[SPEAKER_09]: I think you got everyone. Motion is approved for in the affirmative three absent. We will adjourn to executive session and be back here at approximately 615. Thanks everyone. I would like to welcome our two student reps. So tonight we have Darren Trong and Noah Urasko with us. Welcome. We'll try not to make this meeting last until forever, but if you all have to leave at some point in time, you don't need anybody's permission, but we would love to have you. And if you would like to speak, if you could just tap Kathy on the shoulder and she will be happy to give you a microphone so you can speak and you're welcome to speak on any item. So thank you guys for being here.
[SPEAKER_10]: Excuse me, point of information. I think it's Nicholas, you're asking.
[SPEAKER_09]: I'm sorry, is it Nicholas or Noah? Noah, OK. Also with us tonight, I want to congratulate Nicole Branley, Erica Reinfeld, and Aaron Olapade, who will be joining us officially as members starting January inauguration day, first, second, third, one of those days. So welcome. As is customary at the school committee, we invite newly elected members to join us behind the rail so they can start to learn the process. This is a big job and it's not one for which there's lots of training. So welcome. We are all here to support you as you onboard and to answer any questions you have. They will be behind the rail with us tonight and for the next couple of meetings as they're able. And with the one caveat that if they would like to speak, they will have the same privileges as any member of the speaking audience because they're not quite on the committee yet. So enjoy your time as a pseudo member of the committee and also just a regular member of the public. So thank you and welcome, congratulations. Do we have a motion to revert to the regular order of business?
[SPEAKER_10]: Motion to revert to the regular order of business.
[SPEAKER_09]: Motion to revert to the regular order of business by member McLaughlin, seconded by? Second. Member Kreatz, all those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Okay, motion passes. So we have good of the order. Motion to take good of the order off the table. Oh no, we're good. So we have good of the order. And for those of you who are new, the good of the order is a time and a moment where on a monthly basis as a committee, we have an opening to talk about and reflect on sort of how the committee is working. So when we talk about the good of the order, we're talking about the order of the school committee and how we're carrying out our rules and policies. Member McLaughlin.
[SPEAKER_10]: Thank you. Just two things I wanted to mention are bring up to our colleagues. One is we, member Rousseau, member Graham and myself were at the association of school committee conference the day after the election for a couple of days. And it was a really informative conference and session. And I'd like to, if my colleagues and the rest of the committee are in agreement, like to provide maybe for the next meeting, just a summary session of our, of our sessions. to our colleagues so they can know the sessions that we went to and what we learned when we were there, and maybe just a little bit about the MASC conference. So I don't know that that needs to be voted on, but just putting that on the floor. And then the other is orientation for our new members. So this is something that's been discussed previously and, you know, something that we had made some motions and passed some motions on, and I wanted to ensure that that is happening prior to the start date of our new members. So orientation or shortly after the start date of our new members. Certainly, I think there can be some documentation and or meeting provided, either, you know, with the vice chair and the mayor or the superintendent or what have you, just for some initial orientation. And maybe, you know, we can collaborate on a Google Doc or something, because we've been talking about this for about since we were elected, I think. initially. So just to provide them with some material before the actual start date and then also shortly after the orientation, if we could book and I don't know if the superintendent wants to do this or if it's something that is done through the vice chair, what have you, but something maybe with, I guess, Dorothy's retiring. Dorothy Presser is our representative for the MASC who does a lot of the training. and we learned at the last session at the MASC actually that she'll be retiring shortly. So we'll have another wrap or if we don't already, but it would be great to maybe have a, you know, training and orientation reorientation with our MASC wrap for maybe, you know, January, February. So who would actually schedule that? Would that be you, Dr. Eby? Yeah. Would you, is that, okay. And then I think that's it for me for good of the order.
[SPEAKER_09]: And I think just to follow on to that, if I may, as the chair. We've been in communication with the new members about tonight. That's why they're all here. We made sure they got packets. Thank you, Miss Malone for your help. And the superintendent is working through their onboarding process in the paperwork and setting up a meeting and some time to go in and meet with central office to start to get to know them. That's a process that will take years, probably by the time it's all said and done. But certainly to start there. I was in touch with MASC last week about the upcoming charting the course dates. They've not yet been set. But statutorily, you're all required to attend a one-day training session just one time. But it's actually a great refresher for all members of the school committee. And it covers everything from how meetings run and the open meeting law, all the way through to the budget and all the other responsibilities of the school committee. It's a pretty fast and furious kind of training, and it leaves you having maybe more questions than less, but at least you know what those questions are at the end of the time, and we can guide from there. We also were talking last week, the superintendent and I, about doing a training retreat, which we often do at the start of term. And then the other request that I made to the superintendent is that we actually schedule some time with Tracy Novick to talk about budget and school funding in particular, because Chapter 70 is very complicated and it is changing with the Student Opportunity Act, and she does sessions that are finance-oriented that I think will be helpful, particularly as we that one of the biggest things that you will do in the first six months of your tenure is set the budget. So that's a really complex process for a lot of reasons, but sort of understanding where the funding comes from is super important. So we'll look to schedule both of those sessions, probably not at the same time, but over the course of the first couple of months. And then I think we do need to work offline on that orientation and onboarding, and I will connect with you separately on that.
[SPEAKER_10]: Thank you. May I follow up? Sure. Um, so, and also just to be very clear, what I'm asking for for the training is the orientation training is different than charting the life course, which I think you got that, but I just want to be really clear for the, our colleagues as well, um, that it's more sort of about orientation and that explicitly, I would love it if, um, Dr. Evey, if you could ask MASC to include in the orientation, you know, a Robert's rules of order, aspect to that so that folks know that parliamentary procedure and just sort of how that works. if we could, and then additionally, I know that this has been a longstanding thing, but the rest of us need it as well. And maybe after the first, we can all get IDs so that we have access to the schools. Not that we, obviously we know we don't just show up, whatever, but more so that we have an identification to be able to access our schools. So clearly when you're doing the orientation with our new members, for the members that are staying, it would be great to have an ID as well.
[SPEAKER_09]: And then the last thing I'll say about onboarding, I know that member Rousseau has also sent you a copy of our rules document. We have that for the first time really in ever. So I know there's a lot of rules there and it's overwhelming, but the goal of those rules is really to say like, how can we function most effectively as a body so that we can get the work done of the committee, which is quite particular under the law and then also have some mechanisms to manage everything else that comes their way. So there'll be plenty of opportunity to change the rules and we'll talk all about all of those processes as we go. Other questions from the committee about the good of the order? Okay. Then we will move on to item number five, which is the consent agenda. It includes bills and payrolls, regular school committee minutes from October 16th, committee of the whole minutes from November 1st, and committee of the whole minutes from November 15th. Is there a motion on the floor? Motion to approve by Member McLaughlin, seconded by Member Hays. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes. We have no report of subcommittees, so we are on to the report of the superintendent, and I will turn it over to Dr. Edouard-Vincent.
[SPEAKER_06]: Thank you and good evening. I, too, want to welcome all of our new members to your very first member elect to the Medford School Committee. So welcome aboard and welcome to our students. And I know we'll be able to meet the other students in the coming weeks, but welcome to all of you. So good evening, Thanksgiving break is almost here. And in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I would like to thank all our parents, caregivers, students, staff, everyone in the MPS community who has truly been generous this time of year. We've had multiple drives at almost all of our schools, collecting canned goods and really giving back to the community and to those in need, to food pantries, to churches. And it's just been extreme generosity of our Medford community. And I want to thank everyone for thinking of others during this Thanksgiving season. I also wanna say that this week being Thanksgiving week, Wednesday, November 22nd is early release day, early release for everyone. So please keep in mind if your child is at the middle schools, they get out at 1130, the high school and elementary schools get out at noon. So that's important for this Wednesday. Thursday, as you know, is Thanksgiving. Friday, Black Friday for shopping. So it's a wonderful long weekend. If you're traveling, please be safe on the roads. I have some great news to share about some wonderful accomplishments across Mustang Nation. So on Saturday, 13 students from the Model United Nations Club from Medford High School, they traveled to Catholic Memorial slash the Ursuline Conference in West Roxbury. And over 200 students from across the region attended this conference. The students did wonderfully, and our team earned five awards. So congratulations to all of them. On the 30-year award committee, Evan Russell and Shane Chaudry earned honorable mentions in their delegate roles. On the Venezuelan crisis committee, Brian DePosito earned the People's Choice Award and Outstanding Delegate. And on the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, Darlene Truong, who's here today, congratulations, earned Outstanding Delegate. So congratulations, yes. Congratulations to our wonderful students. Also at the high school, the robotics team was invited to demonstrate their roof, their auto view, their underwater robot. At today's ribbon cutting for the Blue Tech Lab in Bedford, a state-of-the-art all-weather maritime test facility. Some of the dignitaries in attendance were Senator Ed Markey, NOAA NOAA Administrator Richard Spinrad, and Rear Admiral John W. Mauger, U.S. Coast Guard, Dr. Spinrad of the U.S. Coast Guard. Thank you. Dr. Spinrad, the NOAA Administrator specifically asked for an audience with our students. very proud of them. We also want to say good luck to our Andrews Middle School student. This is a first time, Nathan Betancourt, who is one of three young athletes representing the United States this week at the 2023 Mini GP World Series Motorcycle Race in, I'm ready for this, Valencia, Spain. Nathan qualified for the race in Valencia, his first international competition. After finishing among the top three racers in the NATO America Mini Cup Series earlier this year, Nathan has been featured in the Boston Globe just this past weekend. So we wanna say good luck to Nathan overseas and we know he'll do well. So congratulations to our middle schooler, Nathan. In the world of athletics, all eyes are on our football team as we look forward to, yes, the 136th matchup of Medford and Malden. So we want to thank everyone who's able to come out and support the game this Thursday in advance. We want to wish the best to our football team, our cheer team, and our award-winning Medford-Mustang marching band and color guard. And so again, this is the second oldest matchup in the United States. 136 years is amazing, nothing to sneeze at. So I wish our Medford Mustangs success as we've had such a successful year this season. Also, we had many, many festivities that kicked off last week. Our senior class defeated the juniors in a Mustang Puff flag football game at Hormel Stadium. and both our JV and United Unified football teams had great wins against Malden on Thursday. So congratulations to all of our athletes. With the end of the fall athletic season, we want to congratulate and commend all of our Mustang student athletes on another great season of great sportsmanship. Whatever sport you play, We also want to sincerely thank our dedicated coaches, caregivers, and fans. Also, I just want to recognize A special donation of a partnership and a discount program. K&G men's company of Somerville has donated. The amount is small. However, it was a percentage of what was purchased. And this is something that will grow. But they did donate $34.20 back to the district based on a percentage of what was sold. And we want us to continue to work with them and they will continue to give a percentage back to the district. And this was for prom clothing purchases. So we're very grateful for that partnership from the spring of 23 with K and G men's company of some of our. And again, because the donation was less than $50, the school committee is not required to formally approve the contribution. But we wanted to definitely acknowledge a great program and say thank you, a special thank you to K&G. Again, if people use K&G, they provide a 10% discount for our students. So we hope that that is something that continues to grow for year 2024. I want to recognize some of our speech and language pathologists. They attended the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Convention. ASHA is how it's referred to. It took place in Boston this year. The ASHA convention is one of the largest professional development events for audiologists, speech-language pathologists, and speech-language and hearing scientists. bringing together approximately 15,000 attendees. The annual convention offers more than 2,500 sessions eligible for ASHA Continuing Ed credit. It's covering the latest research, clinical skills and techniques in communication, sciences and disorders. So our Medford speech language staff will share what they learned with one another at upcoming staff meetings. Thank you to all of our Medford educators and staff who are committed to being lifelong learners and advancing their professional knowledge and skills. I am bringing the announcements to a close. Please remember this November 22nd on Wednesday, it is early release day, 1130 release for middle school, noon time for high school and elementary schools. Also at the high school, we will be having our wonderful traditional pep rally that's at the high school only. Again, on Thanksgiving day, our game will be taking place at 10 o'clock. It's a horn game at Hormel. If you're able to buy the tickets in advance, you get a discount, a slight discount, $5 at the gate. Also, tonight's meeting, just for you to know what's coming up, I am very happy to welcome two of our wonderful principals, Mr. Andy O'Brien at McGlynn Elementary and Mr. Nicholas Tucci, who are our principals who will be sharing exciting news from their schools. Over the next few school committee meetings, we'll continue to invite our principals to present to the community so that you and the entire community can hear directly from our schools. Following that presentation, Dr. Cushing will present the always anticipated school year calendar for 24-25. And once again, I wanna wish everyone a very happy Thanksgiving and a cheerful start to the holiday season. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_09]: Thank you, Dr. Edward-Vincent. Next on the agenda, we have McGlynn Elementary and McGlynn Middle School update. Mr. Andy O'Brien from McGlynn Elementary School and Mr. Nick Tucci from the McGlynn Middle School. I think you just need to turn on your microphone. It should light up. There you go. Oh, I think John did it for you. Now it's off again. It's off again. Oh, no. Okay, good. Oh, no.
[SPEAKER_11]: Do I have to stay here?
[SPEAKER_09]: That's good. No, no, you're fine. No, you're good. I think he was I think he was turning you on and turning the microphone on and off at the same time you are and it's off again. Mr. Okay.
[SPEAKER_11]: Seriously, I think it's not staying. I'll just keep my finger here. OK. Apologies. I think that's fine. That's OK. All right. Well, thank you very much, members of the school committee. I'm very lucky to be here today, because I just want to give a big shout out to my students and staff and family of the McClin Elementary School. I consider myself a very, very lucky principal. Another quick shout out to my assistant principal, Katie Fumara, who is the architect of the slideshow that we are gonna walk through right now. So the good things that are happening at the McGlynn Elementary School. First, we're gonna start with the CCSR Club, led by third grade teacher, Ms. Griffin, and third grade paraprofessional, Ms. Lorraine Hayes. They lead the MESCCSR for this year and a few projects. One I'd like to highlight is that the kids are gonna be working together protecting endangered sea life. Kids will have a bracelet making workshop to raise money to help protect right whales and leatherback sea turtles. In grade one, We have a district-wide web-based math program called ST Math, and we are finding ways to motivate our kiddos. And I wanna congratulate Ms. Rose's first grade classroom for being our November, rather our October ST Math champions. In grade two at the McGlynn, the entire grade two team set up math centers in our cafeteria for fall fun, so combining the celebration of the autumn season with building math skills. We partner with the McGlynn Middle School in creating middle school reading buddies. This is an example of Miss Fiorentino's grade two students reading with the McGlynn Middle School reading buddy. Grade three at the McGlynn, a lot is happening. In math, Ms. Griffin and the rest of the team, Ms. Burke, Ms. Doherty, Ms. McNeil, and Mr. G put together a bakery to have kids enjoy real world applications as they build skill and multiplication arrays and division. The kids also enjoyed a wonderful fall craft day In addition to preparing for the upcoming colonial day where background knowledge of the pilgrims and Puritans are put into stations using all five classrooms. In the fifth grade, the fifth grade team is really pushing kids to work collaboratively in small groups to build posters that show off student work with a focus on math. For example, comparing fractions. Library at the McLean Elementary School looks different this year, thanks to Mrs. Johnson. All the kids will cycle through a library class, and they will be learning and interacting with literature-based STEAMwork. They will enjoy opportunities for virtual author visits. And of course, they will be checking out books on a weekly basis. physical education, thanks to Ms. Richards, reaching out to the community and securing what are called running mats. You see pictures here. The kids had to work together and learn about teamwork and how everyone has to cooperate, participate, and contribute in order to accomplish their goal together. Ms. Richards, she had a couple of very, very funny videos, but they were a little bit lengthy. So I just wanted to acknowledge her work with the kiddos. Thanks to Mrs. Donato in the next class, the kiddos are learning a lot about zones of regulation and how to be grateful during our Thanksgiving season. The McGlynn Morning Show, this is something that started last year, and we have a participant in what they did last year with the Rock, Paper, Scissors tournament. This year, we continue the morning show, led by Mr. Petrales, in collaboration with Mrs. Ford, our secretary, and Mrs. Shumara, our assistant principal. Script this every Friday morning, where we have our live morning, excuse me, our morning announcements live on Zoom as a whole school community. Here's a little sample. Oh. Are you not able to do it? No problem.
[SPEAKER_04]: The bus duty pass has been a monster so far this year. Here's the thing, when you call in, we're going to be playing a song over the announcements. When we stop the song, we're looking for the fourth caller. They're going to have to unmute in their classroom, and they're going to have to finish the lyric. You have to finish the lyric. Bus duty pass on the line if you've got a good voice. And we would love for your class to sing it.
[SPEAKER_11]: So just to clarify, Mr. Petrales was offering a bus duty pass. So the winning teacher who completed the lyrics got a bus duty pass, which is worth gold. So this is an initiative led by Mrs. Ford, who has started inviting students down to follow morning announcements with a translated version. I don't know if you're able to. Go to slide 13. You can hear in the classroom. Okay, so this was an example of how we are celebrating our diverse culture at the McGlynn Elementary School. This is one of our students who was reading the announcements in Chinese. And prior to this, we had a third grade student read the announcements in Russian. So we are going to be cycling through all of our languages and celebrate the diversity. Yeah. We were lucky enough to celebrate Veterans Day with Medford Police Officer Pura Fori, who came by and did a presentation for our second and fifth graders. Okay, so we're gonna move on. Oh, no, are you able to?
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_11]: So this was an interactive presentation where Officer Peoria shared the value of our veterans and the kids were able to ask him questions throughout the presentation. We are lucky enough to have a local author visit us, Fia Creed. She gave a presentation to our entire school. She read one of her books, Jet the Cat, and talked about her journey to becoming an author. and this is hot off the press, our annual Thanksgiving food drive. We set a goal to have 1,200 cans and we destroyed it by getting over 1,400 cans. So a big shout out to Ms. Dougherty and Ms. Rosa for putting together. Yes, absolutely. Creating 46 bags of food plus gift cards to donate to families in our community. And so I'm going to wrap it up with a McGlynn gratitude tree. This was recently put up where students and staff and family can grab a piece of construction paper and leaf a compliment or something that they're gracious for. So that is our presentation. So I just did want to say thank you. And I want to wish everyone a wonderful. Happy Thanksgiving.
[SPEAKER_10]: Can we ask a question? Thank you. Yes. Member McLaughlin. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. It's really lovely to see everything that the students are doing. I'm just curious for folks that are watching that might not necessarily know, can you give us a little just background on the demo for the elementary school in terms of how many students just in general and how many? Oh, yes. Yeah.
[SPEAKER_11]: Absolutely. So we have 500 kiddos. And our demographics are as follows. We have 11% African-American, 17% Asian. We are 23% Hispanic, 44% white and 4% multi-race. So we are truly the diverse school. I think that's what makes us special. So we have for the Yale population, we have the newcomer program. And we have a specialized special education program called Access, and that is to support the severely disabled. And we also service kids on IEPs throughout the inclusionary settings. Yeah. Okay, you're welcome.
[SPEAKER_09]: Any other questions for Mr. O'Brien? Thank you, sorry about that button. Mr. Tucci.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, good evening, everyone. My name is Nick Tucci. I'm the principal of the McGlynn Middle School. I'd like to have on the button at all times. Happy Thanksgiving to all of you and to our wonderful Medford community. It's certainly a privilege to serve in the role of principal of the McGlynn Middle School on a daily basis. I truly love my job. I truly love interacting with the students and working with our staff members to collaborate to help to meet the needs of our student population. Today, I'd like to just give you a little bit of an update as to what we've been up to here at the McGlynn thus far this 2023-24 school year. If we go on to the next slide, Dr. Cushing, that'd be great. Tonight's presentation is going to be filled with fall highlights. So I'll just kind of report back on some of what's been happening at the school, as well as some student programming, some ways that we've been able to make some strong connections with family in our community in order to engage our community. And then also provide you with an update as to some of the work that I am doing alongside my principal, Mr. John Bruneau, in order to lead the instructional work that's so important to make progress and improve student outcomes. And I'm happy to field any questions that you folks might have at the conclusion of the presentation. So right now I'm very happy to report that students of the middle school are coming to school and coming to school on a very consistent basis. Currently right now we're at a 96% attendance rate to start the school year, which from my perspective that was one of the goals that I had as the principal of the school this school year. I'll speak a little bit more to that in just a moment. Over 75% of our students are participating in the life of the school. That means they're not only coming to school at 7.50 in the morning and clocking out at 2.15, but they're getting involved in the life of the school through clubs, sports, activities. It's exactly what I want them to do. And I'll speak to that in just a moment too. I'm happy to highlight the success of a lot of our Mustang athletes, as well as our fine arts. So first off, let me just speak to the attendance piece. One of the reasons why I wanted to, as a principal, have a goal of making sure my students are coming to school on a consistent basis is because this has been a problematic matter across all of Massachusetts schools and nation schools across the country ever since the pandemic. And one of the things that Commissioner Riley reports, it's on my slideshow here, is that this is one of the key components that we as educational leaders need to really focus on in order to improve student outcomes. We need to get the students through the doors every single day. And once we have that captive audience, I'm really, really a big believer in the work that our teachers can do in order to fully engage our students in order to help them to get to the next level. It also speaks the school climate and culture at the middle school to as well that our students want to come to school, they're engaging coming to school, and this way we can serve their full needs, you know from their academic needs their social emotional needs to their growth as people, and also their needs when it comes to counseling and, you know, just making sure they get a breakfast and lunch every single school day, thanks to you as the Met for school committee as well. So this is a big focus of mine. Last year the school came in the middle school and 94% attendance rate, which is fine, but from my perspective, I'm really shooting towards the 96, 97 and 98% range in order to make sure our students are coming to school on time and we don't have any cases of chronic absenteeism because certainly that's very impactful to the learning and the outcomes that eventually we're going to be paying a strong attention to. As I mentioned before, one of the reasons that hopefully will continue to tick up our attendance rate and our student outcomes at the McGlynn Middle School is making sure that our students are being engaged in the life of our school. As I mentioned before, about 75%, a little over that actually, are involved in either a club sport or activity. And I always encourage our students to say that one of the biggest things you could do to find success is to make sure you're connected to something in the school other than just your math class or your English class, for example. We wanna make sure that they are a part of one of our over 30 clubs and activities that are shared between the McGlynn Middle School and the Andrews Middle School. And I'll speak to the collaboration between the McGlynn and the Andrews and the continued improvement in the right direction in that fashion in just a moment as well. Certainly, I'd love to highlight and I certainly appreciate the Medford community support of making sure middle school student athletes have the opportunity to participate in our full array of fall, winter and spring sports, it's great to see the Medford across their Jersey participating in the greater Boston League sports that we provide. One of the things I'm really happy to bring to the McGlynn Middle School and the Andrews Middle School students is our wonderful partnership with Tufts University after school programming, where twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays our students have the opportunity to go to Tufts, we bus them on up there, and they participate in STEM programming, our programming, and we get them involved in tutoring too as well. We even do virtual tutoring for students with Tufts University too as well. So it's certainly a wonderful opportunity and myself as a parent of kids, I would certainly love to have an opportunity along those lines to send my children up to a great university and have them work and interact with the Tufts students too. The fall season at Tufts University the fall semester is coming to a close in the next few weeks, but if anybody's interested in getting their children signed up for the spring semester, that will be will be accepting new students into that program come January of this year, the next upcoming year. And of course we offer an array of after school support every Tuesday, Wednesday and work with their teachers in small group sessions. We do a lot of really important work with the students to provide some targeted feedback and support for them to help them do great work. to get involved in the life of the school, and we wanna make sure they have a strong connection to the adults in our school community for not just academic purposes, but also when things happen in their lives, they have that connection with the teacher to be able to help them navigate the challenges of middle school. So I'd like to commend our sports teams. But first, I want to make sure that I recognize the fact that the McGlynn Middle School is a unified champion school, because we've demonstrated our commitment to meaningful inclusion through unified sports. Particularly, our students have the opportunity to pursue unified basketball. And it's wonderful to see all students participating in the wonderful unified basketball program that we'll be continuing to offer at the McGlynn Middle School. I want to recognize the girls softball team and the girls cross-country team who took home first place in the Greater Boston League Championship this past fall. Kudos to them. You can see some wonderful pictures from our championship athletes and the boys baseball and cross-country team excelled as well on the field. But I'm also particularly proud of their accomplishments, not only on the sporting fields, but also in the classroom too. They're wonderful, wonderful student athletes. The word student coming before athlete is something I really preach with the students. fine arts programming as Dr. Vincent had mentioned before our Mustang marching band took home a fantastic first place finish in the NESPA finals this past fall just a few weeks ago and keep in mind that you know while many of these individuals are high school members of the marching band there are also several that are members of the middle school and they'll be rising up and eventually leading the marching band to future victories in future years too. We have an upcoming drama club performance that will be happening at the McGlynn Middle School in our auditorium on December 1st and December 2nd. This is a production led by our middle school drama club, led by Andrews and McGlynn students. And I can't wait to attend both the band and the strings concert alongside many of you, because I know you all are wonderful supporters of the arts coming up later on in the month of December. Dr. Cushing if you could go on. Thank you. I want to recognize that just some examples of some initiatives that we part of the middle school to promote. We do programming, at times through the wind block at our school when stands for what I need so a lot of students receive intervention opportunities to be able to work with their teachers to improve their educational outcomes with their team of teachers, but we also use the wind block in order to build a strong foundation and send home a lot of important initiatives with our students at the school. For instance, to start the school year off, we had a whole week filled with start with hello, a big campaign in order to help students find connections in the school and understand the power of just simply saying hello and reaching out to new classmates. making sure that no one's sitting alone in the cafeteria time, just making sure that we understand the power of making those strong connections. And this is through our partnership with the Sandy Hook Challenge. In addition, another layer of the work that I as a principal work with students and teachers on is to make sure they understand what to do in the case that they see something that might be of concern. And we teach the students of the importance of making sure they have strong adult connections and identifying who their trusted adults might be at the middle school level. And if they see something that is of concern, maybe it's cyber bullying, bullying, or just a concern, we teach them how to frame it with their trusted adults and act as leaders. And I've tried to build a strong culture at the school of being upstanders and not bystanders. And I weave that into my programming and work with the students on a regular, regular basis. We even have a tab on our school website where if a student doesn't feel like they want to report something of concern to one of our trusted adults, they can anonymously use that tip line in order to alert a person like myself as a leader or even the Medford police if there is a concern that might be related to safety. One of the other themes that particularly concerns me as a middle school principal is the really big national issue of vaping and the use of the e cigarettes with people as young as elementary and also middle school age children, where people start engaging in this type of at risk behavior at a young age. And from my perspective as a person that likes to model a very healthy lifestyle, certainly this is a major concern to me because I see as a gateway into some other type of behaviors that would really derail some of our students' lives. So I've made an effort in order to continue to help our students understand the pitfalls associated with engaging in that type of behavior. So we brought in some experts to be able to present to our students. In fact, we had the Massachusetts Partnerships Youth come in and speak on the topic of what are you puffing? And I frame it to the students where I say to the students, I say, well, I want to make sure that you have the information. So on a Friday night, you have the opportunity to make the right choice. So we talk about choices a lot. And I actually hosted a screening of screen ages under the influence to the McGlynn Middle School community just a few weeks ago. And all of our students watched the engaging documentary and unpacked it with their teachers to be able to have the important discussions
[SPEAKER_09]: Mr. Tucci, I think your microphone went off. I don't know if your thumb is just getting tired or if we have another problem. Sorry. I just wanted people to be able to hear you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, enough family community engagements. I've also spent some time this this past fall, trying to engage our school community by, you know, giving them opportunities to hear some parent workshops, I brought in several presenters, in order to help our parents be in tune with what our students are learning. The PAVE presentation, PAVE stands for Parents Against Vaping and E-Cigarettes. Screenagers was that documentary I just referenced. We've also worked with the Medford Public Library to provide English classes for some of our families that are learning English as a second language. And just wanted to highlight the work of Dr. Edouard-Vincent and making sure that it was recognized that that bullying presentation was fantastic just last week to be able to help us educate our entire school communities on the challenges and how we can work together to stand up to bullying and be upstanders. In addition, we try to engage the McGlynn Middle School community through regular newsletters that both myself and my assistant principal, Mr. Bruno, send out that are filled with engaging and fun and interactive type of ways to get information to our school community. We've also used both Twitter and Facebook on social media in order to highlight some great things and share out some pictures. We write these talking points in order to help our school community because we deal with a lot of different students in our community and families that English isn't their first language. So we really are to foster that two-way communication. It's so important to have that strong partnership. And a week or two ago, we had a coffee with the Councilors. work of our PTO because they've been great making sure that we're doing fundraising, have school dances, and with the Andrews Middle School and inviting the Andrews and the McGlynn students to go to school dances together, to participate in the ice skating together and other types of things. We look forward to that partnership in years to come too. I wanted to just take a moment to recognize the work that I do on a regular basis with my staff. Utilize every possible meeting. Identify what I can leverage instructional strategies that hopefully will improve outcomes, and I believe it. And I wanna make sure that my teachers understand how to embed these strategies into their lesson plans on a regular basis and be reflective about their work too as well. So this is one of the more important aspects of my job, and I tease every occasional leader. some opportunities to identify like what do as a school community in order to meet the needs of our diverse learning populations. And I put out a few different slides up there that can help you understand a little bit of the work that we do. And every single month, the use of a faculty meeting in order to teach these strategies, then evaluate them and give our teachers feedback is so crucial and valuable to my role as principal. And I look forward to continuing to lead that work at the McGlynn Middle School. Without further ado, I really appreciate your time, happy to answer any questions you might have, and happy Thanksgiving once again, and go Medford, beat Malden.
[SPEAKER_09]: Thank you, Mr. Tucci. Just from the chair, for those of you who are watching, I just wanted to say thank you to Mr. Tucci for the work that he does to bring programs like screenagers, et cetera, to the community. I do wish they were better attended. So maybe we need like a wine license or something for the evening to entice people to come or something. But the unique thing about the bullying presentation is it is available online for a short period of time. So if you missed it last week, The superintendent's Friday update did have information about how to access that presentation. And I found it to be really helpful just to listen to and actually made my kids listen to it too. And they were like, why are we listening to this? And I, so we had a nice discussion at dinner afterwards. So thank you for all of your work there. I think member McLaughlin has a question.
[SPEAKER_10]: Yeah, comment. Thank you, Mr. Tucci. Always appreciate the hard work you do and the inclusive way in which you do it. Thank you. And again, for the listening audience or viewing audience, can you share a little bit with us about the McGlynn demographics and sort of what other diverse populations you serve?
[SPEAKER_00]: We have a very diverse population of students. We have about 450 students this school year. And a significant portion of our population are students who are English language learners. The exact percentage I think is around 15 to 20%. And we also have about 20% of students who are on IEP as well. So it's a very diverse population and I love it every single day. Students teach me new things every single day. So just teach me. So it's a really big point. You're welcome.
[SPEAKER_09]: Are there any other questions for Mr. Tucci before we let him get on with his evening? Thank you very much. Item number three, we have a request to approve the school year 24-25 draft school calendar. Motion to table. There's a motion to table on the floor by member Rousseau. Is there a second?
[SPEAKER_10]: Is there an opportunity? Are we not able to explain motion to table because it's non-debatable? Or can we?
[SPEAKER_05]: Just tell you that there's some mistakes. What? There's an error.
[SPEAKER_09]: OK. Second. Oh. Okay, there's a motion to table on the floor, which means further discussion is not allowed. There was a motion to table by Member Ruseau, seconded by Member McLaughlin. All those in favor of tabling item number three? All those opposed? Okay, motion is tabled until the next meeting on 12.4. Um, we do not have any presentations of the public tonight. Um, and, uh, but we do have a number of resolutions that have been put forward by, uh, by members, including a, uh, first reading of a policy. So before we do that, I just want to reiterate what our public participation policy is pursuant to the policy BEDH public comment and presentations of the public. Any resident in the audience may be given permission to speak once on any item on the agenda for up to three minutes. The speaker is expected to keep their comments to the item on the agenda. The speaker must begin their comments by providing their full name and full Medford Street address where they reside. A welcoming, inclusive community is both a value of the school committee and an aspirational goal. We ask for your help in achieving this goal and value your perspective. Employees of the Medford Public Schools are exempt from the residency requirement of this policy. The voice of our employees is welcomed on all matters before this body. When a non-Medford resident employee is participating in public comment or submitting a presentation of the public, they will include their home address and identify themselves as an employee of Medford Public Schools. So under continued business, we have 2023-25 offered by member Hays, member McLaughlin and member Stone. It is the first reading of a policy which is ACA-1, non-discrimination on the basis of gender identity. So you're going to have to bear with me because there's a lot of reading here, which I'm happy to do. But before I start, I just want to make sure that for those of you listening and watching, this policy was presented at our last school committee meeting. At that time, we talked about a variety of members having questions and comments about the policy. We then subsequently held a committee of the whole. and made substantial edits to the policy and ultimately favorably and unanimously moved this policy back to the floor. So it's here for its first reading. So I'm gonna start reading and I do believe that we should read the entire thing in its first reading and then we will look for a motion afterwards. So I'll start Medford public schools is committed to me committed to maintaining an educational environment and workplace for discrimination on the basis of gender identity, sex, sexual orientation or gender expression is not tolerated. The school district does not and will not discriminate on the basis of gender identity, sex, sexual orientation or gender expression in the educational programs and activities of the public schools. and strives to create an environment where all students and staff feel safe, welcomed, and included. Medford Public Schools takes allegations of discrimination and harassment seriously and will respond promptly to complaints. Where it is determined that an inappropriate conduct has occurred, Medford Public Schools will act promptly to eliminate the conduct and will impose corrective action as necessary, including disciplinary action where appropriate. To help create a safe and supportive environment for all students, the school district will, consistent with the applicable laws and guidance, adhere to the below outlined policy. Section one is definitions. Medford Public Schools will maintain a list of definitions in support of this policy on the district website and will maintain a list of definitions. will maintain the list of definitions on an annual basis. Item number two, privacy, confidentiality, and student records. Under state law, information about a student's assigned birth gender, name change for gender identity purposes, gender transition, medical or mental health treatment related to gender identity, or any other information of similar nature, regardless of its form, is part of the individual student record. There are two hyperlinks to the Department of Education and the Massachusetts Students Records Regulation in the body of the policy. Medford Public Schools will ensure that all information in relation to students' gender identity shall be kept confidential in accordance with applicable federal, state, and local privacy laws and regulations. Information that may reveal a student's gender identity to others will not be disclosed. With regard to changes to the student record, unless the school is legally required to do so, student records regulation 603 CMR 23.01 states that these rights shall be the rights of the student upon, and there's four conditions, upon reaching 14 years of age or upon reaching ninth grade, whichever comes first. Bullet number two, if a student is under the age of 14 and has not yet entered ninth grade, these rights shall belong to the student's caregivers. Bullet number three, if a student is between 14 and 17 years of age or has entered ninth grade, both the student and his or her caregivers or either one acting alone shall exercise these rights. Bullet number four, if a student is 18 years of age or older, he or she alone shall exercise these rights subject to the following. Caregivers may continue to exercise rights until expressly limited by the student. Section three, gender markers on student records. A gender marker is the designation on school and other records that indicates a student's gender. For transgender students, a documented gender marker, for example, male or female on a permanent record, should reflect the student's gender identity, not the student's assigned sex. Upon request by the student, or in the case of students under the age of 14, or has not yet entered ninth grade, young students not yet able to advocate for themselves, requested by the caregivers, the school should change the gender marker on the record for transgender students. In addition, transgender students who transition after having completed high school may ask their previous schools to amend school records or diploma or transcript that includes the student's birth name and gender. When requested and when satisfied with the gender identity information provided, schools should amend the student's record, including reissuing a high school diploma or transcript to reflect the student's name and current name and gender. Section four, names and pronouns. Medford Public Schools recognizes that every student has the right to choose and be addressed by the name and pronouns that correspond to the gender identity they consistently assert while at school, regardless of the student's assigned birth gender and names that appear on the student's birth certificate. Court orders are not required to update student records to reflect changes in a student's name or gender markers. According to DESE, Massachusetts law recognizes common law name changes. Any individual may adopt a name that is different from the name that appears on his or her birth certificate provided the change of name is done for an honest reason with no fraudulent intent. Nothing more formal than usage is required. end quote. Schools will work with the student and the caregivers if they are involved in the process or in the case of a younger student with the student and the student's caregivers to develop a plan for communicating any name and pronoun change within the school. Item five, transitions. The decision about whether or how to undergo social and or medical gender transition is personal and depends on the unique circumstances of each individual. There is no threshold medical or mental health diagnosis or treatment requirement that any student must meet in order to have his or her gender identity recognized and respected by a school. When the school is informed of a student's transition, the school shall hold a meeting with the student and caregivers of the student if they're involved in the process, or in the case of a younger student, with the student and the student's caregivers to develop a transition plan to provide a safe and supportive educational environment for students and to address any concerns that may arise. The primary goal of MPS will be to facilitate the relationship between the student and primary caregivers wherever possible. However, some transgender and gender nonconforming students are not openly so at home for reasons such as safety concerns or lack of acceptance. School personnel should speak with the student first before discussing a student's gender nonconformity or transgender status with the student's caregivers. For the same reasons, school personnel should discuss with the student how the school should refer to the student example, appropriate pronoun use and written communication to the students' caregivers. Section six. Last section, restrooms, locker rooms, and changing facilities. All students are entitled to have access to restrooms, locker rooms, and changing facilities that are sanitary, safe, and adequate so that they can comfortably and fully engage in their school program and activities. Students in Medford Public Schools will have access to the restroom, locker room, and changing facility that corresponds to their gender identity. Transgender and gender nonconforming students who are uncomfortable using a sex segregated restroom, locker room, or changing facility should be provided with safe and adequate alternatives, such as private changing areas, designated gender neutral restrooms, single stall gender neutral restrooms, or a nurse's or main office restroom. However, under no circumstances will a student be required to use gender neutral facilities because they are transgender or non-conforming. So this is a new policy and we've set the frequency for review to be every two years. And there are a series of legal references that follow the policy that I am not going to read tonight because it's a bunch of hyperlinks and those are best looked at online. questions from the committee. Member Ruseau.
[SPEAKER_05]: Thank you. I have a few small amendments I'd like to make. I'll take them one at a time. The first is to add a new related policy, the JICA dress code policy under the related policy section. That's my first motion.
[SPEAKER_09]: So motion to add JICA dress code policy under the related policies in the policy information at the end of the document. Motion by Member Ruseau, seconded by Member McLaughlin. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes.
[SPEAKER_05]: Thank you. The next one is in the privacy, confidentiality, and student records section. And my motion is to replace his, her, with their, and he, her, he, she, with they. Kind of amusing in this policy that we make that mistake. So that's my motion.
[SPEAKER_09]: Motion to replace he, she, with their, and his, her, with their. in section two, privacy and confidentiality of student records. Motion by Member Ruseau, seconded by Member McLaughlin. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes.
[SPEAKER_05]: And two more. Motion to replace DESE with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. I don't remember where it was in the poll.
[SPEAKER_09]: Section four.
[SPEAKER_05]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_09]: So motion to spell out the acronym DESI in section four, which is names and pronouns by member Rousseau, seconded by member Hays. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes.
[SPEAKER_05]: And hopefully last, in the last sentence of the first paragraph, It says, I'm sorry, yes, the last sentence of the first paragraph, it says, including disciplinary action where appropriate, and I would motion to replace that with including disciplinary action following restorative practices where necessary.
[SPEAKER_09]: So motion to add or restorative practices before where appropriate in the introduction by member Rousseau, seconded by member McLaughlin. All those in favor? Seconded by member Hays.
[SPEAKER_10]: Oh, sorry, member Hays, sorry. And following restorative practices, I think it said.
[SPEAKER_03]: Correct.
[SPEAKER_10]: But members, I was writing it down, so. Exactly.
[SPEAKER_09]: All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed?
[SPEAKER_05]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_09]: Motion passes. Motion to approve. Can I just, I'm sorry, before we do that, to Two more, one more question. Motion to change his or her in section four, names and pronouns to their, by me. Seconded by, motion by Vice Chair Graham, seconded by Member Hays. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes. Member Hays.
[SPEAKER_07]: Thank you, I have a couple of, just a couple of edit issues too, or questions. In the transition section, where it says the school shall hold a meeting, would like to change that to the school will offer to hold a meeting.
[SPEAKER_10]: Second. Under transition section, second.
[SPEAKER_09]: I'm sorry, I'm just looking for it. Okay, so motion to add the word offer between shall offer to between shall and hold one, two, three, four, five rows down on our paper by member Hays, seconded by member Laughlin. All those in favor. Aye. All those opposed. Motion passes. Fifth, about halfway through the paragraph member Ruseau.
[SPEAKER_07]: Member Hays, did you have another item? Just one more. Under gender markers on student records, I think there was, so on that the sentence upon request by the student or in the case of student under the age of 14, it's a little confusing. I think that a couple of things got either when I wrote it, it came out wrong, or something was changed. But it just feels like it's a little confusing. It says, upon request by the student, or in the case of a student under the age of 14, or has not yet entered ninth grade, then comma, young student not able to advocate for themselves. I think it needs to be, I'm curious if others, if everyone could look at that and see if that feels like it needs to be a little reworded.
[SPEAKER_09]: Is there maybe a motion to add comma or in the, for young students?
[SPEAKER_07]: I'm wondering, my motion was to take out to, let's see, to change it like this. Upon request by the student, or in the case of a student who was under the age of 14 or has not yet entered ninth grade, and then take out young students not yet able to advocate for themselves. Just take that out. Has not yet entered the ninth grade by the caregivers. The school should change the gender marker on the record for transgender students. I don't think we need young students not yet able to advocate for themselves since we've spelled out that by law, there's that 14 year old. You can't change. By law, the student record can only be changed by the parent if the student is under the age of 14 or has not yet reached ninth grade.
[SPEAKER_09]: So there's a motion to strike young students not yet able to advocate for themselves requested by the caregivers.
[SPEAKER_10]: Can I ask a question?
[SPEAKER_09]: Is there a second before we do that? Second by member Rousseau. Member McLaughlin?
[SPEAKER_10]: Yeah. So tell me what that was intended to mean before we strike it, because I'm not clear. I agree. It's not clear what it was intended to mean. So I just want to clarify to make sure we're not striking something that had some meaning. So young students not yet able to advocate for themselves requested by the caregiver. What does that mean?
[SPEAKER_07]: So I believe the original wording, this is something that got changed after our committee of the whole. The original language was directly from DESE and did not specify that 14 year age, but then we did find that the law does, for the student records, the law specifies the age. So I think that young students not yet able to advocate for themselves was part of the original DESE language. Okay.
[SPEAKER_09]: All right. I gotcha. Thank you. So there's a motion on the floor to strike young students not yet able to advocate for themselves requested by the caregivers. by Member Hays, seconded by Member Ruseau. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes.
[SPEAKER_10]: I have a motion to approve.
[SPEAKER_09]: And there's a motion to approve this policy as amended by Member McLaughlin. Seconded by Member Hays. Roll call, please. I don't have any hands on Zoom and I don't see anybody at the podium. Sure, come on up. You do have to hold that button and tell us your name and address for the record. So to answer, the question was about whether 14 is the age of consent. As it relates to changing student records, 14 is the age that is outlined. I don't believe it's the same thing as the... Students have the right to change their record at 14. They have the right to change everything, yeah. Everything that is changeable, I guess I would say. So we don't charge, to my knowledge, for restated diplomas, is that correct? Okay. There actually are. So they can't, because that button is broken. Sorry.
[SPEAKER_08]: All right. So I was wondering, has the thought process gone into girls who don't feel comfortable in these situations? Do you have a safe place or a safe way to express it?
[SPEAKER_09]: Dr. Edouard-Vincent, can you describe what would happen in that kind of case?
[SPEAKER_06]: So if a student were to feel uncomfortable, they could use a different single stall, a separate changing area. So that's an option for all students. So if they don't wanna be in a large area, they have access to smaller areas where they could change privately. So we do have that available private spaces that students can go in and use to change if they would like to.
[SPEAKER_09]: And the process for students who are feeling uncomfortable in any way about anything is that they should be bringing those concerns to their assistant principal at the high school or their teacher at the elementary school, middle school is probably an assistant principal type as well.
[SPEAKER_08]: Does this get voted on or is it just something that you guys kind of write it out and we have to kind of just accept it?
[SPEAKER_09]: So we have we have did we just take we did we just take the vote we did we did not take the vote yet so. The process is that new policies are read twice in committee, so this is the first reading substantial changes were made in subcommittee we actually didn't have any. input by the public at that publicly held meeting, which was, I think, on November 15th, if I'm remembering correctly. So the first reading is tonight, and we will take a roll call vote to determine whether the first reading passes. Then there is a second reading of the policy, but this body has the power to pass policy. That is one of the four things explicitly that we are here to do. Yes, this body will make the decision about whether this policy goes into effect or not.
[SPEAKER_08]: So if there's someone in the public that doesn't agree with this, what do you do?
[SPEAKER_09]: I would direct them to the school principal wherever their child is so that they can have a conversation about the concerns for their own child. And we want, again, we want all students to feel safe and welcome. And that includes children who are transgender, who are non-conforming, who have questions about what is happening around them. That is always the case. So I would strongly encourage you to bring these concerns to your building principal, and they have processes and procedures to go through. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Seeing no other questions. Member Ruseau, roll call vote, please.
[SPEAKER_05]: Member Graham?
[SPEAKER_09]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_05]: Member Hays?
[SPEAKER_09]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_05]: Member Kreatz?
[SPEAKER_09]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_05]: Member McLaughlin?
[SPEAKER_09]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_05]: Member Mustone is absent. Member Ruseau is yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn is absent.
[SPEAKER_09]: So five in the affirmative, two absent. The policy passes its first reading.
[SPEAKER_07]: Can I make a motion to suspend the rules and waive the second reading?
[SPEAKER_09]: A motion by Member Hays to suspend the rules and waive the second reading of policy ACA-1, non-discrimination on the basis of gender identity. Is there a second?
[SPEAKER_05]: Second.
[SPEAKER_09]: Seconded by Member Ruseau. So there's a motion on the floor to suspend the rules and waive the second reading by Member Hays, seconded by Member Ruseau. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes. Is there a motion to approve the policy now that the second reading has been waived?
[SPEAKER_07]: Motion to approve the policy. Second.
[SPEAKER_09]: Motion to approve the policy as amended by Member Hays, seconded by Member McLaughlin. Roll call vote, please.
[SPEAKER_05]: Member Graham?
[SPEAKER_09]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_05]: Member Hays? Yes. Member Kreatz?
[SPEAKER_09]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_05]: Member McLaughlin?
[SPEAKER_09]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_05]: Member Rosen is absent. Member Rosen, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn is absent.
[SPEAKER_09]: So five in the affirmative, two absent. The policy passes. number nine new business. So we have several resolutions under new business. The first is 2023-26 offered by member Graham and member Rousseau. Be it resolved that the superintendent will present school year 2024 and 2025 handbooks to the school committee for review and approval no later than April 1st, 2024. Be it further resolved that the school committee will create an ad hoc subcommittee to establish a process and norms around annual handbook review no later than March 1st, 2024. Superintendent, I wanted to, before we take a vote, I wanted to check in with you about that timing. And I know there's a whole series of activity that happens at the school level to get handbooks ready. And I just wanted to first ask you whether that timing is consistent with all the work that has to happen within the schools, or if you would request any sort of change to that timeline.
[SPEAKER_06]: I think with April of 24 deadline. The exception I would possibly ask if I were to push it to me first would be if additional policies were added. So case in point this year. the committee met during the summer and we had a policy that was approved in August. So because it was approved in August, this April 1 deadline, if the handbook had been finalized, we would be doing either addendums or reprinting and doing it over again. So if we were to maintain that April 1 date, then we would need to make sure that policy subcommittee meetings that would need to be added into the handbook happened prior to April 1 so that we wouldn't be doing work two and three times over, just making one revision. If we think we're able to maintain that by April of April 1st of every year, then I think that's reasonable. But if we think we might need the month of April and make May be the cutoff so that we could have the handbooks finalized and ready to go for the start of the school year in August, then that would be my one consideration to the committee.
[SPEAKER_07]: Member Hays. I'm just wondering since, you know, since it's difficult to, as a committee will be difficult to not to actually cut off new policies, is there a way we could create a process for if there are additional policies after the deadline for the student handbooks? I know like the bullying policy, which I think for many reasons was put directly on the webpage, but could there be a tab somewhere or a link somewhere that says here the policies that were passed after the deadline for that the handbook so that we have the deadline but we also have the possibility if needed to add additional policies past that deadline.
[SPEAKER_10]: Member McLaughlin. Thank you. This podium has, we've got to do something about this moving forward.
[SPEAKER_09]: It's like, I'm constantly like here. It's a long time to stand up. So I understand why.
[SPEAKER_10]: I'm curious if the podium moves, but we'll figure that out later. Um, so, uh, I would think that the ad hoc committee would obviously be dealing with ways to address policy that changes between the first print and the print for the following year. So I think that's okay. But I do think that in the given year, If we could put it to May 1st, it does make more sense because then we do have April for any policies that sort of change. And I'm assuming that this would be, obviously we can change policy at any point, but if we're talking about sort of a consistent policy and try to building up a routine and protocol, I think it makes sense more for the May 1st so that we can get in as many of the policies that we change throughout potentially the school year before the handbook is printed for that year, with the understanding that clearly there will be additional policies passed between May 1 and May 1 of each year, and that we can create a process through the ad hoc committee. But I would advocate for the May 1.
[SPEAKER_09]: Member Rossell.
[SPEAKER_05]: Thank you. My thinking on this is that if we're passing a policy after a deadline, that we simply set the date for when it becomes effective, because I'm not really interested in having all of this. I mean, it's the principals aren't running around changing these, the site councils are. So I don't think it's reasonable for us to, a week before or a week after site councils have submitted their proposed changes for us to be just making changes to policy. Obviously we can make changes to policy at any time, but I think that when our policy changes, are going to affect the handbook, we should just consider whether or not, can this just wait another year? It's not like if we wait another year, There's, you know, for the most part, those kinds of things are not the end of the world. I mean, the bullying policy was an example that's very, very different because it was so substantial. And this is a great example of what we just did. But a lot of the policy changes we're making are not things that if they waited another year to be in a handbook that anybody would even, be bent out of shape about. So I'm not so much concerned about the cost of printing, although, you know, money's tight. But I am concerned about the work of the site councils. And there's also an important thing about the handbook, though. There are sections of the handbook that are sort of inherited from the district. They're the same in every single handbook. Site councils don't even really have a say in them, things such as things that come from the law. So whether or not the change would affect site council work, I think is something to be considered. And I certainly think that As a chair of the policy subcommittee. This is not something I had thought through. So I think that is something to consider in our procedures around policy adoption to be like you know, sort of a checkbox, does this affect handbooks? And if so, when should it go into effect? Because that's an easy thing to consider rather than setting some arbitrary date, because a lot of times policies come up because something's happening and we can't wait. So knowing the impact of the change, I think, is something we can just put right into our procedures.
[SPEAKER_09]: Dr. Edward-Vinson?
[SPEAKER_06]: So with the March 1st, 2024 deadline, where the committee wants to be able to review revisions, my ask would be of the committee from March 1st to April 1st, that gives 30 days to essentially review the entire handbook and make sure like, if anything else is gonna be, is that enough time for the committee?
[SPEAKER_09]: Well, the March 1st deadline was just to really, I think, do some thinking through the process and norms around handbook review, because we've not done that as a district for a really long time. And I think these are the good kind of questions that probably need some consideration. And so the intent of the March 1st deadline was that our ad hoc committee process will be completed and we'll have some answers about these kinds of things. But then by May 1st, I think as amended, we would need you we would need you to provide all the handbooks to us so that we can then do that review starting on May 1st and in time for the next school year. So I think that ad hoc process to establish like the process and norms is where some of these like finer details can be worked out. But also I'm in favor of a May 1st date for you to turn over the handbooks to us for review. That's totally fine with me. So I would make a motion as amended and seconded by member McLaughlin. All those in favor? All those opposed? Motion passes. 2023-27 offered by member Hays, member McLaughlin, and member Mustone. Ad hoc report request on the bullying curriculum. Whereas the Medford Public Schools bullying and intervention plan states that NPS will provide age appropriate instruction on bullying prevention to students as required by law. be it resolved that MPS administration will provide a presentation to update the community about the curriculum and lessons used at each grade level to explicitly teach students the following. Number one, how to understand what bullying looks like and sounds like. Number two, how to identify bullying when it's happening. And number three, how to understand when verbal bullying becomes hate speech. Member Hays or Member McLaughlin, would you like to speak on this?
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, I can start. So in looking through both the bullying policy and looking just through our webpage, what I realized in looking at everything related to bullying is we do have a lot of descriptions of some of the, I guess, more of the prevention. We have responsive classroom, which gets a lot at building community, social emotional skills, emotional regulation. We have the Nexus classroom, we have, I'm trying to think, there's a number of things that we have. I couldn't find anywhere, sorry? Just say hello. Oh, just say hello and Sandy Hook, yes, the Sandy Hook, which more gets at when you're looking at someone who's really in an emotional crisis and what do you do about that? But I didn't see anywhere that explained clearly for parents in the community and us, where we have in our curriculum explicit, like it says in here, explicit instruction for students, sorry, about how to identify bullying. And it's gonna be developmentally different at every age, of course, but really, I think we need to clearly understand what are we teaching kids so that they know what bullying looks like, what it looks like, what it sounds like, And again, that idea of, you know, we did have a parent who wrote to us a while back about their student, their child in school, talking about how kids were, how language was evolving at the middle school level. And there were words being used that sounded benign, but were being used very much in a hate speech manner. And I think that there's a lot of kids who don't understand that and might hear it and might not identify that as bullying or then identify it as hate speech. So kind of all of this explicit teaching of what bullying is so that kids know what to identify when we're saying, you know, call us or tell us or find your trusted adult. I'm not sure that we have anything that tells us how we're teaching kids what they are bringing to the adult.
[SPEAKER_09]: Member McLaughlin.
[SPEAKER_10]: Thank you. Thank you, Member Hays. I also wanted to request an amendment just sort of in a lot of the thought process that was occurring tonight for me anyway, and has been for a while, is I would like something to be included here around differentiated curriculum for students with disabilities and English learners so that when we're talking about the curriculum, we're also talking about it being differentiated for all students. if you'd be willing to accept that, that would be lovely.
[SPEAKER_05]: I need language that.
[SPEAKER_10]: Okay. I'm ready. Go slowly.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_10]: All right. So resolve the MPS administration will provide a not an presentation. So the current, um, proposal to update the community about the curriculum or lessons and then different common differentiated for students with disabilities and English learners, as well as all students, that is used at each grade level to explicitly teach students the following.
[SPEAKER_09]: Member Ruseau, just let us know when you're ready. Oh, I'm ready. Oh, sorry. Okay. So there's a motion to approve as amended by Member Hays. Seconded by Member McLaughlin. All those in favor? All those opposed? Motion passes. 2023-28 offered by Member Hays, Member McLaughlin, and Member Mustone. Accessibility of End of Cycle Superintendent Summative Evaluation Report. Whereas the Medford School Committee is committed to ensuring transparency, accountability and accessibility to the community with regard to the work of the school committee and the school administration. Whereas the completion of the annual superintendent is one of the three main functions of the school committee. Whereas the Superintendent End of Cycle Summative Evaluation Report is a public document that provides the community with important documentation of the superintendent's performance and the district's progress towards the goals in the strategic plan. Be it resolved, each superintendent end of cycle summative evaluation report from the 2021-2022 school year forward will be added to the newly created superintendent evaluation tab on the school committee page of the Medford Public Schools website. Be it further resolved, each new summative evaluation report will be added to the superintendent evaluation tab of the Medford Public Schools website within two weeks of approval by the school committee. Be it further resolved, every summative evaluation report will be translated into the top three languages spoken by families in the Medford Public Schools. Member Hays.
[SPEAKER_07]: Thank you. We do currently now have a tab on our MPS website that does have this past year's superintendent evaluation. So this motion, this resolution really is just to continue that. I did put in 21-22, which would be the previous year's evaluation, which I opened up to the committee to decide whether they want to include that in this. I just put that in because that was my first year on the committee. But I think it's important that we make these evaluation reports more easily accessible than they have been in the past. Again, as it says in the motion, these reports are not only about the performance of the superintendent, but because the superintendent is the chief executive of the school system, they're also an indication, one indication of how the school system as a whole is doing and how our goals are tied to our strategic plan. It's a measure of how we're meeting the goals in our strategic plan. So this is just a motion to make an already public document more easily accessible to the public.
[SPEAKER_09]: Motion to approve by Member Hays, seconded by Member McLaughlin. Roll call, please.
[SPEAKER_05]: Member Graham.
[SPEAKER_09]: No.
[SPEAKER_05]: Member Hays.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_05]: Member Kreatz.
[SPEAKER_08]: No.
[SPEAKER_05]: Member McLaughlin.
[SPEAKER_09]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_05]: Member Mustone is absent. Member Ruseau, no. Mayor Lungo-Koehn is absent.
[SPEAKER_09]: Two in the affirmative, three in the negative, two absent, the motion fails. We don't have any reports requested this evening, but we do have a number of condolences. The members of the Medford School Committee expressed their sincerest condolences to Patrice Berry, Medford High School teacher, and her family for the loss of their daughter, Lauren Berry of Malden, and also Medford High graduate of 2007. The members of the Medford Public School Committee express their sincerest condolences to the family of John Lazzaro, former high school science teacher, brother of Michael Lazzaro, senior custodian at Medford High School, and brother-in-law to Brooks Elementary School teacher Ellie O'Leary and her husband Chip O'Leary, custodian at Medford High School. The members of the Medford School Committee express their sincerest condolences to the family of Frida London, grandmother of Joy Weldon, human resources administrative assistant, The members of the Medford School Committee expressed their sincerest condolences to the family of Mary Stack, former teacher at the Franklin and Swan Elementary Schools. And members of the Medford School Committee expressed their sincerest condolences to the family of Patricia Kenna, former Medford public school teacher. If we can all please observe a moment of silence. Thank you. Our next meeting will be on December 4th at Alden Memorial Chambers, Medford City Hall, in addition to on Zoom. Is there a motion to adjourn? Motion to adjourn by Member McLaughlin, seconded by Member Hays. All those in favor?
[SPEAKER_05]: Aye.
[SPEAKER_09]: All those opposed?