LIVERMORE FALLS – SAD 36 Superintendent Terry Despres laid it on the line Thursday for board members.
He apologized for not speaking up when directors were struggling with issues pertaining to board governance but said he won’t hesitate in the future.
“I failed you as a superintendent because I wanted to protect board governance … It will never happen again,” Despres said.
There has been some division between board members over how the board should be run, the policies it needs to follow and past practices and interpretations of policies and it has slowed the board’s progress.
There are also some conflicting policies on the books on some issues of board governance.
Despres suggested Thursday that the board revisit policies to straighten them out.
The board had taken a vote earlier in the evening to add the Pledge of Allegiance to the agenda. The existing outline of the agenda embedded in board policy does not include the oath, which caused some division within the board when new Chairman Ashley O’Brien added it to the agenda without a board vote.
The policy committee will review the agenda format and make a recommendation for the new policy to the entire board for a vote to be taken.
Another issue the board needs to straighten out, Despres said, is determining which committees will be standing committees and which committees will be ad-hoc committees.
After O’Brien became the new chairman in June, he appointed several people to a variety of committees and added some that he thought needed with the intent of having those committee members have a more active role.
“I applaud this effort for all board members to have an active role,” Despres said. “The issue is only a limited number of standing committees should prevail every year.”
The only existing, board-approved standing committee is the Finance Committee, and if the board wants to create other standing committees, the board would have to vote on that, Despres said.
The board also votes to create subcommittees, according to its bylaws.
The chairman of the board is authorized to appoint such additional ad-hoc committees as may from time to time be necessary for particular consideration, the by-laws state. Such committees would be discharged after its task is completed.
Despres recommended the board consider having beside the Finance Committee, the policy and board renewal committees as standing committees and be ongoing each year. And for example, a negotiations committee could be an ad-hoc committee on occasion when negotiations are ongoing, he said.
Board members said they wanted to get back to business and go back to having presentations to find out what’s going on in the school and they would like to visit the different schools each fall.
Despres suggested the board hold a business meeting each month and have the other meeting that month for presentations, with minimum business, if needed.
In other business, University of Maine Farmington students, Derik Hammond, Amie Smith, also a SAD 36 director, and Renee Stevens gave an overview to school directors on inclusive schooling. The three are studying to be teachers.
The federal government’s No Child Left Behind Act is recommending schools move toward inclusion so that students of all abilities and disabilities are taught together in the same classroom, rather than separately in general education and special education classrooms with appropriate support.
Now most students with learning disabilities are taught in a separate class from those who don’t have special needs, which has created a stigma for many of those students.
Some of the possibilities include bringing special education teachers into the classrooms to teach with the general education teachers in a co-teaching model, the presenters said. It would be up to each school system to determine what model would work for that system.
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