[Lungo-Koehn]: Pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12th, 2020 order, suspending certain provisions of the Open Meeting Law, General Law, Chapter 30A, Section 18, and the Governor's March 15th, 2020 order, imposing strict limitations on the number of people that may gather in one place, this meeting of the Medford School Committee will be conducted via remote participation to the greatest extent possible. Specific information and the general guidelines for remote participation by members of the public and or parties with the right and or requirement to attend this meeting can be found on the City of Medford webpage at www.medfordma.org. For this meeting, members of the public who wish to listen or watch the meeting may do so by accessing the meeting link contained herein. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via technology means. In the event that we are unable to do so, despite best efforts, we will post on the City of Medford or Medford Community Media website an audio or video recording, transcript, or other comprehensive record of proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting.
[Van der Kloot]: Mayor, shall I call the roll?
[Lungo-Koehn]: I'm gonna, I'm trying to unmute Paul. Paul, could you just state the email that you'll be in control of if the public has a question or that is relative to the agenda items?
[Ruseau]: Sure. So if you have a question you'd like us to be asked, sort of similar to community participation, the email address is medfordsc at medford.k12.ma.us. I ask that you include your name, first name and last name, and your address, and then the question. I will be asking those questions if I can, and what I mean by that is we are – open meeting law is not completely gone. We can't discuss any topic we want. We have an agenda. So if the topic is not on the agenda or can't be kind of seen that way, at least, I will respond and tell you that it's not on the agenda and we will bring it up at the next meeting. So that's the goal.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Perfect, thank you. Okay, we have a Medford School Committee meeting. It's a special meeting today, which is Monday, March 30th, 2020. We are online Zoom meeting, 5 p.m. Member van de Kloot, will you please call the roll?
[Van der Kloot]: Yes. Member Graham?
[Lungo-Koehn]: Present.
[Van der Kloot]: Member Kritz? Member Cress? Present.
[Kreatz]: Present.
[Van der Kloot]: Member McLaughlin? Present. Member Mustone? Member Mustone? Yes, here. Member Ruseau?
[Lungo-Koehn]: Present.
[Van der Kloot]: Member Van der Kloot, present. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Lungo-Koehn]: Present. All present. All present. We're going to salute the 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. Okay, so what, Dawn? Our superintendent, Marice Edouard-Vincent, is present. I'm gonna unmute you. Dr. Marice Edouard-Vincent, would you please give your remarks?
[Edouard-Vincent]: Good evening everyone. I wanted to say that I know that this is a difficult situation for all of our families. You are trying to balance your job, your family, and helping to provide an education for your children. We sympathize as this situation repeats in all of our households around this community and most of the nation. I appreciate The anxiety and the concern you all feel in these uncertain times. On behalf of the Medford Public Schools, please know we are here for you and we appreciate your commitment, dedication, support and patience. We are Mustang strong. The COVID-19 virus forced us into unfamiliar territory. Please understand that none of our decisions have been made in haste. For example, we made the decision to close schools for two weeks after many discussions with the mayor, the board of health, our health services director, state officials, and superintendents from surrounding districts. Having never done this before, we directed our teachers to provide the students with enrichment studies to complete at home as we took in further information. Although we initially had committed to a two-week closure, word about the virus spreading had all of us beginning to think that the closure could possibly be extended. As all of you know, the schools provide so much to our families besides education. Once we had decided to close school, our most immediate necessity was to establish food sites for those in need. A good number of our students rely on the Medford Public Schools for breakfast and lunch. Led by the mayor and working with the Food Security Task Force and the Malden YMCA, we were able to put in place grab-and-go lunches for the first week and grab-and-go breakfast and lunch for the second week. Medford is often referred to as an urban rim community, which makes us unique from other school districts in the Commonwealth. Our next goal was to develop an appropriate distance learning model for the Medford public schools. Administrators have been meeting in earnest numerous times and have contacted fellow educators across the state to discuss and share thoughts and ideas about how to educate during this extraordinary situation. All of this work is being done in collaboration with our Medford Teachers Association Union President, Charlene Douglas. In discussion with my fellow superintendents and the DESE Commissioner, Mr. Jeff Riley, we are all in agreement that we develop the best educational practices possible under these circumstances. To further assist us in this endeavor, the district has sent out a survey to our families It is our hope that parents, caregivers, and guardians took a few minutes to complete it. Your responses will help us continue to modify our learning model so it works for all of our students. Additionally, as I said, we've met specifically with the Medford Teachers Association as this situation presents for us a very different manner of teaching. We are respectful of our teachers' needs and have met off and on throughout the weeks discussing how remote learning can work under this shutdown. Yet, as the Globe stated on Friday, inequities are everywhere, even in relatively wealthy suburban school districts. Many families don't have laptops or reliable home internet connections. The article continued indicating that even homes that have technology, students often have to compete with a parent who is working remotely or siblings who also have schoolwork to complete. I am sure our Medford families as well as our Medford teachers are experiencing these very same issues. I must take this opportunity to thank all of those who have been working so hard during this unprecedented time. Madam Mayor, who has led us by organizing numerous meetings and bringing all parts of the community together to help to keep this city moving forward during this crisis. The business office at Medford High School, who have continued to go into work so that the office could make payroll, pay bills, and handle our grant reporting commitments. Our custodians who daily are inside our buildings, deep cleaning, disinfecting, accepting deliveries and keeping the buildings safe. Other strategic secretaries who work in specific departments that are also submitting and contributing to our payroll functions. We wanna thank the Medford Family Network who have been assisting families with basic necessities. The media and technology department, who along with principals and assistant principals have sanitized and handed out over or close to 400 phone books to our students, and will continue to do so again this Wednesday, April 1st, from 10 to 2 p.m. at all of our schools. Our volunteers, we want to thank them who have assisted with the grab-and-go food options at the McGlynn School and other meal sites. The administrators, teachers, and staff who have nonstop been meeting virtually as well as by email and phone to help develop an educational plan for the Medford public schools. That includes social emotional learning. Our special education and English learner programs have been in overdrive to make sure we are doing all we can as a district to address all of our students' needs. We have a great team here in Mustang Country, and that has shown even truer than ever in these past few weeks. We are Medford Strong. It is really heartwarming to see some of our teachers who have taken a walk by some of their students' homes and left chalk messages on the sidewalks or knocked on the windows to say hello. Some of our administrators, teachers, coaches have put together videos and sent them to their students. CCSR created a wonderful video called hashtag six feet together, which is accessible on our blog and Facebook sites. Collectively, our teachers have had to look outside the box to make suggestions on other ways to educate. They have suggested that students take nature walks and scavenger hunts, start a journal about this unique time, and do art projects that can be exhibited in their neighborhood or shared on their website. The mayor is looking for some inspirational artwork. So if students are listening, please post your artwork to her Facebook page. These ideas have kept both our students and parents engaged. However, in the end, this is a constantly changing and very fluid situation. Again, something that none of us have ever experienced. I realize there are a number of questions out there and we are attempting to answer as many as possible. Tonight, Dr. Bernadette Riccardelli will present our district's distance learning plan, which will go into effect on Wednesday, April 1st, 2020. My hope is that everyone realizes this is a working document that is flexible because this crisis requires it. We must work together and not adversely as we enter into this uncharted territory. In the end, our students are our top priority and we are committed to providing the very, very best for them. We are Medford strong. So if any families continue to have questions, please do not hesitate to email us at info at medford.k12.ma.us. Thank you.
[Unidentified]: Thank you, Dr. Vincent.
[Lungo-Koehn]: That was great. OK. I know we have a number of administrators here, including my finance director, Aleesha Nunley. So I'm not sure what order we want to take this in. But let's start with the discussion of updated measures to help slow the spread of COVID-19 virus in the city of Medford and the Medford public schools. We have Toni Wray, Director of Health Services, available to make a statement and then answer any questions. Tony? Where are you, Tony?
[Unidentified]: Let's see.
[Wray]: Thank you. Mary Ann O'Connor was going to address some statistics about what's going on in Medford before I give a statement. Are you able to unmute her?
[Unidentified]: That's fine.
[Lungo-Koehn]: I didn't know if she was on or not. I'm here. Hi. Great, Marianne. Great. Hi. Hi, everyone.
[0SdCkR9KuqQ_SPEAKER_06]: I don't know if you can see me, and I'm getting better at the Zoom thing. I'm fine. But thank you all for having me here this evening, and I reiterate a lot of what the superintendent said. It's been amazing how the community has really stepped up, and particularly the school department, and I thank you. I hope everyone's safe and healthy keeping those social distancing practices in place. The state gave their numbers today around four o'clock. State totals, we're looking at about 5,752 cases. Unfortunately, there were eight new deaths today in Massachusetts with a total of 56. The state did announce also, though, that they have been ramping up testing. There are up to 43,000 tests to date. Today, 700 new cases confirmed. So for Medford, we're looking at, to date, 53 cases in our community. But you have to realize a lot of those, however, have since recovered. We've been tracking this since early March. So that's a good thing. And what we have been seeing now is kind of consistent with what the state has been seeing. The majority of our cases are looking at 20 and 30 year olds. They're really making up almost over half of our cases actually. But those are the folks, a lot of them who are still working predominantly in the healthcare industry and are still working in those essential services areas. And then unfortunately our next highest population are your 70 plus population. So speaking of ramping up testing, we were notified today that Lawrence Memorial Hospital is now offering testing at its urgent care center. You'll see information on that on our website and the city website and social media posts. They are all appointment only. You do have to call first and get screened. And thanks to the leadership of the mayor, we've been working with Physician One and Wellington's Circle, and they will be offering drive-through testing as well starting this weekend. And that, again, that information is available on the Medford website and social media posts. As far as the Board of Health, what we do, We are notified typically within a day, if not the same day, of confirmed cases. What we then have to do is get in touch with those cases, first of all, to make sure they are isolating, but also to find out what contacts they've had within the last at least 14 days. What we have found, which is greatly in part of your efforts, and we thank you, is that those contact numbers have really decreased because people are no longer you know, in the school setting. They're no longer in their work setting. A lot of them, most of them are working remotely. So the contacts have greatly reduced. A lot of them are just typically family and household contacts, but those folks are then asked to quarantine as well for 14 days. I really do wanna thank the school and the school committee for your quick and decisive response. Closing the schools when you did, I think has really helped We have certainly beyond the window now from school closure of any additional school contacts. So that's a great thing because of that. However, I do wanna put something out there. I know the superintendent said that staff were still working in the school and administrators are still working hard and that's certainly appreciated, but please, please, please practice social distancing. I know there was something on the news today about another district, someone had gone into the schools, and now anyone that she came in contact with is quarantined for 14 days. So please practice social distancing within your admin building and with anyone working with you still going into the buildings. And again, thank you for everything you've done. And I also want to thank Toni. She's been amazing, very supportive, all her help. Jack, you've been great, and really, thank you for your help. And if anybody has any questions, I'd be happy to take them.
[Unidentified]: Just let me know. Are you muted, Mayor? You're muted, Mayor. Member Kreatz.
[Kreatz]: Oh, yes. I just had a question. If you're going to the grocery store, I've been hearing a lot of on the news. Is it necessary to wear the gloves in the mask when we're going to the grocery store or the pharmacy?
[0SdCkR9KuqQ_SPEAKER_06]: It depends on how good you are at what you're doing as far as and I've heard like disposal of these gloves now are popping up on our streets and sidewalks, which is absolutely not acceptable. It doesn't – if you contact with the gloves, you're still going to have that contact on the gloves. So unless you're doing it appropriately, it's really – hand washing still is the best and only thing. But certainly, if you have the gloves on and you're touching your face with the gloves, it's the same as using your hand to get in contact. So it's really I've heard mixed messages on it, but it's really not recommended or necessary. Thank you. Thank you.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Member McLaughlin.
[McLaughlin]: Thank you. I just actually really wanted to say thank you to Marianne and Tony and all of you guys that have been out on the front line. Marianne, I know it's been relentless for you. It's been a really rough couple of weeks for everybody, but I think especially for you and for the folks that you're working closely with. So thank you so much for your commitment to what you're doing for our city, folks in our city. Appreciate it.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. Thank you. I second that member McLaughlin. Tony, Ray, do you have anything to add with regards to this topic?
[Wray]: I do. And good evening, everyone. And I also applaud everyone's efforts at maintaining healthy habits. A couple of things I wanted to mention that the Medford Vocational School and our department donated some supplies to
[a7nti5izX0Y_SPEAKER_11]: the Mass Nurse Association for distribution to some of the hospitals. We also gave some supplies to the Board of Health and today some thermometers to the Medford Fire Department for use on the 911 calls. So we're really looking for ways that we can reach into the community. Some of the nurses have helped with meal distribution and we are waiting to sign on with the Board of Health for to assist with telephone contacts and tracing of contacts. One thing I would like to stress is that as a school community, we need to adhere to privacy and confidentiality regulations by not disclosing any information. I think if we take it back to the days similar when HIV was emerging and we all assumed that everyone had HIV, so we adopted universal precautions. We need to follow a similar model and assume that we all have been exposed, and make sure that you use preventive measures, meaning stay at home, keep your hands clean, keep your facilities clean, maintain social distancing. Monitor yourself for any symptoms. And if you have symptoms of fever, cough, chest discomfort, you should be notifying your primary care physician. Primary care physicians will decide who is able to be tested because there are still regulations around who is able to be tested. So that's the advice that we're offering. There's a number of helplines that are set up at the state, and I know many of these are on our city website, but I'll just name a couple. One of them is 2-1-1, and residents can dial 2-1-1 and receive information about COVID-19. Another is the Greater Boston Food Bank, and if you go to gbsb.org, you can find a list of places that are sponsoring meals. And lastly, there's a new telehealth company, it's a Massachusetts company that the governor has announced called buoy.com. And that's spelled B-U-O-Y dot com. And residents can conduct a screening. If they have symptoms, they can log on and they can conduct a screening. And this telehealth company will advise you based on the Department of Public Health algorithms, how to proceed. So I'm making those known to people, and we hope that people use those resources. If anybody has any questions, I'm happy to take them.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you, Tony.
[a7nti5izX0Y_SPEAKER_11]: Did you get all of that? I am having some trouble with my connectivity at home.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Just the last few words, but otherwise I heard it pretty well. Hopefully everybody else did.
[a7nti5izX0Y_SPEAKER_11]: Okay.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. That's a good update.
[Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Yes. If we're done with that, I would like to make a motion to take some of the items out of order, but I don't want to get ahead of us. I don't know if we are done with that.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Yeah, it seems so. Motion for suspension of the rules? Is that, you put in a motion for suspension of the rules?
[Ruseau]: Yes, I am.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Second.
[Ruseau]: Let's see, to take what? To take number four, then number five, and then number three.
[0SdCkR9KuqQ_SPEAKER_06]: Sure. Madam Mayor, do you mind if I jump off the call now, so the meeting now, so I can get back at it?
[Lungo-Koehn]: Yes, thank you, Miriam. Thank you for all you've done. You've worked around the clock to keep Medford safe. We appreciate it.
[Graham]: Thank you, Marianne.
[Lungo-Koehn]: All right, take care. Thank you, Marianne. Thank you, Ms. Rags. OK, so number four, financial updates and review of wages. We have Assistant Superintendent of Finance, Christine Patterson, on the line. And we also have the CFO from the city of Medford, Aleesha Nunley, available as well.
[McLaughlin]: So second on the motion?
[Lungo-Koehn]: Yep, motion to take out of order. by Member Ruseau, seconded by Member McLaughlin. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay.
[Patterson]: Hi, good evening, everyone. I'm not sure if you have access to the financial documents that we shared or if I should share my screen. What is the preference to review that?
[Lungo-Koehn]: We have about 75 people watching, too. So if you could share it on the screen, we'll take it. Thank you.
[Patterson]: OK, can everybody see my screen?
[Patterson]: OK. So just to acclimate you with the information that's in front of you, the document, the 12-page document that's numbered page 1 through 12, that is directly from our financial system. So this is a report of the school side general fund budget as year-to-date expenses posted from this week of March 26. I'm sorry, well, early last week as I was preparing the information. So these are the encumbrances, which are amounts held and actual expenditures that have gone through our budget. So as I go through and get us to the end of this report, which is page 12, I will just scroll down so that we can get to the meat and potatoes of this review. So as we can see, we have our general appropriation, which is the 61,250,000 that is appropriated from the city. we have a total of $40,606,143,000 that have been encumbered and expended. Right now, as I try to project for the year end through June, we will have 100,000 that will cover some of the deficits that we anticipate we'll have on a given rolling year that cover some of the revolving funds that we know we will have deficits that's already been planned as part of this budget, it is just not encumbered. So I wanted to show that 100,000 as a subtraction. The payrolls that will be posted that are for normal day-to-day teachers, paraprofessionals, administrators, all of the daily employees that are part of the school budget is the 22,137,104. Those are the regular payments, regular funding programs out of the general budget. With all of those expenditures, we have a total expense of $62,843,247. As you can see, that deficit from the total anticipated expenditures from what our appropriation is, $1,937,247. So we know that we've had a $1.8 million revenue gap that we were trying to absorb for this fiscal year. As we will go through the additional information, we have a revolving fund offset of 613,911. These are just with guesstimate projections right now as the information is available. we still will have a deficit of 979,336. As the encumbrance amount begins to reduce or liquidate, I'm using an example here of 500,000. That will then further reduce our deficit that we have to make up in terms of closing out our budget for audit purpose and the end of year. So if I just jump to the next page, this is the final page of our fiscal year 20 budget. So as we can see, we just reviewed the general fund appropriation, which was $61,250,000. We also saw that we have a known amount that we needed to cover a gap of $1.8 million. So we are in in the midst of trying to accommodate and fill that gap. As we look at exhibit two, this was the breakdown of what we had anticipated last year during our budget development for fiscal year 20 of what that 1.8 million would look like or be compromised. So we had after school programs. We had the meet preschool program. We had the Japanese school and all of these additional program areas that are mainly rentals that we're going to offset our budget amount and fill the gap. Right now, as we know, and what we have identified in exhibit three, these are our revenue programs that we still have a gap to fill. What I wanted to identify is that of these programs, the afterschool program, as we are no longer providing service and we have been giving credit and offsets for tuition, we will not have enough to cover the 800,000 that we had identified. For the MEET preschool program, that is tuition based and is not funded fully for the amount of teachers that we provide for these programs, we will not have enough revenue. The Japanese language school that is a tuition based in advance has applied the revenue, but as they are no longer providing services to their schools and their students, they will be looking for a refund for a prorated amount, roughly three months of the school year. The Lesley University agreement, we have received that revenue in advance. there may be an additional request to have some of that portion refunded. The AIC Community College, we roughly have 40,000 that comes in for that program, and given the closure, we will not have that full amount. The CASET Italian program is no longer funded, so that 50,000 will not materialize. Our circuit breaker, which is offsetting special education costs, we will utilize to the full extent that we have within that program area. The Impact Church building rental at the McGlynn, where we will not have sessions available for the last quarter. I would expect a refund to be requested, and we will not have the full amount that we have identified. The Redemption Church, another third quarter rental revenue that will not materialize. The transportation homeless reimbursement, whatever we receive from the state, we will utilize, so that will be applied. The Tibetan church group is a renter, we will not have the full amount to apply. Vocational tuitions, The state has identified and recommended that all out-of-district tuitions continue to be paid. So that amount will be materialized. So given the 1.8 that should have been offsets, we already go in with a deficit that we need to fill. The revolving activity that's exhibit three, in the first column that you see, this is a carryover from fiscal year 19. That means this is a balance that we were able to salvage from prior year amounts and utilize in the current year. As we look at our fiscal year 20 expenses versus our revenue, we know that we will have a shortfall. So we will absolutely need to tap into the reserve that we had begin to build in the sense for these programs. Anything that is in red, we have to provide a balance for those accounts. According to Mass General Law and the auditors, we cannot have a deficit in these revolving accounts. So while we still have a balance, that is a net balance of all of the deficits that we still have to cover. Now, there are some moving parts with this information. The receipts that we have not seen, again, this is a system generated report that I've tried to name so that it's easier to read, more simplified. This column I included so that we could see what receipts have not yet been posted or given credit to a particular account. And even with those credits applied, we're still only at a positive balance of $613,911. The caveat with this is that any expenses or refunds that we issue out of these programs will be reducing the available balance. So as we go through and we identify a particular group, we look at the kids corner, we look at the after school program, we look at the community schools. Any of these programs that might have a positive balance, as we start to issue refunds for tuitions and or rentals and or additional expenditures, these balances will be reduced and we will have to make up the amounts somewhere else. So my hope is that with the general budget freeze that we have issued alongside the city's, um, freeze on general spending that we will be able to liquidate more of what is in this encumbrance column and reduce what our deficit without the offsets will be. I cannot give you anything further projected until we get the bills that need to be paid, which we are still proceeding with payments to our out-of-district tuition groups for special education services. We are looking at paying the additional amounts that we may need to manage and maintain transportation. As we know, prior to the school closures, there was an absolute deficit in school bus drivers. There weren't enough drivers to maintain all the services. So we want to maintain positive relations with our bus companies so that there are bus drivers when the schools are open. So the hope and the intent is that this $2.8 million will further reduce and our deficits can then follow But as we look again towards the revolving accounts, which are the major offsets to our budget deficit, it's very challenging to say the least. So I do not have a crystal ball. I cannot be any clearer or more timely in the intent of what these dollars are and or what the projected amounts may be. But the hope is that all of the services that were provided prior to the closure will be received and posted and that we can minimize the additional refunds that maybe can be applied as credits for the next fiscal year.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Does anybody have any questions before I turn it over to the CFO from the city of Medford? And thank you, Christine. Member Van der Kloot.
[Van der Kloot]: Yes, I just was curious whether we've had any discussions with the Japanese Language School in particular. I do know in previous years, or over the years, they've sometimes been able to work out something where perhaps they would, in fact, pay for the – continue to make their payments this year, of course impacting that next year, then they would – that would be offset. But have we had any discussions yet?
[Patterson]: So I would defer that communication with the superintendent. I know that they have reached out to her in a capacity that they are looking for a refund for this fiscal year. They are one of the groups that does pay in advance and their payment had been received. But even as I prepared these documents, their request came in to look at calculating a refund for this last fiscal year. portion that they have not been able to have their school in session?
[Van der Kloot]: I would just be hopeful that we might have a conversation with them and at least negotiate somewhat better terms for us because it's a large number.
[Edouard-Vincent]: It is a large number, but In fairness, that the program has been shut down significantly. My preliminary communication was that the parents that have not been able to send their children are requesting refunds. So we are going to take it to the table, but they are now being asked to give refunds for the amount of time that school has not been in session. And so we are gonna revisit that topic, but that is just one of the, revolving accounts, we're not sure. We also got requests for refunds from some other revolving accounts. So we are trying to look to see where we can apply credit, whether it's not this year to next year. So we are looking at those options.
[Van der Kloot]: Can I continue? I think that the question that many of us will have has to do with classes of employees who work for some of the revolving accounts. And I don't know if you want to address that now. I think that's one of the most important things.
[Edouard-Vincent]: And I don't know if we can... According to Howard, we cannot discuss personnel on the floor. We're going to have executive session next week at our regular meeting on April 6th to discuss specifics about personnel and the specific revolving accounts.
[Van der Kloot]: Until that time, since it's been put off another week, is everybody being paid in the afterschool and program?
[Patterson]: So based on the timetable of how the payments are structured, meaning the pay periods, the biweekly period ending April 9th will include the two-week payments that were identified for the initial closure. So everybody will be paid through April 9th.
[Van der Kloot]: So Kids Corner employees will be- Everybody, everybody. Okay.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. Thank you. Member Ruseau.
[Ruseau]: Thank you. I'll start with my question before I get to the one from the public. Actually, never mind. I'm going to start with the one from the public because it leads right into my question. forgive me if I said her name wrong, of Sharon Street, wants to know if there are any savings because there's no busing. And before you answer the question, I know that busing was just discussed. And I guess my own opinion is paying the bus company is okay or not okay, depending on what the bus company is doing with the money. If they are paying all of their employees, I think that's a conversation we can have about whether we should do that anymore. If they are not paying their employees and they've sent them all home on unemployment, then us paying them is offensive in every imaginable way. So I'm just trying to understand what's going on with the busing.
[Patterson]: So the busing, we encumber the full contract amount. So again, I appreciate, and in all of the Commonwealth's bus contracts, It is a service provided cost reimbursement type of contract. However, if these bus drivers are all forced to unemployment and or find other employment, i.e. Amazon, where they can get a full time job and not worry about any break in service, we lose all of the capability to have bus drivers when our closure ends. So the impact is far more consequential than to engage with our transportation providers. And that's not just our yellow bus providers. This is our special ed transportation providers as well, because these smaller businesses are the ones that are most likely to have the major impacts that they would go under if they are not provided compensation from their anticipated revenue sources. Nobody expected this type of closure or shutdown as immediate as it happened. Nobody had planned or prepared within contract language to provide for any such dismissal of service. So in the vein of being able to provide service when the school departments are back in session. It is to our best advantage that we negotiate with all of our transportation providers to ensure that we do have transportation. Prior to the closure, there was an extreme shortage of the CDL licensed bus drivers. And that's at the small level of special education, homeless and other transportation, as well as the yellow bus drivers. So in the sense, is there a cost savings? We've already accounted for the full contract value. And I would offer that the hope is that we can negotiate with the bus companies that the Department of Education is also trying to facilitate some sort of payment to ensure that these drivers do not look for other employment. And we are faced with an even more challenging process of school bus transportation.
[Ruseau]: Okay. Thank you. That was the very long answer to my question. I appreciate the detail. I guess my – and I realize that this is still early days. So I just, like, as a taxpayer but also as a member of the school committee, I don't want to find out through a news story, if there's any media left in the world, that We have continued to pay the contract as I think we should, and they let go of all the employees and they put them on unemployment. because, I mean, I'm not saying we have the ability necessarily to prevent that or to even know, but I do think that there's little chance we're gonna be interested in that contract again with that company if they go and just cash a big check and don't pass it on to their employees.
[Patterson]: So I can tell you that Mass General Law does not allow payment for services without the services conducted. That's what all the school systems in the Commonwealth are facing right now. So the answer to your question is no, they have not been given a fat check to go run amok their employees. I do not know the status of other employees, but unemployment does fall to the employer. So regardless of whether their employees are currently on or partial unemployment, that charge is still against whomever their employer was for the last quarters that they've been employed, so that would mean whichever transportation company that they were employed with. So there is still an impact regardless of whether we are providing some sort of final payment. Now, I did ask them to provide their final invoice for services up through the March 12th date that they no longer provided school bus transportation, and they have provided that document. So there will be one final payment up to this point, and then we are looking for further guidance from the Department of Ed and legal in terms of what can be negotiated for a partial payment, if that.
[Unidentified]: Thank you. Thank you. Thanks.
[McLaughlin]: Actually, I just wanted to back up a little bit for folks that are on the call that may or may not have heard. But questions are coming in directly member Ruseau, and he is posting that or asking them if they pertain to the agenda because of public meeting law, they have to pertain to the agenda. If they don't pertain to the agenda, I wanted to just ask again, we're keeping a record of them. We're keeping a record of them in any case, right? And so that we know and are receiving all of your questions and we will in some format, whether it's tonight or next Monday's meeting, be addressing the questions.
[Unidentified]: Is that accurate? Madam Chair?
[Lungo-Koehn]: Yes, I know there's a number of questions that have been put into a Google spreadsheet from a number of committee members. So whether we're going to create a process to answer them all and put them on the website or address them through resolutions, depending on what resolutions are on next Monday. Yeah, actually, that's not the question.
[McLaughlin]: the constituents, the community members, the viewers, the people that are on the call, what have you, our citizens that are submitting questions via the email link that was sent out to folks. Those are all being saved. We'll have a record of those so that school committee members are able to look at them so that we can address them in some context. Is that accurate?
[Lungo-Koehn]: Yeah, that's what I was saying. I mean, I think the superintendent should be allowed, with her administrative staff, to go through those throughout the week, along with the ones that the school committee has, decide, hopefully be able to answer as many as we can, and then we can display them on the website. I think we're going to have hundreds of questions between tonight, the school committee, and the public participation. So I think that might be hard to get in next Monday. Important ones, I'm sure committee members will put on as resolutions and we'll discuss further. But as a matter of just time and not being on a 12-hour Zoom call, I think our superintendent, along with the administration, can work on answering them. Even if it's Desi's working on this, we should have an answer in three weeks or two weeks or a few days. But yeah, we will try to get everybody's questions answered. I know that's a goal of our superintendent.
[McLaughlin]: Yeah, 100%. I just want to make sure that they're being documented and saved and make sure that the community knows that that's happening. Thank you member Ruseau for taking those emails and sorting through them. Thank you. Yep.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Any other questions before we allow Aleesha Nunley to give just an update, citywide update. Aleesha Nunley, do you have anything you want to add with regards to, I know the schools are on a high freeze, spending freeze. We have, and the city side are as well. We are also on an overtime needs to be run by our finance department because of all the revolving accounts that we're going to run deficits in. But if you can add to that at all, just to explain the situation on the city side.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure. Thank you, Madam mayor. And thank you school committee members. So I know Christine did a great job on detailing, you know, the revolving fund deficits, but I'm also looking closely at the general fund. This is such an unprecedented situation that The administration is facing and that no one would have ever thought about that would actually occur. We have to think about, you know, shortage in hotel taxes, shortage in meal tax. Um, these are other general fund offsets. So in addition to thinking about, okay, I have a $61 million budget, you know, general fund budget. She has a part of that is funded by local receipts and our local receipts are going to be halted because of this, but all the social distancing that COVID-19 has caused. So we're doing a lot of analysis on the city side to look at where our revenue deficits are going to run. And so in line with the school, the city also has a spending freeze. And we're doing a deep analysis into what kind of revenue shortage we're going to have, whether it be building permits. Now we can't go in and do buildings and inspect buildings because of COVID-19. So there's really a lot going on. DOR has given us a little bit of guidance within the last two weeks as far as how we can get some COVID-19 reimbursable expenses and how to account for that. But what they haven't done is come up to the cities and say, we know you're going to have a revenue shortfall because we're shutting you down for various months. So I think that's an issue that we're really trying to get a hold of and figure out.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. Any questions for Alyse Nunley, member Rousseau?
[Ruseau]: No, I actually had a question for Christine again. Okay, go ahead. Ms. Patterson, are we continuing to pay? I think I know the answer based on your answer related to busing, but I'm concerned about the collaboratives and the private out-of-district placements where we pay them monthly based on the number of days the students actually are at the schools. If they're not going to the schools, short collaborative shutdown, for instance, On the surface, it's like, if they're not providing services, why would we pay them? On the other hand, the day after we all start this big engine back up, they won't be in business anymore. So I'm very concerned about, what is the principle about, do we just pay people even if they're not providing services? Because when this is all over, we're gonna need them to still be there.
[Patterson]: You know, with the DESE and the MASBO listservs, and we've been on numerous Zoom sessions as well, we've already gotten guidance for the collaboratives and the out-of-district placements. These day programs and the collaboratives, we have already identified that those would continue to be paid similar to as our Chapter 70 is coming into the regular school departments. So there's already legislation in place to provide a provision for tuitions in advance for our collaboratives that we know we're going to have placements on. So we are paying as they are providing the invoices. So we're not paying in advance without having anything documented. We are paying what they are sending in and submitting for those payments. So again, this is going back to our departments that are still the essential team that is coming in and checking the mail and getting those invoices processed for those priority services that maintain the day-to-day functions and supports for students on a regular basis. And we are paying those invoices.
[Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Lungo-Koehn]: I'm sorry. Did you hear me? Oh, geez. Sorry. I said thank you to Christine Patterson and Aleesha Nunley for the explanations. They were very helpful. Thank you for providing that, Christine, the deficit analysis. And while we're on the suspension of the rules, if there's no other questions on finances, We're going to go to recommendation to approve the cancellation of the middle school eighth grade New York City trip. And we're going to just get an update on that from assistant superintendent, Dr. Peter Cushing.
[Cushing]: Good evening. Over the past couple of weeks, even before, I'd say late February, early March, as we had the experience with the international trip at the high school, I had the middle school principals start looking at ways that we could limit our exposure for our families. Member van de Kloot had mentioned that we did not have insurance on the New York City field trip. As you know, an analysis of that insurance actually revealed that that $57 would have covered very little for our families, if anything. The $57 of that field trip, of that insurance, would not have covered the pandemic, as an example. And as of today, we received an update today from the tour company that all $1,500 of the McGlynn Middle School's money will be credited towards next year and all $2,000 of the Andrews Middle School money will be credited towards next year as well. Those were in theory non-refundable deposits. We had anticipated We had anticipated being able to refund all parents' money with the exception of their initial $20 that they put down. At this time, we should be able to refund all monies to all parents. over the coming weeks and months. The challenge is the writing of those checks out of student activities accounts is a very challenging piece because the checks need to be reissued to the people who wrote them. And so that's something that we'll probably have to wait until we are back up and running to be able to have people in to be able to handle those types of refunds. But we will be able to refund everybody's money.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Member McLaughlin, then Member Kreatz.
[McLaughlin]: Thank you. Thank you. That's great news, Dr. Cushing. And I know it seems like a lifetime ago for everybody, but I just wanted to also confirm that the money from the France trip is refunded with the exception of the $50. Is that right? I thought there was an email that went out amongst all of this happenings that You know, in our last meeting, we were also talking about refunds for field trips and that that money was going to be everybody was very upset, obviously, understandably about that money being refunded and somewhere along the line, the email came across our path, just before I Yeah, no, I was gonna say, um,
[Edouard-Vincent]: For our regular meeting, we will have that officially on the agenda. We are able to get a refund. It's not $50. It's a different amount. But we will be able to present that at next Monday's meeting, April 6, during our regular meeting, an update for all parents on what's happening with the Paris-France trip. So it's much better than what we originally thought it was, but it's not as good as just $50. But it's much better than what it originally was. And so we will have that for next Monday's regular meeting.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you.
[Edouard-Vincent]: You're welcome.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Member Kreatz, then Member van de Kloot.
[Kreatz]: Thank you very much for the update. I had the very same question that Melanie had, and I guess we'll find out next week. And it's great news to hear that the middle school students and their families, with that trip, it's going to work out for them. Thank you. It's a redundant question, so Melanie already asked the question. Thank you.
[Lungo-Koehn]: OK. Member van de Kloot.
[Van der Kloot]: Yes, this is the time of year where there are various other activities that entail contracts, for example, for the junior and senior prom, perhaps for some of the senior activities. Has that money already been paid out? Like, let's take one of the proms, for example. And is that just so that we don't, so our students don't lose that money? Where are we in the process around those type of expenses?
[Edouard-Vincent]: Based on the internal list that I saw of questions, we can be prepared to respond to that for next week's regular meeting.
[Unidentified]: OK. Thank you.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Is there a motion on the floor if we have no further questions? Motion by member van de Kloet, seconded by member Kreatz to cancel the middle school eighth grade New York City trip. favor unless we can do a roll call if you want.
[Van der Kloot]: Member Graham?
[Graham]: Yes.
[Van der Kloot]: Member Kritz? Yes. Member McLaughlin? Yes. Member Mustone? Yeah. Yeah. I don't think she can hear. I hear you. Member Ruseau? Yes. Member Bandolier? Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Lungo-Koehn]: Yes. Seven in the affirmative, zero in the negative. The trip is unfortunately canceled. Next order of business is tentative distance learning plan for the Medford Public Schools. And that discussion is going to be led by Director of Curriculum, Dr. Bernadette Riccidelli. Doctor.
[Ricciardelli]: Good evening, Madam Mayor, members of the school committee and Medford Public Schools community. So I am here tonight to report on the distance learning plan that a team of us put together. And indeed, it did take a team. So over the past week, I've been working with administrators. I've been working with Charlene Douglas, the MTA. Peter Cushing reached out to parents with that survey. We've reached out to different districts. And we put together a plan based on the input and based on the data available to us. So the school committee should have received a report. It's a 14 page report. This report is not out in the community yet, but it will be. We were working on it as late as three o'clock this afternoon. It will be made available to the public by tomorrow, if not later this evening. So it is a lengthy report. In the report, we spent a lot of time talking about the rationale as to why we came to the plan that we did. So I am going to go through it. I'm going to try to go through it, be thorough with it, but I will be cognizant of the time.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Take your time.
[Ricciardelli]: Thank you. So this plan is meant to support the school community, including students, families, teachers, and administrators, as they work through this challenge of off-campus or distance education. The plan establishes a structure and expectations from which each of those different groups, students, families, teachers, and administrators, will work to ensure an appropriate learning experience for students. We acknowledge that a distance education plan cannot replace the in-person and the personalized approach of our professional teacher, teaching and administrative staff. But we do believe that this plan provides a supportive and flexible framework from which to deliver an equitable learning opportunity. So we took a look, I mentioned a moment ago that we used several different documents. One of the most important documents that we used was the guidance that the Commissioner of Education issued last week. And in this communication, we did buy some guiding principles. So we kind of adapted it for our guiding principles, so I'm going to go through those at this point. As a district, we are concerned about the well-being of our entire school community. Students and staff have been thrust into this period of great uncertainty and stress and, therefore, are working within a less-than-ideal teaching and learning environment. Our planning team has taken into consideration, has created a framework that balances the need for flexibility with the need and the responsibility to educate our students. Our approach not only focuses on academic concerns, but also takes into consideration the physical, social, emotional, and mental health needs of students, families, and staff. This crisis is going to affect families in so many different ways. For example, some families will be adjusting to life without a paycheck. Others may contract the virus and therefore be unable to engage in teaching and learning. And others may be dealing with the social emotional challenges of being limited in their movement outside the home. While some families may be able to provide a highly conducive learning environment for their child or their children, it is probable that not all families will be able to provide those same opportunities. As a parent myself, I'm struggling with this. I'm struggling with balancing my work and balancing what my children need. So I would imagine that that is happening all over the district. We are mindful of those inequities and have created a plan that allows for equitable learning opportunities to occur despite those differences. Maintaining connections between staff and students is very important, especially for the most vulnerable members of our school communities. Ongoing communication between school and home is a priority for the district, and you will see that embedded in the plan. The expectation is for that communication to be clear, regular, and ongoing. So as I said, nothing can replace the in-person schooling experience and we should not expect that remote learning can replace the traditional school day. With our schools now closed until at least May 4th, we have an obligation to engage our students in an equitable and meaningful manner through appropriately structured educational activities. Again, we realize that distance learning is not the same thing as online learning, and that not all learning activities need to involve screen time. That is really important. Much of the conversations that have been taking place online in different communities equate distance learning or remote learning with time on the screen, and Medford is not necessarily taking that approach. We are encouraging our staff to be creative with their assignments, using this time to embrace new venues for the delivery of instruction. As a school community is important to emphasize the need for flexibility in the design of a plan. The district followed guidelines provided by the commissioner and used it as its framework that educators need to be cognizant of the various individual students experiences during this no school period. So to quote the commissioner, he wrote in his guidance, individual student experience will vary depending on student age, individual and family needs, access and capacity for remote learning, including access to technology and the internet, and the ongoing health of students, families, and staff. So again, it is possible that families are going to get sick. We hope it doesn't happen, but that certainly is possible. The next section in this report does reference various federal and state guidance. So those documents will be available to those people at home who are listening. There are links to various state guidance and federal guidance documents. Moving on to technology systems. So as you know, the district has been busy since the close of school distributing Chromebooks out to students. We will continue options for that. We want to make sure that people have what they need in order to work. So the district will continue to use technology to serve as an important means of communication to students and staff. As you know, the district has adopted Google as its platform and therefore expects the Google suite of programs to be the primary means of technological communication within the school community. While many of the Medford staff are trained in Google and its various program capabilities, we are aware that there may be some staff who would benefit from additional training. Therefore, we are planning, and we actually have already planned for various webinars be available to the community to support the use of Google. Those opportunities will be made shortly. So as you know, we have Gmail, we have Google Classroom, and we have Google Meets. All three, part of that Google Suite, will be instrumental in the communication that occurs. There is also Zoom. We are using Zoom this evening. I think Zoom is a great tool. However, there are some drawbacks. There are some privacy issues. So while we acknowledge that there are some great aspects to using Zoom, it's not our preferred means of communication for teacher to student communication. However, we're not prohibiting it. We just are advocating the use of Google over Zoom. If teachers do opt to use them, we just want them to be cognizant of the various privacy issues and security issues out there. So following along, going over to the plan implementation process. So soon after the close of school beginning on March 13th, we began, teachers and administrators began to develop enrichment activities for their students. So this first two weeks was focused on enrichment. So now we're faced with this longer term, no school. Our expectations have shifted from that of enrichment to that of a deeper review and refinement of curriculum that has already been taught. So it's a very important point. We're shifting from enrichment to a deeper review and refinement of the curriculum that has already been taught. This new guidance, received from the Commissioner of Education on March 26th, has helped to inform the formulation of our plan. It really forms a foundation of where we want our teachers to go. This plan will be in effect, it is Wednesday, not Friday, April 3rd, that you may be looking at, but it is Wednesday, April 1st. We are looking to begin this plan. So we're looking at the drivers of this distance model. So we took what was in our core behavioral themes. And from that we're taking out the themes of care. We care about our students. We care about our staff. We care what happens. We want them to be healthy. We look at communication. We want that ongoing communication to occur. We're cognizant of equity. We're cognizant that not everyone has the same environment at home that may be conducive to great learning. And we are cognizant of the fact that we need to be flexible. We need to be flexible in so many different ways in order to provide for an equitable learning environment for students. So moving on here. So our drivers, we separated this out into drivers. So first driver, we want to engage our students in meaningful and productive activities. The engagement of students will occur through caring, meaningful, and productive learning activities for approximately half the length of a regular school day. So that's important. That guidance was sent out by the Commissioner of Education. activities should occur for approximately half the length of a regular school day. This learning should take place through a flexible combination of educator-directed learning and student-directed learning. Upon recommendation of the Massachusetts Department of Education, the focus of instruction should be on reinforcing skills already taught this year and applying and deepening these skills. In some cases, teachers and students may wish to continue with new material, particularly in the upper level secondary courses, but really the focus should be. on reinforcing the skills already taught this year and applying and deepening those skills. Distance learning encompasses a wide variety of flexible learning opportunities and does not necessarily need to occur in real time or live, in other words. Instructional tools include group video or hangout sessions, email, work packets, projects, reading lists, online learning platforms, and other resources to engage with students. So again, this is coming from the Commissioner of Education. So just to reiterate, all learning does not need to occur through screen time. It does not need to occur live. It can, but it does not have to. We are looking to provide an equitable learning and assessment foundation. Students will receive supportive and meaningful feedback from their teacher, so we get going back to communication. Per guidance from the Department of Education, students will be graded on a pass-fail basis. By grading students on a pass-fail basis, the district will be providing an incentive to students to complete the work while working within the challenging and ever-changing environment in an equitable way. In addition, per the Department of Education, all educational opportunities that are offered to the general student population must be accessible to all students, including those with disabilities. That includes those on IEPs and 504 plans and those with limited English proficiency. Joan Bowen, Director of Pupil Services and Paul Texerra, the director of English learners are here. Their input is certainly in this plan. And at the end of this, they'll be here to answer questions as I will. Supportive and informative communication. Students and families will receive ongoing communication from the teacher and the school community. All staff will hold a minimum of two office hours per week. and families can communicate with teachers through Google Hangout email or by phone. All staff will share their designed office hours with families by the end of the first week of the distance learning plan. So a lot of what I've gone over forms the foundation, again, based on what the commissioner has said, based on what other districts are doing, and based on what we feel we want to do in Medford. Now we come down with some more specific guidelines for our staff. Now our staff has not heard this. This is the first time it's coming out. So for the staff that are are online with us tonight. This is the first time, but again, this will be posted online for you and your respective principals and or directors will be reinforcing this with you. During this time of change from regular routine, students may express feelings of anxiety and fear. And that's not just students, those are the adults as well. As the child's teacher, he or she is a familiar presence in their lives and is therefore best positioned to provide the student with this sense of normalcy and continuity. Staff members are going to play a very active role in the teaching and learning that will occur for the duration of the distance learning plan. So now I'm gonna go over the bullets that are central to these guidelines for staff. And some of this is repetitive, but I think it is worth saying it over. The focus of instruction should be on reinforcing skills already taught this school year and applying and deepening those skills. Secondly, not all of the learning activities need to include screen time. Activities can be designed so that students work on them at their pace, keeping in mind the work should take half the time as a regular school session. Third, at the elementary level, teachers and specialists should follow a regular in-school schedule when opting to engage in live online instruction. So again, there is no requirement to engage in that live online instruction. We know it's been happening and we think that it will continue, but we're not requiring it to happen. So for example, if the Italian teacher wants to engage student in a lesson, she should conduct the lesson at the day and time the class would typically meet. So if it's Wednesday at one o'clock, we're asking that that happen at that time. What we've been experiencing primarily at the high school is that when teachers were doing live sessions with their students, there was a conflict. You'd have two teachers who were scheduling a session at the same time. So Principal DeLeva brought that to my attention and really, really advocated for us to work on a schedule so that there were none of these conflicts if there is online instruction. Again, similar at the middle and high school level, if the teacher wants to engage in live online communication, this should occur at the time period that the class would typically meet. So we will be publishing the six-day cycle, that A, B, C, D, E, F day, that will be available for teachers. Paul DeLeva and I talked about that this morning, so we will put that together and it'll be a link on this on this page. So again, live online lessons do not need to happen. We think they probably will. But if they are scheduled, they should be done with this guidance in mind so that students do not experience conflicts. Next point, students should be able to engage in learning activities with a little to no parent or caregiver support. So the rationale behind this was that many parents are working from home themselves. So there may be situations where a parent can give the child a lot of support, but there are gonna be a lot of situations where that's not gonna be able to happen. So we want the child to be able to work independently, and if they're able to get additional support at home, that would be great. Moving on, any educational opportunity offered to the general student population, including enrichment activities and resources, must be made accessible to students with disabilities. Project-based learning is encouraged. However, it should not require materials that are not easily accessible within the home. So projects are great, but people cannot run out to the store to get materials. So we're asking staff, if you want to engage students in projects, not to require materials outside the home. New assignments do not need to be given every day. They can be given one of the week with the expectation for work to be completed later on in that week. Next point, regular communication between teachers and students is expected. As I mentioned earlier, all staff are asked to designate two hours per week to what we call office hours so that students and families can communicate with teachers through Google Hangout, email, or by phone. We are asking all staff to share their designated offers with families by the end of this week. Guidance councils, adjustment councils, and school psychologists will address students' social-emotional needs, post-secondary educational planning as applicable, and other matters regarding students' mental health as applicable. This is a very stressful time, again, not only for students, but for adults. And as much support as we can offer, I think, is appropriate. Collaboration is really important. That was one of the themes in Commissioner Riley's communication. So teachers are encouraged to reach out to their colleagues, their grade level colleagues, their subject level colleagues, or teams to share resources and to plan lessons. And I know this has been occurring. Special educators and English learners support teachers where applicable should be collaborating with general education teachers to appropriately modify and support instructional delivery. With regard to Title I teachers, they should be collaborating with general education teachers regarding work in phonics, fluency, vocabulary, reading comprehension, and writing skills specifically for those students identified as Title I. We are going to ask that staff participate in biweekly online meetings during the first two weeks of this plan. Meetings may need to occur more frequently between administration and staff. Generally, these meetings will take place from 2.30 to 3.15 in the afternoon with a 24-hour notice. On the middle and high school level, meetings will alternate between building-based meetings and department-based meetings. We will offer some guidance to administrators on this. It's important to note, staff will not be penalized for not attending meetings on account of sickness or other COVID-19 related emergency. And lastly, paraprofessionals shall be prepared to assist teachers in instructional support for students. So the next section is on English learner education. Next section is English learner education. Let me go through this quickly and then I know Paul Texair is here and at the end he can field questions. English learner teachers will follow students established plans, which are determined by the language proficiency level of the students. EL teachers will ensure that EL students have the opportunity to engage in reading, writing, listening, and speaking activities. They're appropriate for students' English language development. EL teachers will collaborate with classroom and content teachers where appropriate to support students with grade level and contentarial. In-class tutors and bilingual EL aides will support EL and classroom teachers to support English learners. Moving on to special education. Students and caregivers will be provided with ongoing educational therapeutic resources. Access to curriculum materials, the accommodations and modifications that are required for individual student needs, and ongoing communication and support. Minute-for-minute remote, excuse me, minute-for-minute remote service as dictated by the student's IEP are not expected. Per the Department of Education and USED, I think that's U.S. Department of Education. I apologize. It's not feasible for schools to provide services in the manner they are typically provided pursuant to students' IEPs. Both special education and general education staff are encouraged to participate in special education meetings, and more specific guidance on this matter is expected from the Massachusetts Department of Education in the coming days. I know Joan Bowen has been attending many meetings with the Department of Education, and not everything is firm. So this is an evolving situation. In general, with regard to special educators, special education teachers will collaborate with general education teachers to create and modify instruction. They will provide support to students via various platforms such as email, Google Classroom, Google Hangouts, and phone conversations. Weekly office hours will provide students and parents and caregivers with an opportunity to reach out to staff with questions, concerns, and requests. With regard to paraprofessionals, paraprofessionals may also be called upon to assist in the instructional support of students. I did speak to Gina Coppola, who leads the paraprofessional bargaining unit, and she is in full support of this. With regard to social emotional support, clinical counseling and behavioral staff will reach out to all families and students on their caseloads to check in and to provide counseling and support if needed and requested. They will also coordinate with outside agencies affiliated with families to discuss services and wraparound care. With regard to speech language hearing services, Speech-language pathologists and teachers of the deaf will continue to reach out to their students and families to provide activities, suggestions, and resources. Speech-language pathologists and teachers of the deaf recommendations will focus on supporting communication skills with daily activities in addition to more student-focused speech-language hearing enrichment activities. Please note the use of teletherapy as a mode of service delivery is highly regulated by the Massachusetts State Board of Licensed Speech Language Pathology, in addition to the American Speech Language Hearing Association. The district is in the process of acquiring more information from the Department of Ed, and the Massachusetts State Board of Licensure for Speech Language Pathologists. So more information is evolving. I know that there have been many questions regarding teletherapy as a delivery source. Moving on to occupational therapy and physical therapy. Occupational therapists and physical therapists will continue to reach out to their students and their families to provide resources and activities. Their recommendations will focus on establishing and maintaining healthy routines that include, for example, participation in chores and other household tasks, spending time outside, engaging in physical activity, and providing resources for these activities in addition to a more student-focused enrichment experience. Regular communication with students and families is expected, and as noted above, minute-for-minute remote services as dictated by the IEP grid are not expected. Per the Department of Ed and the Federal Department of Ed, it's not feasible for schools to provide services in this manner. Moving on to vision services, the district is in regular communication with the Perkins School for the Blind and community services who provide our district vision services. They are working on a plan to support students and parents. With regard to evaluation team leaders, ETLs will reach out to families of students who attend Metro Public Schools, private and parochial schools, as well as students who are enrolled in our out-of-district placements. So that would include collaborative stay and residential placements. The ETLs will contact parents and caregivers to inquire about how students are adapting and functioning at home, and if any additional support may be needed from the district. And then with regard to Special Education Administration, who have been working busily, as have many of us, they will continue to meet and communicate on a regular basis to discuss updates from the Department of Ed, as well as to communicate questions to provide guidance and support during this time. while time along with triaging and problem solving situations that may arise in their respective areas. All right, so those are the guidelines. And many of the teachers have already been engaging in this. So we hear some great, great stories. Teachers have shared with me what they're doing. So a lot of this is already happening. But now we've established these guidelines. So I'm going to move now on to grading, which has been a question that has come up over and over. Some of the teachers that I oversee in the World Language Department have conveyed to me that students have been asking questions about how are they going to be graded. And I know this is pervasive through the district. more so primarily on the secondary level. So per the Department of Education guidelines for remote learning plans, students should be graded on a credit, no credit basis. So in Medford, this is going to take the form of a pass, fail. And that applies to all students. Middle and high school students should receive a pass fail grade for each of their classes for work in the third quarter up through March 12th. March 12th was the last day that they were in school. So they are not being graded on their enrichment work. So they're gonna be graded with a pass fail up through their work until March 12th. Passing grades for quarter four should be based on students' participation in the learning activities beginning with the commencement of this plan. When determining credit or no credit for course grades, teachers in the district will follow the guidelines as outlined in the Department of Ed guidelines dated March 26, 2020. So I'll read this quote from the Department of Education. And this is really, this is important. This is going to be, this needs to be at the forefront of when we're grading students. Before moving forward with any determination of no credit, we strongly urge districts and schools to consider whether the students have had equitable access to learning opportunities during this closure, keeping in mind the variety of technology, health, disability, and language challenges that could occur. So we really need to be cognizant of this. Administrators have had conversations about this. This is not going to be easy, but we really need to be mindful of some of the difficulties that kids may experience in participating in the work. We offer some guidelines for students and families. Students are expected to engage in the learning activities that their teachers have prepared for them. Our teachers are putting a lot of work into this. And even though it's grading, pass, fail, our expectation is that students are going to engage as best they can, as best their situation allows them to. The following recommendations will help strengthen students' learning experience in the home. So just some suggestions. for families to develop a flexible and realistic schedule for the completion of assignments. Most families will likely be juggling multiple duties in addition to monitoring their child's academic progress. It would be helpful for parents to create a dedicated workspace for their child. If a parent can help their child with any technical problems that may arise with their online sessions, that would be helpful. If they can support home learning, as much as possible that's helpful, but we are cognizant that that may not always be able to occur. We ask parents and students to check their email often for any communication from their teacher. We ask them to be proactive in communicating with teachers, support personnel, and school administrators as needed. So one of the guiding principles is that of communication. So we want those venues to be open. And it's helpful. And again, I struggle with this myself is that I provide students with the structured sleep wake cycle. It's really easy to get out of the cycle is I have learned when my my seven year old is is up at 11 o'clock. Um, Next section, we have guidelines for administrators. Basically, administrators, we're on call, and we need to, in a reasonable way, we need to provide support to teachers as needed. Administrators are available to parents and caregivers to answer questions, clarify expectations, and to provide any additional support that where applicable. The next section of this report provides instruction resources and suggestions to support remote learning. Each one of the academic directors has gone through and in many cases, with the help of their teachers, has compiled lists through a link. Each one of these are links. There are a couple that don't appear to be links yet, but they will be by tomorrow. Actually, between the time that this meeting began, I did have some directors submit more stuff. So they're ongoing. So they're live links with material. So we've broken them out into Pre-K 2, a section for Pre-K 2, Grades 3 to 5, Grades 6 to 8, Grades 9 to 12. So these are suggested resources for teachers. Again, they are reinforcing what was already taught. which is a change. And for the most part, teachers now realize this if they're watching, many of them probably thought they were gonna continue with material, but they are refining and they're going in depth with the skills and the material that they have already taught. We have some distance learning resources. So we do have a Google Classroom Training Module. So there are several classes within that link, Google Classroom Training. There are also some other sites that are available. There are a lot of sites out there, some are better than others. The three that we have provided, we think are pretty good. The first one being, actually all of them, we think are. could be beneficial to teachers. Lastly, with regard to references, I've mentioned the Commissioner's March 26th communication. So that is listed. We also reached out to other districts. We looked at in-depthly Lexington's Lexington's plan. We read that the Department of Education. Has made some very positive comments about the Lexington plan. So we did incorporate some of that some of the thoughts or some of the background into Our plan and why we created our plan the way it is. We looked at Newtown, Connecticut. So Newtown, Connecticut was very interesting because if you look at their plan, it was created for the 2019-2020 school year. It was not created specifically for this emergency. And I think it was not super extensive, but it was complete and it was thoughtful. So Newtown, Connecticut obviously has had its share of emergencies in the past. Years, so theirs I thought was thoughtful. Burlington, Burlington Public Schools, actually Paul DeLeva called my attention to the Burlington Public Schools. They have a lot of similarities to what we have. So again, we tried to, we did our research, Peter Cushing's survey. We had our outreach to administration. The other districts, our federal and state guidance. Is the plan perfect? I don't think anything is perfect. We will continue to update this. We will continue to ask for feedback to see where it needs to, does it need to be adjusted. The Teachers Association was incredibly supportive. Charlene Douglas, who was part of this meeting, was incredibly helpful. Charlene and I spent a lot of time this weekend going over lots of different components. I enjoy working with Charlene. I've known her for a long time. And I think This was actually really, I'll say, special opportunity, even though it comes at a negative time. I think it was a really nice opportunity for us to work collaboratively on this plan. So I have spoken for a long time. I am happy to answer questions. I think probably any questions that have to do with special education, Joan might be a better person to answer those. Sorry, Joan. And then E.L., probably Paul Tech Sarah. But I am happy to try to answer questions that you may have.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you, Dr. Riccadeli. Ms. Douglas, I want to give you for a couple minutes. I know you worked hard on this for the teachers. So thank you both. Thank you.
[Charlene Douglas]: Thank you. So yes, and I can express my thanks enough to Bernadette and the work we did together to look at the totality of this plan and how do we meet the needs of all. the health, the social, emotional, all of those things. You know, these are definitely unprecedented times. You know, I am a professor at Lesley University and people know that. Very similar, the grading, pass, fail, biggest colleges in the world. So, you know, while it's not ideal, we do wanna give, you know, the grades, the feedback, but realistically, we have to look at, you know, who are students, where are they, and are our students actually able to access this? I've discussed this with a number of teachers. I have a Google question doc, which is full with questions and things that I'm constantly referring to on a regular basis. And, you know, I'm talking to teachers, some teachers are meeting, even though they're reaching out, we're still only hearing maybe from 50% sometimes of the students, which is, we hope to increase that and keep on working towards that and what that looks like. I know that there are teachers who have made packets and putting them in envelopes and mailing them out to the students themselves, doing those sorts of things. I know that they're online. I know people are working extremely hard. We did look to DESE guidelines. We did look to that social emotional, that whole piece. At a time like this, some of our most challenging students and challenging families that are home, you know, taking care of, maybe, you know, taking care of a niece, a nephew, or this one. Parents are working, they're working from home, they need the computer. You know, I have three sisters, three siblings, we all work on that one computer. How do we accomplish that? That's why these guidelines were put in place to consider all of those needs of all of our population. And our teachers, you know, they're home with their families. We're not, this is not anything that, we've ever experienced before. Teachers are sad. They want to be with their students. I hear on a regular basis, oh my God, you know, I used to look forward to April vacation, but that was a week we knew we were coming back. This is not a vacation. This is a period of hardship and, you know, is my student, are my students okay? There are genuine concerns about that. So I think that working with Bernadette was tremendous, and I appreciate that. And I will happily answer any questions regarding this. I'm here for this meeting and anything I can help with. So thank you. Thanks, Bernadette. And thank you to all the administrators who I know did a great deal of input, Joan and everyone. And so I thank you all for that.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you, Charlene. Member Ruseau, do you have some questions there? I do.
[Ruseau]: I have a few questions. So this question comes from Michael Bernstein. I will not read the addresses and stuff since I have that in the emails, but there seems, I see in this document that Zoom is not preferred, but it seems that some teachers are under the impression that they're not allowed to use it. Can we just get clarification that they are allowed to use it if they want?
[Ricciardelli]: Yes, they can allow, they are allowed to use it. It's not the, It's not our preferred way. We haven't offered training in it. We do offer training in Google. We are a Google district. Teachers can use it.
[Ruseau]: Thank you. And then the next questions is actually three questions from Kelly Catalo at 46. Anyways, what grade point average will be reported to colleges for juniors?
[Ricciardelli]: So Paul DeLeve and I had a long conversation about this. And our thinking is that a grade point average will not be reported. It's not going to be unique to Medford. This is universal across the world. So we have to delve a little deeper. How is this going to affect college admissions? We're going to have to put something on the transcript that indicates why this pass-fail grade was given. So I think it's a great question because we have questions ourselves, but we're going to do it in the fairest way we can. We don't think it is fair to report a grade point average. The grade point average would be calculated for quarters one and two, which is really not representative of their you know, of the work in a course as a whole. So right now, our thinking, and if Paul DeLeva wants to add to this, our thinking is that it would not, a grade point average would not be reported.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. Mr. DeLeva. Mr. DeLeva. Let me just unmute you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you. Thank you for everyone meeting. In concurrence with Dr. Riccidelli, You know, again, I'm gonna be looking for guidance from other high schools as well to see how they're gonna handle this. Again, our thought process is within the transcripts marking that, you know, due to COVID-19, this is what we have listed down. Again, we're talking about pass fail, we're talking about, you know, final values, things of that nature. And again, where we exited March 12th, you know, to do that calculation, four quarters, different standards, I think coming up with something that we can put on the transcripts is probably a better way to go. So I just wanted to kind of reiterate what Dr. Riccadelli had said.
[Ruseau]: Thank you. Member Ruseau. Thank you. The next question is, so Google Classroom is pretty good at communicating with the students, but the parents have an unusual need to be communicated with. I mean, as a parent of a student with special needs, I'm very accustomed to being part of the communication chain. But for a lot, my daughter, for instance, we don't really have much communication with the teachers, and that's fine under normal circumstances. But now parents, I think, for the most part, feel that they need to be part of these communication chains with no matter where their kids are and what grade levels. So is there any plan for how we're going to weave parent communication in when it wasn't necessarily part of the methodology in the past?
[Ricciardelli]: We did a conversation about this. My understanding is if the parent is added to that class, then the parent can view the information between the teacher and the student can see the assignments, can communicate with the parent that way if they are made part of the Google Classroom. So and you bring up a good point. So parents are probably going to need some guidance on that So we can we can definitely get that out to parents To do but the in terms of communication school break. We have opted not to use school brains. We had that discussion earlier School brains is quantitative in nature, we need something that is more feedback-driven and less grade-based. So the mode of communication, we do want to be through that Google Classroom. So the key is going to get teachers, excuse me, to get parents signed on to those Google Classrooms.
[Ruseau]: Thank you. And I will hold my question until other people have had a chance. Thank you.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Member Kreatz.
[Kreatz]: Thank you very much for your report, Dr. Riccardelli. And I wanted to just mention, I forgot to mention this earlier, I think I just got caught up, but I just wanted to thank everybody, Dr. Edouard-Vincent, Mayor Lungo-Koehn, all the administrators, the principals, the teachers, the parents, and the volunteers, just everybody for What an amazing job you're all doing to put all this together so quickly. We at my work, we're struggling with getting everybody remote access. And finally this week, everybody has remote access. So we're all learning to do things differently from home. It is challenging. And I'm just, everybody deserves a great thank you. You're all heroes. I just wanted to know, I received a question like, are we going to be providing distance learning for the career technical education students? Is that in the plans? I know it's the middle of the year and they would still have three more months left of instruction.
[Ricciardelli]: So the answer to that is yes. So in fact, Chad Fallon, who I think is here, just as the other teachers are providing assignments for their children, the CTE instructors will be doing the same. It is different, and they're gonna have to be creative with it, but the expectation is yes, they are going to be engaging their students in work related to their shop. I'm not sure if Chad is available, if he's able to expand upon that.
[Fallon]: Hi, I'm here.
[Ricciardelli]: Hi, Chad. Hi, everybody.
[Fallon]: How are you?
[Ricciardelli]: How are you?
[Kreatz]: Good.
[Fallon]: So we are from, I can give you a quick report since I have you all here. From day one, I just want to start out by saying the teachers in the high school complex have been incredible. And I know Paul would agree with me on that. You know, right the first day we were out, we already had plans in place. You know, we all kind of had a distance learning mind shift. Obviously, it's not as easy to provide distance learning instruction to students on a CTE path, but we're using this time to review previously taught material, provide more of a focus on the related theory component of the individual Chapter 74 programs, and really just focus on the power standards that they can focus on during the closure. Our cooperative education program is suspended until further notice. If students wanted to remain on their respective jobs, we left that up to their families and them to decide. We created a shared folder for all CTE instructors, which is through Google, which use, you know, it's an extensive bank of resources for them with learning activities. We have a question and answer. concern page for them if they want to ask questions of Alice, Beth, or myself. We have emails that go back and forth as a group. So we're, you know, we're building our curriculum as we go, but for the most part, all of our students are involved in some way. So for our programs that, hold on one second, buddy. I'm homeschooling a six-year-old here too. Hold on, buddy. Oh, awesome. You bought me a flower.
[Unidentified]: Okay.
[Fallon]: So for programs that are delivering hours for certification for state boards, our cosmetology program applied for distance learning to be applied for the hours for cosmetology. And the electrician board is going to be meeting next week to see if any of the distance learning hours can be applied towards the electrical program. So in short, yes, we are working on everything now completely for distance learning.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you very much. Thank you. Member van de Kloot.
[Van der Kloot]: First, I, too, would like to thank everybody for all of their hard work. And I know that so much time you've put together to put together this information for us. And it's very much appreciated. You know, in this first two weeks, it's been hard to understand what the consistency across the district is. I had some wonderful conversations with very happy parents about the information their students were getting, and so very, very positive feedback. But what I don't know was how consistent that was, and whether there were some students who weren't having as good as opportunities as others. Now, this obviously now takes this to a different level. One of my first questions is, is we have lost time, and was there any discussion about what we're gonna do during April vacation had? No answers, okay.
[Charlene Douglas]: I can answer that.
[Van der Kloot]: I mean, everybody's just assuming April vacation is going to be a no work time, or are we going to reflect on the fact that we've just lost two weeks? Some degrees, how are we going to look at that? People aren't going anywhere. Kids are going to be home.
[Charlene Douglas]: And so there's been no direction from DESE on that at all at this point. It is a question I know that has been asked by the MTA and how that is being handled. But we have had absolutely, Paula, no direction.
[Van der Kloot]: So that's something that's going to need to be considered and you know personally I would just hope even if the activities didn't continue that week that there would be you know a list of things for kids to do because if they're going to be home at least have them some level of direction. So you know I'm just wondering about that. And I do realize that this, you know, it's been a recent now that closed till May 4th, you know, and who knows? We don't know. We don't know about the future. Other questions I had, are teachers coming in to assemble packets of information? You mentioned that, you know, we don't want it to be all, is anybody coming into our schools or are they just assembling them at home if they're sending out any information?
[Charlene Douglas]: So I can address the teachers I've spoken to. So we closed on the 12th. That Friday, teachers went in and took as many things as they could, assembled packets, things like that, did much of it in that day that we went in that Friday. After that, some teachers have tried, but now that we can't get in the buildings because of the order, so teachers are not being able to do that. I know that many of the teachers that I've spoken to are actually printing things out at their own home, using their own ink, using everything on their own because they realize the need for doing this. I even had one teacher who's an OG person, went out and bought stuff and just felt the need to do that. So I don't, you know, getting back into the classrooms, like, for example, we discussed, you know, how do we video? So the teacher said, well, maybe I can video myself doing a lesson using my reading cards and the different things, but those things are at school. You know, how do I do that if I don't have them? So I think that's something, you know, we need to look at whether we, if the buildings have been cleaned, and then once we do go back in, Now we have recontaminated that building and it has to be cleaned again. So I think we have to be, you know, think about, can we go in? Can we not go in? What does that look like? And that is a struggle. You know, many of us are using our own things at home and just, you know, saying, this is what we signed up, I guess, as a teacher.
[Van der Kloot]: You know, I- Ms. Caldwell?
[Lungo-Koehn]: Oh, sorry, I think Ms. Caldwell, Diane, did you have something to add?
[Caldwell]: I just want to reiterate what Charlene has said. That Friday, all of our teachers did get their work together as best they can, but it was for a different piece. We're doing something totally different now. We have had requests to go into the buildings, but we've told our teachers, unfortunately, that they cannot go in. And so they're doing the best they can with what they have in their homes.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Okay, another question, if I may, you know- Before you ask that question, may I just, if you don't mind, on that topic, are other districts allowing teachers to go in one more time to grab a few things, make copies, do we know? I don't know. No.
[Van der Kloot]: We are basically at a stay at home. So I wouldn't want to jeopardize our teachers in any way, safe words, but I'm asking the question because I don't think, I don't want parents to think that they're necessarily gonna get a packet of information in the mail because I think for many, that's really not real. So that's why I wanted the clarification. My last sort of topic right now is on guidance. This is the time period where many of our seniors are receiving, if they haven't already, acceptances. There will be some kids who are going to need last-minute Oh my gosh, I need another recommendation or something. And I've just somewhat interested in what guidance is doing and how we're making sure that all of our students, particularly our seniors, are receiving the help that they need during this critical period.
[Ricciardelli]: So I can try to answer that for you. So I have been in touch with Maureen Lavin, who's the interim director of guidance. So the role of the guidance Councilors at the high school is scheduling. So they're involved in scheduling for next year and in the post-secondary planning process. So those are their primary areas that they're working on. So we know that kids are getting their acceptance letters. We know that It's a stressful time for that. So the guidance Councilors are there. That is between the scheduling for next year and the post-secondary planning. That is what they're doing. That is their primary focus.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mr. D'Avila? Yeah, so I had a meeting with the guidance Councilors this morning in particular, and we did focus a lot on scheduling. The upside of having, we have Naviance, So a lot of the stuff that we can do is remotely done that can be transferred from what we currently have in School Brains. I know that's kind of weird because we're going pass fail on some things as we discussed before. But we do have the means to do things remotely for students, not requiring anybody to go into the building for that. But as Dr. Riccobelli said, our focus of that conversation now goes into next year for scheduling as well. So we're going to do whatever we can for our seniors that need what they need. At the same time, I got to figure out, you know, the eighth graders coming to ninth grade and moving everybody across as well for their schedules.
[Van der Kloot]: Any idea about applications for the scholarships, the end of year scholarships, which usually are coming in around beginning now?
[SPEAKER_01]: Right. So again, we're going to, when we do our plan, we're going to do more of a meet. Um, so that's something that's been brought up. We're just trying to tackle things one at a time to make sure that, um, everything's officially getting done. But I will also make a note of that. Um, this may include to make sure that I bring that up at our next meeting.
[Van der Kloot]: Thank you very much. Member Graham.
[Graham]: Hi, a couple of questions for Bernadette, I guess. I know we've done one deployment of Chromebooks already, and it sounds like we gave out like 400 or so Chromebooks. I know that there are families out there who felt like it's only going to be a couple of weeks at this point, and I'm sort of making do. But with a longer projected outlook of all of this through at least May 4th, but in reality could well be past that, do we have a guidance for families who may not yet have computers that would be helpful to share? And also, do we have enough Chromebooks? And if we don't, are there funds coming from the state level or elsewhere to support the purchase of additional equipment to support our students. I can even speak in my own house. We have a computer, but juggling that between multiple kids, my work computer is not an option. My husband's work computer is not an option, but at the same time, I know that we're not alone and I've only got two children. So I'm sure there's lots of people out there juggling even further than that. So can you share some guidance and whether there's been any discussion about additional equipment purchases at the city level or even the state level?
[Ricciardelli]: So my understanding is we still do have Chromebooks available. And in fact, my discussion with the Nina Coppola, who leads the paraprofessional group, is that it is quite possible that we need to get some out to the paraprofessionals as well, as they will be supporting students. So we are, I'm not sure if Molly Layden, Molly Layden oversees the department and a majority of the technology that is purchased. I'm not sure if she's part of this meeting. Maybe, maybe not, but I don't know if there are additional funds available to purchase. I'm not sure what the supply is right now. Diane, do you know?
[Caldwell]: So we have a lot of Chromebooks because we've been getting Chromebook cards in the past year or so. So we're lucky in that respect. I know earlier, excuse me, earlier today I checked with Molly and we were at at least 144 additional Chromebooks that will be going out on April 1st. But we do have a lot of kids and families that will just show up on that day. So I think we're in good shape with distribution of Chromebooks, not to say that we could always use some more just in case.
[Unidentified]: Thank you.
[Graham]: And has there been any discussion about the city or the state providing additional equipment should we need it?
[Lungo-Koehn]: I haven't heard anything from the state. I don't know if anybody's heard anything from DESE.
[Cushing]: There's been no conversation from Desi around that. And to procure Chromebooks in a normal situation, you're looking at about a four to six week procurement just through the normal supply chain. And then once those Chromebooks come in, there's actually an individual licensing of each individual Chromebook. So just the man hour, I can't even put a number to that of the man hours of literally just provisioning each Chromebook with a license. Generally speaking, that's done over a summer or with some sort of lead time.
[Graham]: Yeah, I think the important point, though, is we're well off the mark of being a one-to-one Chromebook district. So I feel like I would not be surprised at all if we run out. We're nowhere near a one-to-one district. So as we move forward into prolonged at-home instruction, I think we just, you know, it's more note to, you know, the city and the state level that this is where I sort of expect we're gonna get to a problem here in short order. I have one more question. I'm glad that we've clarified the Zoom component. As we go forward with this plan, which by the way, I know was just a tremendous amount of work to put together and start moving everybody down this sort of course corrected path, which is, it feels like what we're all doing every day, almost. Will there be another iteration of coordination across the district so that our teachers are planning across not just what's happening in their own building with their grade, but what's happening across the city. And I just am super sensitive to the fact that a teacher may have had a really great curriculum plan, lesson plan, and it's all been tossed up in the air. And now they're saying, how do I give at-home instruction for three hours a day? How do I do that in a way that doesn't necessarily rely on the computer? When do I use the computer? Like we're totally sort of starting from scratch. And I am just wondering if there's work that will start to happen across, say like our third grade team, so that our third grade team across the entire city is collaborating and sharing what's been working, what hasn't worked, et cetera. So that at the end of all of this, our third graders sort of emerge similarly, if that's even possible at this point. Will that start to happen next or what is the plan as we sort of look forward to how do we on ramp to normal school sometime in the future?
[Ricciardelli]: Let me try to answer that. So we embedded meeting time. into the plan. So for the first two weeks of this plan, with 24 hours notice, the administrators can ask teachers to participate in a meeting. So we're hoping that that is helpful. So some of those meetings are going to be school-based. Some of the meetings are going to be department-based. When a meeting is department-based, it's a broader group. It focuses in on the subject. One of the challenges that we've had, not during this difficult time, but it is difficult to schedule – so, for example, the director of humanities to schedule a meeting with all third-grade teachers. It's so in normal times, it's difficult to do that with the limited number of time. It doesn't mean that we can't do that. What we can do is we can encourage that to prompt that to occur. I guess what we're up against is we don't know how much time this is going to last. Is it going to last until May 4th? Does it go to the end of the year? So in putting this plan together, With that unknown, I guess the worst case scenario is we're looking between now and June. It's not that we're looking for a year. We're looking for what we think is a relatively finite period of time, which is a good thing. We are going to continue to review what we're doing and to get input. So it may be very helpful to do that. But again, we're talking April, May, and then part of June, potentially. We don't know if we're going until June. And that is one of the challenges. But I think your question, know, points us into a direction that we do need to think about is students at the Brooks getting similar experiences in their distance learning to students at the McGlynn. So it is, it's our charge and our responsibility to cross-reference that information to make sure that it is similar. And I think staff appreciate being able to get together with other, and to share. So I know within the World Language Department that I've been overseeing, we've met a couple of times and it's been great to just to share the information. Relatively unstrained or sharing type, we probably can schedule those relatively easily.
[Graham]: Yeah, and I Bernadette, I totally appreciate that we can't do everything all at once at the same time. And that this plan is going to have to live and breathe and change. So as we sort of press forward. I'm sensitive to the fact that our teachers are in uncharted waters as well. And they have kids at home and reinventing the wheel for three hours of instruction every single day. However we can help them make that process easier in the next iteration as this thing evolves, I think would be wonderful for everyone.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. Member McLaughlin.
[McLaughlin]: Thank you. I want to echo everyone's sentiment, obviously, on all the hard work that's been done, especially in such a short, I'm out of time and also echo member Graham's sentiment about this being a living, breathing document and, you know, it evolving as we are all evolving in this process. So to that end, I wanna, you know, mention that the items that I bring up today, I don't bring up to, you know, show signs of omissions or anything to this report, but more that we're thinking about this as a community and we're thinking about how some of these questions are being answered as a community as we move forward, because there are so many. And I have had the opportunity to talk with some of our directors and our staff, and I think it can all feel a little bit overwhelming. One thing I wanted to mention is, The Special Education Parent Advisory Council, in addition to Dr. Cushing's survey link, has also sent out a survey link as of Saturday. I believe it was sent out today's Monday, just for all of those who are still wondering what day it is. I know I'm in that boat most times. But we did send out a survey on Saturday. We've already gotten 88 responses in the special education community, so that's been good to see. I'm curious about the data collection from Dr. Cushing's whether or not there's a staff survey that's happening. I think now is a really good time to be getting data collection. People are really in a position where they can offer feedback and offer ideas. And I think we should be soliciting them from the community as we're working. to move forward and engage as many stakeholders as we can. And I think that you are all educators and you know the value of data and the collection of data. So I really highly recommend doing surveys specific to certain populations. So potentially an EL survey, a staff survey, where the special ed community is doing a survey and looking at that data. So that's just something I wanted to put out there. And to member Graham's point, about how are we systemizing or thinking about how this is gonna work in the future. Hopefully this is not gonna happen again anytime soon, but I think we've all realized that this can happen now. And so we need to have these plans in place. And so as we're doing them, as we're working now, how are we systemizing for the future so that we're making sure that this is something that we're covered for or thinking about these safety precautions. Joan Bowen and I have been part of a universal safety committee within the district for the past two years, and we were actually having an event this month, well, the end of April 28th, we had scheduled a big event to talk about what do you do in these circumstances and how do we think about systemizing things. So it was really timely to have this event, and we've had Stacey Shulman and Jen Hollenbeck and Paul DeLeva and families and a number of people on that universal safety committee that's done a lot of great work and want to continue to do that work. But I think we should be thinking about how are we systemizing this as a whole. To Member Graham's point around the Google folders and to Chad Fallon's point around the CTE, grade-level Google folders with shared materials seem like a pretty low-hanging fruit. I don't know, Charlene, in terms of the union, what that means. But I'd like to sort of, again, put it out as a suggestion where people can populate a Google folder with shared material at grade level so that folks are feeling supported and having some mentor opportunities. So for questions that I have, Joan, I know that some of these are difficult questions, so I'm not putting you on the spot, but I am putting them out there because they're questions that the community has been asking for special education specifically. For those who don't know, I am the parent of three children, two of whom have special, all of our children are general education students, of course, children who are receiving special education supports and services. I have two children receiving special education supports and services and so very involved in that community and have been able to ask or receive a lot of questions from families. So Desi didn't give much guidance. I was on a call last week on Thursday around IEP timelines. How are we? So, Joan, I'm just going to do a little list and maybe you can address what you can in this quick list for families that are out there.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Sure. If I may, we have that as an agenda item. Do you want to do you want to ask now? Or do you want to?
[McLaughlin]: Okay, so we'll wait. Okay. Let's you can move to you guys. If you guys want to take it out of order, it's up.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Well, that's next when we revert back to the regular order business.
[McLaughlin]: Let me go back and then ask the general, I guess, question specifically. And getting to Bernadette and Charlene's point, how are teachers and families being trained for remote learning? So I saw that there was the webinar thing. Is it accessible for families to be able to access that remote learning webinar? I know that there are a lot of families out there and teachers and staff who don't necessarily know some of the learning, is that available for all? And if so, how can they access it? That's one question regarding general ed. So remote learning for training, professional development or training for families and staff for remote learning. I know there's the webinar link that you guys shared in the report. Is it accessible for everybody?
[Ricciardelli]: That is an open link that is accessible. So what we can do is we can get that sent out to parent emails. Thank you. To parent email accounts. So yes, that is accessible. Also, there's a link on the document. So when the document goes live, people can just click on it and go right there. But we will send out a communication in some way so that people even if they don't access the website, they can go, they'll get it in an email and they'll know how to access the training.
[McLaughlin]: Thank you, Dr. Riccadeli. And if they don't, or if a teacher or a family member needs support in that training, what would you advise? Like if they say there's a technical issue, I know that this happened with some teachers remotely, should they call Molly's department or?
[Ricciardelli]: So Molly and I have been in communication, and I know that Molly does have, there are some people within her department that are well-versed in it. Molly, I don't know if you wanna add anything to that. We did talk a little bit about that this weekend, about having people there to support if needed. So Molly, I don't know if you can offer any more information on that.
[Patterson]: Molly.
[Unidentified]: Motion here. Can you hear us, Molly?
[Ricciardelli]: So Molly and I have been in communication, and I know that Molly does have, there are some people within her department that are well-versed in it. Molly, I don't know if you want to add anything to that. We did talk a little bit about that this weekend, about having people there to support if needed.
[UKy15P8nAPo_SPEAKER_10]: So, I can answer a few questions. I actually was watching, I just wasn't on before, I'm sorry. So, in terms of, I just want to answer the first question about the Chromebook number.
[Unidentified]: Can you hear us, Molly? Can you hear me? Oh, jeez, I don't know what's going on here. You need to mute if you're watching it on TV. at this weekend about having people there to support if needed. So I can answer a few questions.
[UKy15P8nAPo_SPEAKER_10]: I actually was watching. I just wasn't on before. I'm sorry. So in terms of answering the first question about the Chromebook number.
[Lungo-Koehn]: If everybody could mute their microphones. Okay, okay, hold on. Somebody, let's go. Here we go. All right, I just remuted everybody. Somebody must be watching.
[Unidentified]: Go ahead, Molly, sorry.
[Bears]: I think it might be Molly. Might have to turn off the TV.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Is anybody watching the TV? If you could just shut it off in the background. Everybody seems to be muted. I don't, Zach, what do you think? I don't know.
[Bears]: Everybody seems- I think Molly might have the TV on at home. I think that might be the issue.
[Ruseau]: Yeah, and the TV and the other, the medfortv.org are both delayed. So it doesn't work to watch those.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Okay, so we're gonna leave, maybe Molly can respond. Yeah, that's not gonna work then. Well, Dr. Riccardelli, you kind of answered that, so. Molly, it's not working. I'm sorry. Member McLaughlin, we can maybe get Molly to respond to the superintendent, and she can forward it all to all of us, and we can get that out to the public. Thank you, I appreciate it.
[McLaughlin]: I had another general question to Ms. Douglas' point around printing materials. So, you know, there was some discussion around, you know, you don't have to have everything be online, educational opportunities, you know, accessible, you know, all those things. And so it does beg the question, who is paying for and how are they paying for printed material? Are people able to get reimbursed for it? I mean, and it's sort of even like, where are they printing it? There's not probably too many staples open with this, you know, necessary order only in place. So I don't know what the answer to that is. But I guess I'm just asking the question as we're moving forward. How are we thinking about reimbursing or paying for printed material? because that obviously gets really costly. So those were my general questions. And when we move on to the next agenda item, I'll ask the others. I have others, but I don't want to take up everyone's time. So I'll wait until the next section. So again, just adding to the, finally, just adding to the, I guess, bigger question, how are we paying for printed material when teachers have to print or others have to print?
[Lungo-Koehn]: Doctor?
[Ricciardelli]: So what I would say, I mean, from the many of the teachers that I've spoken to, they are, they're not providing print material. They are, so for example, we say, people don't have to use screen time. I'm thinking of screen time as like live time, but maybe that's not a solid way to think about it. Many teachers are creating assignments on Google Sheets and the students are doing it, so maybe they are doing it online. You know what, I probably shouldn't even try to answer this question. I need to think about it a little bit more. I don't know many people who are creating packets. I could be wrong. There are assignments where it's a reading assignment that doesn't require necessarily anything printed.
[McLaughlin]: I guess, Dr. Riccobelli, as we're talking about, and again, maybe this is blending over a little bit into the next area, but I think as we're talking about accessibility and thinking about printed material, because accessibility is going to be an issue, you know, not everyone's gonna be able to go online, not everyone's, not every student is able to go online. So, you know, again, these are things that I'm just sort of putting out there for us to be asking those questions as we're moving forward.
[Ricciardelli]: Okay, so I'm just thinking reaching out to staff to find out what, you know, how often and are you using print material? That would probably be a good place to start.
[McLaughlin]: I think that might be a great question for a staff survey.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Great. Yeah, that sounds good. Thank you. Before we have Joan Bowen present, I just have one quick question for you, Doctor. You mentioned the clinical counseling, that they would be touching base to their caseload. Now, what if we have a student that isn't on the caseload, that is having a hard time dealing with what we're going through, and maybe needs to speak to a school adjustment Councilor? Will that be available? And if so, how can a parent reach out or get the answer to who to call?
[McLaughlin]: So Brianna, that's also a Joan question that's on our list.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Joan, maybe you can start there then in your presentation.
[Bowen]: Sure. Can everyone hear me okay?
[Lungo-Koehn]: Yes.
[Bowen]: So I submitted my report regarding the Office of Pupil Services and Special Education. It's four pages long, so I'm not going to read it word for word at this point. But I have been in contact with Stacey Shulman, who is our clinical supervisor. People can reach out to her. or a school adjustment Councilor that is assigned to a building. And we can get that list out to people. If there is a student that is in need of services, feeling anxious, stressed, that sort of thing. She's also working with the Board of Health to look at what are some outside agencies that are available. Elliott is also available. So anything that we could do if they wanna alert the staff at the building or the principal at your respective building, we can reach out to service providers that way. Great. Thank you.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Go ahead. Member Ruseau, then Member McLaughlin.
[Ruseau]: Thank you. This is a question from Jamie Taylor. What will happen with the students who do not have technology and also for the 50% of students that teachers have yet to hear from?
[Bowen]: Is that the special ed or just in general?
[Ruseau]: This is in general. I apologize for being out of order.
[Bowen]: Sorry. Do you want me to answer it or do you want someone else to answer it? I can answer it from the special ed perspective.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Sure.
[Bowen]: I would have them reach out to their building principals first and asking them why they haven't heard from the teachers. But if it's a special ed person, you can reach out to the building level coordinators at that point.
[Ruseau]: I do want to clarify, it's the students that the teachers have not heard from. Oh, OK. Teachers are reaching out. My own family was one of them. We got the call. The emails are going into the Google account. The students aren't replying or apparently even logging in. I don't really know how many students we're talking about, but apparently it's a lot of students that are not responding to teachers.
[Ricciardelli]: So.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Doctor.
[Ricciardelli]: So I know that, I don't know if Paul DeLaver is still on this call, but I know this morning he and his assistant principals were reaching out, trying to reach out through phone calls to parents because they have been hearing for teachers. We encouraged teachers to share with administrators whether or not they were hearing from students who were participating. The administration has been working to communicate with those parents. So Paul, I don't know if you can add anything, add anything to that, what the success rate of that was.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what we've been doing is, for the high school, and I can only speak at the high school level, what we've been doing is having teachers that have not been successful connecting to give us a list by grade level. So assistant principals, as Joan mentioned, have been compiling. We have a running list that's been going on and today was one of those days where we sort of hit the phones running to try to connect as much as we could because the hard part for us initially was using our phones to kind of connect out. You can do the star six, seven thing, but that doesn't mean you always end up getting a response. So we did social distance today. We all went into our own offices. We never went in contact with everyone, but we took our list and we sort of went down the line. We had a good, successful rate, but we're also trying to figure out the reasons why there's no connection. Do they not have a device? Do they not have internet? Things of that nature. Is their social emotional wellbeing in a spot where having assignments being utilized at this point in time, especially during the enrichment time, Is that something that has been holding people back? I think to go back to this plan, I think the good part about this plan of what we're seeing with people that haven't connected is that we sort of now have a direction of what to do, even on an admin side. So I guess that's where we're at mostly at the high school. Again, I can't speak to other schools, but I'm pretty sure they're following the same protocols.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. Paul's just going to take over for a minute while I've been on Zoom since three. So let's go to the bathroom. Joan.
[Ruseau]: And just to follow up on that, so, you know, I think that one of the challenges, you know, even before this, during the summer institute at the MASC, we talked about having connectivity at home and how a remarkable number of children have connectivity at home, meaning they have an iPhone. they can get on the internet. It is not a device or connection that is going to function for performing your real schoolwork. And I know that it might be too soon to get the results from Dr. Cushing on the survey that was done, but Is it putting the cart before the horse to actually say, well, what are we going to do about kids whose only connection at home is their parent iPhone? And that's not going to work. Are we going to actually be calling up Verizon and having internet installed in their homes? Sorry. Mr. McLaughlin, I'm trying to unmute you.
[McLaughlin]: Thank you. I think, again, getting, you know, sort of thinking of that in terms of the survey, and I know that I've spoken with the English language department and the special education department, and I'm sure Mr. Teixeira will be talking soon as well. But I know, you know, and with Mr. DeLeva, and I'm assuming probably people in their own buildings are going through their list collectively and figuring out who's been able to be contacted and who hasn't. And again, getting towards the information or what have you, asking at that point, especially for the folks that haven't been contacted, asking them while they're being contacted at this point, sort of, do you have connectivity issues or not? So starting to build, again, that database, that information. But I also think that that could be addressed in potentially survey form. But I do think that, I know that the EL and special education department, and as Mr. DeLava said, The high school and assistant principals are going through their list and they're literally creating, I don't know if it's global spreadsheets or what, students who haven't responded. So adding a column to those student responses, you know, do you have connectivity, seems to make a lot of sense as we're trying to be more uniform across the district.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that is what our lists are saying. We're even replying what our communication is with those families as of today. So we added a whole new notes column to go with that as well.
[McLaughlin]: I think that's great. And maybe, again, getting to the point of Google shared folders, like if these standard documents could be shared across the district so that everyone's sort of doing this in a uniform way, it seems like it would make a lot of sense. But again, just putting that on.
[Bowen]: Thank you. Joan, do you want to continue? So basically, Dr. Riccardelli, basically told us, told everyone what the special education department has been doing and where we're heading. So I didn't know if anyone had questions in regards to that, or you needed me to go into the, um, the report, the update that I gave any further.
[Lungo-Koehn]: I think as long as, since it's, it's almost eight, so maybe questions. And then if you could make the report available for the public and for us to read in depth, that'll be sure. I think that as long as we have that, thank you. Any questions? Member McLaughlin.
[McLaughlin]: On Zoom with Joan. So that's been pushed out to the community and folks can talk to the director of pupil services. 6 o'clock on Wednesday as well with additional questions and answers, so that will be helpful.
[Bowen]: Bonnie, we didn't hear the first part that you said. You were on mute.
[McLaughlin]: Was I?
[Bowen]: Yeah, I didn't hear the whole thing. Thank you. Sorry.
[McLaughlin]: So I wanted to make sure the community knows that we're having a question and answer. CPAC is hosting a question and answer period with you on Wednesday from 6 to 7. So there's a Zoom push out. where folks can get online and ask questions to the Director of Pupil Services, but also if they want to submit questions in advance, it is better because then it's better prepared and people have more time. So some questions that have just come across now, Joan, and if you just have a short list to sort of address these where you can, it would be really helpful. One is people are asking a lot about IEP timelines. So how are we addressing initial evaluations, re-evaluations, and expired IEPs? Two is the guidance from the report is saying children should work independently or teachers should be able to provide work for children to work independently. As we know, there are a lot of children in our community, in the disability community, that are not able to work independently. And what are we doing in those instances? Also drilling down with that a little bit more, how are we addressing children who have had one-to-one paraprofessionals? Next question is paraprofessionals and computers, whether they have access, how are they getting them? Are paras attending the staff meetings that are being scheduled regularly so that they're being included in part of the conversation? We talked a little bit about this ourselves, Joan, but I want to point out to the community We have a lot of families that are really struggling right now with children who may have been in out of district placements or elsewhere with mental health issues, self injurious behavior, things that, you know, in addition to what we're all dealing with on a pandemic level and being in social isolation at home are just so much more exacerbated with these particular families and how are we supporting them? and their families. And so to the point what you were saying about Stacey Shulman a little while ago, but also how that addresses families and not just students. So how are we handling compensatory services for therapies? So for people who don't know a lot about special education, students may get therapies like speech and language, occupational therapy, physical therapy. DESE is not requiring, as the guidance said, not requiring those therapies to occur during this time. However, they are part of IEPs. And so how do we address compensatory services? So if children aren't provided their IEP services, typically there's compensatory services. Special education is also very legally dense. So it's hard to answer a lot of these questions, but just sort of putting them in people's minds to be thinking about. What social emotional connections? I'm almost done, two more. What social-emotional connections are we providing to our out-of-district students? So for our out-of-district students who are, you know, sometimes sent to Lexington or Belmont or, you know, Beverly or what have you, who don't have necessarily connections to their out-of-district placements because those students are all from other areas as well, how are we connecting our out-of-district students to the community in this social isolation time? So for example, we know that every student is assigned to a school because that's the way out of district placement works. So even if you're out of district, you're still part of a school, you're able to take extracurricular activities at that school, you're supposed to be a part of the life of the school. So is there a way that we can be connecting these children, these students to social opportunities, meetings, online meetings, recess, morning meetings, what have you? Extended school year is another big question. And are we posting and sharing resources for remote learning? So again, these Google level, I mean, these Google folders grade level where we're sharing information amongst people. So I know that's a long list for you, Joan, and we'll answer more on Wednesday. But if you could get sort of the meat of that in any way that you can, I'd appreciate it.
[Bowen]: Sure. So we've had a lot of meetings with DESPIE in the last couple of weeks. Districts are still waiting for guidance regarding IEP timelines. They have told us that we can hold virtual meetings. We have started to do that. Our evaluation team leaders are reaching out to parents to conduct annual review meetings that were supposed to be held within the last two weeks. And we're moving in that direction to get them done. But we haven't had direct guidance regarding initial evaluations, re-evaluation timelines, that sort of thing. So, we were told on Thursday that guidance would be coming. So, as soon as I am aware of it, I will let people know. The independent work, I think that is going to be – I don't have a definite answer because I want to reach out to the teachers of students that have the one-to-one and how that's going to look. advisory to us that we can't provide all the services in the exact same manner, but what does that look like for students on one-to-one? So that would be me reaching out with those program levels, teachers and the paraprofessionals that provide one-on-one and what it may look like. And that also goes to with the students working independently as well. The paras, I don't believe that they have been giving access to Chromebooks, but that's something I think we need to look at on a individual basis with the paraprofessional, what their role is going to be and what services they're going to be providing to students and who needs that access to a Chromebook to do remote learning, to be involved with virtual morning meetings, that sort of thing. I think it would be helpful for the paras to be involved so they can So the students can see the staff members who've been consistent with them since August to make those connections with them. So we will be working with the paraprofessionals regarding that. Compensatory services, that is up in the, it's not up in the air, but it's a discussion that we're gonna have to have with individual families at their IEP team meetings. We're gonna try to provide as many services as we possibly can. I'm asking, teachers to document the work that they're giving, where the student was, where they're progressing, and then if there's a need for extended school year services or compensatory services, that would be determined at the team meeting when the teams meet. So I don't have, oh, was there one more? Oh, community access. I feel like if the out-of-district families are looking for community connection, then I would like them to reach out to me and we could take a look at that, what that would look like for each individual child. We want to be thoughtful about it and make that appropriate connection with their community school or their in-district school. Would it be a community meeting, a morning meeting? Would it be some sort of activity? Whatever it may be, I would want to look at that. What are the opportunities and then how we can provide those to the students and their families. I think I answered all, I'm not sure.
[McLaughlin]: There's a lot, thank you. I hope so. And I'm sure that if families have additional questions, again, Wednesday, they can be on the call, but they should also be reaching out to their ETLs, right? Correct, yes. And I just want to point out to the mayor and to, I don't know if Christine's still on here, but those compensatory services and ESY costs are real. And I know that the guidance from DESE was to provide as many services as we can now so that we're not dealing with all those compensatory services and compensatory service costs later. But they're really something that needs to be considered. And also toward that end and around gathering data for staff, families can also be gathering data at home just in terms of showing and documenting any regression if there is any, because as we're seeing from our survey, the two biggest concerns right now in the CPAC survey is regression and social isolation. So yeah, thank you. OK.
[Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Thank you. I have a question from a special education teacher, and I will just actually say what I would hope would happen, is can we, can someone make it a priority to create either a Google Doc or some kind of a format for teachers to begin keeping track of their purchases of student materials, mailing of envelopes, you know, the cost of stamps. I don't, hopefully we don't need to have an actual motion to say we're going to reimburse teachers for all of this stuff. But I'm more than happy to make that motion if if somebody isn't going to just say we'll take care of it because I mean I'm not suggesting teachers be out, you know, ordering. everything off of Amazon they can find, and that's not, I think, the question. The question is, is if they are providing materials and mailing it to students' homes, we should be reimbursing them without any question. So it'd be better to start ahead of time with, here's the format of the document that you all should be filling, the teacher should be filling out, so that we don't later on say, oh, well, you didn't keep track of this detail. Dr. Edouard, Vincent, do you have anything to add?
[Edouard-Vincent]: So we have a few people still working on certain days of the week. We do have a mail machine here at the school. What I'm concerned about is having something that would be like a cut lunch and not really being able to monitor What are the grade levels? And what's the frequency of that actually happening? So I do think we can work collaboratively with the MTA, with Ms. Douglas, and figure out, like, try to create a Google Doc where we could have teachers put the information in and it might be something that maybe more early childhood people might want to take more advantage of that as opposed to some of the upper grades, but I think it needs to be something that we more closely manage and the fact that we do have critical staff members coming in one or two days a week to deal with payroll and paying bills, that if it was something where it was a particular day a week that we said we were going to do a mailing, we could potentially have some of that go out through the school. Also, as I say that, I'm still thinking about social distancing and really being careful because, again, as Marianne O'Connor said at the beginning of the meeting, that we followed good social distancing We made it through that first two-week window. But again, anyone could become affected just by going to the regular supermarket or the pharmacy or to a Staples or someplace. So it's something that let us work on that with the union and come up with something that is mutually beneficial for everyone.
[Lungo-Koehn]: That would be great. Thank you. Thank you. Member Van der Kloot?
[Van der Kloot]: Yes, I just wanted to inquire about our homeless students. Have we done any outreach to the students who are in Medford? And have we given them any support in particular? And who's in charge of doing so?
[Lungo-Koehn]: Joan.
[Bowen]: So I have reached out to the ETLs and the principals regarding the homeless students. And we also have a connection with Marie Cassidy from Medford Family Network, who's been doing a lot of outreach to the shelters, making sure that the students are getting what they need for meals, for also any additional supplies that they may need, and then they are being provided with the same educational opportunities that our students are.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Great.
[Bowen]: And she's also working with DCF and other outside agencies to continue to support those students.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Great. Mr. Teixeira, I don't know if you're still on, if you have anything to add with regards to the English learners program. Did he sign? Oh, there he is.
[Teixeira]: Still there. So I did the report. I'm not going to read it, but does anyone have any questions on the report?
[Lungo-Koehn]: Member McLaughlin?
[McLaughlin]: I just want to say thank you and I'm assuming Mayor Lungo-Koehn that these will all be available for the public on the website?
[Edouard-Vincent]: I believe they already are, Dr. Vincent. All documents are uploaded on the website. They're available right now. Great, great. Anybody else?
[Lungo-Koehn]: Member Mustone, did you raise your hand?
[Kreatz]: Oh, no, okay. Member Kreatz. Oh, my, oh, off mute, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Texeria, for the report. I just had a question, because I know in your report, it mentioned that you haven't been able to get in touch with 30 of the 480 English learners, and you continue to do the outreach. And I think, did you do a mailing as well, Mr. Texeria? Like an actual mailing to the families, their address?
[Teixeira]: No, not a postal mailing. It's all been emailed, but the EL teachers are the ones doing the outreach. They've had systems in place prior to the closure of schools where they would reach out using online texting called talking points. Some use remind 101. So they've always had this outreach. So even with that, there are the 30 students that we haven't been able to get in touch with. And so they've reached out to the translators who are trying to call home. Somebody talked about using phones to call and dialing star 671st. They're finding that they don't pick up if it's a private number. Also, they can't leave their personal cell phone number. to call them back. So it's not like we have the advantage of being in school, but the teachers are continually doing the outreach and they're keeping a log of which students they can't get in touch with and which students aren't responding to what they put out on Google. And so we'll have that list and we'll just kind of keep going at it to try to get to the kids that aren't responding or the families that aren't responding.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions for member Ruseau?
[Ruseau]: Actually, I was just going to, if we're done with this item, are we ready for the last item on the agenda?
[Lungo-Koehn]: Is there a motion to accept the last two discussions on what would be the second and third item of our agenda? Motion to accept. Motion to accept. Member Graham, do you have a question first?
[Graham]: Yeah. Can we, oh. Can you hear me. Yes. Okay. Um, I was noticing in the the report and the conversation around having not been able to reach 30 out of 480 students felt like a good sort of way to understand what's happening in terms of how many students are we reaching and I'd like for us as we talk about the entire school population at all levels for us to figure out how we can start to assess where we're at in all buildings and with all of our populations in a future meeting. And it doesn't have to be on Monday, but as we continue to progress forward, I would hope that we're reaching more and more and more families. And if that's not happening, I want us to be thinking about whether we need to be changing our strategy. So can we put that on an agenda for a future meeting?
[Lungo-Koehn]: Yeah, motion for approval to place that on the future meeting agenda, maybe a week from, do you want Monday or two weeks from Monday? Two weeks from Monday. Two weeks from Monday, we'll get those numbers, yes. Motion by Member Graham, seconded by Member Ruseau. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Okay, motion passes. Maureen, do you have?
[SPEAKER_26]: Hi everybody, I just wanted a quick follow-up. Anybody that needs any information about scholarships or guidance information, you could go to medfordhighguidance.com and all that information is located there. Several of the scholarships have had extended deadlines and the students have had emails from that website from our department anytime any updates come up. So they have been in the loop. And many of them have already applied for a lot of the scholarships as well. So we're constantly sending email reminders out as we get information. So I just wanted to make sure everyone knew that. I can follow up at a later meeting a little bit more.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. Okay, so we have proposed meeting schedule, regular school committee and budget committee of the whole, Superintendent Dr. Maurice-Edouard-Vincent and Assistant Superintendent of Finance, Christine Patterson. Motion to approve by member Rousseau, seconded by member, oh, question, member Van der Kloot.
[Van der Kloot]: Yes, so I looked at this and again, I realized that part of it is because of the school vacation week, but I feel very uncomfortable that we would have a meeting on the 13th and then not again to the 4th. And so I think it's really important that we add a meeting on the 27th. I don't need a full agenda. meeting, but I need an opportunity where we are brought together and we can talk and ask questions. So I'm not, you know, it's a long gap and I'm just not comfortable with, this was a very, very long two weeks that your members had. And we know you were working really hard and we appreciate that, but in our role, that was an extraordinarily long time. So when I see that just by chance, and I understand that this is the way it would have been under our regular meetings, But under this circumstance, I'm just not comfortable with that amount of time between our meetings, especially because, you know, May 4th, we may be starting school again, we don't know.
[Edouard-Vincent]: I would like because right now Christine is under tremendous pressure to complete all of the pre-budgets because all of those meetings stopped and because we tried to honor the previous schedule that was in place she was going to be trying to meet with if you look at that schedule she increased some of the numbers of groups that were presenting in order to get us back on track. So I would propose to either do the sixth and push the second meeting out to the 20th, because the amount of work that we're doing in the background, I cannot see adding another meeting on top of that, where we're gonna, right now, this has been a three hour meeting today, and the amount of preparation People were working all weekend. We are working non-stop. It's very difficult not physically being in the same place. And I think that the workload needs to be manageable for us. So I don't mind keeping the 6th next Monday and not doing the 13th and meeting on the 20th because we do need to have planning time to get work done. Even something as it seems simple, the request from member Graham about keeping track of all of the families, but in order to meet with the administrators, to talk with the union, to talk with the teachers, to have every single teacher keep track of that, that's gonna take time to say, you know, out of my 20, you know, students, I've been able to track down 18, and I haven't been able to track down two. So there are a lot of things, it seems like it's something that can be done quickly, but it takes time to get that together and to be able to present something meaningful.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Yeah, I think that sounds reasonable, the 6th and the 20th. Member Van der Kloot?
[Van der Kloot]: So the only reason I didn't suggest the 20th was because of the fact that it is during that school vacation week. I'm free. So which of course in today and doesn't exist anymore. So I'm just mentioning that again, the sense of we have a difference in terms of and this certainly was discussed over these last two weeks in terms of the school committees need to be able to talk to each other without having the full agenda, without having the, you know, because I understand and appreciate how much work this meeting is. How do we set it up so that we have a touch base opportunity?
[Edouard-Vincent]: So as you are aware, I've been sending significant communications to you, the school committee, and I can continue to send updates in terms of what is happening in terms of my own productivity and really being able to do the best on behalf of the district. I need to be able to have time to be able to prepare these reports and be able to gather the data. No one is on campus per se on a daily basis, so everything is not immediately at our fingertips. It's multiple calls. It's multiple Zoom meetings. It's conflicting Zoom meetings. It's DESI calls from the commissioner and waiting for time-sensitive updates. Today's meeting, which is a special meeting, this meeting alone is three hours long in duration right now. And this isn't a regular meeting and we need at our next meeting, we're gonna have an executive session. So I am just saying we need to really be cognizant of the amount of time and the breadth of what can reasonably be done and done well.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you, Dr. Vincent. So is, do you want to make a motion for the 6th and the 20th versus, I remember Randa Kloot, that was your motion.
[Van der Kloot]: I'd like my colleagues to weigh in some, and I would like, you know, some concern about the 20th was vacation week so far. If you're comfortable, you know, in this one, I'd give to Marisa and say the 20th. It just seems very difficult to have a meeting on the 13th and not again to the 4th.
[Lungo-Koehn]: I'm fine with the 20th myself, member McLaughlin and member Ruseau, member Kreatz.
[McLaughlin]: Thank you. I can appreciate the hard work, Dr. Vincent and staff. I know you guys have been going into all hours and weekend hours. And I do also feel a commitment very much to the constituents who voted for us to represent them and to be updated. And you have been updating us, and you've been doing an excellent job at updating us. I think your memos to us have been very thorough and useful. Unfortunately, those aren't shared with the community, and they're feeling a need for updates as well. So I think we need to think as a group, and I'm asking our colleagues to be thinking as a group, as how we can make this work for everybody so that we're getting updates, the community's getting updates, and we're able to feel like it's more regular because with all that you're doing, I do hear from our voting members that they are feeling that there needs to be more in terms of community update and family and community engagement. And that's what's so important about this meeting is that we now have, we have 60 people on this call. We started with 80. So 60 have held through for three hours as well. And I'm sure there's lots of other things they would like to be doing too. So I hear you, but I am also asking, and I am also asking our colleagues for some creative solutions around this.
[Unidentified]: I think it was member Ruseau, then member Kreatz.
[Ruseau]: I really had nothing to say.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Okay, member Kreatz. Hold on. I'm just, sometimes I have to click it like five times. Can you unmute yourself?
[Kreatz]: There you go. Okay. Yep. So I just wanted to, you know, I was speaking with Melanie and I really appreciate all the email communications and updates from the superintendent and the mayor. It's been phenomenal, the updates and the emails. I do and did feel a little bit like, in the dark a little bit because we weren't actually meeting the same way that you were meeting with the administrators, let's say, and having like those Zoom calls. So, you know, I do support having, you know, a meeting before the, you know, before we're supposed to go back to school, which is, you know, set to be May 4th, because with the coronavirus, you know, it's constantly changing. Even the president, he originally planned to want to have people to go back after Easter, but he made a decision after speaking with researchers that, you know, it wasn't in the best interest and for the safety of the Americans, citizens. And I feel like the the virus is changing every day. We just don't know what's going to happen. And that would be a long stretch if we didn't have a meeting before, at least like, I mean, even if it was a special meeting, it doesn't have to be scheduled for three hours, but just a special meeting to catch up and, um, you know, talk about where we are and where's the coronavirus, how is it infecting Medford, things like that. So that's my thinking. I do support having it the 20th if everybody else agrees with that. But I think that, you know, we have to continuously monitor what's happening with this virus. And because it spreads very, very rapidly, it's very contagious. And we just don't know.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Absolutely. So it sounds like everybody's OK with the 20th. Motion, Member VandeKloot.
[Van der Kloot]: Yeah, I just would like to ask the administrative people whether they're OK with the 20th as opposed to the 13th.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Can we do a high five? Can we do a thumbs up if we're OK with the 20th? Diane, do you want to speak? OK, thumbs up. Let's do this. OK, motion by Member VandeKloot to move the meeting on the 13th to the 20th, seconded by Second. Member Kreatz, all those in favor? Aye. Motion passes, great. And motion to accept the rest of the schedule offered by? Motion to accept. Member Kreatz, seconded by?
[Ruseau]: Second.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Member Ruseau, all those in favor? Aye. Rest of the meeting scheduled is accepted. That's great, thank you. Discussion on future, we have one last item, discussion on future subcommittee meetings. Superintendent, Dr. Edouard Vincent.
[Edouard-Vincent]: Essentially for the subcommittee meetings, I had just wanted the school committee to look at the schedule of meetings that were there, if the individual chairs would reach out to me so that I could at least try to space the meetings out and ask from the members who they would like to have in attendance at those meetings. And so I can work on that schedule with the individual chairs of the subcommittee meetings.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. Is there a motion? Thank you, everybody, for the hard work. I know it was a long meeting, but it was definitely needed. And I apologize it took so long. We didn't get the Zoom accounts till last Monday. And I wasn't really trained on it until finalized training on Thursday. So it went really well. And I'm glad we had so much participation. And I thank you for your patience. I thank all the administrators and Charlene and the teachers for everything you're doing to make sure our kids continue on and learn as much as they can. And we definitely take care of every child. So thank you all for participating. Thank you for all you do. We will meet again on Monday. Please have your agenda items in by Wednesday, Dr. Maurice. What agenda items?
[Edouard-Vincent]: Yes, I am working on the list that we have. But because we have executive session, we will not have an extended regular list. But we're working on getting the responses to the spreadsheet and to some of the communications that came forward already with a lot of information. So that's right now all being gathered together.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Great. Great. So we'll see you Monday. Did we want to change the time or do you, how does everybody feel? Do you like the five o'clock now that we have time and then we can put our kids to bed or can I get a thumbs up or should we go five o'clock? Everybody thumbs up for five. Okay. Does anybody want seven? Okay. Motion to change the meeting to five made by make a motion to change the meeting?
[Edouard-Vincent]: The only thing is we're having the budget committee of the holes, which are 5.30 to 7. Then we have the regular meeting following. So our school committee meetings are going to start at 5.30 PM. And I'm hoping we don't go until 10 and 11 PM, but they're going to start at 5.30.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Do we want to start them at 4? I mean, it's up to the this body obviously but do we want to start them a little bit earlier so we're not here till 10 or I don't know it's hard the computer is a lot harder than being in person I don't know between so I don't think we can go much longer than the three hours just for our eyes but it's up to the body do you want 530 fine or do you want to go a little bit earlier?
[Kreatz]: I could go earlier if people could. Like, I am working remotely from home, but I'm home, so I get out at three. I could be in a meeting as early as like 3.30 just to, you know, get something to eat and, you know, be ready if that works for everybody else.
[Lungo-Koehn]: I'll unmute you all at this point if you wish to chime in.
[Van der Kloot]: Earlier. Is that you, Janine? I can't do as early as 3.30, but I could do 4, I guess. OK. 4 o'clock.
[McLaughlin]: I move a motion to move the meeting on Monday to 4 o'clock.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Seconded by member Kreatz. We will have a budget meeting from 4 o'clock on Monday to 5.30. And we will start our school committee meeting at 5.30 on Monday the 6th. And if that goes well, we can continue that on. And hopefully, we'll go to about no later than about 8 p.m., 8.30, and that will be great. Regular meetings. Okay. Motion for that to be our school committee meeting to start at 4? I made a motion for the school committee meeting to start at 4. Kathy? Seconded. Seconded by member Kreatz. All those in favor?
[Unidentified]: Aye.
[Lungo-Koehn]: All those opposed? Paper passes. So I'm sure we'll be in constant communication until Monday as well. But we will see you all Monday at 4 o'clock to discuss the budget and 5.30 for our regular scheduled school committee meeting. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Good night. Stay safe and healthy. Motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn. Motion to adjourn by member Vanda Kloot, seconded by member McLaughlin. All those in favor?
[Unidentified]: Aye. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Bye.
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