MSAD 58 Superintendent Laura Columbia sat down to answer some questions about recent events in the district including high levels of CO2 recorded and the PowerSchool breach.
MSAD 58 serves Avon, Kingfield, Phillips, and Strong as well as some tuition students from surrounding areas.
“Things are great in MSAD 58,” said Columbia. “We have been doing a lot of work on our curriculum recently, which has been great—a lot of teacher input. We changed up some of our curriculum. We just finished using our ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief) money, which is from the COVID-19 pandemic. So we were able to finish a lot of projects.”
Columbia gave a quick review of how the facilities assessment went. She said that the on site assessment was finished in September or October and that the report came back in November or December.
“The board has really appreciated the thoroughness of (the assessment),” Columbia said. “And now we have a subcommittee, which is the Finance and Operations Committee.”
Columbia shared that this new committee is digging through the data and gathering information to inform decisions for short-, mid-, and long-term solutions to facilities issues. She also said that in order to predict future challenges they look back at past records. For many things, they have five and ten-year plans for
“We have contracts with certain companies for electricity, but as you can see, like a lot of our buildings are aging,” Columbia said. “They don’t have the most efficient lighting for example. So that’s another thing that we’re getting close to bringing in is asking the board, ‘do you want us to do efficient lighting?’ It’s a balance between looking at what are we going to invest in our buildings now? What saves us money? And what’s cost-efficient for a long-term plan?”
Columbia said that there haven’t been any surprises in the report, but that some things are seen to be breaking down a bit sooner than predicted. She said the board is trying to budget for these types of things.
“We have a reserve account,” she said. “Last year’s budget process, we put a little over $600,000 in our ballots forward into a reserve account for facilities for replacement and repairs. So that’s one start that we can have, but just kind of building up a plan so that we’re budgeting and being preventative in our work and not just fixing it when it breaks.”
Columbia said that she was unsure whether there will be a big difference in the budget this year.
“I’m not sure yet,” she said, “and what I mean by that is we have our regular increases with our salaries and benefits and all that contracted, and that’s a big portion of our budget. So that’s going to go up. But we are getting some more money from the state, that should be great, but our locals look like they’re going to have to contribute a little bit more. So I had to see how that balances out.”
Columbia reported that though the budget didn’t didn’t have an increase, the amount of money that tax-payers had to pay was higher. She hopes that there won’t be a high increase for the locals to pay this year. She said that there are multiple parts to what the locals pay for taxes, but that since the towns are so small in the district, the school budget is the larger portion of their tax bill.
The next subject that Columbia addressed was the issues with the HVAC system at Phillips Elementary School. She said that the system went down and they had some people try to repair it and deem it beyond repair. They conducted some air quality tests and the results showed higher CO2 levels in some areas of the school.
“That’s basically just due to not having fresh air in our system. So we recommend teachers keep their windows open. On the report there was no major health risk.”
Columbia also said that they have put out an RFQ (request for quote) to have companies partner with Efficiency Maine to replace the HVAC system. They will be holding interviews with those who submitted proposals within the next week. After that the proposals will be brought to the board for a final decision.
“[Teachers and staff have] opened up windows,” said Columbia. “I mean, really it’s more of a comfort thing. They said one of the side effects of higher levels of CO2 is drowsiness, just feeling more lethargic. So windows open, we do go outside a lot, which is good. And it wasn’t the whole building. So again, if it’s feeling like it’s getting stuffy, opening them up is what we’ve been doing.”
Columbia mentioned that she has been following some of the sicknesses that have been going around, but that she hasn’t seen anything that could directly correlate to the air quality in the school.
In terms of when the HVAC system will be back up and running, Columbia said it would be after spring or even summer break.
“Basically when students are out,” she said. “They might be able to do some work when students are in session, but it’s a pretty big system that they would have to be working on. So the goal, if the board proceeds with it, would be to have it fixed over the summer, replaced.”
Columbia explained that the majority of the funds for this project are coming from Efficiency Maine.
“They’re able to get us grants to offset the cost to have a more efficient system. We’re not sure how much that’s going to be yet. So that’s part of the process of seeing how much we are going to be able to get with grants and the overall cost. Our facilities assessment quoted us at around $700,000 to have it replaced, but we just don’t know yet.”
Columbia commented on the recent PowerSchool breach, sharing that she had no new updates.
“We do know that our information was downloaded,” said Columbia. “This was a nationwide breach, so when we went to the information sessions that helped us work through what was stolen, they told us what tables were stolen in our software system so we could go through and see it. They then assured us that they had evidence that was deleted, that it was removed and they’ve been having their own other subcompanies be on the lookout for any of our data that was breached.”
She stated that as of now there have not been any reports of information stolen from any staff or students from MSAD 58 specifically.
“PowerSchool has offered us to work with anyone if we think that it’s been specifically breached, credit score checks and all that kind of thing. But so far, we have heard nothing from our families.”
“When we first got the alerts, it was really panicking,” said Columbia. “And not to make it less, but it wasn’t just (MSAD) 58, right? It wasn’t just RSU 9, it was across the country. They didn’t give us a lot of details on how it happened. They explained, and I don’t know all the tech stuff, but someone’s credentials were compromised and they were able to go into the system and then go through and copy the data over and download it.”
Columbia wanted to make it clear that this was not a breach of security on the district’s part, but instead a breach in the nationwide company that they use to store records.
“We trust these companies with our data because every school has to have a system for storing their information that’s not just paper and pencil or a Google Doc,” Columbia said. “We have to have a secure system and PowerSchool is our secure system. Cybersecurity has drastically changed just in the last six months and I think it will rapidly continue to change as our systems get more complex in response to the cybersecurity breaches.”
She said that she thinks the district is in pretty good shape as they have not heard anything from families or PowerSchool about a breach specific to their information. She also said that the district tries to collect the least amount of sensitive information possible, not recording date of birth or social security numbers for example.
Finally, Columbia shared that from her experience working in many different school districts, she finds that each one has its own “flavor” that makes them special, and that she loves the “smallness” of the MSAD 58 district.
“I know the names of 90% of my staff members. […] I want to know my people. […] I want to be approachable and I want kids to know me. I want the staff to know me. […] And the other thing that’s special is I’ve been able to go to so many community events and it’s been just wonderful getting to know the community. They’ve really just embraced me, taken care of me, and gotten me used to what happens in MSAD 58. I just feel really lucky to work in this area.”
Columbia encourages anyone to email or call with questions or concerns. She said that email is best, but calling works too. She said that she likes to go over any information that is sent out to families because sometimes things make more sense after talking it through.
MSAD 58 Superintendent Laura Columbia can be reached at [email protected] and 207-639-2086.
