[Frances Nwajei]: Hi everyone and a happy new year to the Commission on Persons with Disabilities. It's our first meeting of the year in 2023 and I'm just super excited because we have a full commission and I'm looking forward to the great work that we'll be able to accomplish ahead. I'm Frances Manjoh, Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. The meeting is for January 25, 2023. So I'm going to pass it over to Chair Commissioner Hamill.
[Tom Hamel]: Thank you, Frances.
[Frances Nwajei]: Happy birthday, Tom.
[Tom Hamel]: Thank you. Well, so our first agenda item is introductions. But I think we all know each other. Is that true? Or should we do introductions? Should we kick off 2023 with introductions?
[Frances Nwajei]: Maybe kick off 2023 with introductions for people who might be watching through other means.
[Tom Hamel]: I'll go first. I'm Tom Hamill. I've been on the commission for three years and lived in Medford for 15 plus years. and honored to be a part of the commission. I've been connected. I have a disability myself, but been connected to the disability world in different ways, whether it's been my career, being a parent, or myself. That's what brings me here. Susan, would you like to go next? Susan Bivens?
[Susan Bibbins]: Hi. I'm Susan Bivens. I have, I've been a member of the commission for It's been a long time. I'm not even sure how long it's been. I am past chair of the commission. So if you want to know anything procedural, just ask me. I disabled myself, which affects me in a myriad of different ways. I also have two adult children who are living with disabilities, and that's me.
[Tom Hamel]: Who wants to go next? Yvette.
[MCM00001818_SPEAKER_06]: I'll volunteer. Ladies first.
[Tom Hamel]: Yvette, why don't you go, and then we'll do Joe.
[Evangelista]: OK. Are you able to hear me?
[Tom Hamel]: Yes.
[Evangelista]: OK, awesome. So my name is Yvette Wilkes. I am new to the commission, and I'm just very excited about being part of being able to support individuals with disabilities within our city of Medford. Thank you. Thank you. Happy birthday, Tom.
[Tom Hamel]: Joe, what's up? Can you introduce yourself?
[MCM00001818_SPEAKER_06]: All right. I'm Joe and I grew up in Medford pretty much my whole life. I think it's a great city. I have lived in other places for short terms and always came back. But let's see, I have a 30-year-old son that has a major disability, but I'm lucky he's pretty healthy besides his disability. And right now I got a slight disability and I'm working with it. And I'm just here to help and make life better for everybody.
[Unidentified]: Thank you. Sue, would you like to go? You're on mute. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. I was muted. Thank you. I'm Sue Feller Finn. I've lived in Medford for 19 years, which is the longest I've lived anywhere. and have become involved in the community, this board and a number of other things, which has been really fun. And I have a relative, close relative who has a disability, does not feel like it defines him, which I think is something very important to think about. And yet it affects his life greatly. And just thought I walk and run and bike and so on in the community a lot. So I sort of have my eyes and ears and so on about things in the community that might be tough on people with disabilities. And that was partly my interest in becoming part of this board, I also taught special ed for years and years and years, and still teach a lot of special ed kids where I ski instruct in the winter. And so that's part of why I thought I could be maybe helpful on this committee. Thank you.
[Tom Hamel]: Linda or Heather?
[Smith]: Yeah, I can jump in. I'm Linda Braden. I'm the vice chair. I've been on the commission for two years now. And I have a brother and a niece who have disabilities. And I specialize in digital accessibility in work and in life. So that's how I contribute to the commission.
[Unidentified]: Thank you. And Heather.
[8kUnsaXIsWQ_SPEAKER_06]: Happy birthday, Tom. I'm Heather McKinnon. I have been on the commission for about a year and a half. And my son brings me to the commission. And that's about it.
[Tom Hamel]: Thank you, everyone. Our first agenda item is to approve the meeting minutes. I saw the December minutes, but I, Frances?
[Frances Nwajei]: As I have amended the meeting minutes, because I forgot to include where we spoke about doing a nomination for Claire. Oh, good. So I have amended that and included that, and I can look it up and screen share it.
[Tom Hamel]: Okay. Okay. And do you have the November minutes? I couldn't find it in my email.
[Frances Nwajei]: No, the November minutes, the meeting was combined November and December. Oh, right.
[Tom Hamel]: That's right, right. Okay, thank you.
[Frances Nwajei]: All right, so let me pull up the amended one that's been done. So everything is pretty much the same, with the exception of the fact that at the very end, after FY23 mini-grants, I added nominations, because at the very end of that meeting, we did discuss nominating Gabby for CLEP. and the voting was to take place at this meeting. And I had forgotten to include that information when I sent the original meeting minutes out.
[Tom Hamel]: Thank you for adding that.
[Smith]: Would we be able to change the word clerk to secretary to match the bylaws?
[Frances Nwajei]: Okay, does it say secretary of the bylaws?
[Smith]: I wasn't able to find a position for clerk, and Tom filled me in that he thought that that was the same thing as it paralleled to secretary in the bylaws. Is that right?
[Tom Hamel]: I think that's right.
[Smith]: Yes.
[Frances Nwajei]: That's right. Thank you, Susan. What are we using? Are we using secretary? Are we using clerk?
[Susan Bibbins]: It says secretary in the bylaws.
[Frances Nwajei]: Okay. All right, so let me make the change right now.
[Unidentified]: Awesome.
[Frances Nwajei]: Okay, so everyone, I'm going to, whilst you guys do the voting and stuff, I'm going to send this copy out to you. Sorry for the email bombardment.
[Tom Hamel]: Were there any other recommended changes or amendments that people have? Let's see, head shaking now?
[Evangelista]: No, it's all good.
[Tom Hamel]: Great. All right. Do we have a motion to approve the minutes?
[Smith]: I can make a motion to approve the minutes.
[Tom Hamel]: I'm going to write this down. Do we have a second?
[Smith]: Heather is raising her hand to second.
[Tom Hamel]: Thank you. Great and all in favor say aye or raise your hand. Thank you. Any abstentions?
[Unidentified]: Great.
[Tom Hamel]: They are approved. Thank you, Francis. So our next agenda item, website update. I'm gonna turn it over to Linda to update us on the website.
[Smith]: Yes, good news update. The web edits that everyone has contributed have been passed on to Steve, the Director of Communications, and Lisa, the Director of Community Engagement, Community Affairs. They've been working together on the website and Lisa had sent me an updated page. I've checked it against all the edits. She got all the edits and the page, the new site is going live on Monday. So mark your calendars, check out the new website on Monday and happy birthday, Tom.
[Frances Nwajei]: Thank you, Linda. And I wanna make sure everybody knows, on Monday, they are switching over. So we might see some, we might see all. Hello friends. We might see a little and we might see nothing, but fear not, the webpage will be more updated. So if you're looking at the webpage now and it looks like the old webpage, please don't worry about it. Don't send me an email. We know it's not. We know, we know. And I'm excited because this one looks cleaner. There's a lot of information that we've taken off and I feel like we can add more up-to-date resources, right? So I was looking, I was like, wait a second, we don't even have the transportation access pass information on here. That is something that the MBTA has. for people with disabilities, right? So, boom, I made sure that that went on there. But as we find credible resources that we know are still active, we can just simply send a request and that link can be added on. I'm not quite sure what's, I'm going to ask if it's possible because there's a section that says, meeting minutes and meeting agendas. I'm going to ask if we can bring our body of work forward. I don't know, there's stuff in there that I saw from 2017 on the old one, but could we just start afresh with our September cycle, right, which is really this current year that we're in. just so that it doesn't get all confusing. Like if somebody wanted to see, hey, what have folks been up to? They can open up, you know, the 2022 to 23 cycle and review those minutes. But I, again, so that's something I was going to ask. And then Joe, I had, Joe, you had sent me something a while ago about a friend of yours that does something with wheelchairs. So I was hoping to have some conversation with Joe at a different time to figure out if that's a link that would, you know, that's worth going on the website. I just, you know, I just couldn't come across the email in a timely manner. And, oh yeah. So there might be a little bit of homework because somebody gave me a list of all these different like rec spaces and organizations that they had put together a long time ago. It was actually Shanine Pellequin, who is a recreational therapist. and also the city's, oh my gosh, Shanine, I'm about to call Shanine the city's playground inspection person because I've just forgotten the actual formal name. But the issue, you know, it's not really an issue. We don't know. Everything has changed post pandemic. So we don't know like, you know, what's updated, what's not updated, but it's a brilliant, brilliant list because My gosh, I mean talk about real adventure style recreational opportunities. So we might want to. split and say a couple of us take some of those businesses on the list to call just to make sure they're still active before we then put them on the site. So if you don't mind, I would like to drop that in an email to all of you. But don't feel that this is something that you have to do. This is just if you don't mind. And that's it, yeah. website. I'm excited about it just looks fresh.
[Smith]: Yeah, yeah something else along those lines Francis as far as like updating that came up in the, in the comments, as we were updating the links was that. kind of eight year old PDF on service animals. And it looks like that was done in conjunction or like in collaboration with the health department. And I'm not sure if we I'm not sure how that process works. If we want to collaborate with the health department again, or if they have something already about service animals.
[Frances Nwajei]: Yeah, I think if we were to do anything with service animals, we would have to go with what the federal laws are, right? Service animals are not the same as emotional support cats. So I want to make sure that that's very, very clear to people, there's a clear distinction. And that is why emotional support pets don't necessarily fall under ADA reasonable accommodations and things of that nature. So if we were going to do that, and I'm sure that the Board of Health probably did it as well, but I think that that's something that can be updated later on. And the only reason I say that is because I know the director of the Board of Health is actually going to be on leave. for a month as of tomorrow.
[Smith]: Do you think it would be better just to link directly to the, is there a place to link to the federal regulations or guidelines on it? Would that be better?
[Frances Nwajei]: You can, but it might be better, but it would be less accessible. If we start thinking about language access, it gets cumbersome.
[Susan Bibbins]: I think for our state in particular, the emotional support animals, the regs are slightly more giving than the federal regs. For service animals, the federal regs are it. The be all and end all.
[Frances Nwajei]: There is a site, there is a site that I used to use which I, you know, it's called askjan.org, you know, it's sort of like my, it was my go-to, oh my gosh, somebody's just come up with something that I didn't even know existed and how do I take them through this process and help them. So it's, I would say it's more of a practitioner's side, but it's incredibly helpful. And I've not referred back to it since in my time with the city, but I can look back and see if their language was a little bit simpler in terms of service animals. But only because there is a clear distinction and it always created It always created confusion with people assuming that they had certain rights that they actually didn't have. And not just confusion in the workspace, confusion in many other spaces as well, right? You could bring your service animal into many businesses, many locations, but actually you can't, your emotional support animal is not granted the same rights. So you would not necessarily be able to walk your miniature horse through the mall. And the reason I picked that is because equinines are actually like very up there, really preferred in terms of providing support. I don't know if folks have heard of equinine therapy and emotional support, miniature horses are really in as emotional support animals. And pigs, specific kind of pig as well, I just can't remember which one.
[Susan Bibbins]: I'll check on the Mass State website because I believe they make the distinction and have something to say about emotional support animals. If they do, I'll just copy it and see if we want to include it. That would be great. Thank you, Susan.
[Frances Nwajei]: Maybe what we should do, too, is if we take things off sites and we include them, we should probably find a way of mentioning where we're taking the information so the site can be helpful.
[Unidentified]: That's a really good point.
[Frances Nwajei]: Right. It's a good point. Yeah. So, OK.
[Tom Hamel]: If we come up with more resources, Linda, should we be sending them to you?
[Smith]: I'm happy to pass them on, but I defer to Frances on the process. Frances, if you would rather have them sent to you. Yeah. Either way.
[Frances Nwajei]: Yeah. If you come up with more resources that you feel that send them to me so I could just hit forward and get them to Lisa, Emma, and Steve for update. If it's like a list of links and things of that nature.
[Smith]: So, oh, sorry. I was actually just going to read your question from the chat. So you go ahead.
[Evangelista]: Yes, you can go ahead and then I can fill in on it, but. So I just submitted a question in the chat about the process, because I went through the website and I had a lot of questions and I said, am I going to send this to her in an email or should I create an Excel spreadsheet? And, you know, what information? So to instead of. creating a bigger issue, I just kind of waited and I hear this conversation. So what would make it easy for you? Like when I'm looking at that site, a link doesn't work or is it Excel?
[Frances Nwajei]: I would say wait at this point because the new web pages being so what you're looking at is actually old information.
[Evangelista]: Correct. I didn't send you anything.
[Frances Nwajei]: Right. So I would say wait until Monday. Well, because they did say it might not recognize. I would say wait until at least Wednesday and then match the list that you actually have. To what you were viewing, because the new website is the web page is viewable. As just to be because. I feel that if you send me the list, it's not necessarily going to correspond because the list is based off information that you're looking at now, not information that's already being corrected.
[Evangelista]: I'm sorry, my phone is still ringing and I don't know where it is. Turn it off. That's all right. I did not send you the information. I just wanted to know once we get this site up and then once I start checking it, then if I have questions, you want me to just kick you an e-mail or as a spreadsheet better?
[Frances Nwajei]: Either way, whatever is easier. Thank you.
[Evangelista]: Thank you, Yvette, and thank you
[Tom Hamel]: Linda and Francis for moving this forward. As you said, very excited about it, debuting on Monday through Wednesday of next week. I know our next item is the logo design discussion. I know Melanie is here. Francis, do you want to do? I don't know how long the website logo design piece is.
[Frances Nwajei]: OK, so the logo design discussion basically goes like this. Please help. If you've got anybody or anyone that would be interested in coming up with something fabulous for us, they can either come and talk it out as a group. We could meet individually. That is truly unique and representative. Let me know. So it's really just an SOS to say, Please don't let me do this by myself.
[Unidentified]: Okay, so are you talking about a logo for disabled?
[Frances Nwajei]: Your logo. Your logo for the Commission on Persons with Disabilities. A logo. Okay.
[Unidentified]: So why would, I'm sorry, wouldn't that be a great project to send to like the arts department at Medford High School?
[Frances Nwajei]: Possibly, but at the same time, you should also have some input from members that are- Definitely. Yes.
[Unidentified]: Possibly- But you could also, or you could also ask them to meet, say kids in the art department, meet with disabled students in the high school. And what would you like to see on a logo? and then ask them to create. I'm just throwing it out there. I think that's a fabulous idea, but can I, you know... Or the graphic arts department.
[Frances Nwajei]: Like I said, please don't make me do this by myself. If you want to make the connections and do that and bring the feedback back, that would be great. So I... Hello?
[Unidentified]: No, I don't. But I... I feel comfortable in public schools, I taught in them forever, to say, this is what we're looking for, blah, blah, blah. But also I think it's partly pulling in young people who have a passion and then enabling them to connect with disabled people more. That's all.
[Tom Hamel]: I like your idea. Yvette?
[Frances Nwajei]: What I can do is I'll email you, Sue. I'll email you Leo's and I can't remember his last name. He's the graphics. He's in charge of the graphics class. And then maybe you can have some, you know, communication, you know, if it's something that can come together.
[Evangelista]: So I would just to put a suggestion out there, you know, as this commission is building and wants to be known, is there, could we possibly create a subcommittee where we actually put a proposal out to the community and get community engagement. And then we could maybe have one or two meetings at the library where we actually work on creating this logo. And that way, it's kind of open to this intergenerational community. And then, you know, what Sue and Tom were saying as far as making sure that individuals that want to talk about their disability or be involved, they be part of that. It's like two separate invites. There's overall invite, hey, this is what we're trying to do, but make sure we invite individuals that are going to be willing to speak up and share on that. Then put the two together and involve the library.
[Frances Nwajei]: You could certainly do anything that you wanted to. I just want to make sure that this logo and our identity is completed by July. Okay. So that way we have to have something by July. Okay. We might have to have it even before that because that's the reason Melanie is here. So just so you know, the whole identity of the commission, it's nothing new. You're just coming on board at the cycle whilst it's being discussed. But I think that that's a great idea.
[Unidentified]: So you bet. You and I can start the committee.
[Frances Nwajei]: OK. Now just remember, subcommittees, please, Subject to open meeting laws okay. What subcommittees are actually subject to open meeting rules so just remember that.
[Unidentified]: Oh, I'm sorry I don't know much about that but whatever. I'll look through that, and you bet. chat about whatever in open meeting or whatever.
[Frances Nwajei]: Well, here's the thing. If you do start if you do form a subcommittee, you have to post your meeting date at least 48 hours. I know about that 48 hours. Yep.
[Unidentified]: Okay.
[Evangelista]: Could we maybe Oh, sorry, Tom.
[Tom Hamel]: Go ahead, Gabby.
[Evangelista]: I was gonna say, could we maybe make a motion to vote for one person to be able to reach out to maybe the library? I think that's a great point because they publicize a lot of like their events with like the teenage age group and kids and things like that. So maybe we could make a motion for someone to contact them and kind of get the ball rolling from there.
[Unidentified]: You're saying for an exact date of when we might have that kind of a subcommittee meeting, or what are you saying? I'm not sure.
[Evangelista]: I was just proposing to make a motion for somebody to be able to reach out on behalf of the commission to the library, and then we can kind of take it from there either at the next meeting or if we want to do email follow-up. So it doesn't need to be a specific date, but maybe just a motion for by the time we have our next meeting, someone to have been in contact with the library.
[Unidentified]: Melanie. I made a suggestion.
[Melanie McLaughlin]: I think that you guys have great ideas. I think these are all really important. And I think that I was just saying to, I just messaged Tom, I don't know if you saw it, Tom, but I think, you know, even motioning to make the subcommittee and motioning for the, you know, subcommittee or one of you guys to contact the library so that I think it could be one motion together to do that. And then if you're suggesting the motion, can I call you Gabby or Gabrielle? Yeah, Gabby. Yeah, Gabby's great. Yeah, I know we met before, so that's why I was, yeah. Good to see you. So I was just gonna say, so if you're suggesting it, I think you just make the motion and wait to see if one of your colleagues seconds it. Okay.
[Evangelista]: I am making a motion for somebody to reach out to the library to get the ball rolling on organizing a logo.
[Melanie McLaughlin]: and a friendly amendment from one of your colleagues might be and to create a subcommittee.
[Susan Bibbins]: And a friendly amendment to that would be creating a subcommittee to work on creating with community support and involvement, including the library and classes at the high school level, a logo for the Commission for Persons with Disabilities.
[Melanie McLaughlin]: And identity. And then Gabby, do you accept that amendment? Yes, I do accept that amendment. And then you see if any of your colleagues are willing to second. I think we have a motion.
[Tom Hamel]: It looks like soon as a second time.
[Susan Bibbins]: Yeah, so it do we soon would you like to second that is there. No I propose the other right.
[Tom Hamel]: There is a second for that I know, I don't know if this moved too quickly for some people, so I just wanted to make sure that... Great, so all in favor? I. I. I. I. So, anybody opposed? Anybody abstaining? All right, great. So I have to write down who made the motion Gabby. The amendment. Nice job, Gabby and Susie have a second.
[Unidentified]: Great.
[Tom Hamel]: So I know that that's so do you prefer Susie or what do you prefer, what do you prefer.
[Unidentified]: I don't care. When I'm in trouble. People call me Susan. You're not in trouble.
[Tom Hamel]: I hope I never get in trouble on this board. So can let me call, I'll call you Sue and then Susan, you're okay with Susan?
[Susan Bibbins]: I'm okay with Susan. All right, great. I answered to Sue, so it's gonna throw me for a loop.
[Unidentified]: We can call you on this board then, it doesn't matter to me. Wait, I'm confused. Susie, you've been signing Susie in your emails and on your voicemail.
[Frances Nwajei]: Yes. That's why I don't care. Are you okay? Because I would get really confused if we started calling Sue, Susan. never call me Susan. Okay, so can we do Sue as we had and then Susie. Sounds good. Okay, we're moving on. Gabby, I hope you've taken notes on this very important situation.
[Tom Hamel]: Very important distinction.
[Frances Nwajei]: And can we have a caveat that there are no Francis's allowed, no Heather's allowed, no Beth's allowed, no Joe's allowed.
[Tom Hamel]: It'd be too much to handle. So to come up with who is on the committee, do we need to, I don't know what our next procedural step is to do that.
[Susan Bibbins]: It's usually appointed by you. Oh, wow. From full of volunteers.
[Tom Hamel]: Happy birthday, Tom. Happy birthday, Tom.
[Susan Bibbins]: I know that Susie and Yvette were both interested.
[Tom Hamel]: and being on the committee. Is anybody else volunteering to serve on this subcommittee?
[Melanie McLaughlin]: Well, you also have to be sure you don't have a quorum just, right, with the subcommittee.
[Tom Hamel]: Say that again?
[Melanie McLaughlin]: You just have to be sure you don't have a quorum with the subcommittee, so obviously not one more in the majority, so just mentioning that.
[Tom Hamel]: I was thinking no more than three. Yeah. But two can work too, so if no one else is interested, we'll go with two.
[Unidentified]: All right, Yvette, you and I, woo!
[Tom Hamel]: Thank you. All right, Melanie, are we ready to move on to the next agenda item? Great, so Melanie McLaughlin has joined us and she is going to talk about, I believe, a disability awareness day and maybe some other stuff. So Melanie, you're up.
[Melanie McLaughlin]: Thank you. It's good to see everybody. I am Melanie McLaughlin. Some of you might know me as a school committee member, but as importantly or more importantly, I'm sorry, more importantly, I am the parent of. three children, two of, well, children, I have two, three young adults, I should say, two that are currently in college. And then my youngest is in eighth grade and she has an intellectual and developmental disability. And so we have a few people in our family that have disabilities, myself included. And so we have some experience and I'm really interested in the issue of, I work for the Federation for Children with Special Needs, which is, a disability advocacy organization, and I am a project manager on a project called, project director on a project called Mass Family Voices, which is about healthcare equity for individuals with disability. And so I do.
[Unidentified]: I'm sorry, you said family what, what did you just say you work for?
[Melanie McLaughlin]: Yep, the Federation for Children with Special Needs. So that's fcsn.org is their website, fcsn.org. What was the part that you work for? I work for them, the Federation for Children with Special Needs. I work on a project called Mass Family Voices with them.
[Unidentified]: Oh, Mass Family Voices.
[Melanie McLaughlin]: Yep. And I work on healthcare equity for families that have disability. So helping them access healthcare, being a voice at the policy table, family voice at the policy table. doing presentations, what have you. All of that to say is that I'm a disability advocate, both personally and professionally. I have worked really hard. It's one of the reasons I ran for school committee, was trying to have our schools be more inclusive and be more thoughtful about meaningful inclusion for everyone and all children. In particular, children with disabilities and other communities that are often marginalized, so economically disadvantaged, minority students, English learners. I do a lot of work for marginalized children. All that to say, I think Medford has work to do. I think that there's Happy to say I think there's willingness there and I think there's a great administration that cares about this issue as well and so I think this is a really wonderful opportunity for the Disability Commission to hopefully rally and be cohesive and get information out there like you guys were saying in terms of the library. There's so many great organizations like Heather's group, supporting families with autism and the Special Education Parent Advisory Council. We have the Walnut Street Center here in Medford. I know the Kiwanis does work with adults with disabilities. There's all kinds of groups, but they're very disparate. We don't have any cohesive identity in some ways. And, and what I really am interested in seeing, and 1 of the things that I'm working on teaching my daughters and others is a disability pride. Right? I think that it's really important to be able to. Advocate for people with disability and to also. share experience, strength, and hope with disability so people aren't so afraid of or unwilling to talk about it or be part of it. So recently I saw an event that I thought was really interesting. They called it an un-march. a non-march event for disability, which, you know, you usually hear march for, you know, march for whatever. So this was a non-march event. It was sort of a play on like, you know, for people who are not marching, who cannot march, right? Like a non-march. parade for say disability pride or something like that. I thought that was an interesting idea. I know Tom used to work at the Federation for Children with Disabilities too, so I know he's familiar with the Federation used to have something that they called shovel, stroll, something, roll, walk that they did. That was a fundraiser for the Federation. But I'm just trying to think of various ways that we can bring the disability community into the community. One of the ways that we do that would be to have a disability pride day. It's been really great to see the LGBTQ plus community come together and do their first gay pride parade. I think last year was their second gay pride parade and it was much bigger than the first. I was at the first. The second one was awesome. Frances and I were there and we were just like, ah, that's what we're sort of talking about. We need to do this with disability. And I was talking to one of the city councilors, Kate Collins, who was really interested in the same idea. And I think we're stronger together, right? I think that these various groups could be stronger together and really to have an identity. So I think it's important. It's something I would like to see. So that's one topic. that I wanted to share with you guys and identify and that's one of the things that Frances and I have been talking about. We've also been talking about the Americans with Disabilities Act and the need to really amplify the voice around the fact that there's a lot of places that maybe aren't really in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, particularly as a school committee member, I'm wanting to focus on our schools, but I think that this is a citywide problem, not just a school problem. But specifically, we started a pilot program essentially at the high school to have this conversation. We just sort of started the conversation in the beginning of last year. It turns out somebody had been working on this a couple of years before, and then the administration changed. This work has been sitting there for a while, and we're trying to really revive it and pick it up again. We've created a database of all these pictures and everything else that are things that need to be done. There's a lot of low-hanging fruit, for lack of a better word. There's a lot of really small easy fixes that can be done right now. Then there are some larger, more major issues which everyone's talking about. We hope we're going to be able to build a new high school at some point, but in the next 5-10 years, I don't think that that's necessarily going to be right away. In the meantime, what are we doing about these ADA needs? You cannot you can hardly access the front door of the high school in a wheelchair. I was at the high school on Saturday for the Spotlight Theater Group, which is an adaptive theater program. There was an individual who was parked at the bottom lot where there are some spaces designated for disability. When you get out of those spaces, there's no curb cuts to be able to get onto a curb. There's no curb cut to get off the curb to get into the crosswalk. You literally have to go into the road, come around to the road, risk being hit, then go all the way down to the media center where there is a very narrow not to code. I'm not an expert, but it certainly doesn't look to code to me in terms of the width for a wheelchair over by the ramp where the ramp is the access ramp to the media center, which was built more recently, which is why there's a ramp there. The ramp in the front of the building is not accessible. It does not work for wheelchairs. The incline is too high. The cobblestone over the front entrance, you can't get a wheelchair over the front entrance, not only a wheelchair, my daughter has difficulty, she has vision impairment, so it's very difficult for her to walk on uneven surfaces. So there's that issue. When you get to the door, I'm just giving you guys some examples, I'm not going to go through all of them, I just wanted I think there's some really egregious things that I think should be addressed sooner than later. When you get to the door, if you push the button to open the door, the door comes out at you, so you're in front of the door. If you're a person in a wheelchair and you're in front of the door and you need to push the button so that you can access the school, the door will come at you. Instead of open for you, which is a little bit more expensive fix. There's the signage issue is a huge problem. There's not a lot of signage to tell people where to go and what needs to be done. Essentially what we said was we really wanted to get. an assessment of the school for ADA needs. Like a consultant assessment, like an out-of-district consultant to come in and do an assessment of the school. We were hoping for some grant money around that. It doesn't look like that's happened. Now, we did in the meantime get some small money from ARPA funds where one of the small fixes that we thought could be done that would maybe invigorate the project was using more contemporary symbol for the disability. You guys might have seen that symbol, it's like a forward leaning.
[Unidentified]: Yes, wheelchair forward.
[Melanie McLaughlin]: Yes, exactly. That was created here in this area, triangle. We were able to get some money to get decals to overlay the current signs that we have outside of the buildings at each of the schools to have the more progressive sign. The more up-to-date sign, we also got some stencils to be able to spray the parking lots, the parking lot spaces with those signs. We did have a little bit of movement forward with that, which was exciting. Unfortunately, there's been no movement in terms of actually getting that work done and having between the DPW and the buildings and grounds at the high school facilitating. No, no, Frances says there is. So go ahead, Frances.
[Frances Nwajei]: I'm sorry. The work of the stenciling and the DPW has to be done in collaboration with EPIC, which is an organization of individuals with disabilities. So it takes some coordination between the DPW who said, yes, they're willing to do it in collaboration, Mother Nature, You know, we need the sky to stop having dandruff and some like level of reasonable weather and our friends at EPIC so that it can be a joint. Oh, well, that's good.
[Melanie McLaughlin]: That's an update. I'm sorry. I just thought that DPW was so backed up that they have not been able to do that yet. So that's good to know.
[Frances Nwajei]: No, the only thing they haven't been able to do is bring the stencils over and the decals over but I did speak to them again today because Joan was actually expecting it, and they said they'll get it for me before the week is out.
[Melanie McLaughlin]: So Susan has been a representative with Francis at these meetings. We've created a Google Drive where we have accumulated, like I said, a series of photos. There's probably 50 photos in there that identify different places within the school. Another thing is the food pantry. There's other community organizations that have been really great about wanting to help people with disabilities and not really knowing how or what to do. For example, the micro pantries, I had talked to them about there not being any accessible level micro pantries for individuals in a wheelchair. They very, very graciously offered to put one at the high school. Unfortunately, somebody because when you don't have disability expertise at the table, this often happens and not by any fault of anybody's. It's nobody trying to be malicious. People are actually trying to help, but they don't necessarily know what is helpful and what isn't because they're not persons with disabilities as you guys know. Put the micro pantry at the entrance to the high school, which is inaccessible. The accessible micro pantry, was put in an inaccessible location, if you guys are following me. We are. Bureaucracy at its finest. People trying to do well, but not really understanding. I'm sure Tom has talked to you guys about this as well, but this is part of the commission's role as a whole throughout the city to be looking at what is going on here. It's not just about curb cuts, it's about access and what this really is like for people with disabilities. I would love to see You know, I have these dreams and I'm, you know, I'm definitely someone who's a boots on the ground person to like, I'm not just putting stuff out there. I'm happy. I'll get my hands dirty and be right there with anybody that wants to do the work because I think it's important, but I love this idea of like. like a disability photo exhibit, right? Like really showing disability and life with disability in Medford. So individuals with disability, or even if they don't want to be photographed as individuals, just sort of some of what the world looks like to them or perspective or whatever I think could be super cool. I think working with the CCSR at the high school on some disability related or disability themed projects is important. The CPAC has done a lot in terms of creating a disability awareness program at the schools. There was a curriculum that was created a year ago after many years of struggling to get that going. That was finally created and they did a disability awareness program, which they did a disability history and then they had teachers and staff come in and do it like I think a six-week course all about disability-related topics and they would have advocates come in and others, but I suspect that people in the commission did not know about that. I know you guys are fairly new, but I don't think the previous commission knew about that either. That's part of the issue is that there's not a communication across systems to make like you guys should have been invited to those, you should have been participating in those. Because I think people don't necessarily recognize that this group exists, that that doesn't often happen. You guys should be the experts that people are going to when they're asking questions about disability in the city, you know, to ask how you weigh in. And that's really what your role can and should be. And I'd love to, I'd love to help however I can to make that happen. Because you know, I'm in it for the I'm in it to win it, I'm in it for the long haul. My daughter and I are in this for the long haul and I wanna make the world a better place for her and for people like her and like me, people with disabilities. So that's the scoop of what we really do.
[Unidentified]: You're also a Medford citizen. I am. And you want to make Medford accessible. 100%, that's absolutely true, yep.
[Melanie McLaughlin]: It not only make it accessible, but it has to be. We're out of violation in the law with a number of things. And so we risk, frankly, a significant lawsuit. And that would cost a lot more money than really figuring out how to make this accessible.
[Frances Nwajei]: Melanie, I wanted to remind you of the other thing that was discussed, the event, hopefully in April. And I'm looking at my notes and for some reason I wrote just April 2023, celebrate our disability, the all day events that you had talked about.
[Melanie McLaughlin]: Yeah, what we had talked about at the meeting for the ADA, and yeah, we have to circle back, because that's coming up super quick. What we had talked about doing was a screening of Crip Camp. Has anyone here seen Crip Camp? Yeah? Yeah. Good, yeah. So we talked about doing a screening of Crip Camp. Obviously, it's not a child-related event, right? So that would have to be an age-restricted event for that particular screening. But we talked about, did we talk about a resource fair?
[Frances Nwajei]: Yes. So basically, it was having the screening of Crimp Cramp and then having some sort of resource fair where there would be materials, you know, maybe, you know, representatives from different organizations that do adventurous recreation for people with disabilities. You know, let's bring the M.O.D. I mean, I don't even know if I'm just throwing this out there.
[Melanie McLaughlin]: Yeah, just putting everybody in the room.
[Frances Nwajei]: Yeah. That's right. Let's bring the M.B.T.A. Like, you know, who can help with these tap passes and these, you know, Charlie cards, like just a whole variety and looking at the different age ranges and styles of of disabilities. Listen, if you're a dentist and you work well with children on the spectrum who have sensitivity issues, I welcome you to come because parents are going to need your card. You know, so that's what I think that we had talked about having that sort of We did and we talked today was a Saturday we we thought of I remember saying that it fell on some it fell on a disability of some of I don't know remember this March 21st is.
[Melanie McLaughlin]: 321 is Down Syndrome Awareness Day, but I don't think it was that. No, it was a Saturday in April. We'll ask Joan Bowen because Joan was taking the notes for the ADA. But basically, it's a lot to plan, but I think we could do a mini version of it, you guys, and it would be more like just getting back to the special education department in Medford does have what they call a transition fair. And that's on March 23rd, I think, and that's going to be at the bistro and that's at night and that but that's very specific to students transitioning out of the high school and into, you know, either the transition program or the college world or whatever. So it's very specific to education, whereas, you know, I was at something recently. Boston Special Education had a resource fair. It was so awesome, which is one of the things that made me think about it. It was like the Autism Insurance Center was there, the Federation of Children with Special Needs was there, there were Easterseals, so many camps like summer camps, there were so many active organizations like for gyms and accessible gyms and what have you. We could recruit for tables for people to come to that it would essentially be a resource fair to start, and a screening and sort of just would be the two together on this particular day that we were figuring so that was really it was about getting people in the same room and letting people understand that they that we all coexist so like I would imagine the Walnut Street Center, I would imagine folks from triangle, you know, thinking about really widening the circle around disability too, so that we're thinking about all kinds of disabilities. We're thinking about behavioral health supports. We're thinking about any of these organizations that are in Medford that can really come together so that we can see each other as part of a whole community. That was what we were thinking. That's coming up fast if we're going to do that.
[Frances Nwajei]: I think the resource fair, Melanie, is a lot simpler, is a lot easier because there are quite a few organizations and usually it's like space and availability and between the schools. So Joan will definitely know the date. I want to say I think it was like the last Saturday in April. Okay.
[Melanie McLaughlin]: I'll reach out to Joan tomorrow and confirm that and email you guys about it. And then I guess what we would say is, you guys, you know, we need folks to coordinate who's gonna be, you know, soliciting people to come to the resource table, you know, bring a resource table and what that actually means. And I would assume it will be at the high school, maybe at the bistro or something. So whether they actually need tables or what have you, I can talk to Joan and Charlotte Heim about it, who do the transition fair. And I think we can get some things together. And what I can work on, What I can work on is getting the screening underway, so I'll work on the materials for the projector and the film and that stuff.
[Frances Nwajei]: And Melanie, there'll be a separate space in the high school for the screening, right? We won't have to do the screening on a different day, will we?
[Melanie McLaughlin]: No, the whole point is that we'll do the screening first, I think, and then have the resource, or do the resource fair maybe and have the screening. We can figure that out, but the point was that we would have people come for essentially for both. Yeah, so I'd love to hear what you guys think about all this.
[Frances Nwajei]: So we've got Heather, and then we've got Yvette. Actually, I think that was first, right? We've got Yvette, and then we've got Heather. And happy birthday, Tom. Melanie, you may wonder what's going on. Tom celebrated his birthday this month. He said it was a big one. So we've just been randomly saying happy birthday, Tom. Happy birthday, Tom.
[Tom Hamel]: Thanks, Melanie.
[Unidentified]: Yvette, you're on. I'm on. You're on mute, Yvette. Oh, Yvette, we're not hearing you. It better.
[Evangelista]: Is that better? Yeah. OK. Yeah. So thank you very much, Melanie, for for that, and it's just encouraging to hear that, you know, there are individuals within this community that are really thinking about those things. ADA compliance should happen, but it doesn't happen in the most obvious places. Right. And so come some of the things that you discuss I mean the pride when I read that on the agenda. I did not know where angle that was coming from but I like that about being you know being pride of proud about your disability in a sense, so to say, and being able to talk about it in a comfortable environment. At our last meeting, I think Sue and I had mentioned, and I'm calling Sue Fowler-Finn.
[Unidentified]: Sue Fowler-Finn, go ahead. Yeah.
[Evangelista]: We had briefly mentioned a marathon. So I don't know if this is something that we're talking about at the school, maybe the parking lot can be utilized for that. And like you were talking about the different types of games, maybe that's something that can be, you know, where we do host something like that and to allow everybody to really participate, right? Because you want that communication and that contact. The other thing to think about is like, I know at the high school, I think the high school where the cable access station is, I mean, our commission can have a television show because we should be out there. All of these people that you're all talking about. is like, we should be inviting them onto a show every month, and we should be getting our individuals that are in our community to host these shows. And I mean, that's how we're putting, you know, the individuals there. And I say this because I do the radio show, my co-host has a disability. My other co-hosts have, you know, so my family, it's all there. But I know that not everybody has the same point of view as, you know, the group of us that are sitting at this table.
[Melanie McLaughlin]: I think that's so exciting. If you go on to Medford Community Media on the website, you'll see that there was a show that was running. Two years ago, I started it called Ed Talk. It was a studio-based show and I was doing education-related stuff once a month and I had students at the high school that were working with me to run the camera and run the studio. Then COVID hit and then it stopped because the students weren't available or whatever, and I've just been wanting to restart that again. But I'm a documentary filmmaker by trade. That's my life before this, so I totally hear you on the communications and I think you're absolutely 100 percent correct. It's not hard to do because the studio will train anyone that wants to learn that Medford Community Media will train you on studio cameras and the switch. And all you need, we needed three people. We needed one for each camera and one or two in the studio. So three to four people. And then if you want to host, you have a host. And I can help you guys, you know, again, set that up, get ready to produce it, whatever. But I think that is a fantastic idea.
[Evangelista]: I think that's awesome. I mean, I did the the words and music over at West Medford Community Center. So, you know, we work with them to make sure that we could do our live shows. Right. That's why we had the hub set up at West Medford. So there are different. Right. So and I still do my stuff over at Somerville Media Center. So I know that the high school is there is I think that the media center is being underutilized. I know that they have their little side kitchen. I don't even know if that's up. So there are so many things that this group, we can host our own show. And then we don't have those issues about getting our stories out, getting our updates on our website. You know, people will come to our show to get our monthly updates. So it's a pleasure meeting you again, Melanie. I know Divya is gonna be excited about this.
[Melanie McLaughlin]: Yeah, I hear you. It's nice. I would love I think I have your email. So I'll follow up with stuff. Okay.
[Unidentified]: So Melanie, I think it was you that mentioned triangle. And I know triangle do get an offshoot with media. And so on. I want to say it's called Pleasant Street still in Malden. where they have a media place. And it was started, I want to say five years ago. And it was all disabled people. And a media place. And they did live TV, blah, blah, blah. And I think it is still there on Pleasant Street.
[Frances Nwajei]: It is 420 Pleasant Street in Malden.
[Unidentified]: And it was awesome. It really, it took the hearts, it like embraced the hearts of disabled people. And I hope it's still running. You're saying it's still running.
[Frances Nwajei]: It is still running. Triangle has expanded into so many different avenues. I know, I know. Because of Triangle, we have Epic and the Accessible Icon Project, which began- They should be your first show.
[8kUnsaXIsWQ_SPEAKER_06]: Triangle could be your first show.
[Frances Nwajei]: yeah but anyway just i'm sorry i have the horrible job of being a facilitator and heather needs to get in with her comment because we have 20 minutes left and then i need to bounce back to yvette who's um i actually have to sign off but i want to say that i don't know if medford has that type of thing yet okay Well, we will follow up. I'm sure that we can work closely between Yvette's experience, Melanie's experience, my experience. We can work closely with Medford Community Media. I mean, even if we're not ready to go live yet for whatever reason, we can still begin the process of providing communication in an accessible manner. All right. Okay. All right. Thank you, Susie. Great meeting. I'm going, I have to leave. Okay, bye-bye. All right, over to you, Heather. Tom, I'm doing a terrible job. I'm firing myself as facilitator.
[Tom Hamel]: We're doing it together, but yes, we've had a lot of great ideas. So Heather, we'll make sure you have your chance to share.
[Frances Nwajei]: I think you're right we will need a logo eventually I mean for now maybe we just say, you know, we just do it as we're doing now goes through the Office of diversity but I would love nothing more than for the city of Medford to have its own logo that people see everywhere and becomes recognizable. But we'll get there. Oh, yeah. I requested ARPA funds for this. We have no choice but to get there.
[Evangelista]: We're not giving that money back. For the logo, you requested ARPA funds?
[Frances Nwajei]: Yeah, but it's not a huge sum of money. It's not like, oh, you know, we're a corporation going to get a logo. But I did request some funding to assist us with Oh, the commission needs an identity. The identity is not free. I want to make sure we don't lose Heather. See, I told you, horrible facilitating. I gladly quit. I quit facilitating.
[8kUnsaXIsWQ_SPEAKER_06]: I was going to say something that's on a totally separate topic, so you should close the loop on this.
[Tom Hamel]: All right, so Melanie shared a lot of great ideas. Well, we had a lot of great ideas shared in all of our conversations, and I tried to take good notes. Gabby, I don't know if you were taking notes or not, but we can combine them later. I feel like we need to figure out next steps. about what we can do. I know we formed a subcommittee earlier in our meeting. I don't know if people are interested in helping with the Disability Pride Day or a radio show or some of these other ideas. I feel like we have 15 minutes left and I know we have a few more agenda items. Anybody interested right now, if you want to raise your hand, I guess, if you're interested in working on a radio show.
[Evangelista]: Tom, can I say that we're talking about a television show?
[Tom Hamel]: Television show, sorry.
[Evangelista]: Television.
[Frances Nwajei]: And, and Tom I think that that is free flowing I think that that can be built out, I don't feel like that is something that we need to have a concrete, I mean Medford community media is part of the city. You know, so I think that, you know, between Yvette's experience, Melanie's experience, my experience, we'll be eventually able to build things in and folks can work directly. And if anybody else is interested, then they can, yeah, see that they can join on. But I think like we really got to focus on what we're doing for the resource fair. That's in April.
[Melanie McLaughlin]: Yeah, and I just wanted to add, if people do want it, that's what I was going to say. I think that's the priority. If people want to help out with the resource share, that would be really great to know. And to Heather's point, I was just going to finish up with whatever, and I would like to stay for the rest of the meeting, if that's okay with you guys. But the Federation for Children with Special Needs has an annual conference, and it's March 4th. It's a virtual conference. It's $15. You know, there's scholarships if folks need them for the $15. But it's a virtual conference and they have a ton of resources and information and Heather just put that in the chat too. So thank you, Heather. It is my favorite. I do work for them now. So full disclosure, like I said, but even before that, I was on their board of directors because it was my favorite conference, I think that they really help people of all walks of life. So anyway, there's that. But we do need people, if we're really gonna do this resource fair, we need people that are interested in volunteering to help us organize.
[Evangelista]: And when you say us, who's us?
[Frances Nwajei]: Is it this group and... Us is the Commission on Persons with Disabilities. Oh, okay. This is our way of ensuring that we have a presence. So a lot of times I, you know, I send information out and I say things like, oh, you know, this is happening, please sign up. It's not part of a mass blast. It's dedicated specifically because it has a disability something focus, right? So maybe something that seems like it could be positive, or unfortunately, negatively impacting people with disabilities.
[Melanie McLaughlin]: Well, can I just add, I don't think it's just the commission for the resource fair.
[Frances Nwajei]: I think it's not just other interested parties, but members of the commission are expected to, if they can, yeah. to support, otherwise if I do it, it becomes another city event. And then I have to honestly say, why are we here? We talk in spaces, right? But now what are we doing? So this is the beginning of our thing, just like when we do start the television show, it will be the beginning of our thing on behalf of persons with disabilities.
[Evangelista]: Oh, I just wanna ask a question. So if we're looking at, we're at January, that gives us what, February, March to advertise, and then April. I mean, so- We'll be fine.
[Frances Nwajei]: We'll be fine, Yvette. I had to do pride for an entire city in what, three months? Yeah, we will be fine.
[Melanie McLaughlin]: But I think this is going to be the first one. It might be smaller than the next one, but it's our first one to get it out the gate.
[Evangelista]: Well, what I was going to say is that, you know, the fact that we are trying to identify a logo, this could be part of this, this gathering where And then I'll talk with Susan about it. But, you know, this came up after Susan, I don't know who, Fowler-Finn got off the phone. We're calling her Susie now. Okay. So Susie and Susan. No, Susie and Sue. Okay. But I'm just going to tie back with Fowler Finn, and then we'll tie in what we're talking about, because I think that could be a great kickoff, because we don't want to go out, push ourselves, and then we have to come back later on to talk about the logo. We can make this a bigger kind of thing. So thank you.
[Frances Nwajei]: maybe even have a table for people to submit designs. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. You know, Melanie put in the chat that she knows somebody that does graphics. I mean, I could make sure that we have like generic swag that just says City of Medford Commission on Persons with Disabilities. So I could just get like a limited supply of generic swag and reserve funding for like when the commission actually has like its own logo. So those are just, but we've got this, okay.
[Evangelista]: We're in it together, Frances is not in it by herself. Okay, is there a committee for this group?
[Tom Hamel]: I think that's our next step. So Gabby and Heather have both volunteered to serve and help out. Is anybody else interested on this? I don't know if we want to call it a committee, but Susan.
[Frances Nwajei]: Susan, who's really Sue.
[Tom Hamel]: Who's really Sue. Anybody know?
[Melanie McLaughlin]: Yeah, I wouldn't call this a committee. I think it's more volunteers because a committee would mean that you have to have public meetings and post them and everything. These are more volunteers from the commission who are interested in helping with the resource. I don't even know that we want to call it a resource fair. Maybe we want to call it Disability Pride Day. We want to help with Disability Pride Day. I'm deferring to you guys about what you want to call it. I like that name. Yes, Susan, did you have something you wanted to say?
[Susan Bibbins]: I like Disability Pride Day.
[Melanie McLaughlin]: Me too.
[Susan Bibbins]: I like the disability pride. I even have a shirt to go with it. Disability pride actually, I have on one of my t-shirts. But is this strictly Medford resources or Massachusetts resources?
[Melanie McLaughlin]: I think they could be Massachusetts, but I definitely think it's important to reach out to Medford, Chamber of Commerce, and others too to really try to tie in the community piece so that the people that are going to come and go are the people that are going to come and go and they're good to know about. But I think one of the objectives of the Pride Day is building community and making sure that people see us. When I say us, I'm not talking about the commission, I'm talking about people with disabilities. I identify as a person with a disability as well. So that's what I would say. That's one of the goals is to connect people and also for the community to really see us and see them as part of us. Because disability is natural, right? We all know that. Everybody's disabled someday. We're all differently abled. Right? And you're going to be disabled either through age, you know, hospitalization, accident, birth, anything, we're all ultimately disabled. And really, you know, I love disability is natural, too, and that people understand like, one of the problems we have with CPAC is that whenever we have an event, I think a lot of people who don't identify as people with disabilities don't come to the event because they think, well, that's not for me, that's for people with disabilities or kids who have people with disabilities. When in reality, the information is obviously for everybody and can be super useful.
[Tom Hamel]: Right.
[Evangelista]: I know I have a lot of- Sorry. I was thinking of making a Google Doc where people can include who they've contacted already so that we're not doing like an overlap of, you know, someone's been getting five emails from different people on the commission. I am happy to contact as soon as we have a date, like the Carroll Center in Perkins and things like that. I know they're not Medford, but they kind of have jurisdiction over a lot of Medford residents. So yeah, if that's okay, maybe I'll make a Google Doc so that that way we can see live changes. And once somebody has, you know, reached out to someone and heard back, we can kind of put a little note there so that we know we have an idea moving forward of how many people we're going to have and things like that.
[Melanie McLaughlin]: Gabby, I'd love to work with you on that, if you don't mind, just so that we can just do it in section so that we can get it all organized to start. I think that would be great. Then you can share it with folks who are interested in participating and we can start identifying who we want there. But I think a Google Doc is essential for us to be able to populate and share the information, so thank you.
[Tom Hamel]: All right, that sounds great. I just wanna be aware of the five minutes that we have left, and then we still need to take a vote on electing a secretary. And so why don't we wrap this up? It feels like this should certainly be an agenda item next month as we flush more of this out. So can we move, can we, everybody okay with us moving on to new business? All right, awesome. So thank you, Heather. All right, so the first item for new business is we talked last month about the secretary spot is vacant on the commission and Gabby is willing to serve as our secretary. And so I wanted to know if anybody wanted to make a motion.
[Smith]: I would love to make a motion to nominate Gabby as secretary. I second.
[Tom Hamel]: That was quick. All right. All in favor.
[Unidentified]: Aye.
[Tom Hamel]: Aye. Anyone opposed? Any abstentions? Thank you. Congratulations, Gabby.
[Frances Nwajei]: Only because I can't vote.
[Tom Hamel]: That's right. Well, thank you, Gabby.
[8kUnsaXIsWQ_SPEAKER_06]: Thank you, Gabby.
[Evangelista]: I will be. consistently about 15 minutes late, just because I have children and disability while class gets out, but we can coordinate filling in those few minutes. It's just for the semester, but.
[Tom Hamel]: Definitely.
[Unidentified]: That's good.
[Frances Nwajei]: Tom, can I sneak in quickly? Yep. Melanie, I don't know if this was the date. I just quickly went. April 29th is World Healing Day. I just remembered that we threw a date out. I looked it up and something happened and we all felt like that would be a good date. It was a Saturday date. Oh, you're on mute.
[Melanie McLaughlin]: I just said I'm emailing John Bowen right now just to get those notes, because I want to make sure, because everybody wrote it down. And then I will get that date to you all. I'm CCing you on the email, Frances. So we'll get the date for sure. And then I'll send, Frances, I'm sure you'll send it out to the persons with disabilities and keep folks in the loop. But I will confirm that.
[Tom Hamel]: Great, thank you. Thank you. Another item that came up last month, and Susie is not here, she'd asked us, or we'd asked everyone to send any trainings in Medford for folks with disabilities to her to collect. I didn't get a chance to talk with Susie about if anybody emailed her, but if you haven't, please send those ideas to Susie. And actually, there may be a way to incorporate that into, obviously, some of the other discussions that we've had. But I just wanted to put that reminder out there. And this is just in reference to, I think, one of the ideas was having a class at the library about using computers and computer training and things like that. I think there's a few more items and notes about that. Did anybody else have new business that they wanted to share in our last three minutes?
[Frances Nwajei]: I'm just really, really excited.
[Tom Hamel]: And then we don't have any public participation. Sometimes we have correspondence. Is there any correspondence that's needed to be shared at our meeting?
[Frances Nwajei]: No, I think that there's the MBTA has something that's coming up and I believe that you responded if that's interested in attending. It's a Zoom. It's through Zoom. It's an accessibility thing with their transportation. I think I shared it with all of you. So as I get those things, especially if they're free, like I just send them out immediately and, you know, please feel free to attend what interests you should your schedule permit. Amen.
[Melanie McLaughlin]: The spotlight theater program is having their adaptive performance in February of Annie. So I can let you guys know when that is, but that will be a lot of kids with disabilities performing Annie, so the adaptive theater. So we'd love to see you guys turn out for that too. So I'll make sure I get it.
[Frances Nwajei]: If you could let us know that, that would be great. And if they have a flyer now, I don't know, I haven't run this by comms yet. We don't have an event section on our webpage.
[Melanie McLaughlin]: You need to have an event section on the webpage. You guys need presence on the webpage.
[Frances Nwajei]: Right, maybe we can test it with their flyer and put their flyer on the webpage. I don't know if it's possible.
[Melanie McLaughlin]: And also you guys should know, just lastly, that Epic Warriors was one of the community grants that was awarded. and Medford, so I'm on the Community Funds Committee too, just full disclosure, and there was an application for Epic Warriors to work with students, individuals with disabilities, as they did last year and in previous years, so they did get some of that funding as well, so they would be great for the resource fair.
[Frances Nwajei]: I'll reach out to Jeff directly and say, once we have the date, I'll reach out and I'll say, Hi.
[Tom Hamel]: So great. So Melanie, a big thank you to you for joining us and sharing everything. It was great to have you. It was a great discussion. My pleasure. Thank you guys for the work you do. And yeah, so thank you, everyone. And we'll meet again next month.
[Frances Nwajei]: Thank you everyone.
[Tom Hamel]: We have to have a motion to adjourn?
[Frances Nwajei]: Wait, yeah.
[Tom Hamel]: Oh wait, go ahead, Frances.
[Frances Nwajei]: We have two hands up. I saw Yvette's hand sort of like going up. Oh no, I was gonna say bye. Well, there's no bye yet, because we can't adjourn yet. Do you have a motion to adjourn?
[Evangelista]: I have a motion to adjourn. I second that motion.
[Tom Hamel]: All in favor.
[Evangelista]: Aye.
[Tom Hamel]: Any no's? Any abstentions?
[Frances Nwajei]: No, I'm just kidding. Have a fabulous one, everyone. Thank you. Bye-bye.
|
total time: 24.2 minutes total words: 1654 |
|||