Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the Sonic Council.

Before we start the official meeting, we do have two workshop presentations to go through first.

So first I would like to welcome Superintendent Ray, Assistant Superintendent Parkhurst, and the school board members.

Superintendent Ray.

All right, good evening, everybody.

And for everybody in the audience, this will only be about 2.4 hours, so settle in.

So thank you for having us here tonight.

Every year in the fall, we come in and provide kind of an update of where we're at at the school department.

This summer for the annual report letter, which you all have a copy of here.

We've highlighted several things that are going on in the school department, but we thought that we would work you through some of the slides in the letter, and feel free during the presentation to ask any questions that you may have on the school department side.

So we broke this up into several different sections here tonight.

And obviously in the news, we hear a lot about academics, math and reading scores in the state.

And it's important for you guys to see where our students are achieving this year based off the main through year assessment.

And one of the things that we would like to highlight is that every one of our grade levels in math and in reading are exceeding the national averages on the test.

Now, certainly there are times that we would like that spread to be bigger than sometimes it should shown.

And those are things that we continue to work upon in both of those areas.

Now, one of the things that also tends to go along with achievement is also talking about demographics, we will get to so that you can see about the makeup of our communities and some of the pieces that go with that.

But it's great that we can see an upward trajectory of growth and achievement in all of our grade levels throughout the school year.

So that's a testament to the hard work that we have of our teachers, our staff, our families.

Because I think one of the things that we miss sometimes, and I was just briefly chatting with Will about this, and we've been talking about it more also on the state level, is that reading and math success, yes, are a measurement of your school, but we also need to go back and you know think about the partnership that exists between families, school uh, and educating your child, of thinking about the importance of reading at home with your child prior to school.

Um I think it was uh the great uh you know the stat of what was it like 30 million dollars uh uh books that Dolly Parton had given out over her time.

Uh and I think we all can remember getting the Dolly Parton book in the mail or at the doctor's visit, uh, and making sure that kids have a wide uh kind of experience of literature, and that it does go hand in hand.

It's a both, it's not a this or that.

So we're very happy um overall with the progress that our students have made.

On like the fourth page in um the other thing that's really important to us is each uh every two years, the state of Maine provides a mental health view survey to students that talks about um kind of how they're feeling, and there are three things that um we really wanted to kind of call out in this situation is that um 93 percent of middle schoolers report family love and support.

Uh that's self-reporting, which is up from 90 percent.

74 percent feel an adult at school cares about them above the state average of 70 percent, and 18 percent more students exercising five days a week since our last survey.

Now, those don't see like very tangible things, and you're like, why are you reporting that?

Because we're not just schools, aren't just about reading and math, they're about the whole child.

Um, and then you also look at some of the other state metrics about um percentages of students SOCO is in blue versus the state of students who maybe have had uh suicidal thoughts, which were lower than the state, um lifetime marijuana use lower than the state, lifetime alcohol use lower than the state.

So clearly some of the programs that we have in place and the partnerships with families do make a difference, uh and we're thankful for that.

The other piece that we're pretty proud upon is one of the tasks that we wanted to look at this summer as we were thinking about this and thinking about our achievement is since we are kind of overseeing pre-K through eight education.

How are our students doing achievement-wise?

And 78.5% of SACCO residents made the honor role at least one time last year at Thornton Academy, and 56.7% of students that were SOCO residents made it all four quarters.

So clearly, the foundation that SOCO students are getting in their pre-K through eight schools are leading towards success.

And that's something that we should be very proud of.

The other piece is that our students are experiencing more in the trades.

We have had 77% growth at the vocational center in the last three years, and currently have 117 students who are taking a class at the vocational center.

Um, whether that be in our nursing programs, our business programs, our electrical, our trades programs are pretty packed over there.

Uh and it's great to see that SOCO students are accessing those.

So I'll pause for a minute because we broke this up into six some uh sections to ask any questions around the academic piece that you may have, or feel free to hold them till the end.

Anyone have any questions on the first group.

Okay, exciting new grants and partnerships.

So we're gonna highlight a couple here that are very exciting for us.

And the first one is at Socco Middle School, and we were able to partner with uh the U.S.

Department of Defense around science, technology, engineering, mathematics with an emphasis on manufacturing and designs, and we were awarded uh a five-year grant that is a half a million dollars, where they came in and they outfitted an entire classroom, mobile labs, 3D printers, design space, um, and it really is looking to uh leverage some of the hands-on pre-vocational work.

We were lucky enough to get this piece is um they had reached out to us at the vocational center uh and wanted to bring this in, and uh I was able to hold out and say, hey, I can't just have it at one middle school, gotta have it at two middle schools.

Uh, and we were able to work with them on that, and it's uh really exciting piece.

Um, we would invite any of you in to come see our space at Socco Middle School.

Uh it's a very exciting program.

Um we hope that this will only be the first part of the process as they do have some other programs that they can offer.

Uh we're one of four middle schools in the state that has this program right now, Sacco Bitterford, Bath, and Lewiston.

Um, so this is a really exciting opportunity for us, and boy, there's a lot of uh really great technology in those classrooms.

Um another grant that we have at Socco Middle School is what's called the bar program, and it's a three-year grant funded uh, and it's around really getting to know students, the data where each team really has an advisory time, and you have a group of students that you're watching, and you can really kind of tailor in so that if something's going on with Sarah or attendance or whatever as a team, somebody is watching her and the data.

Um I actually will ask Meg to speak a little bit more on this piece as she's more familiar with this program.

I think another important part of this program to know is that it really focuses on looking at improvements for every single student.

So it's not just about identifying students that are at risk in either attendance or academics, but talking setting aside time to talk about every single student, every single student's strengths, and every single student's needs, so that that team is approaching growth for every student rather than putting the team in a position where they're spending 90% of their time talking about 10% of students.

And this grant has included a lot of support from their organization, but luckily most of the resources associated with it are open source resources, so it's really the professional development and the coaching support that the grant is providing, but we should be able to sustain it beyond the lifetime of that grant, which is great news.

And then when we look at additional grant supports for SACO students, we work with learning works for after school programming, climate education partnerships, regional homeless grant and our welcome center, unified uh champions uh schools for Special Olympics of Maine, Aid for Sacco Kids, our sweetener suites our partnership at CK Burns, which provides mental health counseling.

We partner with the University of New England, University of Southern Maine, which helps EdTech to teach your pathways, day one, which is a substance abuse counselor for students, ecology school, our seventh graders are on overnights at the ecology school right now, and then learning works for specialized partnerships for middle school programming.