Well Happy April Fool's Day to each of you. May the pranks you provide to others be in good nature and may the pranks you receive place a genuine smile on your face. After all that is the point of April Fool's Day right? More on that later actually! For now, let's start as I usually do with some pictures from the past few weeks as a snapshot of what's happening in our schools!
Lots to talk about on this blog...so let's get right to it!
UPDATE ON SCHOOL 2022-23 SCHOOL CALENDAR CONVERSATIONS
Before I jump into the details on where we are, allow me to thank everyone who has helped contribute to this important conversation. We've had a lot of great correspondences with parents and community members regarding our initial proposed 2022-23 School Calendar and some great public feedback at our school committee meetings this past month. These conversations have really helped contribute to our decision making processes. The level of civil discourse has been high and the focus on meeting the overall needs of our children has been constant, which speaks so highly of our great community!
Based on feedback, and an extensive review of data, the School Committee has determined that it might consider adding 1-2 additional early release days to the 2022-23 School Calendar but that it is NOT interested in moving to an every Wednesday early release schedule for the coming year. The final decision has not yet been made on the proposed calendar, but these latest discussions have made it clear that moving to an every week Early Release Day model is not the direction the school committee would like to take to address the increased need for professional development time for teachers and staff. The final vote on the 2022-23 School Calendar will be taken on Wednesday, April 13, 2022 at their regular school committee meeting, which will be televised on GoCAT TV starting at 7:00 p.m.. If you have questions, please feel free to reach out!
UPDATE ON PROPOSED FY 23 SCHOOL BUDGET WORK
The School Committee is closing in on a final vote to approve of a proposed FY 23 Gorham School Department Budget. That vote will also occur on Wednesday, April 13, 2022 at their regular School Committee meeting. Once approved, the proposed budget is then sent on to the Town Council for further discussion and a vote on June 7, 2022. From there, the proposed budget would then go to a referendum vote in the community on June 14, 2022.
This has been one of the most difficult budget development years in my 15 year tenure as a Superintendent of Schools in Maine's public schools and certainly the most difficult budget development season in my 7 years here in Gorham. Why so difficult folks might ask? Valid question for sure... and one with a multitude of answers.
First and foremost, although we are now beginning to feel like we are on the path from "Pandemic" to "Endemic" there is still a great deal of uncertainty in the economic climate as a result of the 2 year Pandemic. Staffing shortages, broken supply chains, increasing costs of EVERYTHING, all take their toll on a school department's budget. Couple that with trying to address the increasing needs of our students, especially in the areas of Social and Emotional Learning and Mental Health supports, while grappling with meeting continued academic learning gaps and you have a recipe for significantly increasing costs across almost all programs.
The School Committee has had to work very hard over the course of the past 4 budget meetings to make some really difficult decisions regarding priorities and balancing costs with needs. There is one more budget meeting left to take place on April 12 at 7:00 p.m. before the School Committee will be asked to approve of a proposed FY 23 budget on April 13th. If you want to follow the previous budget meetings themselves, you can view their recordings by
CLICKING HERE.
Additionally, I have included links below to the original proposed budget presented to the School Committee in February and our budget priorities list.
Finally, I thought it would be beneficial to include a list of Proposed FY 23 "additions" and "reductions" to programming and positions as of our last budget meeting (March 22, 2022) below. Please note that items on the reductions list are clearly noted as either being reduced from FY 22 (existing programming) or reduced from the initially proposed FY 23 budget. Please click on the items below to browse this high level summary information:
The Bottom line is that the original proposed FY 23 budget projected an overall increase of 12.95% or $5,730,852.00 in expenditures. The School Committee has since worked to reduce that to an overall increase of 8.08% or $3,576,452.00, a reduction of $2,154,000.00. The current proposed budget (which is still very much subject to change before their final vote on April 13) stands at that 8.08% increase in expenditures, which would have an estimated mil impact of (+)$1.09 (an 8.60% increase over last year's mil impact).
Like I said, still a lot of potential for movement here as we come into the home stretch and I will certainly provide an update to everyone after the School Committee vote on the 13th - but I thought it would be helpful for folks to have this information so that if you are interested in watching the final budget meeting (4/12/22 at 7:00 p.m.) or the final budget vote (4/13/22 at 7:00 p.m.) you can. You can also reach out with any questions at any time via email at heather.perry@gorhamschools.org.
THANK YOU!
LEAD TESTING UPDATE
If folks remember, the Gorham Schools completed its first round of water testing for lead earlier this winter and reported those results to the public by school. There were several tests across four of our five schools (not including Great Falls) that required follow up testing. We just received the results of that follow up testing on Wednesday and I wanted to share that with you here and in a separate email message you will see later today.
First it is important to note that you can see ALL TESTING RESULTS, old and updated for each school by CLICKING HERE. Below is an overview of the updated testing results per school:
GHS - Re-tested 7 areas. 4 faucets and 3 water fountains. 6 of these areas came back clean which is "good" and one area by the trainers area still did not pass. We will simply discontinue use of this faucet fixture as it is rarely used.
GMS - Re-tested 2 areas. 1 faucet in kitchen and 1 outdoor near the concession area. The concession area faucet passed but the kitchen one still tested high. We are going to replace the fixture in this area and then re-test.
Village - Re-tested kitchen faucet and it passed.
Narragansett - Tested 2 new areas and re-tested 3 areas. The two new areas were missed in the first round. Those were from the nurses clinic and from a classroom faucet. Both of these tests came back clean and we are good. The other 3 were re-tests 2 from the kitchen area and 1 fountain in the new modular area. All three of these areas still tested high. We believe this is likely due to our having re-used kitchen equipment from the old kitchen in the new kitchen. The water fountain, we believe is "bleeding over" from the kitchen issues as they are connected. We have temporarily discontinued use of these water supplies for right now and are bringing in bottled water to be used in the cafeteria. We will replace fixtures ASAP and then re-test. In the meantime, once again, we are bringing in water supplies until we can take care of the identified issue.
Bottom line, please rest assured we take the testing of our water supplies very seriously and continue to monitor these issues closely. Right now, the only issue left unresolved is the Narragansett kitchen area water supply, which we believe can be fixed by replacement of older fixtures and continued flushing of the water lines. We will retest immediately once this work has been completed and in the meantime will continue to bring in bottled water for utilization until required tests have been passed.
If anyone has any questions, please reach out to Facilities Director, Norm Justice at norm.justice@gorhamschools.org. Thank you!
LAST DAY OF 2021-22 SCHOOL YEAR & SOME END OF YEAR EVENTS HIGHLIGHTS
I hope I am not jinxing anything by sending this out early in April as Maine has been known to have snow storms as late as May...but I'll take the chance and hopefully won't blow it!
At this time, unless we use any additional snow days, the last student day for school this school year will be Monday, June 13, 2022. This will be a half day of School. Please plan accordingly.
I thought while on the topic of the school calendar, I might as well also share some HIGHLIGHTS of end of year activities that folks can look forward to at each school. In this blog post I'll share from GMS & GHS. In the next one I'll share K-5 end of year highlights! Note - this is NOT an exhaustive list and folks should check out individual school events calendars from our website to stay up to date...but a nice list of highlights is below:
GHS End of Year Events Highlights:
* Junior Prom - May 7
* Step up Day for Non-Seniors - June 6
* Final exams for Non-Seniors - June 7-13
* Senior Walk - June 10
* Graduation - June 12
GMS End of Year Events Highlights:
* May 20- GMS School Dance
* May 20 - 8th Grade and 5th Grade Amazing Race of Gorham
* June 2 - Incoming 6th Grade Parent Night
* June 6 - 6th Grade and 9th Grade Step Up Day
* June 10 - 8th Grade Celebration
Mark your calendars! End of year is coming up waaaay too fast!
WEEK OF THE YOUNG CHILD
Did you know that the Week of the Young Child is April 2nd - 8th?
This is a National celebration of early childhood, from birth to age 8, the importance of the early years, and all the adults who care for and educate young children!
LINKED HERE is a flyer about the Week of the Young Child that folks can share with anyone in the community. There is also some incredible information and resources on the NAEYC and MaineAEYC websites.- Go to the bottom of this wage on the Maine AEYC website for links to activity ideas for your child care programs, elementary schools classrooms, libraries and community programs, and families with young children. https://www.maineaeyc.org/events
GORHAM CLEANS UP EVENT THIS WEEKEND!
A message from GHS Teacher Jason Tanguay below regarding the event and a HUGE THANK YOU in advance to those that volunteer to help make sure our community continues to look as good as it feels!
Hello again,
I wanted to send out another reminder as we are only a couple of days away.
It's time for our Spring Gorham Cleans Up event! It will be on Sunday, April 3rd from 8 to 11am.
We'll meet at the Municipal Center and after a quick safety meeting, we'll clean up around Gorham Village and along New Portland Rd from the Village to the rotary.
If you can't join us in person, please consider doing some clean up around your neighborhood that weekend and posting photos tagged with #gorhamcleansup All ages are welcome. We do ask that you wear sturdy shoes, gloves and bright clothing! We will have trash bags and safety vests available, too.
Thank you to Gorham Village Alliance, Gorham Public Works, Gorham Recreation Department, and Gorham Outdoors for support and to Gorham VIPS for providing traffic safety.
This event is being organized by the Gorham Conservation Commission.
Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions.
Mr. Tanguay
JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT VIDEO MADE AT VILLAGE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
Just wanted to share this awesome video made featuring our very own Village Elementary School Students to encourage volunteers to help out with Junior Achievement programming in schools! Check out those smiling faces and our incredible business partners at work in our schools!
Video Link:
HISTORY OF APRIL FOOLS
I thought I'd end my April Fools blog post with a quick little history lesson! Check out the link below from the History Channel to learn about the history of this very funny day!
Once done, check out the link below for some ideas on some fun and SAFE April fools pranks to try either later today or next year!
That's it for this blog post! See ya for the next one on April 15 when we start our April break...NO JOKE!
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