[Lungo-Koehn]: Medford School Committee regular meeting, April 20th, remote meeting by Zoom at 5.30 p.m. Pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12th, 2020 order, suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law, 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 a requirement to attend this meeting can be found on the city of Medford website 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 technological means. In the event that we are unable to do so, despite our best efforts, we will post on the City of Medford and Medford Community Media websites, an audio or video recording, transcript, or other comprehensive record of proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting. The meeting can be viewed through Medford Community Media on Comcast Channel 22 and Verizon Channel 43 at 5.30 p.m. Since the meeting will be held remotely, participants can log or call in by using the following link or call-in number. One of the phone numbers is 1-929-205-6099. Enter this meeting ID when prompted, 975-2504-7259. Additionally, questions or comments can be submitted during the meeting by emailing medfordsc at medford.k12.ma.us. Those submitting must include the following information. Your first and last name, your Medford street address, and your question. Member Van der Kloot, will you please call the roll?
[Van der Kloot]: Yes. Member Graham? Present. Member Kreatz? Kathy? Kathy Kreatz? Here. Thank you. Member McLaughlin? Melanie? Member McLaughlin?
[Unidentified]: Yes, here.
[Van der Kloot]: Member Mustone? Member Van der Kloot present, Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Lungo-Koehn]: Present. Seven present, zero absent. We all may rise to salute the flag. Don't make fun of my sweatpants. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. approval of the minutes of March 6, 2020. Motion to approve. Motion to approve by Member Kreatz, seconded by Member Van der Kloot.
[Hurtubise]: Roll call.
[Van der Kloot]: Member Graham? Yes. Kreatz? Yes. McLaughlin? Yes. Ms. Stone? member miss stone. Yes. Member Ruseau. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Yes. Seven in the affirmative zero in the negative bills. Transfer of funds have been approved. Report of secretary. There is none. None report of committees. Number one. We have budget committee of the whole meeting April 6 2020. Mayor Lungo current at this meeting. We had had with a number of departments to go over the budget from 4 p.m. to 5 30 p.m. Similar to every other meeting, we will be having four o'clock budget meetings. I don't know if anybody wants to add anything specific, but Miss Patterson leads us through a line by line departments. Motion for approval. motion seconded by member Kretsch all those in favor aye all those opposed paper passes number two special education behavioral health subcommittee April 14th 2020 member McLaughlin one second Melanie we're gonna unmute you or unmute yourself yeah sorry I'm trying to exit my screen and pull up the report and sorry
[McLaughlin]: Okay. Um, so yeah, we met on movement last week, and we wanted to the purpose of the meeting was to identify the newly formed subcommittee, which is behavioral health and special education combined. So we had a good turnout. There was, you know, a number of people in the meeting over 25, I believe. And we wanted to identify goals for the upcoming year. And so we have identified for behavioral health, we wanna focus on trauma and for special education, we're wanting to focus on community friendships and relationships. And we will be meeting every other, I mean, every third Thursday of the month. And what we're gonna do is because there's such broad topics, obviously, We're, um, staggering the meeting. So one month, the subcommittee is open to everyone, obviously it's a public meeting. Um, but one month we'll be, uh, specific to trauma and addressing, um, specific goals to trauma in our schools and what we want to achieve, um, and trauma awareness in our schools and what we want to achieve. And then the second month will be related to, uh, community friendships for individuals with disabilities in our, community and focus on our schools and community as a whole. Any questions?
[Lungo-Koehn]: Great. Thank you very much, Member McLaughlin. Is there a motion for approval of those minutes? By Member Van der Kloot, seconded by Member Kreatz. All those in favor? All those opposed? Paper passes. Thank you. Number six, do we have any community participation that is not related to any agenda item? Hearing and seeing none, we will move on to report of the superintendent, Dr. Vincent.
[Unidentified]: Yes, good evening, everyone. Oops. You're on, good. I'm on, okay.
[Edouard-Vincent]: Good evening. I wanted to share, today we hosted the middle school lottery via Zoom. All of the numbers have been posted to our website and blog as of 1215 this afternoon. We welcome all of our rising fifth graders to the Andrews and McGlynn middle schools in the fall. Depending upon Governor Baker's decision, we will either go forward with orientations on May 6th or 7th, whether we are in school or not in school. Mr. Downs and Mr. Tucci will be working on special presentations to do a very welcoming orientation, even if it does need to be done remotely. So please stay tuned to receive more information about that. I want to extend a very special thank you to Dr. Bernadette Riccadeli, our Director of Curriculum and Instruction, and to Ms. Kim Miles, our Data Manager, for their tireless efforts in organizing and producing the lottery today. I'd also like to thank Alison Goldsberry for creating a new tab on our website, which makes it very easily accessible for parents to log on to the website and review our lottery results. So I want to thank them for that. I also want to say that we have congratulations in order for our own librarian, Ms. Maria Dorsey. She's our Medford High School librarian, and she was named, Maria was named the 2020 recipient of the Super Librarian Award from the Massachusetts School Library Association. The award honors excellence in school librarianship. The Super Librarian works on the regional and state level to contribute to improving all school libraries. Maria has been at the Medford High School since 2010. She has worked hard to make it a welcoming place for students and staff. She has weeded out old book titles and added diverse books for the student body. Maria established a strong partnership with the Medford Public Library, where materials are shared and getting library cards for students. Additionally, she formed a partnership with the Office of Prevention and Outreach to bring information on services and self-care for mental health and addiction. She developed a relaxation station in the library that allows students to give their brains a rest and enjoy puzzles, chess, Legos, coloring books, and a chalk wall. Maria also co-chairs the Metro West region of the Massachusetts School Library Association. She truly demonstrates exemplary school library leadership. Great job, Maria. Congratulations. I'm sorry this is being done remotely, but we appreciate all of your wonderful contributions to Medford. Additionally, during this time of school closure, I want to extend a special thank you. We're very grateful to the Teamsters 25 and one of their partners who donated liquid hand sanitizer for all of our custodians, 375 milliliter bottles. The hand sanitizer was made from a local distiller called MS Walker, which is a family owned business based in New England. they stopped their production of alcohol and changed their business over to making a very strong alcohol-based hand sanitizer that can be used with a spray bottle. So we want to just extend a very special thank you to M.S. Walker and Teamsters 25 for going the extra mile and having a community partner support Medford Public Schools. Additionally, according to our director of library media and technology, Ms. Molly Layden, she has created a link that has been established that's going to help anyone who is in need of technical support during school closure. So I'm going to encourage all families to please use tech support. That's T-E-C-H-S-U-P-P-O-R-T. techsupport at medford.k12.ma.us. They are ready and willing to help you with any technological challenges that you may be facing during the school closure. Additionally, while we're during this closure time, the college board has informed our guidance department that due to COVID-19, SATs will not be administered during the remainder of this school year. So that is just an important update for all families. SATs will not be administered. At this time, I also want to just acknowledge one of our Mustangs who's doing an excellent job. And we want to just say thank you to all of our health care professionals during this COVID-19 crisis. Last Sunday in the Boston Globe, one of our own Mustangs, Ricky Cormio, a 2002 graduate, was featured as a paramedic on the front lines for Cataldo Ambulance. Ricky is the son of vocational electrical teacher, Mr. Richard Cormier, and his wife, Teresa. Ricky Cormier is just one of so many Mustangs that are currently serving us during this pandemic, whether in the medical field, in public safety, or in our grocery stores. And even at my own home, my husband is a medical professional at Boston Medical Center. So I know the dedication it requires and the long hours it demands. We salute them all and pray for their good health. Last week on Tuesday, we had the opportunity to enjoy an uplifting parade that the McGlynn teachers and staff hosted for their students. This parade was led by the Medford Police Department, the Medford Fire Department, and special guests, including Elsa from Frozen and Marshall from Paw Patrol. Principal Diane Garino, Assistant Principal Doreen Andrews, had a long line of cars filled with teachers, administrators, and well-wishers who participated. There were balloons, streamers, and posters beeping and waving to our students and the community. assistant superintendent, Dr. Peter Cushing, associate superintendent, Diane Caldwell. We also were part of the parade and it was a wonderful time for all. We did get to see the mayor and her family joining in and cheering the teachers on, on our route during the parade. And I want to just extend a special thanks to our coach, Jack Dempsey, who filmed the parade, which was shown later on NBC 10 Boston News. It was a bright spot in this time of social distancing and I know that the Brooks and Columbus schools hopefully are planning to host their parades in the near future. So I just want to thank everyone for their participation and for that. Additionally, I would like to say that I want to thank Mayor Lungo-Koehn for lifting our spirits with her Medford Strong video, which featured Medford residents indicating who they are staying home for, school children. Parents, teachers, and residents are pictured with decorated signs and posters reminding all of us why it is so important to hashtag stay home. We are Mustang strong, and we will get through this together. On the academic side, there continues to be conversations with our commissioner of education and listening to what's being said by our governor. We are awaiting an official decision from Governor Baker as to when schools will be able to resume. As it stands right now, the date is May 4th, but I'm told that we should be hearing an updated report from the governor sometime this week. In addition to this extended closure, I just want to formally say that in light of the extended closure, the Commissioner of Education, the MCAS assessment has been officially canceled for this year. It will not be given. And that is something that we were waiting to find out if they were going to do it at a later point in time. But again, based on this extended closure, the decision has been made to cancel the MCAS completely for the entire year. Yesterday evening. I am not aware uh, if some of you had the opportunity on fox 25 there was a um, A presentation in our own school nurse columbus school nurse Miss karen roberto was featured as one of the nurses talking about um how she is supporting our board of health additionally our mayor was on as well as showing what medford was doing to keep our community safe and And so we do thank our nurses again for being part of the team and contributing to keeping our entire community safe. The Medford Public Schools, our administrators, teachers, business staff, paras, librarians, nurses, along with the mayor and the entire school committee, are approaching this pandemic in a unified manner. So for those of you who do have questions, concerns, or any other school-related issues, please do reach out to us. And that email address is info at medford.k12.ma.us. We are all here for you. Thank you for listening this evening.
[Unidentified]: Thank you, Superintendent.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Great job. Um, number two report on COVID-19 update from miss Toni Wray and miss Mary Ann O'Connor. Tony, I know I saw you.
[Wray]: Oh, can you hear me? Yes. Good evening, everyone. I just wanted to report that we've all been hearing in the news that Massachusetts is experiencing its surge in COVID-19 diagnoses. We're seeing this in Medford as well. As of today, we have 519 positive cases in Medford. And the group that's been particularly hit hard has been our elderly population. As Dr. Edouard-Vincent said, many of our school nurses are helping in the Board of Health with contact tracing and checking up on families. They've been serving meals at the McGlynn Educational Complex, and they've been connecting with elderly patients as part of the RUOK program. We're following all the Department of Public Health and Department of Education information closely and waiting for updates about continuing school closures or when we can reenter school. I do want to take this time to recognize the stress that everybody is under and experiencing. I want to encourage everyone to continue the stay-at-home advisories and the social distancing measures that they've been doing. This is critical at this time in our surge of cases. Please follow the governor's advice and wear a mask when you're making needed trips outside of your homes. Continue good hand washing and cough etiquette to control the spread of germs within your own home. And please call your primary care physician if you're experiencing any symptoms of illness before you go into the emergency room or go into your doctor's office. Thank you.
[Unidentified]: Thank you, Ms.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Ray. I'm not sure, I don't believe Marian O'Connor is on, but I did speak to her today, and it's a lot of the same that Tony mentioned, 519 cases. She wanted to give a special thank you to the six or seven nurses working on the contact tracing within the city of Medford. That's what is giving us the ability to really try to slow this spread. We also have the meals being served by a number of residents, and members of the committee, as well as nurses. And I thank them also for making calls on our UOK program. 11,000 seniors have been called. Many of them are getting deliveries on a weekly or biweekly basis. And the second round of those calls will be starting on Wednesday. Member McLaughlin?
[McLaughlin]: Yes, I just wanted to say thank you, Mayor Lungo-Koehn, for doing the R U OK? program. We have members in our district that are volunteering. I don't know why we're getting the echo. We have members in our district, in our ward, that are doing a lot of volunteer work. And I've done some of those calls as well. And the constituents are just so happy and touched that this has happened, that this R U OK? program is happening, and that people are calling out to them. Some of them, it's kind of funny, the younger ones are like, you know, are you putting me in the elder category, which is kind of funny. But there was somebody who wanted it to be made clear that they said, We needed to tell you that there's a special place in heaven for Mayor Lungo-Koehn for doing this, which I thought was really sweet. Reminded me of my Nana. But it's a really great program and all of the volunteers in our community that are calling each other and just the neighborliness that it's creating. People are bringing things to each other. I have several folks who are delivering groceries on a regular basis, like on a weekly basis to people in the community. And it's just really brought the community together in a way that's quite remarkable. So thank you.
[Lungo-Koehn]: No, thank you for taking part in that. I know that there was about 150 people, volunteers from the school committee, the city council, making those calls. Now for the second round, we did take a little bit of time off so that we can make sure people are quarried. And while we're on live, I'd like to just point out, if you're willing to make calls, please, all you need is a quarry check that's being run through my office. And if you'd like to make deliveries, which we are gonna need some, serious support there, because our few volunteers are getting a little overwhelmed. You can be MRC certified. I took the certification course myself. It took about an hour, and now I'm certified to make deliveries of medication and food. So if anybody in the community is willing to help out with that, we are. This is going to stretch for some time, and we are in need of some extra volunteers. So thank you for everything you all have done, and we'll continue doing what we have to do to make sure everybody's fed and medicated properly. And of course, our administration and school committee taking care of our kids as best we can.
[Van der Kloot]: Mayor?
[Lungo-Koehn]: Yes, Member Van der Kloot.
[Van der Kloot]: Yes, I just also wanted to add and echo Melanie's thoughts because I too made calls and I will say that the response was just so positive and I'm very appreciative for you to doing that, starting that program and all the things that you and our administration have been doing during this very difficult period. Thank you so much.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. It's the volunteers doing the work. I delivered to 13 homes on Saturday. That's because my husband wasn't feeling well, but he's been doing it too. Everybody's just pulling their weight and it's going a long way. So thank you all. And I know Toni Wray also said, yeah, our hardest hit population is the elderly and our nursing homes are, you know, we're working very hard to get them help through DPH and Secretary Sutter's office between staffing and PPE and, infection control, we're working hard. Marianne is on the phone all the time, really trying to get those nursing homes as much help as possible. So that's what she wanted me to add. If anybody has any other questions, if not, we can move on to number three, report on negotiated transportation contract payment for remainder of the school year 2020, Ms. Christine Patterson.
[Patterson]: Mayor. So I provided documentation showing a calculation what the different phases of a potential cost breakdown would be. I can share that I've been on numerous calls with the Department of Education, and they have given direction to the 365 cities and towns to work with their local yellow bus companies to maintain a payment structure to have our bus drivers intact when we do go back to regular school schedule. So the Eastern Bus Company has a number of communities that they are working with, and I've been on subsequent conference calls with the groups as well. And the estimates that we have come up with. Medford is on a low end of a per diem rate because we are in year five of a finalized five-year contract, which also leaves us a little bit open to some insecurity for a bid for this current year. The bid is currently been pushed out to May due to the closure And so we're hoping to mitigate this, but what the collective group has been negotiating with the bus contractor is between most of the cities are at the 70 to 75% reimbursement of the daily to and from school bus runs. So the projection that I provided you is the base rate contractually at 70% of that cost factor. So I did negotiate that directly with the owner of Eastern Bus and for the Medford community, that's what he was looking at for our contract currently. I also provided a sample letter that is a separate letter memo of agreement because we do have a current contract and in order to pay on a different schedule, we would need a new pseudo contract. And that has been vetted out through the resources of Brookline and their legal department through the schools. So we have all been working in partnership as local schools in terms of trying to identify a collaborative rate in order to maintain our bus drivers. And what we have been insured and what is part of the separate side contractual agreement is that the bus drivers would be maintained payment or their regular salaries or hourly wages, they would be on a regular bus run. So they are not filed for unemployment at this time. and the continued partial payment would ensure that they would be accessible. And that's the hope, that they will be accessible when the closure ends. So as reported, I have provided the information back for your consideration and hope that we can maintain this prorated cost measure in the same effort to maintain an extension of our school day, which is the school bus drivers.
[Van der Kloot]: Thank you. Member van de Kloot? Yes, I wanted to thank you, Kirsteen, for working this out and for giving us the proposal. I assume we need to take a vote to accept the MOA?
[Patterson]: that would be correct, yes.
[Van der Kloot]: I make a motion that we accept the MOA as negotiated by our business superintendent, Christine Patterson.
[Ruseau]: I have a question. Thank you for doing this, Christine. One second, I have to open my comments about this. One, two, three. And the fourth whereas, there is an asterisk in front of the word payments. Does that mean something or is that just an asterisk that got left in there?
[Patterson]: I'm sorry, which document are you referring to?
[Ruseau]: I'm in the COVID-19 agreement schoolbustransportation.pdf. I know, there's so many documents.
[-Ad9b17iUII_SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[Ruseau]: says, where is the Department of Development, DESE, and the Mass Department Division of Labor Services encourage districts to make asterisk payments?
[Patterson]: Oh, I believe that's in reference to an established payment. So where we haven't formalized it yet, it was just a placeholder.
[Ruseau]: OK, great. And then my other question was, Under section three, considerations G, my question was, and I don't necessarily think it's a huge deal, but is there any way for us to know that, sorry, my notes keep moving, that they have received any grants or loans, and whether or not they've had to be repaid or not, are we just gonna trust them, which I'm not saying that's not okay,
[Patterson]: So any of the federal or state grants will be public information, so we would have access to a listing. And if they were recipients of a stimulus grant or loan, we would have knowledge of that.
[Ruseau]: Excellent. And then my last question is, when I hate the word when right now. I feel like the answer to when right now is the most ridiculous question. But when do you think we might know if we were going to be getting any revenues back? Considering we may be looking at some rough times ahead, every little bit of potential revenue coming in might become very important.
[Patterson]: revenue coming back, I'm sorry, from where?
[Ruseau]: For credits related to anything that they've received that's forgiven, any grants or loans that are forgiven.
[Patterson]: So just given the timeline that we're on, I don't believe that they would be receiving federal grants or state grants until likely May or June. So the form of a credit would be the next fiscal year that it would be counted towards.
[Ruseau]: Right. And do you know, would that likely come to the schools or to the city?
[Lungo-Koehn]: If I may, I know the second stimulus package that the federal government is discussing and hopefully passing this week does not have anything for the cities and towns. They're hoping to maybe take that up in the third, if there is a third stimulus bill.
[Ruseau]: I think, oh, and then just at the very end, obviously, it accidentally says Brookline instead of us at the very end of that document.
[Patterson]: Yes, thank you.
[Van der Kloot]: I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
[Patterson]: So the smaller trips and or if they had been for the prior service period, those are getting paid now. We're on a delayed cycle. So you were likely seeing some that were directly from the service period of March, which we were still in session the first half of that timeframe. So that is phase two of the discussions is working with the special ed transportation providers as well. Yes, correct.
[Van der Kloot]: So right now we haven't had that yet. No, no, we haven't.
[Patterson]: The main issue that has been directed to us from the Department of Ed is to work out the large contracts, the yellow buses at this point in time, because that's the majority of what would be needed in order to to provide the most service for the most population. So they've encouraged us to do our yellow bus schedules first. We are working with the other smaller bus companies as a subset, but we wanted to get this initial yellow bus side agreements completed and or approved and negotiated before we attempt the other categories.
[Unidentified]: Okay, thank you. Any other questions?
[Lungo-Koehn]: If I may ask a question, this will carry us through, Christine, if you could just give us the timeframe of when this will carry us through. And I only ask because the governor has stated that he is gonna decide on school by the end of this week. So just by chance, he says we're not going back to school, would our position be different? And what timeframe does this carry us through?
[Patterson]: No, so this particular agreement would be the end of this school year or when we would be allowed to return, whichever comes first. So it's strictly for the remainder of this school year. And if the closure is lifted prior to June 15th, when our last day is, then the subsequent agreement would end as well.
[Lungo-Koehn]: And is this, if I may just follow up on that, is there, this what other school districts are following or are some school districts going through a certain timeframe and then figuring it out once the governor makes the decision?
[Patterson]: So the school districts that I have been collaborating with that are all part of Eastern Bus are using the same format. It was a template developed through the school department of Brookline and vetted through their legal department.
[Unidentified]: Okay, thank you.
[Lungo-Koehn]: So we have a motion for approval by member Van der Kloot, seconded by member Kreatz. All those in favor? I think it should be a roll call. That roll call vote has been requested.
[Van der Kloot]: Member Graham? Yes. Member Kreatz? Yes.
[Unidentified]: Member McLaughlin? Yes. Member Mustone? I think she said yes. Yes. Member Ruseau? We'll pull the thumbs up for her. Member Ruseau?
[Lungo-Koehn]: Yes.
[Van der Kloot]: Member van der Kloot? Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Lungo-Koehn]: Yes. Seven in the affirmative, zero in the negative. The paper passes.
[Van der Kloot]: Thank you.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Number four, report on kindergarten online enrollment. Ms. Diane Caldwell.
[Caldwell]: Good evening, everyone. How are you tonight? Thumbs up. Good. So Medford Public Schools has developed an online kindergarten registration system that has been up and running since April 7th. This process will enable all our prospective parents to register their children remotely. I have provided you with a document that has been posted online. And as you can see, the application requirements are the same. Maria Ibrahim, our Parent Information Center coordinator, will communicate with families if parents are missing information. Stephanie McCann, a nurse at Medford High School, will coordinate and check the various documents required for health registration. Kim Miles, our data manager, will check school brains regularly to ensure the information provided is correct and will send notification of missing information. Emails will be pushed out to families if the application or health information is incomplete. So prior to March 13, we had 147 kindergarten students registered in our four elementary schools. And then we had a gap of about three weeks, but since we posted the online registration process, we have enrolled 41, and I believe it's even higher than that now, students, which brings us to a total of 188 students registered for Medford's kindergarten classrooms. Last year at this time, we had 237 kindergarten registrations. This year we're at 188. So it's about a difference of 49 students. We are certain that our number of registrations will increase during the spring and summer and the gap between last year's numbers and this year's numbers will diminish. Our plan is to roll out the grades one through 12 registrations by May 4th, and then after that we need to do our MEEP classrooms, of which we have about 10, to get the applications and the lottery process started on that as well. So I just want to send out a huge thank you to Toni Wray and her staff, Stephanie McCann, Maria Ibrahim, Kim Miles, who have been working tirelessly and collaboratively to register all of our families. And in addition to that, we just want to remind parents that just because they register on School Brains doesn't mean they're complete and they're finished. So they need to check in with Maria or Kim or Stephanie to make sure everything has been passed in. I'm happy to take any questions.
[Unidentified]: Mayor, Member Ruseau, then Member McLaughlin.
[Ruseau]: I think I'm looking at the wrong report. I don't have a question on this. Thank you.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Oh, okay. Number McLaughlin.
[McLaughlin]: Hi, thanks for the report, Ms. Caldwell. I was just wondering if registration continues, if we're going back, obviously, these are big ifs, all ifs, would there be an opportunity, especially in the parent room where folks are checking in all the time on the regular, would there be some, you know how we're seeing a lot of the plexiglass that we're seeing at the grocery stores and some ways that we can continue the social distancing if needed. Again, these are big Fs, but is there an opportunity for something like that? I know that we'll have, I'm sure that we'll have hand sanitizer, what have you in the setting, but it's a small room and a lot of people will be coming in and out. And I just wanted to make sure that there's some thought to that.
[Caldwell]: So I haven't given that any thought at all because I'm worried about opening up our schools too soon, even though, you know, it's a small area, you're still in the foyer of the high school. And, you know, I am concerned about the people that would be working. Maria would be there, Kim, maybe some translators. So I would obviously check with John McLaughlin, the superintendent would have to weigh in and Toni Wray, our director of nurses.
[Unidentified]: Thank you. You're welcome. Member Ruseau, then member Graham.
[Ruseau]: Thank you. I did find my question. In the documents required, there's an early childhood survey. Is that a survey that's like a standard or we write it right around the survey?
[Caldwell]: It's a standard survey that we send out to preschools and to our Catholic schools just to see that it helps us transition the children into kindergarten, but it's a standard survey.
[Ruseau]: Can we edit that survey if we want?
[Caldwell]: I mean, if you want to- I think it's a PDF form. You mean, do you want to change some of the parts of it or?
[Ruseau]: Well, I wanted to see if we could add a question to it around whether a parent or older sibling has a diagnosis of dyslexia since 50% of kids who have a parent or child with a diagnosis of dyslexia absolutely will end up with that diagnosis themselves. And I just thought, as we address dyslexia in the fall, you know, capacity might be an issue, but if we have a set of kids that we, you know, should we be prioritizing some kids that have this known diagnosis in their family ahead of time? It seems like the right time to ask them that question, but maybe there's another appropriate place too. I don't know.
[Caldwell]: But let me check on that for you, Mr. Oso and I'll get back to you.
[Ruseau]: Thank you. I mean, if there's another spot that it belongs or there's a kindergarten, you know, I understand. Thank you.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. Thank you.
[Graham]: Member Graham. Thanks, Diane. Sure. I am excited that we are offering online registration. And I hope that it's our plan to do that regardless of whether our buildings are open or not. Because I think there's a tremendous community of parents who getting to the Parent Information Center on a particular day or time is just not logistically feasible when you can do it at home. So I'm hoping that we can find ways to streamline this even further as we go forward. But I also wondered now that we have this online registration like have we done pushes out to all the area preschools to sort of make everybody aware that we want them to register as quickly as possible. given, especially given that they may not, you know, if they have a first kindergarten child, they may not be following the blog, or even if they have other children, they may not be following the blog to know that they still need to be doing this right now. And the sooner, the better.
[Caldwell]: So I didn't make any formal pushes, not a bad idea. We did prior to March 12th to us leaving, we made pushes to our private schools, but it might be a great idea just to remind parents. Yeah. Yep. So I can do that.
[Graham]: Yeah. And then, um, I guess one other question and a comment. Um, the comment is that before the school closure, we had a subcommittee meeting scheduled to talk about the kindergarten, um, onboarding and registration process. And I'll circle back with you all on finding another date and time where we can do that. Um, and particularly. wanting to make sure we get that meeting in before the end of the year so that all the institutional knowledge that Diane has in her head over her years of service can sort of be part of the conversation as we prepare to go forward. And that will obviously, that meeting will continue next year, but I want to make sure we get that in this year for sure. So I'll reach out on the dates for that soon. And then I think the other question I had was around, kindergarten visiting day. And I know, um, especially if you are a first time parent to be able to sort of touch and feel what school is like is super important. And we may simply not have that option right now, but I was wondering what plan B is if we don't go back to school. And we still want to provide our families some virtual way to touch and feel what school is like. and whether you guys have talked about that at all.
[Caldwell]: So we really haven't had any formal conversations about that, Jenny, but we certainly can do a virtual. I know we can talk to the principals and they'd probably be happy to set up some kind of a Zoom or some kind of a meeting with all of their new students, the prospective kindergartners coming in. And I know throughout the summer, there's all kinds of activities. And at some point, this is going to, I hope lighten up or let up a little bit, that the activities that happens in the various schools will continue. So there'll be play dates in the summer and some, you know, I know the Brooks has some food thing that they do with the kids as well. So we will be able to do some activities during the summer. And in addition to that, do some virtual. And so I just wanna speak to a little bit. If I could say it's like a silver lining that we have this online kindergarten registration. I've wanted to do this for a long time. So I think this is filling a need for those parents who also work 12 hours a day and can't make it to the parent information center. So I'm kind of happy that this is up and running and we'll be able to do it for the other grade levels as well.
[Graham]: Yeah, I think, you know, none of this is good, but there's a lot of ingenuity that comes out of really, really bad situations. So I'm really glad that we were able to move in this direction.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. I agree, thank you. Is there a motion for approval of report number four? Motion to approve. By member Ruseau, seconded by member van de Kloet. All those in favor? All those opposed? Paper passes. Number five, report on student engagement during school closure. Dr. Maurice-Edouard Vincent.
[Edouard-Vincent]: Yes, and we're going to share just the first screen of data with you right now. In summation, trying to contact, gather and curate all of this data, we have some good news. And we have, I would say the good news is out of all of our students, we have not been able to make contact approximately with 38 students. So although that's very good in terms of what we haven't been able to make contact with about students that are not as engaged, that we are closely monitoring, that number is larger, about 10 times that number. So there are about 350 students. that are being closely monitored. Total, that includes our general population, our special education population, and our EL population. And so teachers have been working truly collaboratively with us. um talking to their uh direct administrators and so um as a result of having this number we've also i've been in contact with our own chief jack buckley who is um committed to helping us make contact with every single student. And so those 38 students, we're going to put that information together to pass it on to see if we can have in partnership with our police department, for them to go and do a wellness check, to check on our families. And the 350 students that are not as engaged as we would like them to be engaged, we are looking at... additional ways to support them, not excluding students that may be experiencing extreme anxiety or other needs around this extended school closure. So we know that although the number is 350 students, the teachers, the administrators, assistant principals, all are really working diligently on trying to re-engage the students that, for different reasons, are not as involved in the instruction that's being given to them at this point in time. So as you can see, this report shows all of the schools. And the first table shows the data district-wide. I want to be able to thank Dr. Cushing for, sending out a survey to all of our administrators that they filled that data. And also I'd like to acknowledge Ms. Kim Miles, our data manager, who took all of that data and produced these tables for us by school. So that's the information that I have in a nutshell, and I'm open to any questions, if there are any. Yes, member Rousseau.
[Ruseau]: Thank you so much. I'm very happy to see this report. It's so important. I guess my question was, what does engaged mean? When I first read the report, I was completely confused how we could have more students not engaged than not contacted. I think engagement means something very different than contact.
[Edouard-Vincent]: Yes, so when we were trying to get the information, our first priority was to make contact with every single student. Like, has a teacher, whether it's been by phone or by Zoom, by Google Classroom, have teachers been able to make contact with every single student? so that we know that they are okay. And so the first ask was, have you, since school closed, since the 13th of March, have you been able to make contact with students? So out of the entire population, 38 students, for one reason or another, we have not been able to make any contact with them by phone, by email, by Zoom, by Google Classroom, by some type of communication. And so those 38 students are going to be the first set of students that we are going to be working collaboratively with Chief Buckley to have him go and check on those families just to ensure, are they still living in Medford? We could have some students that it's a transient population. Based on the survey data that was collected, one of the schools said they believed a student relocated to another state. And they were still diligently trying to see if they could confirm that the child has relocated to another state and is no longer a student in Medford Public Schools. But at this point in time, the child is still showing as a student. The second number, where it's approximately 350 students, that number of students where they may have joined one or two Zoom classroom sessions, but their participation, remote participation, has been very inconsistent to the point where the classroom teachers are concerned that, wait a minute, I'm not seeing Johnny, every time we have our Zoom meeting. I've only seen Johnny three times in three weeks. And I've met with my other students, you know, multiple times. And so those were what we were trying to figure out who haven't we had any contact with at all, which is the 38. And then who has made contact, but it's so inconsistent that the teachers are truly concerned that it's not consistent interaction, consistent engagement in instruction and learning. So that's where we have the two numbers, and we are working to provide additional supports. So we can't say for every family that it's connectivity, because there could be some families that it is connectivity, but we've been able to connect with them by telephone. There are other students where they have access to internet, but we haven't been able to completely unpack why they are not fully engaged in our distance learning that's currently being offered.
[Ruseau]: I hope that helps. That does help, except I feel like the numbers here are implying that there are no general ed students, i.e. students that are not getting special ed services, students that are not Yale students, that every one of those other students is engaged.
[Edouard-Vincent]: No, so 228 of the students that are being closely monitored, we could classify that as general population on the first table. Specifically under the special education umbrella, we have 58 students that fall under the special education umbrella that have not been actively engaged. And under our EL umbrella, we have 64 students that have not been actively engaged. And so we're closely monitoring and looking at what's going on with all of those. Those are kind of like the key categories that we're continuing to look at.
[Ruseau]: But I'm trying to understand, so is there 106 other students that are not engaged, or is there 228 additional students not engaged, not including the special ed and the EL students?
[Edouard-Vincent]: Well, 228 minus the 58 and minus the 64 is 106 students.
[Ruseau]: So is 228 the total population of students that we're considering not engaged right now?
[Edouard-Vincent]: In my calculation, I'm doing it as 350.
[Lungo-Koehn]: What makes up that number, are you asking Mr. Member Ruseau?
[Ruseau]: 350. Okay. I'm sorry. Yes. 228 plus 58 plus 64 is 350. Got it. Okay.
[Edouard-Vincent]: No problem. Problem. I have a question. And by school, by school, it shows you. So as you can see specifically, um, Dr. Cushing, if you're able to screen scroll up, It's on your screen. By school, you can see specifically that some schools have made, you know, 98% contact with, you know, I'm just looking at the Roberts, for example, very high engagement. The McGlynn Elementary, 99, 441 students of their 443 students they have been able to make contact with. And there were approximately two students that they were trying to nail down at that particular school.
[Van der Kloot]: I have a question.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Member Van der Kloot.
[Van der Kloot]: Yeah, I was just curious whether we've been able to go yet to the next level and find out, say, with the 38 students, is that 22 families? Are there multiple siblings? Have we been able to look at the students? I would think that would be the next step and say if it hasn't been done yet.
[Edouard-Vincent]: That is the next level of work now that we were able to, you know, I originally thought prior to the survey being done, I actually thought it was going to be, you know, I didn't know if it was going to be six, 700 families that we weren't able to hear from. So I was really, um, excited. And even when I, you know, spoke with chief Buckley, he said, you know, what numbers are you thinking? I said, I'm, I'm really not sure because, um, some students they might like, uh, at the secondary level, for example, they may like a particular class better than another class. So they have more active participation in one class and their MIA in another. So trying, waiting for all of that data to kind of be sorted out and by each school to finally say, okay, this is the total number of students that we have not been able to make contact with. And these are the ones we're closely monitoring. So that is next layer of work that we are definitely doing. And, um, just trying to nail that down. But it's, again, where you're not able to just physically reach that person. We tried. And all the administrators, assistant principals, calling, texting, emailing, we finally got down to these numbers that you're looking at right now. And our next level of work is exactly what you were saying.
[Van der Kloot]: I think it's very valuable information for us to have. As I know, it must have been very time consuming to get it. But it really gives us a good picture about where we're standing. And it also reassures us as committee members of knowing that all of this outreach and touch has happened in a very clear way that we can see on these tables. It really sums it up nicely for us. So I appreciate it very much.
[Unidentified]: Thank you. Member Graham.
[Graham]: So I think I understand the numbers, but I just want to make sure I understand. So if you take the McGlynn Elementary School, if we think of the kids that are sort of on watch in some capacity, we have two kids that we haven't made contact with, zero that are closely monitored, zero special ed students not engaged and zero EL students. So for a total, for that whole school, there are two children in a concerned status.
[Edouard-Vincent]: Is that accurate? That is accurate. And I was going to say, I believe, I don't know if Diane Guarino is still on. It's so, um, uh, there's so many people on, but, uh, if Diane Guarino is still on, I was gonna unmute her because when we had our meeting, she's unmuted. Okay, Diane Garino.
[-Ad9b17iUII_SPEAKER_01]: I'm still here. Yes. Can you speak? I'm happy to say it's only one child that we haven't heard from. Uh, one of them, the mom calls me over the weekend. We have her on board. She spoke to the teacher. She's been doing her work. So I am thrilled about that. So it's only one shot at the McGlynn elementary. We have not heard from excellent. Great.
[Cushing]: And just so everyone else on the committee is aware, we have many of the principals, um, and assistant principals on the call right now. so that they can also provide more detailed information. The other thing too is, is I was speaking with the middle school principals today and they had mentioned that their numbers had changed over the weekend as they were able to make more contact and able to do outreach throughout the weekend. So I really do applaud the efforts of the principals to really, from the high school all the way down through All of our principals have really done a great job reaching out, making sure the students have what they need, are doing mailings home as necessary for students who may have connectivity issues. And teachers, principals, assistant principals are really going above and beyond in this crisis to make sure that kids have what they need.
[Graham]: Yeah, and I have to say, I wasn't exactly sure what the numbers would look like. So this is wonderful. I think one question I have as we continue to refine these, I'm assuming that you'll give us an updated report. If that can also include like what is the definition of a student that requires close monitoring? So I'm assuming we're all sort of using that same definition in terms of like, what does it mean to be in the category of needing to be closely monitored? I would just wanna make sure that all of our schools are using the same criteria to come up with that number. So hopefully you can add that to the next time that you provide this report to us. And then the other question that I had around technology access, access to the internet, and whether there's like a one-to-one device available at home, is whether there is a place where we're capturing this data from a sustainability perspective in school brains or wherever we capture this kind of data. So if we're hearing from a family that they lack internet access, that's something that I think we're going to need to know in a systemic way ongoing. So is there a place that we're capturing that information or is that the next phase of this?
[Edouard-Vincent]: So some of the principals I know and teachers have been gathering specific information. We can specifically gather that information to get a closer number since we're down to a fairly manageable number of students that we haven't made contact with yet at all. and or the number of students that we are monitoring based on the specific school. Where you were talking about what does the closely monitoring mean, that definition was generated through working with the administrators, because we've been meeting on a weekly basis for a couple of hours. And that basically meant the students who were being closely monitored, there was a tiny asterisk due to sporadic work production in all or some classes. So again, it was specific students that were flagged. For not being consistently present during instruction and it could be for different reasons You know, we've been told some people are working right now and the fact that Instruction is happening at certain times. So again, we don't know the specific financial situation of every family, but we will do a better job of Trying to gather more data regarding that
[Graham]: Yeah, and I think having a place for it to live systemically is super important as we think about what the next several months and years looks like throughout the sort of ebb and flow of this virus. I don't think there's going to be less need for us to be really clear about how many students lack internet access, how many students lack a device, those kinds of things as we go forward.
[Edouard-Vincent]: OK. And I, yes, we can definitely do that. We can definitely gather more specific data on that.
[Unidentified]: Member Ruseau? Hello.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Member McLaughlin, I'm sorry, Member McLaughlin's had her hand up for like five, 10 minutes. Member McLaughlin, Member Kreatz, then Member Ruseau is what I saw.
[McLaughlin]: Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for this information. And to all the staff members out there who took their time making these phone calls and reaching out to families, thank you very much. I know that's a lot of work. I'm wondering about the closely monitored category as well for the next step. So if I'm hearing you correctly, Superintendent, for the folks that have not had contact, you're going to work with Chief Buckley for the non-contact folks, right? And so for the roughly 350 who are being closely monitored, I'm thinking about sort of the mass tiered systems of support and just that model and wondering how or what the closely monitored categories are gonna be. How are you gonna work that out so that you're getting some progress in terms of what you're seeing or is there a plan in terms of the remote learning plan, what closely monitored means in terms of what happens next. So I get what it means in terms of the definition, But I'm wondering what it means in terms of what are the next steps.
[Edouard-Vincent]: Yeah, so we definitely, you know, data is knowledge, data is important. And this data really let us realize that we are reaching the majority of the district. However, the 38 that we haven't I guess maybe 37 right now on, um, you know, principal Garino's updated number. And then I haven't even been able to include the middle school administrators updated numbers, but the 350, that is our next layer of work. And again, because it clearly stated that it was sporadic performance to try to unpack that. But a critical member of this would also be the work that's happening right now with Stacey Shulman, because we do know that this is a very stressful time. And I personally have received emails from students that have shared that this is just very stressful. Some of our secondary students And so we are working on also meeting the social emotional needs of students. So in that number of 350, they may have different needs. And so we are definitely willing to meet their needs. So if it is a social emotional challenge, next time when we, you know, if we're not back in school on May 4th, where I don't think we will be back in school on May 4th, but if in fact they extend it, than to take this exact data, run the report again, see what the numbers look like, and even be able to say, of this number of 350 students, we are now providing social emotional type supports for 120 students. And to be able to say that we are monitoring them, but this is what we're doing to address their needs. And for others, it could be 50 students, 60 students having inconsistent internet availability. Um, it could be, unfortunately they could have some members at home that are currently sick. And, um, also, you know, because they're working with their health right now, that school work is not a priority and that their health is a priority. So we are fully aware that there could be some, um, very understandable concrete reasons that we would need to make the necessary accommodations for those students. And we are definitely willing to do that. But based on what the original ask of this specific report, we wanted to at least be able to present this is what Medford Public Schools numbers look like in real time as of Friday of last week. So we'll continue to do that.
[McLaughlin]: Thank you. That's great. And just the data collection around that narrative piece, I'm assuming will happen in terms of the reaching out, right? So just, and not that you need to report necessarily that to me or the personal circumstances to school committee, but just that there's some narrative there so that there's some documentation that, you know, if for example, it's, you know, again, a student with, you know, depression, anxiety, you know, that these are being documented so that there's some, reference would be really helpful. And thank you for all you're doing, we appreciate it. Thank you.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you, Member Guilfoyle. Before Member Kreatz, I don't know, Ms. Galusi, do you have something you want to add to that answer?
[Galusi]: If it's okay, I just wanted to speak on the elementary level, going with what the superintendent said. Part of the closely monitoring is also that some students, in addition to the elements that the superintendent mentioned, also may, at least for my school, may be attending meetings consistently. but maybe not doing the work consistently. So we're monitoring the academic piece, but the social emotional is definitely the first. And just to highlight on your multi-tiered system and to chime in about what the superintendent said, at the elementary level, Stacey Shulman has been working with her staff and they are doing and continuing with lunch bunches virtually so that those students are being targeted and getting the support that they need. Thank you.
[McLaughlin]: That's really great. And we also had the opportunity on a personal level, I want to share with my daughter who has a disability to participate as not a district student in our in-district school with some morning meetings, some community stuff. So we really appreciate that too. Thank you.
[Galusi]: Yeah, you're welcome.
[McLaughlin]: Thank you. Member Kreatz.
[Kreatz]: Yes. Thank you very much for the report, Dr. Edouard-Vincent. I also want to just thank Dr. Peter Cushing. I know I reached out to him a couple weeks ago, because while I'm working remotely from home, I was on the phone with a teacher in another district, and we were just talking about, oh, you know, how are you reaching your families? She had mentioned that in her town, that that's exactly what they did. They had to, um, enter, you know, with the partnership of their police department, do wellness checks at their houses. And, uh, they were able to reach the families and identify and get the information out to everybody. So I think it's just great. And I want to thank the administration and the Medford police department for their partnership and his and their team. It's just, that's going to be terrific. And I can't wait to hear back on that. Um, I did want to ask about, so as part of the number of students not engaged in the Zoom meetings, I know I had brought this up in another meeting that I've heard from some parents that don't want their child, for whatever reason, to participate in the Zoom meeting. So, you know, I think that I think that, you know, some parents just don't want their children to be on the zoom meetings. So I just want to make sure that, you know, you know, once again like that, the students, it's not going to be held against them in terms of their grade is pass or fail. I just want to reconfirm that information, because it sounds like That information is being factored into whether or not the students are engaged or needing to be closely monitored. So if you could maybe explain that a little bit.
[Edouard-Vincent]: So in regards to that, if with the pass fail piece, and it is true, we gave some guidance about that. There was bombing that was taking place. If there are specific families for personal reasons, they don't believe in the remote learning, or they don't want the video coming into their homes, there are options where you can turn the camera off. That's one thing I would encourage the teachers and or administrators to speak with some of the parents to say, you know, you can still speak without, um, you know, showing your home, your, your private space. Um, And now that we're all getting accustomed to Zoom, you even have the opportunity to create your own backgrounds. You can be at the beach, you can be in the mountains. So you can be creative and create your own backgrounds if you so choose. So there are options, but again, I think some people don't trust the security. And I know here we are, we're hosting this meeting, And we have, you know, 50 participants who are on with us right now. But, um, unfortunately, there are, you know, there's concerns about will other people be looking at my child or whatever the case may be. We would be willing to work with those families to find a way to get, um, assignments to their child if it was, you know, for that type of a reason. But, um, if we're not able to, um, make contact with the family. And Chief Buckley, you know, goes to the house and ends up saying like the person, you know, is no longer living in Medford, then they really shouldn't even be carried on our rolls any longer. But if someone is, um, You know, it appears that they're in Medford, they're fully functioning, and they've made a decision to not participate in any work. And even with the teachers making their best effort to call, to email, to communicate with them, then when it comes time to giving that grade, we would have to say we weren't able to have anything to show that work was done. So that would end up having to be a failed grade. If we were not able to come up with, you know, a medical reason, severe anxiety, hospitalization, medical illness, if we really weren't able to come up with a reason, it would be very difficult to say that the student passed and then you have, you know, our student Cindy, who's doing all of her assignments and responding and the teachers have something to look at to say, well, this is, you know, they've completed at least half of the assignments or half of the activities. So that is something that as administrators, we're gonna continue to talk about, but we're not gonna be able to just make up a grade if there's nothing to show as evidence. So I don't want to send out a message that if you choose to do nothing, you're gonna pass. Because that is not the case. You have to do something. You have to produce. You have to be in contact if there's a legitimate disability or something that we have to take into consideration. then you would be working with special educators who would be able to speak to that. If there's a medical need, we have access to our medical professionals. If it's a behavioral, social, emotional need, we have access to Stacey Shulman's team. We have access to our guidance Councilors. So we have the entire district that essentially is all working together to meet the needs of every single student in Medford Public Schools. So if for whatever reason we're not able to say when this is all said and done, then we're not going to be able to say that the student has passed. So I hope I'm being crystal clear for everyone here in the listening audience that the expectation is that you are producing something. And if there's a greater need, we the district are willing and able to provide those additional supports to scaffold those individuals. But of that number, 350, as we diligently unpack that number and get it to a smaller number of people, I will be able to give more data regarding that later on in the year.
[Kreatz]: I just had a follow-up. So I just wanted to just get some clarification. I know when we first talked about the distant learning plan, it was mentioned and I recall Bernadette Riccidilli mentioning that Zoom wasn't required. So I just wanted to know, are we now requiring the Zoom communication or If the family or student are doing the other work, but they're just not wanting to participate in the Zoom classroom meeting on the phone, and they're doing everything else, would that pass fail be held against them?
[Edouard-Vincent]: Well, we were using the Google platform and the Google classroom platform goes directly to the teacher as well. Okay. I spoke already about some families don't have the connectivity, so they can't do that. But through email and or through communication with the classroom's teachers, And the teachers are diligently monitoring, closely monitoring their student participation and their involvement as they're planning activities on a weekly basis. So where I'm talking about students not getting credit would be that there's no contact, no communication. So the case you're talking about where students are producing work, they're in communication with the teacher somehow, then they would be given credit for that. This is where there's radio silence and we find out that, you know, From all appearances, it was just a decision to not be involved or not be held accountable. We know that we're not in a traditional academic environment right now. DESE has given us clear guidance to try to provide students with at least half a day of instruction and or work. for them to do. So based on all of the content areas that they have, the way the teachers are planning, and what's being available, being presented to the community, there are a lot of options that are available for people to be able to respond and participate in some form or fashion.
[Cushing]: Also, I think it would be good to encourage those parents to reach out to their school principal. So hopefully those fears could be allayed. There are a lot of security features that I know that teachers and principals and others are putting into place to make sure that Zoom, which unfortunately is a superior product to Google Meet, which is within our Google suite for education, but that we could allay their fears and really work to make sure that Um, their students aren't missing out on something potentially beneficial. Um, but as the superintendent said, there are other opportunities, um, for students to get the work done. I just would like the, the people that you're speaking with to know that they can reach out to their principals and, um, you know, hopefully be reinforced and encouraged that, um, this is working for many students at this time.
[Kreatz]: Thank you, Kathy you all set or I just had a final, I just wanted to I did ask earlier, when Mr. deliver was speaking about his committee the whole report. Are there any families that are still waiting for a device, and will there be a third deployment I know right now, the schools are closed, but I was just, you know, didn't know if that was maybe if schools going to be out, possibly longer, and we have families that are waiting for a device, will there be another deployment.
[Cushing]: So we did two deployments. Um, we have actually, uh, some principals have delivered devices to homes. Um, but we made the decision about two weeks ago now, uh, where the public health professionals, um, the governor and others were really in, uh, Dr. Burks on the president's team said now is not the time to be going to the grocery store. So we took that into consideration for the health safety and welfare of our school leaders and the people who were doing these things. And having offered two, we will definitely offer another pickup if the data shows from the health professionals that the limit, that the danger to our staff is limited. and that we have the personal protective equipment required to make sure that that is a safe pickup for our staff.
[Kreatz]: Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for the updates and communication. And thank you.
[Lungo-Koehn]: And we have some MRC certified people. Anybody needs a Chromebook delivered, so let me know. Kathleen, I think, did you want to answer anything for Kathy and then member Ruseau?
[Kathleen Kay]: Yeah. So I just wanted to add that, um, at the Columbus, when we talked about engagement, it wasn't just at zoom meetings, but it was work being returned, whether it's via email or snail mail, because a lot of the teachers to some families sent out packets. Um, and what, when we haven't, when we've had the radio silence, what we're doing now is sending a letter that comes from me with the teacher's name on it through the U S post office. And I just heard back from a teacher that once that letter was received at home, we got like 16 pages of work. Wow. That's fantastic. And I know one thing that is frustrating for the teachers is that they are doing consistent daily contact on those that we're really not hearing from. And many times, family's phone inbox is not receiving messages. It's full. So that's just one more thing we have to keep in mind when we're talking about not having contact back from families is that we can't get through because their mailboxes are full. So I just wanted to share that piece as well.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. Member Ruseau. if you want to unmute yourself. Oh, there you go. I did it.
[Ruseau]: Thank you very much. After the last meeting we had, I had sent a few emails about getting some Wi-Fi hotspots purchased, whether through the school or the city, so that we could provide them to students that we've identified don't have Wi-Fi at home. I think that the ask that they get Wi-Fi, even if it's free for a few months, is really not very considerate of what it's like to actually be living on a shoestring. So I was wondering if there's any progress on looking at purchasing some of those. I mean, I'm completely unaware whether the companies that provide them actually would be sold out or not. But, you know, we could purchase them, which includes the actual internet service, and then distribute them as needed, and then collect them at the end. Leasing would probably be better, because we doubtfully will need a lot of those. long term. Has anybody made any progress on that?
[Lungo-Koehn]: Superintendent, I don't know if you have my I know my office did call Verizon and Comcast and maybe I think one other provider, but I will circle back. I'm not sure where we're at with that. I know we did try a boat a couple weeks ago.
[Edouard-Vincent]: Yeah, and I will follow up with Ms. Leighton, Molly Leighton. And we had also, I was given some information about hotspots being put on school buses. There are a lot of different ways that different districts are doing it. I think it was somewhere in Texas, but what they did do was they sent like school buses to Um, it could be like a housing area neighborhood and they would say the time of day that they would be there and they just had to encourage the kids not to closely go to the school bus. So we did start looking at some of the ways in which these mobile hotspots could be used. So I will definitely follow up with her. And also based on the additional data that we're trying to find out about the 350 that are inconsistently Involved to find out of that it is a significant number of them. Um, is it because of connectivity concerns? so, um, I think if we can get a a firm handle on what the number of uh members of our community That really need that additional support with connectivity um that will That will help us because again Sorry.
[Cushing]: Yeah It's also, it's really identifying where the students are. And so doing single hotspots versus something like the superintendent mentioned on a bus that could have a broader spectrum to reach more students might be a better bang for the limited dollars that we have. So identifying where the students are, how we can best get a spread of internet. And then I would say a third piece is really planning for the future in this. Because if a situation like this happens once, the possibility, God forbid, that it can happen again. So what are we doing as a school district community, those types of things to really contingency plan for how we can, I guess the best way that I've heard it described as a Tennessee Valley project for internet, because it is such a vital part of everyday life. And how do we make that a reality for our students?
[Unidentified]: Member Graham.
[Graham]: I have been thinking a lot about the same thing when it comes to what happens in the future and the need for contingency planning. And I'd like to make a motion that the engagement communications and strategic planning subcommittee work with the administration to develop plan to have a series of community roundtables in the month of May. The plan would include a strategy to use the roundtables to develop possible fall 2020 back to school scenarios amidst our ever-changing environment. The subcommittee would provide a full plan to the school committee at our next meeting on May 4th. And the roundtables sort of in my vision would be something that would be executed as committee of the whole meetings. But I want to totally appreciate all the hard work the administration has done so far, and I'm very concerned about the administration continuing to sort of take on the load of all of this on their own, especially as we look forward to fall 2020 and what that could mean. And it could mean we're all back to school and we're just behind. It could mean something else completely. I think there's a bunch of scenarios there that we need to sort of vet out in collaboration between the administration our teachers and the community. So I'd like to make that motion and hopefully have a second. Member McLaughlin?
[McLaughlin]: Yes, I wanted to second the motion and also add that in the upcoming presentation, which is coming up next with co-chairs of the CPAC, Tanya Sullivan and Alex Lorik, it's one of the recommendations that they have as well, that there are round tables and to have some stakeholder engagement. So I second the motion.
[Lungo-Koehn]: motion for approval by Member Graham, seconded by Member McLaughlin. All those in favor?
[Ruseau]: Aye.
[Lungo-Koehn]: All those opposed? Paper passes. And motion to accept the report by Dr. Edouard Vincent. All those in favor? I move to accept the report. Member McLaughlin, seconded by Member Ruseau. All those in favor?
[Hurtubise]: Aye.
[Lungo-Koehn]: All those opposed? Paper passes. Number six, report on CPAC survey. Tanya Sullivan, CPAC co-chair.
[Tanya Sullivan]: Hi, everybody. Thank you. And first I wanted to start out, we'd like to thank the administration and the school committee and the mayor for what they've all done to create the distance learning plan so far. Having to hit the ground running during all of this has been challenging to say the least and whether on the giving or receiving end of distance learning, we are all learning as we go. With CPAC's mission, including the role of advising the district, we put out a survey to families and caregivers on what's working and what could use improvement with the distance learning plan. We will make the survey results and this PowerPoint available after the meeting. The description of the survey, our survey was made available in April through all of the regular electronic venues. It was devised to get families engaged in providing administration and CPAC with clarity on the special education needs and supports that were being received or not being received. Even though 10% is considered a valid response rate, we've received a 28% response rate despite being in a pandemic, which speaks to all stakeholders wishing to contribute to a more encompassing distance learning plan. Because the survey was only distributed electronically, CPAC feels that a more robust strategy, including translating the survey, providing hard copy mailings, and making public electronics available, such as through the library, would result in an even clearer big picture. Most significant challenges, the data from the survey showed families felt that the most significant challenges of the current school closure to be lack of structure, social emotional needs, regression of academic skills, lack of therapeutic support, and lack of behavioral support among others. There are a couple quotes and I will mention a couple quotes from from parents and caregivers throughout the presentation. A couple quotes, one is Worried about regression of skills falling behind. I'm a terrible teacher. That's from a parent actually saying that they're a terrible teacher. Another quote was I'm concerned about regression academically and social emotional regression. Contact with teachers. The responses regarding contact with teachers vary considerably. Some were receiving contact each day while others may have received contact once a week The contact occurred through several platforms including email zoom and google classroom There has been some contact with therapists a couple of quotes from parents amazing communication and community established through blooms and google where the children upload videos of things they want to share and Another quote was, only regular school assignments through Google Classroom, nothing personalized, no checking in, no support with time management and no instruction. My child is overwhelmed. Computer access and remote learning. This being an electronic survey, it was expected that the questions on the computer access would come back high. Academic materials have been shared primarily online and there were definitely printed materials that were shared initially. Another parent quote is currently I'm using our one family computer to do my work on. So it is limited for my child's use. And another quote, continuity of assignments. I had to sit with my son for each assignment because the work was in different locations. Person realized Google classroom, read works, and he didn't know how to get to each assignment. Some of the general concerns, and I think everybody's probably already aware of these concerns, and I'm sure this spreads globally, not just in families of kids with special needs. In summary, the general concerns consisted of overwhelm, regression, IEP meetings, continuity of assignments platforms, communication from central administration, community and social opportunities, week-to-week lesson plans and guidance, inconsistency with amount of work, 504 implementation, and office hours for phone communication. Another parent quote, it's really hard, overwhelmed, do not know where to start, don't have the time to do anything but survive. Another quote, we are all concerned about regressions in all areas. And additionally, how will IEP meetings and assessments occur? The parent caregiver suggestions. So there were several suggestions and I'm just going to sum them up in this paragraph. Parents and caregivers have requested the following suggestions. One-on-one remote meetings with teachers and specialists, IEP team meetings and or check-ins with ETLs, social pragmatic group meetings online, options for touchscreen laptops if needed, virtual support groups for family members, differentiated curriculum from Gen Ed and Exploratory, uniform standards of communication, video consult time, online interaction three times a week, videos on how to address behavior needs. And the Medford CPAC recommendations. While this is a lot of information, CPAC would like to summarize our recommendations for the district. We recommend a webinar be provided to train families in addressing IEP needs. We recommend regular communication from central administration, whether that be through weekly video, weekly email, or weekly robocall as examples. We would recommend virtual support groups for families in cooperation with CPAC through a school Zoom account. We recommend phone calls from ETLs or teachers. And we recommend providing regular feedback to administration from parents and caregivers to improve Medford's remote learning plan.
[Unidentified]: I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. Ms. Bowen, did you have anything to add? I know you have been working hard.
[Bowen]: Yes, I did have can you hear me? Yes. Okay, so I just I just wanted to add a couple of things. Thank you, Tonya and for Alex for your presentation. I did want to just ask a couple of questions of when this survey was taken the two weeks. It was it started March 29. But I wasn't sure how long it extended for. It went until the Saturday this past Saturday. Okay. Um, so During the time that the survey was taken, the district was doing a lot of work in rolling out the implementation of the distance learning plan. So I feel like a lot of these questions and concerns may have been answered or addressed with the distance learning plan. But I feel like there are still some other areas that we could discuss. And I don't know if that's something you wanted to do now or do more of a round table. but there were a couple of points that, you know, the regression, people are very concerned about regression. We're feeling the same way, but this week the special education department is rolling out the remote learning plans. So these are individualized plans for each of our special education students. We just received guidance from DESE. We were provided a template that will be coming out to all of the special education families that'll have a specific who the contact people are, what your individual child's schedule looks like. I know that's been a lot for families to manage that. You know, my child's special ed reading teacher is meeting this day. We have a Zoom that day. I'm trying to keep up with when the classes or Zoom meetings or Google Hangouts are happening. So there'll be specific schedule that's outlined, what it's going to look like for each of your individual children. So that will be rolled out and you will be hearing from your special education teachers and evaluation team leaders from your respective buildings about what those individual plans will look like. And then you can call and have questions. And those are a work in progress. So it's not set in stone. We will look at what each individual child is doing and how we can better improve those remote learning plans as they roll out. And as we continue to get updates on when we are going to return to school this year. The IEP meetings, right now, through the guidance of Desi and our special education attorney, we are holding annual review meetings and transition meetings. So those would be specific meetings for any students going from pre-K to kindergarten, fifth grade to sixth grade, and eighth grade to ninth grade. Those are our priorities right now because those are big transitions for students. And then once we do those meetings in the annuals, we'll work on all the other trying to fit in the other meetings and we will get further guidance from Desi regarding that. We have heard a lot about increasing the telehealth services. So we do have that waiver for our service providers that they are able to do that. based on an individual student's needs. And we're hoping that you'll see with these remote learning plans that students are getting the one-to-one services or there's more ongoing communication with the teachers. I think our teachers have really done a great job. This is a whole new world that we're walking into, but I feel like they are really stepping up and communication is key. So if you are struggling as a parent, please reach out to us. We want to make this work for you as well. We don't want to overwhelm parents. A lot of us are working from home. We have the struggle with getting our own children to do their work. So please reach out to us, reach out to me directly. I've spoken to several other parents that are struggling and trying to coordinate with the other special education administrators to see how we could best meet everyone's needs. So as we roll out the remote learning plans, I'm hoping that This will alleviate a lot of the stress and make things more organized and manageable for the families in our community.
[Unidentified]: So I didn't know if anyone had specific questions. Melanie. Thank you.
[McLaughlin]: Thank you, Tonya and Alex, for the report. Thank you, Joan, for the response. So this will be made available on, what, the CPAC Facebook page and the district site, or both? Okay. And I think to what one of the conversations that was being had earlier that I thought was really interesting, particularly around, you know, getting back to that 350 number, Superintendent Edouard Vincent, and specifically the 58, if you will, student special education that have been closely monitored or need close monitoring. There are, in some instances, I know that I've had families reaching out to me directly that are in the initial evaluation stage. So these are people who may have gotten neuropsychological evaluations back, feel like they really need a core evaluation for special education supports and services. special education initial evaluations aren't happening right now. Like that's DESE guidance right now. It's not what's happening. So we have these families that are in limbo, right? There's this state of limbo and this state of feeling overwhelmed. And I think what I got from this survey more than anything was this real need to communicate. And I appreciate what you were just saying, Joan, about how communication is really key and that with these being individualized, obviously education plans that every child has an individual need. So they need to really, families really need to be able to communicate that. with you and I get as varied phone calls from, I'm not getting enough work to, you know, we need more work. I mean, it's like on both ends of the spectrum. And so it's tricky to keep that information. But again, getting back to what we were saying earlier with the superintendent about being able to document this. And I know that special education is very documented so that this is being documented. But I think that the report really gives us some quality data. And to the point of you were saying, when was it taken in that two week or three week window? I think that's also the point is that it could be run again, or it could be run translated, or it could be run in any manner that Alex has provided the survey itself. And so the data can be rerun in any way that needs to be rerun, should you feel like you want more comprehensive data. And I think to the folks that are on here that may not know, again, I'll just with a caveat that I was the co-chair of the CPAC prior to my time on school committee that the, CPAC is a legal mandate that requires that there be advisory to the district. So I really wanna encourage folks to use the CPAC for this advisory capacity. So when you're looking for a stakeholder group or a family engagement group or what have you, that's what Tanya and Alex and the rest of the folks that are around are able to do with these surveys. And I wanna say, Alex, especially the nearly 30% response for a survey during a pandemic, I think is really remarkable. And I want to thank you both for all your hard work and for all your support for our families out there. Thank you.
[Unidentified]: Thank you. Member Graham, then Member Van der Kloot. Thank you for the report.
[Graham]: It was a lot to digest, but I got through it. I did have one question though. At the beginning of the report, it says there's 226 total responses, 102 complete responses, 61 partial responses, and 63 disqualified responses. And I wondered if you could just clarify what a partial response means and what a disqualified response means.
[Alexandra Lauric]: Do you want to speak to that? Yeah, so the survey had some questions, particularly multi-response questions, multiple choice questions. Those were mandatory. And then there were questions, we are asking for suggestions. open-end questions and those were not mandatory because we felt that people might stop doing the survey if we create those breakpoints. So, this qualified response means that the survey was for parents who have children on IEP or 504 plans. So, there was a question, does your child has an IEP or 504 question. If you would answer no, you would exit the survey. So those were the end questions. And then 102 completed responses mean that the parents went through every single question and they answered the open-end questions too. Whereas 62 partial responses, most likely parents only answered the multiple choice questions.
[Graham]: Got it. Thank you, and I think the other question that I had, I think I saw that you could answer the survey multiple times if you had multiple children. Do you have any sense of how many folks responded more than one time, or is the data not able to tell you that?
[Alexandra Lauric]: No, we don't have the ability to. Okay, thank you. But I want to say that we followed, so we were considering making one response per IEP address, kind of make sure that one response per family. But we did follow the same model that Medford Public Schools did for their survey, the general access survey, and they allow people to answer for each child.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. Thank you. Member van de Kloot.
[Van der Kloot]: Yes, I just wanted to first, Tonya and Alex, I want to thank you very much. I thought it was very, very interesting to read through all the responses. And, you know, they kind of fell to me in two different categories. One was the level that was heartbreaking when people just said, I'm struggling. I'm having a really tough time. And, you know, at one point, I just felt like tears coming to my eyes. I was sort of thinking of parents really in that situation. But I also had a second feeling and that was there were many responses which really spoke to the dedication of our teachers and the positive interactions that had happened. And locally there's a child not far from where I live who is in an out placement and I've spoken to his father and he has said so many wonderful things about the people who he interacts with for his special ed child. And I really think that was brought home in the survey as well and want to thank our teachers for their dedication.
[Tanya Sullivan]: I agree, Paulette. I think that the teachers have really gone above and beyond. You know, this is unprecedented. We're all trying to navigate this together. And, you know, we're gathering the information where people are struggling, but there is also a lot of really good feedback too. So I just want to make sure that, you know, administration is aware of that. The teachers, most teachers have really gone above and beyond. So I just like to put that out there as well. Thank them.
[Edouard-Vincent]: And I want to jump in to say thank you for presenting the data. Also in attendance this evening, we do have Ms. Charlene Douglas. And then later today, we have another report by Dr. Cushing about our efforts to try to communicate and reach families. So as this survey was taken and there were new changes that are coming because we received greater guidance from DESE, I do feel that there's going to also be a shift in some of the feedback where there are areas for growth on the district side. But I just wanted to be able to recognize that in this unprecedented time, You know people are definitely working in different ways in many of the conversations that we just had prior to the presentation of this report about consistency of contacting what's available or connecting with teachers I think in this unprecedented time Medford Massachusetts in fact is being recognized on a national level and I know Charlene will concur with that that what we're doing in Massachusetts is probably like second in the nation right now in terms of distance learning plans and trying to meet the needs of families where it was something that was not It wasn't something that we could have planned for in advance. So now that we have this new information and we're kind of you know, learning to ride the bicycle at the same time or learning how to, you know, build a plane and fly it at the same time, that we need to be able to continue to look at our challenges, but at the same time, say, you know, keep up the good work for what you're doing. And I definitely applaud our teachers for all that they've been trying to do. We know we've got more work to do ahead of us, but we will continue to work collaboratively together. The other question about this data and the report, everything is available. It's on our district website. So the data and the slide deck is available under our school committee meeting for this evening. So the community can access it right now.
[Unidentified]: Thank you so much. Ms. Bowen?
[Bowen]: Yes, thank you. Um, so Tanya and Alex, I was wondering if we could set up a time to schedule a time to go over the survey and what the district has put into place since this was taken and then we can, you know, sit down and meet and to discuss it.
[Tanya Sullivan]: Yeah, actually, I think that would be great. And like you said, Joan, because this survey happened over a few weeks time and so much was Um, coming on board with the distance learning at that time, you know, I think that if we do another survey, um, I think that the numbers would be different. Um, there might be, you know, newer concerns that, that we hadn't foreseen now that it's going into, you know, this many weeks, but yeah, most definitely. Okay, great.
[Bowen]: I can, I'll email you and we can coordinate.
[Tanya Sullivan]: That'd be great. Thank you.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Great. Thank you. Thank you. If there's no further questions, uh, member Ruseau.
[Ruseau]: Thank you so much. It was, you know, reading the comments and, you know, it was 53 pages, so it was a lot, but it was, you know, highlighting the stuff that jumped out at me. There was a couple of important perspectives that I thought I needed to call out. One was somebody actually had some – you know, I hadn't even considered that the pre-K staff would have really been included here as people doing – I don't really know how special ed works around pre-K, although I had it at my own home. My husband dealt with that, so I sort of didn't understand it. But the pre-K staff apparently is reaching out and doing stuff as well, which is fabulous and makes me really happy. And there was one other perspective that I thought, you know, one of the comments was about working from, you know, 8 in the morning till 5 at night, and, you know, my own experience with a child with with an IEP is that, you know, that was an early challenge we experienced where the 20 minutes of homework that came home was two and a half hours until we got on the same page with the teachers and the staff. But I want to make sure that, you know, there's at least some kind of a pushback, like nobody should be working that many hours, like no adult should even be working that many hours right now, let alone our students. And I realized that the survey was anonymous, so we can't really reach right out to that person, but we need to make sure that we don't have any kids, any kids at General Ed or anybody else working. eight or nine hour days in front of a laptop. That's just not okay. The emotional needs of all of us are too high for anybody to be putting that in. And that kind of made me pretty upset. And I had lots of other comments that were interesting, but I won't go on all night. Thank you.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. Is there a motion to accept the committee report? So moved. seconded by member McLaughlin. Ms. Douglas did you have a comment?
[Charlene Douglas]: I just wanted to add that I too had read the report and I want to thank Paulette and those acknowledging how hard teachers are working and there were many many positive comments within that report that teachers are reaching out to the parents through emails, through Google Hangouts, through various methods. It appeared from many of the comments that the teachers that were reaching out are reaching out two to three times a week, and so it was really positive. I want to thank the CPAC group for doing that, for reaching out. I do think everyone's working, but I also want everyone to take a deep breath. and understand that, while, you know, we're with the students everything we have teachers to, we have teachers who are taking care of parents right now that are sick, they're in, you know, summary, there's one that's you know as many won't even go into the details, but I do want everyone to realize that so I think that as a community. MedFed is working is light years ahead of some of the communities that I speak with some communities have just started remote learning last week and some is just starting this week, because they needed to negotiate this. This union, this teachers, this group, the district, we've always prided ourselves on working together. And through that, we are light years ahead of everyone else. And I just want to say that, and I want to thank, I want to reach out to Joan Bowen, who also, she and I have been talking, she's sharing, we're in constant communication. So I do want to thank you all for that. Thank you, Paulette, for those wonderful comments, and member Ruseau also, thank you.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. Motion on the floor to accept the paper by Member Van der Kloot, seconded by Member Goughin. All those in favor? All those opposed? Paper passes. On to number seven, which is report on MPS distance learning survey by Dr. Peter Cushing.
[Cushing]: Good evening everyone. So our survey started on March 27th. We asked parents as we were in I believe the first two weeks at that time of our lead into the distance learning plan because the distance learning plan was not up and running at that point. But this survey provided a tremendous amount of information. for our staff and our teachers and everybody to really pull together that. just move through these slides. So the general overview, we were closed by the superintendent and the mayor, a little combination there due to COVID-19 starting March 13th. Last day that students were in was March 12th. We worked with the teachers union to have an initial contingency plan for learning. Charlene Douglas and other members were there to assist with that. It was a really great effort to really set forth. The teachers came in on March 13th to start preparing two weeks of work. I was really impressed. I was seeing a lot of high school teachers who had never used Google Classroom, who were jumping on board to really get up to speed as quickly as possible. And that was really impressive. Chromebooks were distributed on two separate dates. We talked about that earlier this meeting. Teachers continue to mail packets home. We also mentioned that this survey was done between March 27th and the last response was recorded on April 5th. The survey itself was actually just closed on Thursday, but there were no responses recorded after April 5th. So just some demographics. So here you have the responses from the various schools. And what's nice and what I think is really good is that we had responses from every single school. So good cross section of the district. Go ahead. Okay, we had a total of 595 responses in total. Parents were able to basically aggregate their children or they could fill it out multiple times depending on if they had a child at the high school, middle school, elementary, however they wanted. Here's the grade breakdown. for the grade that people's children were in when they were responding. So social emotional, where one is low anxiety, five is high anxiety. We saw some students with some definite numbers in the three fours and fives. That has definitely helped Stacy Shulman and others reach out and to do some outreach for families, as well as other staff members, including our principals and assistant principals. But I would like to see us when we do another survey coming up here in another week or so, ask this question again and see where people are because as it goes on longer, we want to make sure that we're supporting our families as best as possible. So communication, we asked three specific questions around communication. How effective is the communication you receive from your from your teachers. And so we want a star rating here, one star, two stars, three, four, and five. And the message clarity overwhelmingly came through as clear in the four and five range. There was definitely some threes as well. So we want to make sure that we're working with our staff to make sure that the purpose of the message, the overall effectiveness of the message, and how clear it is that people are understanding in this asynchronous learning experience is definitely working. School leaders, how effective is the communication you're receiving from your school? Again, overall, the communication was receiving high marks from our school leaders. And then we also asked a question around the district as well. So these data is there for you to see as well. functionality, the functionality of distance learning is your child using Google Cloud Google Classroom. So of the respondents, 58.3% said yes, no at all is about a quarter of the respondents, and some are and some not dependent on the teachers was 15%. So That is the district's preferred platform because it is the platform through which anything can be delivered to students. On average, how much time is your child spending per day on academics? I apologize, the color coding to the scale in Google Forms was different, but here's your numbers. More than three hours is 17.5 percent, two to three hours is 32.5 percent, One to two hours is 37.6% and less than one hour is 12.3%. This is another question I'd like to ask again to see how we would correlate with people moving forward. What do you think has worked well with learning at home? We had 60 responses of other, and I'm happy to put those together in a separate document. I did not do that for this presentation. And I could definitely aggregate them into certain categories. The teacher has held video conferences, video calls with the class. That's about 300 responses or 50.8%. Instructions are clear, again, 50%. I know how to get support if I need it, 50%. So those areas that I would definitely like to see us start to really pump out information to parents about getting support to make sure that they are. I'm using a district provided Chromebook or computer. So that was 32 respondents for a total of 5.4%. One of the biggest challenges you were facing with distance learning, I am still trying to work a full time job. So that was the same as the previous 150.8%. I will say this much having talked, having spoken to colleagues of my of mine, and living it with a one and a three year old. This is an incredible challenge. And so for any parents who are out there listening, I really feel what you're going through. So, um, I just want to make sure that I'm still on with everybody. Um, I need more and more computers to do all the work my family has. So that's 6.2%. I need help getting meals for my family. Um, that was only four respondents. So that's really a testament to the work. I know a member of McLaughlin was really doing a lot, was there on the ground at the McGlynn helping out. So out of 595 responses, the fact that there were only four, I think that's really a testament to what Medford is doing around food security. I can't help my child with their work because I'm not familiar with the content. That's definitely something we want to pump out, maybe some more videos, Khan Academy, other supports, those types of things to really make sure that parents are feeling comfortable. I'm struggling to support my child's special needs on my own. I would say that goes to what the CPAC was just saying, that kind of heartbreaking aspect of where parents are with their child's special needs. And then I would say this number was surprising, was 28.5% at this time during this survey listed that they were not having any challenges. And then we had another 55 responses. What do you think would be helpful for you? Training for parents and caregivers around Google Classroom. That was only 16%. More communication. This was the one that I found interesting was we had more communication and less communication. So the number for more communication from teachers was definitely the overwhelming number. But there were respondents who wanted less communication. So I think it's finding that happy medium for certain parents and caregivers And then again more academic content and less academic content We can see 34% We're looking for more academic content and I think part of this goes to with the guidelines from the Commonwealth the guidelines from the Commonwealth right now have us in this review mode and You know, there's there's I give our teachers credit because there's only so much you can do with a lot of review. So I can understand where parents at this time we're looking at more academic content. Improved scheduling, I think that that has probably been addressed by the distance learning plan that Dr. Riccidelli worked with the union to pull together, not applicable. Again, I was surprised that this number 17.7% and then another 49 different responses. And I believe that is the last slide. Yep.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Any questions? Happy to answer any questions. I can't see anybody yet. Peter?
[Van der Kloot]: Mayor? Yes, Member Van der Kloot. Yes, I had a couple of questions. First, could you please remind us, Peter, was this translated into a variety of languages? And did we get any ones that were translated back?
[Cushing]: So it was, and we're going to talk about the student opportunity act survey coming up next. Um, what we did for this survey was it was all translated in line. So it was not a separate survey for families. It was one survey that we used Google translate to, um, translate the questions. And, and we received one response, um, in Portuguese, uh, from, from what I recall.
[Van der Kloot]: Okay, my second question, or really just a comment, Peter, is on the slide where you ask about how much time. That's a little misleading because you're, in terms of helpfulness, because it's K to 12. And what my expectation might be for a high school student is very different than a kindergarten student. So were we to do it again, if we could break it down at least into elementary, middle, and high school, for me, that would make more sense. But otherwise, I certainly appreciated the information and that you did this.
[Cushing]: I'm writing that note down. So if we, when we do something, cause I definitely foresee us doing something further. You know, there've been some tweets and some articles published about where families are with distance learning at this time and the struggles that they're going through. Nothing relating to Medford, but just the struggles that families are going through. And we want to make sure that we're supporting them as best we can without being able to be right there with them.
[Van der Kloot]: The other thing which would be interesting, especially in the upper grades and perhaps middle school too, is at some point to ask kids how they're feeling and to return, you know, to see what kind of feedback we get from students. Okay.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Great idea. Thank you, member van de Kloot. Member McLaughlin.
[McLaughlin]: Yes, thank you, Dr. Cushing for this survey. I'm a definite data person and I love seeing the story that data tells and I think it's really important. So I appreciate you sharing this. I appreciate you running it again. And I would also add to Ms. Douglas' point around teachers who are working full time, who are also trying to teach their students and raise their families in their home while being quarantined. I would also advocate for a question or for teachers in the community as well that can share some of their struggle and experience, if you would. But I think this is really great. Thank you.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Motion for approval to accept the report. So moved. Second. Moved by member van de Kloot, seconded by member McLaughlin. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Paper passes. Number nine. Oh, no, number eight, report on student opportunity SOA survey and application. Dr. Peter Cushing.
[Cushing]: Just give me one second. I'm just switching between screens here. Thank you. Apologize for the delay. All right, so back on March 9th, I came before the committee to report on the Student Opportunity Act. At that time, the Commonwealth had approved back in November, the Student Opportunity Act, which was designed to infuse much needed cash towards struggling school districts. 85% of the money was going to, I believe, 37 school districts. And those school districts were deserving of those resources, just given the challenges that they face on a daily basis and to help close the achievement gaps. Medford was receiving approximately $137,000-$138,000. We're receiving the minimum based on $40 calculated per student. Um, so, um, we are working on the short form, which you have in the, in the, uh, last two pages of the proposed survey. Uh, the survey was going to go out this past Saturday. Uh, I had some home internet issues and was actually unable to get that done. One of the pitfalls of working from home. Um, so. We have time if anyone wants to add a comment. Now, this survey is going to be delivered as five separate surveys. And so people will be able to say click for Haitian Creole, click for Portuguese, click for Arabic, click for Spanish, click for English. I want to do it deliberately this way to see if we get better responses. I wonder if the way we did the distance learning survey was confusing in the fact that it went in line. So I just want to kind of experiment and see and provide the best options for families. So we were slated to receive that additional money. The Commonwealth reported, or it was reported during a conference call last week with the Massachusetts Association of Schools Superintendents, that right now, we've lost $5 billion in revenue for the Commonwealth. And so there has been stated concern from the members of our Superintendents Association about the ability for these funds to materialize. That does not mean that we're not carrying through with the process. That is definitely what we're doing. But the deadline has been pushed back. And yes, that's where we are right now. The survey is ready to launch. but open to questions, suggestions, and other pieces as well.
[Unidentified]: Any questions?
[Graham]: Member Graham. Just a quick comment. This was another meeting that sort of got held hostage to our school closure back in March. So there were several meetings that need to be rescheduled. And this meeting to refer this to the engagement and communications and strategic planning subcommittee is one of them. And I will get something on the books shortly so that we can be prepared to look at the results once they come back. So we'll find a time to do that. Great, thank you very much.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Motion for approval. Motion to approve. By Member Graham, seconded by Member Ruseau. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? This will be referred to engagement subcommittee. Number nine, report on senior class of 2020 events. Mr. Paul DeLava and Dr. Peter Cushing.
[Cushing]: So I'll kick it off and then I'm really happy to have Nancy Donlan on the call as well with us. She's one of the senior class advisors. So there has been a lot of consternation by parents in the community and I think rightly so. My niece is a senior in college and having gone to the same college that she's at, I know a lot of what she's losing right now. And having been a high school principal and having been involved with Students, since I was 22 years old, I feel awful for the members of the class of 2020 that are losing out on stuff. As was stated in the letter that was sent out, I'm not saying things like, we're not saying, we as a group are not saying things like, we would like to do this, or we hope to do this, or no, we're saying we are committed. An in-person graduation for the class of 2020 I think is what we owe our students after 13 years. Doing everything that we can to reconsider prom and to think about what things we can do for our seniors, it's an obligation that we have. And the call that I was on the other day with the headmaster, with Mr. Fallon, with Lisa, the principal of the Curtis Tufts, Nancy Donlan and others, I just have to say that in talking to them, that commitment is there as well. Our problem is, is we don't know what the timeline is. We don't know if the timeline is going to be late June, if the timeline is going to be August, if the timeline is Columbus Day or Thanksgiving, or are we doing heaven forbid the class of 2020 on Tuesday, next June and the class of 2021 on Wednesday. Like we don't know. All right. And, but we are committed to doing it as soon as possible and as dedicated as possible to make sure that it is a phenomenal event or events, I should say. And we're working behind them the scenes on a lot of stuff. We we are I shouldn't say a lot of stuff We're working behind the scenes on some things So I want to turn it over to the headmaster who's done a lot of work and a lot of thought about this I've often said to people who bring this up to me I say on on March 12 one of the first conversations that Paul and I had was about graduation senior events and those types of things and I'll turn it over to them now.
[D'Alleva]: Thank you, Dr. Cushing. I do want to recognize, again, what Dr. Cushing is saying. This has been a conversation that really did start at March 12th. And I think the hard part for us is, like he said, we just don't know what time things are going to be updated. If we go back May 4th, We're going to have a different scenario than if we're not coming back this school year at all. So we did have a lot of conversations. I know there was some parents, I know there's parents that are currently on this call as well. As Dr. Cushing said, we're reassuring that there is no cancellation. I just want to make that very, very clear. Sometimes misinformation gets out there. We're in a postponement kind of mode. I think the two major events that we are focused, the culminating events for every senior is their senior prom as well as their graduation. We do have our little things as well that we'll try to work in, but we're trying to focus in on how to kind of get those things in place for our seniors. The thing that I most want to know is exactly And I know it'd be another survey, but I do want to also hear from our students I know a lot of parents are advocating for their students as well But I want to hear from them as well. I think isabelle is on this call as well. She's our student rep um for the school committee and The idea is to also see what they would look like so if we find out that we're not coming back you know at the end of the year if again, we're all living in ifs then what is it that the students would like? With obviously the parent input. That being said, the letter that was sent out on Thursday has a Zoom meeting for families on Wednesday, this Wednesday at five o'clock as well. Because we want, I know all the parents are, really want to do whatever they can for their seniors. And I totally understand that. My heart breaks for the class of 2020, as Dr. Cushion said. I'm happy to answer any questions, but that's sort of where we're at at this point in time.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Member van de Kloet and member Ruseau?
[Unidentified]: Hold on, can I unmute you?
[Van der Kloot]: I had received several letters as well. I think we all did. And I think we all feel the same way, the same as Peter and Paul have just conveyed. It's important that we will celebrate this class. It'll be the most unique and different sort, perhaps. There's things we don't know now, but certainly it's not if, it's really a question of when. I agree. Thank you.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Member Ruseau.
[Ruseau]: Thank you very much. And I know there's been some conversations around funding things for various ways of recognizing our senior class. If we are not going to be using the money for renting the Tufts facility, I really think it's important to repurpose those funds rather than relying on the community to make donations, because we don't know how long this is going to go on. The community to make donations implies that that's a never-ending thing we can rely on. The community may be called upon to make donations to feed each other. And the school system cannot repurpose our $18,000 for graduation to feed the community. So I think we should really look at repurposing the money we've already budgeted for the purposes of taking care of our seniors to do that, rather than relying on the community because it We don't know when this ends, and I don't want the community getting worn out early in our ability to give. Thank you.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. Member Kress and Member McLaughlin.
[Kreatz]: Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you very much for the report. And yes, I was thrilled, you know, to read the report that, you know, we're committed to having this graduation. You know, I couldn't, you know, even it's just so important to recognize all their achievements. And it's just such a big, you know, event for the seniors. I was just thinking of some things that maybe we could do in the city, you know, to just, you know, recognize the class of 2020. Maybe we could put like a message on the billboard on mystic out, you know, congratulations to the class of 2020. or even the large movable message boards that kind of pop up with information, either the square or the various squares like West Medford Haynes Square, Medford Square, and just simple things, because I think it's all students, elementary students moving on to middle school, middle school students moving on to high school, and high school students moving on to college or career. So, because we usually have the moving on ceremonies for each of the schools as well. So I was even thinking, you know, I know that Mayor Lungo-Koehn had, you know, a scavenger hunt where the students put pictures on their door and maybe everybody in the community could just, you know, put a message, you know, draw something and put it on their door and to just recognize the student, you know, all students who are graduating the class of 2020. And it would just be a simple, you know, you know, thing that they could do and just to show our support to the whole community. You know, I was just thinking about that just today. What could we do, something simple that doesn't cost a lot of money that we could all do to recognize everybody and just start spreading the cheer and, you know, the appreciation.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you, Kathy. And I know Dr. Cushing has some ideas that he's been throwing my way the last several days. It's just hard because we want some of the, you know, I know he wants some of them to be a surprise. So I'm sure he'll maybe give a call to the school committee individually this week and kind of let you know some fun ideas that he and a number of the, I know Ms. DeLaver is involved too. So a number of ideas that are out there that we can definitely work on. And I think, With regards to prom, just a comment for myself is it will tell a lot what the governor decides at the end of the week. So maybe we can add that to our meeting in two weeks. And hopefully, no matter what happens, we can get those graduates their in-hand diploma, whether it's this summer or in June. We will get it done. So member Rousseau.
[Ruseau]: Thank you. I have a question from a member of the community. Susan Brosnahan, 9 Laird Road asks, so what is the final day for seniors?
[D'Alleva]: So I can, the only thing I can say at this point in time is we can't make that determination until we know what the if is. I don't want to say that the date is delayed. I don't want to say that the date is on time. I just want to know, if we're going back May 4th, then there's no issue with the date. If we're not going back May 4th, we obviously have to restructure some things so that that date could possibly happen. And I'm not saying that that's right or wrong. I know some parents have some feelings about that date. But, you know, at the same time, we're in uncharted territory and waters, you know, feeling is what is the story with instruction? As you heard in many different various reports, you know, instructions up and down at this point in time. There's some people feel that's too much. There's some people that feel it's not enough. So until we know what the if is, I don't think we can give a direct answer to that question right now.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. Member McLaughlin, and then Member Van der Kloot, and then Member Ruseau.
[McLaughlin]: Thank you. I just wanted to say thank you to Dr. Cushing for all your hard work on this. I have to say, Peter, from day one, I remember back in March, you were saying from day one that you were going to make sure that the students were celebrated, and I really appreciate your effort in that. I also want to show a nod to the parents who are organizing around this. The senior parents have really gotten organized and gotten together on Facebook and are really trying to figure out next steps and what they can do. And this is a big milestone for the parents as well as the students. And I think a lot of people are feeling anxious about this and worried. And I'm wondering, Peter, if folks have ideas or if folks are interested in donating money or if there's anything like that, can people reach out to you with ideas?
[Cushing]: They can definitely reach out to me. Also, I put out a call for parents and students to send me, it was in the letter, to send me information concerning themselves, a picture. Right now, I'm putting together kind of a Facebook skin so that we can start posting to the district's new Facebook page, which had a soft launch last week with the McGlynn parade. The Roberts parade will be up there, but Send it, you can send that information to info at medford.k12 and the rest of it. And then you can also send me any ideas. Please CC the headmaster as well. You know, we do have some things in the works. The problem, going back to what member Kreatz was saying, the problem is low cost. It's when we try to do stuff that's unique for each kid, there's a multiplier. I think the number is 303 in the senior class. So if you want to do something that's say 10 bucks per kid, you're already at $3,000. Um, and so that's just the, the considerations that we're working with. But, um, some people had mentioned the banners, uh, around the town. I don't know what the banners cost, but I know when you do 303 of them, that's where, you know, your, your eyes might start to pop a little.
[McLaughlin]: Well, I think that, you know, yes, I think you're right. And I think someone quoted some of the price around a hundred or more. It was crazy, especially cause they're individual. But I did see, just for example, in Winchester, I was in a walk yesterday and they have, you know, started up with the lawn signs. And I know there are several people here who have campaigned recently and know printers and, you know, know what all costs are for things and what have you. But even, you know, lawn signs for our seniors, letting them know how much we appreciate them and their families, I think is an idea. But again, looking for, you know, donations or whatever. And I know that member Rousseau said, you know, clearly not just, community members donating, but other funds being allocated. But I think we should offer the opportunity to community members as well in the event that they do want to donate.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Member Van der Kloot and Member Ruseau?
[Van der Kloot]: Yes, this is slightly off topic, but I haven't heard any updates about the advanced placement exams. Have those exams at this point been canceled?
[D'Alleva]: No, no, actually, they're doing take home. Exams and we have some students that opted to get a refund from their exams but the idea is that again the College board has done it so that teachers are reviewing what was currently taught. That's what their exam is going to be based on And again, and they're providing with a login screen and their law in and doing it at home I see Maureen Lavin's jumped on so she might have some more details as well
[Lungo-Koehn]: been on, I know that. She just hopped on our page. Member van de Kloot?
[Van der Kloot]: That was my question.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Okay, you're finished. And member Rousseau?
[Ruseau]: I don't have a question, thank you. Okay.
[McLaughlin]: Member McLaughlin? Just one more comment that we heard from guidance Councilors, and I was wondering if this was accurate or something that could be shared, Mr. de Leyva, was that a lot of colleges are bypassing or waiving SAT scores, is that accurate?
[D'Alleva]: Yes, that is true. That actually came out just recently. So, you know, I can't speak to every college, but I know, like they said, everybody's dealing with this in its own way. So, you know, this fact that colleges are doing remote learning themselves at this point in time, and, you know, there are some colleges that are thinking they're not even going to be back in the fall right away. So yeah, so they're trying to do some adjustments as best they can. But yeah, SAT was something that most colleges were reconsidering.
[Unidentified]: Ms.
[SPEAKER_00]: D'Souza, do you have anything to add? I was just gonna say that like a lot of students, like seniors ourselves, we've kind of gathered around to like celebrate other seniors. I know of a group of people who started up an Instagram account, like where people can like send their memories of like high school that are then posted. And then me and a couple of the other officers also started another one where seniors can like DM their, like wherever they're going to college, so that we can all kind of like celebrate together. But a lot of us just feel a little confused because we don't really know where everything's heading. Like Mr. DeLeva said, or somebody else said, this is uncharted territory. It's uncharted territory for us too. So I feel like if we had a bit more communication between the seniors and administration, that would be helpful. Thank you.
[D'Alleva]: And to comment on what Isabella said with her page, the class of 2020 asked me to gather up my 1994 pick that I was able to post out. I had a lot of hair back then so I was kind of excited to see that. The senior class are doing little things indirectly. There's a page called Medford Class 2020, and they're posting out all their memories, actually, like they're listing out 10 things, like remembering their first football game that they went to that night, stuff like that, which has been great to see them share those memories. And I'm thankful that they let me go on the page.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Ms. Dunlap, did anybody else want to speak?
[Daneu]: Okay. Oh, Ms. Dunlap. I just want to say that one of the things that we shared with seniors one day last week was the senior gifts are in and I actually have one right here. They're a reusable water bottle. I'm not sure you can see them. Yeah, we can. They're fabulous. And so just showing students that these came in, they were thrilled, as you could imagine. It made it real that there were things that we had planned for months to celebrate seniors then. And it was very calming for them to hear that we were committed to doing many, if not most, or all of those same things. And I think that just communicating with them like we did last week, the feedback that we got in our meeting today was very positive, very positive. So I think that will go a long way to sort of taking away the great sadness that they feel that, how can this be what I've dreamed about? And when they see that we're following through on them, we're really seeing a really great response from them.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Great, thank you so much. Mr. DeLeva.
[D'Alleva]: So I do have another with the senior class gifts. Once we get the go ahead, I think if you're going to do the next Chromebook distribution, one thing that I have in my office are all the caps and gowns. And so we would also like to try to do a day after we're able to distribute Chromebooks, to actually do a cap and gown distribution as well for seniors to come up and, you know, obviously social distance themselves, like we've been doing with the Chromebooks. And Mr. Blauck and I have been talking about how we could get those distributed. We're obviously, again, in the if wait till everything is, you know, calm, but we do want to get our seniors there, at least their caps and gowns, so that whatever we end up doing, they have those in their hands.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Great, thank you so much. And we can continue that for two weeks when we should know more from the governor. Is there a motion on the floor to accept the report on senior class 2020 events? Member Ruseau, seconded by member Van der Kloot. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Paper passes. Number eight, old business. Is there any old business? Member Ruseau?
[Ruseau]: Actually, one of the documents we had in our packets was the calendar. And I think, I'm assuming there's just a typo. It says that the highlighted dates it says are the school days, when I think it's actually those are the no school days. So I don't know if we published this somewhere, but we want to correct that.
[Edouard-Vincent]: So that calendar that ended up adding, going into the folder was from Christine Patterson. it was showing the calculation, at least the last version of what I had looked at, it was showing the calculation of days that the bus drivers were not driving. And so that was part of her transportation report. And then, so I don't know how it ended up back in there, but she had just wanted to highlight the amount of days that transportation wasn't taking place.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. Is there any other old business? Hearing and seeing none. Any communications? Hearing and seeing none. New business, we have five condolences. Member Van der Kloot?
[Van der Kloot]: It would be appropriate to add one to the new business. Okay. If I may. Yes. I'd like to just mention, of course, that this is the sad, um, you know, today the Boston marathon was supposed to be run and I wanted to certainly remember, uh, Crystal Campbell, uh, this evening. Yes. Thank you for that.
[Lungo-Koehn]: And if you just read these school committee resolution, be it resolved that the Medford school committee expressed its sincere condolences to the family of Raymond Quill. Mr. Quill was the father of cosmetology teacher, Julian Morrow. Be it resolved, the Medford School Committee express sincere condolences to the family of Anne Glencross. Anne served as a senior account clerk for 47 years at the Medford Public Schools, working in the Medford Vocational Technical High School. Be it resolved that the Medford School Committee express sincere condolences to the family of Brian Frida, Mr. Frida was the brother of Medford High School teacher Lisa Dunphy. Be it resolved that the Medford School Committee express its sincere condolences to the family of Margaret Peggy Small, a former Medford Public School lunch staff person and mother of former HVAC teacher Robert Bobby Small. and be it resolved that the Medford School Committee express its sincere condolences to the family of Grace Lauria. Mrs. Lauria was the grandmother of Medford High School special education teacher, Sabrina Huther.
[Unidentified]: And if we all just may take a moment of silence. Thank you.
[Van der Kloot]: Member van de Kloot. I just wanted to let you know that on Wednesday, I went up to sign the bills, and I'm standing outside the high school down on the main road was a whole lot of our vocational teachers and other staff from us. holding signs to honor Annie Glenn Cross. And it was so, so touching and moving to see our teachers making this effort, knowing that it was such an unusual time, that it was different for the family. And yet they had gathered together appropriately, social distance, but showing their love for Annie.
[Lungo-Koehn]: It's so nice. Thank you for sharing. Negotiation and legal matters, I don't believe we have any tonight. Our next scheduled meeting will be at four o'clock, budget hearings, four to 5.30 in two weeks, which is May 4th, yes. And we will have our regular scheduled school committee meeting directly after that at 5.30. So motion to adjourn? Motion to adjourn. by Member Ruseau, seconded by Member Graham. Thank you. Have a good night. All those in favor? All those opposed? Thanks, everyone. Bye. Hang in there. Stay healthy.
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