Reorganization Planning Committee Meeting
28 May 2008
DRAFT Minutes
Present: Facilitator Bill Ferm (arrived at 8:30 p.m.), Chair Gail Marshall,
Vice-Chair Brian Hubbell
Bar Harbor: Paul Murphy Mount Desert: Patrick Smallidge Southwest Harbor: Skip Strong and Kristin Hutchins Swan’s Island: Tammy Tripler
Others in attendance: Rob Liebow, Rick Barter, Nancy Thurlow, Kelley Sanborn, George Peckham,
Judy Sproule, Kathleen Rybarz and Selena Dunbar
Commencement of Meeting
Gail Marshall called the meeting to order at 7:02 p.m.
Review of Draft Minutes from 21 May 2008
MOVED by Tammy Tripler, seconded by Brian Hubbell, and unanimously voted to approve the minutes of 21 May 2008, as written.
Public Comment
None
Report from Trenton and Lamoine
Kathleen Rybarz of Lamoine said the school board is meeting Monday and the RPC will make a report. Budget validation process did not go well. They will be revisiting it. Turned the budget down but it passed at town meeting by 84 – 4.
Judy Sproule – Hope to get Trenton RPC together next week and school board to meet together. Rob Liebow will attend.
Patrick Smallidge – Thinks it must be hard for them to make a decision with no figures. How do they know the bottom line costs?
Kathleen Rybarz – They do have teacher costs. They have asked and received enough information to make a decision.
Kristin Hutchins – If Trenton and Lamoine joined us would they still maintain choice for high school?
Gail Marshall – Yes.
Report from Superintendent and Business Manager
Rob Liebow - Nothing to add from last week. Still struggling with how to split up subsidy. State has a 6-step process which you get bogged down in.
Nancy Thurlow agreed that the six easy steps are not easy.
Brian Hubbell – We don’t have difficulty figuring out our actual special education costs, correct? And we have an idea of what we will receive for special education subsidy?
Rob Liebow – Yes we do. The bigger your district, the less you receive.
Brian Hubbell – Why do we care what their formula is if we can divide it ourselves?
Rob Liebow – If you’re Frenchboro and you get $15,000 - $18,000, with our method you would get $6,000 - $7,000.
Tammy Tripler – Swan’s has taken a hard hit in the last few years. Can’t count on the budget because you get surprises during the year.
Rob Liebow – You’re going to get it back a couple of years later, but when they cut it to 50% everyone ended up in the same boat.
Tammy Tripler – When this goes through we’ll just plan more efficiently.
Rob Liebow – Carry a larger reserve.
Gail Marshall – At some point, the communities may want to look at special education again and decide if it should be run district wide. Not proposing that right now, but that may be one of the areas we look at pooling resources.
Paul Murphy – We discussed that in terms of our reserves. It might be wise for at least that part if we hold each other harmless for the big hits.
Patrick Smallidge – Administered through the union structure, great idea. He supports addressing that now.
Tammy Tripler – There was a lot of resistance to that in prior meetings.
Gail Marshall – Every school already has a special education reserve for unanticipated expenses. When we talked about a central pool it got parochial very quickly.
Brian Hubbell – We all see an advantage to that. One possible way to handle that would be to retain the reserves we have right now and then work on a central reserve.
Gail Marshall – Do we still get Medicaid money that we could do that with?
Rob Liebow – It’s drying up.
Skip Strong – Different towns have done different percentages that they put away. Some putting more away than others. That was what was causing most of the difficulty. Why are we putting in 10% and others are only putting in 5%?
Patrick Smallidge – This is a great example of how we can work together. If we can settle on some idea of percentage of reserves, it might pay off tremendous dividends.
Gail Marshall – Are we talking about centralizing the hiring, firing, and managing of special education staff? Or just the reserves?
Brian Hubbell – Suggest we ask Rob Liebow to look into this, not to set limits on it and make a recommendation in that respect.
Rob Liebow – Like the reserve idea. It’s an insurance pool and everybody has an equal opportunity.
Paul Murphy – Think trying to centralize all of special education, to include staff, taking teachers out of the community and putting them into the hands of the Union is not a good idea. Not for here and now. Do think there’s merit to a centralized reserve account and it’s beneficial to all communities and likely to be any one of us as the other. That’s a good idea at least for now. I recommend that we limit the scope to the reserve.
Kelley Sanborn – If you did pool into a centralized reserve, that it is for unanticipated costs for that budget year and the following budget year, that SAU would be responsible for reimbursing, putting into the budget what they took out.
Rob Liebow – No. They would be able to draw off it and the next year they would pick up the true cost. It would just save them for an unbudgeted year. It would get refueled until it gets funded again. Could come up with a formula so those that use, contribute at a higher rate for a while. You wouldn’t put all your money back in but you would have a higher rate for the next five years.
Gail Marshall – It’s like car insurance. You get penalized for having a car accident.
Skip Strong – Reserve is a good idea island-wide based on percentage of your budget. It’s going to average out over time. Good way to pool money.
Patrick Smallidge - MOVED that Rob Liebow formally look into administering a fiscal special education reserve based on a similar percentage for each budget and report back with some basic mechanics and current status of the reserves in the individual towns that are concerned.
Judy Sproule – We don’t have any special education reserve right now.
Brian Hubbell – I will take this as a modification to my original motion and I will second.
Unanimously approved.
Report from Regional Meeting with Commissioner Gendron
Brian Hubbell and Gail Marshall attended.
Brian Hubbell – The purpose of the meeting was mostly to try to explain her interpretation of the opportunities that AOS (alternative organizational structures) would make. Questions relating to what constituted consistent collective bargaining agreement. Some general interest in what possibilities might be there from other RPC members. Not much to do with us other than we were the model for the AOS. Nothing much relevant for us came out of that meeting.
Gail Marshall – Gave her a sense of the futility of going through this process. Could look at what was said two different ways. She was being unnecessarily vague, or you could look at it that she was suggesting there was flexibility. People tried to pin her down on what consistent means. She asked people to make a pitch. People found that challenging.
Brian Hubbell – Got notes today from Aroostook meeting which was similar to Ellsworth. Interest there in AOS. Commissioner expanded a little more on what the consistent bargaining agreement might look like. Consistent contract is one that could be arrived at by different parties negotiating around one table.
Gail Marshall – The Commissioner said it may take you 4 – 5 years to reach that consistency. After the meeting we met with her and said it might help if she could tell people ways to reach a consistent contract.
Brian Hubbell – That seemed evident. It is required in the plan that you have a plan for achieving consistent collective bargaining agreements, not a consistent collective bargaining agreement in itself.
Gail Marshall – We had to submit a progress report at the end of March. We received a reply to that. (Gail read it.) Friday, June 13 is the deadline for resubmitting a plan. We wrote directly to the commissioner and said we are not going to be in a position to submit a plan by then. We are meeting with Dick Spencer the third week of June. We can submit a progress report. She seemed fine with that. She said the inter-local agreement has to be done and assented to by the governing bodies who will be acting on that before it is submitted. Prior correspondence said we only needed to submit a progress report by June 13.
Brian Hubbell – Remembered her saying that we were required to submit a new notice of intent. Suggest we do that.
Gail Marshall – Notice of intent is just a document that says who the current parties are and that we intend to file a plan forming an AOS.
Patrick Smallidge – Presume that document would have to be approved by a vote of this body?
Gail Marshall - Yes.
Skip Strong – Notice of intent has to come from individual SAUs. Doesn’t come from the RPC. Must be signed by individual board chairs.
Gail Marshall – If you plan to submit a plan for an AOS, you have to submit a letter of intent for that and submit the whole plan by June 13.
Paul Murphy – Other thing was that an inter-local agreement must precede the plan. What happens if the plan is shot down and we end up in noncompliance? What happens to that inter-local agreement? Can we form an inter-local agreement contingent on the plan being approved?
Brian Hubbell – They don’t want to approve a plan and then have the inter-local agreement fall apart. There are two stages. Inter-local agreement can be ratified at the same time as the reorganization plan. It doesn’t require a vote before that. Just requires a vote of the governing bodies which is our school boards. Take to school boards to enter into inter-local agreement to share the central office services.
Gail Marshall – Submit that with the plan.
Brian Hubbell – Then come back and take to voters.
Gail Marshall - School boards would vote on the inter-local agreement and the plan.
Patrick Smallidge – We’ve been talking about the governing body and the inter-local agreement, I’ve also heard legislative body and governing body. Do we know which one for sure?
Gail Marshall – That was one of the questions we asked Dick Spencer. Who is the governing body? We know the legislative body is the voters and they vote on the plan. In this case who is the governing body in agreeing to an inter-local agreement? He said the school committees of the schools that were joining together to share the central office would be the governing bodies.
Patrick Smallidge – Talked about fiscal issues, like special education, and when you start getting into those, then you go from governing body into a legislative body. Be careful not to cross that line.
Gail Marshall – Ultimately the whole package goes to the voters.
Paul Murphy – Recall that when we went through the plan a couple of weeks ago that we really needed Dick Spencer to review town charters and take a hard look at which body is the appropriate one. Not convinced that it’s the school board.
Brian Hubbell – What’s critical is, you can construct an inter-local agreement that contains any number of different authorities. It depends on what it is we’re talking about sharing. If it’s school functions, then it’s the school boards. If we’re talking about larger municipal functions then there are other parts to it.
Gail Marshall – We’re talking about a new way to describe our central administration of our schools.
Brian Hubbell - That’s a school function - hiring a superintendent.
Patrick Smallidge – The board of selectmen had overstepped it’s bounds by creating agreement with the four MDI towns. We had exceeded our authority without knowing it. That’s what I’m trying to point out.
Continuing the Work Session for Central Administration
Chart of regional powers and duties and review components of the inter-local agreement.
Gail Marshall – We started to try to change the whole plan and not just the matrix of powers and duties. So on the front page we just changed the name to proposed AOS instead of proposed RSU.
#2 - the size, composition and apportionment of the governing body and #3 – the method of voting of the governing body. We wrote what we heard people saying, but we’re not necessarily advocating for that.
#2 now says “The superintending school committee of each participating town shall designate three individuals from its membership to serve on the AOS Board.” We talked last week about the pros and cons of doing what we do now – having everyone participate like the Union board. Concerns were raised about that, including governability, manageability and getting a quorum. Still sense that we want to retain informally encouraging all elementary board members to attend, but three voting members from each town and each town would decide how to determine which three would vote.
#3 – “Each AOS board member has an equal vote.” It may not legally fly. For now, rather than weighted vote, each person would have one vote.
Patrick Smallidge – Back to #2, of each participating town shall officially or formally designate? I realize there are no contentious issues with these committees at this time. Should there be one within a singular board, e.g. if Paul doesn’t get to vote but Brian does and they don’t agree, trying to keep the issue from dividing the school board.
Brian Hubbell – We wanted to leave that decision up to each town, how they wanted to arrange that designation. We believe it is a principle worth holding to.
Skip Strong – If you have to officially designate people, you have to vote to designate the people. You could designate three people to show up and if they can’t attend the meeting your town has no vote.
Gail Marshall – If we’re still encouraging everyone to attend, and participate, but by law each person has a certain number of votes, we’re going to make sure we have representation at the meeting. Our town used to designate who could vote by seniority. Now if 4 or 5 members are there we decide who wants to vote. Hasn’t been an issue to date. Then make decision between local board members how to vote.
Patrick Smallidge – You don’t prepare for what is, you prepare for what can be. Helps if you’re a pessimist. You have a guiding document that limits that discussion of representation. Keeps it at local board’s level instead of having 4 or 5 members all squabbling .
Brian Hubbell – I would encourage the local school committees to take a policy that would deal with that concern. Don’t think RSU should decide that for the local committee.
Gail Marshall – Agree that we have been lucky for the past few years. No guarantee of harmony and bliss. I don’t hear in what you’re proposing how formally designating three people and only three people is going to solve that problem.
Skip Strong – We pick two people and then first alternate, second, etc. We pick in August who is voting for the year at the high school. Does encourage people to go because you could be the person voting.
Paul Murphy - There isn’t anything that precludes any town from setting up representation the way they want.
Gail Marshall - #4 – the matrix of powers and duties.
Brian Hubbell – General point that bogged us down is not keeping clear what we expected the central office and superintendent to do. Sometimes they’re working for local committee and sometimes for AOS board. Kept trying to describe what central office would be doing. Need to keep those distinctions in mind.
Skip Strong – All the AOS is going to do is the current union duties. The high school board or budget is going to be part of this, but not run by the AOS board.
Rob Liebow – It will be it’s own RSU.
Gail Marshall continued through matrix and pointed out what the AOS would be responsible for.
Brian Hubbell – The exercise here is useful in developing the plan but this is the basis for the inter-local agreement. Trying to isolate components of the inter-local agreement.
Rob Liebow – The superintendent traditionally oversees building projects for individual SAU’s even though it’s coming out of Union 98 office. All bookkeeping for the project is done in the central office. It’s still the individual SAU’s project, but the oversight is done financially by the business office and managerially by not by the principal but by the superintendent and the local school committee.
Gail Marshall – This is the kind of distinction Brian is talking about. As the superintendent you will perform functions at the behest of the local school boards just as you do now. The AOS board is out of that. We’re paying you to be the manager for the individual boards.
George Peckham – What about the Trustees?
Gail Marshall – The Trustees are for the high school. Right now the superintendent is in the high school. What we were asking is do we need language so 20 years from now if the superintendent should be off campus, should the AOS have the ability in the inter-local agreement to put before voters to build a building.
Rob Liebow – Are you asking if Trustees continue or not?
George Peckham – As I read the wording in the column -
Rob Liebow – Ignore that column. Everybody is going to maintain like our present structure. They will have the same powers and duties as they have now due to the private and special act remaining.
George Peckham – You mean we can continue and spend money without asking.
Brian – Yes.
Gail Marshall continued through the matrix.
Negotiated contracts - Bar Harbor support staff have a collective bargaining agreement. We need to figure out the legal ramifications of that.
Curriculum decisions are those overall goals and objectives. What are the learning results? What do we want kids to come out knowing? What text you use, what materials you use is a local decision. Overall goals for how we’re going to get kids from K-8 to the high school and then through high school and out is what we have the director of curriculum and director of special education for.
Kelley Sanborn – I’m worried about that. Currently have difficulties with curriculum decisions that are different. If you are supporting a centralized curriculum, then supporting centralized decisions about how to implement that curriculum would be helpful.
Gail Marshall – Unfortunately, in terms of powers of boards themselves to make those decisions, when I first came on the board we were approving text books. We don’t make those decision like we used to. If there are problems, that’s something that should be discussed on a union-wide basis. Wasn’t aware there was a problem. Work on at a local level. Surprised if local schools were willing to give up that local building autonomy, but if it’s causing problems we should discuss it.
Kristin Hutchins – Assignment of staff to schools – in the event that a K-8 school doesn’t need a teacher anymore, with this consistent contract we have is there a provision for that?
Gail Marshall – Very large and long provision about reduction in force.
Kristin Hutchins – Does it allow that person to move to another school without loss of seniority?
Gail Marshall – No. It’s a complicated issue.
Kristin Hutchins – So they become unemployed?
Gail Marshall - Yes.
Kelley Sanborn – Another area of opportunity. We could be sharing staff members in more efficient ways than we are now. Especially with MDI and outer island schools. Rather than 1/5 time here and 1/5 time there and go through individual school boards. It’s not an easy process. Opportunity to make some changes.
Gail Marshall – Nothing would be more fundamental to local autonomy than making those local decisions.
Paul Murphy – I agree with you, Kelley. The ability to move staff as needed between buildings and to keep good teachers employed is a clear benefit of that model. It’s something that ought to be part of contracts as they come due is at least on the table and part of the discussion. Could take a few rounds of negotiation to get that done, but worth working toward.
Kristin Hutchins – Heard throughout this process that we have good ideas but we’re not going to talk about them right now because we don’t have to and it’s going to muddy what we have to do right here.
Gail Marshall – Valuable reasons for that. What you don’t see in this process is there has been a natural coming together in the school system over the course of time.
Kristin Hutchins – I understand your argument I just want to make sure I am clear on it.
Gail Marshall – We see the big picture and there are things we’d like to move toward. We don’t want this process to be where people are forced to do things.
Brian Hubbell – This is a point in the discussion where we remind ourselves that we have a vision that we want to work towards. We want to make a plan that gives us a mechanism to evolve in the direction we want and need to go. Make sure that provision is there.
Kristin Hutchins – The reason I’m interested is people will come to me privately and ask questions. These people would like us to be more consolidated more quickly and are looking for ways we are going to do this.
Gail Marshall – We want the system that will allow our communities to work with each other. At some point if communities want to go apart more, they have latitude to do that.
Paul Murphy – There are a couple of schools of thought of what this process should be. One is that this should be a revolutionary process. This is the opportunity for sweeping change. Could be, but it’s been this board’s and communities that this process should be one of conservation and what we have. What we have is organizations that have seen the benefit of coming together and centralizing where possible and achieving efficiencies when possible. That mind set allows for what Partick described earlier as a congenial cooperative system. If this process is used to bring a heavy hand to those changes, as desirable as some of those might be, you’re going to have a more contentious atmosphere.
Patrick Smallidge – This document is strategic. What Kelley is talking about is tactics. If we address tactics in a strategic document you’re tying hands of future boards. If too detailed, you’re taking authority away from local committee to make decision. Special education reserve is a broad-minded strategic reserve. To burrow into tactical affairs is a mistake.
Gail Marshall – In the same way we have to have a transportation director, we appoint Rob and then expect the school boards to task Rob to review the transportation system and see how to do it more efficiently rather than having this board do it.
George Peckham – Construction thing again. Instead of those question marks in that column, why wouldn’t it be proper to say high school trustees?
Gail Marshall – The yellow column will be what’s now the Union 98 board. Need to add something about th high school which would include trustees. Yellow column is what role the union board has now. It does need to mention high school and trustees.
Rob Liebow – What would be in the middle column is exactly how we function now. What we have to turn into the commissioner is what’s the central body going to do because everybody else will be doing what they do now. The central office is the only part that will change. What’s our inter-local agreement and what’s you central office going to do? Will clean that up with high school and trustees put into that.
Brian Hubbell – The law requires that the regional board ultimately has the responsibility for making sure there is a consistent contract that is negotiated. That is a requirement of the law.
Rob Liebow – Dick Spencer will meet with us and he will make a more professional looking document. It’s hard to work with this. This isn’t a set in stone document that would go to the commissioner.
Brian Hubbell – This doesn’t have anything to do with what is going in our inter-local agreement. Just the specific authority of what the regional board will be. We just want to make sure we’re not missing anything.
Rob Liebow – If it’s not taken away by the AOS board then it’s the way it is now. If you never mention the Trustees in the plan it’s because they still exist and function the way they do now unless the AOS board decided to take that power away.
Bill Ferm arrived and continued going through the matrix.
Patrick Smallidge – Can we still keep differences in bus purchasing schedules?
Gail Marshall – Yes. Bar Harbor still has a contract with First Student.
Paul Murphy – Makes sense to ask Rob if there a better way to do something. Would Bar Harbor be better off going away from contracting bus services to going back to purchasing if we all purchase together on the same schedules? There’s nothing that would require an individual town to move to that.
Nancy Thurlow – State wants to see all of the actual bookkeeping for lunch programs come from our office.
Paul Murphy – Seems like this is where the board responsibility and superintendent responsibility got mixed up. Central office handles this. Seems like that should be an N/A because local board doesn’t do anything with that.
Gail Marshall – Calendar – Union does vote on the calendar. We have to strive for consistent school calendars. Rob will be assisting local boards to come up with consistent calendars. Swan’s is one area we discussed with the commissioner. They may have a different calendar.
Brian Hubbell – As a practical matter, the way it will work is that Rob and his office will develop a model calendar. Regional board will approve and local board will modify as they deem necessary. The law requires us to do this.
Gail Marshall – State subsidy still muddy, but we’re working on it.
Gail Marshall – Redistribution of powers – this is where we want to make sure these boards remain viable going forward and communities can make changes as they see fit. If there were going to be changes that affected towns it should get hashed out at the AOS level but would have to get approved by each affected town in order to change the way we do business. If Tremont and Southwest Harbor decided to combine efforts, what impact, if any would that have on this system. We have a mechanism to make those changes in the future.
Patrick Smallidge – Redistribution of powers – Would like to see this a little more defined. Are we just talking on authorization of teacher’s contracts or this or that? What exactly are we talking about? Is it being left vague intentionally?
Brian Hubbell – The idea is to give some latitude so we are able to deal with whatever variety of things we need to.
Rob Liebow – That came about because at one point we had a model 5 and a model 4 on the table. The idea of having the whole thing be K-12 and mutual funding that would allow you to get there and you could be a true RSU. Anything could be on the table as long as each town voted on it.
George Peckham – The yellow column is strictly dealing with union 98. But on first page it says the high school is part of it.
Gail Marshall – There are two different terms. The AOS and the school administrative unit. All schools are administrative units. The school union is going to become the AOS.
Gail Marshall – Do people feel, generally speaking, that the concepts outlined in that third column, are what we want to give Dick Spencer to review?
Kristin Hutchins – Yes.
Patrick Smallidge – Only outstanding issues are funding and governance of central office structures. Done deal in terms of responsibilities and the authority of the central office. Don’t know how it’s going to be made up and how it will be funded.
Bill Ferm – What’s the next step? Is there more to discussion before this goes to Dick Spencer?
Brian Hubbell –We probably need to have some of that discussion Patrick is talking about. We put in that what we thought the consensus of the group was related to the governance structure. If that’s not the case we need to talk about that. Pretty clear, in general, what it is we’re including.
Patrick Smallidge – MOVED to present this document with the exceptions of governance and funding structure for the central office to Dick Spencer for review.
Brian Hubbell – I will second, but I have a question. Are you talking about just this document we went through?
Patrick Smallidge – Yes.
Paul Murphy - Before we have the governance conversation in terms of how we vote and who the members are, we need to hear from Dick Spencer what we can and can’t do. If it’s needs to be one person one vote we can’t have each member having the same weight vote.
Brian Hubbell – We need to tell Dick Spencer what structure we’re interested in pursuing and he will tell us if we can or not.
Skip Strong – We need legal advice before our next step. The only action we have to take is new letters of intent going out from the SAUs.
Rob Liebow – The letter of intent doesn’t dramatically change. Just getting all those boards to meet before June 13 could be difficult.
Gail Marshall – With respect to the motion and outstanding issues of funding and governance. Is it acceptable to go to Dick Spencer and say we’re thinking about possibility of three people from each town having a vote, not weighted vote. And then with respect to funding, do you feel comfortable with pursuing concept that funding formula that functions in affect the way the formula does now? With the last two columns maybe being a three-year average. People seem to be okay with the current formula.
Paul Murphy – No and yes. Disagree that we should present model and say this is what we’re going to do, tell us how to do it. We were not constitutionally bound to one person one vote, or so Dick Spencer thought, we need to ask him about that. Why put forward a model if we don’t know if it’s legal or not? No strong argument about how the funding formula works.
Gail Marshall – With respect to governance issues – we know one person one vote is on the table. We may take that three people for one town and locals may not want it. There’s no harm in saying, if we do that plan the way we’ve outlined, are there problems with that?
Patrick’s motion as Bill understands it is to show this to Dick Spencer and say this is what the consensus is and the two issues we are looking more at are governance and funding. Then fleshing that out as Gail described in terms of specifically one person one vote and could towns have equal representation.
Patrick Smallidge – Comfortable with that. With funding, I’m a little uncomfortable with that. Grierson did have concerns. Where he’s not here I can’t speak for him. I’d be comfortable with how that’s being presented.
Discussion followed regarding governance and funding. Even if we pass motion tonight, can’t say to Dick Spencer this is finally how we want this to look. That’s why I (Gail Marshall) asked for clarification.
Tammy Tripler – Think it’s all right for us to present it and say this is not final form. Say we understand there may be issues that are not legal. Can’t go forward any further until we know about these issues.
Vote moved forward and was approved UNANIMOUSLY.
Next meeting: Wednesday, 4 June 2008
Adjournment
MOVED by Paul Murphy, seconded by Tammy Tripler, and unanimously voted to adjourn the meeting at 9:10 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Selena Dunbar,
Recording Secretary