[Unidentified]: Josie, thank you for your wonderful slides.
[Cushing]: Hey everybody, just so you know, we are broadcasting to YouTube. I apologize, I got tied up with another meeting that went long. Thankfully, it was not as bad as the other time I started this late, so I'll apologize again. And I'm just making everybody co-hosts right now. And I hope everybody had a great weekend despite the rain. I won't turn off the ability to unmute yourselves until I have everybody to be a co host.
[Haberstroh]: Okay.
[Jim Lister]: I talked to Lisa. She's stuck in traffic. We're going to give her a couple of minutes. Okay. And we'll take attendance.
[Cushing]: Mr. Lister, just so you know, um, when the transcription is turned on, so I'll turn on the transcription right now. Uh, it saves a text file. Okay. Um, just so you're aware.
[Jim Lister]: All right. Very good. Well, then let's take attendance. Three brothers and Puccio here. Aaron Genia. Aaron, are you here? Beth Fuller. Beth Fuller. Grace Caldara.
[Caldera]: Here.
[Jim Lister]: Ken Mallon. Here. Kristen Scalise.
[Scalise]: Here.
[Jim Lister]: Laura Rotolo.
[Scalise]: Here.
[Jim Lister]: Leila Fleur. Leigh, are you here?
[Scalise]: I just saw that it said he was being admitted.
[Jim Lister]: Okay. Oh, I see. I see his name. Okay. Lou and Tapa. Yeah. Maria Rosha.
[Brothers]: Here.
[Jim Lister]: Melissa Miguel.
[Brothers]: Present.
[Jim Lister]: Patrick McCabe.
[Brothers]: Present.
[Jim Lister]: Paul Donato. Present. Ron Givino. Present. Seth Hill. Here. Kathy Kay. Present. Matt Habistro. Here. Caitlin Shaughnessy. Caitlin Shaughnessy. Okay. Janelle Garland McKenzie.
[Dufour]: Yeah.
[Jim Lister]: Josie DeFore.
[Dufour]: Here.
[Jim Lister]: And Jim Lister here. Okay. Call a meeting to order. Has everyone had a chance to read the minutes of the last meeting?
[LaFleur]: Jim? Uh, this is Lee just making sure Eddie wasn't sure if you called me. I joined just a few minutes ago. Yes, I have you.
[Jim Lister]: Thank you. Very good. Um, minutes of the last meeting. Does anybody have any questions, changes or, uh, omissions? Can I get a motion to approve the minutes of the last meeting to accept minutes?
[Paul Donato Jr]: Can I get a second? Second. All those in favor. Aye.
[Jim Lister]: Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
[Paul Donato Jr]: Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
[Jim Lister]: Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
[Rotolo]: Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
[Jim Lister]: Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
[McCabe]: I abstain Jim, I did not have a chance to read them yet.
[Jim Lister]: Okay. Thank you. All right, I have something on the agenda and I believe this can to be out of order. This isn't in the purview of our scope of what we're supposed to be doing here. We're supposed to be picking three names. I'm not gonna read this. You should take this to the school committee or to the city council. Okay, next is a review of the presentation. I think I have a few people that wanna speak first. Brian, did you wanna speak?
[Giovino]: Yes, can you hear me?
[Jim Lister]: Yes.
[Giovino]: Yeah, I just briefly appreciate five minutes of your time to just talk a little bit about this process before we get into the details. I think it's important for people who were not part of the subcommittee group to understand that my feeling is that the process was flawed, direction we were in was flawed, and I did not feel in any way, shape, or form collaboration, and that is why I stopped editing. The process went very smoothly when we're talking about generic process descriptions. I thought things were moving in a great direction. I started with, I volunteered to do Jean Barry Sutherland. I started with 14 slides, went down to 10, went down to five, ended up with four. I accepted, believe me, this has nothing to do with content, all about process. Emails were not returned. There was no collaboration from the committee as far as I was concerned. So when I woke up on Sunday and saw that not only did we not discuss my presentation, my presentation was edited, deleted, and words were replaced without any conversation with me at all, which I find highly unprofessional. So on May 31st of 518, I wrote to the team and I'll read it to you. Team, I'm not sure who decided that my entry on the presentation should be changed and did so without any communication with me, but I am very disappointed. We are a team and yet all my emails on process were ignored. Jim Lister, the chairman is still not included on this email chain. I will formally bring this up at tomorrow's meeting, meaning tonight. When this committee failed to move forward, I suggested that we at least begin a base attempt to at least begin a discussion at tonight's meeting. I do not remember assigning a person to change my words and format at will. In my opinion, this is the height of arrogance and completely disrespectful to the work of a fellow member. Should I go in now and completely change the other two presentations without your knowledge or consent? I would never, because I have respect for everyone's effort. I had hoped that we could demonstrate that we are a team, but this action is the last straw. Now, we all have to stay up tonight to watch our proposals to see if anyone will change them. Common courtesy and professionalism dictates that you should show respect for others' efforts. Respect is all I ask. It was just incredible to me that this was going on. I mean, I'm shocked. And somebody mentioned that maybe that was the process. Well, it wasn't the process I understood. And I want everybody to understand, and we'll go through line by line, because I told the people this morning who were slashing my presentation even more, that I would not edit any more until we get to tonight. And you'll see some of the things that need to be changed and what the effort is, in my opinion, to get that change. I'm all for change, but not this way. Thank you for your time. It's not really a discussable issue. Let's move on to the vote.
[Rotolo]: Thank you. I'm so sorry to hear that. I don't have an email like that from you. I don't know who that was.
[Scalise]: Nor do I. Nor do I. I just searched.
[Rotolo]: I just am checking my email as you're speaking. I don't have that email from you.
[Giovino]: Okay. I mean, it's possible. I mean, I have it here. It's in my sent folder, but irregardless of my letter, I could write it today with the same feeling. The fact remains, my words, my style, my format was changed without a word to me. The email still works. A committee is a collaboration by definition. And it just saddens me that, very disappointed that that process had to exist.
[Jim Lister]: All right. Thank you, Ron. Anybody else? Now's the time.
[Brothers]: Ken has his hand up.
[LaFleur]: There are several hands up.
[Mallon]: I was also under the impression that this was to be a collaborative effort through email. People were collaborating through email, and then all communication stopped. People would ask people's opinion. and then there would be no response. Ron, I'm sorry, I don't have your email. It did not come through to me. Who did you send it to?
[Giovino]: Sent it to the presentation committee. And again, if I read it now or read it three days ago, the action still happened.
[Mallon]: We could have addressed this three days ago if people on the committee got it. There are several people on the committee who are saying they never received this email.
[Giovino]: I understand what you're saying. The action still happened. The email is the words of my email, whether I say it now or had sent it is not relevant.
[Mallon]: It is. It is very relevant because there are people who would have said, you're right. That shouldn't be happening. We need to discuss this. It needs to be a discussion. If you'll notice, when you sent your presentation, I said in email, I think this needs to be shorter. We need to standardize the slides. And there were some fluff things in there that we could put onto a single slide from five down to one. I didn't make that change in the presentation. I just sent a screenshot of what I was proposing. I did not make a single change to your slide. There was a little bit of discussion after that, and then it just petered off. You did not weigh in.
[McCabe]: Point of order, Mr. Chair. All comments should be going through the chair.
[Jim Lister]: Yes. Okay. Why am I not seeing the raised hands?
[LaFleur]: Maria has her hand up.
[McCabe]: If you look at the list of participants, put that to the right hand side on your screen, you should see all the names and there's four hands raised right now.
[Jim Lister]: Okay. Maria, go ahead.
[Rocha]: I am quite frankly very confused. Every single person on the subcommittee had edit access. They had the ability to make comments. We were making comments based on what we thought needed to be changed. There was absolutely no assigning of anyone to a specific name. If you wanted to work on Jean Barry Sutherland, that's great. But every single other subcommittee member also had the right to make edits and comments. That is how the process was working. I did not receive any emails from you past the point of your having sent your full presentation, and having shortened it to four slides I believe. multiple people asked exactly what your issues were regarding the process, and you simply did not reply fully. You did not fully express what your issues with the process were, at least not clearly to me. If I may say so, I I understand not wanting to have your work completely edited down. However, I will say that the majority of your sentiments and your statements verbatim are included on what we have right now. I think that in terms of collaboration, that is what a collaboration is. it's editing someone else's words down so that it fits better to the purpose. So while I understand some of your issues with the process, I don't believe that it's a reason to be halting the entire editing process for the sake of this.
[Jim Lister]: Thank you. Melissa, do you have your hand up?
[Miguel]: Hi, for some reason, I don't have that function, but I did want to speak if we're speaking a point of information through the chair on process. I just wanted to speak to last week, I had mentioned that I feel my role on this committee is to represent the citizens of Medford, we can't have 50,000 people join on a Zoom call and give their input onto why or why not the Columbus School should be renamed and why or why not a name should be selected. However, I have grave concerns with the language being used on the presentation that we are putting forward. The school committee has asked or tasked us with putting forth a name to help heal and bring the community together. And as we have all witnessed from day one, This entire process, names that are being put forward and everything else is doing everything except bring this community together. The names that we are putting forward came from the input from the community. And I find it grossly alarming that one of the names that we are putting forward to the school committee did not even make it in the top three submissions from the community. There is something wrong here. There is something wrong with this process, and it needs to be addressed. And if nobody's going to say it, I'm going to say it. There's something wrong here. Last year, a committee member put forth that he was going to name the committee, the school, after a member of this community, regardless of what any taxpayer, any community member, or any child, including mine, that sits in the classroom at the Columbus School and hella high water, he was gonna name the school that name. Well, you know what? We don't live in a dictatorship. And I don't find it, I don't appreciate it at all that I sit here representing my neighbors, my friends, families at the community that I consider family, and somehow a name that nobody wants is now being put forward. And that's the name on this committee that it has the most votes going forward.
[McCabe]: If nobody's gonna- Point of order, Mr. Chair. We took a vote and 12 votes. The majority of this committee voted to send the name forward.
[Miguel]: And my issue is not- Point of order, Mr. Chair. No, you're not gonna cut me off. You're not gonna cut me off if you don't like what I'm saying. Nothing to do with my- If you don't like what I'm saying, you're not gonna cut me off. and I will not allow you to cut me off, I will allow you to let me speak. My opinion here may not be the popular one. And I don't know if it's not the popular one, okay? But we're speaking on process here and I am backing up Ron's thoughts on the process and I for not one minute do not support the presentation nor the process and I want that on record.
[Rocha]: Point of order. Point of order. We're discussing the process of the present creation.
[Jim Lister]: You have your hand up, Kristen.
[McCabe]: Point of order, Mr. Chair. There's no motion on the floor. Let's put a motion on the floor if there's something to discuss rather than just a general discussion about whether or not people like or do not like a process.
[Jim Lister]: I've given the right to one to speak. I'm going to give the right to the other three that have their hand up, and then we'll move on. Kristen, would you like to say something?
[Scalise]: Sure. Well, I was going to say that I didn't receive the email that Ron was referring to. If I had, I would have been happy to work. I was looking at all of the stuff over the weekend. I would have been happy to continue to work on it as a group. I mean, people are using the notes, the comment function that is built into Google what do they call their version of PowerPoint slides? And I thought it was working okay. Everything is always retrievable. So any changes can always be undone. You can go back to previous versions. But if I had gotten that email from Ron on the 31st, I would have been happy to work on things. I think we do all understand that the presentation does need to be consistent between the three options. So changes are going to have to be made. But I think we can, if we had just discussed this at the time, it would have been, you know, I don't think it would have been too much of a chore to find a way to come together on it. In regards to what Melissa was saying, I understand that she is saying she is taking input from the community. And I think that's wonderful. I think we're all here for that reason. And we're all taking input from people in the community. We all know people and we're all of the community and we should all be taking all of that into account. Now we're all talking, we have different contexts in the community where we have different groups. Everybody has different opinions. That's why we're on this committee. And when Melissa says that, you know, something wasn't, you know I'm sorry, I don't want to misquote, but I already forgot, you know, something wasn't what the people voted on. I mean, we did get a wealth of public comments, which were all fantastic to read and go through in their own way, but they were a small portion of Medford residents. So even just saying, well, we're not going with what those people wanted, those aren't all the people in the community. both the survey and the public comments, but I think, I don't know, I think we have three excellent options and we're not making the final choice. So I think everyone has an option that we'd be happy with. I'd be happy with any of the three. I think they're all fantastic, but I really do think we can make a good decision out of what we have if we're just more open with each other.
[Jim Lister]: That's it.
[Scalise]: Thank you.
[Rotolo]: Laura, would you like to speak very quickly just reiterate the technical piece of this, um, that I don't know how Roger Venus. input got removed or changed. But I certainly don't read anything nefarious into that. It could have been accidental. It could have been somebody misunderstanding the process. But the beauty of Google Slides is that there's a history there. We can always just redo everything. We can go back and start over. So I really hope that we're given the chance to do that. And I also did not receive that email. And I would have reacted very much like others have said to engage in that process. I certainly don't want anybody to feel like their work is being ignored because we're all putting so much time and effort into this. So I hope that we can sort of go back to the slide and fix it so that everybody's voice is heard.
[Jim Lister]: Thank you. Seth, did you have your hand up?
[Hill]: I did. I'm formally calling for orders of the day. We have specifically on the agenda that we are going to review the presentation, if there is actually a presentation.
[Jim Lister]: Let's actually review it. Yep.
[Hill]: Thank you. So is it now in the Google Drive?
[Jim Lister]: I believe it is. Can we bring it up? Can somebody bring it up?
[Scalise]: I can bring it up. Do I have screen share permission? No, it's only host. So the host has to change it to participants. which actually could get dicey. If the host is able to get into the drive and share it, that would be best for Zoom security.
[LaFleur]: It can make you the host too, Kristen.
[Jim Lister]: No, I'm not.
[Scalise]: Oh wait, I think I got it. Can everybody see the thank you slide?
[Jim Lister]: Okay.
[Scalise]: Okay, let me go back to the beginning.
[Paul Donato Jr]: Mr. Chair, can a motion be made to see Ron's presentation in its entirety? Sure.
[Giovino]: Point of order, I'd prefer just to move on, thank you.
[Jim Lister]: Okay.
[Giovino]: There's enough content there that we can have a decent discussion about my slides.
[Jim Lister]: Okay.
[Rotolo]: As a point of clarification, do we know how much time we will have to present this?
[Jim Lister]: I don't think there's a limit. No one said that we have to. How long, Ron, roughly how long does this presentation take, what we have?
[Giovino]: this complete presentation?
[Jim Lister]: Yes.
[Giovino]: Well, I wasn't involved in the speaker notes, so you probably should ask somebody who wrote the speaker notes. I'm guessing 15 minutes.
[Jim Lister]: So I'm not worried about time then, I guess.
[Scalise]: Are we the only thing on the school committee agenda when it gets presented? I know that there's time limits with them having the Zoom account.
[Kathleen Kay]: No, I don't think we are. This is Kathy Kay, I'm sorry. I don't think we're the only thing on the agenda.
[SPEAKER_13]: There's just 30 slides, so I don't think 15 minutes. I don't think we're going to make it in 15 minutes.
[Scalise]: Well, and then our script could be different than what's on the slide. Sometimes that's an approach that people take. So we just want to make sure we have enough time to share the right amount of info. But tell me when you guys want me to move to another slide.
[Jim Lister]: Yes.
[Giovino]: just point of order, can we make that any bigger? I mean, I think the comments are really important. The comments all need to be addressed, if they need to be.
[Scalise]: Is that, it kind of pushes them down and gets them out of frame. Is that any better?
[Giovino]: Yeah, I'm just old. I have my cheaters.
[Scalise]: I understand. I have the same one. That's that one. How's that? It just takes them out of frame, unfortunately.
[Miguel]: I think once it's up on being projected, it'll be big enough. I just think, unfortunately, on our small screens right now, it looks smaller than it will be.
[Scalise]: Let me see if I can get rid of the sidebar.
[Mallon]: I was going to say, it looks pretty OK on a 36-inch monitor. Stop bragging.
[Kathleen Kay]: It's also not in present mode.
[Scalise]: Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm so used to PowerPoint. Is this present mode, right? No, that's explore.
[Kathleen Kay]: It's the white box up here.
[Scalise]: This one?
[Giovino]: Well, I just think if you hit present, you're going to lose the comment section.
[Scalise]: Oh, you're right. Ron's right. I will lose the comment.
[Rocha]: I think that people are able to zoom in onto the screen by clicking next to where it says you are viewing Kristen Scalise's screen or it says view options, zoom ratio. And there's different percentages. So that might make it easier to read.
[Scalise]: Okay, just let me know where you guys want me to go.
[Miguel]: Okay, so on bullet point number four, I had said that those names, if our names are going to be listed in alphabetical order by last name, it should be Mr. Tuck, Dean Barry Sutherland, Belinda Sutton, and additional recommendations. Sounds good. I think everything should be in alphabetical order. I agree. For consistency, I think.
[Jim Lister]: Can I ask why additional recommendations is there? I mean, three is three.
[Scalise]: I think someone had pointed out that if there was a way to honor all of the options, all 18, that we would suggest that the school might wanna look into doing that.
[Jim Lister]: But that wasn't, I read that, but that wasn't what we were set to do here. We would come back with three and only three.
[Haberstroh]: Aren't they going to have that information anyway? Right. Be a top 18. Right. So I get rid of additional recommendations.
[Jim Lister]: Thank you.
[Haberstroh]: Sorry, this is Matt Amherstro. Thanks, Matt.
[Scalise]: OK. Yeah, it was hard to alphabetize, because mistletoe is just a word. So then you start thinking, well, alphabetize by first word.
[Miguel]: I think it should be mistletoe, Jean Barry Sutherland, and Belinda Sutton, as I had noted on the side. Yeah, I am.
[McCabe]: Should I move on? Mr. Chair, there's a motion tonight for an additional recommendation, so.
[Jim Lister]: That motion's out of order. I already took care of that. That can go to the school committee or the city council. That has nothing to do with our scope of what we're doing.
[McCabe]: That's what you're being out of order. It's on the formal, it's on the formal. It's out of order. How did it get on the agenda if it's out of order?
[Jim Lister]: Someone put it on the agenda.
[McCabe]: Anyone on this committee has the ability to bring a motion forward. You don't decide that a motion is out of order.
[SPEAKER_18]: It has nothing to do with what we're here for. And that's what the committee would then decide. It's not deciding. There's the chair, I'm telling you. It has nothing to do with what we're doing here. I guess you don't understand the responsibility of the chair.
[McCabe]: You're not the person to determine. Go to the city council with us. It doesn't have anything to do with what we're doing here. It's not your job as the chair to decide what that is. It's for the committee to decide.
[SPEAKER_18]: My job is to decide what the committee gets to decide on. That is not true. It is tonight. OK. Thank you.
[Brothers]: Can we hear the motion?
[Jim Lister]: We also on the slide. We all sit with this slide. Everybody agree on this one? Yes. Can we go to the next one, please? Everyone agree on this one?
[Kathleen Kay]: Yes.
[LaFleur]: I'm not double checking the dates, but it looks fine.
[Jim Lister]: Thank you. Go to the next one. Thanks. This one look okay to everybody? Okay, can we go to the next one?
[Haberstroh]: So this is Matt Haberstrom. I'm assuming Grace is going to explain this rubric to the school committee.
[Jim Lister]: Yes, I would like that.
[Haberstroh]: Since she created it and they can get a good handle on what the scoring is all about.
[Jim Lister]: Yes.
[Caldera]: Grace. I'm happy to do that if that's what you would like, yes.
[LaFleur]: Please. OK, does this look fine to you? A point of information on that last slide, the 66 names, we arrived at that 66 after actually removing some names using the process that we voted on. I don't know that it needs to be articulated here, but there were some other names that did not make that list of 66, if that makes sense. So it was an additional step as part of our process.
[Kathleen Kay]: What did we take off? We took off the people who were still alive.
[Scalise]: And the ones that weren't entered in good faith, like Vito Corleone.
[Jim Lister]: So anyone have a problem with leaving at 66?
[Scalise]: Maybe just a rewording, like after reviewing the community survey, we created a list of unique name suggestions, 66 suggestions based on that input or something like that.
[LaFleur]: That sounds good.
[Scalise]: I want to acknowledge the survey because it was very important. All right. Now I can't remember what it was so important that we ignore it. I didn't ignore anything. I read every single through the every single entry, please.
[Jim Lister]: Can we correct that first line of that Senate? First bullet statement that
[Haberstroh]: Yeah, I feel like there should be some mention that there was more than 66 names. This is Matt again.
[Jim Lister]: Okay.
[Haberstroh]: And that didn't we vote? I mean, I don't know if we want to put this in there, but didn't we vote to take off the living members of this list?
[Jim Lister]: Yes.
[Haberstroh]: Yes. I don't know if we want to mention that to let people know that that's one reason why that's one reason where a lot of them got knocked off.
[Puccio]: Are we going to mention the survey that was done?
[Scalise]: I believe it's in a
[Jim Lister]: Next slide. This is the process step-by-step as we went through it.
[Scalise]: So I can't remember what I said.
[LaFleur]: I think you said like after the committee reviewed the results of the community survey, we generated a list of 66 names.
[Haberstroh]: Mr. LaFleur, very good.
[Scalise]: Thank you. So do we want to put in more of the methodology with how we narrowed it?
[Brothers]: I think saying that we omitted living people is probably an important.
[Kathleen Kay]: Okay. Couldn't the person who's doing this slide, put that in the notes and add it?
[Scalise]: Yeah, we can add it there.
[Caldera]: Should I just put a... Just a clarification, in the notes already, it does say the first reduction of the list was to remove living, current living suggestions, and then the remain, like, it kind of walks through some of that. So if you want to open up the talking points,
[Scalise]: Okay, so yeah, like it could be possibly in the script.
[Caldera]: And then alter it as needed. It was just kind of a way to help frame everything.
[Scalise]: Yeah, and I guess we'll have to go through that soon because the script could highlight different info than the slide. Okay, should I go to the next one? And we'll work on that after? Or someone else could pop in and edit while I'm driving the slides. So we're good on the rubric, right?
[Jim Lister]: Everybody good on the rubric? Yes. Yes.
[Haberstroh]: This is Matt. On this slide, should we name, should we put Dela Russa's name in there so people aren't wondering who was that name that was accidentally left off?
[Mallon]: I would say no, because I think that takes out the neutrality.
[Jim Lister]: I agree.
[Kathleen Kay]: And the committee is going to have the list of 18 anyway, won't they?
[Jim Lister]: Yes.
[Hill]: And all of our proceedings are public documents and public records, so they have access to what happened.
[Caldera]: They can also just ask, and we can tell them, too. I think as long as whoever is presenting the slide knows that information, it's information that we can freely give them without hesitation.
[Jim Lister]: OK. Is everyone good with this slide?
[Haberstroh]: Yeah. Yeah. Yes.
[Jim Lister]: Okay. Yes, Mr. Chairman. Do we have to go back and look at the last one? Has the last one been fixed or are we gonna go back to it later? Too bad, that was being changed.
[Scalise]: Well, I think the question here is, do we want to change it on the slide or do we want to add it to the script? Because it's always, it's pretty much standard that you put less info on the slide. At least this is what I've heard in every single PowerPoint class I've taken. Less info on the slide so that people's eyes aren't all over the place. And then you put additional info in the narration or the script.
[Jim Lister]: All right, that's fine. We'll leave it like that.
[Scalise]: I have no preference.
[Jim Lister]: That's fine. All right, can we go back?
[Scalise]: Okay, where were we? We were good on this?
[Jim Lister]: Yes.
[Rotolo]: Mr. Chair, I'd like to speak on this slide, if I may. I don't think we should have this slide. I think it is misleading. We were not tasked with counting votes, because these were not votes. We were tasked with reading every single submission, doing our own research and coming up with the rubric and that's what we did. giving these numbers, I mean the numbers are public, they will be given to the school committee, any member of the public can access those numbers, they can access all of the numbers that we have. I think this slide makes it seem like it was an election, and it wasn't. And so I would say that this slide is misleading in itself.
[Miguel]: Point of information through the chair, as somebody who is sitting on this committee, strongly, strongly, strongly, advocating for community input and community feedback. I think it is extremely important that we let the community know how their feedback was taken and what they submitted and what was submitted. Somebody used the word mock. And I said, if we are not gonna present the community with what they provided to us, this is extremely misleading.
[Hill]: kind of information to the chair, all of our information, including all of the things that we just voted on last week to send to this school committee, our public record, every single document that we've created, every single thing that we've done, every single rubric that each individual has taken, every single, uh, submission from the public, all of those are public documents.
[Miguel]: So then point of information to the chair, there's no reason why we can't summarize it here for the community who doesn't have time to go through a Google Doc drive that has thousands and thousands of documents. We were barely able to do that in the time that we were given.
[Jim Lister]: One of the time please.
[Miguel]: It's interesting, whenever I speak about community input and supporting and using the community, I get spoken over and I really find that to be alarming and I'm just really disgusted. So all I'm going to say is it is extremely important to me that we listen to the community and we let them know what we heard. And what we heard on here, it doesn't say anything about votes. All it says is the number of submissions that was received for each name. And I will continue to fight and continue to speak on behalf of the community. And that's what this slide means to me. Thank you. Information to the chair.
[Kathleen Kay]: This is Kathy K. Yep. But I then think we would need to have all of the names with how many submissions there were like Lydia. Child, Marie Child, those names, none of those are on this slide.
[Miguel]: Point of information to Mrs. Kaye through the chair. When I developed this slide, there was a next bullet that said, and so on. I just didn't have time to go through and put every name. So I agree with Miss Kaye. That line that I had in there was taken out.
[Puccio]: Point of information. Go ahead, Rob. Ann, go ahead. No, let Ron call. I'll go after Ron.
[Giovino]: Thanks. Thanks, Dan. I mean, we've been going through this for four weeks now. I understand the frustration you heard from me at the beginning. However, this was never a vote, and it's been miscommunicated. It's not a vote. What I do suggest is there is significance in this number for the three people that we chose, Gene Barry Sutherland, Belinda Sutton, and Missituk. In my 14-page presentation, I wrote This disclaimer, while this number does not have any significance in terms of a vote or total legitimate entries, it is important to note that this was a search for positive and negative antidotes and feedback on each candidate. So if you wanna put percentage, I wouldn't even count, I'd put Jean Barry Sutherland got 34% of the feedback, but that disclaimer has to be there because we're just perpetuating this, what it's not, and it's not a vote, period.
[Puccio]: Okay, thank you, Ron. For information, Jim, just want to make a quick comment. If we're being true to the process and we're showing how we got where we got and this was part of the process, I think it's important that we keep that in there and let them know that this was part of the process. Thank you.
[Miguel]: Through the chair, I'd like to make a motion to keep this slide.
[Paul Donato Jr]: I second that motion.
[Jim Lister]: All right, further discussion here. I see hands up and then we'll take a vote. Laura, would you like to speak?
[Rotolo]: I've already spoken, thank you.
[Jim Lister]: Seth, do you got a hand up? Seth, do I see a hand up?
[Hill]: You do. I guess, are we specifically speaking to this motion that has now been made to keep this?
[Jim Lister]: We have a motion to accept this slide.
[Hill]: All right. So are we going to go through each particular thing on the presentation as a whole? I guess I'm a little unclear as to a parliamentary thing because are we, you know, I mean, there's other edits that we're going to be making. On this slide? No, I guess I'm just asking important information. So we are having a vote.
[Jim Lister]: individual slides so right now every up until now we've we've pretty much agreed on the slides now this slide we have a little disagreement we have a motion we'll see you know the vote we'll see who if the slide stays or goes all right um maybe i'll let patrick uh weigh in here if you would so choose because i think what we may be facing is that we have asked a subcommittee to bring this to us and
[Hill]: that might have some parliamentary issues from a standpoint as to whether or not we're going to then, as a committee, change what we had tasked the- We're going to take this forward as a committee, and that's, we tasked some committee to bring it to us so we could do this. Okay. So from my standpoint, I think that the information has already been passed through I think that presenting it here is misleading and doesn't serve a purpose. And so I would strongly recommend it being removed.
[Jim Lister]: Thank you. Patrick, you got any comment?
[McCabe]: Yes, Mr. Chair. When we asked for input from the community, it was specifically stated that this was not a vote. In fact, when one of our committee members resigned, one of the issues that was brought forward was that he had stated something about this being a vote and multiple people took offense to saying it's a vote. Now people are saying it is a vote. It wasn't a vote before, now it is a vote, or now it's just stating what the submissions are.
[Jim Lister]: I didn't hear them say it's a vote, I heard them say it's submissions.
[McCabe]: Okay, even if it's submissions, we didn't go through and we did not call the list. I took a look at the list, there's people on here saying, in the survey we asked them what their relationship was to Medford. Somebody there said my boyfriend lives in Fulton Heights. Someone else said that they knew one of the candidates because they were in sewing club together. Multiple people said they're former residents of Medford. So we didn't go through and call this list to see whether or not this, you know, how many submissions were accurately represented as people of the Medford community.
[Miguel]: A point of information to the chair. If we weren't going to allow, if we weren't going to accept certain submissions, then it should have indicated that if you did not meet this criteria, then you could not provide feedback. We can't start now eliminating feedback based on criteria that we're setting in the 11th hour.
[Jim Lister]: No argument here, please. Thank you. Kathy Kaye, would you like to speak next?
[Kathleen Kay]: Yes, please. I think I just need to reiterate that if in fact we're gonna have this slide, it should have all of the names with how many submissions they got, not just the first five or however many are there.
[Jim Lister]: If we want it to be- That would be an amendment.
[Paul Donato Jr]: I would second that amendment, Kathy.
[Jim Lister]: Okay. Grace, would you like to speak?
[Caldera]: Yeah, I just, clarification, I think, I just wanted to go back to what Ron had stated about how he had, in his longer presentation, he had provided this information, but in a different way. And I was wondering if that was an amendment to this. I'm not quite sure where we stand procedurally, but, if we're voting on this slide versus a suggestion that Ron had made to clarify some of the numbers that were on here.
[Jim Lister]: I have an amendment and I have a motion here. Ron, was that an amendment or?
[Giovino]: Well, I mean, you know me in procedure, I'm always behind, but yeah, it's an amendment and here's the amendment. The only information that's valid here are the three finalists. I think instead of putting a number, I think a percentage, and I also think the disclaimer has to be on here that I just read, has to be on there, because that's what it was, seeking information. And I think we forget that there were multiple people entering submissions multiple times. I think there were multiple people just saying, I like this one. The goal of that whole effort was for people to submit positive and negative information. I think I would offer an amendment. I would support this slide if it said only the three names, the percentages, people can figure out how much was not what was the other. And the disclaimer that I read that this was definitely not a vote. I mean, that's what we voted for. As much as I'd love to do it the other way, that's what we voted for. And I also suggest that going forward to the next slide, people can offer friendly amendments, which has been the procedure for this committee since its beginning. You accept the amendment, we make the change. These really are amendments. This is not, we, subcommittee did not come up with a final presentation. The whole committee will approve this one. So friendly amendments, and then if it gets stuck, we have to vote. That's the process.
[Jim Lister]: All right, thank you. So we have an amendment. First of all, we have an amendment to add all the names to this list. We're going to vote that up or down.
[Paul Donato Jr]: Kristen has her hand up.
[Scalise]: As do I. Sorry, I've lost the little hand thingy because I'm screen sharing. I don't know where it went. I just want to say, I don't know why we started. arguing, well, maybe not arguing on this one, but we didn't even address the comments that were there from the subcommittee where Grace just wanted to, her comment is, can we move the slide up to slide eight? We wanted to know if that made sense. And then Maria brought up in the comments, should the other 13 be included or top five? So in the subcommittee, I don't even think we were talking about removing it, but maybe we should address the comments that we had earlier before we, I have no problem with leaving it. And I think in Turan's case, this would be a place where we could use the script for the presentation to be more detailed about how the process went and yeah, give some of the background that he suggested.
[Jim Lister]: Okay, thank you. Seth?
[Hill]: Yeah, I just wanted to reiterate that from a standpoint of how this committee was given its charter, it's our job to come up with the three names. And yes, community feedback and the submissions were a part of that. But at the end of the day, when we have done our job, they are no longer the part of the, they are no longer the part of our job that necessarily needs to have representation in form of this that looks like a vote. And I think it just gives the wrong impression that, you know, it doesn't give the clearest picture of what our job was. And I think that that's the most important part. For a presentation that is supposed to say, these are the three names, this is how we determined our names, that's what the presentation's for. This is specifically the- The question is whether we're leaving the slide or taking it out. Right. And it's the community slide.
[Puccio]: It's not the committee slide. And that's my point. Jim, point of information again, this is part of the process. I'm just confused as to why we're even discussing it. It was part of the process that we got community feedback. Why are we gonna eliminate the community feedback portion? I get it. It looks like there was a lot of votes for Gene Barry and a lot less for the other two that are going forward. I understand that. However, it was part of the process. Community feedback was part of what we did. So to eliminate this, I think we're doing a big injustice to the whole process and to the folks that took their time to do it. Where the 423 people submitted for Gene Barry and whatever percentage of them doubled or faked it or whatever, this was what we got and this is what we're showing you we got. You know, I just don't understand why we're still kind of discussing this. It's, it's part of the process. We're showing them the process. Can we move on? You call the move the vote.
[Haberstroh]: I think we should. There are still a lot of hands up for discussion, Jim. Thank you.
[McCabe]: Patrick. My concern with this slide is it sends a message that there was a vote and that this committee did not take it to consider.
[Jim Lister]: What's that? Don't use the word vote. It's submissions.
[McCabe]: Yeah, I know that.
[Jim Lister]: But what just happened.
[McCabe]: When Danny just spoke, as he used the word vote, people are going to use the word vote. I wish they wouldn't, but they are. And that's what this slide is gonna be perceived as. And when Melissa gave her presentation, she said she was gonna pick the three people that received the most votes. If we check the notes, despite the fact that the motion specifically states that these are not votes, It's gonna be perceived as a vote. And this is going out into the community perceived as a vote. And some people in the community didn't think of it. Most people didn't think of it as a vote, but now it's gonna be presented as such and be held against either this committee or the school committee.
[Puccio]: And that- Jim, put up information, Jim. Go ahead. Let's all be realistic here. Let's not think for one second, the school committee, who is gonna be voting on this, doesn't know about this list, whether you call it submissions, votes, whatever it is. The school committee is aware of this list, and I don't care what anybody tells me. So for us to take it out when it was part of our process, you can even eliminate the names. We're just showing them what we did as part of our process, and this is what came back.
[Jim Lister]: Okay, so I would agree with that. All right, let's not talk about this one all night, stop.
[Caldera]: Point of information, if you looked back at slide seven, it does detail the steps that we took in order to receive public participation. You can see that there were 17 names, we put out a survey, it was translated, members could submit. there was a limit to what they could say. And we did receive over 1,200 online responses and 39 paper responses. So the only thing that this slide doesn't detail right now is the list of names and how those got broken down. So I think it's a little disingenuous to state that we're not stating how we got community input when this in fact, does already discuss the process as to what we did to get the community feedback. Additionally, later on, when you get to the specific names, there are comments that have been pulled from the community input in order to support some of the specific names. So it's incorporated throughout this presentation, I think in various ways. It's still there, whether it's as explicit as the slide, it's not, but I think it's been incorporated in this and in other ways. Okay.
[Jim Lister]: Melissa, your hand up.
[Miguel]: Yes, point of information through the chair. The reason that I added this slide, I don't care if we put submissions, I don't care if we put tally marks, I don't care if we say lollipops were submitted for these people. I think it's crucial that we ask the community for input and the results of their input and their time should be presented to the community. I agree with, I think it was Ron who said, put a disclaimer, these are not votes, they were not utilized as votes. And yes, Patrick, last week I did say that my role here is to listen to the community and I will listen to them and I will support the names that came in with the three highest submissions. So you are correct. I did not going by votes. I'm going based on the feedback and the number of people who spent their time to commit to this process in a democratic way and they want their voices to be heard. So I think it was a gross failure on the part of the school committee if it was to task us with this with no public engagement. And so I would like that to be on the record that I don't care if these are votes. I don't care if these are handed out lollipops. I don't care what they are. These are voices. We can say 423 voices were heard, but it's crucial that we ask for community input and the community sees what we heard.
[Jim Lister]: Okay. Thank you. All right. I don't see any more hands. We're all set here.
[Rocha]: I leave myself.
[Brothers]: Okay.
[Kathleen Kay]: If I'm just going to jump in, just because. Is that okay?
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[Kathleen Kay]: I was just wondering if it might make everybody feel better that rather than say number of submissions and like Melissa was saying, it doesn't matter if it says lollipop. So maybe we just say number of feedback forms collected. If that makes people feel better about this.
[LaFleur]: And I was just going to say that, you know, there are a lot of slides in this presentation. And while I may not be delivering the presentation, ultimately, we may need to reduce the number of slides. And so I think having a list of all the names and all the submissions that basically replicates the data set that we're turning over to the school committee might be overkill in this case. I do agree we should have some community feedback. I think Dr. Grace suggested that maybe that is actually the public participation slide. If we want to have this slide, perhaps Ron's suggestion of just some percentages with our three names, but I think adding a whole list, the entire list with all the submissions is an extra slide and you're not going to have much time in the presentation to spend on that detail. And we're already handing over that data to the school committee.
[Evangelista]: Can I ask how many slides in total? It's Lisa.
[Jim Lister]: 25, I think.
[Scalise]: I think some of these at the bottom are extra.
[Caldera]: 23, and then the ones at the bottom are just recovered slides.
[Scalise]: That might be worked back in.
[Evangelista]: So between 20 and 25, so you're thinking about a 25 minute presentation approximately?
[LaFleur]: Probably closer to two minutes per slide.
[Evangelista]: I think you're gonna have to get clarification from the superintendent, because I think that my beach time. So I'm not sure. I'm not positive, but I believe that you're going to have to get clarification. I don't think anyone's made that long of a presentation in front of the committee, but again, the superintendent's office would have to clarify that. I think it's too long because it's a regular meeting, so there's other things on the agenda. I'm just going to touch base with Dr. Cushing and he'll probably jump in at some point to kind of, I think they will look in between five and 10 minutes, but again, I can't be quoted because I'm not the rule maker, but I do know 25 minutes could be wrong. So I'll try to get Dr. Cushing in the meantime for clarification, but I just want to throw it out there folks, sorry. I'm always the bearer of bad news.
[Scalise]: Can I make a comment on the community feedback slide? What if we just added the, I have no problem with the slide. What if we just added the context in case people forget the number and just say close to 1,300 members of the Medford community decided to share feedback out of that and then just give them the starting number and then the submission numbers make more sense in context. I have no other issue with this slide, unless of course, as Lisa said, it comes down to time.
[Giovino]: Point of information. Yes, right. I think the side comment that Dr. Grace is the correct one, we can list these numbers and then a description of the process already includes 1,200 plus submissions. I think we give this, maybe tweak a little bit the disclaimer part of it with this next slide, as opposed to the before slide. And again, just while I have the five minutes for this presentation, I might as well just fold it in an envelope and hand it over. 25 minutes is the minimum we're gonna use. Just five minutes is ridiculous. But anyway, switching that slide to number eight makes more sense to me. That way, Dr. Grace can add the disclaimer again, or it's already there. We move on, everything's done. Whether you want, to me, three names, percentage, is, you know, Jean Barry Sutherland got 34% of the feedback. Belinda Sutton got 12% of the feedback. Mr. Tuck got 12% of the feedback. Let's go. We haven't even got to substance yet. I agree with Melissa.
[Jim Lister]: This is important information. Can we take back the, rescind the amendment and the motion and go with Ron's?
[Rocha]: Um, I've had my hand raised for quite a while. I speak. Yes. All right. I'd like to reiterate what's been said. This information will be public record. The school committee will already have access to it. The public will already have access to it. To be quite honest, it feels like a logical fallacy to be providing these numbers, but because regardless of whether you say, okay, yes, this was not a vote, this was simply feedback, I don't think that you can really qualify submissions that said nothing but N-A or completely blank or people ranting about why the Columbus school name should not be changed anyways in these numbers. I don't think that that is an accurate representation of the community's feedback regardless, especially considering the fact that this is a very limited scope of the people in the community. I feel as though, regardless of whether we have the slide or not, the school committee is going to see this information. So it feels like if we're presenting this to the public, if that is the point of this, if that is the point of this presentation, in addition to presenting to the school committee, it just simply feels like a logical fallacy. It feels unnecessary. It feels like it's going to be misleading regardless of whether we have that caveat that this was not a vote or not.
[Miguel]: Point of information through the chair. First of all, I find it extremely disrespectful to say that people who do not want the name of the Columbus change to be ranting. So I wanna put that on the record. And second, if this information is gonna be in black and white in front of the school committee, that's fabulous. But again, gonna back my stance that this is, we are gonna have the public watching that and they're not gonna have the packet that the school committee is going to have in front of them. This information is crucial. to be shared. Again, many people on this committee seem to not understand the importance of community input, and it's very, very alarming to me. And I don't understand why there's such a hesitation to provide information, but not 423 voices were heard, good, bad, or indifferent for these names. The community deserves to be heard. I feel like I'm talking to a wall.
[Jim Lister]: Lisa, have you got your hand up?
[Puccio]: Jim, can we move this to the vote? You call the vote.
[Evangelista]: Sorry, I shouldn't have it up. Sorry.
[Jim Lister]: All right.
[Brothers]: This is Brie, I've had my hand up for quite a while now.
[Jim Lister]: He called the vote, Brie.
[Brothers]: Okay, what is the vote to keep it?
[Jim Lister]: That's what I'd like to know, what are we voting on? To keep it, yes, to keep it, no, it's out.
[McCabe]: Point of order. Before we take a vote, we would have to vote two-thirds. Calling the vote requires a vote of two-thirds to close debate.
[Jim Lister]: He called the vote.
[McCabe]: Right. That requires a vote of two-thirds. It's not debatable. So we need to take a vote first on whether or not we call the vote, whether or not we close debate.
[Hill]: If not, debate is still open, and people need to be recognized to talk.
[Jim Lister]: I think we've had enough discussion. We're going to go to the vote.
[Kathleen Kay]: Can I ask a clarifying question, Jim?
[Hill]: Yes. That's not according to the Robert rules. That's a point of order.
[Kathleen Kay]: Go ahead, Kathy. Are these five questions the one that got the top five submission responses? Is that why these five are there specifically?
[Jim Lister]: I believe so.
[Kathleen Kay]: OK. Thank you.
[Jim Lister]: Okay, on the motion, Brie.
[Caldera]: Ken, I just have some clarification. I'm so sorry. Are we voting on the slide as is, or are we voting on the slide with Ron's suggestions? I would just like to have a formal understanding of what exactly about this slide I'm voting on, yes or no.
[Jim Lister]: To get to Ron's suggestion, we need to vote this down and go to Ron's suggestion, I would say. No, that was a friendly amendment. Was it actually?
[Giovino]: It's an amendment to this slide. And I just want to reiterate to Melissa, this is an opportunity for us to keep this information on. I cannot support it this way. I do believe moving it to the eighth slide. And then once again, this is our opportunity to educate the public. And the fact is we appreciate the community input was invaluable because I didn't know any of these candidates. However, it was never a vote, and I think it's our opportunity to say that, that's all. Otherwise, I just don't see the slide. Your choices are to sweeten it or eliminate it, in my opinion, so.
[Miguel]: point of information through the chair I just want everybody to know that I was also under the impression that we were kind of drafting these slides, I felt that this information was important to share, and my kind of draft of the slide was just I would like to discuss this information and how it should be presented in no way shape or form at any point did I feel that my slide and the information that I provided was set in stone. Like I said, we can change it to voices, we can change it to whatever we want to change it, but the point of my slide was to get something down and my passion behind listening to and respecting the people of Medford. However we want to present it, you wanted to move it to number eight, that doesn't matter to me. I don't care where we present it or how we present it, it was more just, can we please work off of this? and value my strong belief that the community needs to be heard regardless of if it's, thank you for taking your time to fill out a Google poll. But it's, I will not change my stance on this. Thank you.
[Giovino]: Point of information, Melissa, I agree with what you're saying. I just think it needs to be done in a way that we reiterate, it wasn't a vote. It was extremely valuable information. It was an education and that's what it was meant to be. opinions of way to vote go right to the school committee. That's not us.
[Miguel]: So I think information, Ron, I'm agreeing with you. I know that you agree with me.
[Jim Lister]: Can we do that to this slide right now?
[Giovino]: Let's just move forward. Yeah. Yeah.
[Jim Lister]: Again, slide what you're saying. Yes.
[Paul Donato Jr]: Mr. Chair.
[Jim Lister]: So who's got the power to change the wording?
[Scalise]: Can I just drag like I would in PowerPoint on the left? I don't want to break anything. Okay. Yes, you can drag. Okay. Thank you. All right. And then do we want to add any any wording? I think Ron had some nice suggestions before.
[Haberstroh]: Can we can we see the slide before? So I understand the public.
[Scalise]: Sorry, I think I'm on it now. It should say community feedback at the top. Are you seeing my screen?
[Haberstroh]: I think you mean slide seven. Slide seven.
[Scalise]: Sure.
[Haberstroh]: There's a line about participation that maybe could just be expanded.
[Scalise]: Mm hmm. I also like keeping the slide because it just occurred to me maybe if someone sees that, maybe we'll get more people participating in this type of thing in the future. I would love to get more feedback on any similar situations we find ourselves in. So I agree with Melissa that it would be good to keep it there so that people know that their voices are heard.
[Kathleen Kay]: But I do think too, I'm sorry to belabor the point, for all those people who voted for the names that aren't the top five, then maybe it should say, these five names had the most feedback or something like that. Because all the other names that are on the list, people wrote about them. And so for those people, they're not seeing, well, where's the name I voted, submitted on, not voted.
[McCabe]: Right, so do we add saying that there's 500 other votes or however many other votes there were that weren't counted from those other 13 nominees?
[Giovino]: Just point of information, that is why I only wanted the three of our finalists there with a percentage. So you can figure out there were other votes there. I just wanna make it simple but concise that this is valuable, we appreciate this input 100%, but it just, it wasn't a vote.
[Haberstroh]: point of information, Mr. Lister, I don't see why we don't list the names without the submission numbers and or the top 18 that we were discussing. Here are the top 18 that we discussed. Why do we need the submission numbers? And, you know, I feel strongly that we do not put this in as a submission because it does look like votes. Some of our committee members are saying the word vote, and I find it really I don't know, awful to hear that all the time. So there's some confusion over submissions and votes.
[Jim Lister]: We're going to move past this page and we're going to stick on this page for the rest of the night.
[Hill]: Well, from a point of order, are we actually Is there a motion on the floor to accept it into it or not?
[Jim Lister]: It was a motion on the floor to accept it into it. Yes.
[Giovino]: Is a friendly is a friendly amendment offered that has not been accepted yet. That's our procedure. Okay, so to Melissa. I'm asking you to accept the amendment that only the three finalist names and the percentage of submissions are listed along with the disclaimer, either in slide seven or slide eight. Do you?
[Miguel]: Ron, I accept your friendly amendment.
[Unidentified]: Thank you.
[Giovino]: That's how it works. That's our process, been since day one. All right, but right now- Now you can vote on it, up or down.
[Rotolo]: I'm sorry, I think there was another amendment on the floor from Matt Haverstead. I'd like to second that amendment to put the top 18 names. I think it makes sense that the other names are missing, to put just the 18 names and not the number of submissions. I would second that amendment.
[Paul Donato Jr]: Mr. Chair, I'm against that.
[Jim Lister]: All right, that wasn't a friendly amendment, the second one. So we'll vote that amendment first. Is there any more discussion here?
[Miguel]: Point of clarification, please. Can I ask Laura what if we're summarizing the community feedback and somebody please explain to me that just listing the 18 names that doesn't really provide any context of why. I don't really would see the point of just listing 18 names so if somebody could just keep clarify that for me.
[Rotolo]: Before I vote, I can address that I think, as Kathy case that it makes sense that you know we're leaving out in the 1412 names here that people did put a lot of heart and soul into. And I think having the numbers of submissions, as I've said before, gives the wrong sense that these have some sort of weight. Perhaps there was one submission in a name in the top 18 that really spoke to us. We were not given a quantitative task. We were given a qualitative task to use our best judgment to read all of the feedback from everybody and make our decision based on a rubric. We were not tasked with counting numbers of submissions. And so I have said it, but I will just say it again. I think it is misleading to the public to rank by the number of submissions. And instead I would like to see the full 18 be there.
[Miguel]: Point of information. It was then misleading to ask the public to submit information if we were going to not even consider it. So we can get on to the next slide.
[McCabe]: Point of order, Mr. Chair, the amendment that needs to be voted on is the amendment of the 18 names, not the amendment.
[SPEAKER_18]: Correct. Can I have that vote now? Anybody else?
[McCabe]: Is there a second on adding all 18 names? Three.
[Rotolo]: And without the submission number.
[Jim Lister]: How do you vote on this? No, you're all talking over each other.
[Brothers]: I have no idea what's being voted on. There's so many amendments flying around. I've had my hand up since the start of the meeting. I don't, I don't know what we're voting on.
[Jim Lister]: This was an amendment to list all 18 names with the submissions next to them.
[Rotolo]: point of order, without the submission numbers next to that.
[Jim Lister]: Oh, without the submission.
[Rotolo]: That's how I understood it.
[Paul Donato Jr]: With the submissions, with the submissions was the agreement.
[Rotolo]: The amendment from Matt Haberstow, maybe he could clarify.
[Paul Donato Jr]: Yeah, there was a motion before Matt's.
[Haberstroh]: Yes, there was a motion before Matt's. I simply, you know, somebody can help me with procedure. I would just suggesting we list all 18, top 18, without the numbers, because the numbers You know, they make you interpret it as voting. And as Mr. McCabe said, a lot of these submissions weren't verifiable, okay? So putting all these numbers up there makes it look like a winner and a loser. And we don't wanna do that. We wanna put all 18. These are the ones we discussed. In other words, number of submissions provided by the community, 1,200, 1,300. And these are the top 13 we discussed.
[Puccio]: So information, Jim runs, runs friendly amendment was percentages, right? Yes. Okay. So we vote on that.
[Jim Lister]: So we got to vote first. We got to vote mats down or up before we get to Ron's.
[Giovino]: Okay. My end doesn't need a vote if she, if Melissa accepts it. So we need to do this one first.
[Jim Lister]: Right. Then we go right to Melissa. Okay. So this is to list all 18 with no number of submissions next to them.
[Hill]: But if clarification, would a yes vote here, then are we going to actually be voting for whether or not we include the slide as a whole? So what happens with a yes vote or with a no vote to this particular amendment?
[SPEAKER_19]: So this is to add it to the slide if we include the slide in the next vote.
[McCabe]: Thank you, Chair. Mr. Chair, the question, though, is if we include the 18 names, that's the only thing on this slide.
[Jim Lister]: That's the only thing on the amendment, is do we include the 18 names?
[McCabe]: Right. And if we say we include the 18 names, then the original motion is moved. Right? I mean, there's nothing else on the slide. If there were more things on the slide, I would understand.
[Rotolo]: Wouldn't the motion be to accept to keep this slide as amended, if that motion passes?
[Haberstroh]: That was my idea, to keep this slide, but eliminate the numbers and put all 18.
[Scalise]: What if we just reiterate in the introduction, out of the nearly 1,300 community submissions that we received on 18 candidates are the five that went forward, or I don't wanna say, the five that had the highest rubric score were, that way we're giving context, we're giving information, we are acknowledging people that were, you know, you know, listed, but not, we can't, don't have room to list everybody here. And we're just, and then letting the community know there are more names that we don't have room to list here, but we heard you and read every single one of them. Something like that.
[Miguel]: Point of information, I don't think the rubric scores accurately represent what was submitted by the community.
[Giovino]: Point of procedure, please, to Patrick through the chair.
[Jim Lister]: Go ahead, Ron.
[Giovino]: Patrick, if the first amendment, which was mine, is accepted by the author as a friendly amendment, how does it not become the amendment that we vote on for this slide?
[McCabe]: Because the amendment to the friendly amendment is what needs to be voted on first. Any amendment to a motion needs to be voted on before the motion itself.
[Rotolo]: It's an amendment to the motion, right?
[Jim Lister]: Correct. So if the amendment doesn't pass, then we go to Ron, we go to the other.
[McCabe]: Correct. But if the amendment does pass, I believe that that means that this slide is 18 names with no submissions.
[Giovino]: Point of information too, once we add this amendment, then you can vote up or down. So got a lot of work still to go on this. Correct. Move the amendment please.
[Jim Lister]: Right now it's the amendment.
[Brothers]: So right now I am voting on this slide to have 18 names on it with no numbers.
[Jim Lister]: Correct.
[Jim Lister]: Dan. No. Aaron. Aaron's not here. Beth's not here. Aaron. Aaron is here.
[Scalise]: Aaron is here.
[McCabe]: He's muted.
[Scalise]: She's not a host, she can't unmute.
[McCabe]: Can you do a physical thumbs up for yes and thumbs down for no?
[Genia]: Can you hear me? I think you're muted now. Okay, thank you very much. I would like to vote to include all 18 names without numbers, please.
[Jim Lister]: Okay. Beth Fuller, she's not here, right? Okay, Grace Caldera? No. Ken Mallon? Yes. Kristen Scalise?
[Scalise]: No.
[Jim Lister]: Laura Rotolo?
[Scalise]: Yes.
[Jim Lister]: Leila Fleur? No. Luwin Thapa? No. Maria Rocha?
[Evangelista]: Yes.
[Jim Lister]: Melissa?
[Miguel]: No.
[Jim Lister]: Patrick McCabe? Yes. Paul Donato?
[Giovino]: No.
[Jim Lister]: Ron Givino?
[Giovino]: No.
[Jim Lister]: Seth Hill?
[Giovino]: Yes.
[Jim Lister]: Kathy Kaye? Yes. Matt Habistro? Yes. Did Caitlin Shaughnessy show up? No. I haven't seen her. Janelle Garland McKenzie.
[Mackenzie]: Yes.
[Jim Lister]: Josie DeFore.
[Dufour]: Yes.
[Jim Lister]: And the chair votes no. So we have. Okay. So 11 yes, nine nos. So all 18 submissions will be there. Okay.
[Giovino]: Now are we moving the slide to slide eight? No, that was just the amendment to the slide. We have not approved the slide yet. Okay.
[Scalise]: We already did move it to slide eight. It can be moved again.
[Jim Lister]: Okay. And now are we leaving the slide in? Correct. That's the motion we're voting on.
[McCabe]: I believe that's what was just voted on, Mr. Chair.
[Giovino]: That was the amendment. An amendment to that slide. Right.
[Puccio]: Now, didn't Ron have an amendment to put it up there with percentages?
[Giovino]: My amendment is moot now because we voted on this amendment. All we can do is vote down the slide and vote on a new motion to a new slide. That's our only option.
[SPEAKER_13]: Thank you, Ron.
[Kathleen Kay]: And may I ask a question to the chair? Yes. I guess through Ron. So for voting on this slide, is it as is or what we just voted on to amend it with?
[Giovino]: Well, I'm certainly not the expert, but it's been amended to just the 18 names here. I don't know where it's positioned. I don't know. We just voted to put 18 names on this slide.
[Kathleen Kay]: Right. So that's what we're voting on now.
[Giovino]: That's correct. Okay. And Patrick is the expert. I'm just a slide in to leave the slide in that says, the all 18 names, no submissions. I assume you all mean under where it says number of submissions provided by the community that didn't get changed.
[Haberstroh]: That's correct, Ron. That makes the most sense. All 18 names, no submissions under that next slide. Are we voting?
[Giovino]: My point is that all we did was, what does the slide look like with this amendment? Is the number of submissions provided by the community on the public engagement form, does that stay? Because I don't remember voting on that. Or is it just a slide that says the 18 names?
[Haberstroh]: Somebody can wordsmith that fairly easily. That's on the subcommittee, I would imagine.
[Rotolo]: Was it Kristen who was making the changes as we spoke? Somebody can just pop in and do that right now, right?
[Giovino]: All right, let's move on the slide up or down.
[Haberstroh]: So all this discussion could be- We have to vote on the up or down on this slide.
[McCabe]: Yeah, point of order, Mr. Chair. I believe that we just voted on that. The amendment was to replace all of the language that was in the original motion. I mean, we could vote again whether or not we include the slide, but I mean, I think that by virtue of us voting on the slide content, we're voting on having the slide in the presentation.
[Puccio]: Point of information, my understanding was is that we were gonna vote on Matt's and then we were gonna vote on Jim's, I'm sorry, on Ron's that had the percentages, you know, and keep at the bottom three, but now there's not gonna be any percentages. And like Ron said, his, you know, It's just useless. It doesn't make any, what we just did to me makes zero sense because we voted on one thing thinking that there was gonna be another vote on another thing and it never happened. So now we're gonna have a slide with 18 names on it with no percentages. To me, that's absolutely useless because it's not showing the true, you know, the true thing that the public was able to participate in. We're basically leaving that out. just doesn't make sense.
[Kathleen Kay]: Point of information? Isn't that information on the slide that comes prior?
[Puccio]: It's not. We eliminated that slide now, apparently.
[Kathleen Kay]: No. Slide number seven, I mean.
[Giovino]: I guess to Danny's point is, what is the purpose of these 18? Otherwise, the previous slide works fine, We've already, you know, we keep talking about everything's open to the public. People know who the 18 are. I don't know what the point of this slide would be as a speaker presenting.
[Jim Lister]: The point now would be whether to keep the slide or not. And I mean, I don't see the way it is now.
[Giovino]: Let's vote it. Let's vote it. That's how we do it.
[Haberstroh]: Information through the chair, Mr. Lister? Go ahead. Thank you. This is Matt Haberstroh, just so you guys know. The point of this slide It's not to slant the numbers that were thought of as votes, which people on this committee actually refer to as votes. So for the community, which I'm a part of, and I feel strongly about representing all those voices in Medford, that now they can see all 18 of these.
[Miguel]: I hope I'm not being mocked.
[Haberstroh]: I am just saying that this is the slide that shows you all the information that the community put in. And I see that as not a problem. I see it as a focus rather than a rating system. And that's the point of it.
[Puccio]: Point of information, Jim, I find that we're not being transparent with the community. And I think it's very wrong. And it's a disservice to the folks that did submit for any name. So I think a discussion needs to be had and something needs to be shown, whether on another slide, with percentages from the community. We're always talking about transparency and inclusiveness. Well, let's include the folks that took their time to vote for anybody and show some sort of percentage of what folks did vote for.
[Unidentified]: Well, that's the point.
[Puccio]: There's a lot of slides to go through here.
[Kathleen Kay]: But they weren't voting. I think that's the point. I think that's the point we're trying to make here.
[Puccio]: Then it's submissions. Call it whatever you want. I call it votes. You call it submissions. Put it down as submissions. I could care less what it is. But in the sake of transparency, the folks that went out there and voted. The folks that went in there and submitted. You want me to use the word submitted? I'll use the word submitted. The folks that went in there and submitted took their time. We should show transparency and show what those numbers are. That's my feeling.
[Haberstroh]: Point of order, Mr. Lister. Yes. So this is transparency, Danny. These are all the names that the community put feedback in. This is transparency. It is transparency. Why don't we put some numbers next to all those names?
[Scalise]: Because the numbers were never the point of this feedback.
[Haberstroh]: Somebody went through all the feedback and made some assumptions about ratings and things of that nature, which construes in a wrong way what the community feedback really is.
[Puccio]: I don't feel that way. I don't feel that way personally.
[Haberstroh]: I know you don't feel that way personally.
[Jim Lister]: get a couple more hands raised and then we can vote this slide in or out. I mean, hold on. Maria, would you like to say something?
[Rocha]: Yes, we quite literally just took a vote to include the top 18 names without numbers and that was voted yes.
[Jim Lister]: to vote, put the top 18 in the slide. Now let's vote on whether to put the slide or not.
[Rocha]: Yes, and I just don't understand why there's this discussion about something that has already been voted down.
[McCabe]: Point of order, Mr. Chair, if I may answer that question. So there's an original motion on the floor to have a slide about community and feedback. And then there was a debate about what that slide should look like. So now the question is, do we include a slide about community feedback, which would be the 18 names with no submissions? That's the vote. That's why it's two different pieces of a vote. The vote right now is whether or not to include this slide that people are looking at right now as part of the presentation. Exactly.
[Jim Lister]: Any more discussion?
[Paul Donato Jr]: Yes, Mr. Chair. What's the point of showing the 18 names if it doesn't show what the community input was? We know that there was 18 names because that's what the community voted on. Submitted, submitted. I'm sorry, I apologize. Submitted, submitted. All right, we're gonna- Submissions. Maybe we should put it, instead of alphabetically, put it in with the number of submissions, put it in that order. Would we agree for that? Agree with the order that the amount of submissions were made. So we know the order of the submissions with the 18 names. Anyone? All right.
[Jim Lister]: We've already voted. Put it in like this. Are we going to put this slide in? Yes or no? Can I go down and take a roll call? Brie, are we putting the slide in?
[Brothers]: No.
[Jim Lister]: Ian, are we putting the slide in?
[Puccio]: No.
[Jim Lister]: Erin, are we putting the slide in? Erin?
[Genia]: I don't think we need it, no. Grace?
[Jim Lister]: No. Ken Mallon? No. Kristen Scalise?
[Scalise]: No.
[Jim Lister]: Laura Rotolo? Yes. Lila Fleur. No. Luwin Tapa. No. Maria Mrosha.
[Miguel]: No.
[Jim Lister]: Melissa Miguel.
[Miguel]: It would be disingenuous to include this slide, so I strongly vote no.
[Jim Lister]: Patrick McCabe. Yes. Paul Donato?
[Giovino]: No.
[Jim Lister]: Ron Gervino?
[Giovino]: No.
[Jim Lister]: Seth Hill?
[Giovino]: No.
[Jim Lister]: Kathy Kaye? No. Matt Havestro? Yes. Janelle McCallum-McKenzie? No. Josie DeFore? No. And Jim Lister, no. Okay. So we have three yeses and the rest noes. So that slides out. Can we move to the next slide?
[Scalise]: Well, that used to be the previous slide. Now it's the next slide. Are we done with this one?
[Puccio]: Well, this one needs to be adjusted now, right?
[Scalise]: Probably. I think if we just specify a little more, we received community submissions. And from that, we took 18 names.
[LaFleur]: And maybe after reviewing community feedback, all 18 names are individually scored by all committee members.
[Kathleen Kay]: And is it, I'm sorry, may I ask a point of information question, Mr. Chair?
[Jim Lister]: Go ahead.
[Kathleen Kay]: Do we have on any of these slides how many submissions we received altogether?
[Jim Lister]: I believe back there was one that said over 1200 submissions.
[Unidentified]: Okay.
[Giovino]: I think you should take a look at slide seven. I think a lot of this is covered in that slide.
[Unidentified]: Okay.
[Jim Lister]: All right, let's, do we need to change anything here or are we all right with this one? This is just procedure we went through.
[McCabe]: To Ron's point, can we look at slide seven? It seems like there may be a lot of duplication. No, I guess not.
[Scalise]: I think this one is how we asked for. the public participation and then the next slide is what we, how we parsed it.
[Giovino]: I was just referring to the amount of, I was just referring to the amount of submissions. Right.
[Brothers]: Slide seven says 17 names and then this one says- Oh, good point.
[Scalise]: Oh no, we said 17 plus one name that was accidentally left off.
[Brothers]: You're right, sorry.
[Jim Lister]: Is everybody okay with this slide?
[Scalise]: I think maybe in the first bullet, we could add in something. A short-term memory shot. Maybe what Ron had talked about for the last slide, maybe some of his wording could be more clear here or make this more clear. Our community, sorry.
[Haberstroh]: I eliminated the last slide of the, so.
[Scalise]: when we were talking about adding to the community feedback slide. Was there like a sentence that would make this more?
[Giovino]: I burnt it 30 minutes ago.
[Scalise]: All 18 names gleaned or synonym for gleaned, gleaned from public participation.
[Giovino]: I would motion that Dr. Grace accept these words as a friendly amendment just to enhance our appreciation of community involvement?
[Caldera]: I'm a little, probably yes, but I'm just a little confused about what we're trying to accomplish with the addition because I'm also looking at what was written in the proposed script to try and add context to that. So right now it says the top 18 names were also independently researched and scored via the previously discussed rubric by all 23 advisory committee members. The scores were collected, averaged and ranked. The committee then moved forward to reduce the list down using the final three adopted process. And I thought at some point it said, yeah, there's a line in it saying that As a committee, we all took into account our own research, the rubric, and public input. So I don't know if... So I guess clarification to the friendly amendment as to what exactly we're putting in the top with all the 18, and then let's go from there.
[Giovino]: Are you asking me this question?
[Caldera]: Whoever proposed it, yes.
[Giovino]: I see the value, and based on what Melissa and everybody else has contributed, I do believe it's our opportunity to make a statement of how invaluable the community input was. And I think you can do that with two things, straightening out this vote versus submission thing in this sentence. While this number, whatever you want to say, while the submissions were not significant in any way as a vote, the total entries received was invaluable. I don't know, I gotta rewrite it. Was invaluable to the committee for both positive and negative feedback.
[Caldera]: Absolutely, yes. Thank you for that clarification.
[Giovino]: Thank you, yeah.
[Scalise]: How about did not signify a vote instead of saying we're not significant, because we don't want it to sound demeaning.
[Giovino]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's fine.
[Scalise]: And I know what you meant. I totally know that you did not mean it in any way.
[Giovino]: Yeah, thank you. Do you wanna?
[Scalise]: Can someone else? Here, let me just add it here. Say it again.
[Giovino]: You're going to ask me to say it again.
[Scalise]: Sorry, I thought you were writing it down.
[Giovino]: Let's just say the committee notes that the community input, although not a vote, was invaluable and important. to this decision process to receive both positive and most positive anecdote, most positive feedback and positive and negative feedback. It was invaluable. Let me think about it and write it again.
[Scalise]: Was invaluable and important as to both positive and negative feedback.
[Giovino]: Yeah, say the committee wishes, I believe everybody's saying this, the committee wishes to note that the community feedback was an invaluable, it was a very valuable piece of our decision process. The ability to receive both positive and negative anecdotes and feedback.
[Scalise]: It was an invaluable, important part of our Did you say the word deliberation?
[Giovino]: There you go. You can do that.
[Scalise]: Deliberations. I like that.
[Giovino]: There's so many. English is not my thing. I can add it up after, but not speaking.
[Scalise]: Good, because someone was saying percentages before, and I was like, do not let me do anywhere near math.
[Haberstroh]: This is Matt. I like the spirit of that, Ron. I really do.
[Scalise]: I do too.
[Hill]: This is Seth, and I like it, except invaluable and important are kind of saying the same thing.
[Scalise]: Oh, yeah, OK. Someone, synonym, or non-synonym. Invaluable and necessary? Significant. Significant. Welcome.
[Hill]: I like necessary.
[Scalise]: Anyone else?
[LaFleur]: I like necessary.
[Scalise]: I like that. Yeah, I think that's what I want to get through, at least personally, that these were so incredibly important. And I'm sure all of you, just like me, read every one.
[Brothers]: Just a quick grammar, if we phrase it that way, between was an invaluable, invaluable, or, oh, you're right.
[Scalise]: I see. Yeah. Thank you.
[LaFleur]: This also doesn't have the positive and negative.
[Scalise]: Well, I mean, we don't necessarily want to say negative. I don't think we need to. There were only a few negative ones that I think someone else categorized before and where, you know, someone said we were mentally ill, but we don't need to go into that. I don't think that was a in good faith submission.
[Jim Lister]: Okay, everybody fine with this now? Yes.
[Hill]: Yeah. And if I could chair, could I say a moment? This is Seth, I'm sorry. I just wanted to comment that things did get pretty heated the last up or down vote that we did have. And I just wanted to say that This is the thought that I think everybody brought to it, and we brought it in our different ways. And I wanted to make sure that it was acknowledged that we all felt a significant burden to represent the community as a whole. And I know that the committee as a whole did the due diligence of looking through each and every one of those pieces of community feedback. And I don't know. I like this wording. Thanks for the help of the committee to find it.
[Jim Lister]: Very good. Thank you. Next slide.
[McCabe]: Ready to move to the next slide. We say during the first round of voting, Belinda Sutton received 12 votes. And the additional votes, I just think when we say additional votes, it sounds like there's extra votes or something like that. If we said the remaining votes or the other votes went to Jean Barry, additional
[Paul Donato Jr]: Why do we have to use the word votes anyways? Why can't we just get rid of the 12 votes and just say that the first round of voting, we got Belinda Sutton, Jean Barry Sutherland, and Ms. Sutton. Why do we have to use the word votes? Those are our top three. We're gonna give votes to either one of them.
[Caldera]: A point of clarification. With this slide, I edited it. It wasn't... Anyways, to clarify what we did, just we, in order for transparency, right? We went through the initial round of voting where if the nominee received 12 votes, then that would be the recommendation to the school committee. And we did that. And so I think it's notable that Belinda Sutton did receive 12 votes and there were other votes that went to the other two. And then after all of that, Mr. Donato Jr. then made a resolution or an amendment was passed in order to bring all three of those names. So it was just, I think, a step-by-step of what actually transpired with what we did.
[Scalise]: But I- I think because our process was very, a little confusing in the moment that the wording sounds confusing. I forgot that we did it that way, but now that you explained it, now I remember.
[Puccio]: Jim, point of clarification. Yes. So we could have a slide that shows that Belinda Sutton received 12 votes from the committee, but we can't have a slide showing that Jean Barry Sutherland got 34% of the total votes from the community.
[Brothers]: Yes, because the committee was voting.
[Puccio]: I understand that. I understand that. I think it looks the way it looks. That's all. That's all I want to say. It makes sense one way, but it doesn't make sense the other way.
[Jim Lister]: All right. Now procedure is it was laid out to us.
[Puccio]: Yeah. It was laid out to us. You're right.
[Jim Lister]: Jim was laid to us this way.
[Paul Donato Jr]: 12 years back in 2019.
[Jim Lister]: Okay.
[Hill]: Point of order.
[Jim Lister]: All right, yes. Like to say something?
[Hill]: Just that those comments were out of order. OK.
[Scalise]: All right. I would be fine with just listing the people. I don't know how anyone else feels about it. I don't want to start another. I would second that.
[Paul Donato Jr]: I'd vote for that.
[Scalise]: I think especially just because we know how this preceded and we know understand how the Blinda Sutton received 12 and then there were additional.
[Puccio]: It makes sense to us, but I think- It looks pop heavy.
[Scalise]: I think we understand because we get the, we understand how we voted, but if someone wasn't watching the meeting, I think Paul's suggestion is correct because then it does, it makes it seem like the other people Yeah, if you weren't here to watch the process, it is confusing to someone what not involved reading this.
[Haberstroh]: Point of order, Mr. Lister. Yes, Matt. Matt Haverstroh, I have no problem with putting, Blueness Sutton received 12 votes, Gene Berry received, I think, seven, right? And Mr., two.
[Puccio]: But you would have a problem with the community slide.
[Haberstroh]: Danny, you have to go through the chair.
[Puccio]: Yeah, I'll go through the chair. So Jim, he's saying that he would have no problem with that, but he would have it on the community slide.
[Haberstroh]: Listen, we have a motion.
[Jim Lister]: We have a motion and a second here. So I'm sorry, we have a motion and a second to remove the numbers.
[Giovino]: Just on the motion, if I could, the fact is there were no second votes. We voted for the group. So you can't say one got 12 and maybe somebody else would have gotten 12 and we don't identify that. So with that regard, I think the votes total should be removed.
[Jim Lister]: We have a motion already to remove the votes, the number of votes, and just tell the people that we accepted the three.
[Rocha]: On the motion, I believe that it is significant to note that Belinda Sutton did receive 12 votes during the first round of voting. And I understand that it may be confusing. However, I also think that if someone is watching this presentation and they're really confused as to what exactly that means, they are able to go back and watch our previous meetings. I feel as though in many of our discussions about confusion, these are things that can easily be clarified if someone is that infested by looking back in our records. I think that for many of these committee members who have been repeatedly mentioning transparency, transparency, I think that we should explain this process for the sake of transparency and making very clear what our original process was and what actually transpired through the amended process.
[Miguel]: Point of clarification through the chair, you can't be transparent on one slide and then not be transparent on another. You're either transparent 100% of the time, or you're not transparent at all. And I second Ron's comment that Jean did not get any votes. She could have gotten 12 votes the second time around. So I think this is extremely misleading to the public. We're either gonna be transparent for community feedback, as well as committee input, or we're not gonna be transparent at all. My vote is that we are transparent, that we summarize the voices heard from the community and how we got to this voting process. We can't pick and choose where we're transparent.
[Paul Donato Jr]: For the chair, I agree.
[Jim Lister]: Lee, do you have your hand up?
[LaFleur]: I do. I am fine with leaving the 12. As Maria said, I think it does highlight that we use the procedure in the first round. I am open to removing that number. But my main comment was going to be, if we leave the 12, we could note here that only three names received any votes. So during the first round of voting, Belinda Sutton received 12 votes, and only three names received any votes. So there were only two other names that received votes.
[Jim Lister]: All right, so that would be an amendment then, right? I suppose it would be. Well, is that a friendly amendment?
[Scalise]: What about something like Belinda Sutton received 12 votes, and then the committee decided to send through the top three candidates, which included Gene Barry, Sutherland, and Misatoch?
[Hill]: Point of clarification. So when we chose to make that amendment, we actually moved from the process that Patrick had written out, which assured that the committee would bring forward the slate of three names that the majority felt were the best names. What we did by moving the amendment was bring forward the three names that the members of the committee had as their favorite names. And that's a significant difference. The motion did pass with a two thirds majority that the slate that we are passing to the school committee Two thirds of this committee did find that that slate was the best slate, but it is a specific difference that we didn't have a majority vote on the best slate. And that's what we would have gotten if we had gone through with Patrick's motion, we had one round, and Belinda Sutton was the only name that received enough votes to be put on the list. Since there were groups of two other committee or groups of people two names then became part of the slate that we are now sending. And I think that the way in which this is worded now is probably, it doesn't get into all of that detail, but it is an accurate representation of I think if we start slicing and dicing, then we're going to need to, again, in the interest of full transparency, be a little bit more explicit about how exactly we came to pass the slate.
[Jim Lister]: Thank you, Laura, would you like to speak.
[Rotolo]: Yes, thank you. Um, so, I, I think this the way it's written now is the most transparent it doesn't omit any of the steps that we took what we had was essentially ranked ranked choice voting right and that can be a little difficult to explain. But in ranked choice voting, you put your top name first. And that's what we did. And I think it just might be interesting. It might be relevant to the school committee that we did have a first round where Belinda Sutton got 12 votes. And as it became obvious after everyone was doing their three minute speech and the way to vote in the first round, shook out, it became obvious that the other two were likely to win the second and third rounds, right? So that's why there was a motion to forego the second and third rounds and just to put forth those three names. I think it's important to show that and I think it is not transparent to skip an important step that we went through with several votes to get there. Thank you.
[Jim Lister]: Thank you. Ron, did I see your hand up, Ron?
[Giovino]: Yeah, I'm not in favor of listing the number. I think you've got to go back and look at who got the highest rubric score too, and we're not doing that. So I'm for just eliminating all the numbers. It's just too confusing.
[Jim Lister]: Thank you. Grace, did you have your hand up?
[Caldera]: Yes. I have an edit I would like to bring forward. Changing that bullet point of during the first round of voting, blah, blah, blah. So changing that bullet point to each committee member voted for one nominee. After the first round of votes was recorded, only three candidates had received a first vote and a motion to amend was made and accepted to offer all three names to the school committee.
[Paul Donato Jr]: I agree with you, Grace. Thank you. I'd second that.
[Jim Lister]: Everybody else?
[Mallon]: Yeah, that sounds great. Yeah.
[Scalise]: I think that's nice. Can she say it again so I can type it?
[Paul Donato Jr]: Very well said.
[Mallon]: Thank you, Grace. I think it also replaces the next bullet down so that you have space.
[Jim Lister]: Do I still have hands up?
[Paul Donato Jr]: Do you mind repeating that for her so she can write it?
[Caldera]: Um, I have it written down. So how about I just, can I just drop it in? Yeah, sure. Right.
[Scalise]: I like the idea of it being comprehensible to someone who is only seeing this and who didn't really watch our, our, our YouTube videos that we're currently starring in.
[Jim Lister]: Patrick, give me a hand up. Okay. All right. Thank you, Grace. You got hands down. So we all in agreement here? I like doing a couple more hands, hold on. Lisa, raise your hand up. I think your hand's just stuck up, right?
[Evangelista]: Yeah, my hand's not up, sorry.
[Jim Lister]: Okay.
[Hill]: This is Seth. I copied from the transcript Grace's remarks.
[Mallon]: Okay.
[Hill]: the chat.
[Rocha]: If I may say, I certainly understand that this is more comprehensible. I do think that it is notable to state that Belinda Sutton was the only candidate that did receive 12 votes. If it would be acceptable to add in that Belinda Sutton got 12 votes or?
[Scalise]: I think it's notable, but then it makes it, for someone who didn't understand that we then voted and changed the procedure halfway through, it just sounds a little like, oh, but these people didn't get 12 votes, that Jean Barry Sutherland and Ms. Suttuck didn't, and they very well may have. I just feel like it's, I can't think of the word. It's a little misleading, not because we're being misleading, just because we, we changed our procedure halfway through for a good reason and for expediency. But I think it would just be a little, people would infer something from it. That's not really there.
[Jim Lister]: Hey, thank you.
[Scalise]: It's my opinion.
[Jim Lister]: Ryan, did you have your hand up again? No. Okay. All right. We all agree on this page. We can move to the next one.
[Paul Donato Jr]: Yes, Mr. Chairman.
[Hill]: Patrick does have his hand up.
[Jim Lister]: Oh, okay. Patrick.
[McCabe]: Yeah, I just, I just want to explain to folks the reason why the 12 is really significant is the initial charge from the school committee was that nominees that we bring forward must receive a majority vote and you know to what Seth had said before Belinda Sutton received you know the 12 votes and then we took a vote of two-thirds to send it send the other two names forward so those other two names you know did receive a majority vote not through the traditional way of the 12 votes that Belinda Sutton received, but it was a compromise vote going forward.
[Scalise]: What about instead of first place vote in the last bullet point, we say majority vote? Because all three did receive a majority vote.
[Puccio]: I think that that is- Point of information, Jim? Go ahead, Dan. Had we gone with the original format, Mr. Tuck could have gotten 15 votes in the next round. So, I mean, I think to add, put numbers in it makes zero sense at all. Then in the next round, maybe Gene Barry gets 15 votes. You know what I mean? That was just the first round. The only reason why we moved it was because all of us only voted on three. So we collectively decided to move them forward. So to put a number in this slide, It's not being transparent, in my opinion.
[Jim Lister]: That's what this language is here for, that we have right now in front of us.
[McCabe]: I wasn't advocating to have the number put in, Danny, so.
[Jim Lister]: OK. We agree on this slide. Move to the next one.
[Rocha]: I would like to say that the language of first place vote is a little confusing to me, because that implies as though, at least in my mind, as though three names all had a tie for first place. I just think that the phrasing of first place vote is confusing. I also would like to advocate for perhaps putting all three numbers because I think that it is significant. Once again, I'll reiterate that Belinda Sutton got 12 votes. I think that Because there are 22 members of the committee, it becomes clear that those are the three names that received any votes at all, which is why the motion was made to amend and all three names were offered to the school committee.
[Paul Donato Jr]: I make a motion to move on to the next slide.
[Jim Lister]: How many want to second that? Second. All those in favor. Aye. Any opposed.
[Rocha]: I'm opposed.
[Jim Lister]: I'm opposed as well. This is to accept this slide. Move on to the next one. Three brothers. Yes or no.
[Rocha]: Excuse me. This, this, this feels like a very clear attempt to, brush off the comments of some committee members. Also, Seth has his hand raised. I believe he had comments to make.
[Jim Lister]: Seth, go ahead.
[Hill]: Sure. Am I now commenting on the motion? For Christ's sake.
[Haberstroh]: The slide, so.
[Unidentified]: Yeah.
[Hill]: Lou, I'm sorry. Was that directed to me or is the chair? Oh, I was talking to someone else. I'm sorry.
[Paul Donato Jr]: I'm sorry, I pass. A motion's on the floor to accept the slide and it was seconded.
[Jim Lister]: Anybody else's hand up? I'm sorry, I closed out that window and I can't get it back. Patrick's hand is up. Patrick.
[McCabe]: No, I gotta take it down. Okay.
[Scalise]: Could we, I know there's procedure, but if the issue is first place vote, could we maybe just agree on a wording for that, and then?
[McCabe]: It would just be received a vote.
[Mallon]: Yeah, I would say received a vote.
[Haberstroh]: Point of order, Mr. Lister, reporting information. I kind of agree with Maria Roach. This is Matt Haberstroh. It just sounds like all three of these people got first place votes and there was a tie at the finish line. That's clearly not the case. Linda Sutton got 12, which is kind of blows away everyone else, in my opinion. So there should be some reference to that in this last one.
[Paul Donato Jr]: Sure, and Gene Barry Sutherland got 423 submissions. You want to get rid of that, but you don't want to get rid of this.
[Jim Lister]: Please, please, please, please. Thank you, Mr. Lister. We have a motion on the floor. Matt, you would just vote down then. You don't want this slide, right? I mean, we're going to vote the slide. You vote it down if you want it. You don't like the language, I guess.
[Haberstroh]: I thought we were talking about the language in the slide.
[Caldera]: Well, I'm happy to remove first place vote. That helps.
[Haberstroh]: It does help. Thank you, Grace.
[Hill]: Can we change it to first round vote?
[Haberstroh]: Well, it says the first round here. After the first round of votes, only three candidates have received and it says a first place vote. So I think Grace's idea of just eliminating that, can also receive a vote.
[Scalise]: Majority vote?
[Haberstroh]: No, because some didn't have a majority, so.
[Hill]: Well, it was the only, just a vote.
[Haberstroh]: Right, because we, okay.
[Paul Donato Jr]: And a motion was made. All right. We move this now? I will drop my motion if we just move on to the next slide.
[Scalise]: I think this conveys to the general public, the basics of how we proceeded.
[Jim Lister]: Okay. We're all in agreement on this slide. We can move to the next one.
[Scalise]: There's some hands up.
[Jim Lister]: Go ahead. Sorry. Maria, your hand up.
[Rocha]: I still believe that we should include the numbers, quite frankly. Um, I, I, I don't. really see how it would be so confusing. I think that the language, if we were simply to add after received a vote, may I edit the slideshow just to explain my point? Okay. I can remove it after, but Belinda Sutton received 12 votes Um, Jean Barry Sutherland received seven votes and miss a tuck received two votes and a motion to amend was made and accepted to offer all three names to the school committee. I don't believe that that is too confusing. I may I make a motion to add that to the presentation?
[Paul Donato Jr]: No, my motion's still on the floor.
[Kathleen Kay]: Jim, may I make a suggestion through the chair to Maria?
[McCabe]: Point of order, that would be a motion to amend. That would be a motion to amend. Yes, Kathy, please.
[Kathleen Kay]: If we just put in the word only, after the first round of votes was recorded, only three candidates received, oh, sorry, it's already, only three candidates received a vote. Sorry, it was already there, I missed it. I retract.
[Paul Donato Jr]: Motion to move to the next slide, Mr. Chairman.
[Jim Lister]: We have an amendment to your motion, Paul. She wants to put it back to putting, I mean.
[Hill]: Point of order, it wasn't actually to Paul's motion. It was a new motion in and of itself, I believe.
[Jim Lister]: Well, that would be an amendment with a motion on the floor. Either that or we vote the other motion up or down.
[Brothers]: Didn't Paul just say he would withdraw his motion? Did I hear that?
[Giovino]: With a condition, he said it.
[Paul Donato Jr]: Yes, if we moved on to the next slide, leave it the way it is right now currently and move on to the next slide.
[Rocha]: Well, could I offer my motion as instead an amendment to add that to the slide, then move on to the next slide?
[Paul Donato Jr]: And then I'll add an amendment to add that there's 423 votes were made for submissions were made for Jean Barry Sutherland. I mean, we can go on.
[Rocha]: We already voted that down.
[Paul Donato Jr]: I understand that, so that's why I'm saying.
[Rocha]: But we have not voted on whether or not to.
[Paul Donato Jr]: You're not going to be able to be presenters to the school committee next Tuesday.
[Giovino]: Point of information. No, I come back and forth, please. Point of information, please. Can we all start looking at the presentation and realizing what we're doing here? If you think putting votes there is going to influence seven school committee people, as opposed to the description of the candidates, then there's something wrong. I vote as is, move the question, but we can vote on the amendment. But, you know, this stuff is getting, you know, we're in our 90 minutes in where we've got another six hours to go with the way we're moving. So if you want to put the amendment up, let's vote it up and down.
[LaFleur]: And my point of information is, gentlemen, simply that the way it's worded now, it does not highlight that Belinda Sutton received the majority of votes from our committee. The public input was not a vote. Our committee does vote. Belinda Sutton did receive the most votes, all 12 from our committee. If we have it like this and do not acknowledge that she received the majority of votes, Even if we don't put in a number, we have not indicated that she received the majority of votes among the names that we put forward.
[Giovino]: Point of information, please.
[LaFleur]: That's my information point.
[Giovino]: Lee, I hear what you're saying. All I'm saying is, as being part of the presentation group, all I kept hearing was, let's be neutral, let's be fair, and let's not enhance one or the other. I think without knowing the procedure that we went through, I just, I think this accomplishes the same goal. There's plenty of time to celebrate in a different way. This to me is just not significant in terms of the vote, and it would move the question, and that's all I'm looking to do now. I just don't think it's a significant piece to stand on. You may disagree, in which case, let's vote.
[Jim Lister]: I agree, I understand. Thank you, Ron. Wouldn't it still be in the script that she had 12 votes? Not in these bullet points.
[Giovino]: No, not if we vote on this slide. The presenters will have to stick to this script that we write, not going offline.
[Caldera]: Yeah, no, the script should reflect the slide. So there will have to be edits made to that. But I think what we say should reflect what's also on the slide.
[Miguel]: Point of information, I have one question. This was supposed to end at six just for my own personal planning purposes. Are we going to extend this until we're done?
[Jim Lister]: Just got a message. We have to be off by seven. Before seven.
[Miguel]: Okay, thank you. Sorry to interrupt.
[Jim Lister]: No problem. Thank you.
[Kathleen Kay]: Can I can I make a friendly amendment? I think if that's what it'd be called.
[Jim Lister]: Go ahead.
[Kathleen Kay]: So could we say only three vote, only three candidates, and then right after the word candidates, put parentheses Sutton 12 or Barry seven, miss a top two. And then there it is. The information's in there.
[Jim Lister]: I second that. I think that's good. I mean, that's a friendly amendment. Who's the motion to accept that amendment? No. Yes.
[Puccio]: Don't we have something on the floor that Paul put up?
[McCabe]: Point of clarification, what is the motion that's on the floor right now? The motion is to keep the slide the way it is and move to the next. But the slide has changed five times since there was a motion to keep the slide the way it is.
[Paul Donato Jr]: Keep the slide the way it is presently, because I'm the one that made the motion. Keep the motion. Keep the slide the way it is. Right now, move on to the next slide as we were just informed that there's another meeting coming up and we'll never finish this. As Ron said, we have five, six hours more left to work to go. We're gonna have to go to the school committee and ask for another week to delay this. So let's just move on to the next slide, please.
[McCabe]: Who seconded that motion? I second it. And then there's a friendly amendment on the, it seems like, or not a friendly amendment, but there's, I don't know if Maria has an amendment or if Principal K has an amendment. I don't, I think they both have amendments. I think they say the same thing, but we need to clarify what the amendment is.
[Giovino]: Point of information, I've been trying to keep score, Patrick. Dr. Grace made a friendly amendment. Now we're debating, there is no amendment on the floor that's been seconded.
[Rotolo]: I made an amendment. Maria Rota made an amendment.
[Giovino]: Has it not been seconded yet?
[Rotolo]: I second it.
[Giovino]: Let's vote on it.
[McCabe]: Can you say what the amendment is so that we know what we're talking about?
[Rocha]: The amendment is to insert after had received a vote, dash, Belinda Sutton received 12 votes, comma, Jean Barry Sutherland received seven votes, comma, and Missituk received two votes, dash. And a motion to amend was made and accepted to offer all three names to the school committee.
[Jim Lister]: Okay. on the amendment, Bree?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[Jim Lister]: Dan? No. Erin? Yes. Grace? No. Ken? No. Kristen?
[Scalise]: No.
[Jim Lister]: Laura?
[Scalise]: Yes.
[Jim Lister]: Lee? Yes. Lou? No. Maria?
[Miguel]: Yes.
[Jim Lister]: Alyssa?
[Miguel]: No.
[Jim Lister]: Patrick? Yes. Paul? Definitely no. Ron? No. Seth? Yes. Kathy?
[Kathleen Kay]: Yes.
[Jim Lister]: Matt? Yes. Janelle?
[Evangelista]: No.
[Jim Lister]: Josie?
[Evangelista]: Yes.
[Jim Lister]: Chia, no.
[Haberstroh]: We got 10-10.
[Jim Lister]: That's what I got.
[Rocha]: I believe Caitlin Shaughnessy is absent.
[Jim Lister]: Yeah, Caitlin Shaughnessy is absent and Beth Fuller is absent. So that's a tie 10-10. The debate keeps going.
[LaFleur]: Parliamentary procedure not saying anything about a tie.
[McCabe]: Motion to carry on a tie. So now we need to vote on the original motion, which is to include this language.
[Jim Lister]: Okay. As we're looking at it right now in front of us.
[Rotolo]: On a clarification, can somebody just repeat what we're doing? What happens when we have a tie?
[Jim Lister]: Motion does not carry. Thank you. Thank you, Patrick. All right, so we're voting to Okay, this slide as we look at it right in front of us. Brian, do I see your hand up? No, okay. All right, anybody else speak up? Okay, Brie.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[Jim Lister]: Dan. Yes. Erin. Yes. Grace. Yes. Ken. Yes. Kristen.
[Scalise]: Yes.
[Jim Lister]: Laura.
[Scalise]: Yes.
[Jim Lister]: Lee. Yes. Lou. Yes. Maria.
[Evangelista]: No.
[Jim Lister]: Melissa.
[Evangelista]: Yes.
[Jim Lister]: Patrick. Yes. Paul. Yes, please. Ron? Yes. Seth? Yes. Kathy?
[Kathleen Kay]: Yes.
[Jim Lister]: Matt? No. Janelle?
[Rotolo]: Yes.
[Jim Lister]: Josie?
[Rotolo]: No.
[Jim Lister]: The chair, yes. So three nos and 17 yes. So let's move to the next slide. That slide stays like that now.
[Scalise]: My only question about this was, do we have permission to use this photo? I don't know who added it or is it not applicable? Cause we're not using this for profit or sales. I like the photo.
[Haberstroh]: It looks like it's from the Royal House.
[Evangelista]: Where did you get the picture?
[Dufour]: It is a picture from the Royal House. That's the Royal House fireplace right there.
[Unidentified]: OK.
[Evangelista]: So it's from the Royal House Association's website? Yes. OK. You should indicate that then, please, in case people have questions at night.
[Miguel]: point of information when I was editing the slides and we initially put the three names in alphabetical order, I suggested or requested that these overview slides also be put in that same order. Mr. Tuck, Jean Barry Sutherland and Belinda Sutton to keep things in alphabetical order so there could be no indication that we are giving any preference.
[Scalise]: That makes sense.
[Miguel]: Thank you.
[Kathleen Kay]: make sense to me too.
[Scalise]: All right, let's do the content in the way it is now and then we'll just, we'll flip it. Yes, I figured that's something we can do offline. Thank you. Yeah.
[Jim Lister]: Okay, does anybody have a problem?
[Scalise]: I like the content of this one.
[Paul Donato Jr]: I think it's great.
[McCabe]: Very nice.
[Paul Donato Jr]: Motion to accept this slide.
[McCabe]: Second. Second. There's a typo down below. It opens a rare opportunity, a rare window onto the life. So all the way to the left, three lines or two lines up from the bottom should say into the life.
[Scalise]: Oh, was this a quote? We'd have to see if someone, it was just pasted directly from.
[McCabe]: Okay.
[Scalise]: We'd have to check on it.
[McCabe]: Yeah. I'll check now.
[Scalise]: OK, I'll make a little comment here.
[Haberstroh]: PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, David Ensign — Herndon, he's on mute. PB, Harmon Zuckerman. PB, David Ensign — Herndon, he's on mute. PB, Harmon Zuckerman.
[Giovino]: Oh, it is.
[Miguel]: Oh, okay. Point of clarification, do they only hear her story when they visit? I've never been, so I just want to know, do they only hear Belinda's story, or do they hear the whole history of the royal house?
[Unidentified]: The whole... Lee could probably answer that one.
[LaFleur]: Yeah, I assume they hear the whole history of the Royal House, but of the enslaved people, Belinda is the main story that they would hear about.
[Miguel]: So we should say that the students attend the Royal House as a field trip and hear the story of the history, including her story. I don't think we just highlight her on the visit.
[Scalise]: Can I move to the... Oh, sorry. Is this on the next slide? Should I move to the next slide?
[Haberstroh]: Are there a couple of slides? I'm sorry, this isn't... Yeah, yeah. Okay, okay.
[Scalise]: There's several for each person, each candidate.
[Haberstroh]: Oh, okay.
[Rocha]: Also, I believe that on the slides themselves, it's clarified that Belinda Sutton is the story which the most is known about. I don't believe it's said that they only hear about her story.
[Miguel]: Can we- Point of clarification, I don't think you visit the Belinda Sutton house, the royal house to hear about Belinda Sutton. I think you learn about the history of everything that went on there. And if we wanna highlight that her story is spoken about because it's the most, that we have information on, that's fine, but it's not the Belinda Sutton House. I think this is- We wanna honor Belinda Sutton, and we wanna call the dream space over there, the Belinda Sutton House, that could be a discussion for another day.
[Rocha]: Point of order, that is on a later slide, so we can discuss this once we've moved on.
[Miguel]: Maria, can you please learn some respect, thank you. Please, please, talk to me. Hi, Jim, through the chair, I don't think it's fair to say that you go there to hear Belinda's story. I think you go there to hear the story about the history of what happened in that house. And Belinda Sutton is a piece of that history. Point of order.
[Rocha]: That is on a later slide.
[Jim Lister]: Can we slide down? Okay. Are we done with this slide? Can we move to the next slide?
[McCabe]: Kristen, you can remove your note. It does say, um, on to you.
[Scalise]: Okay, great. Thank you.
[McCabe]: All right.
[Hill]: Thank you.
[Scalise]: Thanks Jim.
[Unidentified]: Jim.
[Paul Donato Jr]: The Underground Railroad, there's lots of things that you learn about at the Royal House.
[Scalise]: I had tickets before COVID started, and I was very disappointed that I haven't been able to go yet.
[Paul Donato Jr]: I would love to take you on a tour.
[Mackenzie]: This is Janelle. I've actually been on the tour with the fifth graders before.
[Scalise]: Oh, how is it?
[Mackenzie]: It is not the focus solely on her, but she is mentioned in the tour.
[Scalise]: And do the kids always enjoy it?
[Mackenzie]: Yes, it's a great tour.
[Scalise]: That sounds nice.
[Jim Lister]: All right, thank you.
[Scalise]: OK, so next slide.
[Jim Lister]: Next slide.
[Scalise]: Okay. So let's see if it's worded here.
[Evangelista]: Buddy, you're not gonna have as much time as you think, so you might want to be less is more if I can get that across to you. Okay. Yeah. Okay.
[Scalise]: I think this one's pretty straightforward in my opinion. Anybody else?
[Puccio]: I don't like the last line in there. I find it offensive.
[Miguel]: I second.
[Giovino]: Point of information. I think the Columbus issue is over. I do think we should change Columbus with early settlers.
[Scalise]: Legacy of the slave trade?
[Giovino]: Excuse me? I mean, early settlers. I mean, we've done the argument. That's not our piece. I think Columbus is just not an appropriate place to have it. Early settlers seems to cover everybody.
[Paul Donato Jr]: I second Ron's wording.
[Kathleen Kay]: I accept that as well. I would second that too.
[Jim Lister]: Anybody else got their hand up here? I don't see.
[Puccio]: I would like to leave Columbus out of this whole thing. OK.
[Jim Lister]: No, I don't. I see. I don't see any hands. I think we're good with this.
[Paul Donato Jr]: That's a friendly amendment. I second Ron's amendment. My question.
[Jim Lister]: Go ahead, Seth. Well, excuse me, while you're talking, can someone take out Columbus there and change the language?
[Hill]: Well, that was specifically what I was speaking to.
[Jim Lister]: All right.
[Hill]: So the committee in and of itself was specifically formed because we are addressing the marginalization of of Columbus's legacy. This is, it's not up to- It's specifically- Point of information.
[Giovino]: Point of information. To think that putting Columbus's name in here is any way a building tool for the city, is a Columbus or early settlers I'm sure he didn't marginalize all by himself. I would respectfully request that we do not begin the debate again that's been over a year ago settled. Early settlers covers the point. Whoever wrote this, who's the writer of this? I'll offer it as a friendly amendment. Otherwise we'll take another vote.
[McCabe]: I agree with this. I have my hand up, Jim. Go ahead, Patrick. So I can definitely understand saying the legacy of Columbus as far as Columbus specifically, sort of doing like an end zone dance for some people. I can have respect for folks that don't want to see that. But I think that early settlers is way too squishy. I don't think that, you know, it acknowledges those marginalized by the slave trade. Someone else offered that up. I mean, I think we need to acknowledge, you know, why people were marginalized and what she overcame.
[SPEAKER_19]: And so just saying, instead of early settlers in Columbus then.
[Brothers]: For this entire slide, I did not write this entire slide. I did write this last line. So any friendly amendments should maybe be directed towards me. This is Brie.
[McCabe]: Yeah, so Bree, would you accept acknowledges those marginalized by the legacy of the slave trade?
[Brothers]: No.
[McCabe]: Okay.
[Genia]: You could say acknowledges those marginalized by the legacy of colonization and slavery. That works.
[LaFleur]: That works. Jim, does Bree want to speak to why she chose Columbus?
[Brothers]: Because we're renaming the Columbus Elementary School based on what we now know about him.
[Puccio]: For clarification, the school committee's renaming the school would just suggest in three possible choices. And I, as I said before, I'm against any mention of Columbus in our presentation to the school committee.
[Miguel]: When a clarification can breathe, please explain to me the connection between Columbus and Belinda Sutton, or maybe not specifically me, but for those listening, how Belinda Sutton was marginalized by Columbus, please.
[Brothers]: uh sure it's um Columbus and his legacy is one of the it essentially makes him one of the founding fathers of modern slavery, whereas Columbus, you know, marginalized Native Americans who were here first, those same ideals and those practices of like, you know, pushing people off of their land and basically taking them in as slaves, both for labor and for sex trade, that continued well on into modern slavery where, you know, Black people were brought over from Africa. It is more of a, a chain of events, you could say.
[Giovino]: Point of clarification, Brie, are you saying that Columbus is the name of what you're speaking of? Totally disagree.
[Brothers]: I'm sorry, what?
[Giovino]: You're using the name Columbus as if it was, you know, all... I just don't understand why you need to put that in other than to inflame the fans who are watching this show. Anyways, let's move the question.
[McCabe]: What's the question again?
[Paul Donato Jr]: to remove that line.
[Giovino]: Well, it wasn't accepted as a friendly amendment, so we need to put it as an amendment, whatever the words were.
[Paul Donato Jr]: What were your words again, Ron, please?
[Giovino]: Oh, these weren't my words.
[Paul Donato Jr]: No, but not your words. I'm talking about the way you said a legacy of.
[Giovino]: Well, they changed that. I don't know who was the one who changed it, but let's vote on that.
[Jim Lister]: Well, I got a few more hands here. Grace, would you like to speak?
[Caldera]: Yeah, so I think yes, the actions of Columbus did help move and instill practices that were used in the actual slavery within our lands on the U.S. However, I think that Columbus never landed in the U.S. and much less was here in Medford. And so I guess I will put forth a friendly amendment to change it to acknowledges those marginalized by the legacy of European settlers or colonists. Just because I think that holds a little bit more true to where we are located and where the school is and where our city's history. So that's all I have to say.
[Brothers]: Sure that's that's fine but didn't Aaron also put a put forth a a friendly amendment so now there are two.
[Jim Lister]: You didn't accept the other friendly amendment so that would have been a
[Evangelista]: No, no, no. That wasn't Aaron's amendment. Aaron's was legacy of colonization and slavery.
[Jim Lister]: Okay. Thank you.
[Brothers]: Yeah. The other one was, I think early. I don't remember what it was now. Early settlers, maybe.
[McCabe]: So do you accept any of those as friendly?
[Brothers]: I would accept Aaron's or braces.
[McCabe]: Okay.
[Scalise]: Um, we have slavery in the previous bullet point. So maybe colonization. European colonization would be less repetitive?
[Jim Lister]: Settlers? Legacy of early European settlers?
[Brothers]: No, that's the colonization.
[LaFleur]: Yeah, I like colonization.
[Brothers]: Yeah, slavery and colonization, colonization, I don't have a strong preference.
[Jim Lister]: Can we get that changed?
[Genia]: Does that work?
[Haberstroh]: Sure, sure. Mr. Lister? Yes. Order of information, whatever. Brie, would you be OK with acknowledging, well, maybe not acknowledging, but inserting a line that the blended sentence story in the royal house is part of the curriculum of Medford schools?
[Scalise]: That might be in the next, I think.
[Haberstroh]: Already in the slide. Okay, thank you. Already in the next slide.
[Scalise]: I think there's a, if I remember correct, can I go to the next slide? Are we okay?
[Jim Lister]: We all set with this one?
[Giovino]: I think it's one of the citizens' inputs.
[Brothers]: I do want to acknowledge whatever Matt's asking for. I think it's in the next slide.
[Paul Donato Jr]: Should we move on to the next slide, Mr. Chairman? Motion? Everybody happy with the slide?
[Scalise]: Can we go back to it if what Matt is saying is not in the next slide?
[Jim Lister]: We have two raised hands here.
[Miguel]: Can we go to that? Can somebody who actually works in the Medford school system or maybe Lee, what is the actual curriculum that is taught to the children who visit the royal house? Is it strictly focused on Belinda Sutton? I need that question answered. I feel like I've asked it twice now. Is she a piece of the history or is she the entire history of the Royal House?
[Mackenzie]: I think Janelle answered that. I spoke on this briefly. I've been to the tour. It's not specifically focused on Belinda Sutton, but she is something that they do include, they talk about. Right.
[Miguel]: So I think to say that she's mentioned there, it's a given. I think to highlight that and make it seem like she is in Broadway lights at the Royal House and that's what we talk about there is, again, disingenuous. We need to put the facts on the table.
[Haberstroh]: Mr. Lister. Go ahead. Thank you. I certainly wouldn't want to put her in Broadway lights. I would just simply mention that as part of the curriculum, the royal house is toured by fifth graders and blend this story.
[Jim Lister]: It's on the next slide. If we get to it.
[Haberstroh]: Okay. Well, you interrupted me. So thank you.
[Rotolo]: And point of information, in terms of the curriculum, the children do learn her story as well. I know my daughter did not do the tour of the royal house probably because of COVID, but she did learn about the story of Belinda Sutton, I believe in the third grade.
[Mackenzie]: Yeah, the third graders do like where they dress up of different members, like different historical people. And she's one of the names on the list of characters or people that they may dress up in third grade.
[Miguel]: Point of information, we did third grade remote last year and we did learn about the slave trade in Medford that included the Brooks, which we have a school named after. And not once did I see in any of the information that we were presented in third grade to include Belinda Sutton, but we did learn about the rum trade with the slaves for the Brooks family. So I think we need to take a deeper look into what is being taught because I did remote third grade last year and I don't ever recall Belinda Sutton's name coming up. So again, I could just put facts out there.
[Caldera]: Point of something. What's being taught in the school is out of our purview and I know that the schools are working on racial equity and working to adjust to adjust and add to the school curriculums with the teachers as well as doing an overview of the curriculum. So if you would like to see more, I would suggest you go send them a letter to that suggestion.
[Jim Lister]: All right. Can we stick to this now? We run.
[Rotolo]: I'm sorry, Mr. Chair, just answer the question about what's on the curriculum. I just want to say from my own experience that I'm just, I'm sort of embarrassed to say that I didn't know anything about Belinda Sutton until my child brought that to me. I believe it was in the third grade. So at some point it is in the curriculum.
[Jim Lister]: Okay, thank you.
[Kathleen Kay]: And if, may I just for clarity, the third grade does biographies. So it depends on the year and if a child chooses Belinda Sutton to read and do their project on. So it's not like she's excluded from the curriculum. It's not like she's the major highlight either. The children just have a list of books they can choose from, Belinda Sutton being one of them in the third grade.
[Jim Lister]: Okay, thank you. All right, we happy with this slide? We're gonna move to the next one.
[Evangelista]: Folks, we have 10 minutes and then I have to move to the budget hearing.
[Paul Donato Jr]: Mr. Chairman, are we going to have to go to the school committee and ask for another week? Because as we only have 10 minutes left and we haven't even finished. We have another meeting this week.
[Jim Lister]: There is a Lisa.
[Evangelista]: I'm sorry, I'm the advisor to the club and we have to vote that evening on awards. I was the only night that the coaches could meet.
[Paul Donato Jr]: Friday.
[Evangelista]: So we need to, I really would rather not meet on a Friday unless it's like two to four or three to five the most. I just a question.
[Rocha]: I thought that we had discussed earlier that we did not need to have Lisa evangelist there as a note taker, since the meetings are recorded.
[Evangelista]: No, we do need somebody because then I'm going to have to go back and watch the meeting and in order to get it all done and ready for the seventh, I'm not sure I'd be able to do that.
[Caldera]: Could the superintendent find another note taker for us? My understanding is it just needs to be anybody. I understand that there are some I understand there's two of you that are designated for that. Is there anybody else that could potentially step in for us if we need to in order for us to get this done?
[Unidentified]: You'd have to pay somebody else.
[Paul Donato Jr]: Ron's original, Ron's original.
[Evangelista]: I can do two to four or three to five, but it's going to be tough to get the notes ready for Monday. But anyway.
[Paul Donato Jr]: That's why originally Ron did ask for two weeks. And unfortunately we voted for only given one week to June 7th. And we should have listened to Ron from the beginning and went with the two weeks because this is the problem that we're having. We're not going to finish.
[Hill]: Pulling for an order of the day. We need to stick on our agenda.
[Evangelista]: I can ask to see if Susie can do Thursday, but I'm not sure if she's helping with the prom, because that's also Thursday. I told you guys it was just a tough week.
[McCabe]: Lisa, what's the advanced posting, though, the requirement on the posting?
[Evangelista]: Oh, right. Yeah, I need 48 hours.
[McCabe]: So it would have to be Friday.
[Evangelista]: Yeah. Good point there, Patrick. You got it.
[Jim Lister]: So it's either Friday, or we were asking for another extension.
[Haberstroh]: Yeah, and Grace did mention, other people mentioned, I think a week or so ago, that we might have to ask for another extension. I don't think we should rush this. As I tell my art students, don't rush.
[Paul Donato Jr]: Thank you, Matt. I agree with you. You need to ask for an extension, please.
[Hill]: From a point of information. From a point of information, the committee could theoretically just move to submit the transcripts as is and then amend as needed at the convenience of the stat.
[Giovino]: Point of information, Seth, I know this for a fact, that is against open meeting law rules. Thanks for that. Good idea, but it is against open meeting law.
[Haberstroh]: Can we ask Mr. Cushing to hire somebody for us for Friday? That seems like the only option to me.
[McCabe]: Wasn't Dr. Cushing the one that told us that we could start the meeting without a note taker because of the transcription service? I know that was before you came on Lisa, but that's what Dr. Cushing had said when Jim talked about waiting for you to get here.
[Haberstroh]: Yeah, I would propose we try to meet on Friday and Mr. Lister, if you can try to find somebody for through Mr. Cushing.
[Evangelista]: When you say Friday, what time folks, because it's a Friday night. I don't think that's appropriate.
[Miguel]: I'm sorry, but if you want to do information, I would not be available until four due to my full-time commitment to my job. So if we can keep it after four, that would be helpful.
[Jim Lister]: Thank you for everybody at all on Friday.
[Giovino]: Mr. Chairman, I go back to, again, I am not rushing this process. I think that we should have a conversation. A year it took to get to us, they gave us a month. How could we possibly get it together? We're doing our due diligence to make a quality presentation. I think we ask for another week, we meet on Monday. to continue this. Just think about it. Friday we've got to do this. That means we've got to put it all together and have it ready for Monday? No.
[Paul Donato Jr]: And Mr. Chair, if I say Lisa said that we had a 15 minute presentation when we need a half hour. So we need to put on the agenda that we need a half hour to 45 minutes for our presentation.
[Scalise]: May I ask a rules question? Go ahead. If we as the subcommittee of 10 that are working on this, if we are stay under quorum, are we able to meet in a Zoom to continue working together to do this? I have a business level Zoom that has no time limit and I can have people in it. I would be willing to host that at a time convenient for everybody if we could work that out. I just don't know if that is against the rules.
[Giovino]: Point of information, believe me, I want to do that more than you know. However, I know from the Attorney General's office, all our deliberations need to be done in public with the same rules as the open meeting. Okay, even if we keep it below the quorum?
[Rotolo]: Not if they're under quorum. Yes. Not if they're under quorum.
[Giovino]: That is not true. The quorum, our subcommittee is its own separate public body.
[McCabe]: No, no, it's not.
[Giovino]: It's not.
[McCabe]: Patrick, I will say. It's a work group established through our committee.
[Giovino]: Point of information.
[McCabe]: It's not a subcommittee.
[Giovino]: I mean, I'm no expert. That's why I went to go to do this research. But point of information. Do you want me to read it? I don't know if you want me to read it or not.
[McCabe]: I'm familiar with it. I read it.
[Giovino]: Go read it. The 10-person subcommittee of the advisory committee is also a public body in its own right. This means that the subcommittee must follow all of the requirements of an open meeting law, including the prohibition on a quorum deliberating, deliberating out. Let me finish the deliberating outside of meeting. Deliberation is defined as any oral or written communication through any media between or amongst the quorum. of a public body on a public business within its jurisdiction. To be deliberation, the communication must reach a quorum of the public body, which is the subcommittee.
[McCabe]: An email from... Who's this from, Ron?
[Giovino]: This is from the Attorney General's office. The first line is the 10 person subcommittee of the advisory committee is a public body in its own right. That's its first sentence, Patrick. Again, I defer to you, but it's in writing. I mean, this is their opinion.
[Rocha]: Are you able to show that to us?
[Giovino]: I can send it to you all, but I don't think you guys get my email.
[Rocha]: Are we going to ask for an extension here, everybody?
[Giovino]: I'm going to send this to Patrick as the post.
[McCabe]: Well, I also need to see what the original, what you were asking. I'll send you the whole thing.
[Paul Donato Jr]: One minute extension, please.
[Jim Lister]: All those in favor of asking for another week. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
[Miguel]: Yes.
[Mallon]: Yes.
[Jim Lister]: Kristen. Yes. Laura. No.
[SPEAKER_19]: Lee. Yes. Lou. Yes. Maria.
[Miguel]: Yes, please.
[Jim Lister]: Patrick. No. Paul. Yes, please. Ron.
[Giovino]: Yes.
[Jim Lister]: Seth. No. Kathy. Yes. Matt. No. Janelle.
[Mackenzie]: Yes.
[Jim Lister]: Josie.
[Dufour]: No.
[Jim Lister]: Chair, yes, okay.
[Jim Lister]: We're asking for an extension. Okay, motion to adjourn? Second. Second. I'm sorry, Kathy, I have a question. Shoot. Kathy Kaye? Yep. Did you get the background on the three candidates and were you able to do a
[Kathleen Kay]: I did, Josie gave them to me, I gave them to the teachers today and I asked them to turn the votes back to me by Thursday so that Mrs. Sherman Hudson and I could tabulate them and have them ready for what I thought was Monday's meeting.
[Jim Lister]: Okay. Suggestion. All right, so we can see.
[Rocha]: Point of information, what is this extension going to look like?
[Jim Lister]: We're asking for one more week.
[Cushing]: We have the district's budget meeting that needs to start now, so I apologize, but it's the same channel. Okay. All right. Thank you. We're adjourned.