total time: 11.4 minutes
total words: 691
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: Good evening everyone, and thank you for joining us. I'm here live from the Medford Community Cable Station, the new facility that was just built, and it's an honor to be here. I'm Mayor Stephanie McShaney-Burke, and I'd just like to give you a community update on some important events that have happened over the past several weeks. And please excuse me, I have a little bit of a hoarse voice. But this really is an honor to open up the studio. As you may realize, we've been working on it for several months now. And it has just about completed. We're waiting for some additional cameras to be delivered. And we'll also be performing interviews for the station manager starting tomorrow. So we're very excited to get this underway and also to eventually open it up to the public, which is the main important goal of this studio. And as you know, during the day it will be used by our Medford High School students. So we're getting a double whammy for our money here. So we're really, really thrilled about that. Secondly, I want to bring up someone from Armstrong Ambulance. We have Daniel Roba here representing the company. You may realize that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts mandated that affected in September, we have We have devices on the fields for all of our sports teams. With that called out, we knew we wanted to jump on it a little earlier. We wanted to get them onto the fields as soon as we possibly could. So we reached out to our partner, Armstrong Ambulance, to see if they'd be willing to donate some of the defibrillators for us for the fields. And of course, as Armstrong has always done, they've always stood tall and they've always come to our aid. So we're really, really thrilled to have them with us today. And Daniel, maybe you can give a little summary on the number.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you. We're thrilled to be working with Mayor Burke in such an accepting city government and progressive that we have donated 16 AEDs. The Interscholastic Athletic Association of Massachusetts has mandated as of 2018 that there needs to be an AED or an automatic external defibrillator at every sporting event. So donating these 16 AEDs will be, 11 will be distributed to some of the teams. So as they are the fields outside of the school, they'll be able to be safe and protected. And then six of them will be distributed in each of the schools. So there's additional AEDs coming in there. We do know that the science dictates that there's two things that help everyone in cardiac arrest. The first are compressions, and the second are the use of a defibrillator earlier rather than later. So it's not the life-saving measures that paramedics and EMTs will do. It's actually the effect that the bystanders can have using these AEDs and compressions on people in the community. So we appreciate accepting these AEDs and appreciating not only the school system, Superintendent and Mayor Burke, and ensuring that these can get out into the community and we can make a difference early on and affect patient outcomes in our own city.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: Very good. Thank you so much, Danielle. Please send our sincere thanks to the Armstrong family. As I said, they've been fabulous partners with us just last Thursday. They were up at City Hall training parents on how to use different devices and how to perform CPR. So they're always there and they always come through. So thank you again on behalf of the city of Medford. We appreciate it. Second up, we would like to announce that the Cummings Foundation has awarded the Medford Public Schools a $100,000 grant over three years to support the work of our Center for Citizenship and Social Responsibility. We have with us tonight Richard Trotter who would like to highlight some of the accomplishments of this program and then we would like to bring up Cummings Foundation. Mr. Trotter.
[Richard Trotta]: Thank you. So the Center for Citizenship and Social Responsibility was founded in 2013 with a grant from the Bloomberg Foundation. And as the brainchild of Mr. Bellison and myself, we got that $50,000 grant and decided that part of it should go to our new mission, which was to create global citizens who will make the world a better place. Sort of part of the whole child education, We do an awful lot with testing and academics, but I believe that there's a little bit of a gap that we don't do enough with social-emotional learning and teaching students to help make the world a better place. And so that's sort of our mission. The CCSR has done a great deal with activities that are real-life activities for students. Actually helping people is part of their experience with the CCSR. And you can visit our webpage, Bedford Public Schools webpage is a link, and it has all the activities, I'm not gonna list them all, but there are many, including things we've done, professional development, we've done symposiums on drug addiction, working with people in the school district. So there's a whole range of activities we've been doing. And what's really wonderful is that we were just about at the end of our foundation money from Bloomberg, and now we have new life, we can exist And so we're very grateful.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: As you may realize, the Cummings Foundation gives out 100 for 100. It's 100 grants of $100,000. It's just an amazing feat, and hopefully you all caught the globe this morning. It was a wonderful story on the family, of the Cummings family. And we're really proud to have with us David Blumberg here today. Not to be confused with Mr. Bloomberg, who is instrumental. He's a Medford resident. He's been instrumental in helping us garner this grant. So we welcome you, Mr.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wanted to just give you a little bit of background, as Mayor Brooke mentioned, alluded to Bill and Joyce Cummings, their involvement with Medford, their commitment to the local communities by way of Cummings Foundation. A little bit about the organization, a little bit about the foundation, and how the goals of the foundation match so nicely with the goals of the center. Cummings Properties is a regular sort of company, if you will, regular to the extent that we manage and operate commercial buildings in the area, all in greater Boston, north of the city. We have a couple of buildings here in Medford, 196 Boston Ave and 200 Boston Ave. That forms a little business community, if you will, that's Cummings Foundation. And when Bill and Joyce Cummings founded the foundation, they determined that they wanted to direct all of the profits to local charities, local non-profits, to benefit the local communities. So they established what they call priority funding areas, and those are the communities in which we have Bill, if you saw the Globe article this morning, you've already probably read this, but Bill grew up on Salem Street in Medford. He is an alumnus of Medford High School. He continues education at Tufts University. He founded his first business in Medford. So we're Medford through and through, and Bill is a Medford guy through and through. In addition, I should say that the organization is committed to
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: With that, thank you very much and congratulations. Thank you very much. And Dave and his lovely wife, Gwen, don't live too far from here. So I hope that they'll come up and visit the center on one of your next events so that you can experience where the funding and what the funding does for us. So thank you very much. Thank you. Next up, I would like to introduce Mary Ann O'Connor. She's the director of our public health department for the city of Medford. And she works hand in hand with the school department on a host of different issues. And we're just really thrilled to have her here tonight so she can tell you a little bit about some of the work that's going on, especially regarding opiate addiction. And we'd like her to say a few words and show a product that's going to be coming out in the very near future. Mary Ann. Thank you.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Good evening. So yes. The Office of Outreach and Prevention, which is part of the Board of Health Programming, has several grants that focus and really target students and substance abuse prevention. We have an opioid prevention grant. that is really aimed at reducing opioid deaths and opioid overdoses. But then there's also the prevention piece, where we're hoping to reach out to young students, teens, high school age, to really get them to not actually end up having to go down that path. So if we can prevent them from ever starting. And we have a prescription drug grant program as well, which is really aimed at targeting high school youth to prevent them from starting to use prescription drugs. Team Medven is going to be putting out this lovely health and safety guide within the next month. This will be mailed home to all homes of 6th to 12th graders. It's filled with great tips for parents, articles, articles and information about substance use, substance abuse, marijuana, opioids, prescriptions, but also about some safety tips and stress management and other helpful guide and information for parents. So we hope you, when you get this in the mail, we hope all parents really take a good look at it and use the helpful information inside. So thank you.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: Thank you, Mary Ann. Also under Mary Ann's leadership, we've been very active in hosting a series of events at City Hall and the school department. One of which just transpired over this past weekend and it was called In Plain Sight. I hope many of the parents got to experience that. It's really amazing the lengths that companies are going to, to give children and young adults a means of hiding some of their uses. It was eye-opening for me to walk through there and see some of the gadgets that look like generic items. You can't hear a spray, but it has something that you twist off and then it's a hollow inside for storage of things and different types of regular everyday tools that can be used for other purposes. So it was really eye-opening to me. I thank you for putting that on and I know you had a stream of parents that came through the building last week in addition to the CPR training that Armstrong conducted. So it was a nice segue and a nice cooperation that occurred over the last several days at City Hall. So thank you, Mary Ann. And I just want to make one quick announcement. We think it's really important that we take a stand on opiate addiction and that we put everything we can into it. As you may realize, a few years ago, we dedicated funds for a full-time coordinator, outreach prevention coordinator, and that has worked famously. However, we think more is needed, and we have put in the budget for a position for a coach, so a recovery coach that can actually get in the community, And deal one on one with the individuals that are afflicted to try and help them through that. So we're hopeful that the city council will see that that's an important item as well. And we look forward to that passage. So I make that announcement tonight that the administration is completely committed to fighting this horrible epidemic. Thank you, Marianne. We also have Tony Vento with us tonight from the school department. She likewise received a grant having to do with opioids. And I'd like Tony to just describe it a little bit. As you can tell, the schools in the city have been really, really busy over the last several months. We try to get as many grants as we can. We certainly are writing them on a daily basis. And Tony has been very successful. So tell us a little bit about your grant, Tony.
[Toni Wray]: This January, there were funds available from the Attorney General's office that used money from a settlement with CVS and Walgreens over fraudulent prescription drug prescribing and dispensing practices. So we were very fortunate. I worked with Rachel Perry, the director of health education and physical education. We received $18,000 grant that we will use to support the middle school and elementary curriculum, health ed curriculum, so that young students are learning ways to have positive coping mechanisms, ways to develop their own social-emotional resources, to learn how to make healthy decisions and healthy relationships, which research has shown us is at the basis for preventing substance abuse in the later years.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: Thank you. As you can see, we're not just starting in on this. We've been active in this topic for several years now, and we're just really pushing the envelope and trying to do as much as we can to curb some of the issues and to cease the stigma that surrounds opioid addiction. So thank you very much, Ms. Bento. Another grant that we just received has to do with vocational services. It's a regional grant. It's a regionalization of service grants from the Lieutenant Governor's office in the amount of $45,000. People may be aware that we have a wonderful vocational program and certainly Heidi Ruccio, who has been the director of it for several years now, has been instrumental in changing the look and the feel of our vocational studies. She certainly has expanded programming and brought in a wealth of fabulous instructors that work day to day with the students and we now have crossover between the high school and the vocational program so that the kids can go back and forth. Our vocational students are able to take college prep classes and likewise our college bound students and business students are able to cross over and take culinary arts for example. So it's a really wonderful marriage, and we really tried hard to create this synergy between the two schools to make it one, which we have applied to the state to be known as one cohesive school district. So we are very thankful to the Lieutenant Governor's office, and Ms. Buccio would like to come up and say a few words about that grant.
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you, Mayor Burke. In the fall, we applied for a regionalization of services grant with the intention of combining our resources with Everett Public Schools. As many of you know, we formed a partnership many years ago with Everett and our high school students in Everett are able to now take advantage of vocational programs. We currently have approximately 25 students who reside in Everett but come to Medford Vocational Technical High School each day. We would like to expand that, and one way through the expansion is through this regionalization of services grant. So some of the funds will actually be made available for a site person to coordinate this planning with Everett. The remaining of those funds will actually be used to install LED lighting in all of the vocational programs. And so $35,000 of that dollar figure will have new LED lighting for each of the vocational high school programs The installation, how we're able to save on that, is the installation will be done by all of our students under the supervision of our electrical teachers. This work will be done over the course of the summer months as well as into the fall. So we're very excited to partner with Everett and increase our ability to enroll more students than what we currently have. But in addition to that, having some efficiency standards like LED lighting. Thank you, Amber.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: Thank you, Sergio. Thank you. And this $45,000 grant piggybacks a half a million dollar grant that we received just a shot two months ago from the Lieutenant Governor and Governor's Office. Lieutenant Governor Polito came to our school. She did a walking tour. She got to see what we wanted the funds for. And they have been partners with us each and every step of the way. So we're really thrilled with the Lieutenant Governor and Governor's commitment to vocational studies. And part of the $500,000 is going towards our new culinary arts program, which we're very proud of and we hope to have finished over the summer. And I think a piece of that has to do with Wynn coming to Everett. We know Wynn Casinos is coming to Everett, and we're trying to look at the positives that will be coming from that. And part of that, our job creation. So we're really trying to get our students that they can be ready and able when the job market demands it, which we know will be in a short few years. And what we hear out in the marketplace is that Wynn is going to gobble up a lot of the employees that may be working elsewhere as well. So we need to have a stream of students and accomplished people that are ready to fill the job market. There is going to be several voids across the Commonwealth, especially in the Boston area. So we're really thrilled about that. And again, we want to send our thanks out to the governor's office for their support and commitment. And also Ms. Ruccio, we will be missing her in a very short while as she goes up to Essex. And she surely will be missed. She has turned the school around and put it on a road. And that's certainly a road that we continue to follow. be reaching those strides. So we are thankful for all of her years of service to the city of Medford and we wish her the best of luck out there. Thank you. The last item is that we have a recreation guide that just went live last week. And we want parents to know that we have a really robust program for the summer months coming up. So we urge you to either come by, pick up a copy. They're at the library. They're at the schools. There's a little backpack slip that's gone home for you to know that it's around. And certainly up on the website, you can see the entire PDF. So I urge parents and family members to reach out and look at the programming that we have over the summer. And then to augment that, we have had a recreation committee that's been working diligently for the last several months, greater than six months now. And they have come up with a survey that has reached out to the entire metro population to see what would you like to see in your recreation department with the goal of going full-time in the very near future. So I'm really proud to say that we have incorporated a budget account for a full-time recreation department. It will be delivered to the city council tomorrow. But we're really thrilled to be able to say that we are committed to a full-time recreation program. And likewise, we understand that if we keep our kids safe and we keep our kids busy, we want to keep them on that healthy road, whether it be physical health, mental health, and the whole nine yards. So we're really committed to that. And recreation goes well beyond our children. It certainly goes all the way up to our seniors. So we look forward to having a rec coordinator and program director on board, hopefully by September. And they'll be looking at programming across the spectrum so that we can really attack physical issues and mental health issues on an ongoing basis on behalf of the City of Medford. And just one lighter touch, the Farmer's Market is coming back. It's opening up this Thursday. So hopefully, weather permitting, they'll be in operation and they have a new location down at the Condon Shell on Route 16. So I urge all of you to come out, come to the Farmer's Market. It's a great, not only a great event just to socialize at with live music, but also get your fresh produce and really come down and help the local businesses that need your help, the local farmers. So with that being said, I thank you for coming to this press conference and I do appreciate the ongoing efforts of all of the department heads and the school department and the private partners that we have built partnerships with. Certainly we couldn't do half of what we do without the volunteers that really step forward and help us get things done in the City of Medford. So I'm thankful and grateful and I look forward to a future press conference where we can announce more information on the City of Medford activities. Thank you very much.
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total time: 11.4 minutes total words: 691 |
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