Latest news with #RyanScallon
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Portland City Council approves $171.8 million school budget
May 19—The Portland City Council unanimously approved the $171.8 million school budget on Monday night, which will account for a 5.3% increase in the schools portion of the property tax rate. For the owner of a median-priced $500,000 home, the budget would raise property taxes by $210 per year. The budget approved on Monday is $28,000 higher than the budget Superintendent Ryan Scallon presented to the council's finance committee in March. Sarah Lentz, who chairs the Portland Board of Public Education, explained in a note to the council ahead of the meeting that when the budget was originally crafted the district had not yet received notice of the cost of employee medical premiums. At the time it was estimated that medical premium expenses would climb by 6%, but she said the district recently learned that the actual increase for medical premiums will be 9.6%, $350,969 more than was originally budgeted for. Additionally, she wrote that the board's decision in April to add the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur and the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr to the school holiday calendar will cost about $130,000. In order to keep the budget from skyrocketing the district opted to make reductions. The board eliminated the Multilingual Center's AmeriCorps contract, restructured the student enrollment process and adjusted two positions from full-time to four and three days a week, respectively. The school budget the council approved this year is about $10 million higher than the $161.4 million school budget approved last year and brings a smaller property tax increase than last time. In her note, Lentz wrote that special education, multilingual learners and early childhood capacity were budget priorities this year. New expenditures in the budget include $800,000 for kindergarten literacy staff and more than $1 million for new school and central office-based special education staff, based on an outside review of the district's special education programming There's also $200,000 for two music teachers, something educators and parents advocated for at the district's first budget workshop in February. The budget includes funding for a staff member to prepare the district for taking on early childhood special education — a response to a bill that passed in the Legislature last year transferring responsibility of providing services to 3- and 4-year-olds from Child Development Services to local school districts. That change takes effect in 2028. Several people spoke in favor of the budget during the public comment period. Gabriel Terraciano, a Grammy nominated violinist who attended Portland Public Schools, spoke in favor of the addition of new music teachers. "I'm a former PPS student and I'm a professional musician," he said. "There are so many things in my life that I can trace back to the music educators who I was around." Evan Smith, the parent of a child with an Individual Education Plan, said that while he supports the budget, the new investments in special education aren't enough. "There is a portion of this budget for special education that does not come close to meeting the needs of existing IEPs," he said. "It just doesn't come close." A few council members spoke during discussions, expressing support for the budget. Councilor Ben Grant, who previously served on the school board, urged other councilors to support the budget. "If we continue down this path to pass supportive budgets for the school system I think we can keep telling our neighbors this is the right place to be," he said. "I think schools should get a bajillion dollars but I appreciate the times we are in," said Councilor Anna Bullett. Councilor Regina Phillips emphasized the need for more investment in adult education programs in the future. "I just want us to remember how important our adult education program is and maybe next year really and truly look at that program with a fine tooth comb to make sure we're really and truly doing everything we can for our adult learners" The council also heard a first read of the $285 million general fund budget on Monday night, which is not expected to go to a vote until June 23. Copy the Story Link
Yahoo
31-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Negotiations with Portland Adult Education union headed for mediation
Mar. 31—A new union representing Portland Adult Education's part-time teachers is about to enter mediation with the school district after many months of meeting without reaching an agreement on their first contract. Although negotiations have been productive, union members are frustrated with the district's recent decision to bring in a mediator, which they're concerned will delay progress. The administration said the choice is designed to move the negotiations forward. Neither party shared specific points of disagreement in the negotiations. Portland Adult Education is the district's largest school by enrollment, and serves about 2,000 students. Its courses in English for Speakers of Other Languages, or ESOL, are in high demand, with more than a thousand on waitlists to take courses. Among the school's teaching staff, 18 are full-time employees represented by the district's teacher union who receive a salary and benefits, but the majority of teachers, 31, are part-time adjuncts who teach up to 20 hours a week and are paid hourly ($26.78 an hour). Portland Superintendent Ryan Scallon said the district also pays for planning time. At a school board meeting this month, Portland Adult Ed part-time teacher Lucy Shulman expressed frustration with the latest development in the negotiation process. "Our team was really surprised to hear that the school board chose to pull the plug on negotiations and file for mediation, rather than make a good-faith attempt to collaborate," Shulman said. "We thought that members of a board that affirm their commitment to equity so often and so publicly would immediately see the problem with a two-caste system of compensation among the teachers at Adult Education." Scallon said it's common for a first contract, where both parties are starting from scratch, to take longer than a renewal. UNION FORMATION Vanessa Sylvester, a part-time ESOL teacher at Portland Adult Ed, said the idea for the union rose out of a 2023 district study about hourly compensation. "Out of that study, which found that our pay rate was not as high as it should be, we got together and talked about organizing a union so we can be able to address the issues of compensation," she said. "With overwhelming support, we went ahead and organized." The Portland Adult Education members said they are organized by the Portland Education Association, but are negotiating a separate contract. The president of the Portland Education Association did not respond to a request for comment. The new union of hourly workers officially achieved certification in February of 2024 and began bargaining with the district that summer. Sylvester and Scallon agreed there has been progress, but Scallon said that there are a lot of different interests among the bargaining group, which have extended the timing of the negotiations. Recently, Scallon said, the district decided to call in a mediator, a neutral party from the Maine Labor Relations Board that either group in a collective bargaining negotiation can request. "We felt like a mediator at this stage could help us, as a collective, move forward in this process," he said. "And so I think everybody has been engaged in it so far in good faith ... We didn't want to get stuck, or remain stuck." Sylvester said she is worried not just about the delay, but also the cost to the district. "Our interest is to better serve our students, and we should be able to figure that out together," she said. Going forward, Scallon said, the two parties will have to agree on a mediator and then schedule a meeting, or series of meetings. There is no specific timeline in which the negotiations need to be completed — the union members say a contract feels overdue, while Scallon said the goal is to reach an agreement that will stand the test of time, and to do that sooner rather than later. The district is right in the middle of its budget season, but Scallon said once the negotiations are done, the district can make adjustments to the budget as needed. SUSTAINABLE WORK Union organizers agree that there are different reasons they're negotiating, from higher pay to benefits to retirement benefits to schedules. But overall, Shulman said: "We'd like this to be more sustainable work." Both Shulman and Sylvester would like to make Portland Adult Ed their full-time job, and say a goal of negotiations is creating an on-ramp for hourly employees to do that. "We're all coming to this job from different places, and we're all here 100% for the students. Some people are in retirement, or semi-retirement, and teach a class," Sylvester said. "And then there's people like myself. I got my master's five years ago, and I love teaching adult education, I really consider this my profession, and it's really hard for me to continue to work here just because I don't have benefits." In an op-ed published in the Press Herald last week, part-time teacher Shoshana Hoose wrote that the school's current pay scale hinders retention and recruitment. "I've seen many talented young teachers come and go from PAE because they couldn't support themselves on the low pay," she wrote. "That also makes it difficult for the school to fulfill its goal of diversifying its workforce so that it better represents our student body." Shulman said just four Portland Adult Ed staff members out of nearly 60 are people of color, despite the overwhelmingly African student population. Having higher pay and a more sustainable job structure, union organizers argue, is an important step toward diversifying staff. "Having a diverse staff that look like your students, part of it is having jobs that can support that," Sylvester said. Scallon said the district recognizes the importance of those goals and is working on increasing its overall staff diversity, which has been slowly climbing over the last decade. One item included in the proposed budget for the next fiscal year is a review of Portland Adult Education, a $150,000 item. Scallon said that review would be mostly programmatic and would not focus on pay. The goal is to create a strategic plan for the growing school, he said, with a focus on potentially serving more students, offering more classes or creating more workforce partnerships. The funding would bring in a contracted worker to complete that review. Copy the Story Link
Fox News
20-03-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Maine Public Schools Superintendent likens transgender in women's sports to past US ‘civil rights struggles'
As Maine continues to be a focal point of the sports culture debate about transgender athletes in women's sports, the state's Public Schools Superintendent Ryan Scallon has now said his piece on the situation. The Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Office of Civil Rights (OCR) announced that it found the Maine Department of Education, the Maine Principals' Association and Greely High School all in violation of Title IX following an investigation into trans-inclusion in girls' sports. "What HHS is asking of the Maine Department of Education, the Maine Principals' Association (MPA) and Greely High School is simple — protect female athletes' rights. Girls deserve girls-only sports without male competitors. And if Maine won't come to the table to voluntarily comply with Title IX, HHS will enforce Title IX to the fullest extent permitted by the law," OCR Acting Director Anthony Archeval said in a statement to Fox News Digital. However, there has been pushback to this finding, as well as the HHS' warning that the state has 10 days to correct its policies through a signed agreement or risk referral to the U.S. Department of Justice, from several authorities in Maine, which now includes Scallon. The superintendent likened the current transgender athlete battle to past U.S. civil rights issues during a recent statement. "In our country's history, there have been many civil rights struggles, including, but not limited, to fights for women's rights to vote, for racial equality and for gay marriage. In each of these fights, the opposition in part was driven by fear in attempts to ostracize other people who look, act or believe in something different. "Today, I see that happening again with transgender or non-binary students, and in particular, our transgender athletes. When I came to this district, I was focused on the work of educating students in improving our outcomes. I wasn't interested in proactively speaking out on social matters or political matters. That said, it is simply unacceptable that there are efforts from our federal government, and some in our state, to ostracize a student population that is estimated to be less than one percent of our student population. "In light of this, I cannot continue to sit silently." The Maine Principals' Association issued a response to Fox News Digital after the OCR's announcement on Monday. "The alleged violation is due to MPA's policy which is a direct result of the Maine Human Rights Acts mandate that athletes be allowed to participate on the teams which align with their gender identity. MPA's policy is consistent with Maine State Law," the response read. The Trump administration expanded its Title IX investigation into Maine last week, citing violations of President Donald Trump's executive order stating biological males are not allowed to compete in women's sports in educational and athletic institutions. Trump's Executive Order 14201, better known as "Keeping Men out of Women's Sports," was signed to "protect female student athletes, in the women's category, from having to 'compete with or against or having to appear unclothed before males.'" In turn, the executive order also mandated each federal department to "review grants to education programs and, where appropriate, rescind funding to programs that fail to comply with the policy established in this order." Republican legislators in Maine called on Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, to comply with Trump's executive order with millions in federal funding for K-12 schools being threatened as a result of not doing so. "If Maine Democrats continue to double down on allowing biological males to participate in girls' sports, our students stand to lose hundreds of millions of dollars of federal funding. Gov. [Janet] Mills and legislative Democrats have a renewed opportunity to do the right thing, to ensure restored funding and a fair and level playing field for Maine girls," state Rep. Laurel Libby, R–Auburn, said this past Thursday. Libby became a prominent figure in this Maine debate after posting a Greely High School pole vaulter on social media. The pole vaulter competed as recently as June 2024 as a biological male, and ended up winning a state championship as a woman. Democrats in the Maine state legislature censured Libby for the post, which showed the athlete competing as a male, while next to an image of the athlete winning the women's pole-vaulting competition in the Maine Class B indoor championship in February. Trump called out Maine shortly after Libby's post began to stir up debate. Trump had a public argument with Gov. Mills at the White House, where he threatened state funding if Maine did not "clean that up." Mills replied that she would see Trump "in court." Mills, in congruence with the Maine Principals' Association, argues that Trump's executive order conflicts with Maine's current Human Rights law. As a result, following the executive order would defy state law, which currently allows athletic participation based on the person's stated gender identity. "No President – Republican or Democrat – can withhold federal funding authorized and appropriated by Congress and paid for by Maine taxpayers in an attempt to coerce someone into compliance with his will," Mills said in a statement when the HHS initially announced its investigation. "It is a violation of our Constitution and of our laws, which I took an oath to uphold." Follow Fox News Digital's sports coverage on X, and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.
