December 1 Post

Another two weeks have gone by and there is much to discuss.  You would think that because we didn't have school for several days due to the Thanksgiving break that perhaps we'd have a hard time finding cool pictures of our students having fun learning - but nope - not the case!  Check out the pictures below and then on to the information!

UPCOMING DECISION MAKING TIMELINE FOR PK-5 ATTENDANCE ZONE SHIFT 

As has been shared previously, the Gorham School Department is seeking to shift our PK-5 attendance zones between our three elementary schools one more time as part of our long term capital planning.  This is being done in order to ensure all three schools have ample space to continue to grow over the next 10+ years.  The last planned attendance zone shift for our K-5 schools occurred in 2020.  The 2nd attendance zone shift would take effect for fall of 2024, this coming school year.

Our long term plan is to eventually gain approval for a state capital project that would consolidate Narragansett Elementary School and Village Elementary School into one new school.  Of course, this is going to take considerable time to bring this vision to a reality and in the meantime we need to allow all three of our schools additional room to grow.

The general standard for schools in terms of planning for future growth is that you should try to keep school buildings at 90% capacity or less.  This 10% then allows for that room to grow.  If we were to NOT make an attendance zone shift for the coming year, each school's capacity would be as follows:

-  Great Falls - 97%

-  Village Elementary - 97%

-  Narragansett Elementary (with additional modulars open) - 71%

Clearly, what this data says is that we need to drop enrollments at both Great Falls and Village Elementary School and increase enrollments at Narragansett in order to ensure all three schools have this needed room to continue to grow over time while we wait for this needed new consolidated elementary school. This has been part of our long term capital planning for the past 6 years.

In order to make sure we have appropriate time to make this shift possible in a well-done and positive manner for students and families decisions will be made starting soon.  We are currently working behind the scenes to determine best adjustments to our attendance zones as well as to determine what shifts will be needed in staffing across the three schools as a result of these changes for the coming year.  Decisions will be made fairly soon after we return from the Holiday break.  Because of this, I wanted to give all PK-5 families a sense of what to expect for communication from the School Department and what to expect in terms of a timeline for decision making.  Below is that overview:

-  January 17, 2024 - All Pre-K Staff meeting via zoom @ 7:30 a.m.  Superintendent Perry will review the following with staff:  WHY the attendance zone shift is needed; WHAT outcomes we hope to achieve; and WHEN we will be making decisions and communicating with parents and staff.

-  January 29, 2024 - All Pre-K Parent/Guardian meeting via zoom @ 6:30 p.m.  Superintendent Perry will review the following with families:  WHY the attendance zone shift is needed; WHAT outcomes we hope to achieve; and WHEN we will be making decisions and communicating with parents and staff.

-  February 7, 2024 - School Committee public decision to adjust attendance zones.

-  February 12 - 16, 2024 - Individual phone calls to impacted families will be made by Great Falls Principal and Village Principal to notify families of the upcoming changes.

-  February 27, 2024 - Great Falls Parent night to explain process and answer questions for all GF parents impacted.  This meeting will be hosted by Principal Fortier at Great Falls with time TBD.

-  February 29, 2024 - Village Elem. Parent night to explain process and answer questions for all Village parents impacted.  This meeting will be hosted by Principal Mezzanotte at Village with time TBD. 

-  After April Break, 2024 - Specific transition activities will occur and be hosted by Principal Eppler at Narragansett Elementary School with dates and times TBD.

An email will be sent to all PK-5 families after the Holiday break with a reminder about the Parent/Guardian meeting and a zoom link for folks to join.  Please pencil this in on your calendars if you think you might like to attend.  As always - if you have questions, please reach out to me at heather.perry@gorhamschools.org.  

SHARING HIGHLIGHTS OF RECENT CODE OF CONDUCT THOUGHT EXCHANGE

Thank you to everyone that participated in the most recent Thought Exchange survey regarding our Gorham School's Code of Conduct.  

If you recall this Thought Exchange is part of a larger data/feedback gathering process sponsored by the Code of Conduct Revision Committee.  The purpose of this committee is to revitalize and refresh the Gorham Schools Code of Conduct originally developed 20+ years ago.  The existing document continues to provide a strong foundation for school community expectations and core values that is utilized daily in the Gorham Schools. The Steering Committee will facilitate a community-wide review of the Code of Conduct to ensure the document reflects today’s contexts while reinforcing our core values for another 20+ years.

You can view an overview of this committee's purpose and work by CLICKING HERE and you can follow along with meeting agendas and notes by CLICKING HERE.

The recent Thought Exchange was open between October 16, 2023 and November 11, 2023.  The question that was asked was:

Schools should be safe, caring, respectful and welcoming. As we refresh our current Code of Conduct to address the unique conditions within our schools and community today, what are some important areas that we need to consider and why?

The following provides a summary of participation rates:

Of the 865 participants shown above, 72% were students, 16% were staff and the remaining 12% were parents/guardians.  Out of all participants 87% stated they were familiar with the Code of Conduct.  Below is a word cloud of the TE results:

Below is a set of the top themes from the Thought Exchange results:

Hard to see, but the top ten items listed were (in order from highest responses to lowest) - (1) Community, (2) Respect, (3) Protect Students, (4) Inclusiveness, (5) Digital citizens, (6) Living with integrity, (7) Social Media, (8) Social Media, (9) Bullying/Cyberbullying and (10) Mental Health.

You can view a full summary of thoughts generated by the Thought Exchange by CLICKING HERE.  

The Code of Conduct Committee met on November 20 to review in more detail the results of the Thought Exchange and the data from the first survey conducted in September.  The group determined that inclusivity, community, digital citizenship and student safety (physical and emotional) all came up as key items that warrant additional discussion in relationship to our current Code of Conduct.  The group continued to discuss the differences between values and behaviors and after much discussion determined that the likelihood is high that our five big value statements (i.e. honesty, compassion, etc.) will still be the bedrock of our Code of Conduct, but what we will likely need to do is update our definitions, behaviors and perhaps create a procedure that goes more in depth regarding the specific behaviors that make these values come to life and bring these values into current times and real context.  

The next steps for this group's work will be to develop some highlights of the data and use these highlights to sponsor several focus group meetings with the public, with students, and with staff to gain additional insights about how to best move forward.  The Committee will be working on this and scheduling forums between January - March.  The data collected will then be shared with the full committee when they meet again in March, 2024.

Overall some great feedback from survey participants and great work by the Code of Conduct committee in breaking all the data down into actionable next steps!  More to come!  Please stay tuned for upcoming focus group meetings...we would LOVE to have your participation!

SCHOOL COMMITTEE KICKS OFF FY 25 BUDGET DEVELOPMENT PROCESSES WITH THEIR ANNUAL "DESSERT & DISCUSS" MEETING!

Each year the Gorham School Committee officially "kicks off" its budget development cycle with a meeting we lovingly refer to as the "Dessert & Discuss" meeting.  It is given its name due to the incredible desserts that our school nutrition workers put together each year for meeting participants.  Below is a picture of this year's yummy treats just so you have a clear reference and understand just how incredibly talented our school nutrition staff are!

Typically this meeting is attended by all school administrative team members as well as all School Committee members.  This year we also had the added bonus of having 4 Town Council Members attend.  Thank you Seven Siegel, Rob Lavoie, Phil Gagnon and Lou Simms!

There are NO DECISIONS made at this meeting and purposefully so.  There will be ample time and opportunity for decisions later in the budget development process!  Instead this meeting is geared towards making sure School Committee members gain information and insight into student data and information about our schools and programs that will help them to navigate the difficult choices they must make further on down the line.

The meeting starts with some fun activities, then on to the dessert and after that we use the "sugar high" provided to share lots of information with the School Committee about our schools and programs.  It is an extremely informative meeting!  If you are interested, you can CLICK HERE to view the agenda that contains all the information links that are open to the public.  You can also CLICK HERE to view a recording of the meeting.  

With this meeting...we've begun the process!  A timeline for FY 25 Budget Development can be found by CLICKING HERE.  I've also updated the School Committee budget website link.  This web page is where we will archive all our FY 25 Budget development information as we move along through the myriad of meetings and decisions required to create our best proposed budget. Its a long but valuable road - I encourage folks to follow along with the good work! I will do my best to share along the way too!

SUPERINTENDENT'S LISTENING TOUR INFORMATION AND REMINDER OF FUTURE DATES!

So I had my first listening tour meeting on November 13 and unfortunately no one showed! 😐 I am going to choose to take this as a good sign that no one has questions about our schools...but somehow I doubt that!  So I thought I'd share some of the information I prepared for the meeting and then remind folks when the next three "Listening Tour" events are and encourage those who want to learn more, ask questions, and share their perspectives with me to attend!

In regards to information - I put together several charts/graphs that outlined some key facts about our schools and where we see our major challenges moving forward.  Here's some selected data slides:

Lots of folks ask me how old our schools are.  So I shared this chart below:

Then I share with folks a chart that shows pretty clearly the "hole" we have "dug" for ourselves regarding capital renovations and improvements to our school facilities.  This chart is based on a 2% reinvestment of total facilities value annually which is the standard set by the State of Maine.  Our annual capital reinvestment deficit is shown in the red bars below.  This is not a slide any of us are proud of.

I also tend to get a lot of questions about our enrollment history - so I included this data chart showing historical projected enrollments in blue and actual enrollments in orange.

Current enrollment is 2841 which includes 87 new Pre K students, hence the spike in the data chart on the right hand side.  Without Pre K the height of our enrollment was in 2019 with 2799 students.  Our lowest enrollment (again without Pre K) was in 2014 with 2631.  

I also tend to get a lot of questions about historical budget increases.  So I shared this graph below.  As you can see the FY 24 budget was a continued increase on paper - but please know that included a new Pre K program and associated expenses.  If we removed those costs (that had corresponding revenues) the actual increase would have been 5% which would have been even with FY 23.  The largest increase then would have been back in 2014 when our budget increased by over 5.5% in one year.

It is interesting to compare/contrast the expenditure budget graph above with the one below though too.  The graph below shows that our state property values have increased at the same rate or greater than our expenditure increases each year.  Last year's state property value increase, for example, was 8% over the previous year.  This is the figure the state uses to determine a community's ability to pay for its public education system.

This last graph below shows our per pupil costs compared to all other school districts in Cumberland County for FY 23.  As you can see (in red), our per pupil cost is the 2nd lowest at $17,000.00.  The Cumberland County average for this year was $19,446.00 per student, which is $2,446.00 more per student than we expended.

I then included a slide outlining what I see as the top challenges our schools face moving forward.  Those are:

My hope was that this data would spur some great conversation and thinking and help lead into a discussion about what people want to see for the future of Gorham.  At that point - after introducing my three leading questions below - my goal would be to sit back and listen to whoever is present and take notes to help inform future thinking.  Here are the three questions...

Since no one came to the first meeting - I wouldn't mind at all if folks perhaps wanted to send me some of their thoughts on these 3 questions via email!  I promise to read them just as I would have listened to them in person! Or perhaps this little piece has sparked your curiosity and you'd like to attend a future planned "Listening Tour" meeting?  If so - here's the information on the remaining planned events!

Dates:

-  January 22, 2024

-  March 26, 2024

-  May 20, 2024

Times

-  All meetings will begin at 6:00 p.m. and last no longer than 1 hour.

Location

-  Summit Community Church, Gorham ME. (26 Cressey Road, Gorham ME)

Note:  I may move the location for each meeting just to get different audience members.  This will be the 2nd location for sure.  After that - stay tuned for possible change in locations.

Food

-  Light munchies, coffee, tea and water will be provided

GHS STUDENTS PARTICIPATE IN THE "CAN WE" PROJECT!

Pictured above are GHS students and staff who are participating in The Can We? Project.

The Can We? Project is an experiment in revitalizing democracy through dialogue across differences. The project brings together groups of students within schools to take part in three day-long retreats with the goal of uniting students from different backgrounds and places on the socio-political spectrum. Experienced facilitators engage students in conversations to find a shared vision for the future. The Can We? Project is an opportunity for students interested in working together within and across schools in Maine to learn and practice the skills of civil dialogue and to collaborate on common ground issues in order to have a positive impact on our communities. This year the project is working in 15 partner schools across Maine including Gorham.

It is exciting to see our students participate and to hear the incredible conversations and ideas that they are generating. Thank you to those students who are putting themselves "out there" to participate. You are modeling our Code of Conduct for everyone when you do! GO RAMS!

If you’re interested in learning more, visit aspiregorham.live/CanWeProject. For even more info including video clips and news articles, visit aspiregorham.live/CWInfo

GHS SCHOOL STORE HOLIDAY SALE IS UNDERWAY!

WOW...is it me or did the Holidays sneak right up!  I know one place I can go to do a little quick shopping and make sure I can get some good quality Gorham "swag" while at the same time benefiting GHS students!  Check out the flyer below if you are interested in perhaps doing the same! 

Well that is enough "stuff" for this blog post.  I would encourage everyone to keep your eyes open on your individual school's calendar of events...there is always LOTS happening this time of year across all our schools! I know I have several upcoming concerts on my calendar in the near future!  You can access all school activity calendars from our district website (www.gorhamschools.org) and then click on each school to view calendars!