[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. Approval of the minutes of the May 20, 2019 meeting. It's a motion for approval by Ms. DeRusso, seconded by Ms. Kreatz. All those in favor? All those opposed? Motion passes. Approval of bills, transfer of funds, and approval of perils. Ms. DiBenedetto. Thank you.
[DiBenedetto]: I just have a few questions. See? Mic tags. OK. So on page 1 of 23, the second one from the bottom, Boston Public Schools for $2,222, guidance, contracted services, Do we contract with Boston Public Schools?
[Patterson]: Yes, and that is for the Department, and I can get you the breakdown of what that covered. Okay, that just seemed unusual to me.
[DiBenedetto]: Thank you, I appreciate that. On page two, there's a few guys, sorry. On page two, about 10 up from the bottom, Groundmasters Corp, $5,025, building operators, I was just wondering,
[Patterson]: That's the maintenance of grounds for the schools. That's within the custodial building and grounds category.
[DiBenedetto]: Do we outsource some of that work, the groundmaster? They are a contractor. Okay, what kind of, do they do specific stuff that our in-house don't do any of the grounds? I know I see them up at the high school growing lawn.
[Patterson]: This would be significant landscaping and or providing loom and things of that sort. Okay, gotcha.
[DiBenedetto]: Further down on that page, for $50,000 to Robert W. Arvine and Sons, contracted services. That just seemed like a lot. I just thought I'd ask.
[Patterson]: They are a state bid contractor for various electrical work that we have required throughout the buildings.
[DiBenedetto]: Oh, great. I just like to know different stuff. I'm nosy. OK, next page. Just about six or seven down. Fringe benefits from method retirement system. What are fringe benefits?
[Patterson]: What kind of fringe? So that would be city retirement allocation, and that's part of a grant requirement. Okay. So that's paid directly to city retirement.
[DiBenedetto]: And I think I only have one more, Christine. And it's on page 9 of 23. It's the one I always ask you about, miscellaneous charges, but it looks like it's a lot of money for the high school. It says Medford High miscellaneous charges is $35,266. Student activities, the prom. Okay, I'm just curious. I just like to know what those big line sums are because I forget from time to time.
[Burke]: Is there a motion for approval on the floor? Offered by Ms. Kreatz, seconded by Ms. Van der Kloot. Roll call vote, please. Yes. Yes, seven in the affirmative, zero in the negative, motion passes. Report of secretary? None. Suspension of the rules. Ms. Mustone would like to move for suspension of the rules to take papers out of order on the motion. All those in favor?
[DiBenedetto]: Aye.
[Burke]: All those opposed? Motion is granted and you'd like to take papers 2, 3, and 4 out of order. Item 2. Recognition of Medford High School Ethics Bowl Team. Dr. Nicole Chiesa.
[Chiesa]: Good evening, everybody. I am joined tonight by Mr. Esner, who you met a few months ago as well. Thank you for having us. As you know from my last presentation regarding the Ethics Bowl, they had an extremely successful year. They, on February 2nd at Tufts University, won the New England Regional High School Ethics Bowl competition, and that is where they outperformed in multiple rounds against many teams, such as Phillips Exeter, Phillips Andover, Lexington High. And from this win, they then participated in the semifinals, which was on February 24th. And they once again achieved great success. As you know, that win led us to allow them to compete in the National Ethics Bowl. And they had a wonderful experience at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill in early April. The students learned a great deal at the event, and they worked very hard to compete among the best teams in the nation. They were phenomenal, and I wanted to thank all of you, including the superintendent and all members of the school committee, and Mayor Burke for their generosity in supporting our students. I also want to give a very special thank you to Mr. Esner for that. And I'd also like to thank the female chaperone that accompanied them, Ms. Mahoney, for giving up her time as well throughout those days. So thank you to her as well. And so with that, we want to honor them tonight, recognize them for all of their hard work and discipline. And Mr. Esner is going to read the names.
[Edouard-Vincent]: Is that how we want to do it?
[Burke]: Tonight is the senior barbecue, so we are missing some members through all these three papers. So we would like to invite whoever is here up to the side. They can all come up to the side and we'll call your names.
[Chiesa]: Thank you again.
[SPEAKER_20]: We have Maria Carmona. And Katie Stefani.
[SPEAKER_21]: Maida Mankakar, Drexel Osborne, Josh Cugno, and Shane Keddy.
[SPEAKER_20]: And those seniors that couldn't join us tonight were Julia Gelbach, and Brendan Mayer, and Jessica Taddeo. And I think that's it. Yeah, that's it. Congratulations. Thank you.
[Burke]: Thank you. It's great to see you. Congratulations. You did a great job. Thank you very much. Wonderful job. Congratulations, job outstanding. Well done. Next up, we have the report on 2019 high school science and engineering fairs. Mr. Seery.
[Cieri]: Good evening school committee members, Mayor Burke, Superintendent Edouard-Vincent. I'm here to give you a quick update on our local fair, regional, state, and international science and engineering fair participants. First, very quickly, the local fair was held on April 11th, which is after the regional fair. The regional fair is held on March 9th. We decoupled those two events to make sure that kids had ample opportunity to prepare for projects at our local event. At the same time, we have students who do participate in the regional fair and they have to fill in a lot of paperwork and dedicate large spaces in their homes to conduct a lot of these science fair experiments. And we also provide some sort of one-on-one support to the students who are going to go to the regional before that event. and sort of vet their projects and then move them into that event. Because we do provide that sort of individualized attention on the project, the students did show some success at the regional fair. Four of the students who participated, all four moved on to the state fair. And then one of the students was selected to participate in the International Science and Engineering Fair. So it's a really ambitious sort of project that these kids take on for themselves. And going through a science fair is a very individual event. I guess it's a little different than being on a team than in this particular event. So I'm very proud of the students. I do have one of the four. The others are at the barbecue this evening. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that Tufts University provides us with a tremendous amount of support for this. They come in and do a reverse science fair, and then they also come in and volunteer as judges for our local event, and also contribute at the regional event. So there are constant partners all the way through for our students and for the school. In particular, Karen O'Hagan, who has been in front of this board before has provided a tremendous amount of support for the science fair students and for the event overall. She's from Tufts University. So at this time, I'd like to call one of the students who did participate, Mr. Albert Farah.
[Burke]: Come on up, Albert.
[Cieri]: This year Albert is a junior. He studied modeling mass flow distribution in a multi-stage rocket concept design. He placed second overall at the regional and then went to ISEF from there. That was in Phoenix for a week, about a couple of weeks ago. The event itself is a pretty amazing thing. I'd love to say that Medford, in the last eight years, has gone to ISEF five times with three different students. Outstanding. That's a remarkable accomplishment by kids from Medford. Remarkable.
[Burke]: Wonderful. Yes, primarily.
[Cieri]: The other three participants were Morgan Simcoe, Subhesha Durali, who has been before this board for a number of times, and Sarah Elkendackley. All three are seniors. All three participated in the regional and the state. And that concludes my report for this evening.
[Burke]: Thank you very much. Congratulations. Congratulations, Albert. Ms. DiBenedetto.
[DiBenedetto]: Thank you. I want to congratulate Albert. I've known him for many years. His older sister was also wonderful in science, as was his older brother. We have seen them come before us for many, many years. And we still have one more year left to go, so I can't wait to see what that's going to be. Secondly, I also want to comment on having those new science labs and opening up opportunities not only for our vocational students, but our high school students and bringing Tufts down and partnering with them and it really opens up so much for students in our community. I know myself as when my daughter was a junior, she was able to go to the Broad and work in the organic chemistry lab and that opened up doors for her actually through today. So Method has amazing programming and kids do wonderful work and I don't know, but I see rocket science from Albert. I think I've always seen that. We've heard that tonight. I can't wait to see what he grows up and does for all of America and us in general. So our future is great because of students like that, and because of the educators who devote their lives and times to make sure our students have all those opportunities. So thank you to them as well.
[Burke]: Yay. Thank you. Recognition of Seal of Biliteracy, Velma Bebeau.
[Vilma Bibeau]: Good evening. Good evening their school committee, good evening Mayor Burke, and good evening Superintendent Edouard-Vincent. Thank you so much for allowing me to be here tonight. For the second consecutive year, Medford High School has provided seniors with the opportunity to take the Actful Assessment of Performance Toward Proficiency in Languages test. This test recognizes qualifying students with the seal of biliteracy for those who demonstrate a high level of proficiency in both English and another language. students must meet the state-approved proficiency level on the state-approved English and foreign language assessment. This year, we are proud to report that we recognized 18 students with the Massachusetts State Seal of Valoracy, three of whom earned the award with distinctions. So the Massachusetts State Syllable Literacy with Distinction, the criteria is advanced threshold skill score of 260 on the English Language Arts grade 10, grade MCAS test, and scoring at least at the advanced low level of the Actful Proficiency exam. The seniors that received the distinctions are Zoe Salvato-Cutter, English, Italian, Melissa Canelas, English, Spanish, and Antonia Collings, English, Spanish. The Massachusetts State sealed by literacy the criteria Proficiency and Above Threshold score of 240 on the English Language Arts Grade 10 MCAS test and scoring at least at the intermediate I level of the Act for Proficiency exams. The seniors were Zoe Salvato-Carrick, English-Spanish, Wendy Blanc, English-Spanish, Elisa Toledo, English-Portuguese, Maa Shakfik, English-Spanish, Sarah Elkondakli, English-Spanish, Sarah Elkondakli, English-Portuguese, Rose-Biandigi Marie, English-French, Judemy LaFalaise, English-French, Jenny Lu, English-Spanish, Ximena Valderrama, Kano, English-Spanish, Jessica Dos Santos, English-Spanish, Jessica Dos Santos, English-Portuguese, Jennifer Dos Santos, English-Portuguese, Kimberly Sintara, English-Italian, and Alexis Lemus, English-Spanish. Please join us as we celebrate the achievement of these students, and thank you so much for your support in implementing the Syllable Literacy in Medford Public Schools. It's a huge achievement for these students and for the district.
[Burke]: In some cases, tri-literacy.
[Vilma Bibeau]: Yes.
[Burke]: Amazing. Very amazing. Congratulations to them.
[Vilma Bibeau]: Thank you so much.
[Burke]: And again, you're at the senior barbecue tonight.
[Vilma Bibeau]: Yeah, they're at the senior barbecue, but I have the certificates, and I'll make sure that they receive it. If you'll allow me, I would also like to take this opportunity to acknowledge something extraordinary that happened to our department and thus to our district this year. Our student, Joseph Schmidt, has received this letter from the college board, and he brought it to our attention, or better, to be more precise, to the attention of his teacher, Ms. Nelida Nepore, a Spanish teacher. I'm sorry. It's a big thing. So this is the letter. It's very short. Dear Joseph, I'm writing to share some exciting news. Your performance at the AP Spanish Language and Culture exam in May 2018 was so superior that it falls into a very select category. As you know, advanced placement exams are scored on a scale of 1 to 5, where a 5 is equivalent to a grade of A in the corresponding college course. you not only received the top score of five, but were one of only 100 students amounting to just 0.053 of 2008 Spanish language and culture exam takers from around the world to earn every point possible on this difficult examination. We applaud your hard work, diligence, and enthusiasm, and wish you many future successes. Congratulations once again. Oh my goodness, that's fabulous. I'm sorry, but I can't help myself that we have this treasure. Thank you so much. Oh my goodness, what a wonderful speech.
[Ricciardelli]: Thank you. So I want to thank Nelida Lepore, who does a phenomenal job teaching Spanish all levels. She is truly a gem and I enjoyed working with her as a colleague and on an interim basis right now as the interim director of the World Language Department. It also is a joy to work with Vilma B. Bowe. I have to say that she really took on the seal of biliteracy last year under the former director and this year officially. And she wanted to deliver the report and I absolutely supported that. She has done an absolutely fantastic job. So I just wanted to say thank you. to both Vilma and Nelida.
[Burke]: Congratulations. Thank you. I just wanted to mention one thing about Joseph. Not only is he obviously quite talented in that arena, but also he received sports accolades the other evening last week at the M Club banquet. And he is working on our enslaved project this Saturday that will be dedicated in our old burial grounds at 10 o'clock. So he's a wonderful, outstanding student from Medford. So congratulations. Job well done.
[DiBenedetto]: Mr. Benedetto. Mayor Burke. I see a lot of English Portuguese. We don't offer Portuguese as an AP class at Medford High, do we? That's my understanding.
[Vilma Bibeau]: This is the beauty of the Seattle Methodist. This is the beauty of the Seattle Methodist that gives the opportunity to our heritage students to perform, to take this test. And as I'm learning, this is my second year, as I'm learning more about the test, it is my goal to coach, to teach even students languages that we don't have, to teach how to take this test to give more opportunities to our seniors. We need to stay with the state standards, such as only seniors can take it up, but I think it's a nice beautiful crowning at the end of their high school career. One of the things I repeat that I love in particular about the SEAL because it does not stop on the languages that we're teaching, but it opens up to other heritage languages, which it gives, it's a social justice aspect that is very important in our culture today. And this beautiful district that is so multicultural and so diverse and needs to, we need to have something like this.
[DiBenedetto]: So, Mayor Burke, that's what stood out to me because I knew we didn't have Portuguese as a class at MedFed High School. I know we have a large population of Portuguese people moving into MedFed in that it might be an opportunity to add that. But also, just even maybe working with that ESL director to encourage more of our students that have been in the ESL program to initiate and to feel proud and strength and show them your native language you can still take that with you and not lose it while you're here and it can be celebrated through these exams. I'm hoping to see more of that.
[Vilma Bibeau]: Absolutely, and I already collaborated with the ELA director as well as the LA director. It has to be, all these stakeholders need to be on board in order to give, to promote the Seal of Valoracy, to implement the Seal of Valoracy. So they already are on board, and I participated last year and this year, but it would be my goal to teach the kids how better to take the exam. For example, take your time, respond thoroughly to give them the opportunity to score higher to gain the seal.
[DiBenedetto]: Thank you. Thank you for your time.
[Burke]: Thank you very much. Thank you. Motion to approve. Item 5, recommendation to approve field trip, Dr. Bernadette Rigdelli and Marine Island. Hello.
[Ricciardelli]: So good evening again. So tonight, we have Marina Island. Maria is a French teacher at the high school. And she will be presenting her plan, her request, I should say, for a field trip to France in 2020.
[Nyland]: So good evening, school committee. Good evening, Ms. Mayor and Ms. Superintendent. Yes, so I'm here tonight to request an approval for our first ever a trip to Paris, France. And I hope you all have a packet, which includes the itinerary, which is Paris and Provence and Nice and Versailles. So this will take place, we're hoping this will take place next April vacation. We fly out on Friday and then we return on Sunday. So we won't be missing any school days. The flight is late Friday evening. So there's no school days that we would miss. It's a great, it's very aligned to the curriculum. We actually have almost 40% of the students are French students. So basically, we talk about the castles in the Loire Valley, and we're actually going to go there. A good thing with this program that we're using, Travel Design Italy, which is the same tour guide that we use for the Italy trips, we actually were able to customize our trip, which is fantastic, as we told them. We do castles, so can we go to Loire Valley, because after all, that would be wonderful to see that. So it's on the itinerary. We have 39 students all signed up with their deposits down, ready to go. 35 are going to be seniors. Yeah, two sophomores and two juniors. So it's going to be a very nice senior trip other than the other two. I did some additions here. Again, 40% is French. I gave you a list of all the students there. Any questions?
[Burke]: Are there any questions from the body?
[DiBenedetto]: Mr. Benedetto, can you just clarify the total cost of the trip? Insurance, I want to make sure you understand that insurance is not an option. It has to be included in the price. We made that motion many years ago when we had to cancel a trip abruptly.
[Nyland]: Absolutely, yes. And again, the good thing with using the same company that we use for Italy, he has it down-packed. He has a routine going, he knows exactly what needs to be included. The chaperones are six to, I'm sorry, one to six, one chaperone to six students, which is fantastic. We did a Montreal, Quebec city two years ago, and it was 10 to one. which was a lot. And I went to that one too, and I've gone to the Italy one, and the 6 to 1 is way better, a lot better. It's more in control, and that's what he does. But yes, right now the price is $2,100, including insurance, which is not an option. They have to pay for that. So the full price is $2,100. So they've all put down $200 deposit. Once this gets approved, I do want to have a meeting next week, like maybe one of the final days, maybe Tuesday night, Wednesday night. I have a letter at the back there. saying that because I would like to meet the parents and just tell them how things are going to run.
[DiBenedetto]: So the $2,100 is for the ground tours and the hotels and all of that.
[Nyland]: And the flight.
[DiBenedetto]: Does that include the flight? It includes the flight. Yes. Okay. So that's for everything. And how are chaperones chosen?
[Nyland]: Chaperones are chosen by experience. We have about three or four that have gone on these trips on a regular basis.
[DiBenedetto]: And then... How much do chaperones pay?
[Nyland]: Or do they go free? They go free.
[Ricciardelli]: They're working. We're working, yes. Okay, I'm just curious. They are on. They have a lot of responsibility, so it's built into the price. So Ms. Nyland is working to select the chaperones. We want it to be balanced. We want male and female. It's great to have chaperones with experience.
[DiBenedetto]: In the language as well, right?
[Ricciardelli]: Yes.
[Nyland]: Correct, correct. In the language as well. To get around, absolutely. Myself speak French, and then there's one more chaperone who also speaks French, but the other ones don't. but at least some of us do, right? I'm sorry, I do wanna, I'm sorry, the total price is $3,000. It was 31, and because we have a high number, it went down $100, so we're at $3,000. Air, land, insurance, meals, right there, on the itinerary, you've got eight nights, five dinners, two luncheons, entrance fees, admissions, so basically, all the students bring is spending money. That's all they bring. Motion to approve.
[Van der Kloot]: Yes, by the way, I love these trips for students in these opportunities I do also one of the things that the school committee worried about previously Is that the list would be given to the school nurse to find out whether there is any special?
[Ricciardelli]: So the school nurse has been consulted. And I have the original.
[Nyland]: She did sign my copy. She signed it after your copies were made.
[Van der Kloot]: OK, great. Thank you very much. I second it.
[Burke]: There's a motion seconded by Mr. Gero. Roll call vote, please.
[Burke]: Yes. 7 in the affirmative, 0 in the negative. Motion passes. Thank you very much.
[Nyland]: Thank you very much. Bye.
[Burke]: Have a great trip. And one final item while we're under suspension, item 7, recommendation to appoint Dr. Peter Cushing to position of assistant superintendent. Dr. Edouard Vincent, please.
[Edouard-Vincent]: Yes, good evening. Dr. Cushing, can you come forward, please? This evening I present to you my recommendation to appoint Dr. Peter Cushing to the position of assistant superintendent. Upon the conclusion of an extensive leadership search, it is the administration's recommendation to offer the position of assistant superintendent to Dr. Peter J. Cushing. Dr. Cushing began his teaching career as a long-term substitute in the Lynn Public Schools. During his tenure, he had a myriad of experiences, including teaching history and serving students in the Alternative Education Program for transition back to the comprehensive high schools. Dr. Cushing earned his master's degree in educational leadership from Boston College at the Lynch School of Education, where he served as a supervisor for student teachers. Dr. Cushing continued his educational track by earning a doctorate from Boston College as well. Dr. Cushing's experience includes teaching in Arlington Public Schools, serving as vice principal and then principal at Narragansett Regional Middle School. Under Dr. Cushing's strong leadership, he led Narragansett Regional Middle School to level one status under the previous accountability system. He is currently serving in Webster Public Schools as principal of Bartlett High School, a turnaround school. Dr. Cushing's educational passions include focusing on issues of equity for students in economically disadvantaged subgroups, building school pride, academic professional development, collaborative leadership, and fostering strong and positive relationships among all stakeholders. His diverse educational experiences and successes will benefit Medford Public Schools. It is with great excitement that I recommend the approval for Dr. Cushing's appointment to the position of assistant superintendent.
[Burke]: Mr. Cushing, would you like to say a few words?
[Cushing]: I just want to say how humbled I am for this great opportunity to work with a great team and to be part of an amazing district. And in many respects, to come home to the north of Boston region and to be a part of just the amazing things that I've heard tonight, the amazing things that people have done with the Ethics Bowl and with the science fairs, and by putting together a trip that is $1,200 or so less than a trip that was just approved at my high school, which is really phenomenal. I'm like, what tour company is that? I just think it's really awesome, and I'm so very excited to be a part of this community, and I really look forward to serving humbly and learning about MedFed and becoming a Mustang through and through.
[Burke]: Wonderful. Thank you.
[DiBenedetto]: Mr. Benedetto. Thank you. Welcome. I wanted to say welcome to MedFed. I had the opportunity of meeting you at a subcommittee meeting for personnel. I enjoyed meeting you. I think that your talents will be greatly used here in MedFed and welcome. I motion to approve.
[Burke]: There's a motion on the floor for approval of the recommendation, seconded by Mr. Ruggiero. You had an outstanding interview last week. We were very impressed with you, not only your credentials, but how you conducted yourself before us. And we are thrilled that Dr. Marisa Edward-Vincent has recommended you. So we wish you the very best. Thank you. And on the vote. Ms. Mustone, please call the roll, Madam Secretary. Yes. 7 in the affirmative, 0 in the negative. Motion passes. Congratulations. Motion to revert to the regular order of business by Ms. Mostone, seconded by Ms. Kreatz. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes. Report of committees. Support Service Subcommittee. Mr. Russo. Yes.
[Ruseau]: So the Support Services Subcommittee has met a few times over the last, well, it's been almost a year, to update our medication administration policy. And there's been a substantial number of changes that I really can't get into because I don't have the old policy in front of me. But this new policy, is better organized, and I think better reflects what we have actually been doing here in Medford, and closes a couple of concerns that there might have been around parental notification. So if there aren't any questions, I'd like to move the motion.
[Burke]: Second. Motion to accept the report by Ms. Mustone, seconded by Ms. Kreatz. All those in favor? All those opposed? Motion passes. Thank you, Mr. Russo. Rules Subcommittee, Ms. Kreatz.
[Kreatz]: We had a Rules Subcommittee meeting last Thursday, and the purpose of the meeting was to discuss the Medford Schools Meals Charge Policy, just minor modifications. The language in the policy was changed consistently throughout the document, so now in the document you will see food services everywhere throughout the document. There's also one other minor change. The last sentence on the original policy under paragraph three was removed because it conflicts with one of the sentences in paragraph one. So it was just simply removed. And if everybody agrees and doesn't have any questions, we can, motion, okay.
[Burke]: Motion to adopt the changes in the policy. Ms. Mustone? Yes. Seconded by Ms. Kreatz. Mr. Benedetto?
[DiBenedetto]: Mayor Burke, I love our food policy and how we make sure that when kids are in line, they're not stigmatized if they don't have money and that we're going to continue to give them a lunch. I just don't want, I know they can't take other items, they can just take a general lunch and like money isn't discussed. at that point when their friends are in line. I just wanted to reiterate that we do that. It's a very important point. I also wanted to talk, actually a community member texted me this morning with an offer to help us write a grant for $10,000 per school for Breakfast After the Bell. So I would like to connect that person to our superintendent and our superintendent in charge of finance. And see, I know we have it on the books to look into, Breakfast for All, but this is one particular program called Breakfast After the Bell. This community member runs a group that will provide you someone to help you write the grant. And it's 10,000 per school, not per district. So every school in the district. And I would love to see it all the way from kindergarten through our 12th graders, because our high school students are hungry as well. So I wanted to just keep that in mind. I'll provide the information. I think I would love to see if we can get a grant to help us get underway with that initiative. I know two of our schools get breakfast now. I would love to see every student have breakfast and have a successful day, because they're not walking into a classroom hungry. So just those two comments, and thank you for the report.
[Burke]: Very good. On the motion to adopt the changes to the policy as offered by the chair of the Rules Committee, roll call vote, please.
[SPEAKER_10]: Ms. Mustone. Yes. Ms. DePrez. Yes. Ms. Mustone, yes. Ms. Ruggiero. Yes. Ms. Rousseau. Yes.
[Burke]: Yes, seven in the affirmative, zero in the negative. The motion passes. Community participation. Hearing, seeing none. Report of the superintendent. The superintendent's updates and comments. Dr. Maurice.
[Edouard-Vincent]: Good evening. It was a fantastic weekend, I can say. Action-packed weekend. There were a lot of events in Medford. We had Diversity Day at Tufts Park, Girls on the Run, We also had the cardboard canoes. racing at Bright's Pond with administrators and students. And it was a lot of fun to be had by all who were able to attend. The weather really turned out beautifully. And again, yesterday we celebrated Medford Day over at the Andrews Field, which was another wonderful opportunity to see us all together. Everyone came out. And again, it just reminds me of one Medford and one beautiful district city that we are in. I wanted to share that tomorrow there are a lot of activities. This is our final official school committee meeting before the close of school because this year Old Man Winter was very cooperative and so the last day of school is Thursday, June 13th. So although we have a meeting scheduled for the 17th, school is not officially in session. So I just want to give the listening audience and those of you here some of the things that are coming up. So tomorrow we have graduation for the Curtis Tufts High School at 11 o'clock at the Irish American Club. Also tomorrow at the Brooks Elementary School at 3 o'clock, CCSR will host their ribbon cutting for their newly painted playground, which was one of their projects. Tomorrow is also the beginning of our spring MIAA tournament play for the following Mustang sports. Boys Tennis will play at North Andover tomorrow at 4 o'clock and Boys Lacrosse will also play tomorrow at Westford Academy. And just a side note, Tristan Howard of our outdoor track team He placed fourth in the States in the 200 meters this weekend and qualified for the New England Championships, which will be held this Saturday. So Tristan did compete, mostly against seniors, so this is quite an accomplishment because we still have him. Congratulations, Tristan. Also, tomorrow evening, our vocational school, we have the robotics and engineering program will host their annual open house from 6 to 8 o'clock. And they have extended the invitation to all, but especially to our middle school students who may want to see what the robotics and engineering program looks like. Our new football coach, John Curley, will also be hosting a meeting for students and their parents who might be interested in playing football in the fall. That meeting is tomorrow evening at 6 o'clock in CAF II. Graduation, yes, the big graduation for our high school seniors. Go Mustangs, I'm getting excited already. Is this Wednesday, June 5th at six o'clock at Tufts University. And our guest speaker is our own, Medford's own Mr. McGilvery. Dave McGilvery. Dave McGilvery, who I'm sure is going to, yes, give an inspirational speech for our students. On Friday, June 7th from 8 to 9, our guidance department will be hosting coffee with the Councilors for interested parents in CAF 1 of Medford High School. Friday also will be the ribbon-cutting for our new orchard and outdoor classroom at Medford High School at 2.30 p.m. in the inner courtyard. On Saturday, June 8th, Medford CCSR Slavery Memorial Unveiling Ceremony will be held at 10.30 a.m. at the Salem Street Burial Ground here in Medford Square. And I would also like to thank Armstrong Ambulance for inviting the Votes Health Assisting Program to a free Stop the Bleed workshop at their headquarters in Arlington. during National EMS Week. We had 15 students along with their teachers, nurses Linda Trofimbo and Sandra Savini. They were able to attend this workshop and learn about the importance of the immediate use of tourniquets. In addition, students were able to review the steps for CPR and AED, as well as learning how to choke save infants or adults that are choking. The paramedics showed them how to intubate a patient using a special instrument called a laryngoscope, and we are appreciative of Armstrong's strong partnership with Medford Public Schools. Also, the past few weeks, we opened our new Mustang Mall, which is located in the lobby of our high school. I also want to recognize that today, earlier today, we had the unveiling of an additional 3D, three-dimensional sidewalk at the Roberts Elementary School, so similar to the Brooks, and so I'm thankful to the mayor's office and the teams that put that together. to put the 3D sidewalk and there was a lot of positive media coverage and hopefully we'll be able to grow it to all of our schools. I wanted to recognize, I didn't have a chance to thank our newly, Marie Cassidy received her honorary doctorate from Tufts University and so I have to stop calling her Dr. Cassidy yet. That is a great accomplishment and we are all very, very proud of her and the work that she is doing and continues to do on behalf of all of Medford at the Medford Family Network. And again, I want to just send out a special thank you to D.A. Marion Ryan for her generous donation towards the Junior class up all-night party that had happened a few weeks back And that's held at Tufts University immediately following the junior prom so I think da Ryan for her support of Medford Public Schools. And coming up, our vocational school is having summer camp for middle school students, grades 6 to 8, the week of June 17th. It will start on Monday the 17th to the 21st. It's from 8.30 to 12.30. and the cost per student is $100. Interested parents can contact the Vogue main office. And in addition, our regular summer school begins on Tuesday, June 18th, and that runs until Wednesday, July 31st. There will be no classes on July 4th and July 5th. And that's what's happening in Medford Public Schools.
[Burke]: Very good, thank you so much. Thank you. Wonderful. Next up, item six, report on CPAC annual update. Melanie McLaughlin and Tonya Sullivan.
[McLaughlin]: Yeah.
[Unidentified]: Hello.
[McLaughlin]: Thank you for being patient. I'm Melanie McLaughlin, and I am from Austin Street in Medford.
[Kreatz]: I'm Tanya Sullivan, and I'm from Brackett Street in Medford.
[McLaughlin]: And we are the co-chairs for the Medford CPAC. So thank you for letting us present to you annually what we accomplish throughout the year. So CPAC is the Special Education Parent Advisory Council for Medford. And our logo is where everyone belongs. We are happy to have been of service to the 888 or so families that are receiving special education services and supports in Medford. Most of you folks know that the CPAC is required under the Massachusetts General Law. So every school district is required to have a special education parent advisory council. And our role is to advise the district on matters pertaining to special education. services and programs, and safety of individuals with disabilities. We look for input from parents, guardians, family members, and we meet regularly with school officials. We participate in the planning of programming and the evaluation process of the special education programming as well. We plan workshops and seminars for families and community engagement. We field lots of phone calls from parents as they're navigating the special education system. We host family-friendly events and It's really been a joy to serve the community for the past several years. Our board members are myself and Tanya Sullivan. Treasurer is Jameel Webb Davis, who's with us tonight. And our secretary is Anne Russo. We have lots of people who help out with the Medford CPAC. And for folks that are watching tonight, we want to say thank you all for all your help and participation in coming to our seminars and workshops over the years, and for being there to not only support the CPAC, but to support each other, because we're stronger as a community together. Thank you. Membership includes students and families who have IEPs or 504 plans and other interested parties. So when we say where everyone belongs, it's where everyone belongs. So you're all included to attend and be part of, and we welcome. My apologies for the little alignment here. We uploaded to Google Drive just a few minutes ago. Thank you, Emily, for your help with that. So our goals, we advocate for every child in our community, and we promote equity in our schools for all children, regardless of race, color, ability, national origin, immigration status, sexual orientation, or race. We really want to provide mentorship, support, resources, and expertise to families and community members on issues of inclusion and exclusion, and offer equality of opportunity, civil and human rights, and legislative advocacy, especially on behalf of our marginalized children. When we talk about equality of opportunity, a lot of people might not know what that means. And essentially, we don't believe that every child should get the same. We believe that every child should get what they need. Next. Oh, we actually updated this a little bit. Kathy Medaglio just gave us a little bit of an update. So at the beginning of the year, we had 770 students on IEPs. And it's actually gone up over the year because of new enrollments, what have you. We're roughly at about 888 right now. But the percentages are roughly the same. So 18.8% of our student population. So almost 20% of our students are receiving special education supports and services. We have actually about 32 out of district. It's a little bit higher than the state average, but Kathy can talk a little bit about that as well if folks are interested. But out of district families are folks who are placed in other outside schools for varying reasons. And one of our goals for the upcoming year help those families feel more involved and part of our community. I think our out-of-district families especially need to feel that they're a part of a community when they're not in our schools. We have a lower full inclusion rate than the state, but we have a higher partial inclusion rate in our special education classrooms, and we have a lower subseparate rate. So the difference between those, our full inclusion is 80 percent or more in general education setting. Partial inclusion is between 79 and 40 percent, so that's a wide range for partial inclusion. And then subseparate would be 40% or less time spent in general education. Some of our accomplishments for the past year is we host multiple seminars. We meet the second Wednesday of every month. Principal Downs has been so generous in offering the Andrews Middle School to us every month, as Paul DeLeva did before. And we're so happy to have that venue. They've always been so welcoming to us. Second Wednesday of every month from 7 to 9 we meet, and we host workshops. This year we had workshops on anxiety in schools, dyslexia, ELL, disability rights as human rights, executive functioning, and we've also hosted coffee with the principals. We should note for the anxiety, dyslexia, and ELL presentations, we've worked with administration and our central administration to bring in speakers from our schools. So we've had our ELL director, We've had guidance Councilors come in. It's been a really nice collaboration between families and administration and teachers working together to help our families across the district. We've also presented workshops at Bridgewater State, the Mass Down Syndrome Congress, and Federation for Children with Special Needs. We helped create and participated in a universal design for emergency preparedness safety in our school subcommittee with national recognition of our efforts featured on NPR. There's a link to that that we're happy to share. The NPR recognition was really nice. We've worked really hard on that committee over the past year, and we've had about seven committee members, again, administrators, parents, a number of folks looking at safety in our schools and how we think about emergency preparedness for all our students using universal design. So essentially the idea that if you design something for everyone with everyone in mind, then everyone will benefit. And so our safety in schools, you know that we did a presentation to you folks last month on that, and we're going to continue that committee. It's been very effective, and we've really enjoyed working on that as well. Next page. We also helped launch and participated in a special education subcommittee this year. Thank you to the subcommittee members here, the school committee. We really appreciated that happening, and we've been focusing on disability awareness and out-of-school time. including after school and recreational program for students with disabilities. So again, we spent the year meeting with school committee members and administrators and folks from community stakeholders, talking about how we can improve access to our after school and recreational program for students with disabilities, for all students really, and also how we could improve disability awareness. So one of the things that came out of that that's been really great is the Director of Speech and Language along with others, created a disability awareness course in the district. And about, I think, 44 teachers and staff enrolled in that disability course. And I had the pleasure of presenting at the first course on disability rights as human rights. The class was really well received. And it was just really nice to see people asking questions and really understanding what disability awareness is and how disability is another aspect of diversity, and having disability pride and celebrating that. They also had a panel where they included siblings and family members and a self-advocate. The course was wonderful. I assume that they're going to teach it again next year. It was really well received. They're talking about also maybe people were asking for a 2.0, so that was exciting. We partnered with community organizations for family outreach, including the West Medford Community Center, Medford Family Network, community schools, and CCSR. Oh, you can skip that. That's repeat. And then our recommendations for the year. So we have just about five recommendations. And one of the things that was really effective about the subcommittee, special education subcommittee this year was we felt like we focused on two issues and we could really move those issues forward when we can focus on just a few. And so we're respectfully asking the school committee, the mayor, the superintendent to look at these five topics and think about how we can move these forward, even if we pick a few of them over the next year to work on so that we can see some progress. One is that we would recommend creating a district-wide survey slash inclusion report. And what we're recommending for this is that we survey general education teachers, special education, paraprofessional, administrators, and families on the current culture in our schools for inclusive practice and what improvements are needed. We'd also obviously like to hear what's working. So we can continue to improve, to continue to implement that, but also to think about what we can do to move things forward for more inclusion for every student. We also would like to recommend offering professional, meaningful professional development on differentiated instruction and supplemental curriculum for teachers, paraprofessionals, and families in partnership with the CPAC. One of the reasons we talk about that specifically in partnership with the CPAC We had a very personal experience where we didn't understand until I think third grade or the end of third grade that there's actually a supplement to our curriculum for students with disabilities. And so we found that out through the ELL department because we understood that there's a supplement for English language learners. And then we were able to explore a little bit more and understand that you folks had voted on a supplement for special education, which was really wonderful. So I felt like if I didn't know that, that there's probably a lot of folks out there that don't know that. And so we want to make sure that folks do know that and that that's a real stepping stone for differentiated instruction for everyone in the community. And so the professional development would be around how to use that supplemental curriculum and how to, you know, show parents what that is and how they can use that at home as well. We would also recommend implementing a co-teaching model at the elementary level. We know that there's some co-teaching at the elementary level. It's just not systemized and sort of, yeah, systemized, I guess, as it is at the high school level. And we think it's been a really good model, and we know that it's a proven effective model for being able to work in general education settings for students with and without disabilities to be effective in teaching all of our children. This is a low-hanging fruit, if you will. Replace and create consistent language for school missions, websites, school-to-home forms, et cetera, to be inclusive. This is one of the things that we talked about at the subcommittee for the school committee as well, is just how are we looking at our language across the district? And we did a preliminary study, nothing sort of expansive, but we just started to poke around on our websites. look for the language on each of the school websites. And some of the schools had school improvement plans. Some didn't. Some had missions. Most all of them had missions, I believe. Not all of them mentioned inclusion or equity or students with disabilities. And we just think that it would be nice to have a language that would be inclusive, because we know that Medford is an inclusive community and wants everybody to feel welcome. And we are one Medford. And just thinking about how we're thinking about our messaging of that, if you think about the four frames of Bowman and Diehl, and the symbolic frame, how we're messaging that across the district. Publishing school improvement plans on all school websites. So like I said, there was just probably one or two that didn't have the school improvement plans. And seeing them are really helpful, but also seeing what the plans are for almost 20% of students with disabilities in the schools would be really helpful. And then expand inclusive communities for children with and without disabilities. So we would recommend providing training for inclusive community schools. athletic and after school program. So one of the things that we worked on in the subcommittee was the after school and out of school time. And we talked about some of the language and making some of that language more uniform. And there's going to be a training provided for the summer fun camp and the Councilors there. We think that's a really great first start. We want to expand on that to make sure that our community school programs, athletic programs, recreation programs, what have you, all have experience in working and embracing children with disabilities. An example of that is we were in the swim program this year. And it was interesting for me to see there was a little bit of disconnect in the swim program. And we went, I think, to the second or third swim lesson. And it just occurred to me that nobody had ever taught the swim instructor in the pool with our daughter just something really basic, which is just, first of all, it might be difficult to hear because of the acoustic, especially if the child has a hearing deficiency. but the acoustics in the pool can be really hard to hear. So sometimes just, you know, motioning or, you know, saying swim or, you know, so using some, you know, basic sign language can be really helpful, but also just the first then. Like first you're going to swim, then we're going to jump or whatever, just some basic, you know, and it was really, it wasn't fair. I realized in that setting that it wasn't fair to the person that was in the pool, nor was it fair to the child just to not have that basic communication that we as parents just sort of take for granted. And maybe some of the administration takes for granted, too, because they're so used to doing that with our children. So just some basic training. We would love to see a Best Buddies program within our district. We used to have one at the McGlynn Middle School, or a Best Buddies-like program, if the Best Buddies program is too expensive. But we could potentially create a friendship program, a mentoring program. And all of these recommendations, we want to assure you, We're ready to roll up our sleeves and work with you on these. These are nothing that we're asking other people to do. We want to work with you to make them happen and offer written guidelines on requirements of ADA, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and building inclusive communities. So in some experiences, our families have inadvertently, mostly because it's just people who maybe don't experience life with disabilities themselves and just don't understand that Accessibility is an important part of our community, but also it is part of the law and helping people understand what the Americans with Disabilities Act is, even if it's just in basic, you know, writing that, you know, folks need to provide reasonable accommodations when children are accessing programs within the district. And then, of course, we want to know how we can help and what next steps can be taken. And for folks who want to know what that sign is, that's the sign for I love you. That's my daughter, and she has a t-shirt on it that says, keep calm, it's only an extra chromosome. So we want to know how we can help, and we'd be happy to take any questions if anyone has any.
[Burke]: Mr. Ruggiero.
[Ruggiero]: Thank you, Mayor Burke. Thank you very much for this presentation. I did have a question on page three of the handout. You mentioned our lower full inclusion rate and lower subseparate rate as compared to the state. Can you tell me what the state average is and where we compare?
[McLaughlin]: I don't have them with me, but I can certainly get them to you. OK. But we are, you know, they're right on the DESE website. So if you do school district profiles. Yeah, I checked.
[Ruggiero]: Maybe I missed it in the wrong place. I couldn't find it. So I'll look for it again.
[McLaughlin]: Yeah, no, I can email it to you.
[Ruggiero]: Great, thank you.
[McLaughlin]: I'm sure we can have it our way.
[Ruggiero]: Are we talking like a huge difference or small difference?
[McLaughlin]: Small difference for the higher for partial inclusion. We're very high for the partial inclusion. For the full inclusion, I think it's a smaller, but the range for the... One of the difficulties is, you know, with DESE as well, that the range for partial inclusion, like we said, is 79 to 40. I mean, that's a pretty big stretch, right? So what does that really mean and what does that translate into? And I think that's when you start to look into the programs and see what's happening around our schools. But again, you know, as was said in the school committee meeting for the last session, I think it's really valuable to go into the classrooms and see what's happening in our classrooms here. So I had that experience this year where I was able to sort of observe some of the classrooms and some of the programming. And I really encourage the school committee to do that and to see for themselves what's happening in our subseparate classrooms. So in our partial inclusion classrooms and our full inclusion classrooms, because we should be looking at every classroom and seeing how we can help and how we can support every child.
[Van der Kloot]: Thank you very much for your report. I just wanted to underline, I think, that this real accomplishment this year, and it certainly was so great to hear about, was the universal design for emergency preparedness. A real kudos for the CPAC. So thanks so much.
[McLaughlin]: Thank you. We really enjoyed that. And it wasn't obviously just the CPAC. Central Administration, Kathy Medaglio, lots of folks really helped out with that. And one of the things that's really exciting about that is we created what we're calling an IER, which was an individual emergency response, much like an IEP, an individual emergency response form so that families who need extra planning in their IEP for emergency response have this form that can be looked at and they can review if your child needs extra help in an evacuation center or a fire alarm or whatever. It can be part of the legal document, part of the IEP. So the IER is something that we're actually going to present at a state level as well to the Committee on Education because we think it should be something that should be not only It's statewide but national, so once again, Medford's leading the way. We're really happy to be part of that.
[Kreatz]: Thank you. Ms. Kreatz. Yes. Thank you very much for the report, and thank you for the wonderful presentation. I just have a question. Do you know, like, is there, like, currently, you know, professional training for the afterschool teachers at the different schools? Like, is that already in place right now this year?
[McLaughlin]: Not that I'm aware of. Well, so actually Megan came to the subcommittee meetings for the special education committee, so out of school time and after school. And so Anthony Petrellis is working with the Summer Fund Camp to have training. And so Megan was just saying at our last meeting that she would like to implement the same training that they're happening at the Summer Fund. So yes, that's going to start. It hadn't in the past, but it's going to happen this year. So we're really excited about that. Yeah, thank you for asking about them. That's really exciting. No, I know, really important.
[Kreatz]: It is. Yeah. Thank you.
[DiBenedetto]: Thank you.
[McLaughlin]: You're welcome.
[DiBenedetto]: Thank you. Mr. Benedetto. Thank you. I think Ms. Stone had her hand raised.
[Burke]: Christmas stone, she yields to you. Thank you.
[DiBenedetto]: You don't usually put your hand up, so I bow.
[Mustone]: I thought she was stretching. I need to stretch too. Thank you Melanie and Tanya for an excellent slide show. I was wondering, and I'm not sure if it's Kathy or you folks that can answer. So your slide says 770 kids on an IEP, but then our hard copy is 888. That's right.
[McLaughlin]: Kathy can talk about that if you want her to, but it's really just
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'll volunteer you, Kathy.
[Mustone]: But to increase by 118, is that an average for the beginning and the end of a school year?
[SPEAKER_08]: OK, so the 770 actually came from the 2016-2017 school year, because that information came off of a report from the Department of Ed website. So the 885 is what I calculated the other day. So it's natural to students move in, new students are identified, especially We have preschoolers turning three all the time. We probably pick up a good 40 to 50 three-year-olds over the course of one school year. So that's not unusual to have that difference. The 770 number, on the Department of Ed website, they post different statistics within different reports. So on the October 1st report that goes in, that 770 came from a students who are ages 6 to 21.
[SPEAKER_10]: OK.
[Mustone]: I guess my concern or question, thinking of budgeting, is do you see a higher than average increase in the last few years of kids on IEPs?
[SPEAKER_08]: We've been somewhere around the 18th percentile. So we fluctuate right around 18, all the way up to 19%, depending on the year.
[Mustone]: OK.
[SPEAKER_08]: The difference is the number of students enrolled in the school district. you know, fewer students, but, you know, what is the proportion based on... Okay, so it's 18% on average for the last 10 years? No, what we do have is an increase of preschoolers becoming eligible for special ed services. Okay, all right. That is a stress area.
[Mustone]: Okay, all right, thank you very much.
[DiBenedetto]: Mr. Benedetto. Thank you. First of all, throughout this year, I've gotten to see many instances where the collaboration between the Special Education Administration and the CPAC have worked together, and it's been really a joy to watch, because a lot of districts don't have that, and we do in MedFed. We have an excellent CPAC that's very well organized and trains us in a lot of different things. I've learned a lot at some of the meetings, and so have so many of our parents. I'd love to see an increase in your enrollment and participation in those programming. So in any way that the district can help facilitate that, either with the auto call or some ways, I would love to see that as a goal for next year. Thank you. As a school committee member. And any way that we can enlighten more parents and more families to your programming and to these opportunities to learn more in order to help their children. is also a benefit to all throughout the district. I've also had the opportunity to chair the special education subcommittee meeting that is a new subcommittee that we formed about a year ago. And I want to thank my colleagues for coming to all those meetings. I tried to provide good snacks and keep it to the correct time frame and really just make sure we didn't ask for 20 things when we could ask for two and really facilitate change. And I feel like moving forward, if you work on two basic things, three are tops, you make effective change and that change sustains for years to come. So I would make that recommendation to the CPAC as well. I know there's 50 things that you can think of that the district could improve because we all want the best for our children. But we really need to focus and plan for next year and see what those items are going to be with the superintendent as well as our new special education director. I also want to take this opportunity, because it is the last meeting of the year, to call up Kathy Medaglio for a minute, if you don't mind. Oh, when you're finished.
[McLaughlin]: Yeah. Yeah. So we just have one more thing that we wanted to do. Yes, we appreciate that very much, Erin. And it has been a real joy working with our special ed administration and our administration and teachers across the district. I think one of the things that people don't realize is that when we have these events, I think oftentimes people think, oh, that's for families of children with disabilities or that's for students with disabilities. And these events are for everyone. In fact, they benefit everyone. The school safety thing was for anybody, elderly, preschoolers, anyone. And they're really helpful. Anxiety, lots of folks have homework anxiety. You're not necessarily diagnosed as disabled. So the other thing that we really want to remind people is disability is natural. We're all disabled at some point. So you could be temporarily disabled, or you could get hit by a car and be disabled for the rest of your life. You could be disabled through pregnancy, what have you. So disability is natural. And really, no one questions anybody that walks through that door or why they come. We're just happy to have you there. And we also have good snacks. And the next actually slide that we wanted to share is that we have our CPAC award, our 2019 CPAC award. So the CPAC award, we give an award every year in recognition of a community member who exemplifies the CPAC mission of equity, diversity and inclusion for every child. And this year we want to give the award to, drumroll,
[SPEAKER_01]: We want to say it's been a joy working with Kathy over the past several years, and I can assure you there are many CPACs that would not necessarily say that about the Director of Special Education. Wow!
[Unidentified]: Thank you, thank you.
[SPEAKER_08]: I'm so honored. I really am. I'm very honored. And it's been a pleasure working with all of you. We've done a lot of good work. And sometimes we might be having discussions that are quite strong and vivid. But we get there, and we get it done. And I do want to say that it really has been a pleasure. Medford is very lucky to have such a strong group of parents who really have a voice and they're very clear and they help us to keep moving forward and to look at things from different perspectives. And it's very important to listen to parents, so I just wanna put that out there and make sure that we're hearing from the home perspective what we can all do to grow and develop and keep moving forward. So thank you very much. We're gonna miss you.
[McLaughlin]: We just want to take a picture for one minute if you don't mind indulging us. I want to be in that picture.
[Unidentified]: I think the whole school committee should join.
[DiBenedetto]: Yeah, come on over, come on over.
[McLaughlin]: Get the whole crowd in the picture, I know. Isn't that pretty? Yeah, come on, thank you guys. Oh, thanks. How many years has that been?
[SPEAKER_08]: What, he remembered?
[McLaughlin]: Yeah.
[DiBenedetto]: Mayor Burke, if it's okay.
[Burke]: Mr. Benedetto.
[DiBenedetto]: Thank you. So I know we have another meeting on June 17th, but this is the last meeting where, you know, parents in the district may be watching because their kids will be out of school for the next meeting. So I just personally, I've worked as a school committee member for eight years now, and I work in special education in my day job. So I just want to say how much respect I have, in admiration for Kathy Medaglio. I know she's retiring this year. I just wanted to say what a pleasure it's been to work with you on so many issues for so many families. You've been an excellent SPED director. Not only do you pass all of our coordinated program reviews with flying colors, which is a really great accomplishment for a school district. You also work with compassion, and you keep what's best for the children in the district at the forefront, mostly the children. I can't tell you how much respect I have for you. Thank you for your years of service in MedFed, and you will always hear from me. I don't know if that's a good thing or a threat.
[Van der Kloot]: Kathy, Erin said it very well, so I don't want to take a lot of time, but I really want to thank you for all of your service to us. You've done a magnificent job working in a sometimes very difficult area. You've kept the needs of the kids in the forefront, and I really appreciate having you here, and we wish you every good thing in your retirement.
[Edouard-Vincent]: I want to echo what has been said, and as a new kid on the block, I've only been here for a little under a year, 11 months, so I think I'm not quite a toddler. However, I just want to say I have truly enjoyed working with Ms. Kathy Medaglio, and she's such a hard worker, a tireless worker, works very, very long, long hours. and has great insight. And I look forward to finding a creative way to continue to tap into your creative insight. And I'm just so appreciative of having had this one year to work with you. I do look forward to working with Joan as well, and I know you've trained her well. But I want to just say thank you for all your years of service and for all that you've done for Medford Public Schools. Thank you so much.
[Burke]: Thank you, Kathy. Big heart. Next up, recommendation to approve teacher unit MTA pay frequency changes. Ms. Patterson. Motion to accept. Motion to accept by Ms. Mustone, is a second by Ms. Kreatz. All those in favor? All those opposed?
[SPEAKER_10]: Thank you.
[Burke]: Motion passes. Report on K to 12 assessments. Dr. Edouard-Vincent.
[Edouard-Vincent]: Yes, so attached, this was the report from our last session that was tabled, but this was just a comprehensive listing of all of the assessments that are given over the course of the school year to support teaching and learning. at elementary, middle, and high school levels. And the addendum, the added sheet gave the official MCAS test sessions and the amount of sessions that students do take. So I feel that it is very self-explanatory, but I'm open to answering any questions.
[Ruseau]: Thank you very much. a bit of an effort to compile this. I think it's a useful thing for the district to have. And as you probably can imagine, this was just a first step in what I was going to be seeking. You know, we see the district report card, we see the MCAS results. It's not a secret that I think of them as relatively useless pieces of data. Within this set of assessments, though, I think is where the educators actually live and learn about their students. And so my hope is that some of these, not all of them, because we couldn't possibly sit through a meeting that long, even this committee couldn't probably last that long, that some of these things could be pulled out into sort of an annual state of the system report to help us understand, you know, Some of these assessments could tell us really very useful information that I don't think we get out of MCAS. And so I'm not requesting a report or specifying a date when that would happen. I think that you probably are doing this already. But figuring out what in here you think we should be presented with that gives us an understanding of what's really going on. Because MCAS- In the community. In the community, obviously, yes. Because I don't feel like I really have a sense of what's going on from MCAS scores.
[Edouard-Vincent]: And I agree with you. I feel that the MCAS scores, although they are very important to have a standard that you can measure yourself against the state in how surrounding districts are doing, But the real work that actually happens day to day over the course of the school year, what's happening in November, what's happening in January, the incremental steps that take place over the course of the year. So I will definitely be able to work on that and try to select other pieces of data to be able to show that we are moving the needle. And this assessment inventory report Again, the directors worked on it and really thought about what were the key, the kind of key levers that take us from here to preparing the students to take the state-level assessments. So that is something that I will definitely be able to do for you during next school year. Great.
[Burke]: I'm sorry, Mr. Rizzo, continue.
[Ruseau]: Yeah, I mean, I'm very happy that clearly you understand what I'm looking for. You know, some of these assessments are offered multiple times per year, and I think that is, for me, you know, these AWIN assessments and literacy, for instance, four times a year, knowing that at the beginning of the year, this is where third grade at Columbus is at, and this is where they are at the end of the year, and identifying that that's not, that's great, that's what we were hoping for, or there's something missing and we need to improve that. you know, that's really, that's going to be good. So, I'm thinking like a year from now, assuming I'm still sitting here, you know, if that's not on the schedule, I would certainly want to propose that. So, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Rousseau. Thank you.
[Van der Kloot]: Ms. Van der Kloot. Yes, Superintendent. We also received in our packet while we're on the topic of assessments, a follow-up report on the universal dyslexic screening cost analysis, and that is not on our agenda specifically, although it certainly is an assessment. I wasn't thinking that tonight we would be debating which one we're going to do, but I'm assuming, and I just want you to confirm this, that our professionals will be looking at this and will be making a choice and will be part it will be budgeted for in our upcoming school year budget? Yes.
[Edouard-Vincent]: Yes, it will definitely be budgeted.
[Van der Kloot]: Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you.
[Burke]: Thank you. Is there a motion? Oh, Ms. Mastone.
[Mustone]: Thank you. I just want to share a conversation I had with one of my children's teachers at the Roberts because the assessment was on our last agenda that we were just talking about what the report was about. Like, what was the backstory? We wanted to know about all the assessments taking place, how much instruction time is lost. What I didn't know, which I thought is helpful for parents to know, is that at least for the math benchmarks, the student takes it on their Chromebook. The results of the test or the benchmark are all downloaded. Then the math coach at the Roberts receives it all and can see where the needs are and what's missing or what needs to be highlighted. And then the math coach met with the teacher to review So at least I can only speak about math because I only had 10 minutes, you know, at drop-off to talk about it. So I do think, I guess I never thought assessments went anywhere except they filled them out and they were filed somewhere. But the math coach is at least looking at the math part, so that is direct service to see how they can help.
[Edouard-Vincent]: And just part of best practices, once an assessment is given, you analyze the data, the teachers, and whether it's their planning time, The data is looked at to inform next steps. So when you hear me talking about data informed decisions, you need to have an assessment so you know where to start and what areas you need to focus on. And the math coaches, the beauty of having them is that they are able to kind of work side by side with the teachers, help them impact the data. come up with additional lessons to target areas of weakness. So, yes, you got that unsolicited feedback, but it is happening in all areas. Thank you.
[Burke]: Thank you, Doctor. Thank you. And Mr. Russo.
[Ruseau]: I did have one more question about the addition to the, that included the MCAS testing times. You know, it says in here that for grades three to eight, the ELA test, there's two sessions. the recommended testing time is two to two and a half hours per session. But these are untimed. And so what I understand that to mean is that even though it's two to two and a half hours, it's a whole school day without any instruction.
[Edouard-Vincent]: It depends on the level that the student is. Some students can finish the assessment in a shorter amount of time. And now that the computers are online, If someone were to need more than two and a half hours, then the test is not taken away from them. So DESE gives you their recommended amount of time, but a testing session should never be longer than one school day. There are rules. So two to two and a half hours. is the recommended amount of time for an assessment. Some students do need a little bit longer and others don't. So it's, you know, it's hard to tell until the assessment's in front of them. And now that the assessment is online, it's, you know, it's even harder to say is someone struggling or not. We're still, you know, figuring out how students are responding to the state assessments since they're taking it online.
[Ruseau]: Thank you. But so from the perspective of counting up all the time that our students are in school and actually not learning, this two-hour session from a six-hour school day is really six hours that they are not learning, because they're not being... It technically can't be six.
[Edouard-Vincent]: They still will have a lunch period. They still have a break. They still will... So, I mean, worst-case scenario, it might be four and a half to five hours, For the purpose of DESE, you're not... But I mean from the planning, I'm teaching fifth grade.
[Ruseau]: I'm not going to plan anything for that whole day, correct?
[Edouard-Vincent]: So I would say it depends on how the assessment is. So if you're the teacher of record, sometimes, depending on how many students are left, they may move a smaller group of students to a different location and have them, it's supervised, So if you have 20, 25 students and 22 of them have completed the test, you don't say to the 22, okay, close your computers, silently read for the remainder of the time. They may at that point in time say, okay, two or three students or four students need a little more time, let them continue testing with a proctor. and the other students can go back. But you have to understand, the children are young, it's stressful, so usually after testing, the teachers try not to give them something that's so cognitively demanding, because it does cause stress sometimes. So they try to make it be, you know, they finish testing, but it's not something that's so, you know, intense, or they start introducing new content. They give the students time to kind of decompress and do something that's less stressful, still academic, but less stressful so that they can just kind of, you know, regroup until they get the hang of it. I mean, by the time they're in middle school, I think they're pretty much professionals. But third, fourth, fifth grade, you could still see them being tired after testing. Thank you.
[Burke]: Mr. Ruggiero.
[Ruggiero]: Thank you, Mayor Burger. One of the questions that came up when we were doing our budget discussion earlier was students, sometimes the Chromebooks will blink out. Do we ever have students lose data when they do the online assistant if we have a Chromebook that blinks out? It's not like they have to start from the top.
[Edouard-Vincent]: No, they don't start from the top. It is saved. They will have to reset it or if there have been a few computers, Chromebooks that just weren't functioning, so they'd have to close the session and then reopen it on a new computer that's functioning. So they're able to go back and continue from, you know, whatever point they were at. Okay. Thank you. Okay.
[Burke]: Thank you. Is there a motion on the floor to receive this report and place it on file by Mr. Russo, seconded by Mr. Ruggiero? All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes. Report on professional development. I do not see Ms. Caldwell.
[Edouard-Vincent]: Ms. Dr. Riccidelli.
[Burke]: Dr. Riccidelli.
[Edouard-Vincent]: Sorry. We'll present that report. Thank you.
[Ricciardelli]: Good evening. Good evening. So Associate Superintendent Diane Caldwell is unable to be here tonight, so I've been asked to read the report that, present the report that she has written. So the report is on professional development as it stands now, and as we move on into the future. The Metropolitan Public Schools has a rich portfolio of professional development offerings for our faculty, our paraprofessionals, and our administrators. This report will provide an overview of the professional development offerings provided to these staff members, as well as the number of conference days and monies spent on the coursework. In school year 2018-19, the Metro Public Schools offered a total of 128 professional development offerings in the following areas. Curriculum committees, so that would include our PBIS, our WIN advisory, our teacher assistant teams, and our ELA benchmark curriculum committees for a total of four. It includes district-sponsored offerings, including risks to resiliency, disability awareness, FOSS, Think Central for a total of 87 offerings, and various professional development day offerings, including safety care training, SEL, or social emotional learning, concepts in art education, and best practices for a total of 37 offerings. With regard to conferences, there were a total of 150 approvals made in the 18-19 school year. The number of staff that attended conferences, and again, when we're talking about staff, we're talking about faculty, paraprofessionals, and administrators. Again, the number is over 150, which means that staff participated in workshops outside the district. Most of the time when we approve staff members to attend out of district offerings, we do ask them to present their learnings within the district at department meetings, school-wide meetings, or other professional development opportunities. With regard to tuition reimbursement, the total is $40,000. We spoke a little bit about this at the last meeting. That is broken up by semesters. So as I mentioned, $14,000 is allocated for the summer reimbursement and $13,000 for each of the fall and spring reimbursement. When staff members get approval to take these courses, these courses, if they are approved and they apply, can be used for salary increment credit. With regard to grant funding, this past year we have spent $15,577. We get that money from the Title II-A grant, and to date that number is $5,177. So examples of where that money was spent would be to Teachers 21, Dr. Nadine Gobb, and staff member payment for professional development. Title IV, another federal grant. To date, the amount that has been spent is $10,400, and we can identify mentor training and a landmark PD that was provided specifically to the McGlynn Middle School. The Medford Public Schools will continue to be responsive to the needs of our district and the faculty and provide high-quality professional development. One thing that I know I mentioned when I presented a couple of weeks ago is that we are working with the Teachers Association our professional development advisory committee. We've looked at what we've offered. We've looked at a lot of the good things that we've offered. We hope to improve upon that. But I think overall, we're doing a commendable job. And again, we hope to improve, but I don't want to take away what we have done. I'd be happy to answer any questions that you have. Mr. Aguirre.
[Ruggiero]: Thank you very much, Mayor Bergen. Thank you.
[Ricciardelli]: You're welcome.
[Ruggiero]: for the report, I was hoping we could speak to Ms. Caldwell about it, but I appreciate you presenting in her stead. First off, I was curious, so in front of the curriculum committee, how many requests are made for professional development?
[Ricciardelli]: To form curriculum committees?
[Ruggiero]: Yeah, so four were granted approval, is that correct?
[Ricciardelli]: That is correct. I'm not aware of any denials for curriculum committees. Some of the curriculum work has occurred not in official committees but in department meeting settings. Again, I trust the number is correct. It's four. I didn't do the research on this. So I guess that's the best answer I can give you at this point.
[Ruggiero]: Yeah, because I remember when the teachers were here speaking on this very issue, they seemed to be, almost all of them, seemed to have the impression that they've presented things and they haven't had a chance to be approved on.
[Ricciardelli]: So I know that one of the things they were talking about is outside professional development opportunities. I think someone mentioned AP offerings, the desire to be a reader, the desire to go for AP training. And so I know that that's one area in which they are looking for more access that would not be included in curriculum.
[Ruggiero]: Yeah, I would, if possible, I would like to request a report to get a percentage of what our denial versus approval rate, but I have a couple of other questions in this regard as well. In terms of our tuition reimbursement, how do we compare looking at other similar school districts?
[Edouard-Vincent]: Bedford is very generous to offer $40,000 in tuition reimbursement. That tuition reimbursement allows you to get a step in lane increase. So we are paying for you to take the course and then we're paying you again to receive an increase in your pay until you retire. So I didn't have that as an option from the district that I came from. I would definitely have taken advantage of that since I enjoyed going to school a lot. However, I think it's a very generous offering to offer $40,000 every year to pay for professional development. That's a commitment and an investment that we're making to have highly qualified and teachers that are getting top-notch professional development. In regards to the comment about the curriculum committee, the comment that was made at the last session was about attending the conference, a professional development conference that was out of state. And again, we approved 150 conference days. So that's one of, we're only in school 180 days a year. So to have 150 conference days, that's a significant number of days that people throughout the district are accessing professional development, and sometimes you may have more than one person attending a particular conference, but you do have to have people back home, and you do have to have a reasonable amount, but I feel that 150 conference days, as they come in, that's a very generous and reasonable number.
[Ruggiero]: Yeah, I mean, I can certainly, as a former educator myself, I've taken part of these conferences and I've learned a lot, but on the school committee I can also appreciate the stress to make sure that we have all these positions filled and if someone's away for a couple of days. that we can fill their spot. I guess the sense that I had when TA was here is that it seemed, and many people nodded, and many people expressed their dissatisfaction with the amount of conferences that they had been approved for. Now, whether that's true or not, I mean, I understand that you You think we're being very generous?
[Edouard-Vincent]: We are being very generous. And although there was dissatisfaction expressed, I think if we were to pool the 150 people who were able to participate in professional development conferences, I think they would be satisfied with that.
[Ruggiero]: If possible, it would be very helpful for me, because I do have these conversations when teachers approach me. ill-equipped to represent the district and say, no, actually, we gave 150 conferences versus Melrose, which only gave 35, or Arlington, which only gave 85. So it would be very helpful for me to understand where other districts are in this regard. I don't know if you have a superintendent database that you would access, but if you could do us a favor,
[Edouard-Vincent]: I can definitely try to find some information from colleagues, but I mean, with it being the last week and a half of school, it's the timing. It can come in October, of course.
[Ruggiero]: I don't anticipate that you, everyone's busy doing graduations, and that would be a terrible time. But at your next superintendent conference, when you all meet, if you could pool five or six of our sister districts and say, how many do you guys give out? And then you can report back those figures to us. It would help me. When a teacher finds me shopping at Wegmans and they're hitting me with that right now, I feel ill-equipped to represent. I mean, I think any teacher understands that there is a give and take, but on the other side, it's important for us to recognize that we are part of the voice of the schools, and it'd be helpful to me to have those numbers.
[Burke]: Very good. Thank you very much. Is there a motion on the floor to accept this report?
[Ruggiero]: So moved.
[Burke]: By Mr. Benedetto, seconded by Mr. Giroir. All those in favor?
[Ruggiero]: Aye.
[Burke]: All those opposed? Motion passes. New business. School committee resolution. Be it resolved that the Medford School Committee express its sincere condolences to the family of Margaret Peggy Kane. Ms. Kane was an English teacher at Medford High School for 35 years. She actually was my teacher when I was in high school. Ms. VanCleef?
[Van der Kloot]: I would just like to add she also was my children's teacher and she went on and was a school committee member in her community. Peggy was a great person and it's a great loss.
[Burke]: And also if we could hold a moment of silence for those in Virginia Beach, 12 people killed Friday evening in a government building, four injured, police officer injured. If we could all please rise for a moment of silence. Non-negotiation and legal matters. Union negotiations, non-unit contracts. Is there a motion to go into executive session by Mr. Ruggiero? Seconded by Ms. Van der Kloot. Roll call vote, please.
[Burke]: Yes. 7 in the affirmative, 0 in the negative. Motion passes. We will enter executive session. And at the conclusion of executive session, we will open it up in room 207 and then exit from there. Thank you.
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