And there it is! The month of February is in the books! Now marching on to March! The groundhog says we have a few more weeks of winter yet, but I don't know about you - I'm hoping he's wrong! With that little stretch of warmer weather earlier this week, I heard the birds singing for the first time...definitely got me thinking of spring! Maybe if we all think spring, we can make it come quicker! Until then we can enjoy all that our great state offers for outdoor activities regardless of the season!
Some pictures from the past few weeks in our schools below, and then on to the updates!
FY 26 SCHOOL BUDGET DEVELOPMENT UPDATE
The initial 1st draft of the proposed FY 26 school budget has been shared with the School Committee and made available to the public on our website. For convenience's sake, I've linked it below for your viewing. It is 100+ pages of detailed information regarding the 1st draft budget - all that any budget lover could hope for!
The School Committee will begin its series of budget workshop meetings this coming Monday, March 3, 2025. The meeting will start at 7:00 p.m. in the upstairs conference room at the Gorham Municipal Center. All budget workshop meetings are open to the public to attend, and they will also be live-streamed or recorded and placed on the website for viewing.
These meetings are very informational and give people a sense of the detailed conversations held when developing a school budget. Those who follow along will get a strong sense of the +/- and reasons why decisions are made. If you want to stay informed about the budget - following these budget workshop meetings is the way to do it! Below is a list of all Budget workshop meeting dates so you can follow along.
- March 3 Budget Mtg. #1, 7:00 p.m. in the Upstairs Conference Room at Municipal Center
- March 11 Budget Mtg. #2, 7:00 p.m. in the Upstairs Conference Room at Municipal Center
- March 17 Budget Mtg. #3, 7:00 p.m. in the Upstairs Conference Room at Municipal Center
- March 24 Budget Mtg. #4, 7:00 p.m. in the Upstairs Conference Room at Municipal Center (As Needed)
- March 31 Budget Mtg. #5, 7:00 p.m. in the Upstairs Conference Room at Municipal Center (As Needed)
Video links to the recording of these meetings will be posted on our budget website LINKED HERE.
After these workshop meetings, the Gorham School Committee will be asked to vote on the proposed budget on April 9, 2025. Whatever budget the School Committee approves on this date will be brought forward to the Town Council for consideration. Here is the timeline of processes you can expect for this segment of the work:
- April 16, 2025, Budget Booklets are delivered to the Town Council.
- April 29, 2025 - Joint Budget Workshop meeting with Town Council and School Committee, 6:30 p.m. Downstairs Conference Room at Municipal Center.
- May 6, 2025 - Joint Budget Workshop #2 with Town Council (IF NEEDED), 5:30 p.m. in the Downstairs Conference Room at Municipal Center.
Once the Town Council is fully informed of the School's proposed budget and its potential implications for the entire municipal budget, it is then asked to approve a proposed School Budget. This is done at a public hearing on the Town's budget scheduled for May 13, 2025. The meeting will start at 6:30 p.m. and will be held in Council Chambers. Typically, we begin the meeting with a discussion and vote on the School's Proposed Budget, and then the Town Council moves on to a debate and vote on the Municipal Budget at this same meeting. The Town Council may vote to approve a school budget that is the same as what was presented by the School Committee, or they can reduce the overall budget or increase it by an amount. Whatever School Budget is approved by the Town Council on this night then goes on to the last step in the process - A public budget validation referendum.
The school budget validation referendum is scheduled for Tuesday, June 10, 2025.
Now that you have all the essential dates for your calendars...please follow along and reach out with any questions!
REMINDER ABOUT THE POSSIBLE USE OF REMOTE LEARNING DAYS!
It is the end of February, but in Maine, that means we still have two solid months of possible snow days...so I wanted to send a quick reminder to families about expectations for snow days and the possible use of remote learning days.
In Gorham, we schedule 5 snow days into our calendar each year. This means we can use up to five snow days each year without impacting the end of our calendar year. On our school calendar each year we indicate the five snow days in June using a (*). So, for each of the five days we use, that becomes the last student day. The image below illustrates what I mean...
So as you see, the 12th, 13th, 16th, 17th, and 18th are all marked with the (*). These are our built-in snow days.
Right now, we have used 2 snow days. This means our last student day would be the 13th if we had no more snow days. If we were to use all five snow days, the last student day would be the 18th of June.
Now here is where remote learning days MAY come into play. Let's say we use all five snow days, and then we have another day that could be a snow day. Well, no one wants to extend the school year any further into the summer...but for each day we miss, we have to make it up because we have to have 175 total student days each year. Because of this, if we have a sixth snow day and don't want to make it up, it needs to be a Remote Learning Day.
A remote learning day would be called the DAY BEFORE a potential storm. The information would be sent home with students sharing clear expectations of what that learning should look like. We would also send bagged school lunches home to families that request them the day before so that we can provide lunch to students as required by law.
Why am I sharing all this? Well - mostly because I know that if we are all prepared to use remote learning days, Murphy's law tells me we won't have to!☺ But also, because if we do - for whatever reason - use all five of our snow days, I want it to be clear to families that we would then move to the use of Remote Learning Days so that we do not have to extend the school year further into the summer months. I want folks to be aware and be prepared for this just in case we have to use this "tool" in our proverbial "toolbox".
If you want to learn more about what a remote learning day might look like for your student, please contact your child's school principal to learn more. In the meantime, I want to remind families that if we ever use a remote learning day - you would need to sign up IN ADVANCE for school lunches. Right now, we only have a handful of families who have signed up, so I want to remind families who may be interested in their child having a bagged lunch if we have to use a remote learning day how to do that.
The link to the school lunch for remote learning days is below. Just click on the link and sign up...you only need to do it once a year, and we use that list for any remote learning days that may occur in that school year.
Now, with all that...let's all do a spring happy dance and hope we don't have to go there! ☺
DO YOU KNOW HOW OUR INCREDIBLY TALENTED TEACHERS CONTINUE TO GROW AS PROFESSIONALS?
With all the negativity that can sometimes be out there about public school teachers, I wanted to take a moment to share with you that our teachers are incredible professionals who don't just go to school for their training once and are then "done." Our teachers continue to learn, grow and sharpen their craft year after year after year!
There are layers upon layers of ways that our teachers continue to learn while working in our schools with your children. Some are minimal expectations required to maintain their teaching certificates from the State of Maine, while others are incentivized like working to obtain their National Teacher Certification Credential and everything in between! I thought it might be good to provide an overview of the various ways our teachers continue to grow to help demonstrate how dedicated these adults are to the children they serve!
First, it is important to note that all fully certified teachers have a four year degree under their belts which includes at least a semester of student teaching, or specific on the job training before they can get their initial certification and begin teaching.
Once in the classroom, each teacher is assigned an experienced mentor teacher to work closely with them for the first few years of their practice. These mentors are master teachers who work hard to share their incredible practices with one another. In addition to the assigned mentor, the minimal requirement for all teachers in Maine is that they complete at least six college credits (or the equivalent in specific job related contact hour training) every five years in order to maintain their certification. This is a minimum. I can share that in Gorham - our teachers far exceed this minimum. Well over 60% of our teachers have either multiple certificates (meaning they are highly qualified in multiple areas) or they have advanced degrees in their fields of study.
Our bargaining agreements also incentivize teachers to advance their degrees. We do this because there is clear research that demonstrates that the more highly trained teachers are, the better achievement results are attained by their students. So in Gorham, we provide modest salary increases for teachers who obtain their Masters Degree for example, or for teachers that go above a Masters degree to earn things like their C.A.S. (Certificate of Advanced Study) or who may even earn their Ph.D. These incentives are part of what creates a system whereby a large portion of our professional staff have advanced degrees.
In addition to formal coursework, our teachers also participate in many different levels of Professional Development at the National, Regional, State and local levels. Often these types of PD opportunities are specific in nature. For example, we may have a team of teachers and tech integrators that attend a national conference on technology integration, or perhaps a team of teachers that attend conferences to improve Literacy Instruction at the state level, or a team of our early childhood teachers attending a state wide conference on how to strengthen the use of purposeful play in the classroom. These are just a few examples of many. The Maine Department of Education hosts a wide range of high quality training that is often free to our professionals to attend. Most content areas and grade levels have specific PD opportunities across all the levels mentioned above that are high quality, focused trainings that our teachers participate in on an annual basis.
At the local level (or in-house), we offer specific trainings during our full day teacher workshop days or during our early release days. These trainings are typically very focused trainings on specific needs we have in our district. For example, they could be focused on providing staff safety care training for how to work with students who may have special needs, or how to use these practices to improve regular classroom environments. We may be working on implementing a new curriculum and need to provide specific training in this area, or perhaps we have seen something in our data that requires us to look more closely at our practices in order to improve results for our students. This past year we've spent a considerable amount of time during our PD days at the PK-5 levels on training in the area of literacy instruction while implementing our core curriculum in this area. Again, these are just some examples of many.
Also at the local level, we offer our teachers participation in PLC's (Professional Learning Communities) where groups and teams of teachers can work collaboratively on their craft together during the course of the regular school day. Often at the elementary level these PLC's are grade level based, at the MS they are often team based, and at the HS level they are often department based. This work may involve bringing together evidence of student learning, calibrating assessment practices, and making sure instruction is aligned to specific standards and much more.
Finally as part of our PE/PG system (Professional Evaluation/Professional Growth), teachers are evaluated based on specific standards. For first and second year teachers, we require a self assessment and goal setting process each year that is combined with at least two formal observation processes completed by their supervisors. After the first two years, teachers are required to complete a self assessment, set goals and complete formal observations every three years. For those that might be interested in what our evaluation standards for teachers look like, we use what is known as the Danielson Model, a national set of competencies created by Charlotte Danielson that look like this:
For each of the four domains, there are specific indicators listed and then for each indicator listed, there are specific competencies. Teacher must demonstrate proficiencies in each. Its a very thorough process that is heavily focused on continuous growth in teaching practices across the district.
These are just some of the ways our teachers work every day to sharpen and grow their craft to benefit our students. I hope what you can tell from this high level overview is just how dedicated our professionals are to making sure that our classroom learning environments are strong and that our students - all our students - are well prepared for their future success after graduating! We have an incredible team of professional educators here in Gorham and that is not by accident!
ASPIRE GORHAM UPDATE
Earlier this week Eliza Kenigsberg, our Career Aspirations and ELO Coordinator for the Gorham Schools, shared a presentation with the School Committee on the continued strength of this program even after grant funds have run out and we are now entirely supporting the program locally.
I thought that folks might want an update to know just how well the program is doing even though we are now "on our own". You can CLICK HERE to view the full slide presentation. And if you are interested in hearing the presentation - which includes two of our incredible students - you can CLICK HERE to view the video. The presentation takes up the first 28 minutes of the meeting. Special THANK YOU's to Abby Rogers and Gabe Harrington for sharing their incredible learning stories with all of us!
Once you view these items, I think it becomes very clear that even after the original grant funds have run out to support this program, Gorham continues to invest in this important work for our students and we continue to lead the way in the state of Maine in this work!
Here are just a few highlights from the presentation below...
First a reminder of what Aspire Gorham is:
Third, although we lost our full time communications coordinator because of the shift from grant funding sources to local funding sources to operate the program - we have not lost the investment from staff in this important work. What has emerged instead is the creation of school based "Aspire Champions" from our staff! These staff help lead the way for this work at each our schools! Thank you Champions!
Fourth, Eliza included a snapshot of how students are involved in this work across all grade levels. Here are the summary slides on that:
Finally, I wanted to highlight how community members can get involved in this work! If you are interested in perhaps sharing your craft with our students via one of our Career X events - just reach out to Eliza at eliza.kenigsberg@gorhamschools.org. If you are interested in perhaps helping to mentor a student for an ELO experience - just reach out to Michelle at michelle.bourget@gorhamschools.org. If you are a business owner and want to learn more about the program and perhaps how you can engage, the best way to do that would be to join our Gorham Business Roundtable. If you are interested in joining that group - you can email me at heather.perry@gorhamschools.org. We have over 100 business partners and are always looking for more across all levels of engagement! Thank you!
SCHOOL MEALS DURING RAMADAN NOW AVAILABLE!
We are excited to announce that the USDA has approved the Maine Department of Education’s waiver permitting our Nutrition Department to serve meals to students who are fasting to observe Ramadan in 2025! Families who observe Ramadan can request meals by completing the following Google Form:
All students who have been signed up and who are present in school that day are eligible for a meal. Beginning March 3rd, meals will be available for pick up at the end of each school day during the observance of Ramadan. Our goal is to make this process as simple as possible, ensuring students can observe their religious practices while still having access to nutritious meals after their period of fasting ends. Please direct any questions to our Nutrition Department at (207)222-1375 or rainalee.cooper@gorhamschools.
EAT AND LEARN EVENT REMINDER &
REGISTRATION LINK!
The Gorham Anti-Racism & Equity Committee will be hosting its third annual "Eat and Learn" event coming right up on Monday, March 10, 2025 starting at 5:30 p.m. at the GHS Library. Check out the flyer below for more details and PLEASE REGISTER TO ATTEND using the following registration link:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/
CONGRATULATIONS TO GORHAM STUDENTS WHO EARNED P.A.T.H.S. STUDENT OF THE QUARTER HONORS!
Way to go Eben and Cameron! GO RAMS!
GORHAM INCOMING KINDERGARTEN PARENT INFORMATION NIGHTS ARE NEXT WEEK!
Each of our three elementary schools are hosing a parent information night for all INCOMING Kindergarten students who will begin Kindergarten in the Fall of 2025. These will be held on Thursday, March 6 at each of the three schools. Check out the flyers below for details and call your school to register today!
A NEW VIDEO ABOUT THE FAMOUS MURALS AT NARRAGANSETT ELEMENTARY SCHOOL!
If you are a local history buff like me, this new video created by Georgia Humphrey and the GoCAT Team here in Gorham on the Dahlov Ipcar murals housed at Narragansett Elementary School is for you! A Fascinating look at a local gem unique to our schools! Check it out and Enjoy! Thank you Georgia!
 | Well known Maine artist Dahlov Ipcar painted the 108 foot mural that is displayed at the school.Over the years thousands of children have passed through the doors… |
Well that's it for this blog post! See you again for the next one scheduled for March 14th! Hopefully by then we can be seeing a little more spring type weather! ☺
