[SPEAKER_11]: hope everybody had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I'd like to welcome Marky here tonight. So happy to have you, the superintendent's assistant, new assistant. Thank you for being here. We're going to start the seventh regular meeting of the Medford School Committee, Monday, December 5th, 2022. Regular meeting, 6 p.m. held at the Howard Alden Memorial Chambers, Medford City Hall, as well as on Zoom. You can also call in by dialing 1-309-205-3325 and join by Zoom. Roll call, member Ruseau, please. Member Graham. Here.
[SPEAKER_05]: We also have our student rep Melanie Chavez.
[SPEAKER_15]: Thank you for being here. If we can all rise to salute the flag.
[SPEAKER_11]: We have number three, good of the order. I believe we have that last meeting too. I don't know if anybody has anything they'd like to add. Member Hays.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you, I just had two very quick things. One, well, first I'd like to mention that it's great we've already got the microphone for our student representative. I did want to check on the follow through with the idea of putting student participation on the agenda and just, I brought it up, but I don't think we talked about how that would, we'd follow through on that, whether that needs to go to maybe the rules subcommittee to talk about.
[SPEAKER_09]: So motion to- Motion to move the student participation to the rules subcommittee. Second.
[SPEAKER_11]: Motion by Member McLaughlin, seconded by Member Hays. All those in favor?
[SPEAKER_03]: Aye.
[SPEAKER_11]: All those opposed? Motion passes.
[SPEAKER_03]: One other quick thing, so we had a training meeting back in October, was it, about the superintendent evaluation, and I know we've talked a little bit about, there were some things that came up that we need to either update or refine. If we could put, I think we were talking about maybe doing a committee of the whole for that, I just wanted to make sure, again, there's a lot going on that got followed through with.
[SPEAKER_11]: Yeah, but I think we decided at 5 p.m. for a January meeting, so you just pick one and let us know, and we'll hold the date and time. Okay, Superintendent will get us a date and time, 5 p.m., one of the meetings in January.
[SPEAKER_09]: And just a reminder that we have the meeting for the school committee goals, right?
[SPEAKER_11]: Yes, that could be next, at the December meeting, or was that the second one in January? Okay, sounds great. Then we also have the consent agenda, number four, bills and payrolls, regular school committee meeting minutes, 22, November 21st. Is there a motion for approval? Motion to approve. Member McLaughlin, seconded by? Seconded. Member Kreatz, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Number five, we have report of the superintendent, superintendent's updates and comments.
[SPEAKER_04]: Dr. Maurice Edouard-Vincent, superintendent.
[SPEAKER_05]: Good evening. Good evening.
[SPEAKER_16]: I hope that everyone had a nice Thanksgiving break and that some of you were able to join us at Fenway Park. Although the outcome wasn't what we would have wanted, the Mustangs gave it their all. And for that, we are very proud of them. I also want to say a special thanks to our Mustang students, families, and alumni who supported the event. I want to thank Our athletic team, Dr. Cushing, Principal DeLeva, Mr. Galusi, all the students who planned and participated in the entertaining pep rally that preceded the game as well. So thank you to all of you, the band, and everyone did a fabulous job. Also, I would like to take this opportunity to thank state representative Christine Barber and the rest of our state delegation for the inclusion of an act to ensure dependent health coverage for adults with disabilities in the legislature's mental health bill. This act restores a provision that allows people with severe disabilities to remain on their parents' health plan without an age limit. This is a critical issue for our Mustang families of children with disabilities, and we appreciate the hard work of Representative Barber. I would also like to thank the following partners for supporting the Missittuck School for this holiday season. The Missittuck hosted a holiday giving program in collaboration with the Malden YMCA, Bank of America, the United Way, Kirkland and Ellis, and the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, which provided gift cards and funds to the Missittuck community. Due to everyone's generosity, a number of food bags and gift cards were able to be donated to families at the Missittuck School. The Missittuck PTO is continuing to collect gift cards and donations until December 9th. Great work, everyone. I also would like to recognize our Buddhist family and friends who are celebrating a significant holiday called Bodhi Holiday. Bodhi Day is celebrated December 8th and notes the day that Lord Buddha's enlightenment occurred. The colors of Bodhi Day are often red, green, silver, and white. Buddhists decorate pine trees and come together to worship and to celebrate fellowship and joy. Since we have a Buddhist temple here in Medford, the Karukala Center, I take this opportunity to wish our Buddhist community a blessed Bodhi Day. There are two historical days to keep in mind, dates. December 7th is the 81st commemoration of National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, and December 15th is the United States Bill of Rights Day, which was ratified on December 15th, 1791. The Bill of Rights are the first 10 amendments to our Constitution, which protects some of the most indispensable rights and liberties that define us as Americans. There are several upcoming events happening in Medford between now and our next meeting. December 7th this week, is both a booster and a flu clinic at the high school from three to 7 p.m. On December 10th and 11th, our band parents continue to have the tree and reef sale. Despite the rain, it's been very successful and I wanna thank the Medford community for supporting our band parents during this fundraiser. It takes place from 10 to five at the high school parking lot. Medford Family Network is going to be hosting their annual book and toy swap. That's December 11th. It's by appointment only from one to five o'clock at the high school. Also on December 11th, we have the Tufts men's basketball team hosting a free youth clinic for our students here in grades five through eight. It's going to take place at Tufts University in the Cousins Gym from 430 to 6. Tufts University is asking that you support them by bringing an item for their donation, their support of the Home for Little Wanderers. So if you decide to participate in that, feel free to bring a new toy or a personal care item, and it will be donated to the Home for Little Wanderers. On December 14th, we have a CPAC meeting, which is going to be about basic rights, evaluation, and eligibility. That's from 6 to 8 p.m. by Zoom. On December 14th and December 15th, we have our winter concerts. December 14th is our band, and that concert will be taking place in the Caron Theater at 7 p.m. It's $5 per person. And on December 15th, it will be our orchestra winter concert taking place also in the Caron Theater at 7 p.m. Tickets are $5 per person. Lastly, before we meet again, December 18th marks the beginning of Hanukkah. Hanukkah begins at sundown and continues until December 26th. It celebrates the triumph of light over darkness and the freedom to worship God. Happy Hanukkah to our Jewish families and friends. Later in the agenda, we will be having several presentations, and one of the key presentations today will be a labor update. Thank you, and have a good evening.
[SPEAKER_11]: Thank you, Dr. Edward-Vincent. We have number two, before and after school presentation by Ms. Megan Fidler-Carey, Director of Family and Community Engagement, who I'm assuming is on Zoom? Yes. Ms.
[SPEAKER_05]: Fidler-Carey. Hello. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_18]: Sorry, I had to get to my camera. How are you? Thank you again. Thank you for the opportunity to present on afterschool. We wanted to answer some questions that came up earlier in the fall. So this presentation is just quick. It's not comprehensive. As expected, we plan to present again in the spring when we have some better ideas about what the next year will look like. But today we just wanted to answer some of those questions that have come up throughout the fall, just because we know that some people are still curious about it. So these were specific questions that some families have asked us. And so we just wanted to respond directly to those questions there about specific statistics about our programming. We can't unfortunately answer questions about other programs in the city because they're their own entities, but we are happy to answer the questions about our school programs. So one of the first questions that came up specifically was how many families are enrolled in afterschool versus applicants to the lottery. And this was from last spring. So as you know, our programs are very full and we have wait lists at every program at the four elementary schools. And every spring we run a lottery to fill the open spots, the spots that become available as fifth graders graduate out or people move or drop out of the program. So to answer these questions specifically, these are our current numbers. Actually, these were our current numbers last week. And the problem with this sort of data is it's completely dynamic. It's changing every day. So some of these numbers are already obsolete, but this gives you a good sense of where we are. So the total number of students enrolled is 330 across the district at the four schools. Again, What we talked about last spring was the difference of thinking about this in terms of families who are enrolled in the program versus seats available. Because we do offer spots for two days a week, three days a week, or five days a week. So it doesn't necessarily capture the data if we tell you how many families are enrolled in afterschool, because some of them might be two days, some might be three, some might be five. So we have 330 students enrolled. but across the district, there are only 300 seats. So last spring, this was a question that was specifically asked, how many applicants were there to the lottery? And there were 152. And then the total that got spots was 47. We only had 47 open seats that we could enter the lottery. Since then, we've entered more. We've had more students come off of the wait list this year, but that's the direct answer to the lottery question. And then the question was asked specifically about the waitlist. People would like more clarification about what the waitlist looks like. And so the question was asked, could we spread it out across grades? So I'll let people who are interested in this take a moment to look at this table that shows you what the waitlist numbers look like at every grade level at every school. You do notice that it, the numbers, if we could go back to that slide, you'll notice that the numbers drop off in the older grades. And we think that's for two different reasons. First of all, maybe students got into the program who had been on the wait list, but second of all, you know, some students just become more independent and can take care and don't necessarily need afterschool care. And it definitely depends on, you know, what time. families come home if they need, you know, the full three hours of afterschool care, or if they only needed a little bit, then, you know, fourth and fifth graders are more independent to be on their own. Okay, now we can go forward. Another question that was asked based on what we presented in the spring, some of our solutions for increasing staff Applicants. So one of our problems for maintaining our maximum spots at each of the schools is that it's very difficult to hire for after school. So one of the solutions that we came up with that was, you know, has been suggested was to increase pay rates and someone asked if that had in fact been done. So the answer is yes, we're glad to say yes, we increased pay rates pretty significantly for last year. And then we did a standard cost of living increase for this year and kept most of our staff. So that's been working and it's definitely a competitive rate. We noticed that we started a trend, other districts around us have been increasing their pay rates as well. So I think, As I say, every year and every time I'm in front of this body, this is a problem that's not unique to Medford. There are wait lists at all sorts of afterschool programs, private and district run, and staffing is one of the biggest challenges we face. So we can move on. Another solution that we've talked about is to think about tuition rates. If staffing, to increase staffing pay, we thought we'd need to increase tuition rates, which we did just a little bit. As you know, we try and keep it as affordable as possible. Last spring, I also asked the school committee to honor the idea of doing away with the EEC vouchers. So if you'll recall, I know that that meeting is recorded somewhere. So if you wanted more information about that, I encourage you to go find that meeting, but we did that. So starting at the beginning of this year, we no longer accept vouchers from EEC. Instead, we're doing a sliding scale financial assistance rate. And the eligibility is based on the same eligibility criteria that the Community Development Block Grant uses for their funding. So we've got currently, I think I have it on here, 21 families that are paying discounted tuition who filled out those forms. And we're going to reach out to all families in the program again after the new year to to say if anything changes and you feel like you need to apply for this tuition discount now they can do that so the idea will be that at the beginning of the year, and then halfway through the year people can apply for financial assistance. So we'll give people a minute to hold on let's give people a minute to look at this slide. From last spring, we increased the pay rate just a little bit. I mean, the tuition rate just a little bit based on the trend. We based it on what voucher was reimbursing, even though we weren't gonna be taking vouchers, that was our sort of benchmark that we used. So we increased just a bit. We're looking at that again, and there may be a chance that we'll have to increase some more for next year, but that's a report that we'll give you in the spring when we have a better sense of what our budget truly looks like. Okay, now we can go forward. Speaking of budget, that was another question that came up transparency for what the budget looks like. Now these numbers are, this is very dynamic and this may change as we're looking at it, especially noting that we're, we're trying to keep creative with staffing. We're looking at how, I told you that other districts have been raising their pay rates. So again, we wanna stay competitive. So we're looking at our own pay rates to think about what that might look like and what changes we might need to make. So these budget estimates are very crude at this point, and we'll have a much better sense in the spring of what this will look like for you. But I wanted to make sure that all of the questions that were asked earlier this fall, both at school committee meetings and in some emails that we've received. I tried to answer every question that's come across our desk, and I hope I got to all of them.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you, Ms.
[SPEAKER_11]: Fiblikary. Appreciate the update.
[SPEAKER_08]: Member Graham, thank you for this. Can you just tell us how many students are enrolled in each of the programs today, like how many of the 330 enrolled are at each school? Do you know roughly?
[SPEAKER_18]: So again, I hesitate to talk about students, but if we talk about seats, that's the one that I can say very definitively. So at the Brooks School, for example, we have 120 seats. We've got a grade group for each grade, and that's 20 students per grade group. And then at the other schools, we've got 60 seats, 60 seats, and 60 seats. We've got three grade groups at each of the other schools.
[SPEAKER_08]: And if I am recalling the history of that, correct, it's actually fairly new that there are wait lists outside of the Brooks School. Is that true?
[SPEAKER_18]: At the length that they are, yes. We've had sort of five and six students on a wait list. And that might be because they had specific needs that we needed specific staffing for, You know it was it was one grade group that had just too many and so we had five on that grade group wait lists, but this year, yes, it has gotten a lot. It's at every school that we've got wait lists.
[SPEAKER_08]: I think you've also talked at times about particularly at the Brooks, there really not being a lot of opportunity to expand that program further because it poses some challenges and some safety issues and that kind of thing for that group to expand beyond its current number of seats. Is that still true at the Brooks?
[SPEAKER_18]: Yes, definitely.
[SPEAKER_08]: And does that mean then that if we were able to find more staff that the other programs could expand?
[SPEAKER_18]: Yes, that's, yes, in fact, so if I were to hire more staff, and in fact, it feels so defeatist to say it, but we've had so few applicants. We're advertising everywhere. We've got it posted in all of the same places we always have before and beyond. I'm constantly asking other districts if they've figured out any secret new place to advertise or recruit from. But if we did get new applicants, they would go to the Roberts first, which is where our next biggest wait list is. And we would expand that program first.
[SPEAKER_11]: Okay, thank you.
[SPEAKER_18]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_11]: Member McLaughlin.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yes, thank you for the report. And if I'm understanding correctly, the 120 across the grades compared to the 60 at the other schools is just, it's a demand issue, right? Like there's more demand at the Brooks.
[SPEAKER_18]: There was there in the past, there was more demand. So we grew that program bigger, but now the demand is pretty high at the other schools as well. Certainly the Roberts and Missituk are close behind.
[SPEAKER_09]: But they're all at 60.
[SPEAKER_18]: They're at 60 because we hadn't grown them yet. So the Brooks, the demand has been that high for longer. So we grew that program so big. And so since the way that we do this as current students get their spot the next year, so it's stayed that big.
[SPEAKER_09]: Okay, thank you. And when you do the report for the spring, can I ask respectfully that you might include data specific to our English learner population and our student with disability population?
[SPEAKER_11]: Certainly, yes. Just a question from the chair, Ms. Igbukeri, do we, I know we did some outreach to try to gain new employees to apply for jobs. How is our staffing looking and are we continuing to do that so that we could hopefully, even if it's after the new year or even gearing up for the next academic year, we can try to fulfill our goal of raising capacity at those three other elementary schools?
[SPEAKER_18]: So all of the positions are still posted. And like I said, I've had, I've had like two applicants and they were actually word of mouth applicants. They weren't from, it wasn't somebody looking for a job. It's been, it's been really difficult. And you know, I, I, I, we face, we face the same, problems that a lot of other industries face. So on Indeed, we have it posted and we got a lot of applicants over the summer from Indeed and then they didn't show up for the interviews, which was very painful because I blocked a whole day for the leadership team from the afterschool program to participate in the interviews with me. And it was really tough when people didn't show up. But I mean, we definitely are still recruiting. So yes, we're still hiring, but the hiring hasn't been successful, I wouldn't say that it has. The few people that we've hired are either internal paras, which is wonderful, or a couple of people that learned about it from word of mouth that, you know, are friends of current staff. But unfortunately, none of them are five day a week kind of committed to this people, it's more, you know, kind of filling some holes.
[SPEAKER_11]: Thank you. And, and I know just if I may, from the chair on the city side, I know you, Megan, you, Ms. Fidelicari, you and I met with the West Medford Community Center leadership and Lisa was great. I know that they were able to add a few spots. And I also just want to point out that our economic development director has been meeting with me and communicating with me and trying to reach out to companies. I know there's two or three, including the YMCA, that are interested in expanding to Medford or the YMCA, expanding in general. So we are working with them. The issue we need to conquer is space, and then they'll have to deal with their staffing as well. And I know our rec department is brainstorming ideas, so we are trying to cover every avenue to try to increase capacity here. We know it's an issue in every city and town, we want something we do want to try to solve here in Medford. So thank you.
[SPEAKER_15]: There are two people with hands up. I don't know if you want to take questions.
[SPEAKER_11]: Emily, if you could state your name and address for the record, please.
[SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, so this is this is Andre Quinn Emily's husband. I guess I have a couple of questions, so we've been on the wait list for three years where I think you want to say this this where we are. So we're at night on Johnson Ave in Medford. We've been on the wait list for three years and I guess my first question is. Have you thought about the equity of the program? So I know some families get access to the program and it's for all of the. the siblings and it's for the entirety of their enrollment at the school. I guess my question is, you know, as a parent that's never had access to the program, my question is, we asked the question three years ago about equity and we haven't seen any changes there. I think the original answer was that there's, you know, guidance or or evidence that suggests that that leads to the best outcomes for the students who are in the program. My question is, from an equity perspective, I struggled to see how that leads to the best outcomes for my son, never having access to the program over three years. So that's my question.
[SPEAKER_18]: Yeah, you're right. I don't have a great answer for that. It is considered best practice. And when I say best practice, I guess I mean most common practice. I think what they mean when they say that is, you know, whatever, hopefully alternate program or babysitter or alternative you find. as long as that's consistent would be best for your child. I know it's a terrible, it's not a welcome answer, and I wish I had better information. I wish we could serve everybody who needs it, but yeah, I don't have a good answer for that equity question. I believe we've had that conversation on the phone before, so I'm sorry.
[SPEAKER_11]: Member McLaughlin, and then we're gonna go to Teresa.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yeah, I guess what I'm hearing in terms of the equity and I'm not sure that there's a quick answer to this, but I think what I'm hearing is that part of the equity issue is the longstanding practice of if you have the slot, you retain the slot. And then if you have siblings, then they get access to the slot. And so I guess it begs the question, and again, not one that I think could be answered tonight, but one that perhaps should be considered among the afterschool program and the district as a whole is, you know, is it wipe the slate clean and start with the lottery every year? Or what's the more equitable solution? And I don't know what that is, but I'm just putting that out there, because I think that's what I'm hearing this particular individual?
[SPEAKER_11]: Name and address of the record. Member, John, can you just make sure the microphone's on, please? It's just the person with the voice, if you wanna just touch the button. Oh, it's on, it's on, thank you.
[SPEAKER_07]: There, okay. Shanine Peliquin, 108 Bella. Hi, Ms. Fidler-Carey. We haven't met, but I did my grad internship at the National Institute on Out-of-School Time. Have you been connected with their programs?
[SPEAKER_10]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_07]: I would assume that Betsy Starr might be a person to ask some of these questions with, because she's the person that does their workforce development, and I don't know if that might be a resource. I know they can help with quality improvement stuff. I'm one of their observers. But they might have suggestions for people to talk to and what the actual best practices are and how districts are kind of creatively solving this problem. Also, I mean, being able to use the paras and having it not be overtime, I don't know what that might even entail.
[SPEAKER_18]: We do that. Yep. Yeah, we do that.
[SPEAKER_07]: Okay. Having been able to use the paras without it being overtime. So it's budget prohibitive for all the programs. And I don't know how that might work. But I know other programs do it. They do it to leverage teacher salaries so that they can work in that summer camps over the summer. You know, there's all sorts of different ways that programs are getting more stuff from the existing HR resources.
[SPEAKER_11]: So anyway, thank you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_11]: Thank you. Teresa, name and address for the record, please.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hi, this is Teresa Fernald, 13 Whittier Road. I wanted to double click on what Andre was saying and Melanie followed up with in that. And before I ask my question, I thank you for today's presentation. It goes and takes a step towards greater transparency. I think a big theme here is transparency and making the information more accessible for parents. It's challenging, as you know, for parents even to get on a school committee, even on Zoom, much less I wish I could attend in person. But we're all dealing with dinner and bath time and all that. One thing very specifically on transparency is you've been mentioning for years about how Medford is similar. And yet when a number of parents more than a year and a half, almost two years ago started a campaign to get more information, to advocate for more capacity, not just at the school, but within the city, we were asked to bring comps. And so my question for you is, are you able, What information are you able to share? And can you share it in an accessible way, like a website, email blast through the school, the superintendent's messages to show us that data? How is this Medford compared to our neighbors, to Winchester, to Arlington, to Malden, to Melrose? There's so many where we don't see that it is the same problem from Medford. So we're asking for that transparency on how you're comparing Medford and how you can say we have the same problems. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you, Teresa.
[SPEAKER_11]: Michelle?
[SPEAKER_19]: Hi, thank you for this presentation. My name is Michelle Barks and I live at 23 Diane Road in Medford. I appreciate everyone's time and energy with this. So I have a couple of questions here. One with equity, I was wondering, something I've been thinking about with this is the idea of, so I know that the days are offered two, three, four, five, or maybe not four, but at least there's some part-time offerings. Something about having all families have some access to the program. So two or three days versus all five, that way it puts people in a similar position of having some care. So it feels more equitable in terms of some people having, everyone having some care instead of all people I'm sorry, instead of some people having all care and some people having none for years and years and years. So I'm wondering if that's been thought of at all. And anyway, and then the other thing around transparency, can our parents able to see what number they are on the waitlist, just to know. the chances of getting into the program in the future. And I also was wondering, I keep hearing that it's a lottery, which I know it is, but I'm wondering if the process for parents getting picked could be explained, like how then, is it just like a random website that kind of uses the, that pulls out the names, like how, I'm wondering if those transparency questions can be addressed. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_18]: Yep, I can try and answer that just quickly. I go over that every spring, how the lottery system works. We do, we use a number generator called random.org. So I have all families who are applying for the lottery sign up through a Google form and then put all of their names in the random, find out how many numbers there are and put it through random.org to regenerate the lottery numbers. So I have at one point written that up and on one of the iterations of our website that is spelled out, I can't guarantee that that made it to our new website. I will double check, and I'm happy to put it on to the step-by-step of how our lottery system works and how, for transparency purposes, because I agree with you. First of all, I think that the random.org website option is really, and encourage people to use it if it comes up in any way, and I'm happy to share how it's used. As far as sharing where students are on the wait list, again, that's a best practice shared across the state. There are emergency situations that we have where we've sometimes got to let students in to jump a waitlist for safety reasons or for McKinney-Vento reasons. McKinney-Vento is the Homeless Students Act, and there are rights to privacy. where if I had told somebody that they were number one on the wait list and that they would be next, and somehow they found out that another student was let in before them, that would be revealing a lot of confidential information about that student that is not the business of the person who's number one on the wait list, who then would be pretty annoyed that they didn't get the next spot and they would know about it. So that's the guidance. from the state and from other districts about why revealing the number on the wait list. So I try as much as I can to tell people whether they're in the top 10 or the top 20, and whether they should kind of hold out. My best advice is always going to be that people should just make alternative arrangements. If you're on the wait list, do your best to make alternative arrangements, assuming that the wait list isn't gonna move. I know there are other districts that either, number one, don't do wait lists at all, number two cap their wait lists at 10 students knowing that the chances of anybody more than 10 probably isn't going to get in. We haven't done that partially because I'm curious as everyone to know what the demand is for after school and also because you know my thinking is you just never know what's going to happen. It's possible that you know, all sorts of things could shift. And so even though somebody is number 23 on the waitlist, if enough people move or come up with alternatives, they might still get in. And so I find that information valuable. So we haven't opted to move to the waitlist cap, but it's something that we might consider if other districts, say, are proving that it's successful. But that's my explanation for why we don't reveal people spots on the waitlist. But as far as transparency, the lottery. I'm happy to to make that as transparent as possible. I'll make sure that the step by step is on the waitlist. I can do that this week because I know that I've written it out before. So if it's not on our new website, I'll make sure that it gets on there. And look for me again in the spring, when I present to school committee and let them know when the lottery, the lottery will be sometime in early April. And so when I say when that's coming, we'll be, we'll again be saying what the step by step process is for how the lottery works. So please watch out for that.
[SPEAKER_11]: Thank you. Next up is Vanessa. Oh, sorry, Member Ruseau and then Vanessa, you're next.
[SPEAKER_15]: Thank you. You know, the word equity is being mentioned an awful lot. And while the definition is relatively simple, it's that people get what they need rather than people getting an equal amount of everything. That definition is only valid when there's enough. When there is not enough, it then becomes a policy decision about, well, when we have more demand, How are we as a committee or as a district going to decide who gets it? When I looked at that chart, I was quite surprised. And frankly, if I was just a dictator, the books would be losing a lot of spots right now. because it's not equitable right now that the Brooks has twice as many spots as the other elementary schools. And next year, unless we had some huge influx of 150 additional staff, I expect the Brooks to get not one more seat until the other schools are being matched. That's equity, folks. It does not mean you get what you want. It means you get, Folks get what they need, and if there isn't enough, somebody other than the people who need it make the decision as to who gets it. And, you know, I was shocked by these wait lists for the other elementary schools. Shocked. Because, I mean, my memory of conversations around this stuff is, you know, there's a couple people at this school, a couple people on the wait list at this school, and often they can get off of those wait lists. And that's all fine. You know, the Senator Jalen sent out a newsletter today about this crisis. And I can't remember the number because I didn't have, I wasn't fast enough, but it was like 18% of child care centers closed during the pandemic that did not reopen. So that there isn't enough isn't really new, but the pandemic has made it far worse. And I also did note that she listed what childcare workers are getting paid on average in the state, and we are more than double it. So it isn't a throw money at it problem. Well, at some point, I suppose we could throw quadruple the pay we have right now, we'd find a lot of people who'd quit their jobs to come take those jobs. So I think equity is not some solution when there's not enough of the thing that we want to distribute. And so, I'm not asking the administration right at this moment in time to talk about what next year's gonna look like, but I really hope that the distribution among the elementary schools looks a heck of a lot more equitable than it does now. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_11]: Thank you, Member Ruseau. Vanessa, name and address for the record, please. We are muting Vanessa.
[SPEAKER_13]: All right, Vanessa Farsner, 17, Barbara Lane. And first, I just want to say that thank you to everyone for having this as an agenda item again. I know it's been many years now that we've been talking about it. But I did want to piggyback on what Michelle said. I do think that just as Paul said, the equity amongst the schools, you only have so many seats, right? you know, said there's only so many seats at a school, but you do have the availability to serve more families for those seats if different things were offered. And, you know, my concern over redoing the lottery is that there are many families who could just end up by chance of not getting on the lottery again, where other families could just end up getting it again, as opposed to, I would just encourage the committee and the staff to think about if there are things you can do with the days so that every child in Medford that wants the opportunity to have at least two days after care maybe has that opportunity. The second thing that I'll say that I've said many times before is that I really look to the mayor's office to support these outside organizations in finding space or looking to our own Medford track or other organizations, we realized that there is a limit at the elementary schools, because of the space that is being used. So we really need the city's help in solving this problem, because saying, you know, just find another option if you don't get a spot. there is no other option right like people don't have an option in Medford and I think that's one of the things that really makes us such such a bigger problem here than maybe in other cities. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_11]: Thank you, Vanessa. I think that's member Graham.
[SPEAKER_08]: Thank you. I just wanted to mention as well that I at one point I had pulled some of our school committee colleagues across the state about this very issue. And universally everyone said we have the same problem and they also and some some folks went on to say What do you mean your community thinks our community has solved this problem? Because we have not. We do have wait lists. There are a lot of communities across the state who have just sort of gotten out of this business altogether because it's problematic. And those folks said, even though we have done away with our programs, we still get constant complaints. about the lack of afterschool care available in our community. And we're not even in the business of doing this anymore because we have made those decisions. So I'm not saying that to suggest that we should stop trying, but I am saying that to suggest that like, we are truly not unique. in terms of the problem statement, which is that more people require care for their children after school than is available. That problem statement is a problem statement that communities across the state and definitely in this area, Melrose, Somerville, Arlington, as far as I am aware, all of them have these same issues. they look different, their programs look really different in some cases than ours. Like I think Arlington is an example where their program looks really, really different than ours. But it doesn't mean that they don't have the same problem that we do. And I say that because I know that it is super frustrating for me personally. The program wasn't ever even an option for my family. Like we just, A, we didn't know about it, but B, even if we knew about it, it didn't meet our needs. So as much as we talk about all the people who the program can serve, like we also are not serving a whole other population of members of our community who the program just doesn't work for them from a logistical perspective for other reasons. So I think it is a big and complex problem and I think that we are still trying to like work to solve it. Some of the work we've done with the power contract this year was aimed at creating another role that would help us feed this after school program, but these things are not, you know, they're not quick fixes, they do take time and we need to make sure that you know, our ask of the administration is clear that the time be spent to try to cultivate additional staff. And again, I truly don't want to be in a position where we have to decrease capacity in a program. And I think the only way to not have that decision to make is to make sure that all the other programs can come up to some sort of reasonable equivalency. And I think that is a lot of work that probably needs to start, and I know that it is. I think we need to figure out how do we create some more interest. I don't know, Superintendent, if you can include our needs in your weekly memo for a couple of weeks to see if there's some additional interest out there. Yeah, I think there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of stones still to turn over, but I wanna make sure we're still doing that. And as for the books, I know that is the biggest program and there really is no opportunity to expand it. That is where another location, that is where another alternative comes into play. So I think we have to continue to try to be creative about that as well.
[SPEAKER_11]: Thank you, member Graham. We have Melanie. North name and address for the record, please. Then we're gonna move on to McGlynn playground update.
[SPEAKER_01]: Melanie North 45 cross street and Medford. I have a question about the way the school handles each elementary school in terms of numbers. Why does the Brooks have a larger program than per se the McGlynn or the Michitak? I find that I've been on the wait list myself and I work in the district for over two years now. So it's a little bit difficult for somebody like me that I have to find outside care for my children, especially on those 130 days. So why does other schools have more opportunities than the other?
[SPEAKER_18]: So the Brooks program is so much bigger because several years ago, and when I say several, I mean probably five, five or six years ago, the demand was higher there. So we were meeting, we didn't have such big wait lists at every school. The demand at the Brooks was the highest. So that program grew the fastest. I grew to meet the demand until we couldn't meet the demand at all the schools anymore. So it's as big as it is because the demand was so high and the demand was not as high at the other schools and we could meet the needs at the other schools, but we kept growing the Brooks. And then because of the way that we have our program that every current student is guaranteed their same spot for the next year. It just stayed so big because they all just move up one, one year.
[SPEAKER_08]: Member Graham. Ms. Fidler-Carey, I think the other thing that's relevant when you talk about the differences in the programs is that there's a real enrollment difference between our elementary schools. So I believe the Brooks has 150 more students every day than Mnistutak does. So it is not, like, I think it is a very complicated picture. You have to look at all of those variables, but our enrollment is not the same in all of our schools either. So when you start talking about what percentage of students you're serving, I think that's just another dimension that makes this really complicated.
[SPEAKER_11]: Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Fibbocari, and for all that participated. We have number three, McGlynn Playground Update, Dr. Peter Cushing, Assistant Superintendent of Enrichment and Innovation, and Shanine Peliquin, the Playful Pelican LLC. Thank you for being here. I'll turn it over to you both.
[SPEAKER_17]: Good evening, Madam Mayor and members of the School Committee. Thank you very much for this opportunity to present the work that the McGlynn Inclusive Playground Committee has done. Two members, Member Graham and Member McLaughlin, are also here with us today, and we have a number of parents community members, teachers serving on this committee that has really made it a very inclusive process. And we're excited to present our almost final design schematics. I'm here with the co-chair of that, Shanine Peliquin, who's been extraordinarily helpful in this process. So wanna quickly just review the existing site. And by quickly, I mean very quickly. It's approximately 25,000 square feet. Just so you know, around those existing playground structures and concrete, there should only be six feet of poured-in-place. When this site was built, there was an excessive use of poured-in-place used well in advance of anything that's actually needed for the safety of our students. And after playground inspections have been completed, we have confirmed that this playground is at the end of its useful life. And while it looks fun from afar, as our playground inspector stated, it actually adds very little play value for any students, not only those students who are otherwise abled. I see member McLaughlin.
[SPEAKER_09]: I just wanted to ask if you can, can you, for folks that are listening that might not know, put in place
[SPEAKER_17]: Yep, so poured in place is the rubber surface, that is this, the blue that is meant to mimic the Mystic River, the green, and then this other shade of green, which is the water damaged that you can see from the satellite imagery, that is the water damage poured in place. All the head drop testing proves that we're fine on this, but I just wanted to give a quick update on that. We are also extraordinarily grateful to the Medford DPW for this past summer restoring the drainage and that has been very helpful to make sure that the site is largely clear of water throughout this year.
[SPEAKER_07]: But it was a temporary fix?
[SPEAKER_17]: Yes, that is temporary. So our project goals are first, we want to create something that's fun, safe, accessible, and reflects the identity of the students. To that end, there's been considerable work to interview and speak to students throughout. And so that, their voice has really come through. The staff want to make sure that it's first for the McGlynn students, if a construction, if a phase construction is needed, but this is a central playground for a large number of Medford's populations that live close by in the towers and other housing developments and in other residential properties. So this is a destination playground throughout the summer. You can see people playing on it all the time. offers a wide range of challenges. So one of the challenges you have when building an inclusive playground is to make sure that it's challenging for everybody and that it offers fun play for everybody. And I think the committee has done a really good job addressing these concerns, considers the wider benefit to the broader Medford community. We're not going to be able to build this without complete support from all of Medford. And so that's something that we'll discuss later in the presentation. And then another final thing is maintenance, right? It is fundamentally critical throughout the life of these playgrounds, which is about 25 years, all right?
[SPEAKER_07]: On the high end.
[SPEAKER_17]: On the high end. For us to maintain, for us to be doing annual inspections, semi-annual inspections, to really be looking at our play structures and making sure that they're well maintained. All right, so community outreach, what have we done? We've done a number of onsite events, tabling, meeting parents as they come on the Wednesday early dismissals, staff survey that had well over 50% of the staff responding, staff interviews, survey that was sent to all elementary families to get a broader sense as we see this project as being the first of the replacements that need to be done. As we said, 25 years on the high end. You all know when the new elementary schools were built and where we are in the current Julian calendar. Survey said that already. Playground observations that have been conducted. Shanine did a number of those, myself and assistant superintendent Kalusi also did some at the McGlynn playground to see how students utilize the play and how staff does a great job observing that plane, keeping our students safe. And then finally, we redoubled our efforts to make sure that CPAC was involved and made sure that they helped us to get the word out as well. And so we're extraordinarily grateful to CPAC for their support in this process. So we had a number of designs submitted. And so there were three. that came through, and this one that I'll then turn over to Shanine is the one that the committee really selected. So Shanine.
[SPEAKER_07]: Hi, for any of you who don't know me, my background, I'm a recreation therapist and a developmental specialist, and I've really taken, I've been working with the city since 2006, increasing access to recreation services for youth and adults with disabilities. And then in the last bit, it's just been kids. So you're taking that away. So this design really addresses what we heard most, which was that we needed to separate the preschool play area, because while DESE doesn't have any requirements about separating playgrounds that are designed for two to five year olds, from sites for five to 12-year-olds, EEC does, and the industry standards are to separate that. You end up with, and what's happening on the current playground is that preschoolers are falling through the slides, and their ladder steps are too big for them, because there's three, right?
[SPEAKER_09]: And they're- Excuse me, Shanine, sorry, point of information. Can I just ask, when we use acronyms, if we can just say that, yes, so DESE, EEC, and EI, no- EEC.
[SPEAKER_07]: I just said industry standard. So the Department of Early, sorry, the Department of Education, Elementary and Secondary Education does not have guidelines that should that say that you have to separate those. The Early Education and Care Department that licenses other programs does require that. So like I work with a preschool and we are not allowed to have our students who are under the like any of them on the 5 to 12 structures at all for licensing. So it also adds a field because right now on the concrete space that's between the two structures, we have kids who are playing soccer and football and big tag games, but you actually have to go through the soccer game to get to the rest of the playground and there's a lot of balls going in places and a lot of concern of just kids running into each other. So this separates the field area and keeps it within the structure of the playground. There's also more concrete area, which is a cost savings, as well as shovelable and plowable area so that this really can be a four season playground. What's happening right now is that because of the flooding, but also because the port in place rubber can't be plowed. kids are having more indoor recess than the other schools because there is no concrete place for them to play. So this allows that more inclement weather recess play. Just for those of you who aren't familiar, prairie in place rubber or any playground surfacing, whether it's mulch or sand or anything, is not designed to prevent injury. It is designed to prevent critical head injury and death. So it's only supposed to be within a six foot radius around any structure so that if a kid falls, they're going to be generally okay, but they might break their arm and they might break their leg. That's not how it's designed. But it's very expensive. It's $20 to $30 per square foot. So we're really trying to make sure that we are thoughtful about how things are arranged. Each piece of equipment has to have a six foot barrier around it and some of those can overlap and some of them can't depending on the pieces of equipment. Go ahead. So you'll see you've got There's a doggle ball pit, a basketball court, which the kids asked for. The older kids wanted two heights of hoops because they wanted the little kids to be able to play too. There's a four square court that preserves the tree in the middle. If you're familiar with the playground, there's this really giant, beautiful tree that the children love. And I've said this at many meetings, but the kids told us that if we did anything to that tree, they would cry for the rest of their lives. So this actually puts a really thoughtful deck area around that tree with two ramps that go up to it and seating. And then there will be more tree area that's accessible as well to the students for quiet retreat places and hangout spots and fully accessible. There are two areas of elevation that we'll show you in other images, but the gray circle to the gray oval to the left is actually a covered hangout and picnic area with big steps that lead down to the field. So that's a good hangout space. It's a good gathering space for classes if they want to go out and use it there. And the whole slope, you'll see the gray path around the outside is a circulation path. that maintains ADA slope throughout without having to add a ramp. It's a gentle slope all the way around and again, adds more concrete as opposed to put in place as a cost saving, but also allows for a lot of interesting play. And we'll be adding sensory pathways and, you know, hopping spots and hopscotch, et cetera, to that as informed by the therapy staff at the school. Oh, and then we just go back really quickly. You'll see adjacent to the school, there's actually an outdoor classroom. So the only thing that's, they're up against a first grade classroom, so it will be a quieter space, but this is a request from the staff to have places to go when they have guest speakers to do science curriculum activities, to do gardening, et cetera, and it will be an accessible space as well.
[SPEAKER_17]: The other thing too is that this oval at the end of the field can also double as a stage. So you get out multiple classes out for a presentation, speakers, something along those lines to have students outside and in their environment.
[SPEAKER_07]: And then the two to five area is accessible via the gate that they're currently using, which is closest to the kindergarten and preschool doors and provides age appropriate and developmentally appropriate equipment. And there's a hill that kind of meets between the two structures. Can you go across that path? Yeah. And there's a gate so that during the school day that can be closed to keep the two age ranges separate, but then on the weekends it can be opened so that parents can supervise kids on both sites.
[SPEAKER_17]: The other thing too about this is you'll notice down here on the path, we are gating off access to the pathway closest to the building while still preserving a fire lane if we need to get apparatus back there. But one of the major goals was to divert any pedestrian traffic away from the rear of the building for obvious safety concerns.
[SPEAKER_07]: So this is a perspective image from the corner of the, so I guess the lower right of that image we were just looking at, looking into the two to five structure or the two to five area. So there will be an inclusive playhouse. We decided with it, with the preschool staff decided that that would be a better option with more play value than a structure because the, small two to five structures tend to be pretty boring. They go up across and down and that's about it. So there will be some sort of teeter-totter seesaw bit with trunk support. There's a basket swing because little kids can transfer easier if they use adaptive mobility equipment. There's a hill slide and a sand area. And also we just added this area where they can go and kind of be in the trees over on the left. as well as, I think, musical equipment and some tree stumps for hopping. Yeah. And then along, you'll see that gray path that's on the right. It leads up and around to the top of the hill at that gentle slope, and we'll be able to put more of those hopping spots and balance lines, et cetera, there. So adding play value in little areas. Member Ruseau? Sorry. Member Ruseau?
[SPEAKER_15]: Thank you. around the sensory stuff. Was there any conversation around the water feature?
[SPEAKER_17]: So we had extensive conversations about various water features. And the reality is, is that that poses an extraordinary challenge during the school day, but then, you know, maintaining clean water in those is also another significant challenge. that for the scope of this current project, it just didn't fit within what we were looking for.
[SPEAKER_07]: The sand table will be able to have water access, I believe, but that sand table is actually going to be lockable is the plan so that it is usable only by the school during school hours. And then the teachers can have water and sand access for the preschool, but that that wouldn't become an accessible piece during the school day or during community hours.
[SPEAKER_15]: So what you mean is it won't be a kitty litter box.
[SPEAKER_07]: So actually, what's interesting is litter ones become kitty litter boxes, but this is like there are lockable ones where you can close the top. Big sand areas don't actually become kitty litter boxes because I mean, if so, we'd have to be covering Wright's Pond, right? Like, but we don't. Yeah, it's one of those concerns that people think about, but it's not actually panning out.
[SPEAKER_15]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_07]: So then this is from A little left of the entrance to the 5 to 12 playground looking toward the road. You see the structure. This is not this particular image is kind of quirky. It's not the structure we're currently looking at those slides. The kids said very specifically they do not want. twisty slides like this. A spiral slide is one thing, but they don't like the ones that go out like this because they're too slow. And because once you hit about fourth grade, your legs are too long for the slide. And we want to make sure, because that was the number one complaint, even some of the third graders were saying they had outgrown the play equipment that was currently there. So we want to make sure that we maintain challenge for our older students. Yeah.
[SPEAKER_17]: Students want to go as fast as possible.
[SPEAKER_07]: It's the same as the double side that they have now.
[SPEAKER_15]: Member Ruseau. Thank you. In all of these images, the trees are mature. You might get to this later on, but are we looking at like a 10 or 20 year progression or are we going to have little tiny you know, twigs that you can get at Home Depot for 50 bucks for the next generation or two.
[SPEAKER_07]: The trees that will be on the playground, like the one that's kind of in the center here, If it's on the playground and accessible by the kids, it will be a four to five inch caliber tree. So a more mature tree. If they are behind a fence, they will be younger trees, but like a two to three inch. So they will take a little longer, but then we will have more of that shade. And the reality is we're going to have to wait a little bit to get the shade that we want, but this will be a more sustainable way to get it.
[SPEAKER_17]: Smaller trees also offer a bit of cost savings measure. But, you know, we're thinking of other ways that we can bring greenery into this because one of the things with a turf field. It's an unfortunate reality. There is no way to have a grass field. You'd need to seed it for a minimum of two years and let it just lay fallow to grow and establish an appropriate root system. And the reality is, is that grass fields are destroyed quickly. So I guess a necessary issue is to have a artificial turf field, but it provides the play value that we need
[SPEAKER_07]: but unfortunately it's artificial. And as evidenced by the Brooks and how many times they tried to plant it with grass before they finally said, fine.
[SPEAKER_15]: Yeah. I mean, I just, aside from the appearance and the shade, you know, unless you place a guard there, kids are going to be trying to climb the trees no matter how small they are.
[SPEAKER_01]: They will be trimmed. Okay.
[SPEAKER_15]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_07]: So you also see an inclusive swing, and we'll have some more close-ups of some of the equipment there. But that is the first swing. It's called the Guigo swing. It's the first commercially available swing that you can put on a public playground, and it is an inclusive wheelchair swing. Every other wheelchair swing has to be behind its own fence, and it requires special training, and they are always broken. So this actually allows, it doesn't have any special chains, et cetera. And it allows a wheelchair user to be on the swing with ambulatory people at the same time. So it's a really truly inclusive swing.
[SPEAKER_17]: We also have a spinner right here that we'll give you another image of later on, but that also allows a wheelchair and ambulatory users to be on as well.
[SPEAKER_07]: the gaga ball pit will have both the kind of scooped out hop over gate and an ADA accessible gate.
[SPEAKER_17]: And some people may notice gaga ball pits in other communities that I've seen are filled with mulch. Ours will not because the mulch limits accessibility for those in a chair or with other ambulatory disabilities.
[SPEAKER_11]: from the chair I've played at one of the middle schools, great game.
[SPEAKER_10]: And I was in with a child, it was in a wheelchair and everybody was having a blast.
[SPEAKER_07]: So gaga ball is a more inclusive dodgeball game. You play it with an open hand and you have to hit it. You can't catch it and huck it at somebody and you are out if you hit somebody above the knees and you just hop out and then you wait your turn and the next 15 kids come in. It's really great. And the PE teacher is excited to do a unit to teach the kids the rules of gaga ball so that they will just be able to play.
[SPEAKER_17]: Last week I shared the plans and the designs just because I was so excited with our student reps and I won't speak for them, but you know, were pretty pumped. They were like, wait, can we come and play on this? So yes. And I guess so overall, as we move through this, like this is an awesome project to be a part of, because this is something great for our kids. This will give them an opportunity for creative play, for fun, traditional play, but also to be inclusive of everyone within the school. We've tried to think of every opportunity. We've had some challenging meetings. We've had some really awesome meetings, but we've had a good give and take back and forth to try to develop the absolute best product for our students and then for our teachers to support our students. So enough of my I may get weepy later on when I talk about how the whole city came together in a meeting last week of various department heads around this, but it's really amazing to see how Medford is coming together around this. And it's really confidence building to see this taking place in our city. So here's another view of the stage and the turf field. You'll see seating available around greenery, around new trees and an opportunity for students to walk off to the right around this area here with the laser pointer will be one of our sensory paths that will allow students to engage with the paintings and other artwork that are there.
[SPEAKER_07]: And you can see a little bit here how the elevation goes up. So it's not very high, but it adds visual interest. It adds some protection for drainage. And then around the edges of that, there will be rain gardens to also absorb the extra water coming in. Both turf and the board in place rubber are permeable. So just so we know that that's got that will catch some of the that. The extra surface runoff.
[SPEAKER_17]: And over here is another slide built into the embankment with some tree stumps for kids to be able to jump. Maybe a little American Ninja Warrior. The stage, however it may be, and then moving forward here are you can see a better opportunity here for the Wigo swing.
[SPEAKER_07]: And then this is the outdoor classroom. So the outdoor classroom has one side with like with a whiteboard and some stumps as well as accessible seating or just a space for chair users to sit. The teachers really were excited about having guest speakers. They currently use this concrete circle that's kind of out toward the river but it's too big to be able to hear a speaker so they were looking forward to this. Then there's a pollinator garden that will have a path through it and then on the other side past the tree where you can kind of see the child wearing red are raised garden beds that will be accessible as well as a couple of picnic tables for a whole class to be able to fit. So some of the features and the inspiration we've taken, this is a small double basketball hoop. So the kids asked for this. The kids wanted swings. They wanted swings so much. They wanted multiple heights of monkey bars because they wanted the little kids to be able to have monkey bars, but they also recognized that by fourth grade, they were all too tall for what exists now. And we are making sure that little kids can't get on to the big monkey bars, that the design actually helps the teachers supervise by preventing first graders from getting on the tallest monkey bars, because if they can't reach it, then they're not going to fall from a height they can't handle. The left image is of a field. The center one is a giant rope swing. This particular one is called the Viking swing. That's from one manufacturer, but there are similar products, and we may end up with one of the others. But it's about a six to eight inch diameter rope, and it's very solid. But it's a multi-user swing. One of the concerns that we heard from the teachers is the teachers were very split on the swing issue. It was fascinating. And I'd say it was about 50-50 teachers saying, oh my God, we have to have swings. These kids need to move. And others being very concerned about turn taking, about impact injuries, mostly about managing kids taking turns. So this and the swing to the right, which is a dish swing, allow multiple users. So the kids are getting that sensory motion without the turn taking and without the, massive space that a swing bay, a typical swing bay takes up and the concern for people running across and getting whacked by someone swinging. So the PT was excited because the rope swing piece would allow her to take a kid out who was working on trunk support and sit over it and be able to help them practice. So it's inclusive in that way. And then the kids can transfer, the dish swings are at transfer height. And then the kid can actually lie down in it and play with other kids, because everybody can pile on it at the same time.
[SPEAKER_17]: And so here are some other opportunities for inclusive play that we've already spoken about. In the lower left-hand corner, this is what's known as the WeGo Swing. If you search WeGo Swing on YouTube, you'll see some great videos of how easily people can get on, move the swing, and then move off with inclusive persons as well. making sure that we also have a playhouse for creative play, the gaga ball pit with access, the Wego swing, and then a gathering space around the tree with sustainable decking. Here's the playground structure, our climber. This is designed by Little Tikes right now.
[SPEAKER_07]: We may end up with a different vendor, but this is the structure we're working with right now. Correct.
[SPEAKER_17]: But so this is what we're really looking for. As we move through, you'll see over here a significant amount of hanging and climbing elements for students that the students said they wanted. The ability for a double wide slide for their racing and another double slide over here. multiple opportunities for climbing, for play underneath, for that creative outlet for students. Here, this is, just want to be clear to everybody, this is not a bridge to nowhere. This will actually go into the hill that is built between the the two to five area, all right? So this will be an accessible area for students to be able to go up on a wheelchair or for other students with mobility issues to access the play structure, to get on it, and to enjoy various multiple elements, including slides.
[SPEAKER_07]: I think we're literally, this is, this is not the structure I would have wanted. But we, because there's so much more play value in the rest of the playground, It's light years better than even a structure. So one of the tricks with ramp structures, which we really needed to make sure we have, is that for every one foot of elevation, you have to have 12 feet. of ramp, which means the structure takes up a huge footprint with very little play value added. So being able to access this from the hills, we're already up four and a half feet, and they can just go straight across, makes it a lot more usable. We're also making sure that the slides have transfer spots already. So one of the tricks is if you next time you go to a playground, if you see a ramped playground, like imagine you're in a chair and imagine like count the number of things you can actually do because if you get all the way to the top and the slide is on the ground you can't use it.
[SPEAKER_17]: So there's a great playground locally that has lots of ramps and not a lot of fun. It's known as the McGlynn playground and we're looking to replace it.
[SPEAKER_07]: So the kids wanted monkey bars, the kids wanted horizontal bars, you see those on the lower right. There's gonna be a storefront that has knee clearance and ignore the kind of the non-attached bits, that's Little Sikes trying to sell us more of their stuff, but we have our stuff picked out. So it's not as much ramp as I would have initially envisioned, but it is A, what we can afford and B, is offering as much play value and as consistently we are including the input of the students and the supervision concerns of the teachers into this structure as we can.
[SPEAKER_17]: So as we move through, you know, the master plan really was about a separate preschool area, developmentally and size appropriate equipment for those two to five-year-olds, but while also making sure that it's still fun. Having a four-year-old, I can tell you, she can't stand her play structure because it doesn't provide enough challenge for her, but it is appropriate based on standards. ages 5 to 12, we're providing inclusion in play for all, challenge for all. The multiple things that we have mentioned tonight, from basketball to climber to field to fill in the blank, is going to give students the opportunity to be engaged. That flexible use field allows for us to have really a lot of play that kids can create on their own, whether it's ball, running, tag, however it may be, And the outdoor classroom really offers staff something that they've requested as well. So what's our budget? Well, the play area that's inclusive of the courts, the basketball court, the gaga ball, the Viking swing, the play structures, all those elements comes in at the neighborhood of $2 million. Our preschool play area is about $250,000. Our turf field is another $250,000. Our outdoor classroom is $100,000. for a project total in the neighborhood of $2.6 million.
[SPEAKER_07]: To be very clear, I know that that sounds like a ridiculous amount of money. This is pretty standard for playgrounds right now. The equipment is more expensive, the shipping is more expensive. We learned there was a landscape architect who's not on this project who spoke with us at the community preservation commission meeting the other day and just confirmed that this is the neighborhood of the playgrounds that she's looking at as well. Inclusive play elements are more expensive, unfortunately. The swing is $50,000 without install. It's wild, but this is consistent with with playground design and we're we haven't gotten to the kind of value decisions where we may have to make some of the harder decisions, but we have a solid budget and. And this is this is what they cost.
[SPEAKER_11]: And just something to point out, if I may, from the chair, I met with Shanine and Dr. Cushing last week, and first of all, thank you for everybody. Thank you for the committee. I know Shani and Melanie have been part of it, as well as the committee, but I want to point out that the funding sources are not going to come from the general budget. I know you're going to put in, like you said, a CPA application. The two of you will also be before the city council. Thank you. I'm assuming you'll do some similar presentation or the same one. That's because we're going to be asking the city council to give comment on $750,000 going to this from our opera funding that was top of our survey. Probably top three was outdoor space, outdoor play area, open space. So that's a large chunk of this. We also have, we're going to be creative CDBG funding linkage. And if we have to do it in two stages, like I said, in the meeting, then we'll have to do that. But we, this is definitely something we want, we want to see happen for our students, for our families and for the entire city. Like you said, everybody uses playground siblings when they're a brother or sister, is that a soccer game or a softball game or a baseball game? People who are frequenting Hormel stadium or the La Conte rink. I mean, people are always in this area, so we'll benefit the entire community. So for that, I thank you. And I just wanted to point out the funding sources, which I guess you had next anyway.
[SPEAKER_17]: Well, and I mean, I do want to say thank you to the mayor and her staff. As I said last week, we had, we had a meeting with the mayor. She's been nothing but supportive and really behind this project, a hundred percent. We also had a meeting with multiple members of the mayor staff last week that was scheduled for an hour, went to almost two hours. because there's a commitment by those individuals to make sure that this project is funded. They see the value in it as an inclusive playground. And so if there are any donors out there, feel free to let us know. But I guess the other thing too, that I just want to say is that this is a tremendous opportunity for the students of Medford to have play value that they deserve. And it is completely been supported by the mayor and her staff.
[SPEAKER_07]: So we have 900,000 requests to the Community Preservation Commission, which is fees that are paid through property taxes, as well as some matching funds from the state. 750,000 requests of the American Rescue Plan Act for COVID relief funding called ARPA. And then 900,000 through the Community Development Block Grants, which is federal housing and urban development funds the city gets annually. That one, the Community Preservation Commission and the Community Development Block Grants may need to be split between fiscal years, but we're trying to figure out how, and it looks like we might be able to use two different fiscal years of funding, but have one phased project. Because if there's enough money up front that we can order equipment and those kinds of things, then we could pay the final bills in FY24. with the money that comes in in August.
[SPEAKER_17]: And finally, I had an extensive conversation today with our CCL shop at Medford High School. Any RFP that we put out for this will include using Medford students so that this is a true educational learning opportunity. They're also going to be looking at how we could make an easily accessible point to Hormel Stadium. They'll be out there in the next week to look at adding a gate to Hormel so students would be able to get there if this playground is not ready while students are in session, and that we would be able to access Hormel in a much easier fashion than is currently, and then also looking at their ability to demolish the current. But we want to make sure that we use our students from the CCL shop so that they get a learning opportunity. Mark Holm is our student representative here tonight. So as a senior, hopefully she would be a part of this.
[SPEAKER_07]: And to be very clear, because I know there are probably a lot of teachers watching, we will be doing a collaborative recess, interim recess planning process with the teachers. We're not going to make any decisions without the staff about how this interim time is. The reality is the playground will be closed for a while during school. It just will.
[SPEAKER_17]: But we will be connecting with teachers to make sure it is collaborative.
[SPEAKER_07]: And then we're wondering, the last question is, what is the desire for this work to be supported by fundraising and corporate grants? I was looking at a bunch of bank grants the other day. Do you want us doing a brick walkway program? Because this really sets the precedent, the other three schools, not to mention the two playgrounds, the preschool playgrounds at the high school, will need to be replaced in the next five to 10 years. That doesn't have to be answered right now, but maybe by the next meeting, if you could have some decisions made on if you would like us to pursue fundraising and if that's the precedent you want to set for these projects.
[SPEAKER_11]: And by staff that you met with, was that Director Hunt from PDS, who knows of all the grants that we could apply for for this and any other playground?
[SPEAKER_07]: Yes, so we met with members of the planning department, including Alicia Hunt and Danielle Evans, and multiple planning, and both the director of the CPC and the ARPA manager, the federal funds manager.
[SPEAKER_11]: Great. Dr. Edward-Vincent, then Member McLaughlin, Member Ruseau, Member Graham.
[SPEAKER_16]: I just wanted to say thank you so much for lending your expertise to the district. Thank you, Dr. Cushing for this comprehensive presentation and to our members who are also part of this committee. This really looks exciting and I can't wait to see it actually come into fruition. So thank you for all of your support.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you. Member McLaughlin.
[SPEAKER_09]: Thank you. I also wanted to say thank you for the presentation, for the commitment, Janine. Janine and I first met at Communitas today, at Swim Lessons for my baby daughter with a disability. She was five. She's about to be 15 for Swim Lessons. And the commitment that you have to persons with disability is really outstanding. And the commitment that you've had to this project has been so remarkable into your community. I wanted to say thank you so much for that and also to all of the committee members who have been so active and we had such good dialogue and, you know, I think good heartedness and people really wanting to do the right thing by our children and Medford as a whole, all of our children, all of our community. And it's such a relief, frankly, to have something really positive in our community. to be looking at and to be looking forward to. And I did want to share this story, and I know you folks have heard it, but not everybody has, and so I do want to share it, is that years ago, there was a family here in Medford. I was first learning about disability and disability advocacy. It was a mother who was working with a family leadership series as part of a state organization. She's a Medford mom. She had a teenage daughter at the time, who was in a wheelchair very complex medical needs and about. She had a birth injury, and her daughter was about 15 but had sort of the intellectual ability of a less than one year old and very physically not mobile. and was in Metro Public Schools, but was in a residential program because of her complex medical needs. But even in residential programs, our complex medically, complex children with medical needs come home, right, for holidays, vacations, summer vacations, what have you. This particular little girl, when she would come home with her mom, who did not have access to a vehicle, what have you, to get around as much as she wanted to, had no place to take her daughter. She had no playground to go to, and all her daughter wanted to do was swing. She loved to swing. And she was in a wheelchair, and there was no ability for her to swing. And so I knew when this project came about that I really wanted to work on it, and also that I really wanted to make sure that there was an ability for a person with a disability in a wheelchair to be able to get on a swing with their child, who really needed it. and you know this is probably the thing I'll be most proud of having worked on as a school committee member and I'm really so you know honored that you guys are part of this and that member Graham and everybody else in the community is part of this and I really want to know in terms of donating sign me up if you need you know I'm happy to donate whatever whatever we need to try to make this happen I think this is really critical so thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_07]: I did reach out to the library as well to ask for any lessons learned in their fundraising process will have information on that as well if you decide that you'd like us to proceed.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you member so the member Graham.
[SPEAKER_15]: Thank you. I really appreciate all the hard work. I know it was a lot of work and of course it's not done by. I had a couple of questions. for the process of actually performing the build. We're not doing our own project management, I assume. So I'm always happy to have the vote. participating in whatever they can. I also get very nervous when we think of them as a free workforce, which I don't mean to suggest that's what you were saying, but the reason I asked about the project management company is because I can't fathom a project management company being willing to insert into their critical path. The Vogue students will do something. That that's just not how you build anything. I mean, so I think, you know, if there's something that the students can be brought into, and it is definitely specifically educational related rather than they're just like free labor. I'm all for it. I just, I get both excited and really like I mean, it's my fifth year and I've heard a hundred times. Let's have the Volk students build it for us. And it's always been a response to, we don't have any money. It's never been a response to, we think the Volk students would get a great education. Maybe we should do a project. And here's the project. It's always been, we're broke. let's see if we can get some free labor out of our student body. So I have a very visceral response to every time I hear it brought up, and I don't mean to suggest that this project was doing that same thing, so.
[SPEAKER_17]: If I could just, this is actually the opposite of that. This is making, our CCL shop has very strong connections with the laborers union. And by partnering through the laborers union, we're hoping we're going to be able to give students a real authentic educational experience to be able to learn how play structures and structures of these that require special certifications to install. that this is yet another thing that our students can put a feather in their cap when they enter the workforce. As an example, I believe that by partnering with the DPW, you're going to be able to get two additional certifications and licenses. So if our students can have that type of an experience, That's what I'm really looking for, is to have a double-edged sword of, we can build an awesome play structure, an awesome environment for our students, but also have the Medford students be invested in it in a real sense.
[SPEAKER_15]: That's great. I'm happy and really excited to hear that. And I did not expect you to have thought of them as a work, as free labor. So I just wanted to bring it up.
[SPEAKER_05]: That's a great point.
[SPEAKER_15]: And then my other question, which I hope will come to me in a moment. Oh yes, about fundraising. You know, But the corporate grants part, I mean, hey, if anybody's got money they want to hand out, that's fine. I just also do not, I'm not comfortable with the playground getting named after some rich person or the Chase Bank Playground, you know, like, not picking on Chase specifically, but, you know, I do feel very much like this is a public good, the public should pay for it. And if we want the companies and the rich to pay for it, then we should tax them properly, not beg them for their tax deduction so they cannot pay more taxes. So I feel pretty strongly I'm opposed to corporate grants, unless there are really companies that are handing out money and not expecting their name on anything. But I don't think that's a thing. And as for fundraising, other than the corporate part, look mad for public schools will take a check from anybody any day of the week. So I think that's fine that we, you know, offer that up. But I think that we should be cautious that it's not a critical part of the funding plan. I mean, because then when if, you know, inflation is high, You know, there's a lot of reasons why I think expecting the public to come out with $100,000, $500,000 of checks to write seems to me to be a bit of a stretch. So I'm all for the raising money from the public, but I do think we should not make it a key element of the financing part. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_05]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_08]: Thank you. Just a couple of things. Thank you, Shanine, for all your work. I know it's been a spirited group and we've had a lot of good discussion and sometimes spirited groups are really hard to manage and you've done a really lovely job listening to everybody. So thank you for that. I remember Ms. Stone was just asking me about the timeline of like, when can a shovel go in the ground? And I told her what I thought, but I think you guys should answer that question more officially. And just to reiterate, like, if you look at the planned funding, the funding is not coming out of our operating budget. Those are capital budget requests. It's one-time funds. And I think, you know, where uniquely in a place where there is one-time funding available for this, which is great, because I don't believe we would see it out of our operating budget in any way, shape, or form. But the other thing I wanted to suggest to the committee is that, or I'll make a motion that we send the funding the naming to the sorry, we'll send a request to the strategic planning subcommittee that they work on and create a naming and fundraising policy for Medford Public Schools. That would certainly be guidance for this program, but I think as we look forward to hopefully some other really big, amazing projects in Medford Public Schools that having some guidance and some precedent around naming and fundraising on behalf of our schools can be sort of thoughtfully entertained now rather than in the heat of those moments. That is my motion to send to the strategic planning subcommittee. That would be really helpful.
[SPEAKER_11]: Motion for approval by member Graham, seconded by member McLaughlin. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? The ayes have it. I don't know if y'all also wanna potentially have a roll call vote to support our funding, just as a way to show the city council, the school committees on board and wants the project to move forward, as I know, the week before the city council in the next few meetings. to support 750,000 coming from APA towards the McGlynn Playground project by Member McLaughlin, seconded by Member Hays. Roll call, please.
[SPEAKER_15]: Member Graham.
[SPEAKER_11]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_15]: Member Hays.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_15]: Member Betz.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_15]: Member McLaughlin.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_15]: Member McDowell. Yes.
[SPEAKER_15]: I just had an additional question. If you would let us know when this city council presentation is going to be, that would be really helpful.
[SPEAKER_11]: I believe we're scheduled for the 20th.
[SPEAKER_07]: of this month, is that? Is that the day you picked the money to get you on the agenda? So the earlier we can get, and the willingness to make this work was very clear. It's the questions that everybody has about where we're going to get all the other pieces. So the more quickly we can do things like get the council to approve the ARPA funding tells the Community Preservation Commission how much they need to put in and how much the planning department needs to plan for this year's fiscal contribution versus next year's. So as quickly as we can make those decisions will help us get the shovels in the ground faster. Go ahead.
[SPEAKER_17]: Yeah. And to speak to that shovel on the ground question. So that is also one of those major questions because of delays in procurements of delays in items while we hope to have this out to bid in the February timeframe, February, March timeframe. The reality is that the companies that bid may come back and say that the start date is not July 1, that it's some other point. So that's one of those things that we still have to figure out as we approach it.
[SPEAKER_07]: One of the things is that we'll be able to order, one of the vendors has a state contract, so we're going to be able to order the swing and the merry-go-round piece at the discounted rate with the state contract, and then we won't have to have any substitute equipment. So as many of the pieces that we can buy like that will save us money and we can order them now. So there's, I believe there's 400,000 in community development block grant funding that we can use now to start ordering equipment once these are done. And the funding that did the design study also included our construction documents, which as soon as we vote on this final design as a committee will be underway.
[SPEAKER_11]: Great. Thank you. Member Ruseau, and then we're going to get to the labor relations report.
[SPEAKER_15]: Thank you. Is there any specialized equipment that will be required for maintenance and would that be something the DPW or the schools would need to purchase?
[SPEAKER_07]: I will be happy to present on a system I think that the schools need to undergo to do inspections, et cetera. We're working with both DPW and John McLaughlin Building and Grounds to increase the capacity of both departments who are managing playgrounds in the city to keep them safer. We do need to budget. So if, for example, we paid $900 for the initial inspection of this playground, and then we got a grant for for about, yeah, that was including, so it was about 4,000 to do all the other playgrounds that are owned by the school department. And that really needs to be an annual process. So that's something that while CPC did fund it this time as an assessment, because we don't know what our playgrounds need, they won't fund it again because it's maintenance. They won't fund maintenance. So we need to start thinking about how we're budgeting for not only repairs, but preventative maintenance and replacement slides, et cetera. so that we can maintain our current playgrounds longer, extend their lives and not run into this playground where it really needed to be bulldozed several years ago, because it hasn't been maintained.
[SPEAKER_11]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_07]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_11]: Thank you very much. Next up, we have number four, Labor Relations Report, Mr. David Murphy, Assistant Superintendent of Finance and Operations. Mr. Murphy.
[SPEAKER_14]: Good evening, Mayor, members of the school committee. That wasn't a call and response. I was just slowly warming up for our latest labor relations update. So thank you for the opportunity to address you tonight. And I hope to answer some questions that you may have with respect to where we are with our negotiations and where it is that we hope to go. And as the committee knows, I've had the privilege of presenting a number of these presentations over the past several years, and particularly over the last four or five months. And I think In situations like ongoing negotiations, there's always a certain calibration or thoughtfulness that you want to put in with respect to what it is that you are conveying publicly. sort of the public narrative that gets wrapped around a particular negotiation. And as has been the case in our negotiation with our teachers, and as is the case in essentially all collective bargaining in the public sphere, It's not at all uncommon for the bargaining unit and the bargaining unit leadership in particular to spend more time communicating publicly than the governing body of the school system does or the district leadership does. And that makes sense. I mean, it has to do with the dynamic, the legal dynamic, for one. And the fact that their union leadership is fulfilling their responsibilities that they have to advocate zealously on behalf of their members. It's also, again, not uncommon that as a negotiation plays out, there becomes a responsibility on the part of the district to speak more frequently and at times more explicitly so as to ensure the members of the community who at the end of the day are footing the bill for this contract and every other contract that we as an employer enter into, have an accurate set of information and data so as to make their assessment. As this negotiation now has now stretched into a month 13, I know that it's the case that the tenor and the tone at times has been a challenge. And it's been a challenge, I think, for those of us that have been at the bargaining table feel compelled to respond to what we believe to be inaccurate information that's disseminated. And I know it's a challenge for members of the school committee, as well as the city administration, to be reading about and hearing about a set of facts, and I'm using that sort of as a term of art for the moment, that is very different than the information that we have conveyed to you as an administration, that we have provided to you a voluminous amount of documentation to support. And I want to start by extending, on behalf of the administration, gratitude to the members of the school committee for your patience and for your support that you've demonstrated in a variety of ways as we've gone through this process. And I want to say clearly that I think for whatever assertions that folks may make with regard to the narrative that's attached to these negotiations. I think our strategic decision to not speak publicly over the course of the vast majority of months of negotiation was the correct one. I don't think it is in the interest of the community to have a nonstop back and forth between union leaders that are doing their job representing their members and the district that is doing its job trying to make decisions that will ensure whoever has the honor to serve in the roles that the seven of you and the five of us serve in in the years ahead are positioned to make investments necessary to serve students. I think that was the right decision. At the same time, there does come a point at which there is so much misinformation that gets shared. And the work that we as an administration and you as a governing body have done is mischaracterized to such an extent that I don't believe we have any other choice but to speak clearly and to do our best to clarify what's true and what's not. And when we do that, because we're the employer, and at no point, particularly in the realm of social media, are we ever going to be considered the good guys. And if anyone signed up for any of these roles hoping to be the good guy in this dynamic, I can assure you it's not going to happen. And that's OK. Because this really isn't about good or bad. It is about accurate and inaccurate. And I think our obligation is to try to share as much accurate information as possible. A very quick antidote before we go through this deck, and I promise we'll be quick because you've seen a lot of it before. I had occasion to have a conversation with a Medford community leader, not someone who is in this room at the moment, but someone I respect and someone who was thoughtful enough to share. the person's take perspective. And the person said that the facts and the law support the information that we are sharing and that the administration has shared with you routinely in these public updates. And they said that, but there's a lot of emotion. And then for that reason, we had to understand that we shouldn't, that we should just essentially hand over exactly what's being asked for, despite the financial implications. And as you've heard me say many, many times, when a district enters into an agreement that it cannot afford, it is the students who are most vulnerable, who need services the most, who suffer. That's not a scare tactic. That's not an appeal to anyone's emotion. As I've said, apparently I only have facts and the law on my side. That's just reality. And when a school committee makes that type of mistake, well, it's not overnight. The services we provide to students today will be the services that we provide tomorrow, regardless of what you vote for, regardless of what the Teachers Union ratifies. But over time, structural deficits have a cost. And the cost is paid by students. And so, As you've heard me start every single one of these presentations saying that we have the utmost respect for our teachers and we recognize that it is the educators of this district and I include teachers and paraprofessionals and support staff and everyone else who populates our school communities day in and day out. They are the reason that this community has made it through the pandemic. And they are the reason that we are situated as well as we are to try to continue to serve students in the years ahead. But that doesn't mean information that's being shared is accurate. It doesn't mean that it's truthful. And it does mean, I think, that we have a responsibility to correct it. And so with respect to my friend who said that we were relying too much on facts and the law, I would say that I've had the privilege to serve this community for two and a half years. And I've found the people of this community to be smart. I've found them to listen. And I've found them to be respectful of accurate information. And I am confident that regardless of whatever other types of appeals are made to the people of this community, that the people of the community, as well as its elected leaders, and I do include the 70 of you in that, will continue to be cognizant of the implications of the decisions that you have to make. And so with that, I'm gonna walk you through a few things on this presentation. If we can go to the slides, Dr. Cushing. Thanks. So then you've seen this stuff first. The first table there is just an update. Here's where we are with respect to our negotiations. There's very little change from when I updated you on October 17th with the very notable exception of where we are with respect to the teachers. Then we'll move on. And then in the second table, what you see here are the financials for the tentative agreement that was reached on October 13th. And the district, as you know, fulfilled our legal obligation. to support that agreement, to advocate for that agreement, and to urge your approval of that agreement. And just with respect to the specifics, that's 2.5% a year per fiscal year, with 1% on the final day of the final fiscal year. And then as we go to the next slide, as you've heard me say many times that for purposes of this discussion and wanting to essentially be efficient, we haven't gotten too much into, and I'll just say really quickly for those watching along, these are documents that are available on our website, as all the documents that are shared with the school committee are. I understand it's very small print, and we're going to move fast, but the purpose of this is for those that are talking about listening to this presentation in the days ahead. These are resources that you can go back to, and we hope that you enjoy it when you do. So the purpose of that first table at the top is to demonstrate that the tentative agreement that was reached is a more favorable agreement from the employer's perspective than the previous collective bargaining agreements going back over a decade. To be clear, there is no one suggesting that this is what teachers in society should be paid. Again, you've heard me say many times Most of us who have decided that this is how we're going to spend our professional lives think that education is pretty important. Most of us believe that for a community like Medford, its future is going to be defined by the investment that you as a community make in public education. And part of making an investment in public education is making sure that educators receive a competitive and a sustainable wage increase. And it's also true that given the circumstances under which we are operating and have operated under for some time, now is the time that educators should receive a more competitive increase than they have previously. That is a premise that we began the negotiation with. It is a premise that we shared with the teachers union routinely. And by shared, I mean we certainly share the sentiment, more than share the sentiment, but we communicated that routinely. When members of the Teachers Union bargaining team were taking to social media and saying that we were disrespecting them and that we did not value them, At the same time that that was happening, we were having conversations with their leadership, telling them that we understood the need for a more competitive wage increase. That's not to say that this is the morally correct number. There is no morally correct number. But to suggest that it is somehow less than, that it is not competitive, or that it is disrespectful is an assertion that I do not believe is supported by the facts. And the facts are that this is the history of the increase. Dr. Rodness, one of the teachers from the high school, stood at this podium some time ago and relayed that on his commute, there were no fewer than seven communities in which their teachers were paid more. That was a disturbing assertion. It's one that prompted us to do an analysis of the region in general and of the districts that, under the state's framework, we are most similar to with respect to socioeconomic demographics, size, and funding, and whatnot. And the assertion that Medford pays less than districts is not true, nor should it be. Any education finance administrator who comes up and seeks accolades for keeping teacher wages as low as humanly possible is not someone who's going to contribute to what's happening in the classroom, and it's not someone that's going to help move a district forward with respect to the quality of the education being offered in that district. And so I want to be clear, I'm glad that it's not true. And the people of Medford, even those who are not directly connected to the school system and who wonder why so much of their tax dollars have to go into our public school system that they never stepped foot in and that they have no direct connection to, even those members of the community. who are just as much a member of your constituents as everyone else, the people who follow it more closely because they're more directly connected, they should be grateful. And I know with certainty that many are, that educators in Medford are paid a competitive wage. And under the agreement that was reached on October 13th, they would continue to be paid a competitive wage. So much so that at the meeting in which the agreement was signed, While the teacher union leadership and the state representative from the Massachusetts Teacher Association did not agree with the premise that, frankly, we didn't spend a lot of time showing the documentation that proved that our teachers are paid a competitive wage, they agreed at the time that, quote, now they will be. as in upon implementation of this agreement that was reached on October 13th, the teachers would be paid in a competitive way. To be clear, if we're actually talking about facts, the competitive wage is already there. But as is the case with every, the nature of competition, you have to keep moving the needle forward. You have to keep building that momentum. It's not okay to just have stagnant wages. You have to be competitive or you will not be able to recruit and retain the talent that the students of Bedford deserve. Which is why it was a priority from the very beginning for us to institute a competitive but sustainable wage increase. I think that's enough for those tables. Excuse me, actually, if I could just point out at the bottom, I apologize, Dr. Cushing. The crux of the disagreement now, after the union's failure to ratify the October 13th agreement, is that the union has put forth what it has dubbed a proposal, and they have identified it as cost neutral. If it were a cost-neutral option, frankly, I don't know that we'd have a lot to talk about because there's an eagerness, I think, on everyone's part to bring this to a conclusion. Mathematically speaking, it is not a cost-neutral option. to move a wage increase up in time adds a compounding element. And as I said before, we haven't frankly talked about the specifics of interest because one, we're trying to keep everyone awake in these meetings, and two, we're trying to keep it moving forward. But where we refer to 7.5% in over a three-year period in the tentative agreement, it's actually technically a 7.69% increase. To move what is in effect an FY25 increase that would be instituted under the tentative agreement on the final day of FY24 up in time as the union has proposed, and as they have spoken about publicly, brings that increase to 8.74%. 8.74% is more than 7.69%. And when you look at that from a citywide perspective, It's not just the principle that's violated. It is a dollars and cents issue that it becomes unsustainable. We can move to the next one. I want to talk briefly about the timeline of this negotiation, but I'm going to spare you these first two slides because you've already seen them several times. We started in June of 2021, and then we negotiated for a while. Why don't we go to part three? will pick up our history in the beginning of October. October 4th, the Department of Labor Relations informed the teachers union in the district that parties would essentially be given a month before a mediator was appointed to help resolve the stalemate. At that point over the course of the next week, the dialogue picked up considerably. And while I'm not going to go into every single blow by blow specific as to what was happening at the bargaining table, I will say there was a third party who intervened and functioned as a mediator. The district had said at the end of August that we felt a mediator was necessary. The union objected. This did, in fact, slow the timeline down because there was a need for the parties to stake out their positions with the Department of Labor Relations. And then immediately after being given a timeline before the mediator would be appointed, the parties found themselves as part of a three-part dialogue in which a mediator was helpful and provided assistance in helping to facilitate the dialogue. That led to the tentative agreement that was reached and signed on October 13th. As I said, I briefed you on October 17th, and then the Teachers Union took a vote to ratify, which failed to pass, on October 24th. On October 25th, the district contacted the MTA leadership. We had been told through various sources that the vote was close, and so the reasonable question seemed to be, do you plan to vote again, and is there something we can do to help facilitate that? The union responded immediately that yes, they did want to vote again, and that the issue that needed to be discussed was the elementary release time, which as you know, has been discussed publicly, including initially when it was introduced into the public sphere in June of 2022 by representatives from the teachers union. Over the next week or two, the district met with the teachers union to identify clarifying language And I received some correspondence from teachers saying that this wouldn't have been a problem had we provided better language to begin with. And all I can say to that is there were two parties at the bargaining table, and the language that was originally sent for a vote of ratification did not come from the district. We then worked on that language and we clarified it, and it was a productive dialogue, and Ms. Galuzzi, as our resident expert in elementary matters, joined me in a few different conversations, some of which slightly late at night, with the teachers union to try to iron out specifics that would position the union to do as they said they wanted to do, which was to take a vote to ratify. Initially, during that window of time, the Teachers Union leadership communicated to the district that they understood that we would not be revisiting the financial package that had been agreed to. They stated that they felt it was a good financial package. They stated repeatedly that they had met their obligation willingly to enthusiastically support the agreement that had been reached. We then finalized language that they said they were comfortable with respect to the elementary issue. And upon completing that language, they completed a transition that admittedly began during that two-week window in which they first said that they understood the financial package would not be revisited. They then said that they just wanted us to know that some individuals were not happy with the financial package, to which the district responded that that was true for every negotiation in the history of time. I don't think there's ever been one that was completed and everyone agreed that it was perfect. They then said that they might have to revisit the financial package. And then finally, at the conclusion of the two-week window, they demanded to revisit the financial package and submitted the quote, unquote, cost-neutral option that I referenced earlier. I think we can go to part four now. And this brings us up to the last week, which, as I said at the beginning, as a general rule, I prefer to not go over every single detail, but at some point when public buildings are being blocked with rallies and information is being disseminated in every medium available, again, I think we have an obligation to explain to the community what actually happened. On November 29th, last week, I think that was Tuesday, the union leadership announced to their members that they would be delivering a vote of no confidence. I can't say I really know who it was directed at. I assume the mayor and perhaps all of you and maybe myself and the superintendent, I don't know, but maybe they can come in and clarify sometime. They wanted everyone to know that there would be a rally on the steps of City Hall before your meeting. The following day, after announcing to the 500 members that they would declare no confidence in the people that they were attempting to negotiate and had already reached a tentative agreement with, they asked for a meeting. The mayor, along with myself and the superintendent, responded in under 24 hours that we would agree to meet, We thought it was important to meet, and we gave a list of days and times that the union could choose from. The union chose December 7th. Now, I will say, I inferred from the request to meet that came in after the announcement of no confidence that we were gonna have an opportunity to have a conversation and that we were gonna have a dialogue. And so I was surprised at 843 on Saturday night when the union asked to move the meeting up to Sunday night, almost as if there was a desire for some type of pretextual meeting before the delivery of the aforementioned no confidence vote. On Sunday morning, the superintendent, the mayor, and I had a conference call. I imagine the superintendent and mayor were engaged in family activities. I missed the first period of a 10-year-old's hockey game on that conference call. And I imagine the mayor and the superintendent had a few things going on in their lives as well. And we discussed, can we rearrange everything that we're doing to have a meeting on Sunday night that Ms. Douglas requested at 843 on Saturday night? And we decided that we couldn't, but we certainly wanted to hear the union president out, and so the mayor agreed that there would be a phone conversation on Monday morning. The mayor can certainly relay the details of that. They're not a lot, because it was a fairly short call, as I understand it. But the call was to inform the mayor that the union had declared no confidence. I want to talk a little bit about the implications of a no-confidence vote.
[SPEAKER_05]: Thank you, Dr. Kushner.
[SPEAKER_14]: And so now we have two meetings scheduled. We have a meeting on December 7th in which we will continue to bring this process to a conclusion so that the competitive and sustainable wage increase that we've negotiated can be implemented as quickly as possible. With respect to the reforms that were negotiated, as the committee knows, the primary reform that we were initially told was the hang up with regard to the length of the elementary school day, we've already agreed that that won't be implemented this year. So the reforms that the district had prioritized in the course of this process have now either been dropped or delayed. And With respect to the financial compensation, I know one of the talking points that's been circulated is that we are threatening to pull back on the one-time payments totaling $4,500 per teacher if an agreement is not reached. And so I don't think we need any more slides, Dr. Cushman, but I'll just speak very briefly about that and then I'm happy to take your questions. $1,500 per year, per fiscal year, one-time payments, that's the non-based pay compensation, is made possible through the grant funding that the district and other districts have. We refer to it typically as ESSER funding. And it's time-sensitive funding. So there's a date, there's two different buckets, and one ends at the end of, or in the first quarter of the next fiscal year, and one ends in the first quarter of the following fiscal year. And based on the agreements, it's about $2 million that we've tied up in the hope of paying these one-time payments. I said at the beginning, given the circumstances and the context in which we're negotiating, in which we're operating, there's widespread agreement. that this should be a highly favorable agreement for teachers. There's a need to recognize the sacrifice, there's a need to recognize the hard work, there's a need to recognize the debt that we owe educators generally and educators in Medford specifically. But there's also a need to do that in a fiscally sustainable way. And so from the very beginning, we've communicated that while we intend to use these resources, to supplement the base pay increase of teachers, it's also true that we can't just sit on a bucket of money that is going to go away eventually. And it is not a matter of if we don't have an agreement in the next week, the money has to go away. It is a matter that if we're not going to spend it as we would prefer, supplementing teacher pay, then we have to plan for its responsible use. And in the absence of a thoughtful strategic plan that we develop as to how that money will be used this spring during school breaks, things like acceleration academies, this coming summer, things like Camp Mustang version 17, whatever we're up to at this point, to support student social emotional growth, or whatever else, after school programs, tutoring programs, all the things that we've discussed with you each time we presented on the ESSER budget, all of it has been on hold. because we don't know what the number is going to be in order to supplement teacher pay the way that we want. And so the reason that we have communicated that at some point that money has to start, we have to start to adjust those numbers, is that if we don't thoughtfully plan for it, we're going to have the equivalent of a financial bonfire this summer, and then it's not gonna be of use to anyone. Teachers will continue to not be paid what we would all prefer that they be paid. Students will not receive the type of targeted supports that we can provide if we have enough time to thoughtfully plan these things out. And so that is why it's time sensitive. In addition, frankly, we really wanted to provide the compensation before the holiday break. That's why we did that. That's not a scare tactic. That's not an attempt to intimidate anyone. It is just the reality of the calendar. And we can't rush through pay increases, and we can't rush through programming and design initiatives, because all of a sudden, we have $2 million more than we were anticipating having. Just one final thought. We know that the vote to ratify failed by 17 votes. We know that there was this issue that needed further clarification that I'd like to think that we've now provided based on several meetings over the last month on the elementary release time. According to the communication that we received within the last day, the no confidence vote, and it's not entirely clear how or when that was declared, was at 94%. And so I would say to the union leadership that has claimed that they supported the TA and they tried to get it passed, that has also now apparently led in the direction that we were 17 votes from ratification and now we're at a 94% rate of no confidence, that we will continue this dialogue and we'll continue this conversation And we will be as constructive as we can and we'll be as creative as we can, but we will not be financially reckless. No matter how many rallies there are, how much information is put on social media, how many vague personal threats are alluded to, how many times they reference the political cycle or the calendar, We're going to continue to act in a way that we believe is responsible for the interests of the district and its future. And it is my sincere hope that they will join us in that effort. And I'm happy to take your questions.
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you, Mr. Murphy.
[SPEAKER_11]: I don't know if there's any questions from the committee. Member Ruseau?
[SPEAKER_15]: Thank you. As always, I'd like to make a motion going forward during any bargaining sessions that a minimum of one school committee member will be present.
[SPEAKER_11]: Motion on the floor by Member Ruseau that one school committee member be present at any negotiating sessions, seconded by Second, member Graham.
[SPEAKER_14]: Mayor, if I could just say, the administration would welcome that, and certainly try to keep you as informed as possible, but I think given that, to the best of my knowledge, no one is claiming that there are any issues remaining with the exception of the finances. I think that, I think it's more, it's helpful to have representatives of the governing body there, and so. I can't promise it will be fun, but I certainly will let you know that you'll be more than welcome to join us.
[SPEAKER_11]: Is real call or all those in favor aye. I was opposed motion passes.
[SPEAKER_09]: If I if I may from me and the chair member of the nation. How is it how is that being chosen.
[SPEAKER_14]: Well, honestly, I think it's going to, I prefer to depend on the specifics and logistics because what I don't want to do is if we have an opportunity to make a mediator, have to wait for a designated member to be available. So I think we'll continue to keep you all fully updated and informed. And I think, you know, frankly, at this point, the mayor, I mean, just back up for one second, if I could, Ms. McLaughlin. You just, you opened the door for something that I do wanna clarify. One of the assertions that has been made, and I, having served in a similar capacity that you do now, I can understand the frustration that some of you may feel when this misinformation is shared, is that the committee has been disengaged. And I will say that If there's one thing I'll say about the Medford School Committee, it is that you are not disengaged by any stretch of the imagination. And I mean that as praise. because I've worked with many, I've served on one, and I've frankly never really seen a committee as engaged as the seven of you. And I think we as a school district are better off and you as a community are better off for it. But in addition to meeting on a regular basis, in addition to asking questions on a regular basis, in addition to having frequent executive sessions in which we engage in dialogue and you set the agenda and you set the goals and you gave us our parameters to negotiate under, Ms. Graham as the vice chair and the mayor have attended multiple meetings with the union leadership. And the suggestion that somehow the mayor or the committee have not been involved in this process is completely inaccurate. It's not fair to any of you. And it's not fair to the members of the community who are receiving that type of misinformation. But with respect to going forward, what I would say is I think we'll continue to keep you informed. The mayor, by the nature of her role, is gonna need to be present, frankly, more often than I think the people of the city would prefer, given the other tasks that she has to do. But we'll make sure that you're informed. Again, there's not really a myriad of issues to discuss, but if there is something that we tell you you're gonna discuss and one of you wants to attend, then by all means.
[SPEAKER_11]: If I may, from the chair, I don't wanna be repetitive in any way, maybe just speak a couple minutes because I know Mr. Murphy, Dr. Edouard-Vincent, we were working all through the weekend on this. And I know the committee has been inundated with emails. I know they're hard to read, and I myself, I felt as mayor, I did need to respond. So the number that came from Pennsylvania or California or Arizona, obviously I did not respond to, but I did take the time one morning, 5 to 7, 7.30, and this morning at 4 to respond to several hundred emails, and it was very simple. I stated that, of course, this committee, as well as the city and school staff, I said, we aimed to do what's right, because I think that was part of the email. Do what's right. We always aim to do what's right. And that's how we did get to a signed tentative agreement. The union leadership, our administration, with the vote of the council, got to a signed tentative agreement. That wasn't easy because, as you can see on the documentation, the average is 6.5 potentially on a three-year contract over the 10, 12 prior years, and we're at something and we saw what happened budget time. It was tough budget with the numbers of the average of 2% for most unions per year, sometimes a little bit more. We wanted to get this done so badly. We know our teachers, we all know our teachers deserve a fair salary. We wanted to bring them up over 90,000 average. This contract would bring our teachers up to an average of $93,000 a year plus bonus checks that we want to give our teachers. So I took the time to respond, and I did say that even though we have the tentative agreement, it was signed in October, that I was asked to have a meeting within 24 hours, like Mr. Murphy said. I gave my times and dates that I'm available this week. We have a meeting scheduled on the 7th, which is this Wednesday. When I did speak to Ms. Douglas this morning, I was a little heated. She mentioned, she called to let me know that there'll be no confidence vote against the school committee and myself. And I just don't think that's fair to the committee. If it's against me, that's one thing because in the email, it also mentioned be a leader. They want us to be leaders. And I just have to tell you as my colleagues that I do feel you are leaders. We are leaders together because we've stuck together to understand And you have the responsibility of the school committee. I feel like I have been a leader as mayor because I have a lot to juggle as the schools, but also the city. We have almost 20 CBAs, 20 unions that we have negotiated with, are currently negotiating with, and need to continue to negotiate with. We have an annual budget that is maxed out, and we can get into that argument. Potentially, we will need an override, potentially, even just with 2% raises. But we went above and beyond. We want to get this done. And it's really hard. you know, as to get those emails and to know you're doing the right thing. And we've, we, we listened to, you know, the park, the needs of the parks at the schools. So, so as a leader of the community, not only worried about the 20 CBAs and keeping our personnel, um, getting cooler percentages each year, We have streets and sidewalks that are falling apart. We have parks that we are finally getting ahead of, not ahead, we finally have 50, 70 projects in the works, some complete, some we're working on. Four, including the McGlynn, or five large-scale park projects that we're working on. We have funding sources that we're being creative with. We have personnel issues that we're dealing with on a daily basis. Maurice, Dave, and I know that, and they're not fun. So a leader to me is what we have done. A leader to me is to say, Charlene, if you have to take a no-confidence vote, I can't lead this city into receivership. I have mayors who are colleagues that, you know, a lot of cities and towns are going through this, and they're dealing with the pressure And to a couple of them, I've said, how are you going to afford that? And in person, I've seen a couple of them and they say to me, I don't know. I don't know. I said, where are you going to cut? How are you going to fund something like that? And I've said to even one, I said, you have a responsibility. to the entire community, to the taxpayers, not just one union, you have responsibility to the entire community. So it is a struggle, there is pressure, we're all feeling it, but we are sticking together and I feel like we are being leaders. And it's unfortunate, from the very beginning, it was the narrative that was being portrayed as we're disrespectful, we're disrespectful. At one point, it was a few months in, and I said, I called Dave, Mr. Murphy right away, and I said, what was our first offer? Because all I keep hearing is we're disrespectful. What did you offer? And the answer was, well, the teachers are asking for 6% a year. So we offered, I forget exactly what it was, 1.5 to- To 1.75 and 1.5.
[SPEAKER_14]: It was communicated publicly that we offered the lowest proposal that had ever been shared. That was not true, but it was to 1.75 and 1.5. And as the mayor said, the reason for that, and this is spelled out in your materials, was that with the union coming in and asking for 18% over three years, We had two choices. We could offer something in the ballpark of we knew that we could afford, at which point we would then be stuck at that position over an extended period of time. and most likely be called disrespectful for not demonstrating movement. Or we could start very low, leave ourselves room for some movement, but understand that we would be accused of being disrespectful based on the initial offer. Frankly, we tried to take a middle approach. We did 2175, 1.5, and communicated regularly with the union leadership that this was just an initial offer. That offer was weaponized against us, and it began the narrative of how disrespectful we are. And to be clear, I don't know, you're never gonna get to a place where you are demonstrating sufficient support for the individuals who, as to a person and as a community, a community of educators, are responsible for delivering what these people deliver day in and day out. You can't demonstrate too much respect, okay? All of us have teachers, some of whom, some of us were raised by some, who we know the impact that they have. So you're never gonna get to the point where you check a box and say, well, now we've respected teachers enough. It's never gonna happen. We are dependent upon them for our lives. That's the reality. And for those that are looking, Ms. Douglas and others who want to quote me on social media and try to weaponize that quote, by all means, I mean it, say it. Teachers are the reason we are here. They are the reason that some of us have been able to do with our lives what we want to do. But to make sure that that continues to be the case and to make sure that kids who have not come into the school system yet will be able to get the services that they need so that they can have a chance to have the lives that they need, we can't be reckless. We have to be responsible, even when that means being unpopular. So take as many no confidence votes as you want. Have as many rallies as you want. That's reality.
[SPEAKER_11]: And my point, thank you, Mr. Murphy. And my point is when I initially heard the offer and 6%, I said, you know, I went back and I said that it's not disrespect. To me, that's negotiations. That's how it works, back and forth. And you get to that number just like we did. Higher than I think we should be, but we're at 7.25 with 1% at the end of the year, plus three $1,500 bonuses.
[SPEAKER_14]: Could you say that again, though? I mean, let me be clear. It's never going to be enough, OK? We're never going to say, well, now we've paid teachers enough. We're certainly never going to say we paid them too much. That's not possible, OK? Just like we were talking about the after school staff, OK? We raised our rates. People know that. We're competing against other communities. It's not surprising that they raised their rates as well, OK? You're never going to be able to pay enough.
[SPEAKER_11]: And I think we never would ever, ever want to disrespect any of our teachers. And I don't feel that we have. But the narrative got everybody so anxious and angry that we had to do something to calm it down. And we did. And we reached this tentative agreement. We had the union leadership sign. We did sign. could, for some reason it wasn't ratified. I think that was Ms. Douglas's job to get it ratified and it didn't, it didn't happen. So here we are. So we go and agree to a meeting on Wednesday, hoping to get it done. We also have mediation on the 20th, but instead what I told Ms. Douglas this morning, and I'll say it publicly is it was disingenuous to ask me for a meeting, which I agreed to. We have it scheduled and then to go back another rally, declare no confidence to rile the membership up again. I mean, are we going to lead this to the spring? I sure hope not. But what I would ask is, could we, or would somebody propose that we take a vote to ask Ms. Douglas the same thing? Please do what's right. Please be a leader. Please bring this back to the membership in a meeting to do one thing, not to hear whatever he has to say, and then some people don't show up because they don't want to hear it, because there's many teachers not showing up. They don't want to be there. They don't want to deal with it. Have a meeting this week to just take a vote. Take a vote. Everybody can take a little time and look at these slides. Take a vote. We want to get our teachers this average of 93,000 as soon as possible. We want to get them to two checks would be issued in the next several weeks. I know you'd start the process right away for $1,500 a piece. We agreed to move up the third payment to July one, I believe. We have made movements since the tentative agreement, because we are really trying to do this.
[SPEAKER_14]: I want to flesh that point out, though, Mayor, if I could really quickly. So, as I said, the tentative agreement that the union has, and I'm not entirely clear why, good question for them, have filed an unfair labor practice against us for acknowledging the tentative agreement. To be honest with you, that's a first I've never seen in a fair labor practice on the grounds that we're acknowledging a tentative agreement that the union president signed, but nevertheless. Our position is that this is a tentative agreement. With respect to its validity, I would point to the fact that we were told that they wanted to take another vote. We were told that this board is continuing to represent the MTA, so we continue to work with them. But what we've said is, in an attempt to be a partner, we've identified clarifying language that could be provided in a side letter That's what we were told that they wanted. And the moving up the one-time payments, just to be clear, we're not the base pay. That is what makes it unsustainable. But moving up the timeline on the one-time payments was designed to get teachers Many of whom, again, have been through a very challenging period, as many others have, to get that compensation as quickly as possible. And again, I think the discussion for the rest is really for the ongoing dialogue, which despite the declaration of no confidence is still scheduled for December 7th. So we're going to, in two days, we're going to, I don't, I'm a little confused because to be honest with you, I've never like had someone declare our team to be quote proven, proven ineffective. Again, we negotiated, we came to an agreement. So I don't totally understand the definition of proven ineffective, and I don't totally understand meeting with a group that you've decided you have no confidence in, but We're really just focused on trying to get it done. And that's what the mayor is referencing is that clarifying points to try to expedite that.
[SPEAKER_11]: And if no confidence vote came after the meeting, that's one thing. But now it's the narrative that we're disrespecting them again. And again, I think it kills us all because you all have children in the schools or had children in the schools. These teachers have been and are my children's teachers. They're my children's, have been tutored by our wonderful teachers, have been coached by our teachers. They're my friends. My sister left the district recently, but they're family, some of whom won't even look at us, won't write recommendations for our kids. I mean, I can't talk personally about that,
[SPEAKER_14]: I just want to be clear though, Mayor, I mean, as I've said before, the withholding of services typically rendered is a prohibited practice. In the communication that the union put out about the, quote, walk to rule, there was a vague reference to letters of recommendation. The district, keeping in mind the implications for our students, directly asked the union three times whether or not they were suggesting that they would refuse to do that, and the union never responded affirmatively. I want to be really clear. It is my sense and my experience being here now for some time, that the vast majority of teachers, and I want to be clear, I think the vast majority of the community, have not been sucked into the vortex of this back and forth. I don't think they think that teachers are being really greedy, and I don't think they think the district is being really disrespectful. I think the vast majority of members of the public schools community, our internal stakeholders, including our staff, and the community are just looking for a resolution. And we share that sentiment, but a reckless solution is not one that the district can in good faith endorse. And I think I would say with respect to the specifics, I think we've got a meeting on the 7th. I think my hope is that that's a constructive dialogue. My recommendation there would be we leave the conversation there and pick it up again on the 7th.
[SPEAKER_09]: Member McLaughlin. Thank you. I just had a question for, again, the lay person who doesn't understand or needs clarification or whatever. What exactly is a tentative agreement?
[SPEAKER_14]: Sure. Thank you. That's a good question, Ms. McLaughlin. So, under, I know I always started toward a statute, which is not gonna be helpful based on that. From the family of the question, the law in Massachusetts is that both parties enter into a negotiating relationship, and the parties are responsible for reaching what we refer to as a tentative agreement. Once that tentative agreement is reached, under the DLR decisions, which is the, I'm sorry, under the law, the parties who negotiated are legally bound to support the agreement, okay? It is meant to avoid representatives from either party sabotaging an agreement. For instance, just a hypothetical, and I really, again, I appreciate Ms. McLaughlin for you leaving the door ajar for a nice illustration. If the district leadership had brought on October 17th back to you this tentative agreement, the 2.5% a year plus 1% in the final day of the fiscal year, and you, the fiscal hawks that you are, looked at us and said, I think that's too rich for our blood. We're going to vote this down. Why don't you go back to the bargaining table? And our response was to sort of shrug our shoulders and say, all right, if you guys don't want that, then I guess we can try to negotiate again. And then we went back to the union and asked them to take a lower wage increase. That would be a prohibited practice. And so what played out was the inverse of that, where the union leadership represents the membership. That was voted down. And, you know, if this unfortunately proceeds, they'll have the union which will have the opportunity to furnish the documentation to indicate that they truly supported the agreement, along with testimony from folks who were in the meeting. They were bound to do that because the point of the TA is to help the parties get to an agreement, which is why once the superintendent signed on October 13th, we as an administration were responsible and legally obligated to urge you to support it. Now, it's true, you could vote it down. But it's not true that we can be indifferent or neutral or just throw our arms up and claim that's part of the democratic process. Part of the democratic process is we elect a legislature, they write laws, and the law is that the parties have to support the tentative agreements that were reached. So it is a step in the negotiating process designed to help facilitate resolution to ongoing negotiations.
[SPEAKER_08]: Member Graham. Thank you. I've seen a question floating around in a couple of different places. that goes something like if you wanted to give the teachers a bonus, you could just do it. Or could you just do it? I think it's actually a question, a genuine one, like we don't know.
[SPEAKER_14]: Absolutely not. You can't unilaterally just increase a party's pay.
[SPEAKER_08]: So because we are under a collective bargaining agreement, any and all compensation must be driven through collective agreement with our bargaining partners. Is that true?
[SPEAKER_14]: That's correct. There are a few exceptions with respect to like declaring an impasse over like But I saw that there was a communication that went out saying that essentially the school committee can increase their pay any time you want. The answer is no, you can't. You have to bargain that. If we could, you could, I mean, there's a whole rationale, public policy rationale that I'm not gonna go into at 8.35 tonight, but if you're interested, you can give me a call. But no, you can't unilaterally just increase people's pay.
[SPEAKER_02]: Mayor? Thank you. Member Ruseau?
[SPEAKER_15]: Thank you, yes. I mean, the most obvious example of that is that we could not decide as a committee that we would give high-performing teachers a bonus every year and we get to decide what high performing is, that would totally be insane. And we just, you know, all compensation, although I imagine there's some situations you're mentioning, not mentioning, but it has to go through this process.
[SPEAKER_14]: It's a mandatory bargaining issue.
[SPEAKER_15]: I just also, you know, I think I've sort of given a version of this tiny speech before, you know, we're all Everybody, and I mean the teachers, the administration, the public of Medford, all of us are running around trying to, you know, at each other's throats for the scraps. And, you know, the 1993 Ed Reform Act, which we, there was much in it that was great, but there was also much in it that we don't talk about. And that is that the defund public education folks won, the charter school folks won, the anti-tax folks won. The anti-union folks won in this landmark legislation that puts the school committee, you know, and when we think about unions and we think about negotiating, we think of businesses who can raise their rates, they can lower the profits they're sending to their shareholders. But school committees got this very fascinating little, I can't think of a non, vulgar word, so I'll just, it's not good. We were given the authority to negotiate something with no authority to have anything to do with the amount of money we have to spend. It is truly one of the most insane things that exists. And, you know, it's not an accident. It's on purpose. And who benefits? The rich do. The people in Wellesley, Reston, and Winchester who can raise their taxes every year, sometimes twice a year, to get what they want. And they know that the rest of us won't be doing that and instead will be at each other's throat, tearing each other apart, rather than doing the stuff that everybody wants us to do, including this committee, including the teachers, the superintendent, Mr. Murphy, I mean, you know, It's absurd. It's where we are, and I'm not suggesting that we just all throw up our hands and walk out of the room, but I think it's also really, really important to not forget there are winners and losers, and the community of Medford, all of us, we're on the loser's side of this equation. The State House, could change the school funding model for the entire state like Vermont did. They could say this is stupid to have 351 communities trying to figure this out and have a single funding model that the state does and then places like Cambridge would have to cut their poor people spending in half And you can imagine why that's not going to be a popular thing. But we don't have a legislature. We think we're a liberal state. We are not a liberal state. We are a protection of the wealthy state. We just also wear a giant D on our foreheads, regardless of whether we're really a Democrat. So I say all this probably the fifth time since I've been in office, because I think it's really It's a detriment to all of us to think of any of us as the enemy. We are all just a part of the other side of the equation and the rich and powerful and corporations who are people too in this country, they are benefiting very clearly. And I just also wanna add like the Student Opportunity Act, the millionaires tax that just passed, those are all really big deals. They are also just taking the edge off of this. The millionaires didn't let us get this millionaires tax pass, you know, it was a lot of work to get it done by a lot of people, it barely passed, which shocks me to my core. This is about taking the edge off. This isn't about fixing the problem. So those, that new tax, the Student Opportunity Act gave Medford pretty much nothing. But the millionaire's tax, I hope nobody thinks that everything's gonna be rosy in a couple of years. It's not, it's gonna be a little less awful. from a tax perspective. So I hope people can not feel like we've succeeded and move on, because we have an awful lot to do to fix this system. We're gonna be doing this again next year for the next contract, assuming we get this one done. And the math isn't gonna look any better, and it's not gonna look any better at the contract after that. And if we want it to look better, then we need a state legislature to do something to change the entire model, because this model will not ever work. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_11]: Thank you, Dr. Edward-Hudson.
[SPEAKER_16]: Good evening. I just wanted to make a few remarks to all the teachers that are online listening right now. I think it's critically important that everyone knows that we are trying our best to get this contract ratified. You've heard everything this evening. We wanted to get the money to the teachers. It was the holiday time of year. We were hoping to have those one-time payments by the end of this year. And now the clock is winding down in terms of it even being able to be possible. What I can say to the membership, when we had the big meeting in the library, after we went back to renegotiate, the only thing that was put on the table was the elementary schedule. So at this point in time, everything has been tabled or deferred until next year, including the elementary schedule. So the only thing that is left now, which has been clearly stated this evening, is about the money, the finances. And that is a totally different conversation. What Medford is offering is compatible. It is competitive with our neighboring districts. I have been in communication with superintendents and other colleagues. We are not, the narrative that's being said that Medford is at the bottom of the barrel, that is so far from the truth. We are actually in pretty good standing in comparison to the neighboring districts. We want to have this contract ratified. We want to be able to move forward. I am in the schools. I see the teachers working very hard, working with all of our students, no matter what their needs may be, meeting the needs of their students. We wanna be able to come to resolution as soon as possible. And I hope those of you who are listening on the call You hear that we are truly being sincere and we are not trying to disrespect anyone. That narrative needs to stop. We need to work together and think about all of our students, keeping them front and center. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_14]: Thank you, Superintendent. So again, we'll be there December 7th. We look forward to the conversation and our positions will be reflective of what we've discussed tonight. I look forward to keeping you all apprised going forward.
[SPEAKER_11]: Thank you, Mr. Murphy. We have no presentations of the public, no continued business or new business, and number 11, reports requested dyslexia screening and intervention update requested by member Hays, member Graham, member Rousseau, questions to be answered. Number one, NWEA map does not include assessments of non-sense word decoding or rapid automatic naming of letters, both recommended and DSEE guidelines. How are we addressing those areas? How are we screening prior to map? Number two, what number of students have been identified as at risk for dyslexia, lacking specific foundational skills each year and grades? K-1-2. Number three, how many K-1-2 students are receiving target intervention? Motion to read the reading by Member Hays, seconded by Member McLaughlin. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? I'll turn it over to, would like to, would anybody like, Member Hays?
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll make this brief. You know, we are talking a lot about reading this year. We already have another report requested about looking into our, how we're following the science of reading and the new, Well, I guess it's not too new, but the research that's out there about how to the right way to teach reading and this just kind of falls in line with that. I know that we, the state within the last few years has mandated the dyslexia screening and they are now looking towards also, um, requiring interventions to be put in place. And so this particular motion or request for report is just looking at what are we doing now? We do have a dyslexia screener. What do we have in place for students who are shown at risk by the screener? What kind of data do we have and what interventions do we have in place?
[SPEAKER_11]: Motion by Member Hays, seconded by Member Ruseau. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes. We have no condolences, and our next meeting is December 19th, 2022. That will be a regular school committee meeting in Alden Memorial Chambers, Medford City Hall. Have a wonderful rest of the week, everybody. Motion to adjourn by Member Graham, seconded by