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[Lungo-Koehn]: Good evening, everybody. We have a Committee of the Whole meeting to discuss the MHS report review. On June 12, 2023, from 5 to 6 p.m., Committee of the Whole will be held at the Howard Alder Memorial Chambers, Medford City Hall, as well as by remote participation on Zoom. The meeting can be viewed through Medford Community Media on Comcast Channel 15 and Verizon 45 at 5 p.m. Participants can log in or call in by using the following link or call-in number. You can call in by dialing 1-929-205-6099, enter a meeting ID when prompted, 935-1511-5662. Additionally, questions or comments can be submitted during the meeting by emailing medfordsc at medford.k12.ma.us. Those submitting questions or comments must include the following information, your first and last name, your Medford Street address, your question or comment. and on the agenda is to discuss and review the MHSMVTHS Safety, Security and School Climate report as provided by Mr. Michael Welch, Administrative Consultant to Medford Public Schools. Member Ruseau, if you could call the roll, please.
[Edouard-Vincent]: Member Graham.
[Yeager]: Here.
[Edouard-Vincent]: Member Hays.
[Yeager]: Here.
[Hays]: Member McLaughlin.
[Yeager]: Here.
[Hays]: Member Mastone.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Here.
[Hays]: Member Ruseau, present. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Present. Seven present, zero absent.
[Yeager]: Would anybody like to start off? Member Hays or?
[Hays]: Member Hays. Sure. So we first met with Mr. Welch on May 1st to go over the results of his time with us, his time with us looking at the high school. We had requested his consultation around, actually the superintendent, I contacted him through, I think, ma SS Massachusetts Association of school superintendents around the climate and culture of the high school. I think this was something that had actually been requested by the school committee prior to my time on the school committee, but given the events that we've had this year there were two violent incidents. One in particular, or the one the final one that kind of led to this was the stabbing at the high school. And so, Mr. Welch came in for several weeks and met with, and he can maybe go through that kind of again if he wants to do it when he first comes up, met with a lot of people, students, us, teachers, administrators, and came back with quite a lengthy report for us. And at the time of our May 1st reading, we had only had the report in hand for a few days. And while that I rewatched the meeting this morning in preparation for tonight, and we did have quite a lengthy discussion, but I know I still felt like given the gravity of this situation and given that this is something that has been in everyone's minds for at least a few years that you know issues with the high school. That it felt like it warranted more than just one item on a regular school committee agenda, so we did request that Mr. welch come back. Hopefully, in the intervening six weeks, which feels like forever right now. we've all had a chance maybe to look through the report again, think more about kind of what questions we have further to get further information. I know again in watching the re-watching the May 1st meeting, what struck me and I think which was what caused me to personally wanna ask for more time was something that member Graham said, she said, A lot of these failures, for lack of a better word, are failures of implementation. And what struck me about that is that here we are again with a report from a consultant, and we also had a consultant last year who came and spoke with us, not about the exact same issues, but about some issues with the schools. It was more focused on racial equity, and then even more finely focused on I think the human resources department at the high school, but that we had a consultant come in already and I'm not sure that many of the recommendations were implemented. So I want to at least make a stronger effort this time to really delve deeply into what your findings were, what your recommendations are and how we can try to ensure that we implement your recommendations, or if there are other things that we can put in place, because some of the recommendations may require resources that we don't have right now, but what we can do to move forward with this and not just have it be another report that we need about for an hour, say, yes, we need to do something about this, but then don't really follow through on. So that was the reason for the request. So that's the background, and if you wanna come up and we can hopefully have a deeper conversation about what you saw and what your recommendations are.
[SPEAKER_06]: Sure, thank you, Member Hays. I'm pleased to be back here this evening and happy to answer any questions the committee may have.
[Yeager]: Is that working now, I hope?
[SPEAKER_06]: I could speak really loud. How about now? OK.
[Michael Welch]: Sorry, again, thank you, Member Hays. I'm happy to be back here. Mike Welch, former superintendent, Dedham Public Schools. As was mentioned previously, I spent close to three months almost every day in Medford High School really doing my best to get to know everyone, build relationships, and really listen to what folks needed. The report that I understand was very lengthy and very dense. Probably it was difficult to have just a couple of days to review.
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm hopeful that if there are additional questions, I'm happy to answer any you may have.
[Yeager]: I'll get the ball rolling.
[Hays]: So I guess in my mind, there were kind of two tracks that your recommendations went down in a way. One track was kind of logistical, operational, maybe positions we would need to hire for, which we should talk more about. But there was also the track that had to do more with the shared vision, the consensus around change. And I'm grappling with how that piece happens, because I guess I feel like, I guess we could say this about either one of those tracks, that you can put one in place, but without the other, it's not going to happen, change isn't going to happen. So we can put new people in positions and, you know, the positions that you recommended were clearly to support, especially the assistant principals, which as you may now know, we now are down to one. We're back to just having Mr. Plowk as the remaining assistant principal and we're gonna need to hire two new people. And so certainly they need the support and that's something we need to talk about, but we could have that in place, but if we still don't have this idea of consensus, I do feel like that's a major issue. for us. And so, can you go into more depth about how, how do we do that? I mean, really, practically speaking, how do we go about building consensus in a large community, a large school community, a large general community? How, what are some steps we take to do that?
[Michael Welch]: Yeah, it's a great question. And I think partly that's why I chose the lipid Nostra model for managing complex change. There are a lot of different pieces here that require substantial investment, one of which is the development of consensus around vision. And the consensus around vision really means a way of listening to all parties and figuring out the direction for the next five years in the form of a strategic plan specifically for the high school. And I delved into the history because my perception was really a snapshot in time. And it was really trying to get to know all the things that led up to where I was at that point in history and not knowing a lot about Medford. It required me really to just get to know a lot of people and what they suggested. And no one was short of opinion, as you might have seen. And from my perspective, the big piece that's a foundational part of this is the one high school versus two. And the idea of having a separate vocational high school from a traditional comprehensive high school. Again, going back X number of years, there was a belief at one point in time that we did need to merge and become one. And I believe that is the right way to go. That requires a lot of work. And I think part of the dissolution of that was the turnover that's occurred. There's been a lot of turnover that has occurred, along with COVID coming in. That has muddled the perception of where we're headed. And I think, as I mentioned, the schedule is a huge part of this, is how do we get a single schedule that works for both sides of the house, if you will. If we are going to move forward as a single comprehensive vocational and comprehensive high school, we need a schedule that works for everyone. And right now, in some ways it does, but in many ways it does not. So that piece requires some consensus and moving forward. And as I understand it, through the collective bargaining process, there was some consensus around a belief that yes, we should move forward with that, but that has yet to occur. And that's a complex series of conversations that need to happen. So that's one way. I do understand that there's a new principal coming in, and I was made aware that there will be two assistant principals who will not be remaining in at Medford High School. That means you're going to have a significant amount of work that needs to happen to build that team, because really what you're losing is a lot of relationships. So the relationships both with the faculty and with students and with the parent community all have to be rebuilt. And that's going to take a significant amount of effort and time because you can't snap your fingers and redevelop all of those relationships. So I think there's a need for some degree of mentoring. As I understand it, the new incoming principal has not been a principal before. And if that's the case, that really requires some support because it's not the same as being an assistant. It's considerably different. So I think there's some mentoring that needs to happen there to support the team. And the team needs time to be visible and present and connected within the school and community. And for that reason, I think it's appropriate to the position that I recommended that associate principal position was really just my term to come up with something that says taking care of all of those logistics and management pieces so that the principal can be the academic leader of the building, be visible in classrooms, be the instructional leader. Because in many instances, that's what Paul DeLevo was doing. He was doing a lot of the logistical pieces, assigning substitutes, looking at ways to manage other parts of the building without necessarily having the time to be visible, doing the schedule, all of those sorts of things that If you're doing those things, what you're not doing is all of the relationship building, all of the visibility, all of the connecting with all of the aspects of the school that are critical to moving forward. So that's a long winded answer to what I think are the pivotal pieces and a new team coming in. If you think of the three assistant principals that are currently in place, not counting the assistant that is on the vocational side is really an assistant director of the vocational school. you're going to have a significant number of new people that are going to need some help, and they're going to need that time to be able to build those relationships. Meanwhile, you have to manage the building. The same issues are not going to disappear. They're going to continue. So you need that opportunity to have both the time to build connections and relationships, and all of those pieces around the management needs to happen in addition. So I don't know if that's sufficient.
[Hays]: I guess I'm wondering, have you Have you seen this in other districts and how do they manage that? Where does the mentoring piece come from for the principal? Who does the mentoring and how do they find the time to have, as you said, the building still has to run. So where does that time come from? I'm really thinking the nitty gritty and I don't know if maybe the superintendent is already working on this. And so maybe I'm asking questions that are already being, so feel free to jump in, but How have you seen this happen and how, how can we make this happen.
[Michael Welch]: Sure, in many districts, there are when new administrators are coming in. They're assigned a mentor or a coach that is exterior to the district and personal and confidential. The idea is that it's a at most a couple once every couple of weeks. At least monthly, there's an opportunity for the mentor to both be a part of the day-to-day operations and also be a thought partner in helping the administrator have a clear head and look forward and not just get buried in the day-to-day rush of things that come into your desk on any given day, but to maintain a focus on a target that is lofty and visionary. And you can easily get swept up in the managerial aspects of a school. And if that happens, you lose the ability to lead and really pull people toward a direction and a target. So in many districts, there's a program whereby new incoming principals or even assistant principals have a mentor assigned to them that does that work as a confidant and someone that can help them guide and shape their vision and leadership over time.
[Hays]: So that's within the district or is that similar to where Dr. Edouard-Vincent found you through mass, is there some. group out there that that provides this mentoring or how I'm really trying to figure out how this happens. And again, I don't know if this is already something that's being considered or, but, you know, I'm really trying to figure out how we're going to, how we can implement this, we do have new people, and it's going to be crucial to get them up and running as quickly as possible, and have them feel as supported as possible. So I'm, I don't know any of this how this all works. So I'm curious How does the district do this is there, is there a group that we go to to find and I guess it wouldn't be school committee but the administration goes to and says we need a mentor, how does this work.
[Michael Welch]: Yeah, in many instances it works the way that Dr. Vincent. applied it, she called up the governing body for the Superintendent's Association and said, we could use some help here. And there are many people out there who are doing this coaching and mentoring. And it has become fairly standard. 15 years ago, you didn't see this. This was not something where people were seeing the value necessarily in coaching and mentoring incoming administrators. The idea was, if you've got the job, we're paying you to do it, poof, you should be able to do it. But if you've never done it before, and you're the only one in that role, how do you move forward? Certainly, there's a need to support individuals from within. So there will be, as I understand it, additional new principals in the district, and they will support each other to some degree, but they've got their own concerns and worries. They don't have time internally to be supporting a high school principal who's new to the role or a middle school principal new to the role. So typically, you provide that from outside the district with somebody who can focus and concentrate and give their undivided attention to someone as opposed to having a whole bunch of other roles that they're already carrying. So, yes, the Massachusetts Association of school. Secondary school administrators has this program, as does a number of other private consulting groups can come in and do that. And it's become quite a bit more common to see this because you're making an investment in people who you're paying a lot of money to and you would like them to automatically know all of these things. They don't. There's a learning curve that comes with this. And it will be much better. For instance, Dr. Vincent and I both went through a program that was orchestrated through the Superintendent's Association because they saw the same thing. You can't just... plunk into a position and naturally know everything and where the landmines are. So similarly with high level administrators, you would like to provide that support. It would be different if this person were coming from already in that role and simply a lateral transfer. That in many instances is not as necessary. As I understand it, this is a situation with someone coming in who has not been in the role before. I think it's worthwhile to make sure that they succeed to have that opportunity to have a coach.
[Edouard-Vincent]: Yes, and just in response to Member Hays's question, we have been looking at MSAA, which is the Massachusetts School Administrators Association, because by the end of the summer, we're not sure what the total number of administrators will be, but we wanna be able to, where we're bringing in almost half of the district, we are aware that it's critically important that a good foundation is set. So we are working on that. We don't have all of the details, but that is something that we've been working on.
[Graham]: Member Graham. Hi, can you tell us what level of person should be scheduling substitutes and what their relative pay is in a typical district?
[Michael Welch]: In my opinion, having seen this in many different places, typically that is the role of an associate or assistant principal in some manner. You need understanding of the individual departments, the type of classes that are being held, where they are, the complexity of what's happening because of the wide array of different teaching experiences that need coverage. So typically, it would be someone who gets in very early, answers all the phone calls, all the emails about the need, and is able to play matchmaker a little bit. Because in some instances, for instance, if a teacher with advanced placement courses is absent in the first week in June, in many instances, that won't require a lot of coverage because kids have taken their AP exams. And generally, it's a lot of seniors. So that you don't have to worry about as opposed to, a ninth grade sort of standard college prep class with 24 kids in it. Yeah, we wanna make sure we cover that. So there's a degree of knowledge that's necessary. You would typically would not provide this to someone who is an administrative assistant, unless they have a significant understanding of the role of all of these different people and how they play out in the school. It would be an assistant principal or associate principal. It requires you come in really early and generally takes a couple of hours. in order to do all of the moving around. And it often will be, you do a little bit of work ahead of time, but much of it you can't do ahead of time because it's day of, you show up and that's what you have to deal with. So those are two different ways that I've seen it done, either through an individual who has a managerial position that doesn't deal with student discipline, doesn't deal with teacher evaluation, and really just deals with the logistics of scheduling and substitute teachers and that long list that I had in there. So those would be two different options.
[Graham]: Is there software that other districts use to do this? Like in any other facet of... the world, there would be a software solution that supports this. So what do schools use?
[Michael Welch]: Yeah, there are software programs that you can use and buy into that will provide a substitute service. It is a significant expense, but that is used by some school districts. They do buy into that, and then they assign you a substitute teacher. It's not always the best because, again, you don't necessarily control the quality of who's coming in, and it's significantly more expensive. Yes, there are options out there. I would say if I had to guess, I would say probably fewer than half the school districts in Massachusetts use such a service.
[Graham]: And I think this question is for the superintendent. I know that you're actively hiring and recruiting for assistant principals. Are there questions being asked about experience with scheduling for those APs that are being interviewed right now?
[Edouard-Vincent]: I don't, I can't speak specifically if they asked about the scheduling piece, but that is something that I can definitely follow up with them on. And again, once we have the new people on board, there'll be an opportunity for us to be doing some work this summer in order to prepare for a strong start.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. If I may, from the chair, Mr. Welch, you recommend a number of committees. in your, I think it's 12 points main recommendation. So could you go into a little bit more detail about the safety and security leadership team committee that you think should be established? And then I guess to the superintendent, maybe even to answer by the end of the summer, which ones do we plan on implementing and where are we at with each of them? Because I think there's about at least four committees that are being suggested. on top of the mentoring for principals and vice principals.
[Michael Welch]: Sure, so to speak specifically to the safety and security, what school districts are seeing now, there are lots of different vendors and lots of different theories about what one should be doing. It seems as though the Mass Police Chiefs Association just came out with a very comprehensive guidebook for what school districts should be doing. That was about three months ago. And annually, there's updates to what school districts should be looking at. But the key to all of those is a very close relationship between the individual administrators and staff at the schools and the first responders that come to the schools. And what you see very frequently is that you need repetition, you need lots of opportunity to practice. So every type of possible drill, a lockdown, a evacuation, an evacuation off site, a shelter in place, all of those different drills, as long and as well as your just typical fire drills, all need to be practiced, they need to be planned for. There's tabletop exercises that need to go on and ultimately the relationship between the leaders in the building and the first responders, police, fire, and EMS needs to be really close. And that needs to happen through a regular series of meetings and a structured series of drills that are planned for in advance with post-action reviews and planning for the next one. And generally this doesn't happen organically. And I know the superintendent has been working with the police chief and the problem is when the folks show up at the school, there has to be an understanding of who's in charge. what decisions are being made, and what sort of relationships are in place prior to the emergency occurring. So, that requires an awful lot of regularly scheduled meetings that become prioritized. And I know that with the turnover that's happened in the district that's hard to do. when the emergency folks show up, they may not know who the boss is, who the administrators are, and they don't necessarily know who to go to, and those first key minutes are critical. So making sure that you have well-practiced drills, as well as a safety response manual that every single faculty member is drilled upon, all of those are pieces that need to be in place. Some of these may be in place in Medford, and I think it's important to understand that This has to happen annually and monthly and a regular basis that can't be directly the responsibility. Although ultimately the superintendent sets it up with the relationships, but it really has to be with the ground troops need to be on the same page. So that would be one of the committees that I talked about. And I think, additionally, I'm trying to look back at my notes here. Also, you need the school-wide diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, as well as district-wide. That needs significant planning and, again, long-range vision on where you're headed and everyone focused on the same target and pulling in the same direction. a collaborative committee for norms for student behavior. Very frequently, if you survey faculty, no one thinks we punish enough. I don't think that's true, but part of it is based on how do we collectively have a series of beliefs about norms for student behavior, and that's based on values. So what values do we hold most tightly, and how do we communicate that to our student body? And then you only need rules when the values are violated. and you have to develop a consequence. But unless you have a true understanding and collective belief on the values, you can't get to the consequence piece. Everyone wants to consequence kids. But if we don't teach them about what our expectations are based on our core values, we really can't ever get to that point. That needs to happen with a group. It can't just be One individual saying, you know, pounding the table saying this is how it's going to go. And if you don't do it, we're going to punish you. It really needs to be students, faculty, staff, and administration all together collectively believing the way we're going to behave in school. And when that happens, then it's easy. When there's a violation, you know there has to be a consequence. So that's a critical committee that needs to be established. Because right now, it's not exactly clear to everyone what should happen. And some people think a violation of a supposed value requires a significant response, and others, less so.
[SPEAKER_06]: So having that commonality is critical.
[Michael Welch]: We talked about the scheduling committee in some way to be able to get a unified schedule together. Whether that is a specific committee, I'm pretty sure it's going to involve impact bargaining. You can't just switch the schedule and change people's working conditions without impact bargaining. You have to do that. But I think right now there's a critical moment where, as I understand it in the last collective bargaining agreement, there was a consensus that this needs to happen. which is huge. So the fact that that's ready, I think we need to pounce upon that. It's too late, I believe, for the fall at the high school level, but that committee should get up and going because you really start planning for the next year in January. So I think this, I don't think there's going to be a lot of impact bargaining in the summer, but I think over the fall you have enough time in there With a new administrator principal coming in, you have the opportunity to really seize that opportunity in the fall. And again, another piece of that to me is making sure that as I spoke to teachers, they understand they have an obligation around the collective norms of behavior in the whole school, but right now the contract doesn't require it. I see those two as linked. setting up a schedule whereby there is some degree of required participation by everyone in the school community around monitoring that school. It's a big place with three separate lunchrooms with lots of places to hide. You cannot do that by paying people additionally, in my opinion. Everyone in the school has an obligation to be effectively enforcing the norms of behavior, and that comes with some aspect of non-teaching duty, and I believe that has to happen. That's the ones that come to mind initially, the committees that we talked about, that I talked about in the report.
[Lungo-Koehn]: And then I don't know how the committee feels, if anybody wants to make a motion, or just if we could get an update on the suggested committees that should be set up by mid-August. I think it would be helpful to know that some or all of these are getting implemented. Member Graham.
[Edouard-Vincent]: I was just going to say where the administrators will be starting effective July, but we do not have all the teachers that will be back for those respective groups. So I just want to say that as Marta comes on in July and she is trying to you know, get to know the staff and doing little things. We're gonna just need her time to come in. I would say September, by our hopefully second September meeting, I would at least be able to report because she will be able to have, you know, communicated with the staff and figured out which staff would like to be part of which groups. Because there are multiple groups and they need to know the schedule, the the times that they're going to meet and just be able to plan accordingly.
[Graham]: Great, great. Member Graham. I know this committee has previously decided that meeting in the summer was not necessary. I continue to think that it is but I would like to make a motion that by mid-August, we get an update from the superintendent about these recommended committees, the status where they're at, and what the plans are for the fall.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Sure, with a further update by the second week and a second meeting in September. So, the initial update by August 15th knowing that the principles working on it and then a full blown explanation on the second by the second meeting. Yep. Motion by member Graham. For those two separate updates. Second, seconded by member Hays, all those in favor. I was opposed, motion passes. Thank you.
[Graham]: I would also like to make a motion that as we prepare for impact bargaining in the fall, that we invite Mr. Welch to one of our executive sessions to provide some advice and counsel around this very issue of our teachers not having a duty requirement. And we've been very unsuccessful in moving that needle in bargaining. So I would like to ask him to join us in executive session at some point in the fall.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Motion by Member Graham to, especially if the contract's not done, hopefully it is, but invite Mr. Welch to a meeting in the fall executive session to discuss negotiations. Seconded by Member Hays. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed?
[Yeager]: Motion passes. Member Ruseau? Oh, sorry.
[Hays]: I guess this kind of segues into a question I had about, so I asked for a couple of additional data points looking at the referrals. And this is all new to me because I don't have a high schooler. But I know we've talked about this, I think we talked about it at the meeting on May 1st. The excessive number of possibilities that, or designations that a teacher can provide for a referral, it's really way too much. I can imagine how overwhelming it must be as a teacher I know, again, having just watched it this morning that Member Graham kind of alluded to that and said, we have 200 different ways to talk about cutting class, which is not true. But in looking at the three different dates, sets of dates that I have, there are at least a dozen ways to classify cutting class. And different ones appear on different sets of data that I have. So I guess the question too I have is thinking about once we get those kind of collective norms, and then again, you say that the only time you would need to have a consequence is when you violate those norms. How do... Is there a better way of doing this? Is there, I guess, again, is there some kind of software out there that does this better? Or do school systems generally just after creating these collective norms their referral codes come out of that, because this is just unwieldy. There's just really no way when I think for a teacher to take this much time to figure out, well, which way do I classify this? And then for the assistant principals or whoever is in charge of following up on this to figure out, well, which ones do I really need to prioritize and what do the consequences need to be? Because there are, you know, on each one of these there's 45 different, you know, classifications of referrals and these are all the referrals that were actually used during that set that those dates, there may be many more that just weren't used at that time so. if you could speak to that a little bit.
[Michael Welch]: Sure. And in my opinion, it goes right back to having a collective belief system. And if you have a collective belief system about what is the responsibility of the individual teacher, what is the responsibility of the teacher to report and then hand over the disciplinary or consequent portion of that, there are a zillion ways to categorize all different types of misbehavior. And then it becomes unwieldy because in addition, teachers can tick various boxes. So it could be insubordination, late to class, left class without permission, and you name it. There's a number of different ways to do that. And you're left with, at what point does something rise to the level of being a referral? And right now, there isn't a clear understanding of that, as you could see from the number of referrals submitted. Many teachers didn't submit any. And that doesn't mean they're not doing their job. But in many instances, those are probably veteran teachers who know how to manage a class and don't need necessarily to be referring things out. Conversely, you saw some folks were doing these like crazy in a way that really is impossible to manage. So there's a number of different pieces there. One, teachers need to collectively understand the norms and expectations for when something amounts to a referral and abide by that. And two, it's making sure that when you do submit something, there is a clear feedback loop and it's a manageable quantity. So that, again, when these were coming in with 30 a day to individual assistant principal that's impossible to keep up with now some of them are fairly minor and routine and easily to easily dispatch others would require days worth of investigation. So, making sure that again, a committee that all agrees. clear communication about what the expectations are, and then holding people accountable, not only students accountable for their behavior, but adults accountable for managing, keeping small things small, and then only referring when you absolutely need to, and what is the expectation for response. So those are all of the pieces. Yes, we could, I'm sure you could tie school brains down such that there would be fewer categories, And I'm sure there's a way to do that. I'm not sure that gets at the exact root cause here. The root cause is a collective understanding and belief about how we manage our own core values and student misbehavior.
[Hays]: That leads me to another question. Because I think I have an idea of what the answer to this is, but I want to ask you to describe it more at the May 1 meeting you talked about the role of curriculum directors in supporting teachers. And the fact that at the moment, teachers don't seem to see them as a support when it comes to behavior management and classroom management. And I know there was some discussion of well, you know, what does that mean when at this point, we seem to mostly view our curriculum directors. as tied to curriculum and that's their only role. I think I have an idea of where you were going with that, but I'd like you to talk a little bit more about that because, of course, that would be another layer of support if there's a role for them in helping with the classroom management piece that would take some of that load off of the assistant principals that we've talked about.
[Michael Welch]: So I'll preface my comments by saying, again, my number of comments about this was limited specifically with the number of new teachers that I met with directly. And the majority of them did not see their curriculum director as the person to go to for help with classroom management, for instance. And that speaks to the type of mentoring program that we have for our new teachers. As I understand it, our curriculum directors are K through 12. they're not simply focused on an individual school. So the scope of their role is much greater. So if we want our assistant principals to also be instructional leaders and teachers of pedagogy and about how to manage a classroom, that is another layer on top of managing student behavior, building management, detention, all of those other pieces that they handle. And I just don't think it's realistic to do that well. So a new teacher mentoring program typically assigns a new teacher mentor. And I know that the district does this, assigns a new teacher mentor to individual new teachers coming in. They have a confidant in that sense to support them, but sometimes that is far more than a new teacher mentor can provide. And I do believe there is some need to provide that if you're a curriculum director, even if you are K-12. I believe the majority of them, if not all, are housed at the high school. And I think it's important for teachers to see that role as a resource, particularly around classroom management and routine curriculum matters. That's not the case right now. And I think that that role of the curriculum director needs to be strengthened and focused on as an aspect of your job now mind you. They are also managing downward at both middle schools, as well as at the elementary schools. So that's just a little of a change in focus. And as a leader, you only have two real jobs, who to hire and fire and what to make an issue of. And you need to make that an issue for curriculum directors, that when there is a struggle, if somebody is seeing someone who's putting in two referrals a day, for instance, that's a problem. And necessarily, an individual assistant principal might be able to go and help, but they're only seeing a piece of the problem. They're not in there every single day, and they don't necessarily know the content and how to embed that within a behavioral plan. So I think there is an opportunity to leverage our curriculum directors in that manner and prioritize that when there are struggles with teachers.
[Yeager]: Member Hays, you go.
[Hays]: I'll keep going. I think obviously that the major recommendations that we'd probably struggle with the most are those organizational, the hiring of additional staff. And I'm not sure, I don't believe we have that in our current budget, if I'm correct. And so I'm wondering, do you have suggestions If we can't hire those additional, what other avenues can we do to alleviate some of the stress on assistant principals or to share the responsibility? What do we do about that? Because we may not be able to hire both the associate principal position that you mentioned, but those 0.5 deans. So do you have some other suggestions
[Michael Welch]: Well, I would say my, my report did not delve into the budgetary impacts of the recommendations. So I was trying to make sure that at this point in time. These are the areas that need support at a different point in time if you had veteran administrative leadership long term stability in those places, you wouldn't necessarily be suggesting this so maybe short term type of. add ons in order to make sure we stabilize particularly with new leadership. So I would say the coaching mentoring piece is huge for the two new assistant principals and the principal, that is absolutely critical to make sure and part of it is, you should probably have somebody who works with them as a team. Because you don't want you know conflicting messages going to different individuals based on their, their needs. So having somebody who can work with the whole group would be critical. Next, I think you need to look at how are we going to support Marta as the new leader to be able to implement some of the things in this report if she hasn't seen it already I think it would be helpful for her to see what she's stepping into, and she may have ideas about how to delegate these different pieces, simply identifying them and figuring out where they're going to go is a critical need. But again, the repurposing of staff is something that is what comes to mind because if we do want to make this a priority, then necessarily other things are a lower priority, and maybe we have to part with some of those things in order to get some of these. And those are questions that are beyond the scope of what I was trying to do, because I didn't want to make judgments about who is more valuable than whom. particularly around the entire district, but I would say you don't want to under resource this right now. I think it's a particularly vulnerable point, and how you go about getting some of these pieces. I suggested the Dean role because it would be taking someone internally, who has relationships and be able to have a portion of their toe in the water as an administrator. That I think is critical because it adds to the team, as opposed to outsourcing that in some way. And I also propose the associate principal because right now, too many of those roles are being performed poorly. And it's taking away from the leadership aspects of what being a principal means and being an assistant principal means in terms of supporting teaching and learning and supporting kids. So that's a long winded answer without a whole lot of specifics, and those are decisions internally that need to be made in consult consultation with the incoming principal and the superintendent, making sure we look at if there aren't going to be. If the pie isn't going to grow, how do we change the size of the pieces in order to help get this the needed supports in place.
[Hays]: Can I ask a question of the superintendent that I know you've talked about this at some of our meetings already referred to. looking for some of the positions from within. I don't know if you're prepared to give any more details about where you're at in that process, whether you've actually been able to find people that might fulfill some of those positions or not. And I don't want to put you on the spot if you're not prepared to talk yet, but if you are, that would be great.
[Edouard-Vincent]: just in response, the team we've been with my leadership team we've been working diligently and just trying to figure out how the start of next year is going to be so our first priority really has been primarily on getting the administrators first and foremost assigned so that we have a complete administrative team. So that's what we've been focusing on right now. And then we were creatively looking at the dean positions, but we do not have a final answer for you just yet.
[Yeager]: Any other questions from the chair? I mean, the body.
[Lungo-Koehn]: Is there a motion to adjourn? Motion to adjourn by Member Mustone, seconded by Member Graham. All those in favor? All those opposed? Motion passes. Thank you, Mr. Welch, again for coming.
[Michael Welch]: Thank you, I'm happy to come back at another time if you wish. And again, I am grateful to work with the Medford Public Schools. I think you have a great moment in time right now to be able to move forward, particularly with a new principal coming in. And some of these decisions will absolutely require her input. So I would encourage the committee and the superintendent and I have already talked. I think it's critical to make sure there's a team effort moving forward.
[SPEAKER_06]: I look forward to learning more. Thank you.
[Yeager]: Thank you, Mr. Welch.
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