[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: The regular meeting of the Medford School Committee will now come to order. The secretary will call the roll.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Mrs. Cugno. Here. Mrs. DiBenedetto.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: Present.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Mrs. Kress. Here. Ms. Mestone. Here. Mr. Scurry.
[Robert Skerry]: Present.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: Mrs. Van der Kloot. Yes. Mayor Burke. Yes. Seven present, none absent. All please rise and salute our flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag
[Robert Skerry]: to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Mayor Burke. Ms. Van der Kloot. I'd like to also acknowledge that we have a non-voting member, but our student representative, Sebastian Tringali, with us today.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: Welcome, Sebastian. Thank you so much for being here with us this evening. Let the records officially reflect Sebastian's presence, please. The first item, approval of minutes of September 11, 2017. Motion approval, chair. Motion approval by Mr. Skerry, seconded by Ms. Stone. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes. Approval of bills, transfer of funds? None. Approval. None. Approval of payrolls? None. Report of secretary? There is none. None. Report of committees? None. Community participation? Your name and address, please.
[Annie Wells]: Hanley Wells, 26 Curtis Street. So committee members, my name is Annie Wells and I'm here to follow up on the issue of school enrollment from last week regarding kindergarten and first grade for our daughters in a Columbus school. Last week we were waiting to hear back from a judgment from a hearing on September 6th. I have with me the dismissal of the case without prejudice, meaning the judge did not make a decision on where the children should attend school, meaning there is no court order. No court order for Mr. Bellison to be concerned he may be in contempt of. Furthermore, Mr. Bellison has indicated to the Department of Education that the children are now enrolled and attending North Andover. They enrolled at both schools prior to Mr. Bellison's decision and may be attending Medford if it were not for his decision to bar enrollment. He indicated in email correspondence to Cheryl Knowles, the legal parent and guardian, that his hope was that the court would resolve the matter on September 6th and that he would be responsive to information directly from the court. A temporary arrangement was put in place to split transportation so the children wouldn't miss too much school while all of this was being worked out. This is not working. I'm here to report today that they missed school today because the other parent did not want to transport them to North Andover. This was her day, and if this temporary arrangement was supposed to be working, it didn't work today. I know these two parents better than anyone in this room, and although I am biased, I'm very practical and reasonable in my view of things. These parents will or would have worked this out in their own way, on their own time, given that it was a fair, if it's a fair playing field. If there's no outside interfering party or blocking enrollment, this will be sorted out. Medford needs to be an option so that they can do this. It would not harm Medford Public Schools, the committee, or anyone else in this room, or anyone outside this room, if the children are allowed to be enrolled in Medford Public Schools. It is in everyone's best interest that Medford continue to be an option for the children's enrollment. Thank you.
[Roy Belson]: Superintendent. So, on the 6th of September, I believe, for Ms. Knowles went to court and asked, once again, same question, can we enroll in the Medford Public Schools?
[Annie Wells]: No. The request was for a court order for school.
[Roy Belson]: There's a piece of paper, which I'll provide to the committee. Enroll to the public schools. It's a second thing. And it was denied again. I don't want to get into a question back and forth about what we can and can't do, because I've taken legal guidance from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, and I've taken legal guidance from our own council, Howard Greenspan. But more importantly, I was able to get consent from to enable to speak to Greg Landry, who is the principal of the Atkinson School in North Andover. And he has indicated to us that the children are enrolled in North Andover public schools as they were in the past.
[Annie Wells]: They're enrolled in Medford as well prior to barring enrollment.
[Roy Belson]: Well, more than attending. They're attending the North Andover public schools and not out of school.
[Annie Wells]: They are out today.
[Roy Belson]: We're not going to go back and forth. My answer is that they're enrolled in the North Andover Public School.
[Annie Wells]: That needs to be the parent's choice with all due respect.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: Mr. Belkin has the floor right now and then you'll have an opportunity.
[Roy Belson]: The parents have to work out their arrangement. We are not going to work out the arrangement between the parents. They have to make the decision among themselves where they want the children. That's what the court has told them repeatedly. work it out. If they work it out, and Medford is the choice, then they will be enrolled, registered, and students in the Medford public schools. But right now, the concern was, are they getting an education? They're in the North Andover public schools. And Principal Landry has confirmed that. I'm comfortable that they're in the North Andover Public Schools when the parents work it out. By the way, this has been going on for a long time. This isn't something that only came about in the last month. This has been going on for an extended period of time. And so they've got to work it out. Maybe having them in the North Andover Public Schools will bring it to a head. But from our standpoint, we've consulted with the Department of Education. We've consulted with our legal counsel. We've gone over this matter multiple times. We've spoken to North Andover. They're in the North Andover public schools. If the parents want a different arrangement, work it out, go to the court together, and get it done. That's the way to move on the issue. And if it happens to be Medford, we'll welcome these kids with open arms.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: How can it be Medford when you said no? Ms. Wells. Doctor. Dr. Wells. Thank you. If you'd like to speak.
[Annie Wells]: How can they work it out if you're barring enrollment? You're leaving that, you forced the decision on these two parents, and you favored the other party in saying, go to North Andover.
[Roy Belson]: Didn't do anything.
[Annie Wells]: You did. You barred enrollment. I have the email here saying you've barred enrollment from Medford.
[Roy Belson]: From our standpoint, the court said that Cheryl Knowles does not have the right to enroll the student in the Medford Public Schools. If we were to let the student into the Medford Public Schools, we would be aiding and abetting an individual who has been told not to enroll them in the public schools in Medford. Now, as far as I'm concerned, that's what we've done. We consulted with the state. If the state had told us you must enroll them, we would have done it. But the state actually asked us, and I'm going to say this point blank, the state actually asked us to file a 51A. because the parents couldn't come to an agreement. We declined to do that.
[Annie Wells]: The case has been closed by the Department of Education because you informed them they're going to North Andover. We are not in agreement with North Andover. It needs to be an option for Medford to allow them to take it. They would have gone to Medford today.
[Roy Belson]: So we would have had an objection from the other side as well.
[Annie Wells]: Yes, but that's not yours.
[Roy Belson]: Right. So it's not our issue to argue with you one way. Get together. Solve the issue.
[Annie Wells]: Just say yes, Mr. Belson.
[Roy Belson]: And whatever you solve the issue, the children will be enrolled.
[Annie Wells]: We will if you say yes.
[Roy Belson]: No, no. It's not me to say yes. It's for you to solve it with the court.
[Annie Wells]: We can't if you say no.
[Roy Belson]: Yes, you can. Yes, you can. Because the court wants you to work it out. If I look at this document, this is the last one that came through, look over the card. The court denied it again.
[Annie Wells]: Dismissed the case, sir. If you read it over, it's a request for the court to make an order for any court district, any district, including other ones we would be willing to move to, because Medford has said no to us.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: We have our attorney present, Mr. Greenspan. Could you please step forward?
[Greenspan]: Mayor and the committee, you asked me after last week's meeting to follow up and get some additional information regarding this matter, which I did. I'm in receipt of a ruling by the Essex County Probate Court, which came in last week, relative to a motion to establish school enrollment. uh, which was brought by, uh, Cheryl Knowles in the Essex County Probate Court. Uh, the motion, uh, stated that, uh, or requested that the court order school enrollment in one of the towns within a reasonable commute to Cheryl's work. Uh, she had requested, uh, that, uh, The court ordered that. The court made a decision on September 6, 2017, and denied the request.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: Denied without prejudice the determination of the merits.
[Greenspan]: Correct. So the request for temporary relief filed by the plaintiff in this matter was denied by a judge in the Essex County Probate Court. From my review of the court records, this is the second time the Essex County Probate Court denied the relief to this plaintiff. The first one, I believe, was to request an order that they be enrolled in Medford. So a judge has ruled on this twice, both times not in favor of Ms. Knowles, and it would be my recommendation that until there's a further order of the court that the Medford Public Schools respect the order of the Essex County Probate Court. until either a trial on the merits or any other further rulings of the court.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: Can I ask one question? At any point during the probate and future court hearings throughout the course of separation, I don't know what transpired previously, was there ever a ruling or an order that they had to go to North Andover?
[Greenspan]: I don't know. I don't believe so, but I don't know.
[Annie Wells]: There is not. So this did go to trial, Mayor, and the determination of the trial that was in March was for the parents to decide and to go to mediation, which I did. And as you can see by the motion for the hearing, they were unable to come to an agreement. And again, like I said, I know these parents well. They will and would work it out. It was an even playing field and there was no forced forced decision to go to a district that is not an option. But from March through September, they weren't able to reach a decision on their own, which is why they're asking the court to intervene. Exactly. And the court is not going to touch it. So I don't know why Mr. Belson feels that he is above a judge in making a decision on where they should go.
[Greenspan]: Mayor, I just I think Mr. Belson has stated that he would welcome the enrollment of these children once this matter is resolved in the Essex County Probate Court. Specifically, in May of 2017, the motion was, the request was to enroll the children in the Medford Public Schools specifically. That was brought in May of 2017. Judge Ordonez denied that motion that specifically requested that the children be enrolled in Medford. That was denied. There was an additional motion filed on and ruled on again this September, which denied the relief sought by Ms. Knowles. So until there is a trial on the merits, or any other rulings by the court, I would recommend that these children not be enrolled in Medford until further order of the court.
[Annie Wells]: With all due respect, Mr. Greenspan, the court has made it clear they are not going to make a decision on school district. There's not going to be a trial. They're done. They're not ordering a district.
[Mea Quinn Mustone]: The parent in North Andover, is she willing to unenroll them in North Andover to enroll them here?
[Annie Wells]: They will work it out. If she was unwilling to drive, she was unwilling to drive to Medford to bring them to school today because of the distance and her unwillingness to move and do other, we've offered private school, we've offered in the middle, we've offered to do the transporting and meet in the middle, we've offered many accommodations to her and all she wants is to have them in her district, not have to drive, and to not be accountable to anything. So she's not really willing to compromise, but if Medford was an option, I assure you, there would be an agreement. They worked the things out in their own way, and if both schools were an option, I am, she would probably not want to drive to Medford to pick them up. Five days a week, because they're with us five days a week.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: So please understand from our point of view how confusing this is, because if in fact the other parent was just willing for them to come to Medford, we'd have no issue. Right. It would be not an issue. The superintendent wouldn't, there would be not an issue. So clearly, there is an issue, because the other parent does not want them to come to Medford, and they've already been in Andover.
[Annie Wells]: And we are not okay with North Andover, but North Andover didn't say no. The only reason they're North Andover is because they didn't say no. So we're not agreeing with North Andover.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: But they were in North Andover last year, correct?
[Annie Wells]: No, kindergarten, she was in pre-kindergarten. In North Andover. So pre-k she was in Wilmington, and Avery attended kindergarten at Atkinson. Temporarily until the trial in March So can you see the I am because they see the imbalance for a minute.
[Roy Belson]: Let me just explain it this way The judge has a statement about not allowing them to enroll in Medford the judge makes no statement about not allowing them to enroll in North Andover and The judge has maybe not made a clean decision that you would like, but he's clearly implied something at this point in time. I'm not going to try and get in the middle of a domestic dispute on this situation, as long as the kids are in school. They're in school.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: Mr. Benedetto? I had a similar question to my colleague. So my own question is, If someone had not petitioned for a specific district, then both parents would be on even still. But because one parent petitioned the court for a judgment, that's the difference. If the other parent had asked the court to enroll them in North Andover, the judge might have said no, not North Andover. But that didn't happen. where, like, had it not been asked specifically, can we ask, then it would be, we wouldn't have documents.
[Annie Wells]: It was, can we have a court order?
[Erin DiBenedetto]: Right.
[Annie Wells]: They said, parents decide, right? Parents decide where to send their kids all the time. And if you don't want to be involved with all due respect, just please unbar their enrollment so that we can work this out. I assure you, it will be fine. Whether it's North End or Medford, we will let you know. But this needs to be a yes.
[Ann Marie Cugno]: Ms. Cunha. First of all, again, our hearts go out to the situation, but I'm also confused. I'm reading from the documentation that you just provided to us. Okay, and I'm not gonna say names, but I'm reading and it says, you keep on saying that if the superintendent says, okay, my fit is fine, they'll work it out. Yes, they will. But on the other hand, I'm reading this and when you come to number six, it says a parent had reasonable in proposing numerous towns closest to the other parents' work.
[Annie Wells]: We did.
[Ann Marie Cugno]: Okay. And it's currently in certain places. One of the parties, the children have gone to daycare in Wilmington, as you just said. However, it does say that the parent who is in North Andover, Refuses to leave North the end over and insists the children be involved in school there So two days a week no, but it doesn't say that I'm just going by what you're telling us That's on the documentation so what I guess my thing is is that you're standing here telling us that you know we want to we want to Understand where you're coming from but you're saying that if we take this this bar or term that you're using off of Medford Then the parents would come to an agreement But here in the documentation from the court that you just provided says that that person, no matter what you provide, is going to refuse.
[Annie Wells]: So you have to understand that they have a history of going through the courts for a lot of things. The court, their file is very thick. And they aren't going to resolve things in court. They resolve things in their own way. I've been a witness to this. It works for them eventually, but you can't decide for them that it's going to be Northendover because you've given her a lot of freedom and now she's going to go and file for having custody during the week. And right now we have them five days.
[Ann Marie Cugno]: But it doesn't even say that because it says that there are other cities and towns that the other parent is willing to move to, including Wilmington, North Redding, Wakefield, and Redding, which is much closer than Medford. And again, you still have the other party who says it doesn't really matter because they're not going to move out of there, or they're not willing to bring the children enrolled in those cities. So that's, I mean, It's confusing to us because you're saying, well, if they didn't have the rule or the documentation or going to trial, then they'll come to their own term.
[Annie Wells]: So right now, there's no reason for her to work with us because there's a note from Medford, so why should she have to give on anything?
[Ann Marie Cugno]: But you don't have a note from Wilmington or North Reading or Wakefield or Reading.
[Annie Wells]: We don't live there.
[Ann Marie Cugno]: No, but what I'm saying is that, I'm just going by what you're saying, and that is that even if we opened up Medford, According to the documentation that you have given us from the court that you provided, it says that the other party refuses to leave North Andover and insists the children be enrolled in school there. I'm reading it from the documentation that you provided. So if there's any other, you know.
[Annie Wells]: The court, that's the motion.
[Ann Marie Cugno]: That's the motion, right.
[Annie Wells]: That was just, we've, demonstrating that we've made many offers to move to the same district together, private school, et cetera, et cetera. We've made options. Right, and they've refused. Right, so now we're just Medford versus North Andover right now.
[Roy Belson]: So let me ask this, OK? Because we're all trying to solve this, but we have different viewpoints on how we look at it, OK? Lisa Greenberg is your attorney. She's filed the motion. If she thought that we didn't have a solid position, she'd be in our face. But she's not. You're coming here.
[Annie Wells]: She costs $300 an hour, sir.
[Roy Belson]: But you know what? She's the legal representative for you.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: Mia, I'm calling you because you're not taking our calls. I'm not calling. You're saying sue us.
[Roy Belson]: I'm sorry?
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: You're saying if she sued us.
[Roy Belson]: Well, no. Look, if she's got a position that she thinks she can sustain, then she should be here. But I called the Department of Education. And I sat down with them and I said, tell me what to do. They went over it and quite frankly They're sustained our position so if believe me if I had a kid outside that wasn't enrolled the Department of Elementary and secondary education would tell me to enroll that kid if it was my Opportunity to do so believe me. They would not let me do we've been in through this many times with with desi if there's a kid out there that needs to be enrolled Even if they're an undocumented immigrant, I'm going to put it that way, they would tell us to enroll them and not check anything else. So the fact that they have not taken a position on this thing gives me great concern.
[Annie Wells]: With all due respect, there is no immigration, there's no... I know, but what I'm saying is... No, no, no.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: You're saying DESE tends to lean on the way of the child.
[Annie Wells]: So DESE, we closed a follow-up on them, and they said, we closed it because you informed them they were enrolled and everybody's happy with North Andover.
[Roy Belson]: Well, I did that today because I got a note from Greg Landry, who's the principal at Atkinson, says they're enrolled.
[Annie Wells]: But that doesn't mean we agree with that. You spoke to DESE last week as well.
[Roy Belson]: Right, I spoke to DESE today, too.
[Annie Wells]: What about us? What about our disagreement with North Vandenberg? What about the fact that the kids would be commuting five days a week back and forth? The fact that they didn't go to school today because their parent didn't pick them up. An unreliable parent didn't pick them up. What is your responsibility to us?
[Roy Belson]: I've got to take some guidance from an impartial group out there. It can't be you and it can't be the other person, Nicole Denning. It's got to be a decision made by a third party. And I'll be happy to do it. We would be more than happy to enroll the children if we had the go-ahead, but we don't.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Ms. Van der Kloot, do you have any paper or court order on your custody arrangements? The one thing we've never seen is what your custom custody order is, which says that the children are with you Monday through Friday.
[Annie Wells]: So it's a 50-50 schedule, but as you can see from the email right now, because she asked.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: I think she's asking for something legal from the court system that talks about custody, not an email chain. That's going to be here until December.
[Annie Wells]: That's going to be here until December. She's petitioning to try to get them.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: The one you have in place right now.
[Annie Wells]: We have them Wednesday, Thursday, every other Friday, Saturday, Sunday. So a 50-50 schedule. However, she does not. She switched her work schedule, so she works weekends. The children are now with us on Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. And many more until they're picked up.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: So on Monday and Tuesday, they would be living in North Andover. So the problem that we have is they are not with us sleeping in Medford the five school days.
[Annie Wells]: Does it matter? It's not about how many nights there are, it's where their social activities are and where they're involved. Cheryl coaches soccer, both teams, you know, 12 to 3, both kids. They have friends in the community. They go to school, they go to park and the kids say, hey, what class are you in? And it's quite troublesome. All of their social activities are here in Medford. This is where they live. These parents will work out the school issue and transportation if you just let us work, do it on our time.
[Greenspan]: No, the only thing I can say is that There was a specific request again in May Requesting to enroll the children in Medford that was denied the court is again denied any change in these orders and There was an original request in May, and a motion was made in May to specifically ask the court to make an order to enroll the children in the Medford Public Schools. Specifically, the motion was denied. There was another request to modify that in September of 2017, denied again. So until there is some further clarification or a ruling at trial, I would recommend strongly that the committee not enroll or order these children enrolled in Medford until there is further court orders to that effect or an agreement by the parties.
[Annie Wells]: We can get you an agreement. If you let us, if you say yes to Medford, we'll get you an agreement.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: If you got an agreement, you'd get yes to Medford.
[Annie Wells]: That's where the quagmire we're in right now. They would have been in Medford today, and if they'd been in Medford Wednesday when we have them, on Thursday and Friday, and she was tired of driving back and forth from Northland to Medford, she would give in, and in Medford it would be.
[Roy Belson]: So let me just say one more thing. My own gut tells me the following. It's not scientific, but my own gut tells me the following. The reality is, is the court probably is saying one child was in North Andover last year. Leave them there because, quite frankly, they've got some stability there. The other child, okay, so they're two together. And what we're facing right now, we're facing a situation where this party would like them to be enrolled in Medford, because then you go back to the court and say, guess what, they're in Medford. So we're gonna play one off against the other. The reality here is that if you told the court, my suggestion, you told the court that Medford is willing, if in fact, The court will make a decision, and you've got the same leverage you would have otherwise. We are willing to enroll these children if we get a go-ahead. That's all. We're not against it. We like children.
[Annie Wells]: We like enrollment. North Andover didn't wait for a go-ahead. And because you said no, it has to be North Andover. Do you get this? North Andover didn't need a go-ahead. We live in this district. Why are you saying no?
[Roy Belson]: We're at a council, I tell you.
[Annie Wells]: The council keeps saying the same thing over and over again, which is that no court made an order. And he's saying he doesn't recommend it, but there's no court order saying they can't go to Medford. What is it?
[Greenspan]: There's a court order denying, denying enrollment in the Medford Public Schools. I have the order. Please read it to us. I don't have to. I've read it to myself. The committee has it. The court has denied the order in May. Denied an order. It's been revisited again in September. They've denied that again. The superintendent has stated that he is willing to enroll these children. If you have an agreement or a court order. Either way, if there is an agreement between the parents or a court order modifying what is in front of us now, the superintendent has stated he's willing to enroll these children in the Medford Public Schools. And my recommendation, again, is to wait either for a order from the trial on the merits or until there's a reversal of this motion or until there is an agreement.
[Annie Wells]: Medford has not said no.
[Greenspan]: Medford is willing to enroll these children if this court order is modified or is there an agreement between the parties.
[Annie Wells]: if Medford's saying no and North Danaver is the only option? If the two parents agree, we will take the children. How can they agree if she has no reason to wait? If she's not willing to drive back and forth to get the kids to school, clearly she... In the meantime, they're out? I mean, like when she doesn't want to drive down here?
[Robert Skerry]: Point of information, ma'am?
[Robert Skerry]: Doctor, reading through the documents that you presented us, mediation was suggested by the courts. What happened in mediation?
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: That it failed. It worked. The parties went to mediation and could not reach an agreement.
[Annie Wells]: So Cheryl, my partner, offered to change the schedule for her request if she was willing to be in Medford schools. She didn't want to compromise on anything.
[Robert Skerry]: What did the original custody agreement indicate?
[Annie Wells]: The original custody agreement is she has them Monday and Tuesday, every other Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
[Robert Skerry]: Cheryl had them Monday and Tuesday?
[Annie Wells]: No, Nicole.
[Robert Skerry]: Nicole, okay.
[Annie Wells]: And then we have them Wednesday, Thursday, every other Friday, Saturday, Sunday. What's 50-50, five and two? What's 50-50?
[Ann Marie Cugno]: Could I follow up on that? Ms. Cunha. Thank you, Doctor. When we first spoke, and up until just a little while ago, You had said to me, I know personally, you had said to me that you had the Monday through Friday, because the children could go to school Monday through Friday. Five days a week. Okay, well, five days a week.
[Annie Wells]: Is Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, five days a week. But not every week. Okay, but they don't go to school.
[Ann Marie Cugno]: Every week, since March. But they don't go to school on Saturday and Sunday. Right, but there's... So what I'm trying to find out, I'm just trying to find out, if they have them on Monday and Tuesday, and you have them every other week, And then you have a Monday, Thursday, and Friday. Even if we said yes, and the other parent doesn't want to bring them down, so how are we going to work that? I mean, I'm really confused. Do we not put the children in school for two days out of the week and let them go to another district?
[Annie Wells]: I assure you if they were in Medford Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. North Ender would not allow them to go to school Monday and Tuesdays only. They would say, hey, your kids are missing too much school. And guess what? Three days out of the week is more than two. They would be going to Medford. Three days. Well, no, five, because she doesn't want to transport on Mondays apparently either. So four days.
[Ann Marie Cugno]: But if she doesn't want to drop them off, then how would they even get? Because she said they missed school today because she didn't want to drop them.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: We're trying to understand it with a few pieces of paper when you have a whole file at home. So just please bear with us. I'm sorry. And also, this isn't something that really should be discussed in front of every person in the city of Medford. It really is a private matter. And I highly advise that if we need to continue this, that we go into executive session for the respect of your family.
[Annie Wells]: I would be happy to do that if Mr. Belson would turn my phone calls. I called the office. I leave messages. I don't hear back. So if I could get a meeting with Mr. Velson and yourself, that would be great. And maybe our attorneys, I would sell for that.
[Roy Belson]: So let me just say one more thing. And I don't know your status. But as far as I know, you're a significant other, but not a custodial parent.
[Annie Wells]: Am I right? I'm not a custodial parent, no.
[Roy Belson]: OK. So as a result, I can't talk to you about the trial technically.
[Annie Wells]: Well, with permission, you can.
[Roy Belson]: Yeah, well, I don't have that. No one gave me that permission yet. So this is a complicated little circle here. I mean, it's filled with all kinds of potholes of things that we can and can't do. So if the court had said, you can put them in part time, but the court is probably saying, I don't want to split the week up for these kids. Let them be in one place and not in two places.
[Annie Wells]: That's the problem with it. Right. It wouldn't work for either party.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: So I move that the party before us meets with the significant other and attorneys or whoever is appropriate and the mayor and superintendent. Seconded.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: Seconded. On the motion, roll call vote please.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Mrs. Cugno? Yes. Mrs. DiBenedetto? Yes. Mrs. Kreatz? Yes. Mrs. Mustone? Yes. Mr. Scurry? Yes. Mrs. Van der Kloot? Yes. Mayor Burke?
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: Yes. 7 in the affirmative, 0 in the negative. Motion passes. Report of superintendent. Report on Team Medford supply drive.
[Roy Belson]: Mayor and members of the committee, we're going to call upon our deputy superintendent to take the lead on this. It's a very significant occasion for Team Medford, and I'm going to let her do it because it's an important thing.
[Beverly Nelson]: Again, we're here with our team. I'm going to ask our team to come up with me. It's a very special occasion. This is the 10th year we're having an anniversary tonight. We celebrate our 10th anniversary. I made it, yes, at Market Basket, yes. We do great work together. But once again, we are indebted to Team Medford. Sam Terabelsi every year comes through. Of course, I know he would because I also discovered we went to the same high school, Watertown High School, which I didn't know until this year. So, we learned good things there. But I'm going to ask Sam to come up and introduce his team that's with him tonight. We, every year, go over the previous year amount. This year was $28,000 with Staples being our prime donator. But again, a lot of constituents participated in this and we have as a result school supplies that arrived before the first day of school. Principals picked them up. Students had them in their hands the first day of school. So we are indebted to Sam and I will let him speak and then we'll have cake.
[Sam Tarabelsi]: Thank you so much, Beverly. So yeah, 10 years. Wow. I imagine the idea just came in as part of our sort of, as we started this committee, about 16 of us and sitting and thinking, what else can we do with the city? How do we connect the hospital with the city? And certainly, our thoughts were more with the school programs, which I've known Mr. Belson for many years. And then one member just said, well, what if we do this back to school drive? And then it just got 16 of us. Wow, that's a good thing. Let's talk about it. And the rest was history. It was just a team of volunteers from the hospital, which we still have team effort that we do on multiple things, including what we do in Kiwanis, the chamber, Tufts Community Day, and the mayor's outing that we do. And when we really thought about it, It's just became natural for us. It just, you know, we look for that moment, that June email that I've already sort of put together to Beverly to say, what do you, all of the principals, what do they need? Let us know, because we're gonna go and get what their needs are. And again, I wanna thank Staples, which is our major donor, and thanks Little Rocco, who has been the driving force trying to get donate for us the amount that they donate. But many other organizations and all the employees at Hallmark Health Lawrence Memorial contributed to this. And before I introduce the members, I'm going to just introduce or really mention some of these groups, like the Medford Kiwanis, this year the Rotary Club. the PTO, and then we have Armstrong, we also have Genesis, our nursing home, and then many other folks that just came in and offered their checks, their cash, and we have gone and bought certain things to really make it happen. So my committee that's here is Lou Rocco, he's been from day one. We got from Armstrong, Chris Hill, representing Armstrong, which every year they make donations to our program, and they have a box in their local place that they collect. This is my partner, Janet Perrault, she's always there with us trying to get this program going too. for us. Joe Raffles again has been over and over an outstanding gentleman. He's in Italy as he usually is and he just again looks forward to this. So again, thank you so much for allowing us to do this and giving us this opportunity to give back to the students and make their school year a successful year. Thank you.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: On behalf of all of the children of the city of Medford, we want to thank you for all the hard work you do, how you coordinate this and get so many backpacks in the hands of needy children. We're astounded and we're just so thankful to have you a part of our community, so thank you all. Thanks for coming tonight. Is there a motion on the floor to accept this report? Motion to accept. Motion to accept by Ms. Cunha, seconded by Ms. Kritz. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes. Report on a Giro backpack donation program.
[Roy Belson]: So another important thing, and Diane is going to fill you in on a Giro.
[Diane Caldwell]: So is it proper to say, let them eat cake? Yes. In addition to our team Medford Patriots and whatever they do for us in Medford Public Schools, we also need to take this opportunity to thank Jero. specifically Mr. Sidney Wolfe, the founder of Agero and the cross-country group, David Farrick, who is CEO and President of Agero, Sandy Savage, Vice President of Human Resources, Sandy Reyes, Human Resources Business Partner, and all the local employees of Agero for their generous donation of backpacks and other school supplies. So, like Beverly, when I get that phone call from Sandy Reyes at Agero saying, are you coming? I'm just there, Michelle and I, my administrative assistant and I go over to Ajero and we get 60 backpacks and they're filled with school supplies for the kids. There are pencils and pens and markers and notebooks all filled and even additional boxes that we have. So they're not just for elementary, we try to parcel it out so we can give some of the backpacks to middle schools as well. So together our principals decided that the backpacks should be disseminated to the most economically disadvantaged students. We've also saved a number of the backpacks to present to the Department of Social Services at our regular holiday donation drive, which I think most of you know we've been doing this for years now. So we keep some of those backpacks back. And we are just so fortunate to have generous partners such as Agero who continue to make a real difference in the lives of our children in school. So, currently the backpacks are in my literacy office and we will be disseminating maybe six or ten per school for the elementary and the middle schools. And then obviously we'll give some supplies to our high school and our vocational schools, pencils and pens and whatever they need as well. Mr. Wolfe couldn't be here tonight, but he wanted to send his best, and we just want to thank all our great business partners.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Ms. Van der Kloot. I would like to make a motion that the school committee send a letter both to Team Medford and to Ajero and Mr. Wolfe to thank them so that it could be posted someplace and express our appreciation for their incredible donations. That would be great. Thank you very much.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: On the motion. Offered by Ms. Van der Kloot, seconded by Ms. Cuno. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes. Mr. Superintendent, we'll get a letter out tomorrow. Very good. Thank you, Ms. Caldwell. Is there a motion to accept this report and place it on file? So moved. So moved. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes. Report on meeting with Wegmans. Ms. Nelson.
[Beverly Nelson]: Okay, from one store to the other, a market basket to Wegmans. On Tuesday, August 15th, Wegmans hosted an informational meeting for several non-profits, community school, and city leaders at their offices at Station Landing in Medford. I was able to attend, along with Diane Caldwell, Chad Fallon, Jill Sawyer, and Lisa Evangelista. We all represented the school district at the meeting. And the purpose of the meeting is that the staff of Wegmans really wanted to learn more about what they could do for the community and for the schools. They have a lot to offer. are still hiring. There was an article actually in the transcript that spoke to this meeting and what they're doing. They're marking their 100th anniversary, and they actually have been named one of the best places to work in the United States. We were welcomed by the store manager, Kevin Russell, the store manager, the Medford service manager, Paula Colnane, and Mary Ellen Burris, who is the senior vice president of consumer affairs. All three have had longstanding roles in the company and could not speak more highly about what the company has done for their careers and communities. Wegmans offers scholarships and some of the people there actually started as clerks. They started in Wegmans in different parts of the country and they were given scholarships and they continued their undergraduate and graduate studies. So they're very generous. We could not be more warmly welcomed by them. Not only did they have a lovely breakfast for us, they again wanted to know what we could do, what they could do for us moving forward. And again, we're hoping that some of our students will apply for some of the part-time jobs because it can lead to scholarship opportunities for them. They also gave us a lovely goody bag, which contained breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the next couple of days. Their products are really lovely. They have all the ingredients. They're very concerned about food allergies, things that we're concerned about in the schools as well. So we welcomed them to Medford. They couldn't speak more highly of things that they wanted to do for us, and we will coordinate
[Erin DiBenedetto]: Probably through Lisa and the school so that not everybody's kind of at the same time asking for things all during the school year They're officially open November 5th So, thank you for the report and I'm glad we're starting early Next time I'd like to come to that meeting make sure you're included That's fine. My real point is, are we going to set up a co-op with our vocational students with Wegmans? Because I don't know if they meal prep right there, but a lot of our culinary students could get a lot of expertise and knowledge. So the sooner we could maybe start that conversation, the better.
[Beverly Nelson]: Well, Chad and Jill were there at the meeting. We did inform them about the new restaurant that's opening at the school. So, I'm sure they will further those discussions because they were present.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: And they will also have a restaurant on site as well within the Wegmans. Right, that's why I thought it was a good opportunity for a co-op. So maybe when we do our grand opening at our restaurant, we can make sure that Wegmans is sitting at the first table.
[Beverly Nelson]: We mentioned that to them, that we would invite them. Chad mentioned that, that they would be invited to that too.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: Great. Thank you so much. Thank you. On the motion of this report be placed on file. Moved by Mr. Brennan, seconded by Ms. VandeVleut. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes. Report on stop-and-shop donation to the metropolitan schools so report Stop-and-shop is still working out the details so tonight. We'll put it aside and wait on the table, but I can assure you that There's gonna be a lot of competition between supermarkets in the table this paper until next next meeting Seconded by mr.. Scary all those in favor aye all those opposed papers tabled I Update report on public release of MCAS 2.0 information and accountability ratings.
[Roy Belson]: I'm going to call upon our director of curriculum, Bernadette Riccidelli, to keep you informed of how MCAS is progressing out of the DESE.
[Bernadette Ricciardelli]: Good evening. So I am here to report tonight on the scheduled releases of our assessment results for MCAS. So the next generation MCAS in grades three through eight, and the legacy MCAS, which is the old traditional MCAS at the high school, and also the accountability ratings. So I've written a lot in the report. I've taken the schedule directly from the Department of Ed site, so you have all of the dates. I've highlighted the major dates in the report. So as you can see, as early as June, we were receiving some raw data. For the purpose of this report, I started in August where we started seeing some of the preliminary data in raw format. both the assessment as well as the accountability. So just jumping forward because everyone is waiting for the official results to come out. So we need to wait until mid-October this year. It seems like each year it's getting a little bit later. So, October 24th is the date in which the official district and school level MCAS and the MCAS alt results are released to the public. The official accountability reports for all districts and schools will be released to the public. And also the printed MCAS parent guardian reports will be received by the superintendent's office. So October 24th is that date. Now they do say that is an estimate, so we're planning right around that date for the results to be released. So certainly we will be preparing reports for you so that as soon as possible, once they're unembargoed, we can report those to you. As far as the accountability schedule, reporting schedule is concerned, if we go back to November of 2015, the Board of Education amended the accountability system that we had in place. And this was done so that districts and schools administering the next generation MCAS assessment in grades three through eight this past spring would not have their accountability results negatively impacted based on those scores. This regulation allows the Department of Education to limit the use of levels one through three this fall for any school that enrolls students in grades three through eight, as long as the school has a participation rate of at least 90% in the administration of this past spring's MCAS. So participation rate is key. that's important to know. So again, not so much the assessment results, but participation. The Department of Ed will publish next generation MCAS results for each school and district, including a normative measure of achievement to help districts and the Department of Ed identify schools that may require support. The Department of Ed will report the participation rate separately for English language arts, mathematics, and science, and for each district and school as a whole, as well as for each subgroup. So again, they're looking for a 90% participation rate. Schools that assess at least 90% of their students in all groups and subjects will not be assigned an accountability and assistance level of 1 to 3, 1, 2, or 3. Any school or district with participation rates below 90% for any group of students in any subject will be placed into level 3. As far as high school level testing is concerned, so we're talking about the legacy MCAS test, the assessment and accountability results will be reported. High schools will continue to receive an accountability and assistance level based on their PPI and the school percentile data with adjustments for those schools with persistently low graduation rates or very low assessment participation. So again, for the high school level, we're looking at participation and low graduation rates. So, as we move forward with this, a new accountability system is in the process of being developed. So, this fall the Board of Education will be considering those changes. And the changes do need to be consistent with the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA. So that, in a nutshell, is the reporting schedule. So again, October 24th is the date that we should have the official results. I'm happy to take any questions.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Ms. Van der Kloot. I have two questions. The first question is, I remember that last year there was the need for a lot of people to be concerned because some of the things that were reported out needed to be corrected. There were lots of discrepancies. And I know that's a very timely thing. Yes. Was the information that you received so far this year more accurate?
[Bernadette Ricciardelli]: It appeared so. There were a few things that we caught on the discrepancy report, so those have been addressed. vigilant with that. We did not want a repeat of last year, which everything turned out fine, but we believe we caught the few discrepancies.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: But I know you had to do a lot of footwork last year. Yes. The second question has to do with the participation rates. Are we anticipating that our participation rates were solid?
[Bernadette Ricciardelli]: The initial look at it suggests that we are there. I mean, we should have some idea, shouldn't we? We should. I just do need to be careful because they're embargoed. they look to be fine, we're not concerned about that.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: But we know who took the test and who didn't. Yes. Okay.
[Bernadette Ricciardelli]: Yes, so in the preliminary results, we actually get a percentage, so we looked at that. Okay, thank you. You're welcome.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: Mr. Benedetto. My first thing is more of a statement than a question. It seems that the DESE is punishing school districts that have low participation rates so that they have forcing everybody to take this test at this time whether Whether they don't like it or not so I think that's a comment that's clear to me is that it's being pushed and if you do participate you get less punished as far as your rating or you get more time for your rating to to be accountable.
[Bernadette Ricciardelli]: Can I just clarify, the participation rate results refers to the number of students taking the test?
[Erin DiBenedetto]: So like when parents decided that they want to opt out, so they're holding the district's hands at pushing parents to opt in. for this, because districts are going to really push for every child to take it. And I knew that we had an issue last year with the subgroup with participation rate because of absences or other issues. And so, I'm sure we were very careful ourselves to make sure that our participation rate was appropriate when we were taking the test. So, those are just some comments. We're really pushing against it and didn't want their children to take this test But it's very important to the district that it does and the district does get punished from desi if not or held at a higher Accountability than districts that parents don't opt out. So that's just a comment from what I've seen Secondly, I wanted to know So the BN keeps us from going over any preliminary results that the district gets. As a committee, we can't notify, because we are... Well, it's a public meeting, so we cannot release the results to... But if we went into an executive session, can we be updated? It's embargoed. It's embargoed? You've got to ask the question.
[Roy Belson]: It's embargoed, Dave. Part of the reason is because of discrepancy reports and other things like that, they want to make sure everything is right before it goes out there. Now, you may have noticed in the Globe today, if you read the Globe at all, that there were some comments about 26 Boston schools were underperforming. Somebody leaked something out there, and I'm sure there's going to be some comment out there. It's very hard to know exactly how they're going to finally come down on things, but we know one thing is if your participation rate is good, there's no accountability rating this year outside of the high school.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: So that's my other comment. So them waiving accountability doesn't mean that we're not accountable as a district to make sure that our children were ready last year and that they're ready in the future. So I don't like when they dangle that carrot in front of your face and say, oh, well, it doesn't count this year, so don't worry. It still counts to every parent and every child who took the test.
[Roy Belson]: If I can just answer that a little bit. I think the thing that you've got to remember this is the first full year that MCAS 2.0 was out there. So as a result, as a new test, it really, in order to be fair to people, they had to see the kinds of questions, you know, they had to see what it was about, whether it really, you know, the questions were proper and the like, and they have to do that analysis with their own testing company. So rather than it's like a new product, it's really in a pilot phase. So the second year, they're saying, OK, you had a year to try it out. We've had a year to work out the bugs. Now we'll start to look at it for real. So that's really part of it. It isn't really an attempt to hide anything, because I think some people in the state would love to issue accountability ratings. But having said that, I think part of it is because you can't just do that with new stuff. You'd have to look at it.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: Right. And my point is, even though that we We as a community are not accountable for that. We are still accountable for teaching our children how to take this test and how to do well on it. And I don't want parents to think, because it's not accountable by DESC that we aren't accountable as a committee and as an educational. Entity that to to our students and to to but have them do very well I just wanted to put that out there I don't like it when they say it doesn't come because it counts because the kids took the time to take the exam and you guys As a school district we spent a lot of time and a lot of money Making sure that we do this well and do it right so it does it does it counts? And it's the data We'll use that data to set up for next year, so it does count to us in so many ways. So that's just another comment, nothing directed at anybody here. So to my colleague who's the committee chair of the academic committee. Last year there was a meeting to go over the results because it's very involved.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: So as a... Yes, but we haven't gotten any results yet.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: We could schedule the meeting and then. So we know the results are coming the 24th.
[Roy Belson]: We always do. I just look at schedules. I mean, there's a lot of things you want to talk about. Tonight was a good example. But we'll get a meeting. It's not something, you know, we obviously have those meetings.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Traditionally it goes to the curriculum committee.
[Mea Quinn Mustone]: Ms. Mustone, were you going to say something, Mr. Belson?
[Roy Belson]: I just want to say one thing. I've been talking to Senator Jalen, who's about to file a bill in the legislature, in the Senate, looking to modify the accountability system in a substantial way, where it goes, how it goes. But you can clearly tell that the debate is very strong these days about academic proficiency not being the only way you measure a school. And two polls were out, the Gallup poll and the Phi Delta Kappan poll, both of which sampled parents across the country, all of whom were saying there's more to school than testing. And the pushback is becoming very, very strong. The Massachusetts Board of Education tends to be very protesting. So we'll have to see where that plays out. But there's an awful lot of ferment out there right now about the implications of just simply evaluating schools only on test results. So I've seen portions of Senator Jalen's bill. I'll introduce it to you at some point in the near future when she's ready to release it. Because I think there's a lot of good material in there looking at how to look at schools in a more comprehensive way. We talk about social and emotional learning. We talk about career and technical education. We talk about health. All those things are important in a school. We're developing youth that have transitioned to adulthood. We're not just developing test takers. So a good school in a community like, you know, in Boston, where you've got 26 schools that someone decided was underperforming, there's a lot of things that go on in some of those demographies out there that are far more complex than just simply a test score. So how we look at our young people, how we look at schools and what we do, needs more scrutiny. And I think Senator Jalen and others are starting to raise that question in a very, very powerful way in the state.
[Mea Quinn Mustone]: Ms. Musto? Sure. You had mentioned discrepancy. Is that part of the embargoed information, or could you elaborate? Yes, it is. So in October, we will know what the discrepancies were?
[Bernadette Ricciardelli]: No. So there's a discrepancy reporting window, which was in August. So that's when the administrators, the principals, the curriculum directors take a look at, we take an initial look at the data. We look at the students who took the test. to see if there's anybody missing, if the numbers are correct in terms of who was supposed to be participating. So we have, I don't know, it's about 10 days or so a week in which we then can report to the state that there was a discrepancy in what they have on paper and what we have as far as our students. So that is not, that's not reported out in any official results.
[Mea Quinn Mustone]: Were there many discrepancies between what the state presented to you and what you had?
[Bernadette Ricciardelli]: I don't know the exact number. I think that it was minimal. There were more last year. It was not, the initial look at the data would suggest that it was pretty accurate.
[Roy Belson]: So let me give you an example of something that was an interesting one last year. Fascinating kind of thing. A student who came to this country, booked a test, but didn't take the English language arts test because it was his first year in the country. However, because he had a SASID number when he was in the first grade, he had been in the country for a short period of time, the state decided that he was, in fact, not a first year student. We had to petition and clean that out. Now, how would we know, coming from another district someplace else, that this wasn't his first year? That's an example of a discrepancy. Medicals, people that are out on a medical who somehow don't get coded out of the thing. All of a sudden, you have to go back and say, well, this kid's been in the hospital for the last six months. I mean, how can you count them? They couldn't possibly take the test in the setting they were in. So those are some of the things that happen. And you have to pay attention to those, because otherwise, you have 100 kids and five or six kids don't take the test for various reasons. All of a sudden, you're below a certain threshold. And that's not what you're going to pay attention to. And with subgroups, it's even less, because the subgroups are even smaller numbers. So if you have 25 kids, one kid could be four percentage points.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you. Motion to accept and place on file. And thank you, Bernadette.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: That's a motion to accept and place on file. Seconded by Ms. Cunha. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion passed. We put on summer programs.
[Roy Belson]: OK, Beverly's going to do this.
[Beverly Nelson]: I have Anthony with me tonight. As all of you know, we run a full complement of summer programs. Some of them are voluntary for students. Some of them are mandatory, like regular summer school for making up courses during the school year that a youngster may have failed. Some of them have a cost to them and some are free of charge. We have, again, a lot of things going on all summer long. I asked people who ran programs to come tonight to present to you themselves, and Anthony volunteered to come. So, we'll start with the summer fun program. And Anthony, you want to tell us a little bit about that?
[Anthony Petrelis]: Hi, thank you for having me. I'm Anthony Pachelis. I'm the director of the Mefford Summer Fund Program. It's in its 11th year of existence and my 10th year running it. I'm just going to give you a short, you know, a little description about the camp. But as I said, this is our 11th year of running it. We run out of Mefford High School. We average about 130 to 140 kids a week. At some weeks we were able to hit up into the 160s, one high 150s, low 160s. We provide breakfast every morning for the children. Every Friday we provide them free pizza for lunch. And throughout the week we have different activities that come to camp, whether it's a magician, a carnival, and so on, that we provide for the kids each week that they're registered. We also hold the World Cup soccer tournament. We hold the dodgeball tournament. And this year we were able to partner up with, Ms. Stone, and we were able, with the Greater Boston Food Bank, the mayor, and Hallmark helped to get food donated every Friday to camp for families, so on the way that the families were picking up their kids, we were able to have bags of food provided for families for dinner for that night or over the weekend. Over the four weeks we did it, we did it four Fridays, July 28th, August 4th, August 11th, and August 18th, we were able to give away over 250 bags. And that was great, a lot of parents were very pleased and very happy that we were able to provide a service like that for them. As I said, I just wanted to come and talk about the camp. I think it's one of those great programs that we have in the city that a lot of people are starting to hear about and know about. And every single year we've grown in size. We have over 30 employees, 33 employees, part-time and full-time. And all of them are, you know, city of Mefford kids that, you know, went through the elementary schools and middle schools and high schools, and some are currently in high school or graduated from Mefford High or in college. So, you know, we provide a great service for the youth of the community from elementary all the way up to high school and beyond.
[Beverly Nelson]: That next year, Wegmans will help you with food stuff.
[Anthony Petrelis]: Yeah, when I heard that, yeah. Definitely, absolutely, yeah.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: Mayor Burke. If I could just jump in on the food portion of it, and really, we have to thank Mia in a large way. Not mean Mia, Mia. She really, we've had several meetings on food insecurity at City Hall, and Mia has been a part of all of those conversations. And she was, with her van, we went in and picked up the whole truckload of stuff in her van one Friday. And it continued for four weeks. So we want to really thank you, Mia, for all of your hard work. And thanks to Sarah and Anthony for coordinating it once everything came back to you. Because that was, I know, a lot of effort on your part as well. So thank you all for doing what you can for our kids.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I think that's such a great addition. I also, though, just need to take a moment to thank my colleague, Anne Marie Cuno, who was a driving force of setting up the camp 11 years ago. It's been a long time of great successes.
[Ann Marie Cugno]: It was one of my things on my to-do list. And as a co-founder of the program, I'm very proud of the program. And like anything else, I always say that we have to have the foundation done the right way when we start something off. So it has proved itself many times. So I'm very proud of that program.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Thank you. And you do a great job, Anthony. Thank you.
[Ann Marie Cugno]: Yes. Thank you. Thank you.
[Sam Tarabelsi]: Thank you, guys. Thank you.
[Beverly Nelson]: It's amazing so many programs are going on simultaneously at the high school and they kind of all share the pool and the facilities and it seems to come together. I really don't have a lot of problems. People take care of their own business and Anthony's been wonderful with that program. Other programs, we always have our special education program. Lisa Ionelli was overseeing it this year. Again, this program is basically for students who have in their IEPs, extended year services, and again, they were approximately 145 students that participated in those programs this summer. We have our English learner program. Paul Texera, our new director, supervised that program. Approximately 75 English learner students through grades one through 12. attended, they were at the McGlynn Elementary and the McGlynn Middle School. We try to contain our programs in as few schools as possible so we get all the cleaning done and we tell John McLaughlin the schedule so we can work around it so it all seems to come together. High School 101, this is a program that we started years ago when we had the academic support grant to support students who have difficulty passing MCAS. Dr. Keizer and David Blow were overseeing this, organizing the program. It's basically a program for students who are coming into grade nine and it kind of gives them a jump start. All eighth grade students have math work to do over the summer. and they have reading to do over the summer. So, we bring the students in about three or four days in August, and the teachers are there to help them to finish the assignments, because oftentimes these are the students that will go into the classes and the regular teacher in grade nine will say, where's your summer reading, or where's your summer math, and they don't have it. So, this makes sure that they have those assignments completed. And we also interface it with just getting used to the high school. So, during the time they're here, they get to meet the the principal, the assistant principal of the high school. And their last day actually is the regular freshman orientation day, so they're on board for that as well. That program was very popular. Once the grant no longer existed, we thanked the committee for supporting it in regular budget. Parents love it and it really does help those youngsters. They benefit a great deal coming into school in the fall.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: Mr. Tringali, our student representative, would like to comment on that. Thank you.
[Sebastian Tringali]: I just have a very fond memory of facilitating student orientation. And there was a group of people, a group of freshmen, who really knew their way around. And then there was a group of people who were asking, what's C building? What's B building? And the people who really knew their stuff were the high school 101 kids. Yeah, I think if I did that as a freshman, I would have been a lot less lost. So I think it's great, thank you.
[Beverly Nelson]: Great, thank you for that comment. Other programs, we had regular summer school. David Blau and Jill Sawyer were running that. And again, this program is for students who really have to make up a subject. Now, one of the big pluses this year is we did not have a lot of seniors. Many times seniors who fail a subject, they can't graduate. We actually, this spring, through credit recovery, got those seniors over the hump so that they did not miss out on graduation, that they actually get into our graduation rate, which is a plus thing with our data. And also, we didn't have to have them pay for summer school, as in the past, we've had a lot of seniors. We also used our Plato, our online courses a great deal. What we do is we have the curriculum directors look at the Plato. We don't throw students into online courses, because some of them are better than others. We make sure that the curriculum people are comfortable with the content of the course. And there were some courses, math courses, that perhaps really had to be delivered with the real teachers standing up in front of the class. But most of the science classes, I believe all the science classes were done online. This is the second year we did that. And again, it also, the other benefit of online courses is that when summer school officially ended on whatever day that was in August, some students who still needed a little bit more time were allowed to have it. because they could just continue online. And that was a real plus, and also students could take more than two courses. Because traditional summer school, you basically have an eight to 10, and a 10 to 12, so you can only take two things. With the online, a student on his or her own could take a third course. So we see a lot of potential, we hope to grow it. What we need to do is to take the packaged programs and make sure that we expand them with our own materials so that the curriculum directors feel that they're rigorous enough that they match the curriculum that would be, you know, a live course. So again, we had a great success with students doing well. We also, we learn, you know, after we do our summer programs, we sit down, we just don't close the books and say, okay, that's it. started again in June. We basically brainstormed what we can do better. And last year we realized that the middle school students in summer school really were having a difficult time with the attention span. They needed a different type of structure. So, what we did this year through the efforts of Jill and David is we kind of mixed it up for the middle school youngsters. Yes, they did their math course or they did their English course, but they also had a 45-minute block in between. Bernadette Riccardelli was part of the planning team on this. where every week they did something different, whether it was an outdoor activity or learning some social emotional activities. Again, it seemed to make them more liable to go back into the classroom and be much more focused. So, we liked that addition. I think it worked well. And again, we'll probably continue with that model. It was just for 6th and 7th graders because those were the youngsters that were having difficulty. The 8th graders seemed to be okay with the traditional model. Two other camps from basically middle school youngsters. Jill Sawyer ran the CTE Explore Camp. These are for middle school students who want to come into the vocational school, explore some of the offerings. Actually they had a great chance to see some of the different shops, auto tech, biotechnical, carpentry, and so on. The students actually had, I believe, a swim, an hour swim in the pool, and that was well attended as well. Very short program, but again, worthwhile. And then finally, we have with Molly Leighton, our director of instructional technology. She has her mobile app making summer camp. that she held again at the McGlynn from July 17th to the 21st. And again, this is tied to a funded program through the National Science Foundation project. So any questions? I think everything went very well, and it's positive feedback.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: Just to comment on this science camp, I know the kids absolutely love it. It's a real hit, and kids get a lot out of it, and a big jump for the next year.
[Beverly Nelson]: Great.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: Thank you for all the summer programming. Are there any questions? No? Motion that this report be placed on file, authored by Ms. Cunha, seconded by Ms. Vander Kloof. Thank you. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. All those opposed? Papers? Passes. Report on McGlynn Middle School Action Plan.
[Roy Belson]: So we have a return visit from Emily, straight from Market Basket.
[Beverly Nelson]: Waitmans. Stop and shop. Stop and shop. This report was included in your packet last week. I hope you've had a chance to look it over, but we'd like to discuss it publicly tonight. I'll start by just introducing the topic with regard to both schools that opened in 2001. Both schools follow the same academic curriculum. They have the full complement of exploratory subjects, such as art, music, and health. They are the same number of guidance Councilors, school psychologists in both schools. The teaching staff are highly qualified teachers, all licensed. And while the nature of the activities may vary, they both offer, both schools offer after school activities. One of the differences is the schools house different specialized populations. The Andrews, for example, houses the therapeutic learning program, while the McGlynn houses all of our EL middle school students. All content area classes are scheduled the same way. Everyone has the same amount of time in English, math, social studies, and science. The exploratories are scheduled slightly differently because of the different populations in the school. And the fact that many of the EL kids don't take foreign language, they need to have the exploratories in a different way. But if you add up the time on a yearly basis, all students are getting the same amount of time. It's just that in one school they're getting it throughout the school year on a lesser basis, and in the other school they get it more concentrated during one segment of the school year. but time-wise it's the same. Inclusion is practiced in both schools. Again, since the opening of the new buildings in 2001, the district has offered parents of grade five students the opportunity to select a preferred middle school. The system has worked well until the past two years, when a disproportionate number of parents of students entering grade six selected the Andrews. Currently the Andrews has 45, I'm sorry, 47 more students entering grade six than does the McGlynn. And we can accommodate them through extra staffing, but again, it's not an ideal situation. We also have a significant discrepancy in the socioeconomic status of the student populations at each school. This is something that we do need to address more long-term, not tonight, but at other meetings that we need to have during the fall and during the winter. In order to correct for this imbalance, administrators at all levels, we came together once we saw this happening this spring. And it was central administration, it was the departmental people, and the building, the principals obviously were involved. And we worked throughout the spring and summer to make some changes that we wanted to put in place at the beginning of the school year that we thought would address some of these issues with the discrepancies or the idea that people were selecting the Anders over the McGlynn. We put some things in place and we are currently working on additional changes that can be put in place during the school year. So, just to kind of review what's happened. At budget time the committee allowed the addition of one health teacher. and one Spanish teacher for additional staff to be shared by the two middle schools. We also added another EL teacher because that population at the McGlynn was growing leaps and bounds and we wanted to make sure the students were supported. And the previous year we had already added a full-time librarian and a .5 adjustment Councilor. So we've been adding staff over the last couple of years. During the summer, There were several more measures that were put in place. And I'll review them with you. We have new staff members that were hired to either fill vacancies or new positions that were created. And you have the list of all of those positions without the individual names of the teachers. We have a new assistant principal in place. We have two special education teachers. We have a new reading teacher, an ELA teacher. a guidance Councilor, she's actually filling a leave of absence, the additional EL teacher, and then we have .5 health and .5 Spanish, that's the McGlynn. The full-time was shared, the two full-time positions. The second thing we did is we took a look at the background of staff and we reassigned a few staff members to better serve the needs of students and to support some of the newer staff and to foster some of the new state required curriculum realignment. Realignments happened in science, English, and mathematics. So, these are the changes without, again, names. statement also attached with this that speaks to the science changes. Again, that statement does contain names, so that's why we have it marked confidential. But the changes dealt with changing a grade 7 teacher to grade 8 in science and a grade 8 teacher to grade 7. And this was based on the recommendations of Director Rocco Sieri. who knowing the background of both teachers, knowing the new frameworks, and the new frameworks realigned standards where they were taught in different grade levels, felt that that placement was warranted. So, that was one of the changes that we made. There was another change with the grade seven and eight English language arts teacher. We hired a new English language arts teacher for the McGlynn. This teacher was brand new, but her student teaching and her background in, you know, again, student teaching mainly was at the high school level. We felt that putting her at grade eight was the proper placement since, again, she was more high school oriented. That was one part of the decision making. current eighth grade teacher, who's an excellent veteran teacher, we needed her expertise to go back into grade seven to help the new reading teacher. In grade seven now, we're starting a new reading program, RTI, where we're going to identify students who really need the reading support. Grade six, all students get reading, but now grade seven and eight, it's going to be students who really need it through our testing, our study island we purchased to be able to identify those students. We felt that having a veteran seventh grade English teacher would assist that brand new reading teacher in making those assessments and placements of students. So, that was the rationale for that change. Again, there was a grade eight team lateral change for two social studies teachers, again, teaching the same subject, teaching the same grade, just on different teams. And that was a measure to balance the two teams with veteran teachers and also to have a little better gender balance. The change I mentioned before is the modification of how reading will be delivered. It's going to be, again, The RTI model that currently exists at the Andrews with a great deal of success. Again, all students in grade six will receive basic reading instruction. Seven and eighth grade students will be given reading support based on needs as identified on the newly purchased assessment tool, Study Island. So we purchased, Study Island has been at the Andrews. Again, we were able to purchase it for the McGlynn through a new grant. that Bernadette Riccadeli is overseeing, title 4A. And again, grade 7, ELA teachers, both grade 7 teachers on both teams are very veteran. They're excellent teachers and we know they will provide a great amount of support for this new reading teacher as she gets started in her career. What we're going to be working on during the school year, we want to make sure that students have opportunities to have more clubs at the McGlynn and opportunities for students to be able to go to different clubs, even if they're housed at another school. I know I had one parent, his daughter is really into theater and drama and she's At the McGlynn he's asked that she could be in the production that's done at the Andrews and we're working on that. So, we're trying to make sure that students are given the opportunity to join clubs at both schools. We are having more administrative support in the building so that we have an idea if people have concerns that they know there's always a place they can go in addition to the principal and to the new assistant principal. Dr. Riccadeli is going to have and has had already more of a presence in the school, walking around the halls, talking to the teachers, seeing again, expressing her interest in what they're doing and if they have any concerns. And also Mr. Texera, again our new EL director, he is going to have a presence there. Both people are going to have an office, we're working on that, where they can actually sit and if a person wants to go to them, they can. It was only natural to have Mr. Texera be there more because all of the EL middle school students and teachers are housed at the McGlynn. We've already decided that we're going to have the open house for grade five parents together, both principals. presenting and then again having the tours of the buildings for the parents. I think we need to together during the school year work on some systemic changes to the protocols for the school selection. Because what's happened is it's resulted in this imbalance in both numbers, but not just numbers, but socioeconomic status. 20% free and reduced lunch at the Andrews and 40% at the McGlynn. It's just like a huge discrepancy. So, we have to together come up with a way for parents to have a voice in school selection, but get around this issue that's occurred this year. And again, we'll have to sit down together and put all of our minds to that. We're planning for more programs at the McGlynn to perhaps attract some students back to the McGlynn. I know that Ms. Lew and I have spoken already about an Odyssey of the Mind program, perhaps to go into the McGlynn, perhaps something around STEM. which would be something beneficial. And then we will look to move some EL classes back to the Andrews, similar to what occurred at the Roberts and the Brooks this year. The thinking was, we used to have EL students in both schools. And then about, I want to say five years ago, we decided that we could actually use staff more efficiently if we had all of the students and all of the EL staff. in one building. But now the numbers have grown. So, it's warranted that we could, again, have students move back and we would still not have. What we're having before with so few EL students is that you'd have the EL teachers running between buildings and losing time having to travel. But now we have so many more students, we feel we could have dedicated staff at each building. So, we'll be looking to do that as well. And as we move forward, we will keep the committee informed. We'll look to you for some guidance on some of these large issues. And again, we welcome your input as we move forward and do our best to make this a better situation.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Ms. Vander Kloof. Beverly, one of the big concerns this year was for the students who wanted to go to the Andrews and didn't get into the Andrews. And you already note that we still have a 47 discrepancy. But it was more than that, because there were parents of students who were very upset that this didn't work out well. I'm hoping that we are tracking those students and making sure that we know that a guidance Councilor, the principal, knows who those students are and are tracking how they're doing, helping make sure that they're getting connected to other kids in the school. This was clearly a great concern to the committee members, so perhaps you could address that.
[Beverly Nelson]: In terms of the number of parents that wanted, we had a wait list.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: We knew that... No, not in terms of that.
[Beverly Nelson]: What's being done now to make sure those students are... We have, again, what happened during the summer is that some parents that would call my office, they again had information that their student was the only student who wasn't from that particular elementary school who wasn't going to the Andrews. we said that's not the case. Again, lists were made available of other students that were from the same school that were gonna go to the McGlynn. The principals are aware, Mr. Edwards is aware of the students that really wanted to go to the Andrews. He's working with them. For example, that young girl who wants to be in the production at the Andrews, we're working with her family to make sure she's doing that. And again, we're reassuring parents, and I know a lot of that I did this summer, is that the students adjust. And, you know, it's really beneficial sometimes to meet new students. You're all going to be together in the high school in a few short years. But we will make that transition for those students and those families that didn't get their first choice. We'll make sure that they you know, it's duly noted and that they, again, dealt with. But I haven't gotten any phone calls since school began, quite honestly. So, everybody seems to have, I don't know if you have any, but I haven't. It seems like people are settling in and kids are settling in.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Like, I see that it says that we have plans to have more clubs at the McGlynn or clubs where kids could both join. And the thing is, I think we need to do that right away. I want to see options so that those kids who feel that they're taken away from their friends have an opportunity to perhaps join something and not waiting until the second semester.
[Beverly Nelson]: No, we've already spoken. Paul and Jake both have sat down with me We're trying to see which clubs are the ones that, you know, more easily the kids can get to either school where they're going to be housed. So, we're making a list. And as I said, you know, Ms. Lew is very proactive and she wants to get something going right away with, you know, at least that one club. And again, we're in the process of asking them what clubs they think that they want to add in. and then making sure we have the funding for the stipends for the teachers to, you know, jump to basically oversee to be facilitators of these clubs. And we're hoping that the teachers are gonna jump at the opportunity to run something new as well.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I think we usually plan for stipends to take place.
[Beverly Nelson]: There is some, but we know we need additional, we need some additional ones and we're gonna prepare, we're prepared to entertain those requests.
[Mea Quinn Mustone]: Beth Stone. Thanks. You had mentioned, I mean, Odyssey of the Mind with Miss Lowe. So, is that a gifted and talented program?
[Beverly Nelson]: Yes. Okay. Yes. The thing is with the gifted and talented programs now, teachers that run them are supposed to have not a license, it's called an endorsement. So, we're looking to see who might have that endorsement or If the person needs to get the endorsement, what they have to do to get it, and then we'll help them to get that endorsement. So there's a few little regulatory things that we have to look into.
[Mea Quinn Mustone]: And the same with that in the EL classes, are we looking for September of 2018 to move half the EL to the Andrews?
[Beverly Nelson]: Not maybe half, but maybe some of the programs, we'll take a look at what's going on and see what makes more sense. Again, we don't want to overcrowd the Andrews because we already have too many kids already, so we want to move kids in unless we can make sure that things are going to be a little bit more balanced all around.
[Mea Quinn Mustone]: And then, I don't know, because it's been 20 months, so it might have happened before I was on. I was assigned to the Roberts for my children. And then I did not choose the Roberts. I love the Roberts. I can't say enough about Mr. Johnson. But then I get to pick middle school. Why don't we just assign families to one or the other middle school, so you don't have kids who are on a wait list.
[Beverly Nelson]: With your support we could entertain that as one of the options.
[Roy Belson]: Before you go down that road, our schools were built on a racial balance plan. Schools were built with choice as one of the options. And if we have to change that, we need to change the plan and get approval for it.
[Mea Quinn Mustone]: But I don't choose elementary, so weren't they built with the memo?
[Roy Belson]: No, you could choose elementary. See, one of the things is that people don't realize is when the schools were built, The essential part was, first of all, the Andrews and McGuinn were the first two schools that were built. So people, you know, it was a, let's say a progressive movement of youngsters. But you could have chosen certain schools after the other schools were built. So there are plenty of people that have chosen schools outside of their geographical area. It's happened all the time. But now people are getting settled. They're getting comfortable. And to some degree, things have sort of settled in. People sort of stay in their own geographic area for the most part, although there are some people that want to go to another school. One of the things that we've got to deal with is that we may want to look at redistricting to some degree, because the Columbus is somewhat under-enrolled compared to some of the others. And if we change a few lines, we'd get a few more people over there. Just got to look at those things. I mean, it's all part of it. Choice was part of the plan in getting 90 cents on the dollar.
[Mea Quinn Mustone]: Right, but it's not, to the family at home with a preschooler, no one thinks that we're a choice system. Everyone thinks you go to the school closest to your house.
[Roy Belson]: Well, you know, we get plenty of requests. Maybe we don't see it.
[Mea Quinn Mustone]: You grant them.
[Roy Belson]: We grant a lot of them. But you don't see them because you didn't make that request. But we grant a lot of requests. We take a look at class size first. We take a look at whether we think the trends are too much in one direction or the other. We look at the balance between different populations. But we have granted quite a bit. Diane, what would you say? Because Diane handles the elementaries.
[Diane Caldwell]: We do get a lot of requests for different areas in schools and for different reasons, but sometimes parents will send in a request because it's easier for them to get to work, to jump onto 93. Sometimes we have requests from parents who have childcare issues and the childcare person is in another school. So, you know, I can't give you a specific number, but we do get requests.
[Mea Quinn Mustone]: I know, but we're not, Selling ourselves. I don't go in with my four-year-old and say Roberts number one Columbus number two. I don't there's really not a choice system So let's know unless you make the request you're going to write your school or you register your child.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I'm racist So it's an interesting thing but there's always been over the course of all the years that they've been open that there are families who asked to go to one school or another and
[Mea Quinn Mustone]: Right, who are in the know to write a letter or an email. But when you go to register your child, it doesn't say you get to choose the elementary school you want to go to. They say to me, you live on Morgan Ave, you go to the Roberts. And unless you are informed or active on Facebook Medford Moms, you don't know that you can choose what school to go to.
[Roy Belson]: Well, I guess it's been less of a drive for people to do that, but over the years, I can assure you people came in frequently asking to go to one school or the other.
[Mea Quinn Mustone]: Right, but if we are, if for middle school you get a choice, one or two, but we don't get that for elementary school, I'm just saying then why do we give a choice at the middle school?
[Roy Belson]: Well, then you would have a situation where certain sections of the city would populate one school and some would populate the other school.
[Mea Quinn Mustone]: Not if we do a random lottery for kids going to middle school.
[Roy Belson]: Well, then no one gets a choice. This trade-off, so all of these systems, for the most part, it's worked. This is a year where we have one real aberration. If you look at the rest of the enrollment at the Andrews and the McGlynn, it's within a few students of each other.
[Mea Quinn Mustone]: No, because you said, The McGlynn used to be the choice school, and they had over-enrollment.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: But not to this level.
[Roy Belson]: Not at this level. This is an aberration this particular year.
[Ann Marie Cugno]: Point of information. Yeah, point of information on this was that the choice of elementary schools really came into place when we were building the so-called new schools now, because we were going from our neighborhood schools to the larger schools. And because we also did it in a phase way, We had parents that felt that they wanted to wait that extra year either in their neighborhood school, and then it got to a point where because one school was built before the other, that's how the choices came. But over the years now, I know that like the last 12 years that I've been here, what's happened is we've kind of, it's always an option, maybe it's not publicized, and maybe the reason we haven't really done that is because there was other complications that come with it too, is that people that started with that, so we've always honored the siblings, if they were on one side and they went to another school, we've honored that, we've honored other things that people knew about, but we also have to take into consideration the buses, we have to take into consideration that as before, you don't want to have one school really to the max, And and you kind of do want to leave I know our schools are in a different type of neighborhood But parents have actually opted to stay within the system or within their district I should say this is within their neighborhood Let's say in a larger in a larger way when it came to the middle school it was always more of a choice and I think that's how that's the reason we've gone that way and So it's on a campus together. So they started off that way, but then over the years it wasn't like we said No, it wouldn't happen if you wanted to pick a different one But we highly advised parents, you know Where are you living? How you know your social life and and as miss Caldwell said, you know if you're going to work or things like that, whereas you're I mean we've had situations because our children some of the children have decided to go to the McGlynn middle school Their children stayed in the McGlynn elementary school because that's it was a better thing for them But I mean I don't remember in the last few years that we've actually gone out there and publicized That there's a huge choice, and I think it's done because of other expenses that are involved too But with that being said if parents have called they have been given that choice
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: Mr. O'Jarrett.
[Michael Ruggiero]: Yeah, my name is Michael O'Jarrett. I live on 18 Pembroke Street. I want to address this question in particular because I had a number of parents say that they weren't able to get into the school of their choice. This happened to me twice now. Right. There was a school that was closer to them and one parent was so outraged That they were like, oh, if Medford is going to treat me this way, I'm going to take my kids to a private school.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: Is it elementary or middle?
[Michael Ruggiero]: Elementary.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: Elementary school.
[Michael Ruggiero]: And I just want to know, what percent does this happen? Because, I mean, you know, I've only heard one side of the story.
[Roy Belson]: Well, I think that there were a few situations where we were concerned about class size. And so there was some desire that maybe we should move people to one school or the other. In some cases, it could be transportation situations that were in there. But Diane, you may want to.
[Diane Caldwell]: No, it's usually. We usually look at class size issues. And when we have kindergartens or different grade levels that begin to fill up, we certainly don't want to put additional students in that school. So if, for instance, there was a child and one of the classes was only 17 or 19 students, we would accommodate. And in the past, we have accommodated them.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: But I think your question is someone that lives in that school district, neighborhood, whatever we want to refer to it as, didn't get to go to that school.
[Diane Caldwell]: That's not true. I haven't heard of that at all. It's not someone in the neighborhood. No. If they're designated, for instance, if it's a Brooks School student, and in their designated neighborhood, they all went to that school. That's what I hear.
[Michael Ruggiero]: It's probably. Yeah, they have fresh choice. There was the way the district lines worked out, that they were closer to one, but they weren't requested. I just want to get a sense of what percentage. that happens? Very small, very small.
[Mea Quinn Mustone]: When was the last time you redistricted? One at a time please.
[Roy Belson]: Long time ago, long time ago.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: When we opened the schools probably.
[Roy Belson]: There was one redistricting that took place probably three or four years in and that's it.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: It's been a while.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: Mr. Benedetto? So I think I live in that neighborhood. that it used to be like North Street, and it used to be Winthrop Street over, you go to the Brooks, and then they redistricted it. And I didn't realize at the time it had been redistricted, so when people were talking to me, this was prior to me being on this committee, I was like, yeah, you just go down the street to the Brooks. But they had redistricted it, so it went to North Street, down, went to the Brooks. To the Columbus. from North Street over was redistricted to the Columbus School, which wasn't as close, and where some people, like on my street, would have been able to walk their children to school, now live much further. So I think that's more what the concern was. And I have heard people in the Hillside area make comments like, I could walk my child every day, but I can't, it's too far. Now I have to bus them or bring them and it's because of that last redistricting.
[Michael Ruggiero]: It's possible that there was a miscommunication. I'll talk to the parent and see if we can forward that information to you guys. But it was that exact issue that she could walk it, but now she can't walk and she was very frustrated at the response she received from the school district. I'm sure it was just a miscommunication.
[Roy Belson]: Let me give you a little bit on that too, just to think about it. When the schools were built, The two schools that sort of had a lock on the Brooks were the Dame and the Irving and Gleason. Those were the three. But there was a whole portion of people that went to the Dame. that we needed to take to the Columbus, because we would have had the Columbus even more underpopulated than it is today. So there was a need to make a division on that side of the river and move it towards the Columbus, or else we would have had an underpopulated school in South Medford and an overpopulated school in West Medford. So that was the sort of divide there. And of course, with busing transportation, we felt it was very doable. That was the thinking at the time.
[Michael Ruggiero]: Yeah, it's not that, I don't think there was any malfeasance or practice on anyone's part, it was just a question of miscommunication. And I just wanted to get a sense of how often that happens for parents, because as well, many parents don't think that they do have a choice, at least in my experience when talking to them.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: So just to follow up, as a committee member, I do hear that as well. Ms. Vander Kloof. I just comment on the district.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: So when we did it, it was very unpopular. And there were many, many parents who were extremely concerned. One of the things which now is I hear so many positive things about the Columbus that I think that parents, I've not heard anywhere near the level of concern because once people go and meet Mrs. K, they're so happy and the school is such a positive place to be. So I just haven't heard that level. The ugliest word of being a school committee member is probably redistricting. I mean, really positive. And Mia, you nearly took my breath away when you said, why don't we just do a lottery and have them do that? Well, that might be something we're going to talk about, but we're going to make A lot of people unhappy no matter what we do when we talk about this type of things of equity between choice and schools. It's a very difficult thing as a school committee member, because we are naturally people who want to please. And unfortunately, when you make that type of decision, you're going to not make everybody, it's impossible to make everybody happy. So what we have to concentrate on is we have to look at the total population of kids and say, what is the most equitable thing for our student body? And how are we making sure? And one of the things is when you go into those school buildings, you will see that they all have the same, they have a gym, they have a library, they have a... because we were so concerned at the time of building them that wherever a student in Medford went, that they would have an equitable building and environment to learn in and also populate as close as we can with the same kind of draws. This is, when I've been on the committee, the McGlynn at one point was more popular, and then it became the Andrews, and then it became the McGlynn. We've never had such an inequity as we did this year, and hopefully we won't again. But we clearly have to take steps this year to look at it. And in the meantime, my concern is the well-being of the students who didn't want to go.
[Michael Ruggiero]: Yeah, the parents I spoke with, I have to talk with them obviously, but I'll forward you the information if they agree. They felt they were sort of, Pushed into the Columbus, and I think that that was just that whether it was the reality of the perception I just maybe it's a question of just clearing it up We don't want to have one school, which has 300 kids in one course And that's the challenge of course very good.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: Thanks, Mike. Thank you They're a motion to receive this paper in place.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: I just had a question if you don't mind It was about Study Island, how much that costs, and why has Andrews had it for a while and McGlenn not?
[Beverly Nelson]: Study Island, Mr. DeLava had put that in his regular budget for several years because he wanted to have that reading instruction to be delivered in terms of the RTI. Because of the way the scheduling was done that wasn't done the same way as the McGlynn, there was not the need for it. We said we have to do it differently, okay? We need to make sure that the two schools are doing RTI and that they have the materials that they need. Study Island for both math, it's a very good diagnostic tool. For both of them we were able to, I think we're under like $4,000 at the McGlynn. What we did at budget time we did include it at the McGlynn budget But then we were able to get this new grant this summer that paid for it So we could put the money back in and probably use it for stipends for clubs.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: So Okay at budget time we we heard from people that RTI was extremely important and a few committee members were really focused on this as being a budget item and now it wasn't and At budget time and now we're purchasing stuff like we talked about staff maybe for RTI and there was talk about using people in the
[Beverly Nelson]: That's elementary. The middle school, Dr. Chiesa had put the study island in her English budget for the McGlynn because she knew it was used at the Andrews very effectively. But again, we can throw that money back into something else because we have this brand new Title IV-A grant that we can support that. The plan was to have it at the McGlynn this year, okay?
[Erin DiBenedetto]: Great, so my other comment is about the clubs. Now, Mr. DeLaver has been here for years asking more and more money for the clubs because they're so popular. And because it makes the children feel a part of that community and the social piece is so important. And I think that is a big draw for the middle schoolers. And I remember either myself or someone else asking why can't we open it up to the McGlen kids and have them go back and forth. He said they've tried it on a few occasions, if I remember correctly, I wish he was here, and that it really doesn't always work. So I just want to make sure that we figure out a way that it does work. And I want not only the McGlynn kids to go over to Andrew's to take part, I want some really cool things at the McGlynn that draws those kids over. Because I really want, you know, the McGlynn has a little bit more space with them.
[Beverly Nelson]: In talking to the principals, one of the issues with having the kids, let's say, from the McGlynn go to a club at the Andrews is just we have to make sure the safety issue, that the kids are, because they're not as well known in the school, so we have to make sure we have systems in place that those kids, they're supposed to be coming over from the McGlynn, they're truly there, okay, and that was the concern that they identified this past week.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: So the drama club that is excellent and it's well-reviewed at the Andrews School, could it be housed at the McGlynn? Or not? Because the McGlynn has the auditorium.
[Beverly Nelson]: The teacher is at the Andrews. I guess that's how that happened, the teacher that runs it. But the McGlynn has- It's after school and the McGlynn has the talent show though, so I mean they both have you know structures in place for the arts It's just different Okay, but we but we can like I said that one that one student again the father wrote me an email the students at the McGlynn But she'd like to participate in the drama because that's her her real passion, and we're working to get her over there, so I
[Erin DiBenedetto]: So I'm sure there's other children as well, and I would like it open to them as well.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Mayor Burke. Ms.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: Vandiver.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I think there's a reality that needs to be mentioned. The teacher is extraordinary. She does an extraordinary job getting all of those students onto the stage. I don't know if there's room one inch that is not covered by- She had a hundred last year. Right. So either we convince her and she would probably kill her because she told us to do it at the other school as well, or we have someone else run a drama program at the McGlynn that's equally popular. Because to just say, okay, every student, if I understand the student that you're talking about, But frankly, airing this, I bet tomorrow morning you're going to have 25 calls of kids who hear this.
[Beverly Nelson]: I won't be in tomorrow, Mr. Superintendent.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: So perhaps we have to think about running a drama program.
[Beverly Nelson]: We have some new music teachers, I know that, that we hired, and I'll talk to Mrs. Igney about maybe doing that. I know that the teacher is extraordinary, she's amazing. I was at the farmer's market in North Andover on a Sunday last week and it's Mrs. Nelson, Mrs. Nelson, there she was volunteering up there, so she's extraordinary.
[Roy Belson]: So I know that some people might disagree with this, but I'm going to say it anyway. This is that when one school draws a little bit more than the other school, The other school has to want to compete. The other school has to want to pick up the energy and to try and find ways to bring people, because they should take pride in their development and making some things happen instead of saying, oh, I don't know what was made. I think there's a certain amount of that. And I've said this to some of you as we've talked. The culture at one place is not as energetic as the culture at the other. And we've got to change that. And that's part of the reasons why we made some of the changes we made. Sending a message. And that's the way you do it. You have to do it. You know, when we talked about in the past, McGlynn was taking over the place and the Andrews was falling backwards after a number of years. And we sent a message and we changed some things. So it's not perfect, but it's an attempt to send a message and say, come on, you want to be the school of choice, you want to bring people to you, then you've got to step it up a little bit. And that happens, it happens in sports, it happens in the arts, it happens in academics. I don't believe in competition as the only way of doing it, but sometimes there's a little competition that's useful.
[Mea Quinn Mustone]: With the federal funding, you said they had to be schools with a similar student population. Not federal. What did you say about that? Oh, state. State, sorry, not federal. But how does the Andrews have 20% low and reduced?
[Roy Belson]: It didn't have to be the same population, it had to be within ranges.
[Mea Quinn Mustone]: But 20% to 44% for that subgroup is pretty big.
[Roy Belson]: It's a change. And because part of it is the growth of the Yale population has changed a lot. I mean, that was not as significant years ago. It's now significant. It's now emerged, and it will continue to emerge.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: And it was part of a racial balance plan back then as well. So that's a new challenge for us.
[Roy Belson]: It's a new challenge for us. But again, we work at these things. And every year there's going to be challenges. This is one of them. And we'll make it work. We'll get on it. We've got a lot of things moving. We've talked about a lot. We're certainly not being satisfied about it. We're saying, let's go make it happen. But we need everybody on board. It can't be, woe is me, they did something to me. They've got to step up too. Ms.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Van der Kloot. I just had one more question, a little bit back to earlier in your report. You mentioned to us the teacher changes. And I'm wondering if that's because are the teachers willing to do that? Are we going to see grievances at some point? I just wondered.
[Beverly Nelson]: We did not change any one subject they taught. We changed grade levels. No one likes change, quite honestly. And again, we exhibited some resistance. But again, we didn't put an English teacher in a math class. And contractually, we have the ability to write. The middle school, you know, I taught middle school for 23 years, okay? And I, you know, I was at the Roberts for 13 years. And all of a sudden, what was the superintendent said, you have to go to the Lincoln. Was I happy? No, I was not happy. Was I fine when I got there? Was I a better teacher? Absolutely. I think that the middle school is the only level of teaching where a person could conceivably stay in the same job year after year. Elementary teachers go from grade to grade. High school teachers teach different subjects. Every year you might be a world history teacher, then you might be a U.S. history teacher. In rethinking all of this, quite honestly, what perhaps we should have learned. You know, we went from the three middle schools to the two. I spent that summer drying tears how this person couldn't possibly teach without their teammate. And I said to people, if you feel this strongly after a year, come back and see me and we'll think about moving you back. No one came back to see me. I think change is healthy. I think it's very healthy for a teacher who's an 8th grade teacher to be a 7th grade teacher because that 8th grade teacher knows what a 7th grade student has to do to get to 8th grade. And I think it's very healthy and we're not asking them to teach outside of their license, their content area. There were needs in that school. We had a brand new reading teacher. She needed veteran English teachers to support her. That new English teacher that was hired would not have been able to help her in the way the veteran teacher was.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: I understand, I was just curious why you were making, you know, informing the committee specifically. I mean, obviously, it's useful for us to know, but I just was curious.
[Beverly Nelson]: Well, we want you to know what we did, because you might get phone calls, I'm sure. Okay. And Mr. Cieri came tonight because he wanted to speak if there was a question about the science. Obviously, we did this with his blessing and recommendation. Science frameworks are new, and he knows his people best, and that change was, again, for the best, are people happy? No one likes change, but you know what? It's healthy, it's good. I went through it. I was a better teacher. I thought, how could I possibly leave my classroom in the Roberts? I could teach from my car by the time I got through. I mean, you just become more flexible and you meet new people and you get new ideas. So, it's healthy, it's just not pleasant to go through initially.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Okay, thanks. Thank you.
[Michael Ruggiero]: One more question here. If a parent has trouble reading perhaps the form for admissions, what's the default school that they get sent to if they don't return the form to you? Is it that they get defaulted to McGlynn?
[Roy Belson]: Well, they were defaulted to McGlynn now because that was the school that was essentially under enrolled in the sixth grade.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: Very good. Is there a motion to accept this report and place it on file? Second. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes. Report on enrollment impact of new real estate development in Medford.
[Roy Belson]: This is a report you asked for, and it's timely because I'll be at the City Council tomorrow night and there's at least three motions on the agenda to ask me these questions, okay? But I think you should be very pleased when you look at the details here, so I'm going to go through it a little bit because I think it's really a significant report. So it's designed to show school enrollment impact of new real estate development in Medford. This report looks at eight real estate complexes that contain 150 units or more. We didn't look at the baby ones here and there because that would be too small. The attached chart identifies each complex and provides information on the total number of enrolled students and their distributions across each of our schools. The overall initial enrollment in our schools is 4,257 students, which is 54 students higher than last year at this time. This number is going to grow moderately as we get to October, because that's the way things happen. The total number of students living in these eight complexes is 105. Two of the students are in outside placements. Overall, the enrollments from these eight complexes is 2.4% of our total school population. Given existing class sizes and space capacity, the enrollment from these developments has no significant effect. The average class size of our elementary schools is 18.3 students in the regular education classrooms. I provided a chart that details the grade level distribution, another chart that looks at each school, a third chart that shows enrollment distribution by complex in school, and a fourth chart that shows the enrollment percentage by school. Our elementary schools could enroll an additional 500 students and still be within our contractual limits for class size. We could enroll an additional 155 students and still maintain an average class size below 20 students, given normal distributions. Our middle schools were built for 1,200 students. We currently have 937. Overall, our middle school class size in the four major course subjects is around 20 students. So again, our class size is excellent, but we have plenty of capacity. People are saying there's no capacity anymore. The new developments are going to swamp the schools. Not true. The high school vocational program has room to grow. Space utilization could be adjusted if necessary to increase enrollment substantially. For example, moving the pre-K programs and offices would open up additional space in the future. If necessary, we can consider some redistricting to shift enrollment to the Columbus. The allocation of specialized spaces for small groups and services could be revisited to create more sections or more options as well. In conclusion, the data clearly indicates that the impact of major residential real estate development has not adversely impacted our schools. So we're going to take you to the first chart. You're looking at the eight big complexes. If you look at them and you see the numbers of families in the first column, So a family might have more than one kid, so that there would be less than the total number. So if you have 16 number students in 100 Rivers Edge Drive, you only have 11 families. Some families have more than one child. And so on and so forth. And some of these complexes have existed for some time. They're not brand new. They've been here for a while. So when you look at it, you're looking at 105 students impacting us at this point in time, and two of them are in outside placements, and the distribution's pretty good. So let me go to the next chart for a minute.
[Mea Quinn Mustone]: Can I just say, is Lumiere less than 150 units?
[Roy Belson]: No.
[Mea Quinn Mustone]: So is Lumiere one of those addresses? Yes. I just don't know what the address is.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: It's the third one, the 3780 Mystic Valley Parkway. Is Lumiere? So there's nine students from Lumiere.
[Roy Belson]: OK, Lumiere. All right, so you go to the next chart, and you look at grade level class sizes. All right, kindergarten, there are 16 teachers district wide, and the average class size is 18.4. And grade one, 18.8. In grade 2, 18. In grade 3, 17.7. In grade 4, 19.3. In grade 5, 17.7. Those class sizes are private school class sizes. There are very few school districts in this area that have class sizes that good. You've done an excellent job supporting that. But anyone who tries to give you the impression that we're swamped and overcrowded, is misleading everyone. We're not.
[Mea Quinn Mustone]: Can we just go back to the buildings, just because I don't know the addresses. So 100 Rivers Edge Drive, where's that?
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: Rivers Edge is along the Malden River. It runs from Wellington Station to Malden Station. It's a new development. It's commercial and residential.
[Mea Quinn Mustone]: OK. 3,600 Mystic Valley Parkway. Is that behind the old Malden Mall? Yes. OK. And that 3920 Mystic Valley Parkway?
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: Those are the condos that are, those are directly behind, if you're on 16 looking at them all to the right. I'm pretty sure. They're the condos. Okay. Cabot Road? That's down Wellington Circle as well. That's brand new, so this is just, it's just beginning, it has its occupancy starting up. Okay.
[Mea Quinn Mustone]: And then the boat that's station landing, and then Riverside Ave.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: That's the towers at Riverside Ave.
[Roy Belson]: Is that near? They've been there forever.
[Mea Quinn Mustone]: Near La Conte Rink, is that?
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: They are, yes. In 1979, they've been there since.
[Roy Belson]: One of the things you need to think about about these things is that typically some young families might move in when they can afford, let's say, to live in a rental unit or a condo, as opposed to a full house at this point, given real estate prices. But when their families grow, they move out. They don't stay in these developments. They move out to houses or they move elsewhere. But we're going to have to see what that does because basically, you know, as housing prices in Medford go up, some young families are not going to be able to afford to come in here as a starter home.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: Mayor Burke, excuse me. Mr. Benedetto. As far as buildings, what are the buildings, you know, when you go down 9th Street at the end, there's a new... 9th Street.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: That's the one that, the five cabin is the brand new one that's having like a ribbon cutting in a week or so, but they have started their occupancy. The one before the train tracks, they're under 150 units. He looked at 150 as a threshold.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: Okay, so all the condo buildings on 8th, 9th and 11th. all those buildings are not included in any of these lists. Those are existing, those are existing. They've been there for a while. It's just that apartment complex at the very end.
[Roy Belson]: And the other thing you need to know, the other thing you need to know, look at the total distribution in the schools. Even if I didn't include a building, your class sizes are still low. Your numbers are still low, so that even if we added another building, it wouldn't have impacted it.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: So could I continue? Really, for a true comparison, you should be looking at the Rivers Edge Drive. That's brand new. It's apartments that are built, you know, they haven't been existing for a very long time. And the station landing would be next up. And they were put in in 2004. But they were part of like transit development, smaller units. So those are probably the ones I would be looking at, but comparable about going forward.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: So I did request this report and it's because of future building and if we have the baseline now that we know where we're at, I have no problem with this. The only data that's not on here that I would like from the census piece is how many of these people are, how many younger children, pre-school age children. do they have that will be coming into our school district? Because they're newer apartments, they might, right, and that is something you would get from the census, and I understand that. And my only other concern is on the, I believe, third graph. and where it says school development enrollment percentage, I just want to keep an eye on things. And at the McGlynn, these new students, well these new buildings affect 10%, almost 10%, 9.6% of their enrollment. So we want to see. Because of geography. Right. That's my whole point here. If we're adding more apartments or condos in our community. We need to see where in the community is and which schools it's going to impact and how we want to deal with that. We want to be proactive, not reactive. So we just want to be careful with that. maybe we redistrict any new building in this side, from this side over goes to this school, and this side over goes to this school for future districting, not redistricting existing people. Then you get less people mad at you already that live here. All right? So that's why I asked for this report, is I want to be proactive, not reactive in how we place students. and to make sure that no one school is more crowded than others. So this is good information, so I make a motion at this point to re-look at these numbers again at the end of the school year, so in June. I have to do January. See if there's any changes.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: This capital will be coming online. Okay, so even, yeah.
[Unidentified]: So moved.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: On the motion, this report be updated for the first meeting in January. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes. Thank you. And that the report be placed on file. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes. Financial report close out of fiscal year 17. Ms. Patterson.
[Kirsteen Patterson]: So just as a preview, as a first-year finance director, it was important to become familiar with Medford's chart of accounts, the budget categories, structurally, and payroll placements. So this end-of-year report is a High-level look by department and category for end of year fiscal 17 as the report indicates the appropriation budget Offered by the city side is the fifty four million three hundred and thirty three thousand an additional 2.1 was identified from outside revenue sources as the overall budget totaling $56,443,392 for fiscal year 2017. The year end finished with expenditures and remaining encumbrances totaling $55,686,555. So the difference in this closeout was $1,458,616. This was a $651,776 less than projected to cover from additional revenue sources within the school departments. The remaining revenue offset has already been earmarked and planned for balancing for the FY18 budget revenue sources as well.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: So we didn't spend enough money? Oh no.
[Kirsteen Patterson]: Nope, that's not what we're saying. We were looking at, you know, as we build the budget, it's a multi-year planning and analysis process. So it's done late in the fiscal year so that we can attempt to project where we are at in the current fiscal year and identify issues or concerns moving forward that we need to provide additional sources for, which we knew we were going to have some lower circuit breaker reimbursements in FY18. We were going to have reduced grant funding, and we have reduced homeless transportation reimbursement. So all of these indicators made it necessary and prudent for us to be as conservative as possible. So that $651,000 has been earmarked and planned for in the FY18 budget process. Good news. So, moving forward, again, as high-level overviews, and again, these are programmatic savings in various line items. So, district-wide salaries, we budget for a lump sum that is to be distributed and reallocated. So, again, being new within the district, it looks like there's funds remaining there. However, they have already been dispersed among the appropriate accounts for step lane changes, things of that sort. The district-wide substitute account, we did realize some savings related to more automatic and accurate substitute call-out. The ASAP system was implemented and completed year one in fiscal year 2017, and it did realize some savings in that area. The ELL department salaries, these were paid within school program codes, so although they had been budgeted in one department, they were, again, the matching up in terms of salaries was for the end of year reporting purposes and did not necessarily align with the budget line placement. So again, just moving forward from my perspective, year one finance director, it was necessary for me to identify and see where these were before making significant changes. So we will be in that process moving forward for FY18. Additionally, the similar situation in the guidance, the directors were paid within the district-wide program versus the guidance department. And again, this is reporting distinctions for end-of-year report that did not align with the budget placement. the English language arts salaries, again, paid within the school program codes. And again, this is just for the understanding of the end of year report. The Department of Ed requires us to report by school. So there is a need to track this and be able to see the expenses for salaries in certain categories at a school-wide level. So that's something, you know, to keep in mind as we do budget a program, those expenses still will have to be reported out at the end of year. So there's still some alignment within our structure that just has to be translated to the end of year report. So where it seems to be variances, That's the rationale in terms of the actual placement of the expense. Again, similar situation within the library department salaries. The director had been paid through district-wide program area versus the library departmental area. The buildings and grounds, the utility usage for heating, which was natural gas, and our phone services did have some favorable contract rates, and we did have lower utilization. with the weather and things of that sort, so that was favorable. That was, again, unpredictable year-to-year. So the budget reflects a need and anticipated heating year. Due to certain situations in terms of building temperatures, things of that sort, it can fluctuate. Hopefully we don't see a spike this year, but I don't know what the Farmer's Almanac will reveal. Again, each year during our budget process, our revenue sources are identified as the supplement to the appropriated budget. And that's a means to achieve the district goals. So the amounts that we had utilized and identified from each source was dependent on program needs and the available balances. So as we close out and continue to reconcile the year end, We will draw from the following accounts that we had identified during the FY17 budget development process. And again, with foresight going into the FY18 process, those similar program areas were earmarked for revenue offsets. And those areas include the before and after school programs, the MEEP, the SURE, and special ed tuitions that come in. The circuit breaker, again, we've been notified that that reimbursement level has decreased. We're down to about 65%. And that is a cost that cannot be managed or tracked year to year, dependent on student need. So transportation reimbursement, again, that continues to drop, and as we have fewer students placed out of our district, those funds begin to dwindle. We did have vocational tuitions, and we had E-rate reimbursement, as well as our building facility rentals, which included all of the community schools, our rink, our pool, the fields, which we have reviewed extensively. And again, continuous communication, working with the city hall, our auditor side, and treasury, we will be determining final amounts from each of the sources and plan the application of those moving forward to FY18. So as we go forward, moving along in this fiscal year, reports will be provided as we continue to do the finalization of closeouts.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: Very good, thank you so much, Christine. Mayor Burkus. Ms. Stone.
[Mea Quinn Mustone]: Kristina, just on the first page, the third paragraph, the last one, the undistributed unemployment, is that one employee, or is that a number of employees?
[Kirsteen Patterson]: No, multiple employees throughout the year.
[Mea Quinn Mustone]: Okay, and is that, so it's 72,000, is that accurate? Is that a typical year for unemployment?
[Kirsteen Patterson]: That seems to be the average looking back, yes. Yeah, wow. And that's just the school department size. Right, right.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Ms. Van der Kloot. Christine, I just want to thank you for your diligence in sorting out all of these accounts, and this is good news. Great. Thank you.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: Thank you very much, Christine. Thank you. So at this point, if we could just entertain a quick little diversion. I don't know how many of you realize, but over the course of the last week, we've been collecting sporting goods equipment to send down to the Houston area. We realized how they were devastated, and a lot of people were giving blood, donating money, and doing all sorts of things to help them out. Our head baseball coach, Mike Nestor, came up with an idea, and he said, why don't we do a drive? These kids want to get back. They have no equipment. Everything's been just ruined. So he wanted to start a drive for it. Jack Dempsey has put together this awesome video that is on a truck right now rolling into Texas. And it's just really spectacular how the community came together. A lot of the sporting teams and the sporting equipment stores that supply our players with their equipment came through and put so many things on this truck. It's just simply amazing. So without further ado, I hope you all enjoy this video that Jack and the team put together with all the kids at the high school.
[Robert Skerry]: Harvey you have a problem the Mustangs
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: Hello, my name is Stephanie Muccini-Burke. I'm the mayor of Medford, Mass., home of the mighty Medford Mustangs. They say up here in Medford country that our veins bleed blue and white, and we know you're the same. We're here to support you in rebuilding your community. I'm here with our athletic director, Bobby Maloney, and our head baseball coach, Mike Nestor. Bobby, would you like to say a few words?
[Robert Maloney]: Yeah, Barry Campbell, from one Mustang to another, we're coming with some help. The citizens in the school department are going to step up, and you're going to get a nice truckload from Local 25 headed your way. Good luck, keep us in touch, and thoughts and prayers are with the entire community.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: Michael.
[SPEAKER_23]: Coach Kelly Meade, baseball coach. From one to another, we're here, we've got your back. We're going to show you what Mustang Strong is all about.
[Annie Wells]: Mustang Strong!
[Roy Belson]: From our Mustangs in Medford to your Mustangs in Texas, you have our support. We're with you. Go Mustangs!
[Robert Maloney]: Houston, we stand with you.
[Diane Caldwell]: Go Mustangs! Go Mustangs! Go Mustangs!
[qChIJ_zcV6s_SPEAKER_00]: Go Mustangs! Alright, from Mustang to Mustangs. This is Coach Joe Donlon of the Medford High School, Mustangs, letting you guys know that we are one track family and we're here for you.
[Robert Maloney]: We support you!
[Sebastian Tringali]: Go Mustangs, we're here for you. Once a Mustang, always a Mustang.
[Unidentified]: Go Mustangs!
[Nick Tucci]: Hello. The Mustang way is that we take care of our own and we support each other at all times. We're with you every gallop of the way.
[Mea Quinn Mustone]: From our Mustang Seors, keep on galloping!
[SPEAKER_15]: Go Mustangs!
[Mea Quinn Mustone]: We support the Kingman Mustangs! Woo! Go Mustangs!
[Nick Tucci]: I want to first pass along my best wishes for your recovery efforts down there in Houston. Go Mustangs!
[Greenspan]: Go Mustangs!
[Unidentified]: Go Mustangs!
[SPEAKER_23]: Go Mustangs! Go Mustangs! Go Mustangs, baby! Let's go! Go Mustangs! Go Mustangs! Bentley Mustangs are here to support the Kingswood Mustangs. Us Mustangs stick together, hang in there through the good and bad. We're with you. We're gonna fight! We support you.
[Unidentified]: Go Mustangs!
[SPEAKER_18]: Mustangs, we got your back.
[Unidentified]: Go Mustangs!
[SPEAKER_18]: Mustangs support Mustangs. Hang in there. Hi, Kingwood High School. My name is Jason Nascimento. I'm the head football coach here at Medford High School. And all the Medford Mustangs here want to wish all of our well wishes to support you guys.
[SPEAKER_00]: Go Mustangs! We, Mustangs, are with you. From us to you.
[Mea Quinn Mustone]: From our Mustangs to yours, keep pushing forward. It gets better. You've got this. Go Mustangs! Go Mustangs! Go Mustangs!
[SPEAKER_00]: from the medford mustang softball team to the kingwood mustang softball team.
[SPEAKER_15]: You're not the only one We all have our ups and all have our downs But we have to find a way around This is not the end can fly into a better tomorrow and leave yesterday behind
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: So we want to thank the Teamsters 25 for trucking down all of the items that we collected over the course of the last week. I know that they probably will still take more down if we are able to give them some more stuff. And just all the athletes that participated. They all were there. All the teams came. All the teams helped. And we're doing such a nice thing for the kids in the Houston area. So thanks to everybody who donated. And keep up the good work. Thank you. All righty, we will now be entering executive session. Is there a vote, Madam Secretary?
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Oh, we have condolences.
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: New business. School Committee Resolution. Be it resolved that the Medford School Committee express its sincere condolences to the family of Rocco Antonio Cangemi. Rocco was the cousin of Andrew's principal, Paul D'Oliva, who died suddenly in a tragic accident. Be it resolved that the Medford School Committee express its sincere condolences to the family of Jean Cain. Mrs. Cain was a former elementary school teacher. She was also the wife of Robert Cain, a former guidance Councilor in the Medford Public Schools. Be it resolved that the Metro School Committee express its sincere condolences to the family of Robert Prince. Mr. Prince was a former supervisor of music in the Metro Public Schools. And be it resolved that the school committee express its sincere condolences to the family of Joseph DiNucci. Mr. DiNucci was the state auditor for the Commonwealth of Mass for 24 years, a former state representative, and championship boxer. And we also have an item under suspension that the Methodist School Committee expresses sincere condolences to the family of Luigi Guarino. Mr. Guarino was the brother-in-law of McGlynn principal, Diane Guarino. We could all rise for a moment of silence on the passing. Thank you. Motion to go into executive session. Motion to go into executive session, seconded by Ms. Cunha. Roll call vote, please.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Mrs. Cunha?
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: Yes.
[Paulette Van der Kloot]: Mrs. DiBenedetto? Yes. Mrs. Kreatz? Yes. Mrs. Mustone? Yes. Mr. Skerry? Yes. Mrs. Van der Kloot? Yes. Mayor Burke?
[Stephanie Muccini Burke]: Yes. Seven in the affirmative, zero in the negative. The motion passes. We will now be entering executive session. Can we stay in here? I think that's fine.
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