PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — Six teaching positions were filled at the June 11 SAD 1 board meeting.
Hilary Harvey was hired as a special education teacher at Zippel Elementary School, Judy Ireland will teach grade 7 English/social studies at Presque Isle Middle School, while Jacob Graham and Karen LeBlanc will each teach grade 7 math/science at the middle school.
In addition, Leilani Mortland will teach Spanish at Presque Isle High School, and Alice Malloy will teach grade 5 (one year only) at Zippel.
Also at the meeting, directors accepted the retirements of Cathy Allen and Karen Shaw, both second-grade teachers at Pine Street Elementary School.
One staff transfer was also announced. Tracy Fox will leave her grade 7 math/science position at PIMS to teach fourth grade at Mapleton Elementary School.
Charles Anderson, business manager, shared with the board the various service agreements the district has for 2014-15 with surrounding school districts.
One is a student transportation agreement with the Maine School of Science and Mathematics.
“That agreement has been in place for about a dozen years, and the total value of that agreement is $51,500,” he said. “Under that agreement we bus the Magnet School students back and forth across the state of Maine. There are several drop-off points; the number of trips varies from year to year, typically it’s 7-8 round-trips to pick up students and bring them home.”
Another partnership is a management services agreement with SAD 32.
“That’s been in place for 7-8 years,” Anderson told directors, “and the services include the superintendent, special education, technology and the business manager. For several years the value of that agreement has been $30,000. However, that agreement is scheduled to terminate Dec. 31, 2014 [when Superintendent Gehrig Johnson retires], so the value will be $15,000.”
Other agreements include a business services agreement with SAD 42, valued at $33,500, and bus repair/maintenance for 11 area school units. The value in labor is $40,140, while parts is $96,240.
“It all adds up and is a net profit to the district,” said Johnson. “We’re in a unique position; I don’t know of another school system at this end of the state that does that.”
During the public comment portion of the meeting, Dr. Brent Anderson, whose stepson attends PIMS, addressed the board.
“I’ve had occasion recently to become familiar with the disciplinary policy at the middle school, and I want to recommend to the board — and to the middle and high school — a report that was just released titled ‘The School Discipline Consensus Report: Strategies from the Field to Keep Students Engaged in School and Out of the Juvenile Justice System,’” said Anderson. “Basically when schools have tried really hard to appropriately make safe school environments, they’ve had to ratchet up their suspension policies to the point where some of these students get suspended over and over again, and then those students get off track in their education.
“It seems like there have been times when because of suspensions, you have students who are unsupervised in the community,” he said, “and there’s a class basis to this because students that have single parents or both their parents work, they’re unsupervised during the day, and then they get off track and have trouble reconnecting.”
Citing the report, Anderson said disciplinary systems that rely heavily on suspension and expulsion to manage student behavior produce poor outcomes and must be changed.
“Every effort should be made to keep students in classrooms where they can succeed and be engaged, and learning while providing appropriate support to educators,” said Anderson. “There’s a lack of evidence that schools that are frequently removing students from the school campus for disciplinary reasons are improving academic achievement among students remaining in the classroom.
“I just want to say that I have absolute respect for the staff at the middle school, but I think there are best practices that we’re missing because our suspension policies are too rigid. I particularly object to the policy of not allowing students to engage in athletic activities if they are suspended for any reason because I feel like if somebody has an athletic achievement or award, they should receive it because that’s what they earned, whereas with the policy — as I understand it — if there’s an athletic award, they do not receive it if they get a suspension for any reason,” he said. “I think there are ways you can be supportive of the discipline and the standards while at the same time being more supportive of the students that are suspended.”
As is customary, the board listened to Anderson’s concerns and there was no discussion or action taken by the directors.
Also at the June meeting, directors:
• Approved KeyBank’s bid of 2.25 percent interest rate for the lease purchase of three school buses for a total cost of $273,000.
The next regular board meeting will be Wednesday, July 9 at 5:30 p.m. in the board conference room at PIHS.
