001okay um diane do you have the slide deck or do you want me to share your screen i know you are able to share the screen um that would be fine with me if it's easier for me to do it i it'll just take me a minute to pull it out okay um all right just give me a second as i usually say you can keep talking while i'm doing this all right excellent thank you diane okay given that it is 703 i'm going to go ahead and call this meeting of the scarborough public schools board of education meeting to order tonight is thursday january 21st 2021 may i have the attendance please sure this is giftus here dr gill here miss casalonas here miss leighton here mrs lindstrom here this is cy there mrs
002turner mr bennett and miss giftus here excellent thank you could i have everyone join me in the pledge of allegiance please i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all we have a relatively short agenda tonight for those who saw the agenda posted online um i do have a couple of small adjustments to the agenda um one there is no place for public comment um on tonight's agenda and so i will certainly be adding a place for public comment there's also no place for adjustments to the agenda but that's okay because i'm going to do that now so i'm going to insert public comment after the pledge of allegiance so public comment becomes
003agenda item 4.0 so with that i am going to open the floor to public comment for anyone who would like to speak to the board as a reminder please direct your comments at me the chair and everyone who wishes to speak has three minutes to do so um if you would like to speak please raise your blue hand in the participant window and i will be able to promote you as the speaker alternatively you can email public comments to public comments at scarborough schools dot org and those can be read into the public record and i'll just give everybody a minute who may not be familiar with the technology to let me know if they'd like to make a public comment seeing none i am going to go ahead and close public comment um if
004you could go ahead and slide share the slide deck agenda item 4.0 is main teacher of the year nominations i really wanted to just take a minute to highlight this amazing opportunity that we have as a community to nominate a main teacher of the year for those of you who are unaware of who can nominate nominations can be accepted from students parents school administrators colleagues college faculty members and members of the associations themselves pretty much anyone in our community who like to nominate a one of our amazing teachers um i have made that button clicky so for anyone who has our slideshow open or would like to access it that way you can go ahead and click on that nominate button you can also go to the main doe webpage and there's a big banner
005for me and teacher of the year and if i'm not mistaken our communications committee also intends to put something similar in tomorrow's district-wide newsletter and so with everything going on um and with the challenges that we've had this year i know that i feel um particularly grateful um and so i think that this is a really awkward amazing opportunity to recognize some of our um some of our teachers so i hope that people take that opportunity to nominate someone special does anyone have any comments okay agenda item 5.0 is a winter sports update and we have our athletic director mr legage here i'm promoting you to a panelist mike so that you are able to have the floor well thanks good evening um just wanted to update everybody um we've had some uh interesting news
006the last 24 hours it's come kind of fast so i'm glad to have the opportunity to update you as soon as we have it can you hear me okay i'm getting her echo okay um so we have we've gotten the green light to go back to in-person participation and as you know um just like the school systems yellow green red system that we have with the department of education that system also was used for after school activities the difference was that for after-school activities excuse me if we were a yellow um or red it meant that we could not we could no longer do in-person activities we could only do activities if we're green um we're still in yellow right now we've been in yellow for winter sports since january first um the coaches have
007been doing all sorts of things that were happening you know last spring staying connected with kids remotely but last evening the main principals association along with several of the state agencies that uh oversee the community sport guidelines that are put out by the department of health and human services basically changed the whole system um for for coaches for coaches for kids for parents it really won't feel any different than us just being green again and going back to participation it really won't feel any different than that all the same rules apply you know that sort of thing for us as administrators it complete the system completely changed because they decided to not use the color coding system for after school any longer so the so the color coding system only applies to [Music] the academic
008side of school it does no longer apply to um the athletic activities uh programs so as you saw in the newspaper because there's been a lot of press about it on social media as well as articles in the newspaper there was an article towards the beginning of the week that talked about if you follow it how community programs are still able to do all the normal things that they're doing so all the community-based programs like youth youth sport programs uh premier programs things like that um could could be actively involved in in those activities but school-based programs could not because we had that um color coding system that we we were required to follow there was some push back um about that so yes last night um at a meeting they decided that they're going
009to um level the playing field so to speak and have one standard not two standards because there were there were really two standards so they're going to have one standard and how they did that was essentially wipe out the color coding system for uh education-based athletic programs and activity programs school-based activity programs um so we're looking to uh where we're uh planning to start back up on monday like i said it won't it won't feel any different to coaches and kids in the community it'll just feel like we're kind of back in in green and able to do things very different on our end because they're all local decisions now whether to participate or not uh the framework that we've come up with is if if students are in school then we're going to continue
010in in-person um after-school activities if for some reason um the school uh went fully remote because of um some reason um related to covet then we would probably be looking to perhaps go to it would depend on the reason in that situation if we went fully remote because of staffing issues then we would probably continue to do in-person activities if we went fully remote because of of covert cases that would be a situation where we would shut down after-school activities and and be fully remote so we're going to kind of follow along with um what the school is doing and make those determinations as they come up we really feel good about the system that we already have in place for screening um and for um you know following all the covet guidelines so it
011really was a simple thing for us just to you know put together more like a letter outlining okay here you know we're getting ready to come back now here's here's where we're going to start here's how things are going to go um but like i said it won't feel it won't feel much different to people this is for club activities as well so um and uh we'll we'll be setting some information tomorrow and and groups can get started as soon as they can um you know back to in-person things following our guidelines next week so great news but big news only because of the whole that's a that's a really big age eliminating the whole color coding thing throughout the school activities that's a big change questions diane did you have anything you wanted to
012add before i turn it over to the board not at this time nope okay so um for us and for our purposes for the community's purposes um you know with first of all i'd like to apologize for the last minute addition to the agenda um you know that's that's not typical for our board operating protocols but given that this news came out yesterday um we felt like it was really important to get um some information out to the community tonight and so um i was you know sandy and diane and i spoke this morning and we said okay you know we need to make an exception here and roll with the with the times um and so i appreciate the people who are able to attend um and i appreciate um everyone's flexibility on this
013um just one more little tidbit and then i'll turn it over is this is really just informational for us um this was like i said brand new information and i didn't want the board to be caught off guard by information that was in the community or available to the community that we didn't have um if this is something that the board wishes to have a lengthy conversation about or we don't feel like we have the answers we need tonight then this is definitely something that we could plan a workshop for in the future um and so with that in mind i will go ahead and open it up to board questions um leanne you have your hand up first and then alicia mike this is fantastic news i'm really excited that this is opened back
014up at what point do we determine if there's going to be competition that are we going to have wrestling meets or basketball games swim meets against other schools well i'm glad you asked that question because i probably left that part out but the community support guidelines actually allow for us to start all that as well and so we're going to do a phased-in system um our kids have been um i'm sure that they've been active on their own but our kids have been not active in our programs for a while so we're going to use a uh phased-in approach so when we when we first return we're going to um we're going to we're going to com when we talk to the coaches tomorrow night we're going to come back doing what we had done
015when we went yellow on january 1st which is uh skill work individual skill work strength and conditioning those sorts of things it's going to be a phased in approach and then we'll eventually add will eventually add competitions to that you know as things develop and then we'll be able to even look to um you know pl play some games against some other schools so i i would say within the next um couple of and within the next week or two we're probably likely going to be um back to competitions now you asked specifically about wrestling unfortunately wrestling remains in the community support guidelines as a high risk activity so that is one sport that is going to have to continue to do the things that they're doing now which is just strength and conditioning wrestling
016will be that sport that will not um get back to competition this season uh because it is still categorized as a high-risk sport um the competition part of things is still going to require every student to wear a mask during competition you know no more 50 students in in the gym at a time so all those same rules that we already have in place that are available on our website um if you link to the covid page you'll be able to see all those guidelines for winter sports all those still apply you know no spectators you know things like that all those rules are still in place but because they move they remove the color coding category we are actually able to get back to competition we're in scarborough we're going to do it as
017a phased-in model as opposed to just starting right off with everything on monday i i just don't think that's safe our athletic trainer dr davis um feels that same way that we need to do a phased-in approach to um you know re-entry the other thing that supports that though is not every school is on board on their start time and when they're going to be allowed to do games and things of that nature so this information is so new that not every school is yet knows what they can do and can't do and all those things so during that time we're going to take advantage of that and do this kind of phased-in approach it's not going to impact anything because nobody's ready to do games anyways right now so there's really there's no impact
018we're not going to lose out on anything um you know nobody's ready to start with games anyways right now and probably won't be for for a week or two um just does it follow up on that mike where they're not going to be ready is there talk about extending the winter season a bit longer in order to accommodate for schools as they're coming back online that i'm glad you asked that too great question that is another um thing that came down last night as well the winters the winter season has a hard deadline of march 12th that was the original stop time and that stop time is going to continue now how it was originally set up was february 27th was supposed to be um the last day for regular season games so to speak
019regular season games um and then the first two weeks in march were reserved for if if a particular league or a county or a particular geographic area wanted to do some type of post-season activity then those first two weeks and marks were reserved for that what they've since done with that is they've allowed the schools and they've allowed the leagues to independently make decisions about the use of those two weeks in march so theoretically we could um continue to schedule regular season games into march if we wanted to or we could stick with the hard stop in february and then join you know some type of postseason activity if we wanted to do that um we're going to we're going to you know we're part of a league we want to be good league members
020and so we're going to you know see how this flushes out within our league as well again this information is so new that our league has not had an opportunity to even reconnect and say okay how is the season going to go now how are we going to do games you know what you know what are we going to do but to answer your question with a very long answer sorry um the hard deadline is march 12th um okay part of that is for for they don't want anything to interfere with the spring season they're committed to the spring student athletes having a full spring season where where they've been the only group to this point to not have a season at all the other part of this that i'll tell you while it's on
021my mind is they have decided to move forward with that wedge season that i had mentioned when i had done a previous board workshop board presentation so on february 22nd um is the schedule we'll see if it does happen everything changes daily um but on february 22nd the plan is for unified basketball as well as volleyball to have a wedge season that would go their hard stop time is april 16th they will their regular season will go to april 9th their hard stop is april 16th unfortunately that's going to have some overlap which is going to create some facility scheduling issues but we think that we've worked through that and and have a plan for that so um so to kind of two reasons for why they're holding on a hard deadline for the winter
022season and i have one last question i'm so sorry i'm like full of them today um there was also talking the wedge about football having a contact season beyond the seven on seven is that still in the works yeah football the the football season was not so much during that wedge time it was actually going to be a summer activity and believe it or not there's a proposal out there that was put out by the coaches association to have a football season that started um in may and actually ran through um the first week in august it would run through the end of july and then the first week in august is when they would do the um lobster bowl game um that the the traction for that has slowed a little bit because there's
023so there's multiple layers of concerns there you know one concern that i've expressed is um is the close the close proximity of that season ending and then the regular fall season the next year start the next for the next year starting we literally would have less than three weeks between seasons that just doesn't seem safe to me um with such a high contact sport like football the other issue for me was the fact that we were doing all of that for really what was going to be three games the schedule only included three games the third part of that for me was the equipment reconditioning part of our insurance requires us to recondition the helmets shoulder pads and things of that nature the window for getting that done is going to be very very challenging
024if we try to do that summer football season and then have everything ready for the start of the regular season i just don't believe the company would be able to get our equipment back to us you know for the start of the of what would be a normal um fall season so i i'll be honest with you and tell you that um you know i'm certainly a big supporter of all the sports but that one set me back a little bit um i i just i think that i think the roadblocks is are going to be um much too challenging to overcome um you know for that but we'll see we'll see how it goes we you know if they offer a season we'll certainly figure out a way how we might be able to
025be involved in that no question okay thank you so much go ahead alicia thank you um i just have a couple of questions and then i have one um comment so um i'm assuming this applies to middle school and high school is that right middle school is a little bit different only because unfortunately their league has not come together in what they want to do with their season so middle school season the middle school basketball season will certainly be able to get going i don't know if they'll end up with games because the the middle school league hasn't really come together on how how that's going to all work they just had their first meeting yesterday so they've got some meetings left to do to figure out as a league how that's going to work
026our plan is for middle school basketball to start monday we're going to have our uh call out meetings um with the kids like like has been our uh protocol um during covid um to meet with the kids and go over the guidelines before they get started as you know we haven't we didn't even start um the winter season with middle school like we did with high school so they're kind of behind on on getting started so we're going we are going to start that on monday i don't know how the second winter season is going to go because our swim team for example swims at the portland ymca the portland ymca right now in all ymcas right now actually are not opening um their pools to outside groups only for their membership and that's been
027the problem with some of the high school programs not being able to do swimming this year because of that we've been really fortunate because we swim at cape pool and they've kept it open and they've kept our spot for us so we've been really fortunate um you know with swimming at the high school it has not been an issue for us but it has been an issue for many schools it will be an issue for middle school we won't have a place to swim for example wrestling at the middle school is in that second season it's the same situation as a high school wrestling is a high risk sport it just won't happen at the middle level thank you and just so everybody um is aware are there other um high-risk winter sports identified other
028than wrestling that will not be um competing this year not winter sports i'll just finish up with saying that indoor track is another concern indoor track um is a concern at both high school and middle school and this is the unfortunate part of this sport it's not a concern to do the sport because it's an individualized sport and it actually could be done the issue with track is facilities usm is not going to open there's no place to do meets for indoor track there's no place to just service that many kids we could not do an indoor track meet with just our kids there because we have too many we have over 400 students that participate in into a track at the high school so we we would only be able to take half our
029team to a meet and we'd have to be by ourselves um and so that the problem with indoor track is facilities same thing with middle school middle schoolers traditionally use the portland exposition building that is not going to be available to them for indoor track meets so we will likely do a similar sort of thing with indoor track as to what we're doing at the high school right now it'll be skill work strength and conditioning you know opportunities to connect with the coaches but there likely will not be meets and that's more facility related than it is covid related really i guess thank you and then my um final thing is i would like to just advocate for as much normalcy as possible for the senior night for those kids to have um some some
030ability to celebrate if possible i know that there's the 50 um individual maximum but they're i'm wondering if there will be some sort of buffer and then um in addition to that um i did hear feedback from parents about um like a raffle system knowing that there is the possibility that they may not be able to attend but just if that's a possibility that we could brainstorm so that people could um try to see their kids in person i know that's really important um to a lot of families and so it's something that i just wanted to bring up okay thank you i feel really good about doing that i think we had success in the fall i did not hear anybody that was disappointed with how we handle it in the fall they certainly
031didn't come to me or they certainly didn't express anything to their coach and so i i feel confident that we'll be able to do something that's safe for everybody and and and the best possible way that we can do it do you think that you might be able to have um spectators on like a raffle basis i can't answer that right now do you think that you could keep the board updated on that true thank you thanks alisha um shannon go ahead please my question about a longer season was asked and answered already but um i did just want to echo um the excitement this is great news for our students and our families that participate in the sports and extracurricular activities at school it allows them some sense of normalcy and um i know
032um i speak for myself but i know there's others in the community that are concerned with the mental health aspect of covid and so this is a great um this is a great piece of news we can deliver um and then lastly i just want to thank you for you mentioned a few times student safety um and clearly that's at the forefront of your mind and i i greatly appreciate that so thank you for your your help and your assistance well thank you for saying that i'm sorry this is the first time we're meeting too but congratulations on on being on the board uh i i appreciate you saying that and we worked really hard to behind the scenes to put some systems in place to you know ensures everybody's safety the kids and our
033staff we're very fortunate that we have 90 percent of our students participate in some school sponsored after school activity if we can keep kids engaged in those activities i think that's going to in scarborough anyways because of that petition participation rate is going to have a large positive impact on social emotional um well-being i couldn't agree more thank you thank you shannon uh max go ahead please okay thank you so i don't know if you already said this because i was slightly late because i had internet issues so i apologize but um in terms of activities i know i'm doing the one act play right now so like it'd be really nice if we were able to meet in person especially since we're only doing like one or two person scenes or whatever or like
034different clubs like key club or nhs at the high school do you have any like updates on those meetings yeah we're going to be sending information out to the club advisors just like we do the coaches the informational letter that's going to be sent out to them is for both clubs and athletics the things that i talked about the beginning of the meeting that you might have mixed max was was the fact that this applies to all after-school activities so still following all the governance that we have to follow in terms of mask wearing social distancing how many we can have inside still following all those rules um club programs will will be able to return to in-person activity just like just like athletics now i will also say that some of our club advisors
035have been very worked very hard and have been very ingenious about creating systems that no matter what they'd still be able to do things with kids so for example um i may be saying her name wrong and i really apologize for this dr nato will help me but diane this sorry a wonderful person she is running our drama at the middle school and they actually selected a play that um is set up to do virtually so they'll probably continue to do that they may have some opportunities to um get together in person for other reasons but their the whole premise of their play is um to to do it virtually the oak hill players as you know max has done they're pretty well finished up in fact i just saw mrs daugherty this evening because
036dr nadu and superintendent prince did allow them to you know film that last they had one component left one little component left to fill one to film one student finishing their part and so we did get permission for them to do that and they're actually doing that this evening right now as we speak um and so i had an opportunity to speak with her tonight and um that that production is going to be fabulous i've seen bits and pieces of it little snippets of it and i i think it's going to be wonderful and and now we're able to get that finished too because of this last component so i will say that we'll still see some groups doing things virtually you know i probably if there's any good that comes out of covid it
037has been everybody's education around being able to do things virtually and so it helps keep the momentum going a little bit so there will just still be some things that are done virtually um some of our club advisors at the middle school are doing their their teaching full-time virtually so they have to continue to do the clubs their clubs virtually but um you know we will see more and more uh of those activities being able to come back in person to answer your question max with a really long answer sorry i'm sure max is thrilled by the answer and so absolutely thank you so much does anyone else have anything they'd like to say okay i'm not seeing any hands mike thank you so much for making time um to be with us and to
038give us this update and i'm sure we will be inviting you back um updated looking forward to it thank you very much for the time thank you very much okay um moving on to agenda item 6.0 is new business for this evening in our packets you all received the um middle school winter coaches and so um i would like to ask for a motion to approve the middle school winter coaches as presented so moved is there any discussion seeing none um i think we're ready to vote miss giftus yes dr gill yes miss casalones yes miss layton yes mrs lindstrom yes mrs either yes mrs turner yes mr bennett yes and miss skip this yes excellent thank you um agenda item 7.0 is a motion to go into executive session pursuant to one mrs4056a for
039the selection of the diversity equity and inclusion otherwise known as the dei steering committee not to return to public session second is there discussion um the only thing i would like to say before we vote is that members of the committee should anticipate an email from me tomorrow either way and so if you apply to be on the committee and you are selected you will be receiving an email inviting you to join the committee and if you are not selected this time around you will also receive that email confirmation and with that i think we're ready to vote mrs giftus yes dr gill yes miss casalonas yeah miss layton yes mrs lindstrom yes mrs either yes mrs turner yes mr bennett yes and miss skiptis yes okay um and agenda item 8.0 is a motion
040to go into executive session pursuant to 1mrs4056 for the purposes of considering a contractual proposal for the superintendent search not to return to public session is there a second second discussion okay so the only thing i would like to say before we vote is that um our hope is that we are able to confirm the selection of a superintendent search committee this evening oh am i frozen okay yeah okay i have the hot spot going and everything i apologize um and uh so we are not returning to public session this evening um so there will be no community announcement about the selection of the superintendent search um however um if we do enter if we do agree to enter into a contract um i will put that on a future agenda and be able to
041present a timeline to the community at that time and with that i think we're ready to vote super mrs giftus yes dr gill yes miss casalonas yes miss leighton yes mrs lindstrom yes mrs scyther yes mrs turner yes mr bennett yes and miss giftus yes excellent agenda item 9.0 is adjourned so moved okay again discussion go ahead mrs giftus yes dr gill yes miss casalonas yes miss layton yes mrs lindstrom yes mrs scyther yes mrs turner yes mr bennett yes and miss yes excellent thank you everyone