Jason Long, principal of T.W. Kelly Dirigo Middle School in Dixfield, addresses Regional School Unit 56 directors Tuesday at Dirigo High School in Dixfield. Long said the school has about 180 students in grades six through eight, which is about 10 more than last year. Almost 62% qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, he said. Marianne Hutchinson/Rumford Falls Times

DIXFIELD — Livestreaming the Regional School Unit 56 board of directors’ meetings will return this year, Superintendent Pam Doyen said at the board meeting Tuesday at Dirigo High School.

The board livestreamed and recorded its meetings on Zoom and the district’s YouTube page the past four years since the COVID-19 pandemic. They stopped the practice last spring to save money as the $14.28 million budget for the 2024-25 was being developed.

Since meetings began in August, several residents and directors have requested a return to livestreaming them.

On Tuesday, Doyen said the district could spend “around $2,500” to livestream meetings. However, she and other administrators did not feel that they could return to remote online meetings with board members and residents attending remotely due to the cost of running the program, estimated to be about $6,000.

In other news, Technology Director Brian Keene said his department made around $17,000 from selling used technology devices at the Central Office on Tuesday.

“We had a few upset people because our iPads were gone within the first 15 to 20 minutes,” he said.

According to the district’s webpage, the IT department had about 200 13-inch MacBook laptops with M1 processors; around 50 iPad Generation 8s with Wi-Fi, and about 20 Apple TVs for sale.

Following Keene’s question about how to proceed with the 160-170 laptops leftover, the board agreed they should be sold to a bulk computer resale business.

In other business, Jason Long, principal of T.W. Kelly Dirigo Middle School in Dixfield, reported on student enrollment and behavior since the start of the school year. He said he is in his seventh year as principal and has been on the school staff for 10 years. The school has about 180 students in grades six through eight, which is about 10 more than last year. Almost 62% qualify for free or reduced-price lunches, he said.

The school hasn’t had any truancy cases so far, however 30 students have each had two absences. “And we keep track of those, because if you miss 18 days overall for any reason, in the state of Maine, you meet the definition of chronic absenteeism,” Long said.

The middle school has also adopted the Building Assets, Reducing Risks program, which was implemented last year at Dirigo High School in Dixfield. “And what the BARR program, in a nutshell, is doing for the middle school is it’s creating an intentional structure wherein we are communicating better about kids; what’s going on with kids, and needs of kids and plans for kids,” Long said.

The middle school has also chosen Magic School as its approved tool for artificial intelligence online needs for staff. The Magic School company “has its own data set that is curated and controlled so it’s appropriate for school. So, in that way, frankly, it is safer. It is also safer from a copyright infringement perspective, because when you put something into ChatGPT or any random AI platform, you essentially provided that to a third party that now exists,” Long said.