After a month-long summer recess, the Portland school board restarted its twice-monthly school meetings Tuesday night, the first meeting with new Superintendent Ryan Scallon.

Board members discussed community building efforts, staffing, homeless students and looked forward to the year ahead.

Both board Chair Sarah Lentz and Scallon discussed the district’s community engagement efforts in light of the change in district leadership, highlighting an ongoing series of sessions where families can meet Scallon and share their thoughts regarding the district. Scallon also announced the district’s plans to review and adapt the school district’s strategic plan and ensure the district’s budget aligns with that plan.

Scallon also noted efforts to bolster the district’s finance team by bringing on outside resources, cross-training staff to run payroll and reorganizing the current finance team. Because of staff turnover, a lack of staff training and technology failures the district struggled to pay hundreds of its staff on time during the 2022-23 school year.

After years of challenging staff shortages, the district is well on its way to being fully staffed or near-so by the start of the school year, district leaders said. As of Saturday, the district had 37 vacancies, said Barrett Wilkinson, executive director of human resources for the district. The district employs 1,500 people.

Of the 37 vacancies, there are 13 open classroom teacher positions and 11 open education technician positions.

“When it comes to classrooms we’re not there yet but we’re in a good spot,” said Scallon.

Other vacancies are in food service and facilities.

Educator shortages have plagued school districts in Maine and around the country for years, and were exacerbated by the pandemic. Many districts, including Portland, have particularly struggled to hire bus drivers, resulting in canceled routes at times. But this year the district expects to go into the school year fully staffed, said Scott St. Ours, the district’s head of transportation.

Wilkinson said the improved staffing is due to a 30 percent increase in retention following the 2022-23 school year compared to the year before and hard work by the hiring department.

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