Beginning in February, the Portland Board of Public Education will
hold its regular meeting on the first Tuesday of each month in City
Council Chambers at City Hall. The board will hold its second regular
monthly meeting – which takes place on the third Tuesday of each month –
at alternating schools around the city. A calendar of meeting locations
will be posted on the Portland Public Schools’ website for the year to
provide predictability and greater public notification.
The
school board currently holds its two regular monthly meetings at Casco
Bay High School, located on Allen Avenue inside the Portland Arts and
Technology High School.
“This move is about the community,” said
Board Chair Sarah Thompson. “The Casco Bay High School meeting location
is a challenge for some of our families and community members. The
school board has been exploring meeting in Council Chambers for years,
and this solution is the best of both worlds. We’ll be in City Hall for
one meeting each month and the other will be in the district’s schools,
where our core business is happening – student learning. This year the
board held some of its meetings in our school communities, such as Hall
Elementary School and the Fifth Maine Regiment on Peaks Island. We found
that we had greater community presence when we came to them.”
Portland
Schools Superintendent Emmanuel Caulk said, “It is important to ensure
that all our residents have access to school board meetings and can
participate in them fully. This move will allow for that. We are all one
Portland.”
Thompson will announce the meeting location changes
at the school board’s Inauguration Ceremony, set for Monday, Dec. 1, at 4
p.m. in City Council Chambers at City Hall. The changes will become
effective as of the board’s Tuesday, Feb. 3 board meeting.
Thompson
noted that holding school board meetings at City Hall is a resumption
of past practice. “This is not a new concept,” she said. “More than a
decade ago the board held its meetings in City Council Chambers, but the
meeting place was moved to its current location due to the city’s space
needs and the need specifically for Council Chambers at that time.”
Thompson
said moving the board’s meetings back to City Hall is overdue. In 2010,
Portland voters approved revisions to the City Charter that changed the
board’s name from the Portland School Committee to the Portland Board
of Public Education and put it on equal footing with the City Council.
"This move is about the community," says
School Board Chair Sarah Thompson.