High expectations, staff changes and continued improvement marked the tone of the Boothbay-Boothbay Harbor CSD school committee’s first meeting of the 2016-2017 school year on Sept 14. The two-hour meeting began with the introduction of student body president Kate Friant, a senior at Boothbay Region High School who shared her enthusiasm for the coming school year.

“I’m looking forward to being a link between the student body and the board,” said Friant. “I also want to build a community where students feel they have a voice.”

In his remarks, Boothbay Region Elementary School Principal Mark Tess reported the summer reading program for pre-kindergarten and first grade school students had 25 participants this year.

“I think it’s money well spent on this program,” said Tess. “It keeps kids from having a summer slide before they come back to school.”

BRES Assistant Principal Tricia Campbell updated the board on the response to intervention team to identify students’ needs. In addition, the school will implement a student support center.

“The purpose of that is to support students with anything that gets in the way of their ability to access learning,” said Campbell. “We’ve seen increased needs around the social and emotional aspects. This will help teachers use a preventative approach to give students the ability to step away physically to focus. This gives them the opportunity to go someplace with an adult and quickly reenter the classroom.”

After a brief update from Boothbay Region High School Principal Dan Welch, Assistant Principal and Athletic Director Allan Crocker spoke of the recent decision to remove the football program from traditional, Maine Principal Association competition in favor of a club sport campaign. 

“It’s worked out really well so far,” said Crocker. “We were able to get a nine-game schedule and even have a team from Berlin, New Hampshire coming to play.”

Crocker hinted at a possible playoff with the league to help give kids something to play for, he said.

“We have teams coming on board with the idea. I know the east division is ready, it’s the west I am waiting on,” said Crocker. 

In a bit of rebranding, Crocker has started using the term “independent” league instead of club sport to describe the football season.

In other business, the committee accepted Superintendent Eileen King’s nomination of new teachers with first-year probationary contracts for the 2016- 2017 school year. The teachers are: Sarah Foster, CSD instrumental music teacher; Sarah Gordon, 5-8 guidance counselor; Jennifer Bryce, CSD Speech/Language; William Fraser, secondary special education teacher; Jane Stevens, secondary special education teacher; and  Christopher Liberti, secondary math teacher.

King distributed a paper prepared by Maine School Management Association to address the November ballot referendum question 2, which would tax income greater than $200,000 at 10.5 percent to raise an estimated $157 million for K-12 education.  According to the paper, a central question is whether the income tax is the best mechanism to have state funding be at 55 percent. 

As King explained, the paper was not meant as an endorsement of, or recommendation against, the referendum question. 

“I just wanted to make sure the board actually had the facts,” said King. 

The committee will meet next on Oct. 12.