[Roy Belson]: First is the National Merit Semifinalist, Ian Adams. Our next commended student is Serena Doe. Sophia Mackay, McKay, McKay. Michael Walker. And we have a few people that aren't able to be with us this evening, and I'll just read their names. James Kostick. Thank you, Mr. Superintendent. Congratulations.
[TM-L7tQLt0w_SPEAKER_09]: to all of our students. The next item on the agenda under suspension is one of a motion to look for the initial approval to move forward to apply for a grant to build a dog park in the city of Medford. And over the course of the last two years, there's been a lot of attention. There's been an advisory committee that's been established. And there's been a search throughout the city to look at the appropriate locations. That field of locations was narrowed down to four. They were studied by Andrew Leonard of Leonard associates to make a recommendation as to which would be the best in our community. The spot that they have chosen is one at the site down by the river in back of the Andrew and school. Presently, if anybody walks there during the day, you will see that there are a number of dogs that are down there, some leashed and some unleashed. This would be a facility that would actually be enclosed, and through the hard work of the members of the committee, they identified a source that we could apply to for funding from anywhere from $250,000 to $400,000 to build this. We put out a press release. We put it on the website, newspapers. We let everybody know the site that we were looking at. And then we took comments online from anybody who cared to comment on the site. And overwhelmingly, people liked the site. They thought it was a positive thing to do here in the community. So at this point, I'm going to call upon Mr. Leonard to just take us through the park. So we have an idea of what we're looking at. Some people have been confused as to whether or not it's right behind the playground at the McGlynn school. And that's not the case. That was a site that was initially looked at, but as you go closer to the river behind a barrier of trees, there is a, an even more suitable location that has been chosen as the number one So I'd ask Mr. Leonard if he would come forward and take us through.
[SPEAKER_18]: Good evening, Mr. Mayor, members of the board. It's my pleasure to be here tonight to describe the project that we are looking at. We're going to begin, we need to get the, can we get these? I think it's the ones just below that, Jim. The next one. There we go. Make it be just a second here. This always happens. Okay, so to give you an orientation of where the site is that we're proposing, we have here the Hormel Stadium, the McGlynn School, the playground for the McGlynn School, the windmill turbine, river is located all along this area, existing parking lot that's behind the school, community gardens, ball fields that are associated with the middle school and the large open space that is adjacent to the wind turbine is right in this area. The area that we're looking at for the potential dog park is on the other side of the heavy band of trees that is in this area here adjacent to or behind the parking lot and between the parking lot and the river. That area is shown here in a more detailed view. Here's the existing parking lot, the community gardens, the large open spaces behind the school and the playground. This is the band of existing trees, it's located in the area. There's a lot of open space in and around those trees between the existing path, the paved paths, that can be redeveloped. There's about six feet of grade drop across this area, so we would have to do some grading because the dog park needs to be, excuse me, the dog park needs to be relatively flat. But that's reasonably accommodated. There are a few trees we would need to remove, some that aren't very healthy and a few that we would need to remove just to give ourselves the area that we would need. There's a few regulatory issues that have to be addressed in addition to getting approval to look at this site. The entire site is within the riverfront zone as defined by the state. regulations, there's also a good portion of it within the buffer zone, the 100 foot buffer zone, so that would need to be addressed. We've had some initial conversations with staff and members of the Conservation Commission and it appears that this project would be viewed favorably by them. We have a number of elements that make this a desirable site in addition to just topography and location, vegetation and such. There is water and electric power available at the community garden and at the ball field, so it's just a matter of extending utilities out into the site. There is existing drainage that was installed as part of the original park construction, so we already have drainage in place that can be repurposed for what we need in this area. So it is a good site, a fairly easy site to develop physically from a utility standpoint. It appears that the administrative and regulatory hurdles can be overcome. So it's a good site from all those standpoints. Functionally, we have, let me just go back to the existing, to the, to the overall. So we have existing parking associated with the Hormel Stadium and the pathway that goes over. So there's parking available at many times. And then when the school is not in session, the parking lot adjacent to the community gardens and the ball fields would be available as well. As far as accessibility goes, we have accessibility at the, excuse me, We have accessible parking already in existence in this area here. The path system was designed to be accessible and it currently meets the criteria of ADA. There might be a couple of minor tweaks we would have to do. So from that standpoint, this is also an excellent site. So what goes into a dog park? All right, so We're going to have separate areas for large and small dogs, which has been identified as a priority. You need to have shade structure or trees for shade. We have plenty of existing trees. We'll be able to incorporate some trees within the dog park itself. We will provide a shade structure, a gazebo of some sort as well. Everything needs to be accessible as far as ADA and Mass Architectural Access Board is concerned. Because this is a year-round facility, and of course we have Darkness at night and the time a lot of people want to be exercising their dogs, we need to provide lighting. You need to have a water supply for dog fountains, for cleaning, and also for an irrigation system that is used to rinse the area. And I'll describe that in a little more detail later. Drainage system obviously needs to meet city and state regulations, and all the wetlands, floodplain, and riverfront zone needs to be met as well. Okay, so the existing site, this is the parking lot at the end of the school looking down toward our site. This is where the handicap parking is located and the pathway that goes down toward the site. Here you see again the pathway heading down toward the site, relatively flat, 5% grade or less. These are the two sites we're looking at. This is the large dog area. You can see that there's existing trees, both deciduous and evergreen, and a large, you know, sloping but relatively flat-ish grassed area that can be redeveloped. And then the small dog area down here at the bottom is, on the bottom right, is similar to the large dog area, just smaller again, and can also be developed. So this is the plan that we've come up with for the park. Access, again, would be from the parking lot down the path, and you would come into the park, into the dog park at this location, where there would be a gated entrance. These are double gates, or sometimes they're called airlock gates, where you would open the gate, you'd come in, take your dog off the leash, then open the second gate to come into the dog park itself. overall area about a third of an acre, so about 150 by 80 feet or so. The primary surface of the dog park that we're considering at this time is called rice stone. It's a somewhat coarse material with grains about the size of rice. It's been successfully used in parks in Arlington, Cambridge, Peters Park in South Boston. It is the favored surface of the funding agency, the Standard Foundation, that we will be approaching for funding. It allows for urine to percolate through the irrigation system, can rinse the surface, and everything percolates down in and diffuses into the soil. It's a very safe and sanitary method. Because that surface is not a ADA compatible surface, particularly, you have to provide a surface path throughout the area that provides access to all the exits and any of the elements within the area, within the dog park, such as gazebo, canine agility, play structures, and the general facility within. So there's a pathway system within the enclosed area. Entire thing, as I said, is fenced by five foot, five foot high chain link fence, black vinyl chain link fence that would enclose the entire area. And again, we would retain some existing trees within the area and provide a new gazebo structure. Then the small dog area, about a third the size of the major area, be located in the smaller open space, completely separate with its own airlock entry and a duplication of facilities. So again, you have agility elements, pathway, benches, shades from the surrounding trees. So an area where people can safely exercise and be with their smaller dogs and not have to worry about inappropriate interactions with large dogs. We would provide some new trees and plantings as part of this, as part of the project as well. So this is a view looking into the large dog area from the main entrance. You can see the gazebo over on the side. In this area here, the shade structure. We often provide boulders for dogs to run around and jump on and jump off of. There was an existing tree that we would enclose with a tree well, which provides seating and shade, and then some additional agility structures, such as a step ramp. Again, we would have lighting along the area, new trees, benches, all along the pathway system. Small dog area is very similar, just essentially a smaller version of the big dog area, and has many of the same facilities and ideas. So this is just some visual elements to give you a sense of what we're talking about here. I've recently, within the last five years, developed two projects, one in Arlington and one in Somerville that you may be familiar with, New Washington Street. and the Arlington facility at Thorndike Park near Alewife Station. Some of these pictures are from them, some are also pictures of other dog parks around the country. So this shows a typical gazebo with benches. This is the one within the Somerville facility at New Washington Street. These are the gated airlock entries that we're talking about. They're big enough to have a bench within them so you can sit down and have plenty of room to take your dog's leash off and put it on. Again, the black vinyl chain link fencing is a very cost effective and secure method of enclosing the area and also relatively blends into the landscape because it allows for looking visual, looking through. This is the Arlington facility. This is the rice stone surface. It's fine to walk on, although again, not AD accessible. Dogs don't have any problem running on it. Because it's a granular surface, it needs to be enclosed with an edging. We use recycled plastic materials. And then in each park, we provide a dog wash, dog watering area with fountain and drainage. Usually something like this can have a people fountain and a dog fountain, as well as providing a spigot for maintenance. Typically, various benches, lighting, dog valet with plastic bags in a place to dispose of feces, trash receptacles. And then canine agility elements. These are some of the ones we developed in Somerville. At that point there weren't a lot of things on the market yet that were park grade, but these were some ones that we developed using standard pipe. We had, we used curbing, reused curbing to make a ziggurat or climbing structure. On the right you can see a, now it's available, a commercial structure that's available. Rocks put in place and, you know, just anything you put out there, dogs will have fun playing on. So it's all about providing stuff that's fun for dogs and their owners. So if this goes ahead, this is what we're looking at for a general timeline. And this of course is, dependent on lots of different variables that are coming up. But we are in the October, November thing now where we are developing our schematic design and seeking approval, general approval from appropriate city authorities to go forward with our funding application. The Stanton Foundation, which is the organization that we'll be approaching for this funding, has got a new round of funding becoming available at the end of October. We would like to get our grant in as soon as possible to get onto their schedule for the next round of funding. projects that they may fund. Provided we get favorable results from them, we would be proceeding in January and February with design development, further interaction with the city boards and groups that would be involved with approving the project with the eye of getting this project out to bid in spring of 2016 for construction next year. So that is what we would like to do if we, you know, if things proceed favorably at this point. So that's the end of my presentation and I'll turn it back over to Mayor McLennan.
[TM-L7tQLt0w_SPEAKER_09]: Could you get the lights?
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you.
[Ann Marie Cugno]: Thank you for the presentation. That was really done very well. I do have a question around a couple of things. What would the percentage of the funding be, do you know, when you say that you would be putting the application in? Would they provide all of the funding for us?
[SPEAKER_18]: They typically- Mr. Lennon, could you get a little closer to the mic? Sure. I believe that they typically, the Stanton Foundation typically looks for the entity that is applying for the grants to provide 10 to 15% of the project. The rest of it is funded by Stanton.
[TM-L7tQLt0w_SPEAKER_09]: And we already have the 10 to 15%. which dates back to the Fast Lane 14 project here in the city. One of the lay down areas when they built all the bridges was the stadium at the parking lot at Horn Mountain. In terms of mitigation, we received $60,000 for that. That was set aside for a dog park, so it's being used for the initial design and schematics and things.
[Ann Marie Cugno]: Right, that part I knew, that's why I was hoping that if we get the funding, they would cover for the rest of it and we wouldn't have any problem getting that. The other thing is the maintenance on that. What is your average cost on maintenance on something if we go ahead and do this?
[SPEAKER_18]: Typically, the maintenance is provided through whatever agency maintains the city's parks at the present time. Part of the Stanton Foundation grant includes a some money for both minor capital improvements and maintenance going forward for, I believe, a three year period. In Arlington, they provided $20,000 a year, I believe, for those first three years. I'm not sure if that's part of their current program, but that's what they did. What we did in Arlington is they actually hired a retired person who lived in the neighborhood who provided 10 to 12 hours a week of time during the summer season to actually do cleaning and policing of the park, as well as what was provided by the Parks Department.
[Ann Marie Cugno]: Okay, and do you know if within the three years, the $20,000, let's say, in that particular situation would have to be used up, the $20,000 would have to be used up in each and every year, or is it something that you could roll over a little bit?
[SPEAKER_18]: I don't know the answer to that question. We could find out what we've approached. They have been going through some changes in their structure of their funding, so we still need to pin down some details like that, but we certainly can get an answer to that question.
[Ann Marie Cugno]: Okay. And as far as the rules and regulations, would it be just like the regular rules of every park that we have? You know, we just put up the signs and everybody abides by, you know, the children to make sure that our children aren't going into the park if they're not being supervised and make sure that if we have people walking to the dog park, because there is a lot of children in those areas, that they'll be leashed. Because I know we do have situations where sometimes, unfortunately, people don't abide by the rules. So I don't know if that's something that could be regulated a little bit more, if there's someone that we could have to regulate that a little bit more.
[SPEAKER_18]: It's a two-pronged thing. One is the fiscal design of signage and making sure it's visible, making sure that it's logical set up in terms of that. But it's also in terms of the community and the community groups that are involved with the parks themselves. Usually the rules for the park are posted clearly in the entrances, oftentimes in the parking area as well. But of course, you need to get the word out. And that's what we found there is that the community groups that are behind the the dog park efforts. You have PAWS from Medford here as your group in Arlington. We have ADOG and there's a Somerville Dog Committee as well. Each of those committees is involved with their members and most, you know, the greater percentage of dog owners in each community are members of these, can become members of these things. And they, through their newsletters and communications, really get the word out and provide some self-policing in terms of getting people to cooperate with that, that sort of thing. So it's a double-primed effort, good design and good communications.
[Ann Marie Cugno]: Looks good. Thank you very much and thank you everyone for your work. It looks really wacky.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: Mr. Mayor.
[TM-L7tQLt0w_SPEAKER_09]: Mrs. DiBenedetto.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: Oh, I'm thrilled to have this in front of us this evening. I have a beautiful big dog who's going to enjoy this. We've both been at both your other parks that you've designed. I find that the Somerville one is a little narrow.
[SPEAKER_18]: That was a function of the site.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: Right, and I understand that. And the Ellington one is newer. I can tell that it was done after the Somerville one because the features for the dogs are a little upgraded.
[SPEAKER_18]: Yes, the Arlington Park was about two years after the Somerville one. The Somerville one was actually a community development block grant park and some Somerville money. Arlington was a Stanton Foundation. So that's why Stanton, Arlington was a little bit different because we were working with the Stanton Foundation. requirements and their desired elements in there. But the Somerville one was a, yes, it is a very narrow park. If you haven't been there, it's only 40 to 60 feet wide and about 240 feet long. But that was a function of this tiny little piece of land that was repurposed. It's a great brownfields project because there was Sorry. I digress.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: So my other point is that we're here tonight just out of a courtesy, really, so that way you can show us where you were thinking of putting it. And the reason you're here is because it is so close to the schools. But seeing the demonstration and how far they are away, I'm sure most people in the community that want this for their dogs are going to be very, very careful and understand that the schools are close by. So I have no problem with it. I love it. I do have to say, my dog doesn't like the stones as much as she likes the other elements, so just a little feedback. The texture is an issue, maybe, yes.
[SPEAKER_18]: It's not 100% that that would be the material. We use that as their preferred material. They do consider other ones, depending on the communities involved.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: Well, just a little dog feedback. When he first gets in, it takes him quite a while to get used to the pebbles. I also was hoping to move this for approval with Mr. Skerry.
[George Scarpelli]: On a motion to approve by Mr. Skerry, seconded by Mr. DiBenedetto, Mr. Schapelli. Just a couple of questions that have happened in the past. I'm sure they're rectified, but being so close to playgrounds and structures, I know I work for Recreation Somerville and we have a few ball fields adjacent to a few dog parks. Now, I know some of the questions that happened in the past just to ease residents' minds, sometimes the smell of the urine from the dogs. That's not a big issue.
[SPEAKER_18]: The irrigation system deals with that in a major way. And that's set up to run once a day, early in the morning, real early in the morning, 4 or 5 o'clock or something like that, and rinse the area completely. And especially with the rice stone surface, It completely dilutes and rinses that down into, even in the hot summer that we've had, there has been no issue with odor from either of the various parts I've been associated with that have this irrigation system to rinse. That's not been an issue. In terms of proximity to playgrounds, the Somerville one is isolated. It's not near any playground or park facility. But the Arlington one is right smack in the middle of one of the most highly used recreation areas in Arlington in terms of soccer, lacrosse. and all things that use grass, play fields, with no major issues that I've ever been aware of. Peters Park in Boston is immediately adjacent to a playground in a highly dense area, and that has a portion that's a dog park. The whole idea of these dog parks is to provide a safe area where dogs can be off leash and not be in a dangerous situation with people and children. And I feel that, especially in this location, where we're a good distance from the school, and shielded visually from it as well, I think that it offers an excellent location.
[George Scarpelli]: And I think the question in one of the other locations in Somerville is that you stoned us. It wasn't the irrigation, was it? Not the Washington Street.
[SPEAKER_18]: There's no irrigation system in the other one.
[George Scarpelli]: Right, and that's why that was an issue. That's why that's an issue. OK, I just want to check. The questions with the watershed and the flood lines or the water lines with the lake, that doesn't seem to be a big problem, something we'll push through.
[SPEAKER_18]: The dog park is approximately elevation 10, the average elevation 10 to 11. The national flood zone for zone A is five feet, so it's five feet above that, but not in the floodplain. We will have to meet all the regulations for conservation and riverfront zone. We can't meet that, I've done this before, both the Arlington Project, the two I'm working on in Dartmouth, the Greenfield Mass, are all within conservation zones and we've successfully obtained approval from the Conservation Commission. Because of the drainage system, it's actually an improvement over just the grass here in terms of the overall drainage. So it doesn't cause any additional floodwaters
[George Scarpelli]: In addition, we've had preliminary meetings with the conservation commission and DEP. I'm a dog person. We have Gabby loves to run and I don't, so it's really nice to finally have an area. You don't realize how big Carr Park is until you're chasing your dog around for 25 minutes. Again, thank you very much.
[John Falco]: Mr. Mayor, thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you for your presentation. Uh, I think this is a great idea. I support it a hundred percent. Um, I'm a dog lover and have a dog myself, so this is going to be great. It'll be great. Great to try this out. Um, we should have a couple of quick questions. The irrigation system, is that automatic? Does that like go at a time? Okay, great. And as far as the, you had mentioned, I try to make sure I didn't miss it. You had mentioned you're going to be removing trees.
[SPEAKER_18]: We would be removing, I think, plants, as I, we did have a new survey done, so this is an accurate survey based on existing trees that are there now. We would be removing four white pines, a hackberry that are alive, and then a red maple that's another tree that's dying. And a couple of them we can probably transplant. They're small enough to transplant. They've done some recent new plantings in the area. And a couple of those, there's a willow we can probably move easily enough. And then we would be planting 1, 2, 3, 4. I've got 8 or 10 trees, new trees being planted.
[John Falco]: So we'll be at least replacing the ones that are being transplanted? That's correct. OK, I just want to make sure on that. Thank you. We'll be on the plus side by 3 or 4 to 1. Yeah, that's what it sounds like. So that's perfect. Thank you. And as far as the, uh, the construction piece goes, it says, uh, bidding and construction is, um, in the spring and summer. How long will it take to construct like as far as once you start?
[SPEAKER_18]: Um, it's fairly straightforward, but it's still a three to four month project.
[John Falco]: Susie probably during the summer when Kids are not in school.
[SPEAKER_18]: Well, that we were trying to do it. If everything lined up, that would be our best possible schedule to do it as much as possible in the summer. Yes.
[TM-L7tQLt0w_SPEAKER_09]: Okay, great. Thank you very much. Good luck on the motion. Mr. Skerry. Second by Mr. Benedetto. All those famous say aye. All the ayes have it. Motion is approved. Thank you very much, Mr. Len. Thank you.
[Ann Marie Cugno]: Thank you. Thank you.
[TM-L7tQLt0w_SPEAKER_09]: Next item is a report on not can protocol for public schools. Mr. Superintendent,
[Roy Belson]: Mr. Mayor and members of the committee, there are a number of issues associated with opiate use that we have been addressing in our schools and in our community and throughout the state. And this is another issue that needs to have you involved so that you can give us some guidance as to the direction of the schools. Tonight with us, we have our supervisor of health, Tony Vento. as well as our supervisor of health education, Rachel Perry, and Penny Funioli, who is working on the city side in substance abuse as well, prevention. Now, Narcan is a medication that reverses overdoses from heroin or other opiates. At this time, our police department has been trained in the use of Narcan. And also, Armstrong Ambulance personnel are able to administer this medication. We generally would call them if we went to an ambulance. The incidence of opiates or heroin used by students in our schools is very small. However, the possibility always exists that a student, a staff member, or a visitor to our schools could experience an overdose. And during the period from 2000 to 2015, there were zero deaths in Medford from opiates for individuals below the age of 20. The highest numbers occurred in the 20s, 30s, and 40s. 88% were males, while an immediate call to 911 is the approved Department of Public Health protocol, is a medical emergency that must receive a rapid response. And Narcan, in most instances, reverses the overdose. The question is, should we train our nursing staff so that we can respond rapidly while we wait for 911 services to arrive? So that's the discussion tonight. I'm going to call up our supervisor, Tony, to talk to you a little bit about it and to answer any questions you might have. We want to give you information on Narcan. Our goal is to inform you about opiate use, about the possibilities of having our nursing staff prepared to administer it. If we elect to do so, it will take some time to put it in place, but tonight we're looking to see if you want us to move ahead with this type of training. So I'll turn it over to Tony.
[Toni Wray]: Good evening. We thought that this was a good time to start the discussion about Narcan administration in our schools. I mean, we're all familiar with all the media and the exposure that we're listening to. So we thought this was a good time to start providing some information. I did put together a packet for you, and I'm not going to go through every slide within it, but just thought I would mention a few key points about it. The packet was put together from a number of presentations and conferences that I attended and others attended on the issue of opioid abuse. So the key points, the adolescent brain isn't fully developed until about the age 24. And we know that substance abuse is damaging to the developing brain and some of these changes appear to be irreversible. The incomplete or immature brain development is demonstrated by teenagers in many different behaviors. And they usually are risky, impulsive behaviors. And there's no consideration or little consideration of consequences by students of this age. Alcohol use by younger teens does predispose their brain to addiction. So we know that the younger a student starts drinking and drinking regularly, there is a predisposition to addiction. and addictive behaviors. Some key points about opioids and opioids. Opioids are present in the compounds found in opium, and opioids are manufactured as semi-synthetic substances such as heroin or synthetic substances such as methadone. We know that the opioid sales, deaths, and substance abuse treatment Admissions have increased epidemically since 1999. There are many risk factors. They're identified in your packet to misuse, addiction, and overdose. Abuse usually starts with a prescription for a pain reliever given in the case of surgery or injury. Oftentimes the prescription will run out or is not renewed and then the person starts looking for obtaining it in other ways, most often from a friend or a relative. For those with addiction problems, this will eventually lead to a heroin use because heroin is very cheap compared to the prescription drugs. So as Superintendent Belson mentioned, Narcan or Naloxone is an opioid antagonist. It binds to key receptors in your brain to reverse the effects of the opioids. And thus it saves life by reversing respiratory depression. It's administered by a nasal spray and to those who are suspected of being in an overdose situation. And 911 is always activated prior to the administration of the spray and rescue breathing is also initiated. It does save lives and it can be a first step towards recovery for many people. So right now we're investigating the feasibility, we're collecting information, we're monitoring the situation amongst our students. We are aware from the communities that care survey that the prime drugs of choice in the community for our students are alcohol and marijuana. And we know our instance of opioid abuse is low in the student population, but we do recognize that this can be a life-saving medication. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health and the district attorney's offices are encouraging school nurses to be trained to administer. and there are many resources for training and free training for school nurses in the area. We estimated startup costs to be about $1,500. Mr. Mayor, any questions?
[TM-L7tQLt0w_SPEAKER_09]: If I could, I'd like to say a few words. Obviously, we all know that we're dealing with an epidemic. as it relates to this issue, and that is known throughout not only this community in the Commonwealth, but throughout this nation. And many people who suffer from substance use disorder suffer sometimes not because of their own doing, but because of injuries that they have received during high school athletics, because of a bad choice that may have been made at one time, and end up in a battle for their life. And we have to be there to do everything that we can to try and support, and to educate, and to prevent, and to intervene, and to support in this whole terrible crisis. Because we've seen too many of our younger population, not only in this community, but in so many surrounding communities who have been taken for one reason or another, related to a substance use disorder. Now can we know, save their lives and give us an opportunity with all of the good work that's being done by the Attorney General's Office, by the Governor's Office, in starting to try and put in new regulations so that people take a stronger look at how they can help and that we take stronger action to help. For a long time, people who had this use disorder were referred to as the junkie down the street. or somebody who is a troubled person. So we stay away from that family. But what we found out in this community is that people are better educated about what's happening around this issue and packed this auditorium one night to talk about friends that they had lost, what the resources that are needed, how there has to be changes with the insurances and the coverages, how they have to be more beds to support and to help a lot of the people who suffer from substance use disorder. Now, for the medical personnel, the nurses at the school, I just want to go on record. I believe they should administer E-Carry Narcan because for many. It's a life saving drug and it's a way for us to help them and try and save them and give them the support to carry on. Yes, thank you.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: I agree wholeheartedly. Um, this is something that has touched my family directly. I lost my brother 14 years ago. Um, and he was a heroin addict for a very long time before he was, um, he sustained very good life the last four years of his life on methadone. And, um, we were glad to have him back because you lose, you lose, you lose that family member to the disease. And then, My family was lucky enough to have him back until he passed away. So I am very glad that as a school system, that we are being proactive. And that could save lives of not only our children, anyone in our school system, anyone we see. Let's not wait for something to happen to someone's child, to someone's brother, to someone's daughter, to someone's sister, to someone's wife, to someone's husband. best people on the front line trained and let them carry Narcan. I am trained and I carry Narcan. I pulled it out of my bag just to show people in case anybody wanted to see what it looked like this evening. The point that you didn't say that really stuck with me when I read through every bit of your literature, Tony, was addiction starts for 67% of people between the ages of 12 and 17. Addiction starts from junior high to high school. That's when this starts. And if we can get them then, we won't lose them. We won't lose our MEDFED children. I will not attend wakes from friends and family that I know for children again, like we were last year. I don't want to ever do that again. Thank you to the superintendent. Thank you to you. I want to see this implemented immediately, and I would like to, um, propose that we work, we move this forward this evening and, um, approve this on the motion of this is the better debt.
[TM-L7tQLt0w_SPEAKER_09]: Oh, second. Seconded by Mr. Falco on that motion. All the babes say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
[SPEAKER_03]: Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye.
[Ann Marie Cugno]: Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye I think, again, it's looking forward. It's looking to make this city better. And it's part of the education that we need. This in itself is a wonderful first step. I know we've had a lot of first steps within the last year. But it's, again, the part of the education that we need to have. I know that we had a meeting last year. I know that there's a lot going on. I'd like to see that meeting of group of people that were all together the last time from around the city and more people come and join us to see where we are what we can do and where we could where we could go and again the feedback has always been it's just wonderful to hear when we're going forward because we do want to have and we want to help everyone who is around Like my colleagues have said, we do not want to go to any more wakes and funerals. So if we could just put that on the agenda at one point in time again to see where we are with all those people that we did meet with, I'd like to see that continue.
[Toni Wray]: Actually, we have a group here tonight, and we're going to address some of the other measures that we're working on at the high school, because this is only one piece of a many-pronged approach. Thank you.
[TM-L7tQLt0w_SPEAKER_09]: Thank you, Tony. We're going to get to those groups in two seconds. Approval of the amendments to the meeting of October 5th, 2015, and the motion of Mr. Skerry, all those in favor say aye. Opposed, no. The ayes have it. The amendments are approved. Approval of the bills and the transfer of funds on the motion approved by Mr. Benedetto. The secretary will call the roll. Ms. Cuno.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
[TM-L7tQLt0w_SPEAKER_09]: Mr. Benedetto.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
[TM-L7tQLt0w_SPEAKER_09]: Mr. Falco. Yes. Mr. Scarpelli. Yes. Mr. Skerry, yes.
[Robert Skerry]: Mayor McGlynn.
[TM-L7tQLt0w_SPEAKER_09]: Yes. By vote of six in the affirmative, one absent, the bill is approved. Approval of the payrolls and the motion approved by Mr. Falco. The secretary will call the roll. Mrs. Cuno.
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Robert Skerry]: Mr. Benedetto.
[Unidentified]: Yes.
[Robert Skerry]: Mr. Falco.
[John Falco]: Yes.
[Robert Skerry]: Mr. Scarpelli. Yes. Mr. Skerry, yes. Mayor McGlynn.
[TM-L7tQLt0w_SPEAKER_09]: Yes, by vote 6 in the affirmative, I want to ask that the payrolls be approved. Report of the secretary, there's none. Report of committees, none. Community participation, none. Report, the update report on the substance abuse- Mr. Mann. And education program, Mr- May I move for suspension of the rules?
[John Falco]: We're under suspension. I have a couple of resolutions if I may. Sure. Mr. Falco. Thank you very much. First one is, be it resolved that the Medford School Committee extends its congratulations to Mayor McGlynn and his team for outstanding dedication ceremony in the memory of Crystal Campbell, Martin Richard, Lindsay Liu, and Officer Sean Collier. The event at the East Garden will be a significant memorial in celebration of the lives, the courage of the survivors, the heroism of the first responders and the law enforcement officers, the skill of our medical teams, and the commitment of all our affected communities to peace and justice. So thank you very much for the event yesterday and for the dedication of the Peace Garden.
[TM-L7tQLt0w_SPEAKER_09]: It was very successful. Thank you. A lot of volunteers did a great job in putting together a great ceremony. On that motion, all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Mr. Mayor.
[John Falco]: Resolutions adopted. Mr. Falco. I have a couple of additional resolutions. Be it resolved that the Medford School Committee congratulate Mayor McGlynn and Sheila McGlynn on the birth of their granddaughter, Nora Cushing Brady. Nora is the daughter of Kathleen and Bill Brady. Congratulations. Thank you.
[TM-L7tQLt0w_SPEAKER_09]: On that motion, we're all very excited. Nora was Sheila's great-grandmother from Ireland. And Cushing, middle name, is where Nora's grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great-grandparents, along with all of their aunts and great-aunts grew up on Cushing Street in Medford. Oh, wow. That's where Cushing comes from. That's awesome. On that motion, all those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed, no. The ayes have it. Mr. Mayor, no more for me.
[John Falco]: Uh, here is all that the Medford school committee extended its congratulations to Bob and Paula Vanderclude on the occasion of the 35th wedding anniversary. Best wishes and congratulations on that motion.
[TM-L7tQLt0w_SPEAKER_09]: All of this. I have it. The motion is approved.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: Mr. Mayor. I'd like to congratulate our colleague, Robert Eminskieri, on his retirement, 33 years of commitment to the state of Massachusetts. What's your job title?
[Robert Skerry]: Bureau of Special Investigations, Senior Investigator.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: Bureau of Investigations?
[Robert Skerry]: Special Investigations. I was a Senior Investigator.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: I'm sure that a lot of people are in jail now because of this.
[TM-L7tQLt0w_SPEAKER_09]: That's his choice. I know for a fact, I was on Beacon Hill when he started. He has recovered a lot of money for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. So we all congratulate you, Bob, on 33 great years. All of the favors say aye. All the ayes have it. The resolution is adopted. There are a couple of them.
[Roy Belson]: What about substance abuse?
[TM-L7tQLt0w_SPEAKER_09]: Under, excuse me one second, under communications there's none, negotiations there are none. On the back, resolution submitted by the Medford School Committee that is expressed with sincere condolences to the family of Aldo Scarpelli, Mr. Scarpelli was the father, a school committee member, George Scarpelli, and the Medford public school teacher, Lisa Seary. And be it resolved the Medford School Committee expresses sincere condolences to the family of Sally Zampel, Mrs. Zampel was a secretary to the superintendent for over 20 years, and also the mother of retired athletic director Ron Zampel. And on behalf of all the members of the community, we extend our condolences to both families. Because if you knew Aldo, Aldo was just a great guy. Had a lot of energy, very friendly, very welcoming, and he was a great part of the history of this city. during the time that he moved here from Italy. And Sally Ziempell, I think everybody knew Sally, a very pleasant lady, who did a good job. It's not easy working for any superintendent, with the daily pressures and everything that goes on up there. But again, a great family. And it is so nice to see that the children also have given back so much to the community, and that starts from the parents. So I'd ask that we all rise for a moment of silence. On those motions, I'll close on those, yeah? Yeah, the I7 resolutions, we're done.
[George Scarpelli]: Mr. Schiappelli. If I can, publicly, I just want to, representing my family, I just want to publicly thank this community. You want to know why Medford's a great place to live. And at the toughest time in my life, my family's life, my colleagues and friends and leaders of this community really stepped up. And where my mother's going through such a hard time and how hard my father fought. and the way that everybody surrounded her and the rest of our family. I can't thank everybody enough. For my colleagues, missing a lot of meetings last few weeks, and the superintendent keeping me apprised of what's going on. And with your leadership and your support, Mr. Mayor, I think that this is what makes Method great. I know that it's the toughest thing that I've had to deal with in my life, losing my best friend and my father, but having everybody around and just giving just a word or a hug or just this card. It meant so much to us. So again, publicly, I just want to thank everybody. And words can't describe what you've done for us. So thank you.
[TM-L7tQLt0w_SPEAKER_09]: And best to your mom, because she's a doll, and everybody loves your mom. She does. Thank you. Update report on substance abuse prevention and education programs, Mr. Superintendent.
[Roy Belson]: Mr. Mayor, members of the committee, the next report is a more comprehensive look at our substance abuse prevention and education programs. With us tonight, we have. from the city's offices and the regional office. We have Tony Bento, our supervisor of health services, Rachel Perry, our supervisor of health education, Jeff Lappin, our director of clinical services, and other members of our overall staff who contribute to this area. So the Metro Public Schools, working together with community and regional partners, we offer significant substance abuse prevention and education services to students and their families. The update report is offered to provide you with the latest information on the various programs and services that are in place and are emergent in our community. This report is intended to inform you regarding what we know about the behaviors and incidents of students in our community and schools, and what we're doing to prevent and respond to substance abuse. So we're going to call up our individuals and have them give you some detailed information. And you have attached information that will allow you to follow along as they reference it in their presentation. So we'll call up Penny and Rachel, Jeff, Tony to begin the process.
[TM-L7tQLt0w_SPEAKER_09]: And I also want to recognize Rich Raymond is here from Armstrong Ambulance too, who's been very involved with many of the health issues here in our community. And I also want to introduce Penny as the new director of the program that we have established in the community. A special office that will work on prevention, intervention, and support from beginning to end. And it was, when the job was advertised, there were about 30 odd people who applied for the job. And I have to tell you. At least the last ten that we looked at in an interview had tremendous experience and insight. And if we had more money, that office would have three or four people in it right now, because everybody had a specialty that they dealt in. But it was the picture of the whole problem. But Penny has a lot of background in the area, has done a lot of research, and we wish her well in what is a very tough assignment.
[Roy Belson]: So I recognize our physician out there, Dr. Kristen Goodell, who advises our health staff and does a good job keeping us informed of pediatric practice in the community.
[Funaiole]: So I have provided a few different resources to kind of keep you to look over while we're talking. In terms of an overall picture of opioid use in the community, I, too, data collection here specifically in Medford. The state has their own set of data that they take time to match and do all kinds of different epidemiological ways to make it what it is. Their numbers don't necessarily match our numbers because I'm just going through our cold records and finding what I see is a pending death record that then shows a toxicology report. So there are a number of pending records that are still out there, but what I know definitively is I know the substance that was in that person's system at the time of the toxicology report, and that's what these records are based on for the death record section of this report. So I know that between 2010 and 2015, and that's only reporting a portion of 2015, that we had 48 overdoses in a matter of those six years. And the predominantly 2012 and 2014 were our highest number of cases, with 13 in each year. We see that number going up specifically in 2014, we believe because of an increase of fentanyl in the product. Fentanyl is sometimes 100 to 80% times more powerful than normal heroin. So that's why we are seeing these numbers increase over time. And I know that come, you know, if I go back in another couple months and I look at those records, there will be more numbers for 2014 and there will be obviously numbers for 2015 that will increase. So it's a slower process to find out this information. Getting this data does take time. The state themselves takes a long time to turn the data around. I know that the commissioner of DPH is really interested in turning these numbers around much faster. So that's hopeful. One thing that I did find though here with our death records is that the age of death seems to be about the most numbers of people are between 30 and 40 years old, in their 30s to 40s. So it's really 30 to 50 years old, right, that span of 20 years. We see these high numbers, 13 in their 30s, 17 in their 40s. And so when we think about that, we're thinking maybe these people were longer term drug users, their bodies have broken down, but then again too, like I said, the product has changed, so that's another thing to be considerate of. When I did further analysis, you find that 88% were males, 13% were females, and 100% were white, Caucasian. And I did even further analysis. On the death record, it states what their jobs were. So I went through, and in a broad category of tradespersons, anything from an electrician to a carpenter, I found that in Medford specifically, 44% were tradespersons. So thinking about that, that's a tool that I'll think about when we're talking about outreach and where we can target some of our efforts, maybe reaching out to local unions to find out what kind of EPA program they have, what kind of ways that we can work with them. And I'm working on that both here locally and then on our regional grant that we have with our six communities that we've been working with. When I looked at police records, and police records have been, they have made a huge effort in the last year to take more detailed records of overdoses and to pull the medical, because when it comes in, the call might say it's a medical person down, but it might not say specifically overdose. So we've done a good job. Officer Benoit and I have been working together to pull those different records together and try and triangulate, you know, who in fact was an opioid-related death. I'm sorry, overdose. So these are non-fatal and there are some fatal. So we have 40 non-fatal overdoses in 2014. I'm sorry, in 2015. So that's January until September 30th this year. Six of those, six were deaths, four were already passed away prior to the officers arriving at the scene, so there would have not been any life-saving measures that they could have done. 23 of those in particular cases, it was stated clearly that Narcan was used, and there were a number of cases where it was uncontrolled. It wasn't stated by the officer in the report, so I had to be very careful with how I report that. But what I found here that I find very interesting is I have different demographic numbers. I have more females in Medford that are overdosing, but not dying. So we have, there is a large female population that needs to be addressed. And we also have a much younger population in 2015 that are overdosing. So I have here at the bottom left hand corner you can see 20 to 25 year olds, there were 10, 26 to 30 year olds, there were 12. So to me, that says that there's either a shift from the death records that I can look at, which are archived data, versus what's really happening right now on the ground. So we do have a younger population using. Unfortunately, this new program that I was using, it cut off, but there was one 18-year-old. That 18-year-old was from Somerville, though. Not that that matters, but there was only one 18-year-old in this number. And then I found that in looking at it by month, May, for some reason, had an enormous amount of overdose calls come in. And there were 12 in May alone. And as you can see on this chart, they're numbered for you so you can see how many there were. And it seems to be taking up from August and September. It's going up as well. So there could be a number of reasons. It could be a batch out on the street that's really dangerous. Or it could be other reasons. But we're looking at that, and as we continue to further analyze, as I get more and more meshed into this position and I work more closely with the police and with Armstrong Ambulance, we'll be able to start looking at locations in the city that might be at high risk and so on and so forth. So that's as far as the overdose stuff. I can stop there and answer any questions before I move on to the community care survey.
[George Scarpelli]: I just have one question, Mr. Mayor. I know that when we had that summit with everyone, I thought that was very informative. But have things changed? I know that we talked about the average age was much older at the time.
[Funaiole]: So like I said, the death records is what I had at that time to definitively speak to. But over the course of the last year, Chief Sacco and a number of the administrative staff have been really working with the officers on the street to make sure that they're reporting thoroughly. And the increase in that reporting is showing more information about the demographics that we're seeing. on the non-fatal side. So when we're talking about people that are overdosing and dying, we're talking that there is an older population. When we're talking about people who are not passing away but are overdosing, I'm seeing a younger population. So I can move on to the next piece, and there's a packet for you. It's a community care I just want to remind everyone that our community care survey, we ensure validity by eliminating any exaggerated surveys, any exaggeration in drug use and or antisocial behavior. We eliminate surveys where the person reports fictitious use of a specific drug. I'm not going to tell you what that drug is. It's a secret on the survey. And then we also eliminate anything that's logically inconsistent patterns of drug use. So they say they've never drank a drink in their lifetime, but they've drank six in the last 30 days. We're going to eliminate that survey, right? And we use a professional statistician to do this work. It's not something that we just pop into a survey monkey. So if you're looking at this report, I always provide the risk and protective factors, and I'd love to go over that some other time, but I think tonight I just want to just say out loud that really our protective factors are steady and strong, the same as they were two years ago in 2013. I think that we've definitely seen something that I'm still significantly proud of. low parental monitoring, and we're seeing it continue to rise so that parental monitoring is increasing, and that's a really, it's excellent, and we're seeing that in our numbers, I believe. If we move on to the next page, you'll see that this is just a lifetime versus 30-day use. Lifetime is ever having had a sip of alcohol, ever trying marijuana. 30-day use is having had a sip of alcohol or tried marijuana within the last 30 days. That is current use, that is a better indicator of what our issues are. Experimentation versus, you know, frequent use is what we're talking about. And our numbers are, they're very low for the middle school. The high school, the numbers are there what they are. If you would continue on to the next page though, and by the way, I think these numbers are lower, 100% across the board. lower from 2013, much lower from 2011. I have a chart that will go over that. But what I am concerned about is, on the following page, it's by grade. And in our 12th graders, we're seeing higher lifetime use in alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine than what's the US norm. So that's something that we need to keep an eye out on. And in the same regard, For our 30-day use, we're seeing higher numbers than the U.S. norm. So while our overall numbers are lower, we do have high numbers in our senior, and then for marijuana, junior and seniors are using, were using marijuana at a higher rate than the U.S. norm for 12th grade. What is really nice to see, though, is that across the board, the middle school numbers are lower. The middle school numbers are lower for 6th, 7th, and 8th grade, and our 9th and 10th graders have really low use. So those numbers of the 9th and 10th graders are keeping our numbers much lower. And that's a great thing. That means that the prevention that we're doing, that the middle school is working on, and that they're coming into the high school with lower uses or rates of use. So we're excited about that. And if you were to go to the next page, I've given you just a scheme of The entire lifetime of this survey has been taken since 2005. And you can see for the middle school, the numbers have drastically dropped across the board. We're very excited about that. And then for the high school, everything has also declined year after year. And I just want to say that in Regards to the high school and opioid use, Eileen DeBattista was a great mentor to me when I first started working here. And one of the things that she impressed upon me is that when in 2000 to 2003, when there was a major Oxycontin epidemic here in Medford, it was a task force came together and started to address these issues. They worked on policy, that policy is still the policy that's in the state DOE drug and alcohol policy. It still sits there. You know, they worked on building the capacity to write for the Drug-Free Communities Grant, which we've exhausted for our 10 years. But we're seeing those numbers go down because of that original first step of organizing and getting there. And so the further, as we continue to maintain this work and monitor it and really do what's new and innovative, we're going to continue to do great professional work in this city. So that's all I really have to say about the current numbers. If you have any questions.
[John Falco]: Mrs. Cugno.
[Ann Marie Cugno]: Thank you. Thank you all for the wonderful and hard work that you've all put in. I was looking at, I guess the, agenda of what's going on through the grades. So for me, this is where what comes from here and goes into the classes. That's the important part for me. So what do the grants do that go into the classroom? How do we get what you're doing into the classrooms? How do we get what you're doing into homes? How do we get everything that you're so enthusiastic and excited and had work? has put into this, how do we get it out there? How do we educate our students? How do we educate our parents? How do we get it out there? And these pamphlets and these booklets, they're wonderful. But I also know that as a parent, we get them at home, and they are very educational, but we're so busy. So hands-on is what we need. And these agendas that I'm looking through are really important, and that's what we need to get out there. And I think it's important that all this work that you've all done is recognized. And that, for me, is the really important part of this puzzle. So if you could go over this, I would really appreciate it.
[Rachel Perry]: Good evening. So I'm going to speak a little bit about the Michigan model. And we talked about this back in the spring. The Michigan model is a skills-based health curriculum that we're looking to use from kindergarten through 12th grade. We are in the third year of using the Michigan model at the high school. We're also using it this year with vocational and the Curtis Tops. So we're using it across those three as well. In the middle schools, we piloted the Michigan model last year. So this year is really the first full year that we've been using it. And we did a lot of work over the summer breaking down the Michigan model, looking at the lessons which you should have in your packet for sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. And those lessons are taught by guidance as well as PE staff. Okay? So what we'll continue to do is look at the Community Care Survey for the high school and for the middle schools, continue to look at that curriculum and see, do we need to add things? Do we need to delete things? Because things are changing, so we'll be doing that as well. What I'd also like to do is to make sure that we have all that information on our website so that parents can go on and see, all right, this is what my child is doing in health class. These are the things that they are learning. For elementary schools, we have just purchased the Michigan model, and we are piloting that at the kindergarten in the McGlynn Elementary School. I am in the process of putting a team together to pilot the Michigan model from first to fifth grade across the elementaries, and we're planning to roll that out this year with the hopes of really being able to start the Michigan model full force in the elementaries next year.
[Ann Marie Cugno]: Okay, so you've piloted at the McGlynn?
[Rachel Perry]: We're piloting at the kindergarten in the McGlynn right now.
[Ann Marie Cugno]: Okay.
[Rachel Perry]: And we're putting a team together to pilot across all elementaries from 1st to 5th grade. Okay, so basically everyone will end up having it from 1st through 5th, except for... Well, from kindergarten through 5th. We're going to go through all the elementaries, but right now it's just at the McGlynn.
[Ann Marie Cugno]: Okay. And do you know when... Is it going to be this year? Oh, yes, this year. I mean, it's a lot of work, and I totally understand that, but it's not going to be successful if we don't get it into the classrooms, and it's not going to be successful if our parents don't know about it. So I guess the flip side of this is, what do you want the parents to do on the flip side of this? I mean, you're going to be teaching it in the classrooms, you're going to make it more aware to the students, but what is it as parents who want to put feedback into this? What are you expecting us to do?
[Rachel Perry]: For the middle school curriculum, there is a form that goes home that explains to parents what's being taught so parents are aware of what's going on in the health classroom.
[SPEAKER_17]: The kindergarten also has the letter that went home, and they're working on maybe a parents back to school night to discuss some of the options and kind of get a better understanding of how that model will help support the students and their health.
[Rachel Perry]: Great. We were also approached by Michael Skorka of the GSA, and we're looking to put together parent forums this year as well to have parents come in and ask questions. That way we can share this information with them as well.
[Ann Marie Cugno]: That's wonderful, and I guess I'm really looking to what is, technically I know it's not under our preview, but how do we connect what we're doing from K through 12, and then from 12, when our students leave? Because that's when we've seen our numbers all of a sudden get high. And we've seen the consequences of what's been happening with that.
[Funaiole]: I think what we need to think about, again, going back to, when we're thinking about our 18 to 22-year-old population, right, a number of those individuals go away to college. So they're sort of out of our reach. There's a number, however, that go to community college that go right into the workplace. So addressing the tradesperson angle of it, we might be able to reach them that way. And then addressing, looking at community, reaching out to community colleges, finding out what they're doing and how we can communicate that back and forth. You know, not try to duplicate what they're doing, but sort of work with them. I think that will be key. Also, just general education across the community. I mean, we're going to be working, By the way, Medford police are carrying Narcan, they started carrying it on Friday if you didn't know. So we're very excited about that. But I also wrote a grant with the fire and the police department on getting more money to do direct education about overdoses. So what we're hoping is that we'll have more information out to the community and it won't necessarily prevent, at this point this is going to be about saving lives. we at least get our framework for how that works, and then we can sort of, and one of those angles would be working with businesses, places for cash, where they have people delivering food, waitresses, sorry, servers, because men can do that. That we would be wanting to address it too, because those folks are the ones who have that sort of income to be able to come and get away with doing more of the substances. So we want to start working towards that directly. And I think that we have, with my change and not being directed by a grant, I think I have the flexibility to be able to start doing some of that stuff a little bit better.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: Point of information.
[John Falco]: Point of information, Mrs. DiBenedetto.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: Just so you know, there are community groups that are very active and are running a lot of events throughout the community. The Method Against Addiction is a great one, and they've been educating the community, having kickball tournaments. They had the memorial service last year. really active and present. They called me about an issue in a school. Their outreach has reached out to many families in need as well as families that didn't realize we had a problem in Brighton. by their publicity from their group is also educating people.
[Ann Marie Cugno]: Yeah, I know, and I'm very well aware that that's one particular group that's out there, and there are a few other groups that are out there, and that's why it's important that everybody work together. And I want to be realistic. I mean, there is a certain point where it's not like we need to wash our hands. It's just that I want to make sure that the information is out there. We cannot hold everyone's hand forever, but I just want to make sure that we have the information here and it is available. Thank you.
[John Falco]: Mrs. DiBenedetto.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: Thank you, Mr. Falco. Going back to how it relates to the schools for this point, I had a question about some of the curriculum, and I just wanted to be very clear, okay? How are we teaching students that have a family member or a friend that is using drugs or alcohol, how do they get help? How do they get comfortable enough to tell somebody that they need help dealing with it or their friend or their parent or whoever else, sibling in the household, whoever, they're living in this situation?
[Rachel Perry]: I know at the high school and at the middle schools we do have lessons that talk about different supports in the schools and in the community. I know we have adjustment Councilors and other Councilors I think that Jeff can speak to a little bit better.
[SPEAKER_17]: I think a lot of times situations come up and come to the Councilors and then the Councilors can refer the students or work with the students to help. a support group that they can be involved with, but there's a lot of support that the Councilors will follow up with and kind of either talk to the parent or the sibling and kind of build up that support.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: I think we just really need to emphasize that even if they don't have a problem, if someone they know is, that they should really speak out and get them help. And that has to be communicated over and over and over again.
[SPEAKER_17]: Right. And I think part of the curriculum, each lesson talks about that on that specific things in the way the lesson is laid out. So there'll be that opportunity. And also the teachers, if they notice something, they'll refer the name to one of the Councilors who can follow up with that student.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: Okay, the other part of your data that I found extremely significant is more about the mental health of some of our students. And it says here on page seven of seven in the packet, it says on the second one down, it says, at times I think I am no good at all. 58% of high school females, that was alarming. More than half of high school females. said yes to that, and then felt depressed or sad on most days. 57% of high school females. This to me is really sad.
[Funaiole]: So I just want to point out that these two charts, I put this chart in here because I do agree with you. My colleague and I, we looked at this data and we were alarmed. We did write a grant for mental health for our state. Unfortunately, we did not get that grant. We were very devastated. But anyway, this is 2013. The next chart is 2015. So the numbers are improving, but it's not good. It's still almost 50% of our girls feeling that way. And we were shocked to see once we started to tease that out, to think about the fact that, you know, and when you look at this data for overdoses, you're looking at substance use rates, maybe there's a merit to having groups for girls. groups just for boys.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: I mean, something to think about, that sometimes separating them by gender might be actually more helpful because they're more able to talk freely about... Or targeting these groups, because we're seeing an alarming amount of children feeling depressed and feeling like they're not good. And that was extremely alarming to me. And as someone in education, and as a committee, I think we should really provide services for somehow come up with ways. I know we have in our own way by funding more Councilors and more people to address these issues in the school system this year. I mean, we made this a priority here. All of my colleagues, the superintendent have really come through with, you know, giving more support to our students, but this is identifying who needs that support. And I just want that to happen.
[SPEAKER_17]: And I think, In the middle school, with the added support, we added this year another halftime Councilor at the McGlynn Middle School. There are now more support groups that are being able to run, if they're lunch bunches or social skills groups or ways of kind of addressing the interaction between some of the girls. So I think that's one thing we can do. We can also look at the high school and see ways to build that.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: This is alarming. Oh, definitely. something immediate, because if half of our girls are feeling this way, this is an emergency situation in my mind, that we need team building or whatever we need, we need to do it, and we need to do it quickly. We're not in our middle school, this is saying our high school students.
[SPEAKER_17]: Right, and so at the middle school we have that, but at the high school there's a referral process that the assistant principals and teachers are all involved with, And so far this year, including the incoming freshmen, there have been 52 referrals for counseling and support. So that's definitely ways that we look at it and build it.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: Is that up from last year?
[SPEAKER_17]: Maybe. We're trying to, I was teasing out the data with the Councilors. I think that the incoming class brought more in as freshmen because there's much more awareness of it now.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: Another suggestion I have is when I was on the PTO up for Method High School, they brought in a lot of speakers in a lot of extracurricular that really were like the yellow dress and about dating violence and about different things. And if they knew that this was the issue, maybe they could help in that manner. I know if you contact Dan Rapucci, I'm sure she'd be willing to like even change up what they do if they saw this data. So maybe presenting this to the PTO, especially at our high school, that's another way, like my colleague Ann Marie was saying, how we getting this to the parents. Maybe there's a PTO night that this is presented, that we actually go where the parents are, even if it's 10 parents in that room and they can spread the word. I mean, I really think that she is right in that regard, that we have to get it to to the students and to the parents.
[SPEAKER_17]: I do know that in Redding, they do send home a flyer in a general mailing, I think, to the community about substance abuse and mental health with some references out. So that's something we can look at as a team here to decide if that would also be a way to benefit the community.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: And maybe it could be the middle school and high school PTOs together. And maybe you could have someone from a couple of the groups, like the parents group that Cheryl DellaFano and have someone from Method Against Addiction and just have like a forum on it because if 58% of our girls are feeling like they're not valued or not important, that's huge. That's a lot of girls.
[Toni Wray]: One thing we did do last year when we had our professional development on social emotional learning, we spent a lot of time educating teachers on how to recognize signs of anxiety and depression in their students. Some of that was part of the suicide awareness prevention training we did, but then we also ran workshops that focused on the different developmental ages, elementary, middle, and high school. So we're getting more of this information out to people that are dealing with students, and they also know the referral process. for support for the students.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: Maybe that's a training our parents could partake in. I mean, I know it's hard to get families to come in, but just some of that training and offering that, I'm sure if parents knew about it and they felt even an inkling that they could benefit their child at home, I'm sure they would come and learn as much as they could. I really want that outreach piece. I know you're all working really, really hard with the school system. I want it to extend into the parents. My colleague is so right with that and I'd be happy to help in any way I can. Just let me know and I will blast it everywhere and help you in any way possible as I know my colleagues would be willing to do. Thank you for your time and your motion to approve.
[George Scarpelli]: Um, just, just to work off of that, my, uh, my point is, is more personal in the sense that, Last year, a few of the overdoses were former soccer players. And if there's a way, this report's wonderful and it's informative, but it's cumbersome. This isn't what I've learned as a parent. Most parents are going to look at things that are going to hit you with bullets and see what's important. Something like this, these numbers are great, but the average parent isn't going to read it. maybe if there's a way that we can just get, you know, just an informative booklet or a trifle, just to get the word out for, you know, maybe doing professional development with your coaches. And I was a teacher and a coach for 15 years at the high school and the middle elementary school. And maybe there were signs that I could have noticed and I didn't. And there's a lot of guilt there. And You know, and being so, being a very important part of these kids' lives, maybe focusing on the front lines, not only with the PTGs, but I've been a little league coach and a youth soccer coach and a basketball coach and being involved with kids. I can't tell you how many hours I've spent with six, seven kids in a car. But if there's something maybe that in a conversation as we're driving and talking about prevention, you know, I'm a dad first and foremost. and I'm very involved with my children, and we talk about drug use, and we talk about everything from taking aspirin to smoking marijuana and heroin, because they knew these kids. And I don't want to belittle what's done, because I think it's important. This is a substance that gets us the grants and gets us the money that's needed to move forward. But if there's something we could dummy down in a sense, just so the average person can just have points that they can talk about, or maybe they hear something you know, where as mandated reporters, something that serious, but just something that, you know, well, let me talk to mom and dad and let me give them this brochure and who they can talk, contact in the community that says, Hey, why don't we talk here? Let's call Melby, right? Let's call, let's call, uh, Rachel at the high school. Let's, let's get the word out. So, I mean, maybe it's, maybe I'm looking at it pretty naively in the sense that, but looking at something that we get out, You know, think about it. We have 500 little league players, and we have, you know, 1,100 youth soccer players, and we have 400 lacrosse players, and I can go on and on and on, but looking at that youth program and talking to the presidents of those leagues and bringing them together and saying, hey, would this help? And part of a conversation when you talk with your coach is saying, we don't want you to be, you know, you're not going to be, you know, a therapist, but just get the word out. because the more in the front line I think is going to be most important.
[Funaiole]: So I'm glad that you said that because we have developed a curriculum for coaches through our Mississippi Valley Public Health Coalition. That's one of our major initiatives for that grant for our six communities regionally. We were the only cluster in the state that identified athletes as a high risk population that we were going to be targeting. And now, as you know, the governor is pointing this out. They took our information and they gave it to the MIAA. I was very proud to hear that. The only catch is we haven't started that training. We worked with Rachel and a few folks to do some piling to make sure that what we're saying lines up with what coaches are thinking in ways that they think. I do have an infographic that I can send home to every single family if that shows the progression of injury all the way down to heroin. And I have that. I'll show that. I'll bring it to you. It's in my office right here. But that is our major goal is to reach out to Little Leagues. So we have a database of Little Leagues for six towns. You know, we have to meet with all the athletic directors to get them set that up to do that, because we feel that the coaches are an important, important role model for these kids. And if they're not just notified about injury and prescription of drugs, but also alcohol, marijuana, how do you talk about all this stuff like you're saying? And so thank you so much for saying that. I didn't include it here, but I do have those resources. I'd love to share and hear your feedback about the curriculum because we want to improve it and we want it to really be good. So that's the story with that. We do have it, it's just sort of I did train 40 hockey coaches in Stoneham last fall, and I felt like it was pretty good training. It was sort of asked right away, can you do it, and I put it together, and then we refined it since then.
[George Scarpelli]: There's stereotypes. In the neighboring community where I work in now, the biggest stereotype was overdoses with hockey players. And they think that my son's not playing hockey because he's going to overdose. And wrong in so many ways. That's so great that we're thinking that, being proactive, and like, again, as a former coach and working, a former coach in Medford and still a former coach in the neighborhood community, I'd love to be, you know, give any assistance possible because, like I said, on a personal level, there's a lot of guilt in the sense that we, did I miss something? And, you know, people like Rachel and I understand where that comes from. So, thank you.
[John Falco]: Superintendent Belz.
[Roy Belson]: Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, you can see there's a lot of information here as you're referencing, and obviously we respect what you're saying about getting it out so that people can handle it. This is a very protracted conversation. I was going to give you sort of an introduction, a little bit more of what's going on. I'd like to ask Tony to talk a little bit about MassBURT, because that's the latest thing coming out of the governor's office and Senator Flanagan's office, which I think is going to be part of the new new bill coming out of the legislature. So I tell you a little because that sort of speaks to what George is raising with regard to getting to people and really dealing with individuals rather than talking in the atmosphere right now. And I think it probably is a, it's a good thing to interject right now.
[Toni Wray]: I also included in your packet some information on what's referred to as SBIRT, which means stands for screening, brief intervention and referral to treatment. And it is a screening process that can be done. It's evidence-based. It was developed at Children's Hospital. And it's a six-question screening tool called CRAFT. And it's used to identify high-risk individuals. It can easily be incorporated into the mandated screening programs that the school nurses are already doing. It takes a few minutes to administer. It's a trained school nurse will go through the six questions with the students and identify who is high risk. And then from there, it becomes a referral for counseling, either within the school or outside of the school. It's presently being used in several school districts. Gloucester, Natick, North Andover, Wilmington, Hudson are some of them that have started using it. And the Department of Public Health does provide training free of cost. So we've initiated contact with those trainers so that we can get that training started at some point in the next few months. Another initiative that we've reached out to is with the Institute for Health and Recovery. And as part of the Mystic Valley Public Health Coalition, there is a substance abuse Councilor that has been now made available to spend a day a week in different area high schools. And they're presently in place in Melrose, Malden, Redding, and I think they're looking to get into Stoneham. So we've reached out to this organization, and we're looking to have somebody come in and speak to our group of administrators to see how can we best integrate a person with that type of counseling experience into our high school. How can we identify students we need to refer to them and the SBIRT screening may be a very good lead in for those types of referrals. So those are the two newer things that we're looking at to get started during this school year.
[John Falco]: Mrs. Cuno had a question first.
[Ann Marie Cugno]: I just wanted to say, it kind of dragged my memory. As Mr. Scottelli was speaking about it, now I'll really end up letting you know how old I am. Involved with four boys in sports for over 24 years. We did, I remember like in youth soccer, we had these little pamphlets that were given out for different things during different situations. But I remember like just at registration time or whatever, just little pamphlets, little things like with little bullet points in it that, as Mr. Scarpelli said and as I had said before, all this hard work that everyone is doing is wonderful, but unfortunately, like everyone's life, it's just very hard sometimes and unless it's Again, unfortunately, in your own backyard, you really can't take the time or you don't take the time to really look at every single thing. But if you could pick up, you know, you're registering your child or whatever, and you pick up a little pamphlet, and you're like waiting in between kids picking up or whatever, and you're looking at all these things, and you look at the, you know, bullet points, you know, just like stereo, people have stereotypes in their mind of what a child who commits suicide is. I know that the state already has a lot of things that are what the stereotype isn't, and to educate people in that manner. So just little things like that is, I guess, what we're asking for.
[Toni Wray]: Many of those brochures are available through the Massachusetts Clearinghouse.
[Ann Marie Cugno]: Right, I used to get them.
[Toni Wray]: And a lot of the nurses have them in the offices, but we can look for other avenues to distribute those types of brochures.
[John Falco]: This is Dee Benedetto.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: I just have a question. Is this sixth question that we go through similar to the one that the police are using? Yes. To identify students that, I mean, okay. It's exactly the same one. I know there were some rules and regulations that, you know, when they're identified that they really didn't have a choice but to go for further help. Are we going there with our students at all?
[Funaiole]: Our diversion program for the police department, they will be psyched. I have four individuals who are now enrolled in this program. We'll run our class on October 31st. They'll be cited, and they have the option to pay their citation and forego the education or waive the citation and follow through with the program. Once the class itself and then the taking that craft tool is the requirement, and if we feel that they've screened high, we will meet with their family and let them know that we want them to get help, but we can't force them to get the help.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: No, I understand that. They have the option of paying the citation or go into the classroom. So at our high school or in our schools, when we're identifying someone, are we offering them the class?
[Funaiole]: Yes.
[Toni Wray]: Or is this- At this time, no. Okay. The typical process is any high risk students that are identified are referred on for to a school adjustment Councilor or on to further medical care or counseling care. And parents are being notified? Yes, parents would be notified. And parents also would be notified of the screening that will be taking place and they would have an opt-out opportunity, should they choose.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: Okay, so someone who places high, can we look at that program? to see if we could get that to work for our identified students within the school system?
[Funaiole]: Absolutely. So the specific curriculum, it deals with the behavior that got them to the class. So it would be more like, were you caught drinking in the woods? What were you doing? So it does a lot of stepping through that. And of course, I think I've talked to Tony about this too. There's a specific incident that we want to, so that, there might be that that course is the right thing or it might be that they need to just be triaged directly to get help. And that. All individually based. Yeah. But there, anyone can sign their kid up to come if they feel like they caught them in their bedroom doing something they were worried about. Please give us a call at City Hall. 393-2449, and we can enroll them October 31st as our first class, but we'll keep a regular schedule. So people are welcome to, but however, if somebody has a distinctive substance use disorder, this class is not appropriate. This is an early intervention for someone who's experimenting or first starting use.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: And that's why I thought that the linkage, that's my understanding of it, the linking, linkage, I just want that link, to parents and to school administrators to know that it's there, to like utilize that tool that's already in place.
[Funaiole]: And we're sending home a notification to every family about the ASAP program. It's going out in the mail very shortly, but also We've talked that if this person becomes an institutional person in the school where they come and meet with kids every week, then we could probably link together that that's the same council for the whole city and that we'll work with the same project on that.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: Okay. That's all I want. I just want that collaboration so that way they'll be utilizing it through the schools as well as the community-based programs.
[John Falco]: Thank you. On the motion of Mrs. DiBenedetto, seconded by Mr. Scarpelli that the Report be accepted and placed on file. All those in favor? All those opposed? The report is accepted and placed on file. Thank you very much. Next item is the recommendation to accept gift from Media Technologies Corporation to the Gator Trade Alliance of $1,500. Motion to accept by Mr. Scarpelli. I'll second. Seconded by Mrs. Cugno. Mr. Secretary, would you please call the roll?
[Robert Skerry]: Mrs. Cugno?
[John Falco]: Yes.
[Robert Skerry]: Mr. Benedetto?
[John Falco]: Yes.
[Robert Skerry]: Mr. Falco?
[John Falco]: Yes.
[Robert Skerry]: Mr. Scarpelli? Yes. Mr. Skerry, yes. 5 in the affirmative, 2 absent.
[John Falco]: 5 in the affirmative, 2 absent. The gift is accepted. The next item is a report on college fair and financial aid night. Mr. Superintendent.
[Roy Belson]: Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, the guidance department's hosting two specific nights. One is annual college fair. The other is the financial aid night. Unfortunately, the dates kind of correspond to things that conflict with you. The 21st is your debate, and the 4th, for those at the conference, will be at the conference. But both items are excellent events. They'll be well attended. You have a listing of the colleges that are coming on the back. It also should be noted that the Special Education Department on the evening of the 21st will be hosting a program to help parents with students with disabilities to make the transition from high school to college. And we think these are all terrific programs. The guidance department sponsors them every year along with the SPED department. And they are very valuable additions to our program. So it's informational for you right now. And if you have any questions, we'll be happy to try to provide additional information going forward.
[John Falco]: Okay. The motion on the motion, Mr. Scarpelli, seconded by Mr. Skerry that the report be accepted and placed on file. All those in favor of this opposed, the report is accepted and placed on file. Next item is follow up report on common core.
[Roy Belson]: Mr. Superintendent, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. Um, and our last meeting, we talked a little bit about the common core and we were going to hold a committee of the whole, but your schedules are pretty tight and there's so many things going on that we thought we could accomplish it at this meeting here. Since Beverly is so good at this stuff that, you know, she'll cut right through it and make sure that you understand it. And before you know it, you'll be on a national tour explaining it to other people. So.
[Beverly Nelson]: You're setting me up for failure here. I don't know. No, I don't think so. Good evening. Again, you received materials dealing with the common core state standards at our last meeting. And again, the materials that you received included the history of the content and learning standards and the adoption of the Common Core, as well as insight into the development and purpose of the Common Core. The Common Core, although in existence for several years and adopted by the Massachusetts Board of Education as the basis for the English Language Arts and Mathematics Frameworks in 2010, it's currently receiving much scrutiny and criticism. Several states have legislation pending calling for the revoking or revocation of the adoption of the Common Core. The intent of this report, this follow-up report, is to provide you with additional information about the Common Core as well as our analysis of what we feel are the strengths of the document over previous Massachusetts standards for English and mathematics. The very first frameworks, which again came out of the Education Reform Act of 1993, were written by educators for all content areas. That's not just math and English, it was social studies, fine arts, foreign language, health, the Zed. And again, as they were rolled out, they were adopted by the Board of Education. This all happened in the mid to late 90s. Once written and adopted by the Board of Education, all frameworks were supposed to be revisited and revised on a five-year basis. And we find that over time, only the English and Mathematics have had those revisions. If you go back and you look at the frameworks which are posted on DESE's website, you will see that the latest versions of ones like the Health and Phys Ed are 1999. And again, this is very troublesome given the fact that so many health issues have arisen that aren't even documented in that framework. The English and mathematics received a lot of attention because of the testing that was involved. Now, the MCAS test was supposed to be a test for all content areas. They were supposed to test foreign language. They were supposed to test, and they did for a while, social studies. Then they disbanded that. They were supposed to test finance. It was supposed to be for everything. But the only tests that emerged really were the ones for English and math. And for a short term, we had social studies. And now, of course, we have the science added back in. Prior to the publication of the Common Core, teams of educators in Massachusetts were already at work in 2009 revising the English and math frameworks. The work of these teams, and I was on the English team in 2009, our work was stopped. All of a sudden, they said, OK, we're going to stop what we're doing. because the Common Core was coming on the horizon, and we knew the state was going to take a look at that before adopting any new frameworks. So what happened is the teamwork stopped, and again, the Common Core was out there, and it was thoroughly reviewed. I think many people feel today that the Common Core was adopted very quickly without public input, but that's not the case. If you go back, you'll see that it was, vetted by many different constituencies, business groups, educators, higher ed. And it was out for public comment for a fair amount of time. So people in the public had a chance to see it and to comment. One of the things that probably pushed the adoption of the Common Core, not just in Massachusetts, but in all states, was the race to the top funding, the race to the top grant money. In order to be able to apply for the Raise to the Top grant money, a state had to adopt the Common Core. All right. But the one thing that I really want to emphasize is that our frameworks, our frameworks for English and mathematics, are called the Massachusetts English Language Arts Frameworks and the Massachusetts Mathematics Frameworks. They're built off of the Common Core, but they're not just the Common Core. Because what happened is once the Board of Education adopted the Common Core, and that was at their meeting July 21st, 2010, the superintendent was there at that meeting, I was there, Dr. Riccadeli was there, and we kind of watched everyone get up and speak. Actually, the only person who was vocal against it happened to be our current governor, Charlie Baker, who actually stood up there and spoke about the Common Core dumbing down Massachusetts standards, which I don't feel and many people don't feel is the case at all. But in any event, once the Common Core was adopted, Then the English committee and the math committee got back to work. And we took the common core and we added to it. So what we have for our frameworks currently does contain the common core, but is not solely composed of the common core. Many things were added back in. What people think happened is things were taken out in order to put things in. But that's not the case. With the English frameworks, we still have a balance of fiction. because one of the switches with the English frameworks was adding in informational text. But that doesn't mean fiction was taken out. It simply means that informational text was added in as an additional type of reading. So again, one of the criticisms of the group of people that were against the Common Core, or maybe are against the Common Core, is that The Common Core Frameworks reduced the rigor of what we already had in place. And there were individuals who claimed that Massachusetts had the most rigorous standards in the nation, and the belief was the Common Core Standards, because they were written for all states, reduced the rigor of Massachusetts, what we had in place. As a result of Race to the Top money, we had two testing groups that were funded to develop tests based on the Common Core. And those two groups are PARC, which is the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career, and Smarter Balance. And each state that adopted the Common Core was asked to sign on for one of these tests. And we signed on for PARC. And again, where we are right now is we're making that big decision. Are we going to actually adopt PARC? Are we going to stay with MCAS, which will be modified in some fashion. We feel that, as we talk about this and talk with colleagues around the state, we feel that a lot of the current backlash against the Common Core is more about PARC, because PARC had its difficulties this year in its administration, and some people aren't quite happy with that. So again, people are speaking out against the Common Core, but it's really, I believe, the testing that's driving this backlash. The RTT money, Raise to the Top money, no longer is an issue. So now states, because that money is no longer something that they have to think about obtaining, many states now are reevaluating their decision to adopt the Common Core State Standards. Many state legislatures have filed legislation to repeal it. And many states who signed on to the testing systems are now pulling away. For example, the number of states that signed on to PARCC was originally 24, and now there are only 12 left. So our administration, our Director of Curriculum, Instruction, Humanities, and Mathematics, as well as teams of teachers representing all grade levels, have been working with our new framework since they came out in 2011. We have a lot of time and money invested, and as you know, we have programs at the elementary level now in place, journeys, and envisioned to support the new curriculum. And we've done a thorough comparison of the previous, I've been doing frameworks since they started. And I really have to say that there are benefits to the Common Core Standards. In general, if you think about it for the entire nation, it's going to improve the rigor in those states that didn't have rigor, without dumbing down our rigor. And the states where we have a lot of mobility and the kids moving from state to state now are going to have an easier time picking up curriculum in their new state. They were coming in from other states and other cities and towns and being exposed to very, very different curricula. So again, those are a couple of the positive reasons for keeping with the Common Core. Other things are because the Common Core state standards are internationally benchmarked, our standards will be comparable to standards in other countries, and many believe will help to improve our ranking among international ratings. The common core state standards focus on increasing critical thinking and problem-solving skills of our students, and we feel that these are the skills of the current and future workplace. They also emphasize skills such as listening and speaking, which again are very important skills for our students today. They're lifelong skills and they're things that we think are very important. Additional benefits for each of the frameworks. The ELA, informational text as well as fiction. The previous English language arts framework only dealt with novels, fiction. Now we know that we have informational text. Now informational text is really important for kids to be able to deal with because they're reading very complex textbooks. The kids who are going on to career training, vocational education, if you ever look at those manuals, they're very difficult reading levels, so it's important that kids learn not just to read novels, we're not throwing that away because that's important, but they also need to increase their knowledge of informational text readings. Another positive I see with the English is for years and years, we've been talking about reading in the content area, how every teacher, whether they're a teacher of science or social studies or mathematics, should be teaching reading skills to students because reading is a component of all those subject areas. We talked about it, we promoted it for many years, now it's actually part of the English frameworks. In the English language arts frameworks, there are literary standards for all the content areas. And so we work with departments, and I know Dr. Riccadeli last year, working on the curriculum, made sure the science department had the literary standards that were embedded in the frameworks for them. So it's not just about the science teachers now following the science standards, They need to follow the literacy standards and the English framework that are specific for science. And that cuts across all curriculum areas. We feel writing, the type of writing that's being asked of students is an improvement. They're less just explaining what they think about things, and they're linking writing more with tying it to evidence. So they're reading passages, and they're being able to write by pulling information from passages. It's still important for kids to be able to write about, you know, what their favorite day was all summer, but there needs to be another piece to that. And we feel that the close reading writing is a definite improvement. With regard to the mathematics, one of the criticisms of the previous math frameworks is that teachers felt that they were not in those frameworks, it wasn't very specific as to what you should be doing by the end of the school year with your student. The math framework's kind of just spiraled all through the grades, and the teachers want that specificity in terms of what should my child master by the end of grade three in mathematics. That's in the new document, and I think that's been a big improvement. Standards for mathematical practice are now part of the content standards, so students, again, are really processing the math, they're learning to think about the math. The math is more difficult, and I think if You know, I could think of any one criticism about the math is perhaps it's just a little bit too ambitious for some of our students, but we're hoping to get them where they need to be. As you know, that the rigor of the math at each grade level has increased. Algebra one is a very different algebra one. It's more like algebra two and so on. And again, having our fourth year of math requirement that we put into place a few years ago, I think will help our kids to get where they need to be. And again, we are committed to supporting them to make it. But the math is very rigorous. So we have put a lot of work, effort, and money the past five years, putting our new district curricular in place. And while there is still controversy about the Common Core, I think much of the controversy is rooted in misinformation and lack of knowledge about what's actually in those documents. And it's more a criticism of this new test. which again has been, you know, had its difficulties. So as we continue to tweak our curriculum as the needs of our students are identified and made change, we feel that the Common Core State Standards are a positive direction to preparing our students for both college and career. And I attached just a question and answer summary from U.S. News for you to look at. Here, put your reading glasses on for this, the way it prints out. But I'll take any questions. Again, we have a pretty experienced group that's worked with this stuff for a long time and can see the comparison. I've been with the frameworks movement since I was on the first committees in 1995. So I've seen full circle where we're coming from. And I have to say that what I'm seeing is an improvement with this. And I think people, basically they're calling our frameworks by the wrong name. frameworks in Massachusetts of the Common Core. Well, they're not. They're based on the Common Core, but there's an awful lot added back in. One of the things that was added back in right away is the pre-K standards, because many states don't have pre-K education, so they were absent from the Common Core. Well, they're right back in. We've added a lot more literature back in, a lot more references back in. So again, if you really want to spend a significant time, you can take the Common Core as that sole document is and compare it. with our English Language Arts and Mathematics Frameworks from Massachusetts, and you can see the expansion of the common core that we now have as the basis of our framework. So I'll take any questions before I go on the national tour that the superintendent is sending me on, I guess.
[John Falco]: Any questions from the committee?
[Erin DiBenedetto]: Just a comment.
[John Falco]: Mrs. D. Benetene.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: At almost every meeting that we talk about, We have groups of teachers that look at the frameworks and break them down into ways that they're interesting and learning experiences for our students. And I know that Dr. Riccardelli and yourself and Dr. Chiesa do that constantly throughout the district. And I don't think people get that understanding piece, that we take those ideas and we break them down and we bring them into the classroom so children can learn from it. And those are the expectations for each grade level. And it's really simple that that's the expectation for every third grade student throughout the Commonwealth, and that they all should reach that thing. And it's not as big or difficult as all the words sound like it is. It's just making sure that all the students at a certain age or grade meet certain requirements before they move on to the next grade. And I think we do a great job of that in MedFit. And I know it's because a lot of the work that you're doing.
[Beverly Nelson]: Dr. Riccadeli has put a lot of work in with her team of curriculum directors. And I know she wants to speak to all the different things that have happened. But one of the things you look at, if you take one of the standards, you'll say, wow, there's a lot of stuff in here. One of the first things we do is unpack the standards. So we take that one humongous standard, and we break it down into manageable parts. Teachers have developed lesson plans. And Dr. Riccadeli, do you want to come up and speak to some of your work? This is why, you know, I think it's important to stay this course. The Common Core, our frameworks, I think, are very solid and our teachers are very invested in what they've done because it's not just Dr. Riccadeli and Mrs. Joy and Dr. Chiesa. It's teams of teachers that have been doing lesson plans and unpacking the standards and making them manageable as you know, we want to do for all of our students. So Bernadette, if you want to speak to some of your work.
[Bernadette Ricciardelli]: Sure. And the work continues, as Beverly mentioned. It's continuously evolving. You know, it's a pretty cumbersome process to go through and to unpack those standards and come up with lessons. It continues, and we hope to continue this in the, with the new science frameworks that come out. If I could just add something about some of the criticism for the Common Core is rooted in political philosophy, and it has to do with the thought that the Common Core is, they're federal, they're federal curriculum frameworks. And as you know, they're not. The only thing federal about them was the race to the top money that kind of stimulated their growth and our accepting of them. But education policy still is directed on the state level, not on the federal level. So if you look at the criticism of the Common Core, that's where I see at least much of that criticism emanating from, is that political philosophy bent towards no federal intervention. So I just wanted to add that.
[John Falco]: On the motion of Mrs. D. Benedetto, seconded by Mr. Scarapelli, that the report be accepted and placed on file. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? The report is accepted and placed on file. Thank you for your very thorough report. The next item is the report on professional day, November 3rd, 2015. Mr. Superintendent.
[Roy Belson]: Mr. Chairperson, members of the committee, we have a professional day coming up on November 4th, November 3rd rather. You're going to be nervous. I had an extra day, Roy. Yeah, well, you know. It's a day. Here we go. We have a professional day coming up. Bernadette's going to give you a very extensive report. Diane, Beverly, Kathy, all the department heads have contributed to trying to develop this, working with the teachers to come up with things that are meaningful to the individuals there. So Bernadette's going to go through it for you, and I think there's a lot of value to what's going to happen on that day.
[Bernadette Ricciardelli]: So good evening. So this has been a joint effort. It certainly has not been me planning this by myself. Just this morning, Captain Medaglio, Diane Caldwell, Beverly, and I were meeting just to finalize our program for November 3rd. So the first of two professional development days for the 2015-16 school year for educators will take place on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2015. Classes will not be in session and therefore students will not report to school on this day. Medford High School will be the site for the majority of the day's activities, which include district initiative topics in educator evaluation, technology, and student information systems. The McGlynn Middle School will host a smaller group of educators for the safety care behavioral safety training program. So pre-K-12 educators will be divided into four different grade level groups. Pre-K-2, grades 3-5, grades 6-8, and grades 9-12. And they will rotate among the following four workshops in 75 minute intervals. So the Educator Evaluation Workshop will be led by myself and Paul DeLeva. We will lead it. Members of the Joint Labor Management Committee, which is comprised of other administrators and teachers from the MTA, will guide teachers in the examination of artifacts as they are used in the evaluation process. The goal of this workshop is to enhance educators' understanding of the expectations for evidence. The presenters will guide teachers in the process of contextualizing that evidence, in other words, providing meaning to each piece of evidence and why it's important, why it represents their work as professionals. And to contextualize that evidence for their SMART goals for each one of the standards involved in the evaluation process. The facilitators will also provide a review of the various educator plans and the process overall. So this new, it's not new anymore, but this educator evaluation system that we are involved with is fairly cumbersome and there's a lot to learn. We've done several professional development workshops, but we're finding that more is needed. And that's why we are embarking on this workshop, this topic on November 3rd. Another training is TeachPoint training. Kevin Andrews, the principal of the Brooks Elementary School, and Curtis Tudin, who is our data manager and system administrator for TeachPoint, will lead in this workshop. They will also be assisted by some members of the Joint Labor Management Committee. They are going to further instruct educators on how to upload evidence to the site and how to tag it, which is a wonderful feature to link each piece of evidence to a specific standard indicator. They will teach them to tag that information so that each article corresponds with a rubric, standard indicator, and element. Kevin and Curtis will also review other features of the TeachPoint system, such as editing forms, generating reports, and accessing help features available on the system site. Curtis Tudin and I did much of the training during the month of September on TeachPoint. Kevin Andrews and Suzanne Galussi also did some of the training as they were engaged in a pilot last year. That was the initial round of training. This is our second round of training. I know Curtis and I have been fielding a lot of phone calls, a lot of questions from people over the course of the past month. We think we're in a good place with TeachPoint, but it is going to take time until everyone feels 100% comfortable working with this system. A third workshop on that day at Medford High School will be on School Brains, our new student information system. So the goal of this workshop is to provide educators an introduction to the newly adopted student and data management system known as School Brains, as you know. The various features of the system include its student information system, gradebook, nursing and health applications, standardized test assessment and analysis ability, and curriculum mapping system. All will be highlighted at this overview training. So like TeachPoint, there are going to need to be a series of trainings with school brains, this being the first for the general teacher population. A fourth workshop is technology related. It will be on Apple TV iPad training. It will focus on how to effectively integrate technology into the classroom. This will be led by Allison Goldsberry and a group of educators she has recruited from within the district to facilitate in these workshops that will be broken down into smaller groups. I believe we have eight workshops that will be occurring during this segment. Let's see. There will be several workshops for teachers to choose from. Topics include the following, the basics, flipping the classroom, science activities, formative assessments, media creation to demonstrate knowledge, and presentation. So again, those are the different workshops that Allison is organizing within that larger context of Apple TV slash iPad training. Over at the McGlynn Middle School, we will be hosting a day-long behavioral management program for 80 educators, including paraprofessionals, teachers, and all assistant principals. The following is a description of the program. So the name of the program, this is taken right from their website. It's a trademark program. It's called Safety Care Behavioral Safety Training Program. The safety care, this program provides the skills and competencies necessary to effectively prevent, minimize, and manage behavioral challenges with dignity, safety, and the possibility of change. So the key to this program is that it's instrumental in preventing negative behaviors. Using the newest and most effective technologies from applied behavior analysis, and positive behavior interventions and support. This program is supposed to provide our staff with strategies not only for preventing and managing behavioral challenges but also to effectively teach replacement behaviors. All of the district administrators will also participate in the professional development day. Some will be participants in the safety care behavioral training program and others will facilitate the various workshops. I've identified some of the key people who will lead those workshops. Again, other administrators will be participants in different ways. Additional workshops for paraprofessionals and curriculum support and effective communication strategies will be offered also on November 3rd. Speech pathologists and occupational therapists will attend the advanced augmentative communication training. It's important to us to get feedback from educators, so all professional development offerings include an opportunity for educator feedback. This feedback is important to the district as it is used to adjust future offerings to ensure that the district's offerings meet the needs of our staff. Attached to the report, you have a, it's a draft of a program. We are still in the process of putting this together. It will be filled in with, with more information. But we, this is what we will be handing out to people. We want them to see this as a program that we, we put a lot of thought in putting this together. That especially when it comes to teacher evaluation and teach point, the two workshops are going to be well coordinated and, and they will complement each other. At this point, I would be happy to answer any questions that you have.
[John Falco]: Mrs. DiBenedetto, do you have a question?
[Erin DiBenedetto]: I just have a comment, two questions. One, with school points overview, could you just remember that the importance that the committee feels that using this technology to use it as an outreach to parents about grades and about any type of homework and assignments is really going to be expected of them? Yes. We just, I just really think that that's an important piece to keep in mind from day one in moving forward. And my second is not directly to you, it's to the superintendent. So this is great that we have professional development day for our teaching staff, but do we have anything for our administrative staff, like overviews on upgraded technologies that they might be using, like, like the admin assistance, the secretaries at our schools, those type of people, they deserve the thought process that we give to our other staff and that there are ways and classes and things that they can use this time as well. And if we're not thinking about it for this day, I think we should think about that for future and make them feel valued and important and that their job moves and changes as well as the teaching staff's job does and the expectations of the system as well.
[Roy Belson]: So as you'll note, the paraprofessionals are part of the professional day. The secretaries have been going through some different programs with Pat Vuey on different things they're going to do and different programs they're using. The custodians, we're talking about some techniques to help them do their job a little bit better. We've got some of that moving at this point in time. So I think we're, you know, we're cognizant of the fact that support staff plays a very valuable role, and they need upgrades and updates on a regular basis, and especially the use of materials. If you're a custodian, you know, what materials are appropriate to use, what materials are inappropriate to use. If you're using the wrong material on a surface, you might get it clean, but you might also damage the surface. You've got to deal with toxicity. You've got to deal with all kinds of things. So we've got a lot of this stuff in motion, and we do it not always as formally as this day, because this is a full day, but we certainly do it.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: Yeah, well I'm hoping moving forward when we have professional development that it's school wide and not just for our faculty and in that manner. So it's just something to think about, even a plan for, possibly for next year. I'm sure there are Windows updates or different programs. When we transfer over to the new program, The school brains, the training, maybe that needs to be introduced to all the administrative staff and all the people that that is going to be changed over. So if someone calls about their child's attendance, they're going to have to know how to use that program. Maybe we need to initiate that type of training now before we just switch it over. I mean, just want to think about the whole picture and not just the teachers.
[Robert Skerry]: Sure.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: Because we're a whole wide system and everybody that works here is of value.
[John Falco]: Except the paper place on Bob's gym. With regard to the educated feedback, what is that? What is that? What is that opportunity given to the educators to feedback?
[Bernadette Ricciardelli]: At the end of each workshop. Okay. So in this case, what we usually do is at the end of the day, each workshop is 75 minutes. You know, it usually takes people a few minutes. We don't want to take too much time away from each workshop. So the plan is to have it at the end of the day. So, you know, by the next day we'll have have information on this. We did it with the new teacher training program. We got the information right away, and I found it very useful, especially for myself. I ran the educator evaluation workshop, so just taking some of that feedback from the new teachers and incorporating it, although it's not the workshop, into what I'm going to do for November 3rd, for me, I think it's going to be very useful.
[John Falco]: I mean, that's good. I guess my question is with regard to something like Apple iPad training, so something like that, do you follow up at some point during the year, maybe like four or five months later with the educators and say, you know, how are you using this in the classroom? Are you using this in the classroom? Just to get some feedback as far as, I mean, they're there every day, so just to kind of see how they're using it in their classroom. Do we follow up then to see
[Bernadette Ricciardelli]: The answer is yes. And the person who has been doing that is Alison Goldsberry. And she does, she has a pretty significant collection of data on what she's done so far. Okay. So, you know, we certainly can get that and, and we will get that and reflect upon that beyond what we do for this November 3rd PD day.
[John Falco]: Okay, great. Thank you. Any other questions from the committee? Okay. Thank you. And the motion of Mr. Skerry seconded by Mrs. D Benedetto that the paper be accepted and placed on file. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? The report is accepted and placed on file. Thank you very much. The next item is the financial report. Mr. Superintendent.
[Roy Belson]: Mr. Chairperson, members of the committee, Pat Vili is here to go over the financial report with you through this period. We're in good shape, but I'll let her go over some of the details, and if you have any questions, I'm sure we'll answer them for you.
[5T-XCQueORE_SPEAKER_06]: Good evening. Before I get started, I'd like to announce that we are having PD Day for the Administrative Assistant Staff Secretaries, and it's a half a day that day. And our title is Work Smarter, Not Harder. Oh, I love it. All right. Please find attached a summary financial report as of October 15, 2015. As of the writing of this report, the general fund budget is 26.65% expended. Ten-month biweekly employees have received four checks since September 2nd, while our 12-month employees have received eight paychecks since July 1. Currently, eight teachers are on maternity leave, with four others pending. We currently have a few replacement paraprofessional positions still in the process of hiring. Furniture, the 465 chairs have been received, delivered, and installed at the buildings. Yahoo. It was feet. Online payments, the district initiated online payment options for many programs this year. The fax online option is for families who are paying for tuition based programming for before school programs, MEEP, McGlynn Preschool, Make Way for Kids, Preschool, and Kids Corner. MPS currently has 194 families participating. To date, payments collected equal $100,543 with a total expected collection of $540,568. The numbers and totals will fluctuate as families are added or changed programming. The second online payment program offered is MCC. MCC is a fee-based online payment program providing for payments to the after-school program athletics, AP exams, driver's education, and any other program that would like online payment options. MCC to date has collected $98,487. All payments collected, to be collected, are reflected in gross amounts. Fees for fax, free of ACH withdrawal, and 3% of credit card payment. Fees for MCC, $0.25 per ACH withdrawal, and 3% of credit card payment. As of FY16, tuition-based programs are required to use FACS, and non-tuition-based programs have the option of MCC or supplying a money order to pay for programming. The district is working toward a cashless payment system, which will improve collection rates and meet dual control audit expectations. Revenue generated by the above programs is part of the MPS budget plan, of which we are on target for. Both online payment programs can be reached through links on the district's webpage. Summer Fund Program. The program ran for seven weeks from July 6 through August 21, serving 145 children. Payments collected $147,989.80. Payroll expenses $108,588. Supplies $8,079.44 with a program profit of $31,232.36 which can be used to offset community schools programming offered to the district. Summer School Program. The program ran 30 days and served 141 students. MPS offered biology, Algebra 1 and 2, Middle School English, Discrete Math, Physics, Geometry, Middle School Social Studies, U.S. History, World History 1 and 2, and English 1 and 2 classes. The revolving fund accepted fees of $39,980, which offsets the cost of the teachers. Technology. Upgrades are continuing as planned. We have augmented iPads, Androids, and computers to ensure that all planned labs and new personnel are adequately equipped. Training sessions and mentors are forming to complement the implementation of the new student information management systems, SIMS, which is school brains. Security cameras are in the quote process to replace out-of-service units in needed locations. NPS has 140 security cameras. 90% of the security cameras are in good working condition. 10% require evaluation to determine need, location, and potential replacement with the items currently in the quote process. Telephones. Training is in place for the Andrews, and the building will port over October 19th from Verizon. The Columbus is scheduled for installation October 23 and 24 and port over from Verizon on October 29th. Roberts is scheduled for installation October 29th and 30th. We're porting from Verizon on November 5th. When I say porting, that is the actual physical movement of our lines, which then stops our payment process at Verizon. We do have to keep the minimum fax lines and alarm lines still on Verizon. The final building to convert is the high school, and we are on target for our December timeline. The telephone transition success can be attributed to our vendor, DSCI Comtel, and their representative, Michael Loria. And MPS is Allen Arena. Allen has been integral to the VoIP telephone implementation process by working with our vendor, our backup internet provider, and the buildings provide a system with backup internet should our main provider, Verizon, provided through Meramec Education doing business as addition networks fail for any reason. Transportation. MPS utilizes 18 buses running 2 a.m. routes and 2 p.m. routes serving St. Joseph Catholic School, St. Raphael Catholic School, St. Clement's, Minuteman, and MPS routes that pick up at 229 stops. Routes have been reviewed for use in crowding. Currently, no stops have been removed, but some have been adjusted for safety concerns, timing, or to minimize crowding. The website has the current routes posted. Routes are running on time, and we are ready for winter with the exception of the Brooks Route Number 8, which runs in an area where the greatest amount of road construction is ongoing. When the roads are open, we are on time. If not, we are still seeing delays. Utilities. Heating season has begun, and heat is on in the buildings. National Grid is currently our national gas supplier and distributor, and we are not contracted. The city of Medford relies on a consultant to monitor the market, and when they priced our loads specifically, the rates all came back above 60 cents a therm. National grid's rate is .5334 per therm, which is lower than anything the UMG consultant can secure for us. Alicia Hunt, Director of Energy and Environment, helps us oversee our energy procurement. NPS will continue to monitor with the city and act should pricing begin to edge up. National Grid electric supplies and delivers our electricity. And I'm sorry, but the Great Eastern is no longer true. We are still all the way with National Grid. And our contract rate is 0.16 kilowatts through November 2016. We are contracted for that. In closing, the first quarter of the school year is busy with grant closeouts and preparation to complete the state's end of year report. Fiscal FY16 is progressing as expected. And MPS will move forward with continued monitoring of the budget.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: Questions?
[John Falco]: Mrs. DiBenedetto.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: Hi, thank you, Pat. This is excellent. I had a few questions. On the summer school program, you said that the fees that we are accepted with $39,980, which offsets the cost of our teachers. Do you know if we run that program in the red or in the black?
[5T-XCQueORE_SPEAKER_06]: The superintendent's philosophy is that we try to provide education for all children who need it in the summertime. And our demographic during that time period does usually need some assistance. And so the community schools program does offset that cost. OK.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: That brings me to my other question, and it's not to you, it's to the superintendent. We asked a few weeks ago if we could see the community school's budget, and that would be included of what we used last year and what we projected, like the other budget that we had seen, and also where we are so far this year, an update on that. We also requested the budget for the fields in school rentals, like what income is coming in, what upgrades we've made to those facilities, what we're charging at each school, and at each location, and at each field. All of that information was requested, and I'm asking for that again. So going back to you, Pat, is you said that the technology, the cameras, 10% required, and we're in the bidding process right now. Do you have an idea of when that will be completed?
[5T-XCQueORE_SPEAKER_06]: Um, right now I do know that Allen arena is searching out vendors. It would be really nice to stay with the current security cameras that we have because then we can, some of these really don't need replacing. They need upgrades. They need maybe new shields that are fogged. And um, so it's taking a little bit more time to research them out, but um, it is, it's definitely on our gold list for the immediate future. Okay, great.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: Thank you very much. That's my only question.
[John Falco]: Mr. Skerry.
[Robert Skerry]: Can we report on our unemployment payments paid out status? How are we running? Above or below what we appropriate?
[5T-XCQueORE_SPEAKER_06]: The figures are in your budget pages right here, but I will have to look at where we were a year ago.
[John Falco]: Okay, thank you. If I may, a question regarding the crossing guard on the Fellsway. Has there been any resolution to that, or has the DCR responded?
[5T-XCQueORE_SPEAKER_06]: It's kind of like a ping pong game, and I have sent it back over the net, and I provided her with the number of children that get on along the Fellsway at different stops. Because the question is, we no longer have children at what used to be the St. Francis stop. And the reason for that is that we have moved the children up and down the Fellsway to keep them closer to their homes. so that they're not crossing that thoroughfare by themselves. They can at least be in view. So it took her a little while to understand that we weren't using the old stop, but what we had done was better for our families. And if they could provide us back with the crossing guard, we would like to put that crossing guard at the point where it can be most used. OK.
[John Falco]: Is it possible, just because it'd be nice to get this resolved. I know you're working hard on this. I know we've talked about it going back and forth, but maybe if we get Representative Donato involved to see if maybe he could talk.
[Roy Belson]: Yeah, we had talked to him, but I'll follow up.
[John Falco]: OK, perfect. Great. Thank you.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: I just have one more question, not directed towards you, but towards the superintendent. I think we were going to go over the old instruments at some point. Didn't we have a comment on the old instruments?
[Robert Skerry]: Musical instruments. The antiques that we had at one point
[Roy Belson]: We brought that again, you know, it's, uh, it really depends. You keep talking to people, we get different opinions as to the value, whether we get enough for them. Um, there's some people feel we should preserve them. I guess we can give you another update on, on, on what we think the value is. But if we go to auction or we go to sell, we may not get that value.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: I understand that, but there, there is a piece of history there that needs to be utilized and they could be played. by people that could appreciate them.
[Roy Belson]: I'm not so sure that the instruments we're talking about are playable by the level of student that we have. There may be one that's not.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: No, I don't mean for our students, like in the world. They should be out there. They shouldn't be in a room collecting dust.
[Roy Belson]: That remains a question, because we've had professionals look at it. And some say they would need some substantial work for them to be usable by an experienced professional.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: But there might be people that generally want that and to put that work into it and to have that in their collection, rather than in our room, collecting dust that we're not utilizing. I hate to see them sitting there and not being cared for well. I really believe that That is not the right place for them to be, and that they should be appreciated by people who would really value their thing.
[Roy Belson]: And the wealth could come back to the community. So why don't we give you another report on that, and you tell us what you want to do as a group, OK?
[Erin DiBenedetto]: That would be great. Thank you.
[Roy Belson]: Mrs. Cunha.
[Ann Marie Cugno]: Just a point of clarification. When Mr. Benedetto had asked about the program being in the black, are you talking about the summer fund program, or are you talking about the summer school program? Summer school.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: I just wanted to make sure it was clear. All right, thank you. Just one more thing, Mr. Superintendent, about the instruments. I'd like to have an inventory and a list of all the, like I think you had that, but could you present that to us again? A list of all the instruments that are there. I think you put it together in the past, if you could find that, or re-inventory, make sure everything's still there and nothing's missing. We know what we have, so that way we can- The instruments that are, you mean the- Antique.
[Roy Belson]: The antique. The antique instruments or all instruments?
[Erin DiBenedetto]: The antique instruments at this point.
[Roy Belson]: Okay.
[Erin DiBenedetto]: Thank you so much, I appreciate it. Those three reports.
[John Falco]: If I may, one more question. Do you have any, as you, we're now, as we progress through the school year, any concerns, anything that you're worrying about with regard to the budget?
[5T-XCQueORE_SPEAKER_06]: No, no. We're, we're progressing this plant. Okay, good. Good to hear.
[George Scarpelli]: Thank you. I was going to pick up that question in January.
[John Falco]: The question that needs to be on the motion to Mr. Scarpelli, seconded by Mrs. Cugno that the report be accepted and placed on file. All those in favor. All those opposed. The report is accepted and placed on file. Thank you very much. negotiations and legal matters. None. Um, under old business resolution submitted by Hispanic group on October 5th, 2015 motion to accept it.
[Ann Marie Cugno]: Okay.
[John Falco]: On the motion of Mrs. Cugno to accept the resolution. Uh, is there some second, second, seconded by Mr. Scarpelli. All those in favor. All those opposed. Okay. The resolution is accepted.
[Roy Belson]: Mr. Superintendent. So I gave you two off gender items, actually three. I just want to tell you what they are so that you can go over them and stay up because obviously they're in the public discourse. And while they're not immediate to you right now, they are immediate in terms of what's going on at the state house and what you need to know. The first item is the testimony at the joint legislative hearing on charter schools.
[Robert Skerry]: You did a great job, by the way, Mr. Speaker.
[Roy Belson]: Thank you. Thank you. I've given you the testimony of the state auditor, which I thought was very compelling. And I've given you the testimony that I provided at this time. It's important that we pay attention to this, because there are bills being filed that would increase the amount of charter schools available in the Commonwealth and could affect our community or any other community around us. And if they affect communities around us, youngsters could go. This is not an indictment in any way, shape, or form of charter schools per se, but it's rather a statement that says, if you've only got so much money, you're already telling the public that the state budget is running behind by about $145 million. Kristen Lepore has indicated that she's going to try to make up that money in the next few months. If you start expanding things, you start spreading it out even more. And as you spread it out even more, you're already $54 million behind. And in our community, it costs us, and it will cost other communities as well. The value of charter schools is something to be debated, whether they're the right way to go and not the right way to go in ed reform. But I think the case can be made that there are other interventions which would be more productive. And I think that the discourse will happen. Now, today, I read from the Statehouse News Service that the Senate will be caucusing on October 28. as to whether they will take up a charter school bill this year, or whether they will just simply rely on a petition or the legal lawsuits that are going through on the outside. If the Senate demurs and says they're not going to take it up, that means the legislature will not take it up. Because the House may pass it, but if the Senate doesn't pass it, it's not going anywhere. If they decide to take up a bill, we don't know which bill they'll take up. And that could be very interesting as well, so we'll have to follow that. So a lot of this is very fertile right now. A lot of discussion is going on. But it's important that you stay informed and you understand the debate. And if you read these two papers, I think you have a pretty good idea. So that's the first thing. The second thing is I gave you a handout tonight. There was an article in the Boston Business Journal that kind of tried to rank our MCAS scores, one community against the other. And quite frankly, It's a flawed mechanism because it's using different metrics and putting them together and saying the total equals a rating. That's just not an acceptable way to understand what's going on, especially since we know, if you just simply look at socioeconomics, how schools will come out. You can predict which schools will be on top, which schools will be in the middle, and which schools will be towards the bottom. So Lawrence and Chelsea never catch up. And Weston and Wayland. Harvard, places like that, are always on top. So I mean, there's really a faux reality to this kind of thing. But I did want to give you something that would show you how we stack up against some of the area communities, to give you a little bit of comparison, as you were asking that the other day. If you look at English language arts, our 92, this is 10th grade, the only thing that can be compared, puts us ahead of almost all the other urbans that we would compare to. demographically. If I'm going to compare myself to a community that doesn't have the demographics, doesn't have the ELL populations, doesn't have the SPED population, I'm kidding myself. I mean, I can't expect that we're going to get that kind of result. In mathematics, with the exception of Cambridge, we leave that back as well. In science, there's a dip there, but in science, The difference is that who takes the science test, 9th grade, 10th grade, or 11th grade? There's three different tests. Our kids are taking it in the 9th grade. And many of them have to take a different one in the 10th grade. But overall, they've done well. The other thing is the competency determination is at 220, not at 240. So if you take 220 rather than 240, we virtually have almost everyone passing. So they meet the competency determination We obviously have stuff to do, to work on, but I think you should know this so that if it comes up in discussion, you have information that you can share and feel confident that these are accurate numbers. On the second page, there's been some discussion recently in public discourse about the cleanliness of our buildings and the like. I think our buildings are pretty good overall. Our high school is 45 years old. Yes, there are some places that can use some improvement. But overall, with our cleaning service, the custodians, and the work that's going in, a lot of improvements have been made. The sidewalks, which were criticized, have been repaired. The steps on the west courtyard are being finished off in the next two weeks. They took a little bit more to get the right bid in to do that. And there's been any number of different projects. When you look at the things that have been done, you've got to ask yourself, this is quite significant. I mean, you think of all the facilities that have been upgraded and improved. So I think you can be fairly proud that you've done a lot. You've supported a lot with capital planning. The vocational school has an incredible amount of increases in maintenance and in new facilities and the like. So I think that if you look at that, you can be fairly good about that. Is there more to do? There's always more to do. Maintenance is never perfect. You can walk through any street in the Commonwealth and find it. the winter took its toll. You can walk through any public building and find that there's things to be done. If you look up over there in City Hall, right above you, behind Anne Marie, there is a crack in the decorative part of the ceiling, which almost killed me one night, sitting here at a city council meeting. The good news for me is I'm still alive, and the bad news for other people, I'll just leave them. But you can see that there's always something more to do. And, you know, I think you don't have to take a backseat on that. You have provided substantial funding, and the substantial work has been done. I believe that, you know, as we go forward, there'll be more and more capital planning. We'll be talking about that. But I don't think you have to take a backseat when it comes to capital planning. So those are some upgrades and reports to help you in your discussions as you go into the next few weeks as people maybe ask those questions, and it gives you a little bit more ammunition. Thank you. Thank you.
[John Falco]: Motion to adjourn.
[Roy Belson]: Motion to adjourn.
[John Falco]: On the motion of Mr. Scarpelli to adjourn, seconded by Ms. Cugno. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Meeting adjourned.
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