FARMINGTON — The Regional School Unit 9 board of directors will not convene on the next scheduled meeting date of Tuesday, Dec. 26, due to the holiday on the previous day. Superintendent Christian Elkington confirmed this at the meeting on Tuesday, Dec. 12.

The RSU 9 board of directors will meet again at the regularly scheduled meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2024, at 6:30 p.m.

Elkington also told the board that many members of the district office, himself included, would be taking the week following Christmas off and staff availability will be limited in the district office during the last few weeks of the year. Elkington stated in his administrative report that he would not return until the first Tuesday [Jan. 2] in the new year.

“Those four days after [Christmas], many people in this district office will be taking those off, including myself,” Elkington told the board. “So it might not be easy for people to find someone.”

In other business, Elkington updated numbers on staff vacancies and open positions. Currently, the district is utilizing eight long term substitutes and has four pending new hires. That leaves 16 open part-time or full-time positions, and they are as follows:

• Five general education support positions [one kindergarten ed tech, one part-time elementary school counselor for Cascade Brook School, one part-time custodian for W. G. Mallett School, one district-wide elementary home to school liaison, and one Maine college and career coordinator].

• Four special education support positions [two adaptive skills ed techs for WGMS, one day treatment ed tech and one resource room ed tech for CBS].

• Three coaching positions [one baseball coach and one softball coach for Mt. Blue Middle School, one JV baseball coach for Mt. Blue High School].

• Four district-wide substitutes [one ed tech, one nurse, one transportation-facility and one general substitute].

With the updated list of staff vacancies, the superintendent’s report also included three new resignations. Director Janice David of Farmington asked Elkington if exit interviews were being utilized to identify why staff is leaving.

“We have not started that but it is something we want to do,” Elkington responded. He went on to indicate staff that were exiting were doing so for much more personal reasons, but they would look into performing exit interviews.

The board passed four new policy revisions on first readings. Changes to the policies were minimal and they are as follows:

• GCOC Evaluations of Administrators: “He/she shall report to the Board annually and make recommendations regarding their employment” was reworded to “A report shall be submitted to the Board annually on the performance of all administrators with recommendations regarding their employment.”

• JRA Student Records and Information: Replaced all “Mt. Blue Regional School District” with “RSU 9”. Subsection C: Health or Safety Emergencies was rewritten with more clinical and descriptive detail on the disclosure of “personally identifiable information from a student’s educational record” to “appropriate parties” if it is determined “an articulable and significant threat to the health or safety of the student or other individuals and that knowledge of the information is necessary to protect the health or safety of the student or other individuals.”

• JRA-R Student Record Retention: The policy expanded to the definition of subsection C, adding “When a student attains 18 years of age, all rights accorded to parents concerning education records transfers to the eligible student.”

• JRA- E FERPA Notice: The policy added an additional segment to section C. Disclosure of Records, adding “Publication on Internet: Under Maine law, RSU 9 shall not publish on the Internet without written parental consent any information, whether directory or otherwise, that identifies a student, including but not limited to the student’s full name, photograph, personal biography, email address, home address, date of birth, social security number and parents’ names.”

The board voted unanimously on all four new policy revisions.

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