total time: 19.25 minutes
total words: 927
[Danielle Balocca]: Hey listeners, this is Danielle. And Shelley. Shelley is a radical Dravidian and racial equity activist.
[Chelli Keshavan]: And Danielle is a community mobilizer and changemaker. And this is the Medford Bites podcast. Every two weeks, we chew on the issues facing Medford and deliver bites of information about the city by lifting the expertise of our guests.
[Danielle Balocca]: Join us in discussion about what you hope for the future of Medford. And as always, tell us where you like to eat. All right, thanks so much for being here with me today. If you don't mind just introducing yourself with your name, pronouns, and who you are.
[Suzanne Galusi]: Thank you. So my name is Suzanne Buckley-Galusi. She, her, pronouns. I'm the interim superintendent right now for Medford Public Schools. My whole career has been in Medford, so I'm in my 28th year right now. I, just a brief maybe overview for people that might not know me. I spent the first 15 years of my career here in the classroom. So I taught a range of grades three, four and five. I started at one of the neighborhood schools that is I believe condos now up in North Medford. It was the Davenport school. And then when the McGlynn school opened in that first phase of new buildings, I went there and I was there for 11 years. And then I moved into school leadership for eight, spending four years as an assistant principal. Two years split between the Brooks and the Roberts, and then two years solely at the Brooks full-time. And then I moved into the principal role of the Brooks School for four years. And then the world decided to shut down. And the current structure for Medford Public Schools at that time, there was an assistant superintendent for elementary education, and an assistant superintendent for secondary education. And the assistant superintendent for elementary education was retiring. And I felt a great amount of onus and duty having my whole career be in Medford. I was raised here as well. I went through the public schools of Medford. And so I decided that I wanted to help lead the schools back from the shutdown of COVID. And so I moved into central leadership after that interview as the elementary assistant superintendent. And I did that for a couple years, and then it's just been the past two or three years that the previous superintendent, Dr. Maurice-Edouard Vincent, changed the structure. it shifted to the assistant superintendent for academics and instruction, and then the assistant superintendent for innovation, enrichment, and operations. And so I became academics and instruction, district-wide, pre-K to 12. Wow. And then this role. Yes, which wasn't on my radar, but I think again, with my strong ties to Medford, I very much am happy to step up and lead the schools in a place that's really near and dear to my heart and 100% has molded me into the educator and the human that I am today.
[Danielle Balocca]: Oh that's really cool. We're gonna talk a little bit more in depth about that and sort of like it's always nice to hear when somebody is in such a sort of like high leadership position that they've been through like sort of all those levels. So you're a student And you were an elementary school teacher, which like, I don't know how people do that. And then you've moved all the way up to here, right? I've sat in every chair. Yeah. I mean, I feel like that's always valuable. And I have a lot more questions about that and like sort of your future as interim. Before we do that, though, I'm going to backpedal a little bit and just ask you the question that sometimes is the hardest for people to answer. But we ask everybody, what is your favorite place to eat in Medford? And what do you like to eat there?
[Suzanne Galusi]: That's really hard. Okay, I mean the two that come to the top of my mind might not be what people maybe typically say. They're not your traditional sit-down. But I would say Magnificent Muffin has the best sour cream coffee cake muffins you've ever had. Their egg sandwiches are delicious as well. And I still can't find a better Italian sub than Bob's. And that's kind of like a weakness of mine. A little guilty pleasure, let's say. So a little South Medford, a little West Medford.
[Danielle Balocca]: Nice, yeah, we spend a lot of time at the Saints basketball. There you go.
[Suzanne Galusi]: So you get breakfast and lunch and dinner covered.
[Danielle Balocca]: Awesome. Great, so I think it sounds like maybe it was a bit of a surprise to you and a surprise to maybe Medford in general when the superintendent stepped down and you've taken her place. So I guess I'm curious to hear, going with the topic of the podcast, which is to think about diversity, equity, inclusion, a hot topic these days but how you like what you've noticed what you appreciate about Medford so far and all of your time here and then what you sort of what your hopes are for an impact on that going forward.
[Suzanne Galusi]: Wow, I could talk on that question for hours. I will try my best to answer that question. I think the first thing for me is that what I appreciate so much about Medford is the uniqueness of where it sits. And I say that because we have such a wonderful spectrum of diversity in Medford. And it is not to get off track, but it also is what was difficult for me. I will say calling my first snow day, which took like days off my life. We are situated between neighboring districts that are also so broadly diverse and Medford's like right in the middle. And you see that in our schools. So we have two elementary schools that are title one. qualify for Title I status, which means that the socioeconomic profile in that building is of need. And then we have two elementary schools that do not qualify for Title I status. And then when you have your middle schools and your high school, this diversity merges into our buildings. So we have a wide spectrum of need in Medford. Throughout my whole entire career, I have always been grounded and centered in making decisions that are best for students and meeting students where they're at and addressing what they need. And so whether we want to call that holistic or the whole child, but that is what has grounded me. And my dissertation focus for my doctorate was all around responsive culturally responsive practices in our schools and how we support leaders to lead that way. And where does instructional leadership meet culturally responsive leadership? And that push to having our school leaders be both instructionally sound and culturally responsive is the work that I'm grounded in. We've done, our school leaders are just that and we keep building that muscle. And so we did a lot of work these past couple years creating our instructional vision for Medford Public Schools, which yes, we want to make sure we're giving students content that is grade level and appropriate, but we want to make sure that when they come to school, they're meaningfully engaged and they feel heard and seen and represented. And it's very important to me to make sure that when our students walk through the doors, they feel welcomed through our doors. And there's a trusted adult for them that is saying, good morning, how are you? I noticed this or, you know, can I help with anything? That to me is the essence of education. Yes, in my three brief weeks, the world decided to implode a little bit. And so the day I started was the day of executive orders. And that has definitely, you know, left people feeling lots of different ways, and people have to, people are going to sit with that in different ways, but I'm all about making sure that students and staff are feeling safe, they're feeling well informed, and we're not going to change how we operate here at Medford Public Schools. So, and I feel fortunate that we live in a state that's going to make sure that people feel safe and respected and identified. Education to me is the business of humanity. And if you're not looking at the person, then we're not truly doing our job. And so making sure that we have that full view of what is going to make our students feel safe and ready to learn so we can make sure that they're exposed to the education they need to be exposed to is the work. And that's the work I keep pushing with our administrators.
[Danielle Balocca]: Yeah, and I'm curious like how you're doing this, like maybe what you're noticing is like going well, what you kind of want to build on for the future?
[Suzanne Galusi]: Sure, I think there's a couple levels here. So you know, not to nerd out too much on the education, but when COVID hit at the elementary level, there was a paradigm shift in how we teach students to read, i.e. the science of reading. And we were working on that shift before COVID, but we definitely kicked it into high gear after COVID. But what COVID also disrupted for us was our curriculum cycle. So we got a little off track with that, but there's been a tremendous amount of work at the elementary level to bring on new updated curriculum to meet state mandates, but also meet the needs of our students and make sure that our curriculum is also centered in equity and those culturally responsive practices. so that especially when you're talking about like English language arts, students are able to have those mirrors and windows and sliding doors so that they are able to relate personally to content and to characters as well as learning new perspectives and new ways at the secondary level It's a little bit more nuanced because some of our curriculum is self-created. And so what we have done for the past two years is we were fortunate enough to get grant funding through the Barr Foundation. And they are very focused on this work at the secondary level. Primarily the high school level, so a lot of the work had to start at the high school, but we've also included our secondary leadership in this. And so we've been partnered with some wonderful consultancies through the Barr Foundation, which is Unbound Ed, as well as Boston College Lynch Leadership, And so we've done a lot of work with our instructional leadership team, which does include some teachers as well, to really ground us in instructional practices that are tied to our instructional vision. So what does it look like, sound like, feel like for our students in the classroom and for what teachers are doing in practice? to make sure that our instruction is grade level, engaging, affirming to our students, and meaningful. And so that is ongoing work, but that is work that is training our school leaders and our teachers. And so this upcoming March Professional Development Day, those two things are happening. So at the elementary level, all of our teachers are getting trained in DIBLS, which is a progress monitoring, for reading and our secondary staff are working on our instructional vision and those instructional practices through training from our own staff as well as unbound ed.
[Danielle Balocca]: Wow, well you mentioned COVID and sort of and I feel like the you mentioned it a long time ago but we that was very helpful information and it's it's really nice to hear and I think One of the other things that was an impact of COVID was sort of this, the emotional impact, the sort of trauma for kids and being, and I also think like for, as a parent, like really understanding how much teachers are, not only like teach our kids, but like providing care, right? And like, and yeah, and so I think, I'm not exactly sure what my question is here, but I do notice like a change, a shift in that focus on social emotional. 100%.
[Suzanne Galusi]: And I think I'm proud of the work we did around that when we were planning for schools to come back in. And Dr. Edouard-Vincent was very clear on her priorities for getting students back in school and that staggered approach that we took. to making sure that our most marginalized, vulnerable populations were entering first, right? Get them back, get them anchored. And a lot of those supports that we created at the elementary level, which has kind of morphed each year, but that creation of Nexus as a specialist was, and we we were intentional on calling it Nexus, because it is kind of like that center hub of everything we do, because if students don't feel safe, they're not going to be in the zone of optimal learning. So you've got to get that first. And so for Nexus to really cover a lot of that behavior regulation at the elementary level, social, emotional, health. Those are key pieces to the whole rest of the day. And up here we have other systems of support for students. There's Nexus as a dedicated period of the day. But the increase of staff to help students navigate that, the increase of our programming to make sure that our students' mental health and emotional well-being is prioritized is most definitely a priority, but continued and ongoing work for the Medford public schools. That's great. Yeah.
[Danielle Balocca]: And, uh, yeah. One other callback to something you said before about snow days, which I appreciate, you know, that that is a really difficult call to make. And I remember being a kid and like always hoping for snow days. And then one time I heard Mayor Menino talk about how school lunch is like sometimes the only time that kids eat and I was like oh wow so like school does mean a lot of different things for a lot of people and it sounds like you know I think I always think about this like parallel process between like who's training the people that do the work and what they're doing for the kids right so like it sounds like you're also holding this responsibility to treat staff well and train them well so that they can treat our kids well and do a great job. And it sounds exciting. It sounds like, I know Medford now has access to a few more resources with the override to sort of like maybe bolster some of this work, but it sounds really great.
[Suzanne Galusi]: Yeah, thank you. And I do have to say that like survey data does show at the secondary level that every student has a safe person that they can go to. And that is very important, meaningful data to us. And of course, there's always going to be areas of data that are the grows that we have to kind of try to build that in that capacity. But knowing that the majority of our students, and I mean like 90%, feel that they have a safe person that they can go to that's an adult in their school buildings, I think is That captures the why of what we do.
[Danielle Balocca]: Can I ask a quick question about the district report card that came out recently? Yes. What do you want people to take away from that? What do you want us to understand about that system or what we're reading about it?
[Suzanne Galusi]: I think what I want people to know, and I briefly covered some of this at the school committee meeting on Monday, This is something that is a little bit going to be very flexible in the next coming months, in the next coming years, because this is the accountability system that was created federally and then also statewide to account for, right now, ESSA, which is Every Student Succeeds, and that is where our Common Core and our grade level standards come from. And within that and beyond local control, federal government wants states to have a mechanism for how you are complying to this federal mandate. And so for us, for many years, it was MCAS. That's what we used to say, hey, we're meeting this Every Student Succeeds Act. Previously to that, it was Race to the Top, and it was No Child Left Behind, just so people know the involvement of it. And now with the removal of MCAS, we're still beholden to the statute to say, how are you meeting this federal mandate? And that is what all the districts have been tasked with to say, what's our competency determination for saying, yes, we have these local graduation requirements we're going to meet, but how are you meeting ESSA? And so the report card is all part of that. And so it's our accountability. It's how the state and the government is holding us responsible for meeting that. And the tension of it right now is that even though ballot question two removed the compliance of MCAS as a graduation requirement, the accountability rating we get, which is what you see in that report card, we are still beholden to. And so the Department of Education is still requiring the participation in MCAS and still using it as an accountability measure. Like a standardized tool. Yes, so we're still, right, yes, so we still are responsible Students still have to take it. There really has never been an opt-out option. And I know for some families, I understand. I totally, as a parent myself, I understand both sides of that. But it is still mandatory for us. The participation is still a requirement. And our Medford Public Schools accountability rating will be determined by MCAS. Interesting.
[Danielle Balocca]: Wow, I didn't know that. That's interesting to know. Sorry, kids. You still got to take the MCAS. Well, this has been really informative. Is there anything that I haven't asked you about that you think is important for community members to know about?
[Suzanne Galusi]: Wow, that's a really good one. I think maybe just for me, yes, one small disclaimer. I'm trying really, really hard. My email is a very scary place to be. And I very much want to be responsive and approachable. I would recommend that if people need to reach out to me, they use the superintendent at Medford.k12.ma.us email. And they could always call my executive assistant, Lisa Malone. But I don't want people to think that if they're emailing me personally and I don't respond, I'm trying really hard, but it is like a black hole. And I very much have always been someone that believes in collaboration. And so that's why, even though I've been here for 28 years of my career, It was very important for me to still have and hold these meet and greets around the community, and so I'm doing them for staff at every single building, and I'm also doing them for caregivers in the school communities, both in-person opportunities as well as virtual opportunities, because they're agenda-free. but they are for an opportunity for people to meet me if they haven't, to learn a little bit more about me if they haven't, but for me to listen to their feedback. Plant seeds. I want seeds planted and I want to hear what's important to people because the decision-making for how we're going to move In the future, I need to hear from all these various stakeholder groups. I joined the CPAC meeting last night. I will be joining the LPAC meeting. And so as much as I can to be participating and listening is important to me.
[Danielle Balocca]: Well, thank you. Oh, thank you. It's been really nice meeting you and yeah, thanks a lot and good luck with the rest of the position.
[Suzanne Galusi]: Thank you, Danielle.
[Danielle Balocca]: I appreciate it. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. The Medford Bites podcast is produced and moderated by Danielle Balacca and Shelly Keshaman. Music is made by Hendrik Giedonis. We'd love to hear what you think about the podcast. You can reach out to us by email at medfordpod at gmail.com, or you can rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts. Thanks so much for listening. Guys, what's the name of the podcast? Medford Bites. Medford Bites. Good job.
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total time: 19.25 minutes total words: 927 |
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