[Rocha]: at Medford High School, and I have also been, or I was involved in the planning of the 2020 Martin Luther King Junior Day celebration.
[Lister]: Thank you. Melissa Miguel. Is she here?
[SPEAKER_11]: I thought she might not be. She's not here, Jim. Okay. She's away. Okay.
[Lister]: Patrick McCabe.
[McCabe]: Hi, I'm Patrick McCabe. I'm also a union organizer like you, Jim. I work with 1199 SEIU, United Healthcare Workers East. So in the city of Method, we have the workers at Courtyard Nursing Home are part of our union. I've lived in Medford since 2002. After getting out of the military, And going to school at West Point, I came back to Medford, be close to home. And I look forward to serving on this committee with everybody, choosing a name for the former Columbus School that brings the community together and reflects our values. So really excited to do that. Good. Thank you.
[Lister]: Paul Donato.
[Donato Jr]: Aldonado Junior, lifelong Method resident. I was born here, 1966. I graduated in Method High in 1984. I have two children who already graduated, and I have two children currently in the Medford school system. I'm a food concessionaire in the summertime, and I do snow removal in the wintertime. Thank you.
[Lister]: All right, thank you. Ron Jovino.
[Giovino]: I am Ron Chivino. I, uh, I was born before Hawaii was a state and I lived in Medford that whole time. So I'll let you guys figure that one out. Um, currently I'm a semi retired. I've been busy working with the city's board of health on the COVID, uh, uh, being a COVID volunteer, getting vaccines out. Um, also, uh, I live up now in, uh, East border road. I have three children, four grandchildren. And I'm also the president of the Method Invitational Tournament, which is a baseball program celebrating its 25th year of helping challenge children in the city. Thanks.
[Lister]: All right, thank you. Seth Hill. That's me.
[Hill]: My name is Seth Hill. I live over on Henry Street. My daughter walks to Columbus every day and I walk over to pick her up every day. We've lived here since 2010 and looking forward to finding a new name together. Thanks.
[Lister]: Thank you. Kathy Kay.
[Kay]: Good evening, everybody. I'd like to just say thank you to all of you for being here. I am the principal at the now called Christopher Columbus Elementary School, and I'm finishing my ninth year and what a year it has been, as we all know, but I look forward to working with all of you to get a name that reflects the community and is a name that would just do the school proud and be something we can keep steady for the entire future of the school. And thank you again.
[Lister]: Thank you. Matthew Haberstrom. I think he's going to be coming late. Did I hear that? No, I'm right here. OK.
[Haberstrom]: I'm Matt Haberstrom. I'm the art teacher at the Columbus for the last four years. I'm originally from California. via Los Angeles, San Francisco and living in New York City. But I bought my house here in West Medford in 98. So I'm a specialist teacher, right? So that means I see all the kids every week, okay, all the kids. And I enjoy it a lot. I'm really looking forward to this process of renaming the school. Thank you.
[Lister]: Caitlin Shaughnessy, maybe that was a name, I'm sorry. Is Caitlin here?
[Kay]: Yeah, I think Caitlin said she'd be a little bit late.
[Lister]: Okay. Uh, Janelle, Janelle Mackenzie, Janelle Golan Mackenzie. Is she here?
[Mackenzie]: Hi, I'm Janelle. Um, I've been at the Columbus, I'm a teacher at the Columbus. Um, I've been working at the Columbus for about seven years now. Um, I also have been living in Medford for about three years now. Um, and I work with the therapeutic learning program. and I'm the advisor for the CCSR, the Center for Citizenship and Social Responsibility.
[Lister]: Okay, thank you. And Josie Dufour.
[Dufour]: Hi, I'm Josie Dufour. I live at 28 Douglas Road, and I was a student at the Columbus School from 2012 to 2018. I'm currently in eighth grade at the McLean Middle School.
[Lister]: Okay, thank you. All right, I wanna get started. I mean, we have a job ahead of us. Obviously everybody knows this has been a divisive thing in Medford and I hope that we can come up with three names that will do a presentation at the end to the school committee that will help to heal Medford, bring us all back together. And I hope that there's a naming ceremony and that there's a lot of people there we do some good work here and hopefully the right name comes out of this and they pick us. I wanted to read the advisory committee selection as kind of a guideline of what we're gonna go by here. Pardon me, it's gonna be three pages, so it's gonna take me a few minutes here, but the individuals up to three selected by the school committee staff, Principal Kathy Kaye and one MHS student member will be announced. Each school committee member will select two members. You all know this, but I'll breeze through that. Participation by the Columbus School staff and students. Work of the advisory committee, okay. At the April 26th committee of the whole meeting, a list of names submitted for consideration will be made public and forwarded to the advisory committee. A file containing emails from the community members on topics of the renaming will be made available to the advisory committee members so that the advisory committee members all are aware of the opinions and concerns expressed by our community. So everybody should have gotten that Google file with all those letters and had a chance to look through them. The advisory committee will develop criteria for evaluating the names. The advisory committee will determine the process for vetting the names, narrowing the field and submitting no more than three finalists to the school committee. Press relations will be directed through the advisory committee chair and members of the advisory committee are urged to send press contacts to the chair. Advisory committee meetings are public meetings and must follow all requirements of meeting law. The superintendent will provide a note taker and create minutes. It is expected that the advisory committee will need to meet three to five times and a majority of voting members will be required to reach a quorum for the meeting. The advisory committee will hold at least one public hearing or issue one public input survey to solicit the feedback on the options they are considering per the charge of this resolution. as at least one of their meetings. Advisory committee members may withdraw from participation by notifying the chair and will not be counted in subsequent quorum or voting requirements. Removal of a member is permitted by a majority vote of the advisory committee. The chair will notify the remaining members of the advisory committee of the reduction in membership. No new members will be added to the advisory committee due to vacancies. While consensus is always preferred, a simple majority of the total number of advisory committee members will be required to select up to three names that will be forwarded to the school committee. A major vote, a majority vote of the total number of committee members and not a vote of the quorum present is required for this vote. The advisory committee will present their recommendation for the new names of the Columbus Elementary School no later than May 24th, 2021. A presentation will be given explaining the way the recommendations was arrived at and why the selected names were chosen. If a majority of the advisory committee votes to recommend the timeline change to the school committee, they may do so. At the time the school committee will vote to approve or decline this recommendation, timeline changes shall not exceed a final date of July 31st. Once The Medford School Committee has received the names and presentations. The committee will vote either that evening or subsequent meeting not later than June 7th, 2021 to approve the recommendation given the authority for naming public school buildings at school committees authority law per Massachusetts General Law. All right, so, and then I have one more page here. It has a rubrics on it that the school committee forwarded to me. Whereas the Medford School Committee has charged the Columbus Elementary School Renaming Advisory Committee with the task of vetting names, submitting for consideration and weighing relative strength of submissions against criteria the advisory committee will develop. Whereas the criteria may include, but not limited to such factors as the potential for the name to bring the community together. The ability for the name to stand as a role model for Medford students and the name as a representation of Medford's community's proud history. Whereas the advisory committee must narrow the field of names to three finalists by May 24th, 2021. Be it so resolved that the advisory committee adopts the following selection criteria and procedure. Submissions made in bad faith, not conforming with the submissions of names, considerations, requirements, or nominations of a living person are excluded for consideration. All other submissions are evaluated upon the rubric below. Submissions are scored by summing the numerical values. For example, a four potential three role model and three represent would yield a score of 10. Each submission is assigned five members of the advisory committee at random. The three committee members individually research and evaluate the submission according to the rubric. The 15 submissions receiving the highest average score advanced to the consideration by the whole advisory committee. In the event of a tie at the cutoff, all tied submissions advanced. The advisory committee conducts additional research and solicits public input. All members of the advisory committee evaluate the remaining submissions according to the rubric. Evaluations previously made in step four cannot be modified. The advisory committee deliberates to select three names by consensus, weighing the submissions, average scores, average values on each rubric to mention public input and research. While consensus has not been reached, the chair will ask dissenting members to state their concerns for additional discussion. Discussion continues until consensus has been reached or the advisory committee acknowledges that consensus will not be reached. The remaining names are selected by simple majority vote. All right, that was, those are the guidelines that we're gonna try and go by. We're gonna interpret them to work for us. But then, anybody have any questions on that, on those? Did everybody got those pages? I mean, our goal here is to shorten this list first, and then we'll get into some deep discussions about who we have left on the list. And then I would imagine we would use this rubrics to take, break off into groups here and do some research on all of our candidates. And I ask everybody to please have an open mind and listen to each other's when we get to speaking about the candidates that we have conversation. I know everybody has their own favorite maybe to begin with, but this is about MedFed. It's not about what anybody individually wants. It's what's gonna be right for that school going forward. And we have an opportunity here to heal any wounds and move forward. So, I have a couple of things on the housekeeping here. I'd like to just get, there was, I saw on the agenda, someone put forth a resolution and we won't be entertaining any resolutions at this point. They're out of order. We're a subcommittee to a committee. We've been given our directive. We're not gonna change our directive. We don't have the authority to do that. So, I'd like to get to the list, I guess, if anybody has any questions. I had, let me say this, I had sent a list to Susan to put on and it wasn't, it was labeled a ranking and it wasn't a ranking, it's a tally. And it merely cut the list down from four or five pages to two pages and tallied up next to the name, how many submissions, they received through that first survey process. So I don't want to say there was any ranking there. It's just that the woman in my office that I had put it together, put the most at the top and then the rest at the bottom are in alphabetical order. So I want to go to the second page of that. From there, I mean, one of the,
[Rotolo]: I'm sorry, people have been trying to get your attention. I'm not sure if you'd like us to raise our hand. I see Grace raising her hand. I'm using the function. I don't know which way you'd like us to.
[SPEAKER_06]: Okay. Yeah. Go ahead.
[Rotolo]: Grace was first. Go ahead.
[Lister]: All right. Yes. Go ahead, Grace.
[Rotolo]: Grace, you're muted. She can't unmute.
[Grace]: Hi.
[McCabe]: Wait a minute. Yeah, Grace.
[Grace]: Hi, I'm not a host, so I couldn't unmute myself. Just a point of information, the rubric you read was the resolution I submitted, I believe. If we could have some clarification on that, it'd be great.
[Lister]: So that was given to me as part of the school committee. That was something you submitted after the fact? Cause I like that. I mean, that's, you want to.
[Grace]: Yeah, I submitted it as the fourth part of our agenda today as a selection for the following criteria to evaluate names since we weren't really handed, we were handed some vague stuff, but I broke it out into the rubric and submitted it as a resolution today.
[Lister]: Well, I didn't take it as a resolution. I took it as it came to me from the school committee. because it was an added on to that. Okay, so everyone had a chance to look at that, that rubric. I mean, to me, I wanna go through these names and eliminate who we can. And then when we get to the people that we wanna discuss that are credible, we'll use the rubric.
[Rotolo]: Point of information, I thought that the agenda said that today's task was to develop the criteria. And I thought that we would be discussing the rubric. I know I have some thoughts and the other people have some thoughts as well.
[Lister]: Is that, are we going straight to the names or I thought that- No, I was under the impression for what I was given is we had a directive. We weren't gonna develop any more criteria. We had criteria. No, I'm sorry.
[Rotolo]: I'll go back to the resolution. Let me just pull up the or somebody else has a handy the text of the resolution of the of the mandate from the school committees that we are supposed to come up with a criteria. Somebody please correct me. I just read that.
[Gideon]: That's correct. We are to come up with the criteria. We are not to be given the criteria.
[McCabe]: Okay. All right, so as a point of order, Jim, are we using Robert's Rules of Order to run the meeting?
[Lister]: So the format of- We are, but I'm loosely with the Robert's Rules. I mean, if we have to raise hands and sit everybody back, this is a committee meeting. It's not open to the public. So I'll, you know, everybody's been made a co-host so they can unmute themselves and speak.
[McCabe]: Yeah, and just the, so I guess the proper format then would be for somebody to make a motion to- Yeah, we're gonna get to that. What was brought forward and then we can have the discussion.
[Lister]: So I was gonna get to that on a rubric, but now I was, I guess I'm gonna see if everybody wants to, has their say about the format that we're gonna be choosing by, I mean- Point of information, please.
[Giovino]: Yes. First, this is a public meeting. I think there are a lot of people besides the committee on here.
[Lister]: Yes, but the public isn't going to speak here.
[Giovino]: No, I understand, but we are open meeting. My understanding, I think Dr. Grace did a great job of coming up and getting this started by You know, I believe it was her who wrote this resolution. I think a discussion, I mean this is kind of like a very big turning point of where we're going by setting up this criteria I'd like to, I'd like to have an opportunity to express some thoughts I have on it. And once we decide on that, I think it would be a lot easier to go through these names, knowing what our criteria is. And I just think that, you know, this is why we're here is to have a discussion about the criteria for us.
[Lister]: So if, you know, if I'm sorry, if I was under the assumption, the criteria was given to us.
[Giovino]: Okay, the role of the when we were assigned, we were giving a basic not not limiting to guideline. And I think, I think, Dr. Grace has done. You know, if I could, I suggest that Dr. Grace explain her thoughts on where the proposal came from, whether it's a resolution or proposal, whatever you want to call it. And then some of us who have thoughts on it may have a chance to discuss that and start a debate as to, and hopefully at the end of all of that, we do have a plan with set timelines. I know we're tied up against timelines, but I think this is a very crucial point of the process is this setting the tone for the future. So I yield to Dr. Grace if she'd like to speak.
[SPEAKER_06]: Okay, thank you.
[Grace]: Thank you, Ron. Yes, I'll be happy to introduce this. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I submitted this resolution because I recognize that as a committee, we have a lot of names that we have to examine and we have such a short amount of time to do so. And we need to find a transparent and equitable way that's also efficient and thorough for us to vet the merits of each of the suggestions that were brought forward. And everyone who submitted suggestions did so, they took time, they took energy, and they were very thoughtful about it. And we should also take our own time to evaluate each and every one of those in order to honor their time and the research that the community members have put into all of the suggestions. I proposed the rubric because it enables us as a committee to share the burden of the research, along with the evaluation into smaller teams, while keeping the decision process objective. And the three categories do align with the overall, what the community has indicated was most important in selecting the name. And it also aligns with the language that was given to us by the school committee in their resolution that created our own committee here. And most importantly, overall, this procedure was designed to try and bring our community together and to ensure that as a committee, we consider multiple perspectives and encourage the committee in making a selection by consensus as well. And so I just wanted to end with, I look forward to working with each and every one of all of these members on this committee, and I do move to approve this resolution. Okay.
[Lister]: Do I have a second for that?
[Giovino]: Mr. Chairman, I'd like to make a few comments before we move to a vote, if that's possible. As I said, Dr. Grace did a really great job of starting this off.
[McCabe]: Point of order, Ron, sorry. The motion needs to be seconded before there's a discussion, so I second the motion. It's not bringing it to a vote, but it needs to be seconded. All right, thank you.
[Giovino]: I second it.
[Lister]: Okay, on the motion.
[Giovino]: Okay, so in reading through this, I just thought there were some points that I need clarification on. My opinion of what's here, first, it says that no living names can be used. That really was different from the guideline we received from the school committee. That was not included in their criteria. I also think that although the rubric is very good for evaluating names of individuals, there are a lot of names that were submitted by citizens that are not our people. and will not be able to be scored under this rubric as well. The other concern I have is the division of, although it would save time for us to divide and conquer, everybody's scoring system, even though it's aligned here, would be different. And I would not necessarily be given a chance to vote on something I feel strong about versus some of the other names. I'm hoping that the committee has done some due diligence and looked at the names and has a pretty good idea of what names are valid and what can be thrown out. I had looked at an alternative which would could, you know, work with Dr. Grace's thought. I think the rubric is really a great way of reviewing individuals if that's the way we decide, but I don't want to preclude the fact that there are some names in here that are not dead people and not people. So I don't want to preclude them just with this vote. The other thing I thought, you know, not to, I don't like to criticize without having an alternative to discuss. So my thought was this, to combine the list, which we've already done, getting rid of the duplicates, which is great, reduce the list, I thought it's important that everybody every citizen in Medford who thought enough to make this to fill out a name and identify the name and give a cause is something that if we do nothing else as a committee, we need to make the citizens of Medford feel like this is their choice, not ours. So I think, I move that we look at a presentation meeting right away with the public, where they can each have three minutes to discuss why they put their name on. It probably will weed out a lot of people who, you know, don't wanna do that, but at least it gives us a chance to understand. You know, I've done my, you know, I went on the internet, I've learned about every name here, but I don't know the passion as to why people gave those names. I think that in terms of scheduling, today's May 4th, by May 11th, we can hold a forum with three minute presentations. I think at that May 11th, we can kick off a citywide survey where people, all people, all 60,000 people in the city have an opportunity to give their opinions of what names they like. It just is not as a binding vote, but as an opinion vote to help us make a decision. I think on the 19th, the results of that presentation could be given to the committee. And at that point, we can look at developing a list of 10 finalists. You know, again, Everybody has a vote. Everybody here has an opinion. So I think those finalists, those 10 finalists, or in case of a tie, it gets even longer, that list should go to the Historical Society for vetting in cases of people's name, historical names.
[Lister]: Can I stop you there? Yeah. Sorry to interrupt. The Historical Society has been, the Historical Commission has been notified and the Historical Society, and we don't have anyone that will, Okay, as the time I want has any interest in doing anything for us.
[Giovino]: All right, so somebody will have to vet them. Somebody from out of here. And then on May 21 have a final open forum for any citizen to give a comment on the finalist. I think at that point, we'll have enough information given from the city, plus our views plus our conversations. On the 24th, we can have our final debate and vote. My goal would be that we all, 23 of us, come up with one name, not three names, one name in unity that we all agree to, to present to the school committee so it's a real true vision of what the citizens of Medford are looking for. You know, again, I think Dr. Grace has given us a great start with this. I just think that there are some pieces and the way we evaluate things going forward, we do need to agree on some kind of a plan. And bottom line is you're all gonna be responsible for the name you pick, and you all have your history and criteria from where you come from. So that's my thought. I have it in writing if you wanna see it, but that's my thoughts. I have a question of privilege.
[Hill]: I'm sorry. Who's speaking? I am, Seth. It's a question of privilege. Just because we're starting into discussions that might take more discussion, I just kind of wanted to as familiar with. Down at the bottom of the screen is a button called Reactions. If you click on that, there's a way there to raise your hand. And raising your hand will, on the side, make a list of people so that, Jim, as our chair, you can go down and order folks that might have something to say. raise our hand like that. And from a, as we discuss more of both Dr. Grace's rubric as well as Ron's ideas and theoretically more ideas to come, I think we will need some facilitation with with some more parliamentary rules as far as, you know, we have a motion on the table. We're discussing that now. There are friendly amendments, those types of things. So we'll just need to be able to facilitate that. Okay, thank you.
[Lister]: Anything else on the amendments?
[Grace]: Just a point of information. I wanted to address one of the issues that Ron brought up with some of the names being suggested not being actual people. It is actually accounted for in the resolution itself, as they will be evaluated simply by example, since they won't necessarily be able to fit within the rubric because they are not people. So I just wanted to point that out. And then I was just a little confused if Ron was trying to add amendments or if he was trying to propose a completely different resolution itself. And if that's the case, we have to vote on mine first.
[Lister]: So to me, he was trying to add to your rubric. I mean, you were talking about using the rubric, but then adding additional language and dates of presentation to it. So I would imagine we would vote on the amendment first. We want to add that, and then we'd vote on the rubric.
[Giovino]: It's a point of information. I'm new at this, so I did not get on the agenda with this item. And I don't know whether it's a, I just presented it because I wanted people to understand that there is, There's two points here. And again, if Dr. Grace could clarify, if I'm calling it the mystic school, how would I score it versus one of the folks, one of the people that is being named at? That would be, how would I follow that criteria so that a number four, if I rated number four for ABC person, how would I vote number four for mystic and give you a ranking of that? That's where I'm kind of confused.
[Grace]: They would be separated out so that those that are not by person are rated by the example that they set and how they represent the community and their proud history versus actual person or group. And you can rate them through, and here I've written, it says, names not associated with a specific person are evaluated by example they set, such as exceptional, good, positive, neutral, or negative. And then we can, from there, pick the top ones and move those forward, along with the other names when we when we move on to further evaluation and other steps going forward.
[Lister]: Okay. Any more questions on that motion? So I'm a little unclear where we're going with this. We wanna vote the rubric, is everyone? Like that part so far, we can move that along. We had a first motion and a second. I would call for a vote on that.
[Rotolo]: We'll have their hands up, Mr. Chair. Sorry, point of order. People have their hands up ready to speak.
[Lister]: All right. Please speak out. Everybody's a co-host. You can unmute yourself when you want to speak.
[Gideon]: This is Hendrick. The motion that Ron suggested actually doesn't match up with what the school committee sent in their original resolution of what the work is that we're supposed to do. the, we're supposed to give them three names, and then they're the ones who choose which of the three names are the one that is put forward.
[Giovino]: But of information, if you read the directive from, I know it's confusing, I agree too, but if you look at the bottom of the charge that they gave us, it says up to three, we may present name, hyphenated names. So I do believe that either we get clarification, which they've already voted on it and it clearly says up to three.
[Lister]: All right. It's up to three, but clearly we could give one if we, if we come down to it, but I don't, let's go slowly here and let's work towards this. You know, let's not make that an issue here. I mean, we're going to, do our presentation at the end. I would hope that we get three names and we do a presentation on those three names and they make that decision. I mean, we've got to do our homework. There's clearly a lot of names on here that, you know, I know people just sent some names. I mean, some of them don't belong on here, but we need to figure out a system to work through that and get it down to a shorter list. So I'm looking for a motion here. I have a motion for the mover.
[Gideon]: I'm sorry, Jim, I just wanted to finish what I was saying before the point of information. I think that any chance to open this up to a zillion people spending three minutes is going to open a can of worms that none of us here that have jobs or families wanna deal with. It will be absolutely interminable and people will not stay on topic. We just don't have the time to listen. Once we have a small list, we can get people's feedback via survey. I think that that's the fastest way forward. We really need to get past this moment in Medford, I think. I think everyone can agree with that.
[SPEAKER_11]: Jim?
[Haberstrom]: Mr. Wooster? Go ahead. OK, so I'm just curious if we pass this rubric, which I think is really well vetted out. I'm just curious about number four. So if we pass this rubric, number four says each submission assigned five members of the advisory committee at random. Who's going to do that? How's that going to be accomplished?
[Lister]: Well, I would think that each person on that would break up into fives and each person would fill out one of these rubrics and then would have the discussion within those groups. But I would think that we would collect them individually and just, you know, average out a score and then discuss them. I would also, this is after we've narrowed this list down and then the opportunity for everyone to speak. If you want to speak passionately about one of these people, one of these submissions, then we should hear each other and let each other speak passionately about them. So we can hear the other person's opinion. But yeah, so I saw that the five people, and I don't know how that in a group would work for us. I think that would be individual sheets for each person.
[Haberstrom]: And then we'll talk. So does that mean we strike this number four out of this rubric? You're gonna vote on it?
[Hill]: Mr. Chair, if I may. Yes. Seth Hill speaking. So right now we have a motion on the floor to discuss the resolution as presented. From my understanding of what we're sort of faced with at this moment, Dr. Grace may or may not accept what I guess could have been a friendly amendment from committee member Giovano. I think that in itself is solely Dr. Grace's position as to whether or not we do that, or she allows that, or takes it, and then we discuss that inclusion or not.
[Lister]: Well, yes. She could take it back and make the change, or we could vote an amendment onto that before we pass it. OK. Dr. Grace.
[SPEAKER_15]: Yes.
[Grace]: Are we, I'm sorry, are we talking about the number four?
[Lister]: Yes, each submission is assigned five members of the advisory committee at random.
[Grace]: And the, question was to, or it was requested to strike that.
[Lister]: Well, walk us through your idea.
[Grace]: The idea. Well, there's a bunch of ways that we could randomize. assigning it. I mean we can pop all the names, all of our names into a website and pop out five different groups and the same thing with the other names. So it's random and we don't have a selection or preference as to what names each committee gets. That would be my suggestion on how to do it. It seems fair and the least biased way for us to form our groups so that we all are forced to work together and to evaluate these names and have these discussions needed.
[Lister]: So out of each group would come one submission to this rubrics.
[Grace]: Out of each group, everyone rates all of their names and then we pull them all together and see from there all of the scores. It's important that we see all of the scores from everybody, not everybody submitting just the top ones that they have.
[Lister]: Everybody submitting scores, not a group average coming out of a group, correct? That's what we're trying to clarify here.
[Grace]: Oh, sorry. Yes. Yes, we could. Yes, all individually do it. I think we should have individual and group averages for that just so that we can see how the breakdowns work as well.
[Lister]: Okay. Anybody with anything else on that?
[Lafleur]: I was going to clarify, would we be meeting two in those small groups or is it really individual work? So that small group work in terms of reviewing our ratings of those names?
[Grace]: I would leave it individually up to that group around your schedules as to how you all decide to research the names and then have those if you want to have the discussions or if you're just writing them on your own to do that, but we have a lot of names to go through even if we cut down some of that list tonight. Um, and they're going to need to be researched and vetted in some way, shape or form. So, um, you know, if we all share the work across the board, um, and we can make all those files available to everybody so we can see what everyone has collected on each of the names as well. Okay.
[Lister]: All right. Mr. Chair. Yes.
[Rotolo]: Thank you. So I also just want to thank Dr. Grace for putting this really, really thoughtful and helpful rubric together. And I only have a few thoughts, some of which have already been mentioned. In terms of the groups, I'm not sure the open meeting law allows us to meet five of us at a time without doing it in an open process, right? Mr. Lister, Mr. Chairman, I don't think we're allowed to do that. So we would either have to do it individually.
[McCabe]: We are, as long as there's not a quorum. Okay, open forum of the group.
[Rotolo]: Okay, thank you for that. So I also had a question like Rondovino about how to score names that are not people. And my idea is, I guess a friendly amendment would be that we tweak the language a little bit in the second and third rows. So I think the first row in terms of the potential to bring the community together fits perfectly with both people and names or words. The second and the third could be tweaked slightly so that, for example, role model for Medford students could become role model or positive influence for Medford students. And in addition to everything that's written here, just a line at the bottom saying, if this is not a person, also has these same qualities. I think we could tweak that language. I don't know what the best way to do that is in terms of today's meeting. I'm happy to write it in the chat and we can discuss it as a friendly amendment. I did not bring it ahead of time written out. And the same for the third row, which represents Medford's community proud history. Obviously a name or word will not have lived in Medford, but it could have a longstanding connection to Medford. So that's, yeah, that's my friendly amendment.
[Grace]: I accept those changes. I think they're a good addition to it and it'll make it easier across the board. So yes.
[Lister]: All right. I know someone's taking the minutes. Are we getting this, Elisa? I don't hear. Hold on one second. Lisa. I don't see it.
[Kay]: It just said she's a coast. Can you hear me now.
[Lister]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_04]: Can you hear me now.
[Lister]: Yes. Are you getting this.
[SPEAKER_04]: These amendment changes? If I can, yep. If somebody, what we usually do in school committee, if somebody puts forth a motion that they email it to me later as properly worded, so that I don't put words in somebody's submission. So if people can do that, when you do submit a motion, you know, at the end of the meeting, if you can email it to me, that would be helpful.
[Lister]: And I'll- We need to read it back so we can finish voting on this motion.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right. We can't wait till, so let me- No, I understand that, but I'm just saying for the note purposes, I just want to get that out there.
[SPEAKER_06]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: So if Grace wants to reread her motion, and then Patrick is seconding the motion, and then you can take the vote from there, I will take down the vote.
[SPEAKER_06]: Okay.
[Lister]: So, Grace.
[SPEAKER_04]: Now she has those amendments that Laura added. So she should probably do that before she reads it so that everybody knows what they're voting on.
[Lister]: So Grace.
[Grace]: Sorry, Grace. Hold on. Let me pull up the document. Okay. So you would like me to read the entire resolution?
[SPEAKER_06]: No, I think we can. We can go to number four.
[SPEAKER_04]: Probably should for public record purposes. Okay. This is a public meeting. Yes.
[Grace]: Okay. All right. So the entire resolution states, whereas the Medford School Committee has charged the Columbus Elementary School renaming advisory committee with the task of vetting names submitted for consideration and weighing the relative strength of submissions against the criteria the advisory committee will develop. Whereas these criteria may include, but not be limited to such factors as the potential for the name to bring the community together, the ability for the name to stand as a role model for Medford students, and the name as a representation of the Medford community's proud history. Whereas the advisory committee must narrow the field of names to three finalists by May 24th, 2021. Be it so resolved that the advisory committee adopts the following selection criteria and procedure. One, submissions made in bad faith not conforming with the submission of names for consideration requirements or nominating a living person are excluded from consideration. Two, all other submissions are evaluated using the below rubric. Potential to bring the community together. Number four, significant to multiple historically marginalized groups, not polarizing. Three, significant to one historically marginalized group, not polarizing. Two, significant to most of the community, not polarizing. And one, Polarizing marginalizes some community members. The next line, role model for Medford students or Laura's word was.
[SPEAKER_04]: Role model or positive influence for Medford students.
[Grace]: Thank you. Role model or positive influence for Medford students. Thank you, Lisa. I appreciate it. Number four is known for exceptional deeds, community involvement, or contributions to society historically notable with a legacy that will last decades. Three, known for good community deeds, involvement, or contribution to society historically notable, no known character concerns. Also, if it's a place just known for the community, known to, known for positive deeds, community involvement or contributions to society, no known character concerns or naming issues in general, just a positive place. place, and then one known for community involvement and contributions, known character concerns, whether major example, criminality, depravity, or oppression, or minor. And then all of those are with Laura's amendments. Yeah. Yeah, okay. And then the last one was represents Medford's community, community's proud history. Four, lives in Medford with Medford specific reputation or known for Medford if it's a place. Three, lived in Medford without Medford specific reputation, known to Medford. Number two, did not live in, Medford, Medford-specific reputation. One has never lived or visited Medford, reputation not specific to Medford or place that's not specific to Medford as well. And then number three, submissions are scored by summing the numerical values. For example, a four potential three role model and three represents would yield a score of 10. Four, each submission is assigned to five members of the advisory committee at random. These committee members individually research and evaluate submissions according to the rubric. Five, the 15 submissions receiving the highest average score advance to consideration by the whole advisory committee in the Event of a tie, at the cutoff, all tied submissions advance. Six, advisory committee conducts additional research and solicits public input. Seven, all members of the advisory committee evaluate the remaining submissions according to the rubric. Evaluations previously made in step four cannot be modified. Eight, the advisory committee deliberates to select three names by consensus. weighing the submission's average scores, average values on each rubric dimension, public input and research. Nine, while consensus has not been reached, the chair will ask dissenting members to state their concerns for additional discussion. Discussion continues until consensus has been reached or the advisory committee acknowledges that consensus will not be reached. And 10, the remaining names are selected by a simple majority vote.
[Lister]: Okay, and what was number 11 that we wanted to add? Someone made a motion for number 11 as a change.
[SPEAKER_04]: Was it the living person or not a living person? I don't know, that's somewhere.
[Lister]: That's back up at the number one that has living or nominating a living person or excluded from consideration. I think we need to... discuss that, whether we're gonna eliminate that or?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[Lister]: Any discussion on that living person?
[McCabe]: So point of order, Ron presented an amendment to eliminate the living person portion and there was no second that I've heard yet.
[Haberstrom]: Yeah, sorry, correct.
[Lafleur]: Second. I will second that to remove the living person restriction or non living persons.
[Lister]: Okay. All those in favor. Removing the living person restriction. Yeah, I can have to enhance. Yeah. Is there a vote button.
[Hill]: There is a thumbs up or there are checks and Xs in the reactions down below.
[Lister]: Okay. Thumbs up. Oh, checks and Xs. We'll do the checks. Instead of the thumbs up, could we use the check mark, please? Thank you.
[Giovino]: Point of information, somehow I do not have a check mark.
[SPEAKER_11]: Neither do I. Neither do I, nor can I raise my hand.
[Lafleur]: Your versions of Zoom. I don't know why that is.
[Bri]: Bree here. Mr. Chair, if I may, I have a question. Before we do the checker and X, I wanted to understand more about why the living person restriction was there.
[Lister]: So we've taken out the living restriction person. You know what, that's what this vote is for. That they don't, right now, the living, that says the person has to be, that says that if this is a living person, they're excluded.
[SPEAKER_15]: Right.
[Lister]: And we just voted to say that that's not one of the exclusions, that it could be a living person. Oh, that it could be a living person.
[Bri]: Right, yeah. And I wanted to understand more about why we would have excluded living people.
[Hill]: Originally?
[Bri]: Originally.
[Hill]: Can we hear from Grace on that?
[Bri]: Yeah, I want to hear from Grace on that.
[Grace]: Okay. So the living people were was excluded just because people There are, because even if a person is alive right now they have a lot of, presumably a lot of life yet to still live. It puts us in a weird position. I think if, for whatever reason, something does not go well in their life, for us to then have to potentially come back and address the issue again, there isn't a full history yet. not saying that it would happen, but there's always a potential for things to shift in a manner that we don't see yet as a committee because they haven't lived their life fully yet. And hopefully they have a long, filled, wonderful life, but there always is that risk. And as a way to try and reduce that, and to not put us as a community in this place again where we have to come back and try and rename the school. So that's why it was there. And that was kind of the reasoning behind it.
[Lister]: I think that when you memorialize someone's name, generally it's taken that the person is no longer here, that when you memorialize them by naming a building after them, I mean, that to me is that intent, You know, you don't name a building after, as Grace said, but I may be wrong.
[Lafleur]: We have a sense of how many living people are on our list. I'm just curious.
[Lister]: There might be a dozen, I think. I mean, I'm not sure. I've had some looked at some of them.
[McCabe]: I'm not weighing in one way or the other. I just, I mean, the McGlynn, the McGlynn school was named after- May and McGlynn's father, correct. Who was living at the time, so. Yes. There is precedent.
[Lister]: Oh, it has been done definitely, but in most cases it's, when you memorialize someone's name, they're no longer of this earth.
[Rocha]: Another point to add on is that, If, well, considering the fact that we're here to change a name that was already done before to base what we name this or what we changed the name to based on what has already been done, does not necessarily make sense.
[Bri]: Yeah. I would agree with that too. I guess my trouble with voting on this is that I see both sides of it in that like, yes, they don't have any more story left to tell. They're easier to vet, you know, if they are passed. But, you know, naming them after someone who is alive and then having to go, potentially having to go back later is also that example of knowing better and doing better. And when we learn, we adapt and make changes. So I Yeah, it's tough.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't mean to interrupt, but if you're going with this as an amendment to change the amendment, then I would say any votes, Jim, it's just my suggestion to go down the list as the chairperson and call out everybody's name, just from the future for now or for whatever, just, I know it's a long list, but I think that we'd have to have that down on the notes anyway, so.
[Lister]: Okay. If I didn't get the last vote, say it clearly, yes. Okay. So on this amendment, this amendment alone, the changing the living, taking out a living person. Can we vote on this?
[SPEAKER_04]: If you're gonna vote on it, who made the motion and who seconded it? I'm sorry, I might've missed that.
[McCabe]: All right. Ron Jovino made the motion, Lila Floor seconded the motion. Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay. Yep, good.
[Lister]: And that's the strike. the language that says a living person is excluded. Everyone clear on that?
[Kay]: Point of information. That's what we're voting on right now to exclude.
[Lister]: Just that amendment. Yes. To strike the language that says that it can't be a living person.
[Lafleur]: Correct? That is correct. So there could be more discussion or we can proceed to the vote.
[Lister]: Yes. All right. So a yes vote would be to strike the language of it being a, it has to be a living person. So if you vote no.
[Kay]: No, that it can't be a living person. We're voting that we can't be a living person.
[Lister]: Well, that was the language, can't be a living person.
[Kay]: Are we voting on it the way Dr. Grace presented it?
[Giovino]: No. The amendment was to eliminate the language of no living person can be considered.
[SPEAKER_06]: Okay.
[Rotolo]: But essentially strikes the word or nominating a living person. We're striking those words. That is the amendment that's on the table, right?
[Lister]: So a yes vote would be striking those words.
[Kay]: Which means we could vote on a person who's still alive for a name. Correct.
[Lister]: Yes.
[Kay]: Okay.
[Lister]: Okay. So are we on the list? Three brothers?
[McCabe]: Just point of order real quick, Jim, sorry. I mean, it's within the chair's purview to call the vote and you don't have to do the roll call. And if somebody questions it just from a sake of time, if we're gonna be taking a lot of votes, we don't have to do the roll every time. If it's a close vote, I recommend doing a roll. If it's not, you can take the call.
[Donato Jr]: Roll call vote.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm sorry, but anything on zoom has to be done by roll call. That's why even school committee can't adjourn by just all saying we adjourn. Um, if we were in person, we could do that, but we are not. So everything does have to be a roll call vote, even to just adjourn.
[Lister]: Okay. Thank you for clarifying that three brothers.
[Bri]: No.
[Lister]: Stan Puccio. No. Aaron Genia. Sorry.
[Genia]: No.
[Lister]: Seth Fuller.
[Lafleur]: No.
[Lister]: Sorry.
[Lafleur]: No.
[Grace]: No.
[Lister]: No. Jim Lista? No. Kenneth Mallon? No. Kristen Scalise?
[SPEAKER_15]: No.
[Lister]: Laura Rotolo? No. Leroy LaFleur? No. Luwin Thapa?
[Lafleur]: No.
[Lister]: Maria Rocha?
[Rocha]: No.
[Lister]: Patrick McCabe? No. Paul Donato, Jr.
[Donato Jr]: No.
[Lister]: Ron Giovino.
[Donato Jr]: Yes.
[Lister]: Seth Hill. No. Kathy Kay. No. Matthew Havistar.
[Haberstrom]: No.
[Lister]: Havistar, sorry. No. Janelle Garland McKenzie.
[Dufour]: No.
[Lister]: Josie DeFore.
[Dufour]: No.
[Lister]: Okay, so majority there, everybody heard that.
[Kay]: And Mr. Chair, Caitlin Shaughnessy has joined us, just so you're aware.
[Lister]: Okay, Caitlin, did you hear the whole topic we were discussing? Have you been here for a while?
[Shaughnessy]: Yes, hi, I'm voting no.
[Lister]: Okay. Thank you. Thank you. To clarify it now, It has to be, a living person is not to be considered, okay? Okay. All right, on the other amendment on, I believe it was number four on the submission is assigned to five members of the advisory committee at random. Did we have other language that we were gonna put?
[Giovino]: Mr. Chairman?
[Lister]: Yes.
[Giovino]: I'm wondering if Dr. Grace would amend that segment to allow that each one of us vet our list and come up with next meeting with our five top and work through it that way. It seems like getting committees and subcommittees together in the interest of time, I would imagine that everybody's looked at the list. has vetted their own list, has done some research prior to this meeting. I'm asking that we may amend that to everybody being charged with bringing their five top and compiling that list for next meeting. As opposed to going through the distribution, and I also think we should adopt the rubric as our guidelines for individuals, but I just think that I don't want to get Vito Corleone's name and trying to
[Lister]: No, I agree. I agree. And I was trying to get to that point and then go to the list later on today and work through and take off some nonsense names there that we all can identify. And then if we agreed that we aren't taking any living names, we could remove them.
[Giovino]: I'm just curious what Dr. Grace has thoughts on that idea.
[Grace]: Grace, you're muted. Sorry, a point of information maybe we the first part of this does allow us to go through and take off names to begin with off the top as to amending number four, I. I'm inclined to say no, just because it would do us well as a committee to have a paper trail with our research from each of the committees, from each of the smaller groups aligned so that we can also have that available, not only when we do our presentation, but you know, if the public wants it.
[Lister]: Well, I think it's the each submission. Each submission is the part that we're in question here. We're trying to shorten the list and then get it down to a short list of submissions that we put into the group.
[Grace]: Yeah, so it would be each submission after we've already gone through. Oh, no, I see what you're saying. No, so it's, we're already gonna go through and cut things off in the first one. And then from there, we're saying each, all the other submissions are being evaluated by the rubric and then- All the other, okay. Right, all other submissions are evaluated by the rubric below. And then those are the submissions that are also assigned to five members at random. Okay. in the smaller groups.
[Giovino]: Just a point of information. Again, I agree with your process. I'm just, in terms of a paper trail, we'll all be bringing our paper trail because people will understand which each 23 of us has elected as our top five. I'm just trying to get to the final debate in a debate where if I get a group of, in my group, if I have four names of which none of them are of my top four or top five, then I don't have input in that list. I'm just suggesting that if each of us brought their top five, that builds a list that we can start debating on. And it's just a shortened way of doing that. So I'm just, You know, in my opinion, I can't support this resolution as it stands, because to me it just represents a debate that other members of this committee are not gonna be part of, and we're gonna be coming out with our ratings on these, and nobody's gonna see that necessarily. This way here, each of us has our own individual input in a top five and then a group debate can start on the numbers that we end up with. That was my intent. I'm just suggesting that we tweak that a little bit in the interest of time. I think you get the same results. Because we're all holding on to, I hope we're holding on to our top five that we know.
[Grace]: I think we are actually going to spend more time if we force everyone to go through and do independent research on the rest of the names submitted. It's going to take us a lot more time and effort to do that versus trying to break this up into smaller chunks. divide and conquer and spread the work out in a equitable way where we are not all spending a lot of time. in order to go through and research all of the names such that we can come up with a top five. So that is why it is written as it is written. And that is why I am also saying no to that proposed change.
[Giovino]: My guess is that Our top fives for all 23 of us will have a lot of commonality in them, because we will have vetted them. So I'm just trying to avoid a long debate on names that I may have no interest in anyway. So I think if we move to top five list, it just shortens that. There's going to be plenty of time and plenty of discussion and debate. But I appreciate what you're saying. I just can't support it the way it's written.
[Haberstrom]: Can I jump in here, Mr. Chairman?
[Lister]: Go ahead, go ahead. Paul Donato next, Paul Donato, Jamie.
[Donato Jr]: My suggestion through you, it'd be each member pick three names off of this list, submit it to the chair. So this way we can have some sort of list and start from there. That'll narrow it down.
[Lister]: I agree with that. I agree with what you're saying, but my intention tonight was to take this rubrics let's and hold it till we get a shorter list, but go through this list, but start from the bottom and work our way up. I mean, you can see how many submissions there are for the names. Like you say, some of us have a short five people name list, but we have to figure a way to shorten this list before we get into doing our investigating.
[Grace]: Excuse me, I would like to try and move to the prior question and vote on the rubric. I do have at 7.30. I have a prior work commitment on Tuesdays starting at that time. So I make that motion.
[Lister]: All right. I'm sorry. All right. So
[Hill]: information. I had typed up in chat. And there is a chat feature that some of us are using to sort of back channel while other folks are talking, just to make it easier for to keep track of what's going on. There's To simplify what I think Dr. Grace might have had from an intention to to randomly assign each name to five individuals on the committee, we could just push that responsibility to the superintendent's office for that facilitation. If we said, OK, we'll go through, and it doesn't even need to necessarily be something that the entire list does, if we say to the superintendent's office, please present us with a... Please choose from this list of... I'm sorry. Please eliminate the living people from this list. And then randomly assign each of these names to five members of the committee. And then we'll go through individually, submit it back to the superintendent's office. They'll run the tally and then present us with the information that would bring us to step number five. And I'm not sure whether or not that... I'm not sure that's the intention of...
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a school committee. I don't think they want the superintendent's office. It's not the superintendent's role. It is the school committee's role, and they assigned it to you guys, if that makes sense.
[Hill]: Well, my understanding was that the superintendent's office was there for administrative. I mean, that would be kind of the role of a secretary, to what my understanding is. There's actually no... It's only administrative. There's no decision-making happening from the superintendent's office. It's only just facilitating our operations, which would be the role of what a secretary and a committee would be doing.
[SPEAKER_04]: My understanding- Hold on. So I'm just letting you know that.
[Grace]: My hand up on point of order. I had previously requested that we move to, um, the previous question so that we can vote on it. Um, is that something that can we please do that on vote on the, on the admin mint at hand?
[Lister]: All right. The amendment at hand is. All other submissions are assigned to five members of the advisory committee.
[Grace]: Actually, that was never seconded. So the amendment at hand would be the overall rubric and names itself, the overall process.
[Lister]: The overall rubric. I don't believe we're done discussing the amendments that were brought to it. I wanted to go through each. make sure we were clear on all of them.
[Kay]: Can I point of information?
[Gideon]: I move to adjourn until next time to get Grace's to be at her job and do what she needs to do.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a motion on the floor. The motion is Grace's original resolution, which was seconded by Patrick. So you need to take a vote on that because it was seconded.
[Haberstrom]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: Want to do amendments later or whatever, you know, decide something else, a different issue, but you have a motion on the floor.
[McCabe]: All right. The amendments that are on the floor get voted on before the original. That's correct. That are on the floor get voted before the original.
[Grace]: That amendment wasn't previously seconded, so what is on the floor right now is the resolution itself.
[McCabe]: Exactly. Actually, I believe that the amendment from Laura Rotolo, unless we're considering accepting friendly amendments, and if it's a friendly amendment, needs to be accepted by you, and then me as the person who seconded.
[Grace]: Okay, well, I did accept Laura's friendly amendment, so I will.
[McCabe]: I would accept that as well. If we're accepting friendly amendments as a group, it's under debate whether or not a friendly amendment needs to be voted on by the whole or could be just accepted by a person originally making the motion in the second.
[SPEAKER_04]: Everybody needs to vote because it's on Zoom.
[Lister]: Okay, I'll go through the line.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm not sure what everyone's voting on right now.
[Lister]: I don't understand what we're voting on. Can we get the two friendly amendments please?
[Rotolo]: I need to begin with mine. So my friendly amendment was to add a clarifying language to rows two and three relating to submissions that were not names of people, but were instead words or terms. If we need specific language, I can, I've just been typing it up so I can read that in now. Please. Okay, so this is my friendly amendment. If you will just follow with me on the rubric. In column, we're looking at row number two. Column one, it would read role model for Medford students or positive influence for Medford students. Uh, Lisa, Miss Angelica, let me know if I'm going too fast.
[SPEAKER_04]: We need to know what they're voting for. I'm sorry, can you repeat that? I want you to say the amendments so people can second it and vote on it. I don't have to wait until after the fact.
[Rotolo]: Got it, okay. So we're still in row number two, column two, we would add the sentence, if not a person has a historical significance that will last decades. Column three, we would add the sentence, if not a person is historically notable and has no known negative properties. Column four, if not a person is perceived positively. And column five, if not a person has negative or harmful connotations or history. And then moving on to row three, the first column stays the same, represents Medford community's proud history. The second column, we would add, if not a person has longstanding ties to Medford with positive history. Column three, we would add, if not a person has ties to Medford without negative history. Column four, add, has no ties to Medford and no negative history. And column five has no ties to Medford.
[Lister]: And that's it. Okay, and that was a friendly amendment.
[SPEAKER_03]: So did somebody second that? Patrick second that? I can second it if you need it seconded.
[SPEAKER_06]: Okay.
[Lister]: Now you have to- Were you gonna vote on that, the amendment? or was it a friendly amendment? She accepted it to her original. Do we have to vote on it?
[SPEAKER_04]: Your call.
[McCabe]: If it's accepted by the person making the motion in the second, it's your call, Mr. Chair.
[Lister]: So we're not going to vote on it. We're going to go back to the motion now. Was there any other, was there another amendment that we wanted to clarify?
[Grace]: No, I believe we were at the amendment itself. for the resolution itself.
[Kay]: There was nothing else. Point of information, can I ask a question? Yes. So Dr. Grace, if I'm understanding you correctly, and I'm not sure if I am. I think what the suggestion you're making is that we take off the names of the people who are still alive, and then we would come with a list of names that we would then use the rubric and take our top five, and then come together from there and then assign people to vet those names to make sure that there's nothing we have to worry about.
[Grace]: The list would be, anything that's bad faith not conforming and not living would be removed, then we would go ahead and assign the rest of the names to smaller groups of five members, they would be randomly divided up between everybody. Everyone would then research and do their own scoring according to said rubric. We come back together with all of those numbers and we take a look from there.
[Kay]: Okay, thank you. I understand now. Thank you.
[Lister]: I think the shortening of the list we would do as a group. But all right, let's Everyone in favor of this motion to accept this resolution? I'll go through reading the names one at a time.
[SPEAKER_04]: Motion seconded by Patrick, amended by Laura, correct?
[Lister]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you. Okay, roll call.
[McCabe]: Hold on one second. Lisa, I thought that Jim had made the call though, that we're voting on the original motion. You're right. Okay.
[Lister]: Yeah, I'm sorry. The amendment was a friendly amendment. We accepted that. Now it's the original motion to accept this rubrics with the few changes we made. And now I'm calling for the vote. Agree brothers?
[Genia]: Yes.
[Lister]: Leigh Ann Puccio. Yes. Erin Genia.
[Genia]: Yes.
[Lister]: Beth Fuller.
[Genia]: Yes.
[Lister]: Grace Caldera. Yes. Hendrick. Yes. Jim Lister. Yes. Kenneth Mallon. Yes. Kristen Scalise.
[Genia]: Yes.
[Lister]: Laura Rotolo.
[Genia]: Yes.
[Lister]: Leroy LaFleur.
[Lafleur]: Yes.
[Lister]: Luwin Tapa.
[Lafleur]: Yes.
[Lister]: Maria Rocha. Yes. Patrick McCabe. Yes. Baldonado Jr.
[Donato Jr]: Yes.
[Lister]: Ron Giovino.
[Giovino]: No.
[Lister]: Seth Hill. Yes. Kathy Kay. Yes. Matthew Havistrop. Yes. Caitlin Shaughnessy.
[Mackenzie]: Yes.
[Lister]: Janelle Garland McKenzie.
[Mackenzie]: Yes.
[Lister]: Josie DeFore.
[Mackenzie]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_11]: Okay. Thank you. That passes. Jim, can I make a comment? Yes. So for the sake of simplifying this whole process, you know, we're all, we're all, here for a reason. We were all picked for a reason, or whether it may be one of the school committee members put us on, or you were in the lottery. One way or another, we're all here for the same goal. I think in order to simplify things, I think the best avenue might be what Paul had said. And have each of us just picked three names and submit them to you using the rubric, obviously, You know, using that process of elimination with three names, sending them to you as the chair, and then opening it up for discussion at the next meeting. This could go on for days and days.
[Lister]: I get that. As Ron said, you know, a lot of people that submitted names have some impassioned feelings about the names that they submitted. There are some ridiculous names on here. Absolutely. So, I mean, we should go through the list and get rid of names that aren't real.
[SPEAKER_11]: The survey of 300 people or so, where did that come from? The people that submitted those names, where was that from?
[Kay]: It was put out to the community through the superintendent.
[SPEAKER_11]: Okay, so that was put out to the community. So I think we kind of got a pulse on what the community is thinking with those names. And I'll tell you that the first five or six names, they're great, you know, they're great starting points. But I think we, as being tasked with this, you know, with this task, I think it might be a good idea that we all take, you know, three of our top, use the rubric, you know, and submit three names a piece.
[Haberstrom]: Just keep it simple. I'm sorry, we just passed information on what we were going to do. So with all due respect, Dan, I mean, that's what we should be doing. I think it'd be great if we could cut down this list and then randomly assign these numbers, just like step four. I'm not going to pick three names and just hand them to you.
[Kay]: If I may also say I agree. Okay. I think what we need to do. I don't I don't live in Medford I'm not from Medford I come from New York originally. I don't know the names on this list that may be living or deceased. And so I think that's very important that for those of you in the community who might know these names, I know some of the people who are on it that are still presently alive, but I don't know all of them. So I think that would probably be an easy place to start perhaps for this evening.
[Hill]: Yes.
[Rocha]: The whole point of randomization is to maintain a point of objectivity, to go and just simply pick three names that are our favorites Um, even if we do use the rubric, that's going to ultimately be secondary, at least for some, um, to the rubric itself. And that can become problematic. I'm sorry. Maria. Um, I was saying that, um, the point of having, uh, the names that we research randomly assigned is in order to maintain a level of objectivity. To simply go through the list and pick our three favorites completely gets rid of that aspect of objectivity because this is not about what we want. This is about what the Medford community wants. And so if we're not going to research not only the impact that this will have on the community itself, as in, will this marginalize certain groups or not? And beyond that, will this be a positive influence, et cetera, et cetera? It just seems like we're, to just pick our three favorites is going against the purpose of this committee.
[Giovino]: Point of information. We've already approved the resolution, so we don't have to have this discussion anymore. We should move towards keep the ball moving. I mean, we've already voted on it. It's done. It's time to move to.
[Lister]: Correct.
[Donato Jr]: Correct.
[SPEAKER_06]: Okay.
[McCabe]: Mr. Chair, I just wanted to offer up to Ron as well and other folks the point they brought up. I mean, if we get assigned somebody who's not our first choice, we have the ability to talk to people who were assigned that person, right? And to put in your opinion to other members of the committee so that your voice is heard. You're not locked out just because you didn't get that person.
[Giovino]: Thank you, Patrick. Like I said, I'm semi-retired. So I've done a lot of research on the internet on all these names. And again, the piece that I think I'm missing is the passion that allowed somebody to go to the website and pick a name. And that's the only piece I don't have with me. And that's why I want to get to that point where the community either fills out a survey or tells us something more than what I don't think I already know. So I just want to see this move in an orderly fashion, because I do believe these debates and these subcommittee groups are going to be time consuming.
[Lister]: OK. All right, to move back to this, what we just passed now, we'll go back and we can take our list out and start. Submissions made in bad faith, not conforming with the submission of names consideration requirements. I mean, do we wanna go down the list and pull out names who are made in bad faith?
[Bri]: Does someone wanna share their screen with that list?
[Dufour]: I would just want to point out that there was one name that was submitted on the same line as PeerPoint. The name was Fannie Farmer. It did not make it onto the list because it was submitted in the same line as another name.
[Lister]: What's that name?
[Dufour]: The name was Fannie Farmer. Yeah.
[Lister]: Fannie Farmer?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes. Fannie Farmer. F-A-N-N-I-E. Bomber.
[Giovino]: I think she's on the big list, original list, but she got lost in the consolidation.
[Kay]: I have her on the list I'm looking at. I was sent today, I think.
[SPEAKER_15]: Hold on.
[Lafleur]: Jim, I had a clarifying question about the resolution that was submitted by Hendrik Giedones. So where is that now in terms of the agenda? What was the... Resolution? And that's a resolution to refer to the Medford Historical Society for assistance as part of the naming project.
[Lister]: So I've reached out to the mayor and the Historical Society, the Historical Commission has no interest and no one available to meet with us or to do any work for us. If anyone has anybody, you know, we'd be happy to have them come on and give us some advice, but that's the position of the Historical Society.
[Gideon]: My understanding is that the historical society will help us, but they don't have somebody that is available to come to the meetings. So we need to submit materials to them in writing so that they can help us. That wasn't the message I got. If that is no longer the case, this is what Susie Weiss expressed to me. I don't know if this happened after the mayor wasn't able to secure somebody from the historical commission, or if it happened before, but my understanding is that they were willing to help.
[SPEAKER_04]: The mayor was discussed, talked to Jim today, if I'm not mistaken, Jim?
[Lister]: Yes. Yes. And there was no availability, so. Okay. If you have someone that will, Henrik, that wants to We're you know, they should contact.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes. And then the mayor Jim's for the chair.
[Shaughnessy]: I had a point of information. It was to answer our chairman's question about suggestions made maybe not in the best faith. Kate Elwell suggested color school. And I think It was well intended, but her description is that her five-year-old came up with it and she sort of just hoped it wouldn't offend anybody. I think that that's, you know, a thoughtful way to do it, but I don't think it gets to the core of what we're trying to accomplish.
[Lister]: Okay. I mean, so we want to go through this and make a list and then vote to take those people or those names off We can start from the bottom and work our way up. And that would be one of them we would include, but... Yes, let's do that. Can we get to the list and get rid of some of these names?
[McCabe]: Mr. Chairman, I think we have nine minutes left. I'm just wondering if the same thing would be accomplished. Like if this went to the small group of five people and they saw Vito Corleone, then they would... give that the lowest grades all across the board, and then it would have a low score and just get filtered out automatically, I believe.
[Donato Jr]: I believe he said at the beginning, it had to be public, right, Elisa? This had to be done in public?
[McCabe]: No, this is not public, so long as there's not a quorum, Paul. If there's a quorum of the committee, then it's subject to open meeting law, but a group of five of us is not going to meet the requirement as I understand it.
[Bri]: I think Grace's original motion was that we would go through the names here and then the names that weren't eliminated would then be split out randomly.
[Giovino]: Well, living or dead is easy to sort out, so that we can do clerically. I think whether it's frivolous or not may be subject to a debate. So that may need to go to subcommittee, but certainly on this list are names that can be eliminated without a discussion about dead or alive, and that can move on. And then I think in subcommittee, a name like colors would be taken care of.
[Shaughnessy]: Sure. If I could just accelerate our process. Second, from the bottom, we have a submission that says, please do not change the name. I think ones like that are also pretty easy to eliminate. I'm just scanning through now.
[Genia]: I would like to bring up looking at the rankings of the names.
[Lister]: Excuse me, they're not rankings, they're just a tally.
[Genia]: The tally, yes, thank you. Mystic Elementary School has received 22 votes. And I'm wondering about Mystic was also an entry, at least three. received at least three, I think.
[Lister]: Yes, as well. I think they got grouped in together with Mystic. We could have discussion on that as far as that's just a person that I had do the thing, the tally for me, grouped them together. But I realized there was distinction between the two that we would have to discuss.
[Genia]: Yeah, yeah. So I would like to have those be separate.
[Gideon]: Yes. We cannot use the ranked list as our working list because it's not a ranking. I understand but that's what it says on the it's it's a an edited version of we can't work from an edited version. It doesn't uh we're working from the original list or are we working from The revised list.
[Lister]: This would be the original list just changed into a shorter format.
[Kay]: I think the one that Susie Weiss sent us today is an attachment was just cleaned up and they're all alphabetical.
[SPEAKER_06]: Okay.
[Giovino]: I do think it's important to have an official list as we just found out Fannie Farmer somehow got lost in the transition. I'm also suggesting that maybe a couple of people on this committee can take the task of individually vetting the list for dead or alive and inappropriate, and then work together to come up with a final list. I mean, I just think, you know, There's no debate in some of the stuff. Anything debatable stays on the list, just to suggest.
[Kay]: Can we just, I know some names right now, like Diane Caldwell Elementary, Diane is still alive, thank goodness. So we can, you know, take that one off. Joan Buckley Yeager, she's also still alive. Kamala Harris, back, you know, Kamala Harris, that can come off the list. Marie Cassidy also. Those are the four I had of people that I know that still work. Anthony Fauci. Anthony Fauci too, right, that's another one.
[Shaughnessy]: I also found kids and dragons, which didn't.
[Rotolo]: But I think anything, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. Go for it. Anything that I think dead or alive, we could do clerically, but anything relating to whether it was in good faith or bad faith, or whether it meets the requirements, we really do need to debate.
[Rocha]: Okay. Would it be possible to share screens with the original list so that we're able to actually see the list together and possibly take off names right now?
[Donato Jr]: Extremely small. I didn't receive an updated list today.
[Lafleur]: I mean, if we're working with a shared document, we could also continue this work. We could just begin to edit it and then make comments and such, and so we would be able to see what the comments are. There's a second tab here that's the cleaned up list of names at the bottom there.
[Kay]: Can you click on that one? Whoever's sharing that?
[Shaughnessy]: Hi, sorry, I'm sharing.
[Kay]: What am I clicking on? The cleaned up list at the bottom, Caitlin. It's a separate tab. Oh, the tab, yep.
[SPEAKER_15]: Yeah.
[Kay]: Well, that's the one I was referring to, and Franny Farmer is on it, Joes. Okay, should I scroll down to the bottom or to the top? So that right there.
[Gideon]: So on this list, Mystic and Missituk is still a single entry.
[Kay]: Right, it should be two entries, correct?
[Genia]: Yes, those are separate entries.
[Kay]: Go ahead. We need to put a new line in.
[SPEAKER_14]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, folks, it's 7.58. I just wanted to note the time. Do we know when our next meeting is? I don't think it was scheduled yet, but that's Jim's question.
[Kay]: I just didn't know if it was already settled and I missed it, sorry. Jim, do we know when our next meeting is gonna be?
[Lister]: So Susan had put a questionnaire out for everybody and I'll have to get back to her and see what, I think we were talking one a week. And then after seeing the way things progressed tonight, I think we're gonna request that we should request another week on the other end from the mayor past that deadline of the 24th, maybe get us to June 1st. Can I have a motion?
[Giovino]: This is a suggestion, too. I mean, it would be a real good use of our time during the week. We have some action items that we can approach. I know we can't do public meeting stuff, but clerical stuff like making sure this list is fixed and preparing for how the subcommittees are going to open up, those might be things we want to hit the ground running next week.
[Lister]: Yes.
[Donato Jr]: I make a motion to extend one week, Mr. Chairman.
[Lister]: Can I get a second on that motion to request an extension from the mayor for another week beyond the scheduled 24th? Second. Can you second that for me? Second. Any discussion?
[Hill]: Yes, please. Go ahead. One of the things that's important to me have this happening in a timeline that can actually sync up to the end of school for this academic year. As the parent of a fifth grader, it's important to me to have a timeline that can actually have the renaming ceremony, what I would hope be part of It's something that my daughter is really looking forward to it's part of why I volunteered for the committee itself. I know that there are other parents of fifth graders and other parents here to that might be a consideration.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm sorry to intercede, but I don't think that you can make a motion to extend it by a week because the mayor can't make that decision. It would be the school committee as a whole. She's only one vote on the school committee.
[Lister]: We wanted to ask the mayor for the extension, was the motion.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, well, it would have to go to the school committee for a vote. So we meet on the 10th. I suppose we could try to add it to the 10th's agenda if that's necessary.
[Hill]: We're gonna try and stay within schedule, but we're asking for the other week at the other end, because just to get that- From a point of order, sir, that's not within our, that's not how we've been charged and what the resolution that actually formed the committee, that's not necessarily how it works. It's not just asking the mayor.
[SPEAKER_04]: We would have to go. That's what I just said. It would have to go to the school committee for a vote. It is a school committee. The mayor has only one vote on the school committee. And secondly, if in fact the committee could not come to, could not submit three names, I believe by, May 24 meeting that the school committee would. I think the school committee is going to want to name change, I believe it says by July 31. So I'm not sure the renaming ceremony would be able to take place by the end of the academic year. But again, that's just a pie in the sky at this point. We have a long way to go before we get there. But I know that there is a July 31st final possible. So I think that they wanted initially a presentation by the May 17th meeting, but it would accept that presentation for the May 24th meeting if that worked better for this committee. And again, I don't know if that is helpful and if not, then I would suggest touching base with Susie because it would have to go on the agenda for the May 10th meeting and the agenda has to be posted by Thursday at four.
[Giovino]: point of information I just the resolution it says timeline changes shall not exceed the final date of July 31st so we can make a request but it is a provision in the resolution to be able to change the timeline whether we do or not I don't think we need to do it tonight well I think we should put the request in tonight because it's gonna take a week to get on the agenda at the school committee My only concern is we may want to extend it two weeks after we get through the next process. So, you know, I don't think we have to get it done for this week because we have till the 24th to before we have to request it. I'm just saying that we haven't even got into really anything yet. We may need two weeks. Why go now and ask for one and then come back again? I think we should just table that until we get this subcommittee thing going. Just a thought.
[Donato Jr]: I agree the way we're going right now. I don't think we'll make two weeks.
[Lister]: I withdraw my motion. I withdraw my ask.
[Haberstrom]: Let's put it that way. I didn't get the motion. When I look at this rubric, I don't really understand why we're going through this process of cutting down the list in the first place. If we're all randomly assigned five names, four of them are obviously not approachable. Then you rate one higher, and the other four have gone away. You end up with 15 high ones when they're all turned in. So I don't know. And then also, why we're talking about subcommittees when there's nothing on this list that says subcommittees? It all says about individual research. So we don't really have to go through this cutting down. If we use the rubric, we rate the ones we like or we think are the best ones that we think are the best.
[Giovino]: Point of information, I do think the resolution we voted for talks about five member subcommittees taking five names.
[Haberstrom]: No, it says five members of the advisory committee at random. These committee members individually research and evaluate the submissions according to the rubric. There's no subcommittee name in here.
[Giovino]: There's got to be. What do we do with that information once we get it?
[Haberstrom]: You get five names. You attach a rubric to it. You hand it in. There's 15 that float to the top. So when people say submitting three or five, there's none of that in here. There's 15 that rise to the top. Instead of five, it's 15 names. That's what it is. So it's all laid out there. We don't have to spend time eliminating all these people. If you're gonna get that, if you're gonna get something like a Dragon School or whatever, you're obviously in the rubric gonna make that really low, right? And if you get George Stearns, maybe we'll make it up a little bit higher. So that George Stearns probably gonna make the top 15, maybe not, just throwing it out there. That top 15 is what we're gonna discuss. That top 15 could be selected by our next meeting, if somebody just randomly assigns these names. That's what, that's how I read this rubric.
[McCabe]: I'll see some clarification though on that, Matt. I think there were questions earlier about, you know, whether it would violate public meeting law if five people met and there was a discussion about, you know, five people did, you know, when do they meet? I mean, there was a discussion about the five people being the same group. I hear what you're saying about the language.
[Haberstrom]: I'm sorry to interrupt, Patrick, but it's individually researched. It doesn't say meaning the five people. It's numbers, and you're individually researching them. Apply the rubric to it.
[McCabe]: And the individually could mean each person is individually researched, not that the research is done by individuals separately. I mean, it was very clear that her intent was to have five people meeting to talk about this.
[Hill]: But in order to do that, we would actually have to divide the entire list into chunks that we're going to hand to singular groups of five people. And those would actually then become, in effect, subcommittees. If it is actually randomized, what it is is that we have a full list that's divided by 23 people five times.
[Bri]: What if we took the start of next week's meeting to use the random number generator, but the random number generator to break these up into chunks of five names. And then we actually split into separate Zoom rooms over the course of the next meeting. And we do this for the next meeting.
[Giovino]: Well, I think we need clarification. That sounds like a subcommittee meeting to me. But if we're all just picking, give me five names, I'm vetting them to the rubric, why not give me, I'll give you my five top? That really makes more sense to me. Because if I get five names that I have no interest in, then what am I supposed to vote other than a zero? It just doesn't make balance to me.
[Bri]: It's supposed to be unbiased. You're supposed to be given five names that in theory mean nothing to you.
[Giovino]: And then you go off and research them and you rate based on- I agree, but I just think the value is, my top five is more valuable than me betting based on a generic number.
[Rotolo]: But Ron, we've already wrote it on the rubric. Sorry, we've already wrote it on the rubric and it says random. So we would have to go back and design something new if we were going to do that.
[Haberstrom]: It says random and individual as well. And individual. It's individual.
[McCabe]: It doesn't say community point of order. It's also, it's not people being assigned five names. It's that five people are assigned the same name.
[Haberstrom]: individual research.
[McCabe]: How many, how many total are on the list? Well, we're not going to do the whole list.
[Kay]: Right.
[McCabe]: I do have other criteria to shorten the list. Right. Right. But about how many Jim are on the list is 84 now. So, so that means that means each person on this list would get like close to 17 names to evaluate.
[Lafleur]: Yeah, I think we'll pull at least, it sounds like we could pull 15 off of that, you know, 84.
[McCabe]: Right. So, so if it's 65 names, that means that everyone here is going to get 13 people to do their research on.
[Lafleur]: Yeah.
[Giovino]: Yep.
[Lafleur]: And I think we could do that. I mean, we could split it up tonight. I mean, we could do that, or during the week. I don't think we need to wait till the next meeting, though, to randomly generate the group.
[Haberstrom]: I agree with you, Lee. We don't have to wait. I think those randomized assignments should be done as soon as possible. We can do that. Then we can apply our rubrics to it. So that next meeting, we can, or even before the meeting, we give those rubrics to Jim. And he can say, here's the top 15. Then we can discuss, Ron, the top 15. OK.
[SPEAKER_11]: That's the way to put it. This is exactly what I had said, but only I had said three names.
[Lafleur]: And not randomly assigned names. Yeah.
[Haberstrom]: Oh, yeah, but you just, you know, you have the rubric. It's, you know, I have to say, Dr. Grace, I don't know her at all, but it's all, you know, this works. Our next step shouldn't be cutting down this list. It should just be assigning these random names. the list will get cut down by nature and by the rubric.
[Giovino]: Still nobody, excuse me, just point of information, nobody's told me how to score miss a tech school. I'm still confused on that. So there's a scoring definition I don't get. That's not in the rubric. I don't know how I can score.
[Kay]: I also think point of information too, is if we can get rid of some of the names, like we've already discussed, that's less names than each group has to deal with. Like why even bother going through the rubric process if we're not gonna, you know, if we need to take the living people off. So then we go down from 83 to maybe 70 or something like that.
[Lafleur]: Well, I think we've already tagged most of the living people and I see Maria has her hand raised. Maria? And you're muted, Maria.
[Rocha]: You're muted, Maria. I wasn't a co-host, so I couldn't unmute myself. I wanted to ask, I dropped off for a bit. So I was wondering in terms of our next meeting date, was anything decided?
[Lister]: I'll have to get back to everyone on that. I have to see what Susan had put out a questionnaire for everyone. And I don't know what, I mean, my proposal to her was once a week. next Tuesday being the next one. But I'll see what everybody's schedule fits better. I mean, I'm available any night myself. So we'll see what the consensus is for the next meeting.
[Rocha]: I'd also like to talk about how in terms of the randomization of groups and names, I do think that in terms of what we are removing, for example, as we have been doing in terms of vetting living people and some of the more throwaway quote unquote names. I don't necessarily think that that is something that we need to do on a live Zoom, wait until next meeting, someone else mentioned that, but I want to emphasize that we do have a timeline. I don't think that we should be at this point already pushing to delay that timeline when considering that this has already been so contentious and there have already been attempts to delay it. And so even if we do need to do some work that is not on a Zoom meeting, it's essential that we do it because otherwise we should not be part of this committee.
[Gideon]: I would like to agree with what you said, Maria. There's some items that we can, like it's a yes, no question when someone is either alive or dead. And any of the different versions of Christopher Columbus, those are all gone. all of the things that are, you know, the dragons and children, that should probably stay on the list and just get booted through the rubric. I don't think that, you know, It's not going to stick to the top 15, but I don't think that we should be making a judgment call. Like, if it's a yes, no question, alive, dead, or Christopher Columbus, you know, different version, yes or no, that's a very easy decision. All the other ones, I don't think we need to make a decision about them, let the rubric weed it out, like Mr. Havestro was saying.
[Lister]: I think there's a few more that fall into the category that we can weed out though, like Vito Cuglioni, there's a few of those on there too that could be taken off. I think that we should have that list next meeting and just do that right away and get rid of them. and then have the rest broken up into groups.
[McCabe]: I mean, the question is, can we do it before the next meeting so that we can review this? And so that's the question, then who's responsible for doing that?
[Hill]: I think what we can do is maybe if we want to, depending on what the other committee members want to do, we can quickly just come up with a strike list immediately right now, do an up or down vote on whether or not we want to strike the list in total. And then if there are living names, for instance, that we miss, we'll have a document that the committee is that is available to the committee. We note that we're striking it from that list. And then from an administrative standpoint, the chair or one of the committee, it is administrative, so it doesn't necessarily need to be a part of open meeting, et cetera. The names get distributed. We do our rubric, and then we have the rubric We have it so that we'll be the third meeting.
[Lister]: You're talking half with the rubric.
[Hill]: No, this is the second one. So I want it. I want all of this to happen, or I would like all of this to happen before our next meeting. I mean, maybe it's it's too much, but I can't stay on any longer.
[Bri]: I would volunteer to go through the chat. People have been chiming in with They've been doing all this legwork in the background with who they think is alive. I would volunteer to take those names, to take variations of Christopher Columbus, and to take out the ones that say, like, don't change the name. I wouldn't remove them. I will just copy them into a new column, and then be like, hey, this is the strike list.
[Lister]: If we agree, they just get... The next meeting we voted up, yes.
[Giovino]: point of information on the shared drive that list we were starting. There's already been some editing being done, and that's great. We can all look at that shared drive to verify what's going on. I think the policies that we have have changed, so some names have already been tagged for elimination, but they won't be now that we've talked about it, to Hendrick's point about leaving Anything that's questionable, just leave it on there. But we all have the ability to go to that shared drive to see the update. So whoever has authorization to do that, if Bree can get that up and running, we can all look at that shared drive during the week. Just Bree can send us an email saying it's been updated, and then we can vet it for ourselves and see if there's anything that we need to question. So to Seth's point, we come in here next week or whenever our next meeting is, let's get the list assigned and talk about other things while we wait for the vetting to be done. So I think it's all doable. We just, we're doing a lot of talking about some real obvious, you know, things that we've already started doing. And that share drive is there for that purpose. So we can all go see what Brie would be doing and just verify. I don't think, who has authorization to change that share drive? Everybody? Yeah, that might be something to, worry about a little bit.
[Lister]: Yeah, I don't think I don't think everybody has it. Yeah, check.
[Giovino]: But I would say Brie gets the authority to do it. We can, Brie can send us an email on Saturday saying I've updated the list to the best of my knowledge, and then we can just look at it.
[Kay]: Is Lisa Evangelista still on? Yes, I am. Lisa, do you know, do we all have access to that? I don't know. Are you?
[Lafleur]: I've gone through the list and tagged at least most of the names I saw in the chat. So Bree, if you wanna double check that, that would be great. And then I also tagged some of the things that we suggested removing. They're still on there though, so.
[Bri]: Yeah, it would literally just be like Hendrick was saying, yes or no questions, variations of Christopher Columbus and fields where people literally said, don't change the name.
[Giovino]: And you may want to just, Bree, just a suggestion, just highlight things that are being removed and don't actually remove them. That way everybody understands what's going out.
[Kay]: I was just going to say the same thing. Maybe color code them red. They have to go or something.
[Giovino]: It looks like that's already started. Somebody's highlighted them in yellow. So that's good. At least, you know, what's being removed. It would be impossible to look at that list and not know what's missing. So that would be a good idea to highlight them. We all review them. And we agree first thing in our next meeting, just that's the list and distribute and let's move. I'm all for Seth, I'm all for getting this thing done for the kids, all for it. And hopefully that's May 24th is a good date.
[Haberstrom]: I think it'd be nice if the next action step could be hopefully sometime this week is get these submissions assigned to five members. Can we do that or not? David Ensign, PB – He, Him, His): Before so we can do a little bit before our next meeting. Do you want to stay on task on these meetings. David Ensign, PB – He, Him, His.:
[Bri]: : Well, if so, if I if we have all the names highlighted by end of week, which I can commit to do David Ensign, PB – He, Him, His.: : We can maybe, you know, Friday or Saturday. We all agree yes or no on the strike list, then the numbers that are next to what's left we put those into a random number generator. And then that gives us the groups of five, then it's just a matter of who is in these groups.
[McCabe]: so to speak. We can't meet on Saturday or Sunday because of open meeting laws.
[Bri]: I meant via email, like via Google Drive.
[Haberstrom]: You were saying you were just going to do the random generator over the weekend.
[McCabe]: We could vote for the random generator now, and then that's just an administrative procedure.
[Hill]: And we could
[Lister]: So we come out with a list Monday or Tuesday of the ones we're taking off. And then the random generator would already be give us our sub lists and our groups. Correct?
[Lafleur]: Yeah, that sounds right to me. And I'm pretty flexible as Matt already suggested. I mean, even if we were to parse out the list tomorrow and then we could remove the ones that are slated for elimination later too. So we don't have to wait.
[Lister]: We could parse them all out and then- So can I get a motion then to parcel out the list and have it ready for with the random generated groups for our next meeting.
[McCabe]: Can I get a motion on that? I'll make a motion. I just, who's willing to work on this? I heard Bree. Who's going to work with Bree on assigning the random?
[Hill]: I can work to assign the random or I see some other names.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm sorry, if I could, whatever's done, should probably go through the chair so through Susie through Jim like everyone should be on that same email or whatever so that Jim is everything should come from Jim per se. that goes out to the committee or goes into the committee, if that makes sense.
[McCabe]: Absolutely. I make a motion that Brie, Caitlin, Seth, Jim, and was there anyone else? And Hendrick were the names I saw. And then I see Maria scratching. I don't know if she was raising her hand or not. She was raising her hand, okay. So that those six people, by the end of the week. And Josie. Call the list, remove all the living people in the references to Christopher Columbus and assign them by the end of day on Friday. And that we start developing our route, that we have our rubric by the next meeting. Our scores. Second.
[SPEAKER_11]: Any discussion?
[SPEAKER_04]: I just have a question.
[SPEAKER_11]: Are we sure before we move forward that we're not violating any open meeting laws by forming into subcommittees? We're not actually.
[Giovino]: I just want to be sure of that. The only concern I'd add is that the assignment needs to come from Jim, who's the chairman.
[McCabe]: Yeah, I just need to add that. That's why I put Jim in the motion. OK. OK.
[SPEAKER_04]: Patrick, you had Brie, Caitlin, Henrik, Maria, who am I missing?
[McCabe]: Him and Seth. Josie.
[SPEAKER_04]: Josie.
[McCabe]: Josie. Josie. So yes, Josie as well. We're getting close though to Dan's concern about the open meeting. We can't have- Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: We can't have- Are you on this, Patrick? No, you're just making the motion.
[McCabe]: I'm making the motion. No, I'm not on it.
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's Brie, Caitlin, Jim, Henrik, Maria, Seth, and Josie, correct? Correct.
[Giovino]: Patrick, just a question. Patrick, are you saying they're just assembling the list, or are you saying the distribution process is going to be handled by Jim? Is that clear? Am I correct on that?
[McCabe]: That that group is responsible for assigning
[Giovino]: I would question the open meeting law being compromised if six or seven folks are doing the distribution without, you know, it sounds like to me it's an assignment that Jim can do as the chairman.
[Hill]: We're just helping administratively. I mean, just with the pulling numbers from a hat, essentially.
[Giovino]: I'm just saying the list could be done and I think Jim could pull the names out of the hat and make the assignments on his own without a third of the group. No, no, however Jim decides to make it random, that's fine.
[Lister]: I mean, I just, I feel like the list and I'll be happy to assign the list. I'll take the list.
[SPEAKER_11]: My only question though, is if we break into smaller groups, and someone in the public.
[Giovino]: Point of information, we won't be doing subcommittees. Okay.
[Kay]: We're going to get a list of names that we're going to do the rubric on individually, and then bring that back and have discussions. Okay, correct.
[Hill]: That makes more sense. Yeah. Every valid name will have five committee members assigned to evaluate according to the rubric that and then we bring it back to the meeting and then we will bring our individual rubrics of everything that gets assigned to us by the chair, and then we'll go from there. Perfect.
[Shaughnessy]: And my understanding is the chairman will randomize the list, but he'll contact me or any of those people mentioned if we need to help. But I guess my question is, do I need to have involvement as suggested?
[Giovino]: Only to compile the list.
[Shaughnessy]: Sorry?
[Giovino]: Bri may need help compiling the list to make sure it's valid. I think that's it.
[Shaughnessy]: OK, so anyone can send me all the information I'm good with or without it.
[Kay]: Just cleaning it up, correct? That's their task, is to clean up the list.
[Lafleur]: Yes. And that doesn't have to be done in a meeting. It can be done virtually, individually, asynchronously, too.
[Shaughnessy]: Now that would just be writing suggested removal for the things that are ambiguous and writing living if it's unambiguous and they're still alive. Is that correct? Okay. And highlighting it.
[Lister]: Thank you.
[McCabe]: So my motion is for Jim and the other named individuals that Lisa already went through the names perfectly to be to call the list to remove all instances of Christopher Columbus and all living people, and then to assign every remaining candidate with five committee members to their name. That's the motion.
[Giovino]: Second the motion.
[McCabe]: How they do it is up to Jim as the leader of the committee and the rest of the small group.
[Giovino]: Second the motion.
[Lister]: All right, all those in favor?
[Giovino]: Aye.
[Lister]: Aye. Do I want to get on the list? I'm sorry. Aye. Brie Brothers?
[SPEAKER_15]: Yes.
[Lister]: Dan Puccio? Dan? Yes. Thank you. Aaron Genia? Yes. I'm sorry. Yes. Beth Fuller?
[Genia]: Yes.
[Lister]: Grace Caldara, sorry. That's the doctor. Oh, Grace had to leave. She left. Okay. Jim Lister, yes. Kenneth Mallon. Yes. Kristen Scalise. Yes. Laura Rotolo. Yes. Leroy Lafleur.
[Lafleur]: Yes.
[Lister]: Luwin Tapa.
[Lafleur]: Yes.
[Lister]: Maria Rocha.
[Rocha]: Yes.
[Lister]: Patrick McCabe. Yes. Waldonado Jr.
[Giovino]: Yes.
[Lister]: Ronald Giovino.
[Giovino]: Yes.
[Lister]: Seth Hill. Yes. Kathy Kay. Yes. Matthew Havistraw. Yes. Kaitlyn Shaughnessy.
[Shaughnessy]: Yes.
[Lister]: Janelle Garland McKenzie.
[Mackenzie]: Yes.
[Lister]: Josie DeFore.
[Mackenzie]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_06]: Okay. So unanimous.
[Gideon]: I got missed, but I vote yes also.
[Lister]: I'm sorry. Who was that?
[Gideon]: That was Hendrick. It was Hendrick.
[Lister]: All right, sorry.
[Gideon]: No worries.
[Lister]: Hendrick. Vote was unanimous. Okay, so we have our assignment for the next meeting here. We're gonna come back with a list of the people we wanna strike off the list, the names, that wanna be taken off the list, and we're gonna vote that first thing, and then we're gonna have the names that are living, the names that are on any Columbus variants, the names of Vito Corleone, anything that was put on there that's not relevant, has a wrong intent, and then we're gonna break the list up and have groups already figured out who's gonna get, and we're gonna work through the rubrics.
[Haberstrom]: So we're not going to work through the rubrics in the meeting. We'd like to receive it before the meeting. We want to get our rubrics done before the next meeting. Hopefully, that would be a goal.
[Hill]: We just voted on a resolution that we are all going to have homework prior to the meeting.
[Haberstrom]: I understand, but I'm just making sure. All right, so we'll work on that this week. Thanks, everybody.
[McCabe]: by end of day on Friday is when we should receive no later than end of day Friday.
[Haberstrom]: Our next meeting we have. So hopefully there's some data cruncher there because we're all going to have scores for rubrics. We have to go up the top 10 list.
[McCabe]: Yes, that was that was the motion.
[Donato Jr]: When was our next meeting, Mr. Chairman?
[Lister]: We haven't specified yet. I'll have to get back to you. Get an email from Susan. Okay, motion. Anything else? Someone like to make a motion to adjourn?
[Kay]: Motion to adjourn.
[Lister]: Second.
[Kay]: I second.
[Lister]: All those in favor? Aye. All right, thank you, everyone. Sorry for any confusion tonight, but we made progress. Thank you, everybody.