[Burke]: Present, seven present, none absent, all please rise and salute our flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. First item, approval of the minutes of December 17, 2018. Motion to approve on the floor by Mr. Russo, seconded by Ms. Kreatz. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes. Approval of bills, transfer of funds. Ms. DiPenedeto. This is a pattern.
[DiBenedetto]: It's been a pattern for a while. I didn't flag it, so if I had a question, I'll come back to it. Sorry. Motion to approve.
[Burke]: On the motion to approve, is there a second? Mr. Ruggiero. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes. Approval of payrolls.
[SPEAKER_14]: Motion to approve.
[Burke]: Motion to approve by Mr. Benedetto, seconded by Ms. Mustone. All those in favor? All those opposed? Motion passes. Report of the secretary.
[SPEAKER_14]: Motion to approve.
[Burke]: Motion to approve on the floor.
[Kreatz]: Sorry. Oh, OK. I wanted to say Happy New Year, and I put a copy of the report in everybody's packets. and there was a couple of invoices that I signed for that were related to heating, so I wanted to share that information with you because our last meeting, we had some concerns and we had somebody from community here speaking about the heating, and so I guess there's still some ongoing invoices that haven't been signed for yet that will be coming up over the next several weeks. One of them was signed for this particular session was Gone Green Electric, and the work was done at Medford High School, There was an issue with the air handling unit in the gym, and it had to be repaired. The technician troubleshooted the air handler, rewired the motor, and it confirmed with John McLaughlin that he is now working in the gym. There were two invoices for E&E Systems. The technician found that there was some issues with the hot water coil. It was bypassed. you know, it was just interfering with the heating, pretty much, it's really technical. So Annie actually did the work and it was, this is going to service the B building, second floor, and the air handler operates along with the pneumonic controller heat exchanger to provide air and airflow to the B building, second floor. And I just want to thank John McLaughlin, I reached out to him to ask him some questions about these invoices. And that's about it.
[Burke]: Very good. There's a motion on the floor for approval of the secretary's report. Is there a second? Mr. Russo. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes. Also just want to take note that Jasper Suh is present, our school committee representative. If we could enter him into the records, please. Report of committees.
[Kreatz]: We just want to take something out of order, Mayor Burke.
[Burke]: Just the next couple. That would be great. Report of committees. Hearing and seeing none. Community participation. Hearing and seeing none. Ms. Kreatz, motion?
[Kreatz]: Yes. We would like to move the resolution that's at the very end, and it's the resolution for the MassDOT Safe Routes to School application for the Roberts Elementary School.
[Burke]: On the motion to take the paper out of order. Is there a second on the floor to take it out of order? I'm going to include all those in favor. Aye. All those opposed? The paper is Right before us, school committee resolution. Be it resolved that the Medford School Committee hereby approve a letter of support for pedestrian improvements near the Roberts Elementary School, Walk Medford, through the MassDOT Safe Routes to School grant. There's a motion on the floor to approve. As we know, parents, I believe, is there a parent?
[Unidentified]: Sara is here. Sara, come on forward.
[Burke]: Sara McGiven.
[s-4VJY_TglE_SPEAKER_01]: Your name and address for the record, please. Sarah McGivern, Madison Motion Coordinator, Board of Health, and 63 Watervale Road. So as a lot of you know, the Roberts School is applying for the Safe Roads to School Grant to get up to a million dollars of pedestrian improvements within a two-mile radius around the school. There'll be, hopefully, two spots on Fells Way and then one on Salem Street at Hadley Place.
[Burke]: Walk Boston did a safety audit as well just a few weeks ago to look at that area as well. So it's getting intense scrutiny for sure. And we've been very successful. As you know, the Brooks received this grant. It's in the planning processes. MassDOT pretty much takes over the whole process once it's approved. And they've become the leader of it. So they are working towards the Brooks School completion as well. But this would be a wonderful thing if we were able to get this grant. So the motion is to go on record officially. There is a paper in your packet that is a copy of the letter. We're going to circulate it after we take the vote and get signatures on it. All right. There's a motion on the floor for approval by Ms. Kreatz, seconded by Mr. Benedetto. Roll call vote, please.
[Kreatz]: Mrs. DiBenedetto. Mrs. Kreatz, yes. Mrs. Mustone. Yes. Mr. Ruggiero. Yes. Mr. Russo. Yes. Mrs. Van de Koop. Yes.
[Burke]: Yes, seven in the affirmative, zero in the negative. Motion passes and I will sign and circulate. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Sarah. Is a motion on the floor to refer to the regular order of business by Mr. Russo. Is there a second? Yes. On the second, all in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion carries. We are now back on the agenda, which is the superintendent's update and comments. Madam Superintendent.
[Edouard-Vincent]: Happy New Year. While the majority of the past few weeks in metropolitan schools have been, most of us have been on holiday break, many families were assisted by different students and groups from our school community. And prior, this was an oversight that I did not have an opportunity to mention a little earlier, but it's a highlight that I think is important and worthy of sharing with the team. The Lure Club, Glue Glue, at Medford High School, this club was formed from Miss Nyland's French class students. They were motivated by CCSR, our Center for Citizenship and Social Responsibility program to make a difference in the world. With the support of Ms. Nyland, the club created Thanksgiving baskets that went to Medford High School families. The students collected the foods and donations from peers, teachers, and many businesses in Medford in order to make baskets for homeless families in our schools. And they were able to provide Thanksgiving dinner to over 15 Medford High School families, and so we're very proud of the students' accomplishments, and I wanted to say that it was an oversight that I didn't recognize them last time, but I wanted to extend a special thank you to Club Lurgluglu for their work in Miss Nyland's students. I also wanted to recognize Nuha Eliazid. She is a CCSR student as well as a sophomore at Medford High School. And as part of her project over the holiday break, she conducted a toy drive at the Franciscan Children's Hospital, where over 50 toys were collected and delivered to the hospital, and the hospital was very grateful. So I just wanted to recognize her for, again, making a difference in the lives of children that are sick and at the hospital. So thank you for that. Medford High School's transitional program. The students and staff at Project Transition at Medford High School, hosted a holiday gathering along with Malden High School's transitional program. And according to Ms. Huther, a teacher in the program, our access program, she explained that getting these groups of students together was one of the best social opportunities the students have ever had. It provided the students the ability to network outside of their world. Truly, this is what our program is all about. A special thanks to Headmaster Paul DeLeva for his assistance in helping to make it happen for our students at Medford High School and Malden High School. So we were very happy about that event. Also, I'd like to acknowledge our Medford High School's AP in Honors Calculus class. Prior to vacation, Dismissal, students in Ms. Chen's class completed projects on related rates of change and optimization. Students were asked to choose a real-life application problem and then create a three-dimensional physical model. This is one way for students to engage in learning as well as deepen their understanding of mathematics. Using appropriate materials, students produced shadow boxes for the purpose of communicating the mathematical problem and its calculus solution to the audience. In addition to the shadow box, the students had to submit a typed manuscript that described their work. On the project due date, students were given opportunities to engage in an evaluation process. They spent time looking at one another's projects and graded them based on creativity, clarity, and explanation, and the overall presentation. These presentations are very informative And there are photos that are posted on the blog. So please, if you have an opportunity, go to the blog to look at that work. But just excellent work that's happening with our AP and honors calculus students. I also wanted to say over the last time that we met, we had a wonderful ceremony here when our new police chief, John Buckley, was sworn in. It was a fabulous ceremony. and he was sworn into office on Wednesday, December 19, and I was honored to join him here, be here with him and many other dignitaries, his family, fellow department heads, and our wonderful band, the Medford High School String Ensemble, I should say, under the direction of our finance director, Tony Zigny, provided the musical selections for the ceremony. Chief Buckley stated that he plans to continue Medford's community policing initiatives that had begun under Chief Sacco, and he also pledged to reach out to Medford's richly diverse community. We in the Medford Public Schools welcome him aboard and are eager to collaborate with him. Another great partner is Tufts University, and Tufts University will once again be hosting the Tufts Classic at Cousins Gym, Sunday, January 20th. both Medford High School boys and girls basketball teams will be playing the Somerville High School boys and girls basketball teams. Each winner will take home the Tufts Cup. The girls games open the tournament at 12.30 and the boys games will follow at 2 o'clock. There is no admission fee. Instead, Tufts University is collecting perishable food items for Medford and Somerville food pantries. So I hope some of you are able to come out and really support that wonderful event. That date is Sunday, January 20th at 12.30 and 2. Cousins Gym. Lesley University, as I continue to work with our partner, Lesley, it's part of the work that I've been doing with my entry plan and also part of the entry plan is looking at our data as a district. And as we had talked about earlier, math was an identified area that we wanted to work on. And so when you hear me talking about Lesley, the focus really is to address how we performed at the elementary levels. In particular, we're having a particular focus on elementary math, to try to increase outcomes for all students. And since we last met, I had the opportunity to go to Lesley University, and I met with Patricia Cren de Galarce, who is our lead partner on the educational side. And in addition to that, I got to meet with the Board of Trustee member, Art Bartich, who is one of the authors of an early childhood math book, a co-author, and supports the what-if math. And I also had the opportunity to meet with Dr. Rohan Kandargi from MIT. He's a K-12 administrator who works for the Office of Government and Community Relations. He also was very interested in continuing to partner with Medford and with Leslie and looking at opportunities to see how we can continue to make meaningful math partnerships. The conversations that I had with Art Bardage, we're looking at early childhood mathematics and different ways to make math become alive at the youngest levels so that it carries all the way through to the high school levels and in meeting with Patricia, Dr. Galarza, Brenda Galarza. We are in the process of scheduling our second math learning rounds, instructional rounds, and we are going to be scheduling those for the end of January. And we are intending on going a little deeper this time as we go to each school. And so I had the opportunity to also meet many professors at the university. who are interested in continuing to collaborate with us, whether it's conducting learning walks and looking at instruction, or providing support in professional development fashion. So that work is still continuing. On our facilities front, the Karen Theater, the heating coil was replaced over a break. so it is now fixed in the Karen Theater. And building grounds, we are still working and making progress on the gymnasium, but I just wanted to put that forward as well. Lastly, I had the opportunity to look at instruction with Mr. Headmaster Paul DeLeva, and we spent some time, we went to Access Classrooms today, and really got to see wonderful work. The students are so excited to be learning and having us there as guests. We also spent some time on the vocational side of the house and went into carpentry, got to see a beautiful table being sanded by a student. I wish I could have displayed a picture. And the students in our carpentry are getting ready to work on a project where they're going to be constructing bed frames for refugee children. And it's through the Boston Cares Foundation. And so in Medford, we are doing great things to make a difference in the lives of our own community, but also in the lives of the greater community. And so they have not started that project yet, but the wood has been delivered. And so I will definitely keep you posted on the progress that they make there. I got to spend time in Meadowfab. Students shared with me some of their beautiful creations. I saw some steel roses that were made by the students. Beautiful. And they're really excited about the work that's happening there. So I want to continue to just be in classrooms, look at instruction at all levels. It's not always mathematics, but just promoting what's best for the district. And so that's my report for today.
[Burke]: Thank you so much, Madam Superintendent.
[Edouard-Vincent]: Mr. Benedetto.
[DiBenedetto]: Just to let the superintendent know, the Carpentries Shop at the Medford High School for years has made bed frames for homeless families because when a homeless family gets housing, They cannot move in until they have a bed for every child. And when you're homeless and you're just starting out, you have nothing to fill that. So our students have always built beds for people in our community in need. And I think there was a spotlight on them a few years ago about it. It's just a wonderful, one of the wonderful programs that our vocational students reach out to and help people throughout the state of Massachusetts. I actually was telling a group that was looking to donate money to reach out to Chad Fallon to talk to them about maybe buying the mattresses if the kids could make the beds and really get people in housing quickly. So I'm glad to see that they're continuing that. Thank you.
[Burke]: Very good. Thank you, Madam Superintendent. Is there a motion to receive this report? Motion on file by Ms. Van der Kloot, seconded by Ms. Mostone. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion carries. Item 2, informational report on vaping and cannabis. Dr. Randy Schuster.
[Edouard-Vincent]: I'm very excited to have Dr. Randy Schuster come to present to us this evening. She did come in December to present to our administrative team. And there were many, many rave reviews. And so I want you to be able to participate in the wealth of knowledge that will be shared by her this evening. Thank you, Dr. Schuster.
[R-JcMFRQo7E_SPEAKER_27]: Thanks for having me. Welcome, Doctor. Thank you for having me. Don't set the standards too high.
[Burke]: While things are being set up, we all know that vaping has become a hidden talent of some youngsters and adults, and it's really important that we catch hold of this and make sure that the students realize that it's not acceptable to be doing this in schools or anywhere else inside our buildings, and similar to smoking. It's very similar to smoking, and it's not acceptable behavior. And so we've been working quite adamantly, along with Dr. Schuster, with our Board of Health, Team Medford, on trying to really educate those about what's in the vaping materials that they're consuming. So I know this will be a very informative presentation. While they're setting up, would someone like to make a motion to take a paper out of order, items five and six? On the motion to take papers five and six out of order. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes. Item five, recommendation to approve leaders environmental donation of $125. There's a motion for approval of this gift of $125. I'm looking for the paper in my pocket. Mr. Benedetto. Thank you.
[DiBenedetto]: Could we send a letter of thank you?
[Burke]: Absolutely. I think that was a wonderful thing. Possibly in the back of the paper. There's a motion to accept this Leaders Environmental, $125 for education. In appreciation, this is from the president of the company, Luders. In appreciation of all the clients we are privileged to service in Medford, we would like to make this donation to the Medford School Department. Leaders Environmental is a lawn, tree, and shrub care company specializing in science-based, environmentally sound approaches and attentive customer service. There is a motion on the floor for approval. Is there a second? seconded by Mr. Giro. Roll call vote please. Yes. 7 in the affirmative, 0 in the negative. The motion passes. Item 6, recommendation to approve statute for joint city school director of security position. If I could from the chair, as you realize in the budget, we placed a placeholder basically for this position. And it's shared jointly between the schools and the city. And they will oversee security for all of our public buildings. And there is a general law, Mr. Howard Greenspan brought to our attention that we need to actually adopt this. We have posted the job. Interviews are scheduled to begin next week. So we're hopeful to get someone on board very quickly so that they can implement a lot of the changes from the Safe Haven report, et cetera. So are there any questions? Ms.
[Van der Kloot]: Vandekloot? Could you let us know what the projected salary range is? Yes. We can send you a copy of the job description. We'll put it in about 90. OK. And where would the person be housed?
[Burke]: Right now, we're anticipating them being at City Hall. We'll set them up in an office, and then we will figure out if it's a better location. But we want to have them right at City Hall for the time being. OK. Thank you. I think Mr. Russo had a question. Yeah? Mr. Russo.
[Ruseau]: I'm busily eating three-year-old gummies. They're not very good. Will there be any additional staff for this person? I mean, the secretary?
[Burke]: Not right now, no. They will be relying on our office, basically, to support them.
[Ruseau]: Great, thank you.
[Burke]: And more or less working with the police department, building and grounds, Mr. McLaughlin, and all of our principals, et cetera, to really get the lay of the land. look at some of the study the work that's already been done we've received that grant for after shooter grant which the police department is administering and they did an assessment of city hall library as well as the council on aging and we're going to implement some changes based upon what they found and then this person would ultimately be the one that could coordinate all the activities stay on top of cameras and make sure that they're all being checked on a more frequent basis and things of that nature. So we anticipate that this person will be on the road quite a bit, and we look forward to having an extra set of hands in this regard. It's a very important topic.
[DiBenedetto]: Mr. Benedetto. Thank you. So I'd like to know who will actually hire and oversee this person since they're joint between the school and the city side.
[Burke]: It's joint funded. It would be an appointment of myself. But we do have, I think Christine is sitting in.
[Edouard-Vincent]: Christine Patterson will be sitting in on interviews.
[Burke]: We'll be sitting in on the interviews. So the way that I handle most interviews, the team does the interviewing and then they put forth a few recommendations and then determine based on that we do And so, we're going to have to look at the quarries and whatnot, depending upon the job specs.
[DiBenedetto]: And my other question is, will the school security staff then report to this person?
[Burke]: We haven't worked out that logistic yet. OK. But we believe that they will have a dotted line to them right now.
[DiBenedetto]: OK.
[Mustone]: Could I ask, would it have been possible, or is it too late, that could a police officer have been assigned to this,
[Burke]: It's more comprehensive than that. And we looked at all different avenues. And it made sense to have it a standalone independent of all the other bodies that are working out there.
[Mustone]: OK.
[Burke]: So they can really see things through a fresh set of eyes.
[Burke]: Thank you. Ms. Van de Kloop.
[Van der Kloot]: Are there any open interviews that school committee members could attend?
[Burke]: This is really administrative. the appointment process. It's not a school committee appointment. So it would be closed until we get to the final. They'll make recommendations, and then that's usually closed in two weeks. So it's administrative. It's not a, it's different than appointments. Mr. Russo, I should just keep all your mics on. Sorry, I was trying to just get things done while we were waiting.
[Ruseau]: So I just wanted to be sure that, you know, you mentioned the active shooter training that the other parts of the city, but we have not approved active shooter Alice training. No, no, no, no, no.
[Burke]: But you will have a person that will be educated to come in and talk to you about it.
[Ruseau]: That's great.
[Burke]: Or other options.
[Ruseau]: OK, good. Yes. Didn't want that to slip under the covers.
[Burke]: No, no.
[Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Burke]: And the police department has been a huge support system for us in all security measures. So they will continue to be.
[Ruggiero]: Thank you.
[Burke]: Mr. Gero.
[Ruggiero]: Just a question on the chain of command here. this new person will be reporting directly to you and will act independently. So what will the sort of relationship be between this person and the superintendent?
[Burke]: They will work very closely. So there'd be a dotted line to the superintendent also, because we're basically direct reports, municipal versus school. So they would be working just as closely with the school department as the city, probably more so, I would imagine, at the beginning. OK, thank you.
[Kreatz]: Hey. I ran out of scripts again.
[Mustone]: Nitty gritty. But I think because I was surprised when I saw it on the agenda, and we haven't really had a conversation about it since maybe May. Right. Yeah, May. And it probably just fell off my radar. Could it be a possible one-year contract? I mean, just thinking of personnel and how often we talk about the budget and the cost of personnel and the cost of every union, and just to add another person on, whereas I think I'd rather a position for more math coaches. And I understand it's split between the city and the school, but could it be a one-year job to see if they're just implementing what we get from Safe Havens? It's kind of...
[Burke]: But then it's ongoing when you look at our buildings. And there's a lot that goes into it that isn't really being looked at right now. And I obviously can't get into specific measures here. But there are a lot of things that need to be tightened up. And it's ongoing in the maintenance of the equipment that you install and whatnot. OK.
[Mustone]: Thank you.
[Burke]: Is there a motion on the floor to accept statute at Mass General Law, Chapter 71, Section 37M, which basically is to? provide for joint services for the purpose of shared security direct to position.
[SPEAKER_06]: Motion to approve.
[Burke]: There's a motion to approve by Mr. Benedetto, seconded by Ms. Kreatz. Roll call vote, please. Mr. Benedetto? Yes. Ms. Kreatz? Yes. Ms. Estrella?
[Mustone]: No.
[Kreatz]: Yes. Mrs. Van De Koop? Yes.
[Burke]: May I vote? Yes. A vote of six in the affirmative, one in the negative. The motion passes. Thank you. Is there a motion to revert to the regular order of business by Ms. Vandeclude, seconded by Mr. Russo? All those in favor? All those opposed? We are now back with item number two, informational report on vaping and cannabis. Dr. Randy Schuster.
[R-JcMFRQo7E_SPEAKER_27]: Good evening. Sorry about the technological difficulties. Thank you for having me. So just by way of introduction, it's OK. My name is Randy Schuster. I'm an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. I'm a neuropsychologist. My area of expertise is in the impact of early drug exposure on the developing brain, particularly as it intersects with academic performance and emotional well-being. Where I've been spending the last probably 10 years of my research has been by way of adolescent marijuana use, which is about as hot button of an issue as it comes right now. So what I was tasked with is in the next 10 to 15 minutes, giving you guys a broad picture overview of where we stand with the science, and then I will turn it over to the experts behind me in terms of how we're gonna implement this and how we're addressing this at Medford. I have more slides than we will get through, This is audience participation encouraged, so please ask questions. A lot of these are really more just talking points and ways for us to just kind of start thinking out loud about an area that we really don't, unfortunately, have a lot of research on, but policy is moving very quickly ahead with, and we will see this in full steam in Medford in the next year. OK, I will touch a little bit on, I'll spend the majority of the time talking about marijuana because that's where I spend most of my academic time. I have some slides at the end about vaping as well, nicotine vaping as well. But to get us started, let's play a game. This is not optional. Everyone has to participate.
[Funaiole]: Which of these are marijuana?
[Burke]: All of the above. All of the above.
[R-JcMFRQo7E_SPEAKER_27]: You guys all passed. These are all cannabis products. And what I hope this slide really illustrates for you is we are in the Wild West with respect to marijuana research. The majority of research that's been published to date on marijuana has come from the 70s, 80s, a little bit in the 90s. And I guarantee you. Most of these products were not available then. So the science that we have is really on, not to be glib, but on yesterday's weed. It is not on what our kids are typically being exposed to right now. So a few things that also that I think just kind of highlight the scope of this issue and really how little we know. So these are the most recent reports from the National Institute on Health with respect to current rates of high school marijuana use. So in the past year, over one in three 12th grade students have used marijuana. Past year, not ever in use. What you'll see in this middle figure here, that as tobacco rates are sharply declining, we've done a phenomenal job from a public health standpoint in nearly eradicating cigarette use in youth. You do not see a similar trend line with marijuana use. This is in the past month that one in five 12th grade students have used marijuana in the past month. So from a public health standpoint, would be considered current marijuana users. This is missing its heading here, but this is in daily use. So about 6% of 12th grade students report using marijuana every single day. I don't think these rates of use are all that surprising when we think about the current legal landscape around marijuana use. Excuse me, I'm getting over a cold. So as of current, there are 10 states, including the District of Columbia, that allow the most expansive laws around marijuana legalization. So they permit not only legal use for medical purposes, but also legal use for recreational purposes. So in 2016, Massachusetts also adopted, voted in favor of question four, which allows for the legal sales of recreational marijuana use. What you'll see in this panel to the right are the 351. Yeah, right. municipalities across Massachusetts, and it's separated by those that have implemented a full-on ban of recreational sales in Massachusetts, those that have a moratorium on sales, and those that have no regulations or no stipulations about whether or not that the town can allow for recreational sales. Question four was written fundamentally differently than what was passed in, let's say, Colorado or Washington, which require opt-in for recreational sales of recreational marijuana. In Massachusetts, by law, towns have to opt out of having recreational sales. So Medford, I think I got this arrow pretty close to right. does not have a moratorium or a ban.
[Burke]: We had a moratorium. Had? And I believe it expired.
[R-JcMFRQo7E_SPEAKER_27]: OK. So now, and Mary Ann will give a more updated stance on where we are on this, I believe three, four. Three. Minimum of three minimum of three shops will be opening in Medford.
[Burke]: That's by state statute because the city voted in the affirmative for that question.
[R-JcMFRQo7E_SPEAKER_27]: Medford voted, I believe it was 60-some, 62% in favor of allowing for recreational marijuana. So by law, in order to move backwards on that, we would have to convene a special election and vote against having recreational sales. This will become very much a reality in this town very quickly. I think if there's nothing else to take away from what I will be talking about, it's this slide here. I hear from parents all the time, I smoked in the 60s and 70s, and I'm fine. What's the big deal? You really should be talking about alcohol. Marijuana is really not that much of a problem. In the 60s and 70s, the average THC content of marijuana was about 1% to 2% THC. Now, average THC is anywhere from 6% to 22% THC. fundamentally different drug than what was used at Woodstock. It's just a different product. And add in, let's get back to, we now have these products here. Does anyone know what this is? It's not a gummy. What'd you say? It's not a brownie. It's not an edible. It's not a turd.
[Burke]: It's snakes or worms.
[R-JcMFRQo7E_SPEAKER_27]: Anyone? Yeah, so it's wax. It's called DABS. These are cannabis concentrates. They are highly potent concentrated forms of marijuana. They're made almost in the same way that meth is made. You use a solvent like butane to extract THC. So THC is the component of marijuana. that will get you high. And they're concentrated down into an oil or a wax that you can vape. What is scary about these products, there are a number of things that are scary about it. One is they are completely odorless. They will not bloodshot your eyes. So kids are reported smoking at school or vaping at school without any sort of those typical telltale signs that somebody's high. And these products can be up to 95% THC. This is, we're comparing taking a swig of a light beer to tequila shots. I mean, these are just, it's a different drug.
[SPEAKER_07]: It doesn't have the smell that typically comes with burning marijuana. It doesn't have this.
[R-JcMFRQo7E_SPEAKER_27]: So it's not going to produce a smoke. So it'll produce a light vapor, a water vapor. When I first learned about this, I was working at another school. And we had to tell this, because I just think this is really telling. We do urine drug tests. And our tests cap at 500 nanograms per milliliter. So for just kind of a benchmark, in order for an adult to be hitting 500 nanograms per milliliter at that ceiling, typically they need to be smoking several times a day, every day. They're a heavy, chronic smoker. And I kept having this one kid come in at ceiling. And we asked our kids to stop smoking for several days to weeks. And even after several days of abstinence, he was still at ceiling. We had to go to our lab, change the assay that we were using, because we weren't able to detect how much THC was in the system. He was using these products. When we were finally able to get his ceiling, he was at over 4,500 nanograms per milliliter. We don't know anything about how these products and how this level of THC exposure is impacting the developing brain. Is it impacting academic performance? Is it impacting psychiatric well-being? Certainly don't know how it's impacting driving fitness. This really is, like I said, the Wild West. Okay, so like I said, this I think really for me is the most concerning trend line for us to watch. Also by law, I believe, there's a slight question mark here for me, in Massachusetts we cannot put restrictions on high potency products. So these will become very, these are We are not able to regulate the sale of these types of products. Typically, you hear THC and cannabidiol are the two products that are most typically talked about right now in the media. THC is really the only constituent that will elicit that high, and these products are just that, oil and milk. So the other thing to think about is this dialogue around cannabis use right now is very complicated. It is not as straightforward as are you pro or against. We need to think about the legal landscape in which this is all occurring. We need to think about the products that people are using. And we also need to think about the user. One user may not be the same and carry the same vulnerabilities as the next user. So on one hand, we might have adults who are using under the a recommendation of their physician and who are using for management of chronic medical conditions. They may not carry the same risk. As in the middle, you'll see here, this is Charlotte Figge. She's been all over the news really, kind of the face child for medical THC use for intractable epilepsy. These two patients might not be the same as who we're talking about on the right. kids who are using recreationally and who are using high-potency products who are smoky rather than using oils or low-potency or high-CPT products. So we really need to approach this conversation with some level of nuance that I think often gets overlooked when we're talking about pro or con for marijuana. It's not really. There's a lot of gray in here. So just to highlight why I believe and why the literature is pretty firm on that this user carries a lot more vulnerabilities than the adult medical user or than the the child, the pediatric user who's using very controlled doses of CBD oils are more vulnerable is because of the way that the brain is developing and the period of adolescence which is highly sensitive to the effects of THC. So the brain develops a lot longer than what we previously thought. So right now, the current consensus is that the brain develops until about age 25, if not a little bit later. And the brain develops in a back-to-front direction. So the last regions to come on board is your prefrontal cortex. And that develops well into the third decade of life. Your prefrontal cortex is critical for a number of higher order cognitive functions. So not only is it critical for decision making, attention, memory, it's also critical for impulse control and risk taking, which is why we see an increase in those behaviors during adolescence, because that region is least developed, whereas regions of the brain further back are further developed. It is also important to know. that the regions of the brain that are least developed during adolescence are highly innervated with cannabinoid receptors. So this is just a rough cartoon schematic of the distribution of cannabinoid receptors throughout the brain. And they're represented by these pink dots here. And you'll see that the pink dots are highly populated in the prefrontal cortex, as well as in the midbrain, which is critical for emotionality, for reward-seeking, sensation-seeking, as well as memory consolidation. So it's not a far stretch to think that use of cannabis during this very sensitive period of brain development has the potential to interrupt normal neurodevelopmental processes and have potentially really a negative impact on thinking and emotional functioning. And again, please interrupt if you have any questions or thoughts as we're going along. So I get asked this question a lot, is whether or not marijuana is addictive. And the answer is a definitive yes or some. About 9% of ever users, people who ever try the drug at some point in their life will meet criteria for dependence. And when I say dependence, I mean they're using despite experiencing some negative consequences in their life. They're having problems at school, it's causing problems with their relationship, it's interfering with work. They're having legal repercussions, 9%. That number doubles when use is initiated in adolescence. Again, highlighting the fact that use might not be a major problem for the majority of the population, but that risk is exacerbated when use is used during this vulnerable period of development. We also know that marijuana use has very strong associations. We don't know causality yet for a number of these different diagnoses and disorders, but strong associations with several mental health comorbidities, such that users, especially younger users, are at greater likelihood of experiencing psychosis, depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder. We also know, and as a neuropsychologist, This is where I start to geek out in terms of the impacts of marijuana use on cognitive functioning. There are robust associations between marijuana use and decrements in attention, memory, executive functioning. And those deficits are significantly magnified when use is initiated before, the magic number right now is we think around 16 or 17. That use before that period really sets kids up of having greater cognitive difficulties. We see, and I think this slide here, if you were to just pay attention to this one here, really highlights this notion. So, sorry the, he got cut off. But what you'll see here, so on this task, this was a task we did in my lab, where we asked kids to learn new words. A list of about 16 words, and we present it to them five times over the course of the study. And all we do after we present the list of words, we ask them to tell it back to us. And then we give them about a 20, 25 minute delay, and we ask them to tell us as many of those words as they can remember again. What we see is that this dotted line here are non-users, kids who have never been exposed to marijuana. This solid line here are those who have been exposed, but who started using later in adolescence. Started using around 17 or 18. This line here are those who have been exposed but who started using earlier in adolescence. What's important to note here is that our two marijuana-using groups are identical with respect to anything that you can imagine, including cumulative exposure. So those who started using later still use the same amount over the course of their life. So this isn't just a dose effect that the earlier users have used more over the course of their life. The only thing that distinguishes these two groups is the age at which they started using. that this is a sensitive period where we really should be discouraging use, or at least encouraging kids to delay use for as long as possible. I really try to live in that more harm reduction camp, because it's very hard, especially with legalization, to get buy-in to never use, total abstinence. This is dangerous, and this will be dangerous forever. When kids are hearing that their parents are using medically, or they're seeing billboards, or they're trendy advertisements in magazines, it's hard to get buy-in for that. But what I think is a more palatable message is this might be OK, but not right now. But if we can put this off as long as possible, you set yourself up for the best chances. Thank you for setting that up. I really appreciate that. Yes, we did. Oops. Go back again. Thank you. OK. So this is the study we're working on right now, which is that question is what we're really interested in. Are these permanent deficits causing our awareness? Or do kids get better when they stop smoking? And we see two pieces of evidence, two things that I think Lent and self-precaution, but optimism. So what we see here, this was pilot data that we published about two months ago. And we see on the left, this is a measure of memory, a similar task to what I was talking about before. So how many words can you remember? Essentially what we did for this study is we're bringing in adolescents who have used smoking water at least once a week or more. So these aren't necessarily very heavy users, those who are using even just on the weekends. And we incentivized them to stop smoking for 30 days. So it's in a treatment study, kids in high school who are doing just fine. Paid them enough money that it was worth their while to stop smoking. And we measured their cognitive abilities every four months. And then we had marijuana users who continued doing what they normally do. They weren't incentivized to sell. And what we do see is that even within one disaster, it's accomplished. So their ability to learn new words improves significantly more than those who continue using, which kind of makes both sides of the aisle happy. So on one hand, we see evidence that at least some of the deficits that we think are caused by marijuana use are not counterfeited. And yet, we see that people are doing better when they're not smoking, which isn't all that surprising. So again, this is, I think, a really important message for us to be, even just within a week, they're able to learn better, they're able to think better. To think about how this is going to translate to the classroom is really important. So I'll go back just one slide, and this is another really critical piece. just like with alcohol. God bless you. Many people, many kids even, can drink without experiencing significant consequences. They can regulate the when, the where. We don't encourage it, obviously, but not every kid who experiments, bless you, who drinks has problems. But some do. And I think we're going to see a very similar pattern with marijuana use, that it's going to be really critical for us to understand who those vulnerable kids are, who are most likely to have problems psychiatrically, emotionally, with long-term social adjustment. And one of those risk factors that I think are going to be really critical for us to keep in mind are those with psychiatric comorbidities. So kids who use marijuana who are also depressed or who have a history of schizophrenia or who have, the area that I tend to focus on is on ADHD and marijuana use comorbidities. And that's what we see here. So this is another cognitive task. And we're looking at kids without depression and without marijuana use, with marijuana use alone, with depression alone, and those with the co-occurrence of the two. And we see there's a double whammy with depression and marijuana use in terms of they fare worse with respect to their thinking abilities than those with either condition or use alone. Again, really just highlighting that prevention is really going to be the name of the game here, and having really tailored, targeted prevention messages to the kids who we think are going to be most vulnerable to having negative consequences from use. OK, so just a quick summary, and then I'll spend two minutes on vaping and then open it up. OK, cannabis use is common. It is likely that it will become more common in the years to come as the state, and Medford in particular, moves towards the implementation of legalization. THC levels that kids are being exposed to are at unprecedented levels, and I'm very, very concerned about that. They're also using new products that we just don't have any research on, which poses really important questions about how they're metabolizing the drug, the effects on driving safety. So, for example, with edibles, When you smoke marijuana, you feel the effects pretty immediately. It crosses the blood-brain barrier very quickly. That is not the same when you ingest marijuana. So kids will eat a brownie. They're fine. Get in the car. An hour later, we'll feel the effects. Or have difficulty titrating because they don't feel the effects right away. So they eat another brownie, or have another soda, or whatever it is, and then overshoot their high. A lot of really important public health questions for us to think about with these new products that will be on the market. We believe adolescents are uniquely vulnerable to the negative effects of marijuana because of ongoing brain development. And that cannabis users, particularly those who start early, tend to be worse, both in terms of their psychiatric profile, as well as cognitive and brain-based abnormalities. So we'll switch gears very quickly and just talk about electronic cigarette use. This has been just a landslide phenomenon. The FDA recently called this a public health crisis, an epidemic. We don't have a ton of data in terms of the effects of electronic cigarette use on the developing brain. We have more data on prevalence. and how these are being marketed towards kids. I don't even think I need to explain that these images are designed to entice young people. These prevalence rates came out about two weeks ago, maybe. And what they suggest is that 3.5 million teens use e-cigarettes. So about one in five high schoolers and one in 20 middle schoolers. This represents a two-fold increase in rates of use since last year. Last year. It's incredible. So about 37%. have used electronic cigarettes in the last year. And they're reporting vaping anything from nicotine to marijuana or hash oil or just flavoring. Even among those who report vaping just flavoring, there's not a lot of evidence that they're always accurate in their perception of what they're using. So about 60% of kids who believe that they're vaping just flavoring or not, or actually are vaping nicotine as well. So why might this be risky? There are a number of reasons to suggest why this might be risky. There is some evidence that kids who vape nicotine are more likely to progress to combustible tobacco products, so things like cigarettes, and kids who might never have And I say that this is really concerning, especially given what an excellent job we've done in reducing rates of cigarette use. Cigarette use is at an all-time low. And now we have the introduction of these products that I worry might threaten those trend lines. Each cartridge, each jewel cartridge, contains about as much nicotine as a pack of cigarettes. So kids are being exposed to large amounts of nicotine, not tobacco, but nicotine. And we know that nicotine, when administered in different ways, so transdermally, like in a patch or through a cigarette, increases the addictive liability of other drugs. So when a kid is exposed or an adult is exposed to nicotine, they find other drugs more reinforcing. So that's one of the things that I'm worried about, that if you're vaping and if a kid is vaping and is at a party and drinking, is that alcohol going to become more reinforcing in the context of dual use and nicotine use? Bless you. Excuse me. We also know that these electronic cigarettes come with a lot of R&D. These are smart products and they have sensors that are designed to maximize the buzz and the amount of exposure that kids are getting with each hit. This is a 6.6 billion dollar industry since 2007. You'll see just dramatic increases in rates of sales in the last decade. And the market share is really being driven by jewel use. Kids are talking about these products. They are all over Twitter and social media. Let's see, tons of images that are designed to promote use to youth. And again, so I'll just wrap with what I believe the punchline to all of this to be, that although cannabis may have some medical properties for some users, and e-cigarettes may be a safer alternative than combustible or cigarettes for adults, The adolescent brain is vulnerable, and we know very, very little about the use of these two products in their current form on the developing brain. But what we do know is concerning, and calls for very smart, intentional prevention messages, particularly in a time where legalization is rolling forward very, very quickly, and access is going to increase in ways that I hope we're prepared for. So I will wrap with that. I welcome any questions or thoughts now, later. This is an area I feel very passionate about. I am a Medford resident, so I'm very committed to doing this right here. So please be in touch or feel free to ask any questions online. Please. Ms. Kritz.
[Kreatz]: I have a simple question. I think Ms. Ray, she shared an article with us over the December break, and Mr. DeLaver did as well. And it does say that the Juul has as much nicotine as 20 cigarettes, like a pack of. And then also, I read that what is in a vape, which is really, really, it sounds horrible, is it exposes your lungs to acriline, which is mostly used in acrylic acid, which is something that is a nail polish remover, that we would take our nail polish off with. And that's what's in the vape, one of the most common ingredients, you know. It's just something that is very toxic and irritating, causes upper respiratory tract, and it's just not good, you know. So, I mean, I did read that there are some schools that have, you know, the FDA has posters And they're putting them in the bathrooms. And I mean, I don't know if we have any of these posters in our bathrooms. Or do we have any reports or numbers of what is happening in our school? Because it also has a little bit information about the vaping devices. And a lot of schools are rolling those out. And do they work? do they really detect if the kids are going into the bathroom? Do these vaping devices detect the students using the vapes?
[Wray]: I don't know any of that.
[Unidentified]: Ms.
[Wray]: Bento? I can speak to that. Rachel and I will be talking about some of those to answer those questions. But I think, just quickly to say, I don't think there's enough information about the efficacy of the sensors. and how deterrent they are. So kids learn ways around them. Yeah.
[Kreatz]: Yeah. But we'll talk about things after Dr. Schuster. There was just one other thing I thought was really frightening is that it says that currently right now they are developing hands-free vaping hoodies and backpacks with integrated vaping delivery systems so that they could be vaping in classroom hands-free. And we don't know. And it's all built into their hoodie or their backpack. And they're odorless. I mean, I don't know how we can tell who's in a classroom who's walking down a hallway here or anywhere. It's just scary.
[R-JcMFRQo7E_SPEAKER_27]: I want to say just one thing to reiterate what I said before along these lines. I think with these two areas, cannabis and all narcocigarettes, are particularly So a difficult conversation to have is because there are real potential public health benefits for some users. So with e-cigarettes, there is promise that this is a much safer alternative for chronic adult cigarette smokers, that this is a harm reduction technique. There's not a lot of research on it, but I think that that might be the case. And same with medical cannabis. Some formulations of cannabis might have medical properties for some conditions. Not a ton of research on it, but there's not a lot of community. So when we talk about, I think it's just, when we're thinking about how we approach this with kids, it's not, traditional data tactics have to be really smart and appreciating the nuance of the current state. Kids are being exposed to both sides of these messages.
[Van der Kloot]: Dr. Schuster, I just wanted to thank you for coming forward and sharing your knowledge with us. I think that for me what really touched home was the increase in the potency in THC. So thank you for being here tonight.
[DiBenedetto]: Mr. Benedetto. I too wanted to thank the doctor for bringing this information forward to make sure that this paperwork is on our blogs and may be sent to our PTOs. So when they have parent meetings that the education is there for them to access. As well as our students, I think especially at our high school level, maybe during health class or whatever classes, I'm not sure exactly how this is being presented. But since it is a crisis that we need to stop now, we have to have strict policy in place and be ready to help our children make better choices. Very strict, like we do for any other toxin ingested during the school day, social probation, and help. We recently received an email as a committee by a family in the district whose child was vaping and asked for our help. And our administration reached out to that person But if there's one, there's many. And if we're getting one email, there's 100 children or families experiencing the same things. My brother was an addict in high school and now is no longer living. It was a different drug, and it took his life. I believe that this is just as dangerous as what he did, because I think the effects of inhaling chemicals that we don't even know are in those vapes into your lungs and into your body that could have the potential to be lethal for some of our children. And I would hate to see a family go through what my family did because of this. So I'm committed to working on this as a committee member and as a community member. And I'm glad that you live in Method, because not that you wouldn't be invested, but that pulls you in even a little tighter. So through the next year, I'd like to have a committee, the health committee or a subcommittee, to really focus on our role as leaders in the community, not only in our schools, but in our community in general, and working with the city council and the mayor's office to make sure that our community is safe for our developing children.
[Burke]: Mr. Oshiro.
[Ruggiero]: One of the interesting factors I would like to discuss more about is vaping of cannabis oils. So do we have a sense of that increase? Because it seems to me that's even a bigger problem. Or do you think it's of the same magnitude?
[R-JcMFRQo7E_SPEAKER_27]: It is not as common. So vaping is far more common. Sorry, sorry, I move a lot. I'm not used to standing still. Where was I? Vaping nicotine is far more common, far more ubiquitous. I think vaping marijuana is, in the use of the dabs, is more stigmatized, not as common as use of marijuana in other forms or use of nicotine. With that said, among those who do use it, I'm very concerned about that level of THC exposure because we have no data on that. And the rates that I'm seeing in the kids that I'm working with are who are not kids in treatment centers. These are high school kids in the Boston area. Like I said, the levels of exposure are unlike anything that's published right now.
[Ruggiero]: Do we have a sense of how the rate has been increasing?
[R-JcMFRQo7E_SPEAKER_27]: We don't, because it is a new phenomenon that we are really just starting to ask about. So the large scale studies that we have, that we get a lot of these nationwide estimates are just starting to ask about it. This is only the second year where we've asked about making it continue. So I think in the next year we'll have that information.
[Ruggiero]: So there's no sense?
[R-JcMFRQo7E_SPEAKER_27]: Not good information. Not nationwide, I think, representative information about increases. Thank you.
[Burke]: Jasper, do you want to step forward to one of the microphones?
[dWFoLPiqEXg_SPEAKER_21]: Just off of my high school insight. So, I mean, I've been in school since freshman year, of course. There has been a major increase in nicotine products. Yeah, sorry. And there's been a major increase in nicotine products and weed products that I've seen, especially in this past year. I think one of the biggest proponents of that is the Influence of media, of course, social media. That's really hard to combat. But also just the stigma of being the cool kids, you know. Although there is a lot of negativity on those who don't drool or don't use dab pens or anything. Although it's gotten to the point where I don't use the bathrooms anymore because, I mean, like, you just walk into a cloud of smoke every time you go into the bathroom. Yeah, it's pretty bad. So, I mean, it definitely wasn't like this when I started my freshman year. I think it's definitely a big problem. It's getting into younger generations. I mean, like, even my brother has seen people in fifth grade. I mean, it's crazy. So, yeah, it's definitely a big problem. I don't know if there's a single solution to it. I think it's just going to be Well, I actually don't know. That's just my input on it. It's definitely a lot bigger of a problem than we thought before. And I can tell you, I'm not going to give specific names or anything, but I can tell you that there's definitely a major increase in this past year alone that I've seen. So just my insight.
[Burke]: Thank you for that input, Jasper. That's scary. All right.
[Mustone]: Ms. Mustone. Thank you for being here. And you had mentioned deer. program and when Jasper just mentioned his brother in fifth grade which that's when we have it do you know is there a new curriculum that is being worked on that's updated with these new concerns for dear you don't know I didn't know in your work if you've come across any discussion about it
[R-JcMFRQo7E_SPEAKER_27]: The one thing I would, and I know this will come as I relinquish the microphone, what I've seen to work really well, just in my clinical experience, is having students like Jasper and having a lot of these messages come from the kids. Having dialogue and having kids think through these problems, talk out loud, problem solve, weigh out the pros and cons, because there are pros and there are cons, and I think we owe it to them to kind of work through those together. But I think a lot of these messages are more salient. more powerful when they don't come from me, but maybe facilitated by me, but come from kids who are really experiencing the phenomenon. So I would highly encourage student participation.
[Burke]: Very good. Well, thank you so very much for presenting to us this evening. And I know we're going to have some follow-up from members. Coming up next is the Medford Board of Health report on vaping response in Medford. Mary Ann O'Connor, our Director of Public Health, will be leading the discussion. And with her is Penny Funioli from our Board of Health, as well as Lisa Van Doyen.
[Mustone]: I think Michael, did you turn off the projector? I don't know, do they want it on?
[Burke]: Are you putting a projector? Oh, they are too, okay. We have to turn it on again. Yeah, they want the projector on, sorry.
[SPEAKER_06]: Thank you.
[Burke]: Is there anything to add, Liv, before the presentation or no? Yes.
[Funaiole]: It's all in the presentation. Okay. I can tell you about the resources that you have here, actually. So the Orange Resources, as Kate and Ms. Barrett described, that was put together by one of our TESS students that was working with us last year. She did a phenomenal job, terrifically, of pulling research together, looking at data, and figuring out how best to display that. So I have had some parents take a look at it and they had some feedback. Some feedback was it's way too long. So we wanted to be thinking about maybe this is our grand guide, but maybe we take pieces and chunks of it and we separate them. We will be looking at that in February. We're gonna be inviting folks in to talk about a campaign around prevention of marijuana, understanding marijuana, and how it affects the whole nine. So we'll be working on that. It's starting in February. We're gonna put a committee together. Obviously anyone here who'd like to be a part of that committee, please come. We'll send out that message to you. But that's what you're looking at now. The state has those nicotine addiction pamphlets, and I think it's important to really start talking about nicotine addiction, because vaping is the device and the mechanism, the actual substance is one nicotine and the other is cannabis, right? So we want to be really talking about the fact that nicotine is extremely addicting. It's not just that the tobacco... I'm taking my presentation, sorry. And then we have other prayer bullets here that have gone out over the years that we want you to see.
[0SdCkR9KuqQ_SPEAKER_06]: I guess we can pass this around while we're waiting, too. This is actually the JUUL device, and this is a package of pods, the JUUL pods.
[SPEAKER_06]: And Maureen, who has made us here, who has the control of Maureen, does inspections of the stores to make sure they're not selling to buy us. So, and then we have a little, She didn't mention that. So this year, this year's graduation, this year's graduation, next year's graduation, next year's graduation. So that's a great way for them to buy these things online, especially those nice gift cards.
[Burke]: So a year or so ago, we did in plain sight in the room right next door to here, and it was eye-opening to me to see where some of these little gadgets can be hidden in an ordinary bedroom. I was curious, I know we spoke about it about a month or so ago, is it possible to bring it back to Medford, maybe possibly in two locations even?
[SPEAKER_20]: Yeah, we are planning that with Tony and Nick Tucci as well. We have it scheduled for February 8th. There'll be a vaping presentation I'm sorry, 7th, February 7th, there'll be a vaping presentation with Maureen Busby and the Hidden Plains site exhibit as well. And we're trying out this idea of doing it during the school dance so parents can drop their kids off at the dance and then come to this presentation. So we're trying that out as well. And they'll be working on the flyer for that event right now. So it should be going out and being promoted next week.
[Burke]: Will it just be at that one? Well, I'm hoping that this office becomes the elevator you're going to have right there.
[Funaiole]: So that would be the hope, is a place to have it, you know, the easiest to view city hall. So let's say coming soon in the spring.
[0SdCkR9KuqQ_SPEAKER_06]: Great. Okay, I guess we're good to go, right? All right, so thank you. So I'm with the Medford Board of Health, Mirian O'Connor. And with me is Penny Funioli and Lisa Bandrian from our Office of Prevention and Outreach. So what I'm going to talk to you a little bit about is just vaping overall, what's going on with that, and then what we as the Board of Health are doing through regulatory processes, as well as the state laws and other policy changes that we're trying to implement. So we've heard a little bit of talk about folks thinking vaping is a safer alternative to typical traditional tobacco smoking. And that is really up for debate. So I really don't want people to walk away with that kind of idea. The FDA does not approve these. mechanisms as a deterrent to cigarette smoking, like they would the patch or other items. And I think that's a message that's important to get out to the kids, because that's the first thing they'll say. Well, it's safer than smoking cigarettes. And it's safer, but not safe. You don't know what the chemicals are in the vapes that you're inhaling, as well as that nicotine, that level of nicotine addiction, which is really what's so scary. They are toxic and trigger inflammation linked to asthma, strokes, diabetes, heart disease, and other chronic conditions. And nicotine in and of itself is dangerous. Inhaled nicotine increases heart rate and blood pressure, is highly addictive, and may lead to changes in the developing adolescent brain like we just heard from Dr. Schuster. And it may increase the risk of addiction to other drugs. So we as parents and city officials and school administrators really need to be aware of this new and dangerous trend, but really we need to open up conversations at home and in the classroom and keep the conversations going. Regarding the health risks of vaping, many, many students don't realize that there are chemicals like formaldehyde and other things in these vapes. They don't realize there's nicotine. They don't know about the addictive behaviors of nicotine. So these are the discussions we need to start having and keep having with our youth. And in addition to being an obvious violation of school policy, these discussions are vital to our young people's safety and well-being. There are common side effects to vaping. most commonly associated with the dehydration that the vapor causes. So it's dryness, dryness of mouth, of eyes, skin, lips, sensitive or bleeding gums, a cough or general throat irritations, headaches, nosebleed, and dulled ability to taste food. And then most commonly, side effects associated with nicotine consumption would include inability to sleep, or unusual tiredness, ringing in the ears, constipation, racing or abnormal heart patterns, and nausea. So these are some of the things to be aware of and like if you are noticing in a child's behaviors as well. So what we can do on a regulatory end, well, as most of you may or may not know, the state's new tobacco 21 law just went into effect New Year's Eve. So Medford had already gone 21 plus back in 2016, but the state has now also caught up. And that does include the purchase of e-cigarettes as well. So it's now 21. Medford's tobacco laws, like I said, in September 2016, we went 21 plus. In July of 2017, we restricted the sale of flavored tobacco products, including the electronic cigarettes, to adult stores only. And those are tobacconists, which we really don't have any, but mostly what you see at the vape shops. And anyone entering those stores must be 21 years of age or older. They're supposed to show identification to enter the store itself. We also, in that same regulation update, we updated the minimum cigar prices for $2.50 for a single cigar and a minimum of $5 for two or more. That was to eliminate those $0.99 cigars packaging that you saw in those stores. We added no new stores with tobacco sales within 500 feet of a school. We permit capped, limiting the number of the vape shops to five in Medford. And as of today, we are at five, five permits for 21 plus stores. So there will be no additional 21 plus stores in Medford. And we updated the public places and smoking prohibition to also include e-cigarettes. So anywhere cigarettes can't be smoked, neither can vapes be done. This is a little bit of a graph to show you where things are, where you can purchase them, and who can purchase. So again, the cigars and e-cigarette devices you can purchase in any convenience store, but you must be 21 years of age in Medford. And we also have drug paraphernalia regulation in place as well. The flavored products, which include the e-cigarettes, cigars, mods, and e-liquids, those are limited to the vape shops. 21 years or older, that's a Board of Health reg. The drug paraphernalia. That's a little bit tricky now with the legalization of marijuana. We may be challenged on whether or not we can actually restrict the drug paraphernalia sales, but right now they are limited to the vapes and smoke shops out of 21. And CBD is something new. CBC does not supposed to have THC or high levels of THC in it, but they're not regulated right now. We don't know. We don't know what's in them. Then again, it's kind of like vapes were before the FDA finally stepped in. So the Board of Health has restricted the sale of CBDs because I think if you've noticed recently, if you go to any convenience store, they're right there on the counter, CBD products that look like gummy beers. Again, they're definitely marketing to kids just like these vape products are with their fruity flavoring and gummy beer style. So the Board of Health has put a restriction on all CBD products to 21 plus stores as well. So they will be coming off the shelves of convenience stores within the next month. So this is the Medford smoking enforcement. So this we brought up because one of the ideas we were talking about is You know, smoking in schools and municipal buildings, you can, and I think at one point they might have done it for the alcohol problem back then, but you can ticket. There is a fine. Actually, these fines are less than the Board of Health Regulation fines. The first violation here is $100, and the second is $150, and the third is $200. And the Board of Health Regulation smoking where prohibited is actually a $100, a $200, and a $300 fine for first, second, and third offense.
[Funaiole]: Hi, everyone. Penny Funnily. So every two years, we do our community care survey. In 2017, we added the question, have you ever used an electronic vaporizer such as an e-cigarette? These were the results that came back. The high school looking at 20% of students basically said that they had tried it in their lifetime, and only 7.3% said that they were using on a regular basis. measure. But we know that this has exploded, and we're not sure what's going to come of next year. This year is the year that we will be doing it again, 2019. We're looking to do that sometime in the early, late winter, early spring. So what we've done is we've worked with our evaluator to update questions, and Lisa's really done a phenomenal job working with them on this. So she's going to talk about the questions that we added.
[SPEAKER_20]: Hi, everyone. My name's Lisa Van Doyen. I'm the partnership for success coordinator for the City of Medford, which is a grant that we have for prescription drug prevention among high school aged youth. So like Penny said, I worked a lot to update our CTC server that we do every two years. When I was updating these questions, I really was focusing a lot on vaping and marijuana questions. We're looking at the vaping questions that we added. So basically, the first two questions that we added was whether or not the youth vaped nicotine, and we were very specific to say nicotine, and then describe that as e-cigarettes, vape pens, and jewels, and how many occasions did you use that. So that's how many occasions did you use that in your lifetime and in the past 30 days. We also added a question to get to whether or not they're using flavors. So we wanted to know whether or not if youth are using, are smoking, what flavors are they into? Are they into these cherries, these creme brulee, or what have you? Or are they just, we all know that they're doing flavors, but anyway. And then we also were interested on if they were, if they are smoking, would they still smoke if flavors were not available? And then lastly, we asked, how harmful do they think that vaping is to their health? And what level of risk is that?
[Burke]: Can you go back to the prior slide for me for just one second? Yeah. Do you have the breakdown 9th to 12th grade? Yeah, I do. Does it go up by 12?
[Funaiole]: I believe so. I would have to look at that again to confirm. But yes, I think it could be. It's higher than the 7.2. Most data shows that it gets higher. But it's interesting, sometimes you'll have an 11th grade that has lower numbers than the 9th grade. And it's maybe that cohort, something going on. So usually though, it does go up as a trend. Yes? I'm about to talk about that. So marijuana, for years we've been tracking it. 2005 is when we started the survey. We have a long history of looking at this data and being able to compare apples to apples. But as you know, the landscape has really changed. And so we had to update these questions. So what you see here is lifetime use, 6th grade to 8th grade. It's 3.4%. 30-day use, 1.2%. That's very low. And that's actually very low compared to where we started in 2005. So that's something to be very proud of. Great risk of harm is another measure that we look at. And that's sort of like... shows this longer-term sense of use. So yes, we want to delay use, but sometimes when they have low risk of harm, they actually start using later in life, and that's something we want to keep track of as well. What is their sense that this is harmful? So, you know, marijuana is coming out as seemingly unharmful to these young people, and that's a concern for us, and especially where you look at It's compared to the U.S. norm. Those are the kinds of conversations. How do we explain in a thoughtful way how this is going to affect them in their future if, in fact, we aren't having good conversations that are really rooted in science? The science isn't there as heartedly as we want it to be. That's kind of difficult. So in the high school, you see 32% of students saying that they tried it in their lifetime, and 20% overall saying that they had tried it in the last 30 days. This is a steady trend across all those years. So that's just something to note, too, is that it really has stayed steady. There was a bit of a tick up and has stayed at that level since 2009 when the decriminalization law passed. So all in all, those numbers are actually comparatively better than other communities, but it's still something that we want to pay attention to, of course. And then the one survey question that we've been analyzing in the last year that we're really... For some reason, it's not showing the actual... It's kind of over it. Have you ridden with someone who's a marijuana user? And clearly, 30% of seniors, these seniors are no longer seniors here, right? Just to keep that in mind. These people are now in college, I think in their sophomore year. So they're saying, though, that they are in a car with someone actively and know that they're driving under the influence of marijuana. And that's going to continue to be something we should be looking at and monitoring and thinking about with our messaging. So all of this here kind of goes into that thing I was saying before, where we sit down and we talk about, how are we going to talk about marijuana to our community? We're going to use these stats to really think about a baseline. And then we'll be looking for our new stats. So we added a question because of this landscape. Lisa's going to hold that.
[SPEAKER_20]: Yeah, basically, we already have the questions about whether or not they are using marijuana in the past 30 days or in their lifetime. But basically, now we want to ask, how are you using marijuana if you are using marijuana? Either you have not used it, you smoked it in a joint, pipe, or bong, or hookah, you vaped it, vape pen, dab pen, vape mods, or you ate it in a brownie, gummy, or other cannabis edible. So we basically just want to get a little deeper and find out how it's being used among youth.
[Burke]: Is there like an all of the above if they did it multiple ways?
[Funaiole]: This is check all.
[Burke]: Oh yeah, it's check all that applies.
[Funaiole]: So just going back, Marianne referenced the tickets that have been used for alcohol. Well, Medford has a nuisance order. And in that nuisance order, it's a fine for underage drinking. With that, Detective Lakowicz and myself and Brooke Quate, we worked on this program years back with the help of the mayor to think about how can we do diversion as opposed to doing nothing. or going to court with a young person who's being found smoking, drinking in the woods or out in the public. So what they would do is they get a fine from the officer. The officer then offers this program to them. They can have that fine waived if they attend our program. A three-hour course. coupled with a brief screening, which is the SBIRT screening that is being done by the schools. This is 2012. We started this method of looking at how can we get kids help. So then we also were partnering with the Safe Project, which is also what the school is partnering with around substance use. So it kind of really matched up and mirrored what's going on at the school with what the police department do. This program is really well organized and ready to roll. The issue is that the officers aren't really actually finding young people as readily as we think they would. So this program is sort of sitting there, waiting. There's an opportunity here. We could be utilizing this along with vaping, thinking about how to put some of that education. Well, first of all, adding vaping education into the curriculum, as well as really expanding it and thinking about how do you deal with smoking cessation or nicotine cessation. Is it that they go to you know, the kind of treatment programs to someone who might be having alcohol. Maybe it is. We need to talk to that facility. But that's something that we could have an opportunity for. Yes. Sorry. I don't believe that's true. I think the issue for the police department in the past
[Burke]: They're in homes. Yeah, they're in homes.
[Funaiole]: They're in homes. Yeah, they're in places. They're not out in the exhibit. But the officers have, since 2009, they have been hands tied to the, they can't do much about marijuana. So we're like now almost, we're 10 years later, officers have not been enforcing marijuana laws at that level. So since it's been decriminalized, that hasn't been happening. I'm just thinking if the plan involves
[SPEAKER_07]: So this is actually, that's a very good point.
[Burke]: And this is the point of this program, that this is a civic-based
[Funaiole]: diversion program as opposed to a connected to a court diversion program, right? They don't go to the court unless they choose to pay a fine from a city ordinance ticket. Okay, so it's a civic, totally different track.
[Burke]: It keeps them off of the court.
[Funaiole]: Yeah. So it's kind of like beneficial in multiple ways in that it's not a punishment. It's about adding help. as opposed to getting them in trouble. And then on top of that, it's civic-based, and it does not include the courts unless that individual chooses not to pay that fine.
[Burke]: Is the school resource officer up to date on everything that Officer Lockowitz is doing with diversion?
[Funaiole]: We are working closely with the SRO.
[Burke]: That might be the answer to the bathroom issue that Jasper mentioned and other.
[Funaiole]: I think we need to meet and figure out how we can connect the two. Here's some other options that are out there about vaping diversion, both in Belmont and Georgetown. They're doing something a little bit different where they're having young people meet with different people within the school system and engage with them. So in Georgetown, they're meeting with different staff members to kind of have more of a relationship building and get them to understand what's going on and maybe get to meet with other people that they're not usually exposed to. And then in Belmont, they're having you call the quit line, and they're getting you to go through a process of stages of change, which is highly recommended, of course, with anything related to treatment. Yeah.
[Burke]: That's what I was asking if the school resource officer knew about the program and how to implement it so that it could happen there. Right, and do we need to set a policy? That's a, please.
[DiBenedetto]: A policy for the superintendent, and I'll get this submitted to two, three to seven folks, so that, you know, when I'm, when a book comes out, for every parent, who's just dying next year, this is the policy, if your child's mom will be taking a class, right, and you're handling similar to a five or five series movie, then they are required to go through this program.
[Burke]: Is the program all set up and ready to run? It's public building based, the ticket program. So an officer could give a ticket in any public building. This would almost be outside of the normal school catching, like a principal catching someone and sending them to after school. Or worse.
[DiBenedetto]: And if you're getting a school ticket and you've been logged in and you have three tickets, you're required on a Saturday. do you want to speak? You're on. I'm sorry, I don't get to speak. Video culture will go off whenever other toxins are going in. And I don't want to show people's lives later on because we don't know now. And we have a program set up in the community. I went to those community meetings.
[Edouard-Vincent]: I just wanted to comment and say that there are definitely some strict procedures that are in place. We do have Saturday detention. There still is the social probation, which usually, if it results in a suspension or something along those lines, it's a 30-day social probation, the administrator, the parents come, they meet with the school administrators, whether it's the headmaster or the assistant submasters. So there are structures that are in place to deal with discipline. And again, with the bathroom situation, I have been speaking with some of the assistant submasters. And students can sometimes be very savvy in terms of where they conceal the jewels. So you have to actually catch them in the act. And so sometimes it's very difficult to catch them in the act. But it is something that is on everyone's radar. They are working collaboratively. When they do catch it, they confiscate it immediately and they follow the disciplinary procedures that are in place. Yes.
[DiBenedetto]: I think what
[Burke]: So maybe Team Medford could look into it in greater detail with Ms. Vento and who else? I can't see who else.
[DiBenedetto]: I need a second on the move up.
[Burke]: Do you have a question on this? Is there a second? Yes. No question on that. On the motion that this be investigated further. All those in favor? All those opposed? Motion passes.
[Ruseau]: Mr. Russo. Thank you. My question is actually around, is there any evidence that punishment actually has any effect on use? No.
[Funaiole]: I mean, I can't. I don't have the research in front of me.
[Ruseau]: Right. I mean, I don't know. I sort of asked the question. There's a lot of shaking heads out there. Yeah. So I mean, I asked the question earlier around kids who don't get to go to college because they got arrested for something that shouldn't prevent you from getting an education. And I just worry about a focus on detention or punishment Because if the goal is to have any impact on this, and that doesn't have an impact on it, then it's a heck of a lot of feeling good like we did something and we didn't do anything. And there's two groups of kids to worry about, the ones that are already using and the ones that aren't. And everything we've heard tonight from Dr. Schuster is also that, If we educate both groups of kids on the effects, that seems like an effective approach without detentions and getting things on your record so that you have trouble when you apply for college or getting into school brains. And then the state changes their minds on what they're going to do with the data. And then the feds are deciding they want the data, because we know that happens. So I just have a strong dislike for the disciplinary approach to things.
[Funaiole]: And I think the most important thing is that we're looking at this on multiple levels, right? There's universal prevention. Everybody gets the same information, right? And then folks who have already started, there needs to be some sort of tactical intervention that we're working on. And then folks that are using, we need to have some good, solid treatment options to get them moved towards a recovery. Because you really do have to be in recovery from nicotine. Nicotine is physically addicting. And it causes a lot of harm when you just suddenly go cold turkey. You can get really sick and stuff. So I don't know that young people know that at this level.
[0SdCkR9KuqQ_SPEAKER_06]: And I think that's part of what this program would have to do. But we really need to look at this program and tweak it, because we don't have that education component right now. the tactical intervention ready. We don't have even treatment options. I mean, you know how hard it is for folks to try to quit smoking. So, you know, we don't know for youth, you know, the patch, the physician involvement. So this would have to be really, really thought out well, this diversion program. But, yeah.
[Burke]: Thank you. Mr. Ruggiero.
[Ruggiero]: Yeah. Seeing that these products are all illegal, do we have any sense of where kids are getting them from or how the distribution networks are happening in the high schools?
[0SdCkR9KuqQ_SPEAKER_06]: Online, the assumption is that older kids may be buying them for the younger kids. It's just like alcohol, same thing, right? The kids get their hands on alcohol and it's 21 plus for alcohol.
[Burke]: So in the case that Ms. Busby just cracked, was it just selling to a minor or was it selling to someone and then giving it to a minor? Welcome. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maureen Busby, Regional Tobacco Prevention Program Coordinator. If you had asked me this question six months ago, I would have said the same answer, that kids are getting them from older kids, older siblings, or a kid who's already 18. That was one of the reasons we wanted to change the age here in Medford to 21, because 18-year-olds are still in high school. So one high school kid can get a whole bunch of them, sell them to his friends in school. It happens all the time. In the last couple of weeks, I've received countless complaints from parents, members of the community, members of substance abuse prevention coalitions who are telling me that this store, that store, this other store is selling to minors. This is not just an epidemic that we were talking about in terms of addiction and all of that. It's an epidemic in our retail environment. These are very popular products. They're fairly expensive. You know, $15 for a pack of pods, $30 for a device everybody wants in on. And I think that stores that I never had a problem with are now selling to our youth. And I'm now planning – I did a stakeout in Malden the other day because I got a tip that kids were going there after school, and so I'm sitting there in my car watching the store until a fire truck pulled up and blocked my view. I'm not very good at it. But anyway, I'm also lining up extra trained youth to do compliance checks with me. And I have a list, unfortunately, of problem stores where I hear that kids are going in. In one store, I heard that all a kid has to do is say, you sold to my friend. That's the magic word. These are complaints I never heard before. And following this explosion of use, I'm now finding that I have to do something different in terms of enforcement than I was doing six months ago. So all of this is fast evolving, and it's kind of whack-a-mole. We figure one thing out. We figured out flavor restriction. So we did a flavor restriction here. So you can't buy mango or creme brulee or whatever in a local convenience store, but you can still buy menthol. and the kids very quickly switched from the mango fruit flavored whatever to menthol. Now when I see confiscated products in a local school, they're all green and blue. They're all mint and menthol. I'm not seeing the flavored products anymore because they're not being sold by our local convenience store. So it's anecdotal, but I'm believing right now that more kids are getting them in our retail environment than I had thought. I thought a lot of them were getting them on the internet. That doesn't seem to be as much of an issue, again, I don't have data on this, this is anecdotal, received a call from a parent who said she found out her son was buying at a local vape shop, doesn't happen to be Medford, but in one of the communities that I work in, because she checked his debit card, his debit account. I had another call to a local community because this parent spotted some Uber charges on her account. And the Uber address was a vape shop. So her son was taking an Uber to the vape shop to get his product. And these are all underage kids. So all of this is just like in the last few weeks, it changed dramatically. And now I'm going to be giving tips. Instead of saying to parents, which I was saying three months ago, watch those Amazon gift cards, now I'm going to be saying, check your son's debit account. Check your Uber account. So, you know, we're doing what we can, but it's fast evolving, and there's one of me in these communities. And so we'll be looking for support as we go forward with boards of health to try to introduce other regulations that we're going to have to figure out as we go along. Excuse me, as I said, you know, tackling the menthol issue, because right now you can buy menthol in a convenience store. You can't buy fruit.
[Ruggiero]: So do you think that it's simply the case where kids are just going into community stores, or is it just some kids have access and they're buying a bunch of it and then distributing it?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, mostly the latter, I think. And stores, when I send a compliance check in, in fact, a kid in, I did this the other day. I did a special check on a store I get a complaint about, sent my kid in, the kid comes out, no purchase. As she's walking to my car, the owner comes out of the store and looks up the street and down the street. he busted us. He knew that wasn't a regular kid in that store. So it's tricky. That's why I was doing a stakeout at that store to see if I could see young people going in there. But what I'm hearing is those stores that are selling, and it's not all stores, but those stores that are trying to make a buck and they're selling, they know who the safe kids are. So that's the trick in trying to enforce.
[Ruggiero]: And what's the penalty for selling to a minor?
[SPEAKER_01]: So in all of the communities they work in, in Medford also, The first time that a store sells to a minor, it's a $100 fine, which is basically a slap on the wrist. But the second time they sell in a three-year period, it's a $200 fine and a seven-day suspension of their tobacco permit, meaning they can't sell any tobacco or nicotine products. So that hurts a little more. The third time they sell in a three-year period, it's a $300 fine and a 30-day suspension. That would hurt a lot. And I was at a meeting with Senator Lewis up at the statehouse because we were talking about what the state did a lot this year. They did a pharmacy ban. They did T21. They passed that vaping will now be treated like smoking because you can't vape anywhere you can't smoke. So they did a lot of good things. Jason Lewis said, what's next? So we talked about a menthol ban. We talked about a whole bunch of things. But one of the things that he wanted to see us all consider was higher penalties for people who sell to youth. Because our youth are getting addicted. They're getting this product somewhere. The AG is investigating the internet sales. The FDA has come, finally, last year they said this isn't a problem. This year they said it's a big problem. And so they're coming out with, you know, they raided the Juul Lab headquarters in San Francisco. They're trying to do a lot. And they're thinking about banning flavors at the FDA level. That's huge. But it'll take time. Meanwhile, we need to take care of our kids right now and do what we can do.
[0SdCkR9KuqQ_SPEAKER_06]: Which leads into our next slide.
[Burke]: Mr. Russo has a question. You're good?
[0SdCkR9KuqQ_SPEAKER_06]: One of the things we've been talking about is what else can we do. And on the regulatory side of life, so right now all the flavored products and such are restricted to the 21 plus. We want to restrict the actual apparatus for the E6 to be in the 21 plus stores as well. We're also considering looking at a flavor restriction on menthol and mint as well. So these are things that are going to be on the Board of Health agenda for Tuesday. Updating the penalties for vendor violations. We don't have to go the 1, 2, 300. We can go right to the 330-day suspension. So these are things, again, we'll be talking with the Board of Health on Tuesday. And someone threw out, I think it was Bonnie when we were talking, we could impose a local sales tax on these products. You know, they're not taxed the way cigarettes are. There is no huge excise tax on these products. So we could impose a local sales tax. Mr. Russo. Enforcement again, we're talking about... Oh, I'm sorry.
[Ruseau]: I'm assuming that you were working with the Board of Health and the communities all around us so that we're not just doing something and you just walk two minutes away to Somerville and it's totally different.
[0SdCkR9KuqQ_SPEAKER_06]: So Somerville actually, Somerville just passed the menthol and mint restriction, the ban. It goes to effect April 1st. The thought is there's got to be litigation. That big tobacco's going to come after them and take them to court on this. So we're kind of at a wait and see, like do we move forward or wait and see how it actually pans out in Somerville and then move forward. So Somerville's already moved forward. They've moved forward with the restriction as well. Malden, Melrose, the rest of us, I didn't speak. We're all kind of looking at the Somerville thing. And we're going to try to.
[Funaiole]: To be clear though, restricting it is not really an issue because it's not saying you can't ever sell it. The banning is what Somerville did. They could not sell it at all, and that's the legal. No, they restricted it to 21 plus.
[0SdCkR9KuqQ_SPEAKER_06]: Adult only plus. Yeah, they didn't ban. It's restricted to 21 plus. But the first ones to ever do that.
[SPEAKER_07]: Right.
[0SdCkR9KuqQ_SPEAKER_06]: So that's like, you wouldn't be able to buy a pack of Newports in a convenience store anymore. So that's convenience store. Oh, store owners are up and off sabbaticals. And then the rest of the ideas that we're looking at is, again, maybe embedding the vaping-specific education into our diversion. program, and really looking at parent education as well and expanding that, explaining to parents what vaping is and how to get help, and then school policies as well.
[Burke]: Very good. Thank you so much. Very informative.
[Edouard-Vincent]: We're going to ask Toni Wray and Rachel Perry to come forward.
[Burke]: Good evening. Good evening. How are you? Good. How are we doing? Happy New Year. Happy New Year.
[Wray]: Thank you. So I just wanted to talk a little bit about student education.
[Burke]: It was probably about four or five years ago we met.
[Perry]: about the opioid issues that were going on. We saw the vaping stuff coming down the pike. Really didn't see it in Medford at Medford High School until last year is when it really exploded. We had sat in a CBJ meeting, noticed these things were happening. Dr. Perla asked me to come up with some lessons for 9th through 12th graders. We did that last year. There was about four lessons. And each grade also were involved in a contest where they came up with posters, videos, on vaping. And what we did is there was one student that won the poster contest, and we had copies of those posters made, and they were put up around high school, and then the videos were posted as well. Since then, as you know, we use the Michigan model, and vaping is included in those units in 6th, 7th, 8th, and 10th grade. So those units were updated this year to include vaping as well. And we've also this year incorporated the CATCH curriculum, which is specifically a vaping curriculum. So we've been really working hard to kind of keep up with what's been going on. And again, that's in those four grades. And as information is coming out, I'm passing that information out to teachers. So we're really trying to keep up with the things that are going on. For example, one of the things that have come up is vaporware. I think Kathy had talked a little bit about that. So we basically talked about that in our CBJ meeting, handed it out to teachers so they're aware of what's coming up with PIKE. And as things are coming up, we're updating and updating.
[Wray]: So I'll just talk a little bit about some of the student supports that we have. You know, we have universal screening through the SBIRT screening program. And we also, so that would be our universal lowest level of support. And then depending on how involved students are in this activity, we up the support. So from there it might go to a behavioral support plan that's developed by the school adjustment Councilors, students who have been referred to them. They'll work with the nurses and the administration and teachers to make sure we have a support plan. And then the next level starts going to referrals for outside counseling. We're fortunate that we have a community partnership with the SAFE project. And we have a variable number of students each year that we refer to the SAFE project and that agree to participate and take advantage of on-site counseling for their substance abuse issues. We've also done a lot of work with professional development around social-emotional learning, and starting at young levels with healthy decision-making, learning about taking care of yourself, peer relationships, and laying the groundwork for being able to deal with peer pressure at an older age. Another place that we reached out to was within the community. Lisa Bandoyan and Penny and I, and Stacy Shulman, we put together a little brochure that was about community partnerships. We attended a Grand Rounds presentation at Winchester Hospital, and then we were also asked back to one of the local pediatric offices to talk about partnerships and how we can collaborate with pediatric offices for the better health of our students and their patients. We really go from a harm reduction model. We use motivational interviewing. We make these referrals. We're always looking at providing support and helping students owning the responsibility for changing their behavior. You can see from the report we've done a number of programs in the community for staff and for parents. I've had a number of them listed out. We have one coming up in February at the McGlynn Middle School, where Nick Tucci had a very wise idea to pair it with on the night of a student dance. So parents can drop off their students at the dance, and they can stay and listen to a speaker inform them about vaping. So that will be coming up in February. We've put website postings out. We get out and update the information on the web as often as we can. And then we have a couple grants that we've received some money for.
[Burke]: Very good. Mr. Russo?
[Ruseau]: Thank you very much. Have you had any conversations around going down to fifth grade, since it sounds like it's unfortunately not something necessarily starts in sixth grade?
[Perry]: Right. So in the elementary schools for health education, we cover the social emotional learning unit. We haven't covered anything else other than the Medford Police Department does go in and do the DARE unit.
[Ruseau]: But does the Michigan model that we've purchased include anything for fifth grade on vaping that we just aren't using yet?
[Perry]: We haven't purchased that part. We only purchased the social emotional learning part. for elementary. They do have one. They do have one. Okay.
[Van der Kloot]: Ms. Van der Kloot. Two things. First, whenever I hear that there's a program at the McGlynn, which of course sounds like a great idea, being partnered, I'd like to ask whether it's going to be similarly at the Andrews.
[Wray]: Yes. We're working on the flyers now. So once those are developed, we will distribute them to both schools.
[Van der Kloot]: OK. And then the second part, though, is if it's a McGlynn dance only? It is. So depending on how that goes, if we're not getting Andrews parents, we should see if we could do it. The other thing is just thinking back, and I believe it was at one of the April 2017 programs, That incredibly great movie that was shown.
[Wray]: Was that the screenagers?
[Van der Kloot]: Oh, that was the screenagers. OK. Yeah. Different. A little different.
[Wray]: Yeah.
[Van der Kloot]: OK.
[Wray]: Thank you. But still, all concerns about adolescent behaviors. That should be shown again.
[Burke]: Thank you. Are there any other questions? Thank you both so much. Thank all of you for what an informative evening. I hope parents at home are watching or will re-watch. Maybe get the buzz out that it'll be replayed a couple times because it was very informational. Thank you.
[Edouard-Vincent]: Thank you.
[Burke]: Okay, is there a motion? We have three items, three reports. Is there a motion to take all three and receive and place them on file? So moved by Ms. Vandekloot, seconded by Mr. Benedetto. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes, thank you very much. We have our item seven, fiscal year 2019 budget update. Ms. Patterson. Hello.
[Patterson]: Good evening. This is a summary of the current activity for fiscal year 19, of which I've done a slightly different presentation for ease of reading the information and knowing which pieces are pertinent for our review. Just as a summary for the wording on the original document, The FY19 appropriation allocation for the general fund budget was $58,608,630, of which current year-to-date expenditures and encumbrances are $30,602,875, which is 52.22%. So roughly half of the year has gone by. Half of the year has been expended. So this is in line with current historical activity. Again, encumbrances are the reserve for what we anticipate expenditures to be. Some of those may not materialize, so we do monitor those as we go throughout the rest of the fiscal year. We try to true them up based on actual invoices and then liquidate any amounts available. So the encumbrance amount does It goes a little bit higher and lower at different points in time during the fiscal year. The expenditures have actually materialized, so that's a true figure. Significant areas for noting. Currently, the fiscal year 19 has settled with negotiations on contracts for the teachers, paraprofessionals, and administrative unions, of which all have a 2% cost of living allowance for this fiscal year. For those units, the adjustments have already taken place with the retros provided for the start of the fiscal year. All of the unit steps have been applied and settled. The non-bargaining staff, did also receive a 2% COLA, which was approved, and the retro payments have been issued for those. Within the budget itself, we did have the undistributed amount that will be adjusted and reallocated according to the deficits throughout as we left that as a placeholder for the negotiation purpose. For the security item, the FY19 budget did include additional funding for general maintenance and upkeep of security cameras, so that line item does reflect a $46,500 deficit currently. Again, this is an area that I will be doing a budget adjustment to reflect chewed-up expenditures. Additionally, we have significant overtime expenses for additional security coverage, and that will be reallocated through a budget adjustment for identifying those areas that have been paid out year to date. So our technology areas, we did have the E-rate wiring and infrastructure project that was completed over the summer. And each building received additional wireless network spots. And significant funding was maintained for needed laptop increases and or the portable work cart items within each building, and that included the $15,000 for the high school, middle schools, and $10,000 for each of the elementary schools. And the library did have an additional $65,000 earmarked for district-wide technology as priorities come up throughout the year. So they are validating what the different needs are within each building as they come up. The transportation costs, again, we are in year one of the two-year extended contract with Eastern Bus. Next fiscal year will be the last contract year we'll need to go out to bid for this current yellow bus transportation. We do provide after-school buses to the middle schools, and that is three buses per day for 70 days throughout the school year. We have just reduced the bus route number 18 that was for our newcomers program at the Brooks, and we have split that route between two manageable vans to accommodate and shorten up time for those students that are transported for the newcomers program. The utilities we encumber based on historical years and we budget conservatively for unexpected occurrences. Natural gas has been favorable. Utilization has been a little bit lower right now. Again, we haven't experienced the cold winter months yet, so we still haven't received those amounts. And our current year-to-date expenditures only reflect through November. We are a month or so in arrears for their invoices that come in through the utility companies. Our electricity. rates are significantly a little bit higher because of the marketplace, and that was, we're running about 32,000 higher than we were last year. Again, we had current rates that were locked in beginning November 2018, so we will see an increase accordingly based on that rate that will go through 2021 for the supply cost. And as we continue to monitor these items within the next few months, we will be able to liquidate and or update, increase those POs as needed based on the actual utilization. So in summary, we are in line with all the budget projections and we will be making adjustments to cover areas that we know are going to be in a deficit. But as you look at the detailed information provided, the summary page that was run, and that is based on program. I think this is a simplified snapshot for everyone to see where we are in each program area, so meaning what departments are we spending, what are our trends in that area. And as a reminder, the budget itself is the total line item appropriation of the $58,608,000. So as long as we are within those amounts, we are fine. The other areas are meant for the Department of Ed reporting, for our programmatic reporting, so that we know which areas are going to be significant. Again, this helps us plan and project for upcoming fiscal year budgeting purposes. And we know that there's going to be some shifts in the upcoming year, as we've just approved major increase in our sciences next fiscal year, we're going to see a big bubble there. So this is just a snapshot to make it easier to really see where we're at in the program areas versus getting in the minutia of each line item. But I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have categorically.
[DiBenedetto]: Mr. Benedetto. Thank you. Thank you for this report. So on page 3 of 10, and you might not have this answer. The superintendent might help. It says halfway down the page for the amount of $14,500 and the line below it $14,982. instructional support staff for the Brooks and for the Columbus. Do we not hire that staff or has that position been left open for any reason?
[Patterson]: No. So again, there are some areas where a payroll code may not necessarily match our general ledger code. So in terms of The staffing component, they are staffed and they are... We do have one instructional support staff that's open at the Columbus right now just because we've had a recent resignation. But the expenditures may not necessarily line up with the actual staffing assignment.
[DiBenedetto]: In the future, will those line up more?
[Patterson]: It's an ongoing effort to try to clean these up. And, you know, again, that's... I know you've been making an effort for that to happen. Right. But yes, that's the goal.
[DiBenedetto]: Okay. Also, for the Brooks School Elementary textbooks, they still have a balance of $4,000, and the Roberts does as well. The reason I say this is because last year at end of budget, some of the principals came forward and didn't realize there was a cutoff or didn't didn't know enough about their budget, maybe on their part or our part for not educating them, of where they have funds to spend. So I just want to make sure that every principal has gone over their budget, knows that they have these funds to utilize for the year, make sure that they have what they need and are not holding back from providing supplies like textbooks or staff.
[Edouard-Vincent]: And at our monthly admin meetings as well, there is an update, and so they're being told on a monthly basis as well.
[DiBenedetto]: So the Roberts and the Brooks realizes they still have 4,000 each in books available for them to order for the school year?
[Edouard-Vincent]: Yeah, they are aware. They are definitely aware. No one would be surprised to see that.
[DiBenedetto]: And last year we talked about sending a reminder email to all principals and department heads, around this time of year, so when you do your early cutoff so you can reconcile your books, that they have sufficient time to get their POs in. I just want to make sure that they weren't... She said not when they're gone.
[Burke]: Yes.
[DiBenedetto]: Right. Okay. Thank you. And then my other questions were... Vocational pupil transportation, $15,000. We hadn't utilized that. Is that additional savings for students no longer going to college?
[Patterson]: Yes. So that cost is actually incorporated within our out-of-district tuition payments. So they invoice us for both their transportation and tuition. So it just hasn't been delineated separately for that cost.
[DiBenedetto]: Further down that page, again, was textbooks. I'm going to move on from that. Math department office supplies haven't used their $500 allocation on page 7 of 10. And then I noticed, like, computer teacher at the Roberts.
[Patterson]: I don't know if that was... So, again, this may be a payroll code issue that the actual person assigned to that is being coded to another line item. It's not necessarily that that position is empty. Sometimes it's a payroll code issue that we are continuously going through the payroll codes. They don't necessarily tie back to one another because our payroll system is not part of our financial system. So we have to crosswalk that.
[DiBenedetto]: So that explains a lot of it, excluding the library, aid, and Medford High School. If that's probably a similar situation then? Correct. And then the operation and maintenance secretary salary is also in that situation. So I don't know if it's allocated differently. Do we have a person in that position?
[Patterson]: It is. So hers is actually the line beneath it. So the $20,594 is applicable to the budget for the line above. And sometimes it's a matter of the function code and where the correct placement is versus where they might have been charged or budgeted previously. So this is an exercise that I'm going through and trying to clean up and working with City Hall. It's gotten much better.
[DiBenedetto]: I mean, it used to be very hard to see a lot more of these. And a lot of the ones I had today, again, with salary, and we don't have that program. Thank you for the information. It's good to see that we're on track. And my only concern was making sure all department heads' needs were met for this year. Thank you. Ms. Vandeclote.
[Van der Kloot]: A couple of questions. Sure. First, or comments on the transportation. I'm assuming that this move to two smaller vans is good for the students as well. And so I just appreciated that we were taking that step to provide transportation for the newcomers in this new way. So I thought that was great. Secondarily, sort of to my concern also was, as my colleague, at this time then, there is no limitation on expenditures. Is that correct? Correct. Okay, great. Because we, again, we had the same issue when we heard that certain people were told they couldn't spend it because they hadn't done it soon enough. It's sort of surprising in some ways that people are a little, especially since that's happened in the past, that they're not a little more proactive.
[Patterson]: And the notification was given in April and May. So again, if certain categories aren't spent at that time.
[Van der Kloot]: I'd be happy to go help them spend it.
[Patterson]: But it's not intended to just be wasteful in that regard. It's where, you know, if there's a true need or maybe they were able to combine resources with another classroom.
[Van der Kloot]: Right, because we always know that there's other things that pop up throughout the school year. The last thing I just want to ask is you said that the business office team has been in transition and key roles. I was wondering if you could provide for the school committee a list of the names of all the business office personnel and their job titles or responsibilities. Great. Thank you very much, Christine. Thank you. Mr. Russo.
[Ruseau]: Thank you very much. I was really happy to see the technology money for the equipment. I know that that's equipment that's there, but you actually can't use it. It's more frustrating than no equipment at all. And I had one other comment of which my own. So I think you told us this already in the transportation and the summary. Because the encumbrances are known already is why it's already at 95%, right? Correct. But the other things we don't really necessarily know, so we don't have them written in.
[Patterson]: Correct.
[Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Patterson]: And even within that line item, we will have a slight reduction because we encumbered for the entire year's worth of the yellow bus route 18, which we've now consolidated to the two smaller van vehicles that will be less.
[Burke]: Very good. Thank you. Is there a motion on the floor to accept this report and place it on file? Seconded by Ms. Vander Kloop. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay, under new business, school committee resolution. We at Resolve at the Medford School Committee express our sincere condolences to the family of John Welch. Mr. Welch helped manage facilities at the La Conte Brink and was a teacher for 37 years in Somerville. He will be missed. If I could tell you the amount of people that attended his wake was amazing and the hockey players, the hockey team showed up and they all in their jerseys and It was quite a tribute to him. He was a wonderful man, and he had an impact on so many. And he worked at Fenway for many, many years. So if we could all rise and have a moment of silence on his passing. Thank you. And motion to adjourn.
|
total time: 15.29 minutes total words: 2620  |
total time: 8.47 minutes total words: 1226  |
total time: 4.36 minutes total words: 652  |
total time: 12.55 minutes total words: 1797  |
|
total time: 2.53 minutes total words: 423  |
total time: 3.14 minutes total words: 493  |
total time: 1.26 minutes total words: 236  |
total time: 0.88 minutes total words: 175  |