Makayla Harding (state level winner) Charlie Bernard (school level winner).
Preventing summer reading slide is a goal of many Maine educators. Students can lose months of learning gains if their brains do not remain active. During the summer of 2017, the Maine Department of Education partnered with the Freemasons of Maine to sponsor the Read to Ride Summer Reading Challenge. Over 800 students in over 60 schools across Maine completed the challenge of reading at least 500 minutes during summer vacation—that is 400,000 minutes of reading! The Freemasons graciously donated 48 bikes and helmets which were awarded to state level contest winners.
Read to Ride Principal, Kyle Rhoads Bike Winner, Chase Gagnon
School principals noted that the Read to Ride Challenge was motivating and helped accomplish the goal of keeping students actively engaged in learning throughout the summer months. Schools were also able to coordinate this opportunity with other summer literacy initiatives going on in their schools and in public libraries. For additional information, contact Lee Anne Larsen, Literacy Specialist at leeann.larsen@maine.gov.
Maine DOE has prepared a summary of major laws related to education enacted by the First Regular Session of the 128th Maine Legislature. This information may prove helpful to educators when planning for the 2017-8 school year.
For each relevant bill, the summary lists the provisions, effective date, action required by the bill and primary contact person at the Department, the State Board of Education, the Maine Charter School Commission and/or other organizations.
A law indicated as an “emergency” is a law that was passed by a two-thirds vote of the Maine Legislature; emergency legislation can take effect immediately upon the Governor’s signature. For non-emergency laws passed during the First Regular Session, the general effective date is November 1, 2017 unless otherwise noted.
The Department has resolved a technical issue with the upload functionality for special education data in the Synergy State Edition Student System.
To solve this issue, it was necessary to delete all special education data that had been uploaded prior to 1:00pm on Friday, October 6, 2017. If you have uploaded your special education data prior to this date/time, it will be necessary for you to upload the data again.
In addition, another system error, pre-population of prior services and an exit date, has been corrected.
If you have already uploaded special education data and need to re-upload as a result of this technical issue, please be sure you are uploading new special education student information and changes to existing special education students rather than starting new. If you re-upload data exactly as it has been uploaded previously, you will receive an error message.
State law, 20-A MRSA Section 13013-A subsection 5 & 6; as amended by PL 2012 c. 702, established the National Board Certification Scholarship Fund to encourage teachers to apply to and enroll in the certification program offered by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, or its successor organization.
A school administrative unit or a publicly supported secondary school or CTE region, may request scholarship funds on behalf of its teachers who meet the requirements.
In fiscal year 2017-18, Maine DOE will allocate $75,000 to the scholarship fund and shall award an amount equal to the cost of the certification program, less any other funds received by the applicant, on a first-come first-served basis to teachers accepted into the certification program.
Superintendents of a school administrative unit or the director of a publicly-supported secondary school or CTE region, with eligible staff who have attained National Board for Professional Teaching Standards Certification prior to July 1, 2017, must submit to the Maine DOE the list of those eligible to receive the salary supplement for the 2017-18 school year by November 10, 2017.
In order to qualify for the salary supplement, eligible staff must be currently employed by a Maine public school, or by a publicly-supported secondary school or CTE region in Maine. Eligible position titles include classroom teacher, special education teacher, literacy specialist, long-term substitute teacher, library media specialist, guidance counselor, teacher leaders, and principals with certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, or its successor organization.
The amount of the salary supplement for fiscal year 2017-18 is $3,000.00, unless proration is necessary. The submission form and further information is available at http://www.maine.gov/doe/national-board/supplement.
The EF-S-07, Special Education Out of District Placement Tuition and Board report for Fiscal year 2017 will open for data entry on October 18, 2017and will close for submission on November 18, 2017.
Districts that paid out of district placement tuition during FY17 school year are urged to compile the information before October 18 to be ready to complete the report when it opens as there is a short window for submission and approval this year.
There are a few changes to the NEO EF-S-07 form regarding the submission procedure. Special Service directors are to complete the EF-S-07 form and submit to the business director for reconciliation with the district’s NEO financials, business managers will certify that the information is correct and submit to DOE. More information will be provided about the procedure in the coming days.
For more information please contact Stephanie J. Clark Fiscal Compliance Associate School Finance & Operations for the Department of Education at
The Maine DOE is sponsoring a series of four workshops for the MEA Alternate Mathematics and ELA/Literacy (MSAA) and the MEA Alternate Science (PAAP) assessments.
These workshops will be held:
Tuesday, November 15th in Presque Isle at the Hampton Inn
Wednesday, November 16th in Bangor at the Black Bear Inn
Thursday, November 17th in Auburn at the Hilton Inn
Friday, November 18th in Portland at the Clarion Hotel
Session One – 8:30 to 12:00 – MSAA
This session is open to all teachers responsible for planning and implementing the MSAA assessment. It will include an overview of the MSAA System, the new stage adaptive design, important documents, training requirements and student eligibility. The MSAA assessment is required to be administered to eligible students in grades 3-8, and 3rd year high school for ELA/literacy and Mathematics.
Session Two – 1:00 to 4:00
This session is open to all teachers new to the PAAP portfolio process and those needing a brush up with the Profile process. This workshop will provide a step by step overview of the handbook, show how to submit a portfolio electronically, and help you decide which tasks to choose for students in grades 5, 8, and 3rd year high school participating in the alternate science portfolio assessment.
To help with new Parent and Family Engagement requirements under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and to meet the civil rights obligations of schools in working with English Learners’ (EL) families across the state of Maine, the Maine Department of Education (DOE) is partnering with TransACT® Parent Notices to provide unlimited remote access to parent friendly notifications that meet legal requirements, guidance on required audiences, a compliance tracking system, and recommended timelines.
TransACT Parent Notices is an online subscription service that has provided State Departments of Education and local education agencies with federally compliant parent notifications in multiple languages for over 20 years. Providing this service across the state reduces the amount of time and money that individual schools or districts need to spend creating, reviewing and translating the same federally required documents repeatedly. “By partnering with TransACT to provide cost-effective compliance resources, the Maine Department of Education is helping educators save time and money on effective communications with families and services for students”, says Director of ESEA Federal Programs, Janette Kirk.
All documents are available to download and printable onto school letterhead. The collection includes, but is not limited to:
Parent and Family Engagement;
Teacher and Paraprofessional Qualifications;
School Support and Improvement;
English Learner Programs;
21st Century Community Learning Centers; and
Foster Care.
In addition to English, the forms are professionally translated into the following languages, which will be available fully within the next several months: Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Haitian-Creole, Russian, Vietnamese, Somali, and French.
TransACT will be providing schools with professional development and training including online live help, support over the phone, email support, webinar trainings and three (2) in person trainings being held Nov. 2 in Lewiston at Green Ladle and Nov. 3 in Brewer at Jeff’s Catering.
Picking Carrots at the greenhouse in Trenton, Maine
Maine Baked Fish Vera Cruz, meatloaf made with locally raised beef and school garden grown rainbow carrots were “on the menu” for schools across Maine who celebrated Maine Harvest Lunch Week. Each year this Maine DOE sponsored event designates one week in September to educate students on where their food comes from by serving up Maine grown foods on the menu and promoting Farm to School in the wider school community. This year the celebrations took place the week of September 18-22, 2017, and while most schools participate on the selected week, other schools chose to highlight Maine grown foods on a week of their choice.
Events from southern to coastal Maine took place with a different Farm to School focus. At RSU 21, the focus was on getting students in the kitchen and serving up some local Maine fare. Kindergarten students at Kennebunkport Consolidated School got some hands-on experience shucking local corn and preparing fresh Maine kale in the school kitchen. At Kennebunk High School a delicious local lunch featured fish, broccoli and corn on the cob. Middle school offerings included slider sloppy Joe’s made with local beef and oven baked local red potatoes.
Kale @ Kennebunk!
At Trenton Elementary School, their Food Corps Service member worked with the school nutrition program to incorporate produce from their own school garden and greenhouse into school meals. Second graders got their hands dirty harvesting rainbow carrots, which were offered on the lunchtime salad bar. Sixth graders used their muscles to harvest 55 pounds of zucchini, which was used to make fresh, homemade zucchini muffins! A “harvest of the month” taste test also took place where the entire school sampled school greenhouse grown spaghetti squash with a side of marinara sauce, yum yum! A Maine map of farms who contributed local produce during the week was displayed in the cafeteria to connect students to where their food came from. Food Corps service member, Nicole Gurreri, remarks “Harvest Lunch Week has been a perfect kick off to a year of farm to school activities!”. The school plans on harvesting spinach, kale, Chinese cabbage and other crops from their school greenhouse throughout the winter months.
RSU 3, based out of Unity, planned a week of harvest lunches district wide but also wanted to involve parents and community members in their Harvest Day Celebration. Hundreds of family
Friends and Family Enjoy the Harvest at RSU 3.
members joined their elementary students for a harvest lunch meal at the Mt. View Complex in Thorndike. The menu featured meatloaf made with local beef raised in pastures across the street from the Mt. View school campus, as well as local red potatoes, apples, and Maine wild blueberry crisp. You can’t get more local than that! The cafeteria featured harvest décor, including posters and other decorations proudly made by Mt. View Elementary students.
Maine Harvest Lunch Week is celebrated district-wide at RSU 17 each year; however this year a new resource was introduced to encourage families to
Ms. Gloria Serving locally sourced meatloaf with a smile! -RSU 3
eat local foods well beyond the one week celebration. The “Western Foothills Harvest Map” shows a map of the surrounding area featuring farms and markets where parents and students can visit and experience local food. Members from Healthy Oxford Hills introduced the map in classrooms while using the “Maine Foods for Maine Kids” curriculum. This partnership between Healthy Oxford Hills and RSU 17 resulted in creating the harvest map for families to use. They hope that parents and students will discover, explore, learn, meet and eat fresh local foods from farms and markets in the community. A link to the harvest map can be found here.
Lot’s of Color and Yummy Options. -RSU 3
Maine Harvest Lunch Week is a celebration of local foods that many school districts across Maine take part in. Although it is only designated one week out of the school year, it is a jump start for more Farm to School activities to take place throughout the year. For more information on Maine Harvest Lunch Week please contact Stephanie Stambach, Child Nutrition Consultant at the Maine DOE at stephanie.stambach@maine.gov or 624-6732.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is offering an opportunity to receive up to $20,000 per vehicle to replace your older school buses, and up to $6,000 per vehicle for retrofits. Older school buses without emission reduction retrofits emit significant amounts of harmful exhaust, so participating in this program will help improve the health of students and other members of your community.
The 2017 School Bus Rebate Program is now open and applications will be accepted until November 14, 2017 at 4:00 p.m. ET. Please visit www.epa.gov/cleandiesel/clean-diesel-rebates for the Program Guide with all the details as well as FAQs and the application form.
Eligible Entities
Regional, state, or tribal agencies including school districts and municipalities, or
Private entities that operate school buses under a contract with an entity listed above
