it's more of like i read it more as a communication like you want to share more what's happening within the community and maybe that was just my interpretation but i agree with what nick said actually and i think the conversations that you're having or just another data point so i actually

086think you're well within your charge as it is without the amendment personally to have those conversations i think what this to me highlights is there there's processes that we have in place that are are obviously not working right and or maybe we just don't have them in place if if people are coming to the committee and not following processes right so i guess i would expect that one of the recommendations that comes to the board is how do we change our system so that people do feel more comfortable that we have a process in place to to address some of these things um and i i guess i guess would just commend you guys for creating a safe space where people can share that information so um you know if if you guys think this

087is what you this is a change that you need in order to be able to do the work productively then i'll support it but i actually think that you're within your rights with it as as is quite frankly [Music] so i actually i think i think to shannon's point um the charge the way it was written doesn't necessarily give the committee um that space and that's my interpretation right so i feel like me the intent behind the the amendment was to make sure that the committee knows that they have that leeway and that that is being sanctioned by the board that's being supported by the board that they have this leeway to have these kind of additional discussions about things that might not have necessarily been data that was derived from the climate survey because

088that's very specific to the charge um and so i certainly you know like sarah said i certainly support an amendment that gives the committee um that that leeway and shows our support of those important conversations because i i agree just you know you to some extent you don't work in a vacuum and this idea that you would all sit there as individuals and say oh this this event happened but we're we're not going to talk about that we're we're going to only speak to the data of the climate survey that's that's really challenging the part where i get hung up a little bit is and i say this out of concern for my the board members is that this is a board-sanctioned committee and that it is a committee that's different than any of our

089other committees in that it is chaired by a board member but that it has administration staff students and community members on it and those people do not necessarily all operate within the same confines that a typical board sanction committee would operate under there's a lot of chain of command there's a lot of gray area there and so i actually would like to see the change to a charge protect is not the right word because that's it implies that something that i don't mean but to make sure that the expectations that any of those um chain of command type things you know that the expectation is clear because i do worry that things are potentially with discharge as written that we are potentially open to people viewing the dei as a direct line to raise something

090to elevate something to the level of the board and that to me is not um that's that's the hangout for me kristen and then leanne yeah i think i would echo what you said in april and i think i also have a little bit of concern about sensitive stuff being discussed within the committee like these are things that are going to involve students and i think to your point we know our role that everyone on this committee does have different roles and i think we just need to be careful of the sensitive nature of some of the things that might come up and the other point that i wanted to make i think it's more of a wording thing because when i first read this and it said raise awareness of work happening in the

091district i was really excited because i was like oh the committee is going to be charged with sharing some of the interesting things that they have encountered through studying their data but it doesn't sound like that's actually the intention so i guess i would maybe reword it in a way because this is the charge of the committee to raise awareness right so i don't know i don't know the best way to word it it's not i think it's just semantics but it's not raising awareness to the rest of the district it's raising awareness within the committee and i think that's an important distinction because that's not how i read this when i first read the amendment that was my only other point yeah you're right it was to raise awareness within the committee of work

092that's happening um within within the district and to your point about um privacy information and protecting students private information that is absolutely something that um we take very seriously we've had many talks about um ferpa and how student any conversations that are the event that the administration is having we cannot discuss in that committee so there is no conversations about discipline about the procedures about investigations that are occurring none of the none of the committee is privy to that information because it would be a violation thank you yeah leanne and then nick um two points one um i agree that yes we need to have a way to ensure that these topics can come in and that you are um supported all the way through and that that gain of command is being met and

093adhered to um some i'd like to offer a um like a friendly amendment to it shannon where it's within the confines of the board's existing policies and this way the conversations can come up and you're not put into a box of trying to take an action but you're able to bring it back to policy and say these are the pathways to find resolution for the issues that are being met so can you say that can you say the full friendly amendment again can you diane would you mind bringing up shannon's wording thank you um raise awareness of work happening in the district within the board's existing policies what about adding um awareness to the committee do you agree with that amendment portion too i would agree with that too [Music] and i know this is

094completely out of order because if i make an amendment we're supposed to talk about the amendment and motion it um but i do have another point so i don't know if i make it before i truly make the motion and we second it if shannon for a point of order leanne if shannon effect uh accepts your friendly amendment then we don't need to vote on it perfect if you accept the friendly amendment then we are then the contin the conversation is just continuous my question is what does that mean for if work is happening outside of like if we don't have a policy that talks about the video that diane mentioned how do we have a conversation around that what i would look at it from the from the point of view shannon you can

095still have the conversation but if you're being asked to take an action or to make a recommendation it would be have you followed the policy first so that rather than jumping over the levels of take it to a building administrator take it to central office it would be coming directly to the board and skipping all of that which is not what the charge should be of the committee so it's giving you those boundaries so that the conversation can happen you're not accept expected to fix the situation gotcha and that would actually i think alleviate the concern about making sure that we're staying within our boundaries and parameters and not overstepping administration exactly that okay so it sounds like uh shannon accepts your friendly amendment leanne can you read the full statement again for us please

096sure um in a moment or shannon either one okay the way the one i wrote down raise awareness comma to the committee comma of work happening in the district within the board's existing policies did i get that right within the boundaries of the board's existing policies within the boundaries do you need me to read that again sure okay so raising awareness comma to the committee comma of work happening in the district within the boundaries of the board's existing policies perfect thank you leanne oh sure um and then my next comment it's a little bit uncomfortable so i don't know how to i'm not i'm trying to be sensitive kind of to the next point earlier of how i asked this question if these conversations are happening and if it's impacting how the data is viewed

097how does that get relayed back to the board who won't have act who won't have been involved in those conversations and we're just looking at raw data and we don't have the same context that you have as those motions come forward so we're working from two different playbooks how do we stay in alignment with a recommendation you make and be supportive of the work that you're doing i'm pausing because i'm thinking i was gonna say i know we we all know it's not rhetorical um we're all just kind of processing that moment here i know is there a way to maybe work into like this amendment to have a more regular report back to the board maybe of some of the topics that actually got added beyond the data that you're already working with say

098oh you know this is the we don't have to know the entire conversation but just like this is or these are the handful of things we discussed at our last meeting just as part of your committee update oh yeah i mean i'm so torn on this topic because it's not about me or what i feel as a committee member or as a representative of the board it's about the people that are engaging in that work that are impacted by the actions of others and have suffered trauma and um [Music] are sharing potentially personal stories and so it's really difficult right because the public has this right to know you have this need to know and we all need to be respectful of the fact that these people have suffered potentially harm and our insistence on

099on sharing that information is could be harmful to them and could um diminish that that the accuracy of the conversation and and discourage the sharing and so you know because on the one hand we want we as a board i think want it to be very objective right we want the the numbers and we want the recommendations and to a large extent that's the work that's occurring there however there is some context that's more subjective in in nature or personal in nature that we rely on to sort of flush that data out and that's the part that i don't feel comfortable saying okay we can do that because it's not my it's not my personal emotional well-being that is being threatened and and having heard clearly that that's a potential source of emotional trauma to

100committee members i can't advocate for that and it's a quandary i mean because i think that you know you you and the board and the public have a right to know on the other hand we all want the best information and that's really how we pick the committee and we're and and in order to get that then we're setting them up to fail and so i just really wanna i i don't know the answer to it it's something i've thought about a lot i've discussed a lot um i heard clearly from the committee members that they have a lot of concern about that and i need to respect their feelings i mean and i'm one member here on the board but i do want to bring that to everybody's attention and it's really hard for

101us i think if we're not impacted personally to fully understand that and thank you for the context alicia and i totally i i really do understand the point it's just the um i don't even know how to say it with you have more context and the why you're passionate about something and it could potentially have board members whether it's this sitting board or future board if they don't have that same context we may not look as caring or as compassionate or as engaged because we don't have the information and we are looking at it to your point very clinically because we don't have that context and it's i i agree it's a quandary and it's not an easy piece um i don't have the right answer it's just how do we find that middle ground

102so that you're honoring what they need and us and future boards have what we need in order to make the right decisions and it would be really easy if we could say let's boil it down to like a subject matter or something but i think that in a community like scarborough it would no matter how distilled that information becomes it would be um identifiable i i hear what you're saying and i i appreciate that i'm gonna recognize diane and then nick i'm coming to you just as a an observation as a member of the sitting committee i think some of what rings true for me as i listen to this conversation is this is a relatively new committee that has got together neat the charge of the committee as originally written is deep it is

103emotional and i think that as we are just beginning to come together um there is a heightened recognition of the need for the work through the use of example um and i think um that's kind of what the committee has been sitting in and um as uh you know one member of the committee said in our last meeting these examples are are just even more reason as to why we need to move forward and start doing the real work right um and set forth action plans yeah i agree because that's where i struggle as well because i'm not sure i'm not sure if the examples or the stories we're hearing are driving the recommendations i think they're exactly what you're saying they highlight what diane's saying they highlight the need for the work and um

104maybe maybe what they do is shine light on instances that we didn't know were even occurring so that's where i see the the examples playing a piece or impacting the committee um so i'm i'm having a same that's why i'm spending a lot of time processing me and i'm not i'm not sure what the middle ground is nick and then i'm going to insert myself again i'd originally raised my hand to put a friendly amendment but don't worry i'm not going to do that because leanne's basically accomplished everything i wanted to do so there's no reason to put another option on the table um but i did want to keep my hand up just to say that the reason i support that language and that friendly amendment as well as the one i was going

105to make is because it keeps the focus of the group kind of like as diane was just saying on on the core mission which is this idea of analyzing the data to come to a big picture action plan to present to this board and then once that action plan is in place and a living breathing plan because new things will come up that will that will impact it that they'll monitor the plan and all of that so that part of the the charge i think remains true in my opinion is the core of the charge and as much as those uh as much as individual stories and stuff are critical because they help people who live outside of those realities to understand just how serious this is in all communities including scarborough at some point

106i think it's important to just keep the committee reminded that this work really is about kind of moving figuring out the best way for us to move forward to ease that pain for our community um [Music] instead i'm i'm trying to figure out how to say this well um because i've done advocacy work myself and i i know what can happen in situations where it it goes away from the idea of looking forward and instead becomes a place to build a context of the past and to spend a lot of time in that which is critical at first to have to have a base but when you're going to move forward that foundation is what you move forward from not what you linger within um and so i'll stop there because i do think that

107leanne's friendly amendment and shannon and the work that you put in that language to start together i feel like that keeps us on track with that and that was and that was my concern that is less of a concern now thanks nick i'm actually going to go to sarah and then i will no it's okay you go thank you i was just going to say you know i understand where like kristen and leanne you got you're coming from in terms of the communication um to me i kind of view this like any other committee right like it's i don't know everything that's happening in policy uh you probably don't know everything that's happening in finance but you know what is important and and what is thematic and and what you need to know in order

108to make a decision and i think um having keeping the the safety of that group is is more important than me knowing the details and i don't need to know the details in order to make the decision because it's your job to communicate that effectively to us in order to make a decision so i'm supportive of leaving it the way it is so i i think that the conversation is is kind of wrapping up here i feel like we are just about ready to vote and so with that i would say that um you know as a reminder to all of us we can put the dei committee on the agenda to discuss as a full board as frequently as we think we need this is an evolving situation this is an evolving committee this

109is the first time we've had a committee like this before i know that shannon had brought to me a request for a workshop and so we have carved out workshop time for the dei committee to come and actually have maec speak to the full board which we have not done yet and so there's going to be pieces of this as we as we move along um and so i think it's important to for the committee to advance their work um that we you know do make this amendment um and then you know as things come up or board members continue to have concerns or if members of the committee you know it's just like tonight bring a concern to the chair then the chair is able to say okay i think this really needs to

110be a full board discussion and we bring it back to the full board um and then i and i will end with a request um which is kind of just something for the dei committee to think about um is just making sure that um we don't have a narrow pipeline for how things arrive at the dei committee um and i don't have a solution for that i don't know if that's something that we need to do outreach or communication or make sure that people understand like how to bring issues to the dei because this committee does exist and if you're going to be discussing things that happen my concern is just people who know about the committee will will channel their energy into the committee and that that's not necessarily a representative voice especially for

111you know the fact that we have lots of buildings not just middle school and high school who are you know more maybe more able to advocate for themselves so i just want to be careful that we don't develop a or fall into a habit where we people feel like they have access but it's not equal access so that would be my request is there any other final comments before we vote i would just say april that all of the points raised tonight by the board are great points and they're all points that shannon diane and i have discussed um so we're sensitive to them and and um we agree and and we're trying to work through it and include you in the journey thank you and thank you both for presenting that and having this

112discussion with that i think diane we are ready to vote on the main motion to approve the amendment um as presented and as friendly amended by leanne mrs giftis yes dr gill yes mrs caslonis yes miss leighton yes mrs lindstrom yes mrs scyther yes mrs turner yes mr bennett yes and miss goodis yes excellent thank you all so much agenda item 9.0 is new business agenda item 9.1 is the shs 2023 italy trip and i want to thank very much for your patience mr transalito if you'd like to take the mic and give us an overview that would be great thank you i don't want to mess up the uh the tech communication system and i kind of feel lucky that i actually came in person um i was going to be on the zoom

113and maybe um that worked out well uh so thank you for the opportunity of having me here tonight to speak to you i just wanted to come and inform you about plans for a europe trip in late june of 20 uh three is that right where are we now 21 yes so two years from now um as you probably know i was here before the board in the fall via zoom to talk about a trip for next june of 2022 which has been a huge success in terms of students signing up why i'm coming two years before this tour generally when we do student travel promotion it's within a year to 18 months of travel but i think giving it a two-year window of time uh a lot of students have signaled that they like

114the idea of gives them more time to plan gives families more time to plan from a financial point of view it is often more cost-effective working with ef tours which i've already mentioned that many times as you know scarborough high school has been working with ef for i've been working with them for 11 years and we've had multiple student groups with the foreign language program latin spanish and french and myself so ef definitely sees this as an advantage as well too so i'm seeking just awareness to you all that i am going to try to promote a tour in early june for two years from now to italy possibly um a side trip to croatia or some era the adriatic but that is not entirely clear at this time but it would be primarily to

115italy and we've had a strong interest in student travel in scarborough high school in the past the pandemic has definitely side tracked us for a while needless to say and there seems to be a pen pent-up interest in don't say demand but pent-up interest for sure and student travel and the thing that i've probably talked about in the past more than a few times is how um over the years i was thinking about that i was sitting here and like how many students have i actually taken on student tours plus some some of my colleagues um who also have done student travel i mean we're talking hundreds if not thousands of students over the years from scarborough who have been able to go abroad and then ultimately um have parlayed that experience into semester or

116year abroad in college internships abroad uh and then ultimately even graduate study abroad so it's the ripple effect is is huge and um it's great to see that kind of interesting uh despite the pandemic and that there is an ongoing interest in in playing it forward so just wanted to apprise you of all those plans so thank you but if you have questions i'm happy to to answer any questions that you have does anyone have questions if you're on zoom i can't see your little blue hand so you can just unmute excellent thank you so much thank you coming and presenting to us it's always exciting when we talk about student travel i know that that's something that you know we are all really excited and grateful that those students have that opportunity so thank

117you so much thank you and just one final thing as i'm standing here as a teacher from the high school i just want to say to the board thank you for all your support this year with the just all the accommodations for the pandemic and for helping us do our jobs i i do think that the general mood in the high school is extremely positive and grateful toward all your leadership so it's been a long year for a lot of us the kids have been phenomenal um but without you all supporting us there's no way we would have been able to uh navigate the way we have and obviously we're now making plans for the fall and for hopefully full you know in-class instruction but obviously with accommodations that you all were discussing earlier tonight

118so truly i do think there's an enormous wellspring of um great respect and gratitude for you so thank you for all of that that's very kind sure thank you agenda item 9.2 is the meeting minutes of april 1st 2021. do i have a motion to approve as presented so moved second discussion okay diane mrskiptis yes dr gill yes ms casalonas yes miss leighton yes mrs lindstrom yes mrs either yes mrs turner yes mr bennett yes and miss skiftus yes thank you agenda item 9.3 is appointments agenda item 9.3.1 is high school english language arts lead teacher so daniel excuse me daniel wiley 2020 and 2020 one year uh the amount of thousand dollars which will come out of the general fund do i have a motion to approve as presented still moved second discussion diane

119mrs giftas yes dr gill yes is catholics yes miss leighton yes mrs lindstrom yes mrs seither yes mrs turner yes mr bennett yes and miss giftus yes thank you agenda item 9.4 is the second reading of the fy 22 school budget and i will turn it over to sarah because i'm sure she has all the numbers and all the amendments all written the moment you've all been waiting for buckle up okay you're gonna lose me on video when i go to my page but that's fine so the way it's gonna work i'm gonna make a motion um like an original motion and then a number of amendments based on the changes that we've made since first reading and then we'll vote on all those and then we'll go back to the main motion okay all

120right so move um approval of the fy 22 education budget as presented at the school board's first reading on march 18th 2021 you want me a discussion yeah is there discussion and then or i i thought you were you were saying you were going to bundle them all together guys no i don't think him but um so is there any discussion okay so then um no i'm gonna make an amendment okay right yes yeah this is yes amendment to the first reading uh proposal so move to a move approval to amend the fy 22 education budget expenditures approved at the school board's first reading on march 18th as follows the general fund operating budget we're gonna reduce expenditure budget by five hundred and thirty six thousand one hundred and thirty two dollars we're gonna add

121three hundred thousand dollars in fund balance to non-tax revenue all of these changes result in a reduction to the net general fund expenditure budget of eight hundred and thirty six thousand one hundred and thirty two dollars i'm gonna amend the general fund expenditures gross budget will now total fifty five million six hundred and eighty three thousand fourteen dollars and the amended general fund net budget um will now total forty nine million nine hundred and forty five thousand 444 dollars i guess i can do these all together so the adult education budget we're going to increase the expenditure budget by as outlining the supporting documents we're gonna add twenty six thousand nine hundred and sixty nine dollars to non-tax revenues all these changes result in a reduction to the net adult education expenditure budget of twenty

122five thousand nineteen dollars which will bring the amended adult education expenditure gross budget to one hundred and seventy nine thousand six hundred and thirty nine dollars and the amended adult education net budget totals sixty five thousand four hundred and eighty one dollars the capital improvements budget will reduce the expenditure budget by two hundred and seventy nine thousand five hundred and twenty eight dollars we're gonna add eighty 286 thousand two hundred and fifty dollars to non-tax revenues all these changes will result in a reduction to the net school capital budget of five hundred and sixty five thousand seven hundred and seventy eight dollars which brings the total amended capital improvements expenditures budget a gross budget to three million three million six hundred and thirty eight thousand nine hundred and one dollars and they amended capital improvements

123net budget total to 655 351 dollars and there's no changes to the school nutrition budget thank you sarah so now we need to vote on the amendments um so diana unless there's questions i think we're probably all set great mrs giftas yes dr gill yes miss cancel otis yes miss leighton yes mrs lindstrom yes mrs scyther yes mrs turner yes mr bennett yes and miss skiptus yes so now we'll return to the main motion which is to accept the general fund operating adult education school nutrition and capital budget as amended is there any discussion seeing none mrs giftes yes dr gill yes ms casolonis yes miss leighton yes miss mrs lindstrom yes mrs seither yes mrs turner yes mr bennett yes and miss giftus yes i'd like to make a final motion um that in

124the event the scarborough school department receives more state education subsidy than the amount included in its budget that pursuant to section j j j j j j i think i got that right all right i think [Music] yeah i can get it back thanks kate sorry so out of order i i apologize madam chair no rice oh you want me to read that you can say as reason you could say statutory language as presented okay i think that's you can read mine if you want um move to approve the statutory language language as presented pursuant to title 20 pursuant to title amrsa 1491.85 let me do that again that was sloppy so okay for the purposes of public record i'm 100 confident that this is fine that you could that we can say it as

125presented but then in terms of our meeting minutes if we could just ask kelly to include the entire language i think that that more than covers us and you can just kate had just suggested that i read the whole thing which okay if for not just just make it official i i agree with april as long as it's recorded as this is the the item that you voted on sarah we're not going to comment you okay cool then carry on [Laughter] no uh okay so we have a motion on the floor to accept the statutory language as presented second discussion thank you very much diane mrs giftas yes dr gill yes miss casalonas yes miss leighton yes mrs lindstrom yes mrs either yes mrs turner yes mr bennett yes and miss giftus yes perfect thank

126you very much with that i believe agenda item 10.0 is adjournment do i have a motion second discussion i just have a couple quick things i want to say before we go um for our june 3rd meeting we're getting daggers for our dream third meeting i just want to remind everyone and the public that the indoor requirements spacing requirements will have changed um and so we will be able to accommodate more people in chambers for our june 3rd meeting at that evening event we will be honoring our retirees um and mr bennett will be guest cheering for us and so that will be an exciting opportunity for him i'm sure i will be right here to co-pilot um and with that i think we're ready to call the vote mrs giftus yes dr gill yes

127miss casalonas yes miss leighton yes mrs lindstrom yes mrs either yes mrs turner yes mr bennett yes and miss giftus yes thank you very much everyone