[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Recording. Thank you. We have our 11th regular meeting on the Medford School Committee, June 18th, 2025 at 6 p.m. This is remote only, and this meeting is being recorded. The meeting can be viewed live on the Medford Public Schools YouTube channel, through Medford Community Media on your local cable channel, Comcast Channel 9, 8, or 22, and Verizon Channel 43, 45, or 47. Participants can log or call in by using the following link. And the meeting ID is 951-4852-7687. Member Ruseau, will you please call the roll? Member Bradley. I think she said here.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Are you able to unmute, Jenny? Anyways.
[Jenny Graham]: I am, can you hear me?
[Paul Ruseau]: Now we can. Yes, now I can. Okay, perfect, sorry. Member Atapa.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Here.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapate. Here. Member Reinfeld.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Present.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rossell, present. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Present, seven, present, zero, absent. Do we have any student representatives on the call? Don't believe so. If all may rise to salute the flag, please. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, we have our consent agenda. It's approval of bills and payrolls, approval of capital purchases, approval of grants and donations, recommendation to approve a $500 donation to Best Buddies Program by First Baptist Church of Medford. And we also have a recommendation to approve an annual $1,500 Crystal Campbell Medford Strong Scholarship Award to the graduating senior at Medford High School. approval of field trips, and approval of meeting minutes from our regular meeting of June 9th, 2025, and our Family Engagement and Communications Subcommittee on June 11th, 2025. Is there a motion on the floor for approval? So moved. Moved by a member in Tapa, seconded by? Second. Member Branley, roll call, please.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[SPEAKER_26]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: member and Papa.
[SPEAKER_26]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember all the potty? Yes. Remember Rand Phil?
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member. So yes, Marilyn go Kurt.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes. Seven in the affirmative zero in the negative consent agenda is approved. We have no reports of subcommittees and we have a number of reports from our superintendent. So we'll start off with number one introduction of new administrative staff. Dr. Kimberly Talbot assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction, and Ms. Chelsea McNiff, director of English learners. I'm gonna turn it over to you, intern superintendent, Dr. Suzanne Galusi.
[Suzanne Galusi]: Thank you so much. Good evening, mayor and members of the school committee. I'm very excited for this first report of the night. And just as you were announcing, the cameras just miraculously came on. So with us tonight we have Dr. Kimberly Talbot and we have Ms. Chelsea McNiff. First I'm just going to say a few words about Dr. Talbot before I turn it over to her and then I'll say a few words about Ms. McNiff and then turn it over to her. Dr. Talbot is going to be the next Assistant Superintendent for Academics and Instruction for Medford Public Schools. She was confirmed by this body on June 3rd. She brings 30 years of educational experience to Medford and most currently is serving as the Executive Director for Academics and Instruction for Salem Public Schools. She has a wonderful background. She also has earned her educational doctorate degree from the University of Massachusetts, Boston. And through every phase of the interview process, she unanimously impressed all the stakeholders from the initial search committee round to interviews with school leaders and directors through the completion of a performance task. She comes with a deep professional knowledge, closely aligned core values, and a welcoming demeanor really made her an ideal addition for Medford Public Schools. We're so confident in her leadership that it will greatly enhance our academic programs and our instructional practices, and we really look forward to the positive impact that she's going to have for us across the district. So I'd like to just have her introduce herself, and we really look forward to partnering with her next year.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, Dr. Galusi. Mayor, school committee, thank you for having me tonight. I am so honored to join this team of dedicated educators to serve the students of Medford Public Schools. I look forward to seeing your students and teachers in action this fall and elevating best practices so that we can improve student outcomes. Thank you, thank you for entrusting me with this work, and I cannot wait to get started.
[Suzanne Galusi]: Thank you. Should I move on to Ms. McNiff? I didn't know if I'm pausing for... Okay, I'll move on. Okay, so Ms. Chelsea McNiff is going to be the next director of English Learners Department for Medford Public Schools. Her appointment was also confirmed by this body on June 3rd. She comes to us after serving as an EL department lead for Everett High School. In addition to that, she has great experience as an EL teacher, working with level one newcomer students, and an extensive background leading professional development for the districts that she's worked in. She's also fluent in Spanish and French. She holds a master's degree in ESL. and a bachelor's degree for French and literature and applied linguistics from Boston University. She also has a certificate in trauma and learning. She impressed, through her rounds, she impressed the search committee with her skill set, her experience, and her optimism for the role. Her values also align very closely to that of Medford Public Schools, and we are eager to benefit from her instructional leadership and her strategic thinking. We're really excited to bring her forward and see the positive impact that she's going to have on our students, our staff, and our broad Medford community. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Chelsea.
[SPEAKER_06]: Thank you so much. I'm sorry. I have my daughter right next to me. If you see this little foot in the camera, sorry about that. Thank you for that introduction and for inviting me tonight. I'm so excited to join this team. As Dr. Talbot said, I've been so impressed with everyone that I've met so far and just everyone's care and intention throughout this whole process. And I'm really excited to get to work. Thank you.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you, Chelsea. Thank you, Kimberly. We look forward to working with you moving forward. Very exciting.
[Suzanne Galusi]: And thank you for joining us here tonight. Yes.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: If there's no further questions, I'll just go on to number two. It's our CCSR annual report. I'm going to turn it over to Rich Trotta and our student representatives.
[Suzanne Galusi]: May I just make one comment before that happens? So I do want to just say this is a long agenda for this evening. So I do want to just say for Dr. Talbot and Ms. McNiff, It's up to you, but don't feel you need to remain on the call. I know that you have things that you're finishing up in your districts before you transition to us here in the summer. And Mr. Trotto is on the line and he will be giving an overview this evening. And I do wanna say moving forward, there has been a lot as we all know, as we're trying to finish up ending this school year. And a lot has gone into the meetings for for the last few school committee meetings. It is our intention that the CCSR report has student representatives with them, little difficult to do that virtually and on the last day of school. Mr. Trotta will talk through the overview of the work that's happened this year, as well as a video of students. Next year, we'll make sure that these reports have our student representatives in person. So with that, Mr. Trotta, is he able to unmute? OK, good.
[Richard Trotta]: Well, first of all, thank you for allowing me to present the work of the students. This is basically about students. The program does more than that, but the focus primarily is about what students have done with their advisors to make the world a better place. So I have passed on through Dr. Galusi the reports. They're pretty comprehensive, so I'm not going to go through those. I'm just going to do some highlights, and then we can watch a couple of presentations. First of all, I want to thank Dr. Galusi and the central office staff for their support. It's nice to have that kind of support when you're running a district-wide program. I want to thank the building principals for their help, school committee members, thank you for supporting us, faculty and staff, the advisors that we have. In particular, I want to thank Janelle, Golan, Mackenzie for doing such a great work in coordinating some of the projects and supporting all the other advisors. So the students, One of the things that we'll see in the pamphlet or the report that I just gave you is some testimonials, particularly by Jonah Siegel, who was the president of the CCR at Medford High School. We want to thank the major benefactors. The Cummings Foundation, which is over the period of since 2014, has provided us with $406,000 grant money. Right now we're on a 10-year grant, which will carry us through 2030. The grant is worth $350,000. The Crystal Campbell Betterment Project has donated over the years approximately $150,000, and the Bloomberg Philanthropies donated $50,000. So those are the major benefactors. There's others in the booklet, the report that you can look at. Next page. So since 2013, approximately 3,000 students have participated in CCSR with over 700 projects over a 12-year period. This year, some of the highlights are the Summer Art Studio that Susan Fee ran last summer and is going to be running it this summer. So that's funded through Cummings Foundation, a special grant of $10,000. We had a poetry contest and two students won the contest, Kalia Diligent and Haley Celestin. So those two high school students were the winners and got a small award for that. We've developed a professional library for faculty and staff that's located at the high school. We also had a donation for Crystal Campbell, a donation, a dedication to Crystal Campbell Memorial Gardens that was spearheaded by Marta Cabral, the principal, and along with Rebecca McKenzie, who does all the maintenance and care for the center. So that's a very brief highlight in addition to the reports that you have. Now, I just want to go right to the project portfolio, which is really perhaps the most important thing. In fact, it is the most important thing. And to give you a quick overview, we've provided a short video And that'll be followed by another short video of student testimonials. Together, the two of them run approximately eight minutes or so. And then we'll take some questions.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Oh, if there's background music maybe we need to press the the allow volume that's maybe the problem.
[Richard Trotta]: Yeah, I'm not sure there is.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Well, I think there's supposed to be audio, but otherwise we can just look at the pictures, that's fine too. I just saw Dr. Galusi put in the chat that there's supposed to be audio music, but either way is fine.
[Suzanne Galusi]: Well, I don't want people to think that there was narrative. We just wanna make sure we have the audio for the next video, which is from the students. I didn't want people to think they were missing audio.
[Erika Reinfeld]: You probably need to reshare it to get the audio and there's a box to check when you share.
[SPEAKER_16]: Say that again, Erica, sorry.
[Erika Reinfeld]: You probably need to re-share and then in the share window, there's usually a box to check. No, not, sorry, not sharing from Google, sharing on Zoom.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, okay.
[Suzanne Galusi]: Nicely done.
[SPEAKER_13]: Hi, I'm Jonah Siegel. My name is Julia Hanratty. My name is Magdela Tekele. I'm Catherine Biegan.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hi, my name is Nathan Quinn and I'm a member of the CCSR club.
[SPEAKER_07]: My role within the CCSR is the president which means that I organize meetings and I help facilitate projects and I run the social media and the website and I mentor other students.
[SPEAKER_13]: My role in the club is vice president and that means I help Jonah who's the president with like setting up the meetings and organizing everyone's project. I'm treasurer of the CCSR.
[SPEAKER_11]: I help like the flow of like meetings and like basically I help like organize or like help other students like with their projects.
[SPEAKER_13]: The CCSR is the Center for Citizenship and Social Responsibility.
[SPEAKER_07]: It's across all schools in this district but for Medford High it's an after-school program that encourages students to lead their own projects for community betterment.
[SPEAKER_11]: Basically just a club that helps like beautify the community through acts of like community service.
[SPEAKER_01]: A club where you get to do projects with your friends and help make a difference in your community.
[SPEAKER_12]: DCSR, it's just a place where people come together to help people. We make amazing projects that either focus on feeding the homeless, clothing the homeless, or spending time with elders. It's a really great community and club.
[SPEAKER_13]: The club's mission is to make the community a better place.
[SPEAKER_07]: The CTSR's mission is to make a positive difference on the community around us and to teach students that they can make a positive difference too, regardless of their age or their interests or anything else. If they have something that they think they can change in the world, they can do it. The club's mission is just all about community service. I've led the Medford Mystic River and Parks cleanup, where we organize volunteers to clean up trash around the Mystic River and our city's parks to prevent pollution and keep the city safe for us and the animals in it.
[SPEAKER_13]: I kind of co-led a project with Kira Tramble and Jonah, Kathleen, and Magdello.
[SPEAKER_11]: We went to a nursing home and we basically did like arts and crafts with the elderly there.
[SPEAKER_12]: I've been in two projects this year. I've been in a hygiene drive with Nathan Quinn and Julia San Antonio. Another project I've been involved in is the winter clothing drive. We collected clothes like hats, mittens, and we also collected some toiletries there as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: We collected health supplies and toiletries for families in need.
[SPEAKER_13]: I really like it's a great community everyone's so nice and fun and it's always a good time every meeting and Jonah really makes it a fun time especially like with the Instagram there's a lot of fun Instagram reels.
[SPEAKER_11]: I like that it's like a very like welcoming group of people like I always feel like very comfortable with people in the club and it's just like something I can go to and like I just like want to talk to my friends and like you can do good and also like have fun.
[SPEAKER_12]: I just love how everyone comes together to help people. I really think that's a beautiful mission and it really just shows how everyone cares about everyone.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like that in CCSR I get to hang out with friends but also make a change in the community.
[SPEAKER_07]: I love that the CCSR really promotes the mindset that we can be the change we wish to see in the world.
[SPEAKER_11]: I would definitely say join the club. Obviously, I'm kind of late in the game because I'm just joining my junior year, but I really wish that I had joined earlier because it's a really fun place where you can just hang out with your friends and do things to help the community.
[SPEAKER_13]: Everyone should join the CCSR and also join the National Art Honor Society because it's so much fun. You can make murals around the school.
[SPEAKER_12]: I would definitely say join the club. It's made me a ton of friends and it was a great way to get involved with high school and also just be so much more appreciative of what I have.
[SPEAKER_07]: You should join the club because it's satisfying to make a difference in the community around you and you all need community service hours to graduate.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been doing CCSR since elementary school and I really enjoy it. You should join the club. Join the club. Join the club. Join the club.
[SPEAKER_13]: Oh, join the CCSR. Yay, yay. Join.
[Richard Trotta]: OK, I just want to thank Janelle, Golan, Mackenzie for putting together the slide video, and then the vocational film and video class put together that short video. And so I want to thank you again for allowing me to present the work of the students, and I'm happy to answer any questions.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you, Mr. Trotter. We appreciate the presentation and the slideshow. Member Graham, I see your hand up.
[Jenny Graham]: Sorry, I'm just not finding the raise hand feature. Sorry. I'll relocate myself before the meeting's over here. I know we had talked, it may have been like a year or two ago now, about the declining enrollment in CCSR. And I wondered if you could talk to us about the number of students participating this year versus years past.
[Richard Trotta]: Basically, it's pretty much the same. The place where we lost the biggest population was the high school. The K-8 program was a typical year. One school had, I think, the McGlynn Middle had some like 80 or 90 students. So the population is steady and stable. What happened was we had a big drop off at the high school after an advisor left a few years ago, Michael Skorka, because he was a super advisor and drove in a lot of students, up to 100 students. So that was the biggest difference.
[Jenny Graham]: And so what's the plan to not just say it's because we lost an advisor, but to replenish the numbers of the students participating?
[Richard Trotta]: No, it's not to say that. It's very disappointing. The key is we have to get an advisor. And I worked with the principal, Marta, and we haven't had, haven't fallen yet. Last year we had an advisor, but she was new. And actually Joe and his team did the bulk of the work. We want to make it more popular and have more students, but it's a voluntary thing. So we try to make it attractive and we hope to get an advisor.
[Jenny Graham]: So the advisors are all unpaid? Is that what you're saying?
[Richard Trotta]: I'm just trying to understand. They get a stipend. That's what the grant pays for. Each advisor gets over $2,000 for being an advisor for the year. So we've, over the years, increased it to $2,500 for working with the students for one year. So it's about as high as we could go. We have a limited budget, so I can't offer too much more. That's the best we can do. And like I said, case away, we have pretty much set for the next year as well. So we're really hoping to get something from the high school.
[Jenny Graham]: So we don't have an advisor for the high school yet next year. Is that right?
[Richard Trotta]: Not yet. No. The people mostly come back.
[Jenny Graham]: OK. Got it. Thank you.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Member Intoppa.
[John Intoppa]: Yeah, thank you. I think I just wanted to, I think the, um. The voluntary aspect to clear up for anyone who might have heard that is at least from my perspective of advising students and seeing, you know, at least the college level students is. At least for the last 2 years, students have been faced with the. split decision of do I go to sports or do I work? And so for them to do volunteer work, you know, it can become a little tricky, especially if, you know, they're helping work with their family. But I just wanted to give, you know, commendation to Mr. Trotta and the whole team for doing this work. I mean, project based learning is huge. You know, we've seen such amazing things for the district come out of this. So I'm just happy to see that the great work is continuing and Yeah, I just wanted to give my thanks to Trott and the team.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. Thank you, member Dunbar. And no questions, I'll just, if I may speak from the chair, I too really hope that we get an advisor if we have to shift around funding in any way to be able to pay a teacher that may be interested. I think it's vitally important. I know that we had over 200 students in CCSR only a couple years ago, and I think the program is just so amazing and our high school students in a way need it the most. So I just advocate for really trying to get that position filled, providing a support system for the officers that we just saw on the video or those to come next year that may be replacing those officers. Thank you.
[Richard Trotta]: Okay, one more point. We have 371 students this year. The max we had was maybe 100, maybe less, at the highest amount in 12 years. So it's not dramatically down. Like I said before, we need some from the high school, and I would appreciate anyone's help in doing that. I've been trying to get somebody, but it can't. Somebody has to volunteer for it, and there is a stipend that goes with it.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Member Graham?
[Jenny Graham]: I was just like digging through the recently done teacher's contract and this is one of the stipends that I believe sits outside of the teacher's contract because it is paid via a grant. Is that correct, Dr. Glucy? That is correct. So I guess maybe a programming note for CCSR is that we have dramatically shifted I think for the better the stipends that we are offering both for athletics and for extracurriculars and. Perhaps the CCSR team may want to look at what we did as a model for what we believe is needed for the kind of support and dedication that we expect of advisors, because it is a lot of work, particularly for this program. And one of the things we did in the contract, which is available on our website, is we introduced a tier structure to the academic Um, and extracurricular stipends that sort of talk about, like, the intensiveness of the activity so that there's some. Like, I'll say tearing for lack of a better word of the kinds of clubs and activities and what they require. So that may be a good place to look to say where does this fit and is the current set of stipends enough or is there somewhere else in the CCSR budget that we could pull from to make those positions more appealing, especially as we have shifted the rest. So that number may. I think used to probably be well in excess of what we were offering for many of our extracurriculars. And it just may no longer be that. So we may need to take a look at that and figure out grant-wise where funding can come from to do that.
[Richard Trotta]: OK. Just on that point, we have a budget. And the money that we get every year pretty much covers everything. And the vast majority, most of it, like 90% of it, 80% of it goes to stipend. pretty much maxed out there. But if someone could add more money, I'd be happy to use it. But we do have a budget that we have to keep to.
[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, I appreciate that. And I would welcome a funding proposal or a recommendation or a request that we feel like would address this. So maybe we can take that up in the fall. But I think this is where, as the person who is the main stipend holder and knows the most about the grant and the funding available, we would welcome your recommendation about what is needed. and perhaps there are other people in the community who might be willing to fund something like that. But I think a recommendation from you would be very impactful.
[Richard Trotta]: Oh, that's great. I would be happy to do that.
[Jenny Graham]: Great.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you, Mr. Trotta. We appreciate the presentation and the slideshow.
[Richard Trotta]: Okay, thank you again.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. We're going to go to number three, yellow bus transportation and electrification timeline recommendation to approve five-year contract comprised of three years and to one year. I'm going to turn it over to Noelle Velez, director of finance and Brenda Pike, planning development sustainability planner from the city. Thank you.
[Noel Velez]: Thank you everyone for joining us today. Yeah, so here we have today is the RFP that we sent out back in March regarding our school bus and our transportation. When we sent it out, we had sent out a very detailed report regarding what the needs of the school district was currently and what we felt the needs might be in the next upcoming years. And we got back one bid currently, Eastern Bus. They offered some prices to us regarding both late pickup, daily charter buses for sports, athletics, and also including our day-to-day operations of morning pickup and after school drop off. Also here we have Brenda Pike from the city side to talk a little bit about electrical buses and a place we'd like to go to in the future and kind of how we as a school district and the city can work together to really manifest this vision and idea.
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, so just a quick update. We were awarded a grant for free technical assistance from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center to create a school bus electrification plan. We've been working with VEIC and Energetics for a few months now, and they've assessed our current conditions and needs. The full analysis will be available this fall, but they have some initial recommendations. They're recommending a phased approach with four electric buses replacing diesel buses in the next five years to be housed at Eastern Bus's Malden location, and then replacing the rest of the school fleet in two more phases over the next 10 years and housing them at the high school, incorporating chargers for them into the new high school design. And there are multiple possible ownership models for this, including third party owning and operating the buses, Medford owning the buses and a third party operating them, or Medford owning and operating our own buses. Initial financial analysis shows that the electric buses cost almost twice as much as comparable diesel buses, but with existing grants and incentives available to the city, the 10-year capital operations and maintenance costs can be less than diesel buses. But we just wanted to let you know today that this report is being developed, and we'll have more information for you this fall. Thank you, Brenda.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Thank you, Brenda. I have a quick question. So I realize it's a cart before the horse a bit in some of my questions. I mean, could we own buses that are housed at Eastern Bus? Is that an actual option?
[Brenda Pike]: It's a possibility. I don't think it's something that's been included in this current RFP. It would have to be an amendment if that was something that we, if we got a grant and decided to do that in the future.
[Paul Ruseau]: OK, because even adding four, we have had a lot of conversations, I think, for at least six years now about adding some electrification at our schools. We were going to do a carport with solar. We can't do that. We bought all kinds of. When we upgraded all of our equipment for our kitchens, we bought all this electric stuff because the school committee has decided we don't want to buy carbon-based equipment. Well, we had to ship it all back because the building doesn't support that much power use and neither did the utilities at the street. While we could certainly probably afford the utilities inside the building, Us having to pay for National Grid to upgrade their grid, frankly, is a wildly expensive endeavor, if I remember correctly. So will your plans include the fact that National Grid isn't ready wherever we want to put it? I mean, we wanted to put more electric chargers We had to put them in different places in the schools. I think we have one or two in, we have one in most schools, but there are other areas we just couldn't put one, because there's not, the electrical systems that are not meant for public schools, electric systems, are not ready for the amount of power required. So, I mean, I use, I have two EVs myself, My electric bill is startling. And I'm all for that, because I also don't have any carbon output. But the costs to run them and to install the equipment is one thing. But National Grid doesn't seem ready. So will your reports or analysis include if they're going to have to pay for it? They're not going to pay for it, which I think is ridiculous.
[Brenda Pike]: We're already in talks with National Grid about the capacity at the high school location, and they've indicated that they don't see any capacity issues, at least in this initial assessment that they did, and they can do a more in-depth one as we move forward.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, certainly when we build a new high school, I expect there would be lots of utilities work to support a new building. And at that point, sure. But anything before there's a new high school, I think, is where I'm concerned about. Where are we going to charge these?
[Brenda Pike]: All of those costs are being factored into that financial analysis that we'll see this fall.
[Paul Ruseau]: Great, thank you.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you, members. Member Graham?
[Jenny Graham]: Thank you. I finally found the raise hand feature. So I do recall at a school committee conference at 1 point in time that there were electrification programs out there that did require school districts to take ownership of the buses. And then there was, like, a lease out of the buses. So it wasn't necessarily like. A contract issue, particularly, but it was like, we would own the buses and essentially lease them out to whoever is driving the buses. So I think there's any number of ways that the electrification piece of this could happen and. Obviously, there's a lot of costs associated with the electrification of buses. So I'm sort of inclined to ask us to send this to subcommittee now so that when you're ready for that media discussion, like there's a place for that discussion to happen that can be dedicated to this, because obviously there's a lot of planning involved. So I'm sort of thinking about that, and I'm happy to make a motion to do that if my colleagues don't have other questions. But I also... In reading this report, I just want to make sure I'm understanding the bid. So the bid, we would be entering into a three-year contract, and there would be options to extend that contract for one-year terms for a total of five years possible. But those are at our option at a later date. Is that correct?
[Noel Velez]: Yes, that is correct.
[Jenny Graham]: And we also only got one bid. Is that correct?
[Noel Velez]: Yes, that is correct as well.
[Jenny Graham]: And I just think I'm not really expecting that we have a big, huge audience here tonight on the last day of school. But I think that's important to say out loud as much as we can, particularly on the heels of the year where we had to ask Eastern Bus to come visit us at school committee because they did not have enough drivers. So our options are extraordinarily limited. It's not just a problem here in Medford. It's a problem across the state that the Mass Association of School Committees has asked the legislature to take up in terms of increasing competition. So there's a lot going on in that space that does sort of limit our choices. But I am happy to see that we were really thoughtful in how we put this bid out so that we have options, including things like late buses, including things like add alternates for electrification, et cetera. So I think we have a lot of options to leverage this contract in the bid that will serve us well for the coming years. So I'm also happy and I will make a motion now to accept the recommendation to approve the contract as described.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Motion to approve the contract as described by Member Graham. Is there a second? I think that you might have moved your lips, Member Ruseau, but you're muted.
[Paul Ruseau]: I did move my lips.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you for noticing. I did second that, yes. OK, motion to approve by Member Graham, seconded by Member Ruseau. Roll call, please. Member Branley.
[SPEAKER_26]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[SPEAKER_26]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Member All the party. Yes. Remember her rifle?
[Erika Reinfeld]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Yes, Mayor Lingo. Kern.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes 70 affirmative zero in the negative paper passes. Um are.
[SPEAKER_16]: Are there other questions? Or should I make my motion about moving the
[Jenny Graham]: I'd like to make a motion to refer the electrification of school buses and the report being prepared for the fall to the strategic and capital planning subcommittee. Second.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Motion by Member Graham, seconded by Member Reinfeld. Roll call, please.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[SPEAKER_26]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: I burn tapa.
[SPEAKER_26]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember all the potty? Yes. Member right help?
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member. So yes, Maryland. Okay.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes. 70 affirmative zero negative. Paper has been moved to subcommittee. I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Lucy interim superintendent to go over the rate card early pickup track for after school programming.
[Suzanne Galusi]: Thank you. So, and I do know that we have Director Megan Fidler-Carey on the call, and she, I'll just give a brief overview, and then if we have questions, I know she's here as well. So, we've come before the body before. We, you approved the rate card for the tuition for the afterschool program. One of the things that we did discuss when we came to talk about the, enhancement of the afterschool program in our work to increase capacity, one of the ways in which we're hoping that that can be done is with this early pickup time. So as we presented to this body before, on the April 14th meeting, we are here to talk about what the rate would be for that early pickup time. So through survey results from families, it was The survey data showed that people would be more open to the early pickup time of 4 p.m. So that would be about 75 minutes after the new dismissal time for elementary schools. So there'd be a 4 p.m. pickup time and then a 6 p.m. pickup time. You have, excuse me, approved the rates for the 6 p.m., so it's the yearly rate of 500, 5,000, no, Yes, $533 for a monthly rate, daily rate of $29.64. And so just the prorated option for that, 4 p.m. pickup time would be $205.20 for a monthly rate, and that's $11.40 for a daily rate. So they just took the 6 p.m. time and prorated it to the 4 p.m. time. And we're looking for approval for that, but if you have any questions prior to approval, please let us know.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Member Reinfeld and Member Ruseau.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Member Ruseau was first.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Okay, you were first on my screen, so I was just trying to remember. Remember Rousseau, then remember Reinfeld.
[Paul Ruseau]: Maybe Zim will get this right someday. My question is, what if everybody opts for, financially, what happens to the program if the vast majority of people choose the 4 p.m. slot?
[Suzanne Galusi]: Well, I don't want to just have a careless answer to say that I don't think that that will be happening, but the way that director Fiddler Carey went about this was she surveyed the current enrolled families she surveyed the families that are on the waiting list and so she's going to take that tiered approach to rolling this out with families as well so the first option will be families that are currently enrolled. And that will, she'll give a window of time for that. And then she'll move to families that are on the wait list before we kind of open it up broadly to newer families. So I don't, yeah, I don't know if that answers my question.
[Paul Ruseau]: Definitely. Thank you. And my other question was $9 an hour is I still think kind of outrageously low. And you can't get anything for $9 an hour unless you, I mean, you'd have to travel thousands of miles to find anything for $9 an hour, thousands of miles. So I don't know what I think about this. I know that we have done comparisons to other places, but I don't know, I'm just really stuck on $9 an hour. That's just, I can't get past it. And I'll let other people speak, sorry.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Member Reinfeld and Member Grant. Thank you. I just wanted to ask how this maps to our staffing. I know part of the motivation for this model was that we thought that we could have more flexible staffing opportunities. And so I just wanted to make sure that was proportional here and that the people who are on the clip shift till 4pm working, they're still being paid at the same rate as the people in 6pm.
[Suzanne Galusi]: Yes.
[Erika Reinfeld]: And so this proportionally maps to what we need to pay our staff to run this program, presumably with more people in the early shift and fewer people overlapping in the later shift.
[Suzanne Galusi]: Yes.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Thank you.
[Jenny Graham]: Member Graham. Thank you. This survey that you did, how did it, what were the results? Like how many people said, what percentage of respondents said, I would do this version if it was available versus people who said I would not do this version if it was available. What were the results?
[Suzanne Galusi]: I'm going to defer to Director Fidler-Carey.
[Megan Fidler-Carey]: Hi, thank you, school committee. So we gave it out, and we gave a couple of different times. And for the earlier pickup time, about 30 people responded that they would be interested in the earlier pickup time from the respondents. What was interesting, though, was how many people followed up afterwards with an email. After filling out the survey, they emailed saying all of the different options that they would be willing to consider, which I thought was very interesting. And just really liking the idea of the earlier time, because a lot of them, you know, especially a couple of our teachers are saying, like, they just need that little extra bit of time. So they did explain that directly. But it was about 30% of the respondents.
[Jenny Graham]: Yeah. Okay, got it. That's helpful. And I do know that lots of people had feedback about that survey in terms of the nature of the questions. And I'm hopeful that the Afterschool Task Force can help us just get a little bit more precise on some of those communications before they go out in the future so that we're not causing agita. We were intending to ask a very simple question, and people got pretty wrapped up around like, if I answer this the wrong way, am I going to lose my spot? Which was not our intention at all. I know that for sure. So I think that's important. I do think I agree with Member Ruseau about the very, very low price. And I think one of the things we have to consider is that when we're offering this shorter version, there is stuff that is still just as much. There's just as much management. There's just as much payroll. Now we have people who will be late. Necessarily like easy so easy to say it's 1 3rd of the work because there is still like, there's like. Sort of the fixed aspect of what this is going to look like to be able to support this program, which is like. Adding a layer of complication, I still think it's like a really good idea. I just would like to see the price go up to be like, instead of just an even 3rd, like, I would, I would personally like to see it be about half of what full option is. Because I think there's a tremendous amount of work that is going to have to be done to manage this separate strand. It's not going to be completely seamless. And I think we just need to account for that in terms of what our infrastructure is going to require to do that.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you, Member Graham. Anybody want to respond, or I'm going to go to?
[Suzanne Galusi]: I'm sorry. I didn't know if you were going to. I think that that is fair, and I think that's a pretty accurate summary of what we have been having internal conversations about as well. So what I'm hearing is to raise it to $15.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: I would be very comfortable with that, but I'll let my colleagues chime in. And when we say $15, Dr. Guzzi, you mean $15 an hour?
[Suzanne Galusi]: For a daily rate. No, for a daily rate. A daily rate of $15.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Got it, okay. Let's see if, okay, so member Ryan fell, member Intoppa, then member Ruseau.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Yeah, I was going to agree and note that the financial aid is still available for families who need that, which seems reasonable as a, reminder that that's happening as well.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Do you remember I felt member and tapa.
[John Intoppa]: Thank you, Mayor. Well, I understand why we want to pardon me, If part of me feels that the administration says they can do it with 11 or whatever, I'm sorry, the number's right here, 1140. I don't know how, I mean, I understand it's, I don't want to say just 15, but I'm curious to see how that works. And if the administration says 1140, we could support off 1140. I don't see why, I mean, I understand why we want to raise it to 15, but I would be more in support of the 1140 number as opposed to the 15, just because I know that, This is a huge pain point for our families, and this may help bring some new folks in, and I understand there's financial assistance, but I don't know. That's sort of my two cents on it. Thank you.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Member Ruseau and Member Graham. just send yourself members so thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm new to the zoom thing. I have a question about, you know, I know we have team leads, and I forget if that's the title that that director for the carry has for her staff, but we will have. I mean, inherently, there will be more staff that is part of this equation. There will be more physical bodies that are employed by Medford Public Schools. And there will be people who will say, I can work that 245 to 4, but I can't work till 6. And that's great. We're going to have those people. We're going to increase capacity. But are you going to also have to have more team leads, or whatever it is that you call them? They get paid more than? those folks who are not team leads. And so is the intention to, I mean, I know it's early days, so I know some of this is a bit hard to nail down right now, but is the intention to put more on the existing set of team leads, or is it to add additional team leads where needed? And how much, how has that cost been considered?
[Megan Fidler-Carey]: Megan, do you want to, yeah. Yeah, I'll take this one. The way that we are envisioning this for the space is that this early shift will be, it will be more of a kind of concentrated big program where the students assemble, they get their healthy snack, they get some homework done, and then they go play. But it's not as much movement. It's not the sort of the enrichment model that we have for the rest of afterschool. That's the full three hours and 15 minutes. This is more the one hour and 15 minutes condensed version so they'll be all be really in one place so we'll only have one lead. We call them group leaders, so we'll have one group leader for that whole early shift, and then supports for as many students again we like to keep that one to 10 ratio. So as many as we end up being able to fit with the space provided and the need, and then that group leader would stay on and go support the later shift group afterwards.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. And I just want to ask my second question rather than going all the way around again. What is the threshold for financial assistance?
[Megan Fidler-Carey]: So we, I mean we offer financial assistance based on the determinations of the city that they use for their community development block grant to determine low income, and so families can get 30 or 50 or 70% off. Um, and we do get funding from the community development block grant. We're getting nearly $10,000 this year, um, that once it's finalized, we'll present to you. Uh, we have also applied for some funding for McKinney-Vento families, and that would allow some students to come at no cost to them, obviously. Um, but then otherwise, it's just a sort of a dent, and we gave, uh, about $45,000 in financial assistance this year.
[SPEAKER_03]: Excellent. Thank you.
[Jenny Graham]: How many more students do we anticipate being able to admit under with this additional strand?
[Megan Fidler-Carey]: Well, I mean, we're starting them all out to have it be one kind of group. And remember, we keep our groups to the 26 mark, which is what the EEC uses the 1 to 13 ratio, 1 to 10 ratio. So if we had two adults with that, so we're starting with that. But if we find that there's a flood at the Brooks and Roberts, which I imagine we will get, those are our two biggest programs, then we'll look at the space and see if we can double that. and get that to, if there's a need, if there's an ask for 50 kids for the four o'clock pickup, I think we can make that work with the space. We've already started conversations with the principals to let them know that this was an idea that we're thinking about and for them to think about how that will work in their afternoons. And certainly our site coordinators, for them to think about how that'll work in the afternoons. And I think if we have the cafeterias, we can do that.
[Jenny Graham]: So are you saying it's like an extra 26 kids per building? Is that what you're saying?
[Megan Fidler-Carey]: Yes. And I mean, I'm not sure how much bigger than the 26 we'd get until we have staff fully confirmed. I think then we could sort of, we always will keep positions posted. And if we can get another staff, then we can let in the more kids that go with the staff member.
[Jenny Graham]: Yeah.
[Megan Fidler-Carey]: And I think the difference,
[Jenny Graham]: But this program will allow us to make a pretty big jump of 25-ish kids.
[Megan Fidler-Carey]: Yes, we're hoping so, because I know that some kids Some families, they've said that they just need that extra little push. And we've had staff that have said, you know, staff that work during the school day that have said, like, I can't stay all the way till six, but I could give an extra hour at the end of the day.
[Jenny Graham]: And I think my other question is, this is a five-day option. We're not splitting that hair further to say there's two-day options and three-day options and four-day options, but this is just a five-day option. Is that correct?
[Megan Fidler-Carey]: We thought we would. Again, looking to best practices in other districts where we learned about this option. They do offer a two day and a three day option, but it's fixed. It's not like we do in the after school where you can pick like a Tuesday, Wednesday, and then that means we have to find somebody who wants to do the Monday, Thursday, Friday. We said we could do a three day option that's Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or a two day option that's Tuesday, Thursday. Just trying to think about what's best for more families. So that's how we're envisioning it. We're also very mindful that we wanna kind of take this thoughtfully. We don't wanna jump right in and bite off more than we can chew. So if we wanted to say like, let's just start with the five-day option, that would certainly logistically be easier. But I think that if we had fixed days, a fixed Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and a fixed Tuesday, Thursday schedule in addition to the five-day, I think that that would be manageable. And it would open up a couple more seats because we could, again, if we're going by seats instead of by students, that would be more so.
[Jenny Graham]: I'm comfortable with that as long as it's not like the complete Wild West times two, right? I think that's something that we're not ready for. So I think that feels perfectly fine to me. I think just circling back to the cost, If you all remember, the other thing we have really committed to is rapidly expanding our program after years of not making much progress. So I think what we will need administratively to make that happen is very unknown. And we're going to layer on top of that this new strand. So I think we should be conservative in terms of what it takes to make sure we do this well, rather than come up short, where we then have criticism that the program would have, could have, should have done something different. And if we find that all of that comes together very seamlessly, I think then we have the option next year to say, we're not going to increase that rate. But I think if we come in too low, we will own this. And all of the criticism that comes with short-changing the operational need, potentially. So I'm going to make a motion that the daily rate be $15 for this till 4 PM option. And yeah.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. Thank you. Remember Graham members.
[Paul Ruseau]: I was doing some calculations. AMI is $118,000 in Medford this year for a family of four. And that would be what you'd have to make to receive no financial assistance. And so I'm very comfortable with that $15 a day because I mean, I'm not going to comment on people's finances, but if your household brings in $118,000 a year and $15 a day is going to break you, then that's a different conversation, really. It's not for me to comment on that. But we provide assistance, 70% what was it, 50% and 30% of that $15. So that's why I'm quite comfortable with these rates. I think that I would like to know next year when we're having this conversation, what would it look like if these rates were significantly higher? And I don't mean 6%. I mean, the $29.64 a day was $45 a day. The $15 a day was $25 a day. Like, what would that do to the program? What would that do to our ability to offer more assistance to families that were in need? Because again, these are the rates for people who do not meet any financial assistance requirements. These are not the rates for folks that have those income levels. So what happens if we go there? Do we end up with a much greater retention of staff? Do we have the ability to offer retention bonuses? Would that actually change how many staff we retain from year to year? One of the biggest challenges I am concerned about with this is that more staff means more time spent recruiting because that's more turnover. There's no way around it, right? Megan, I don't know if she's doing it all herself still, but spends an enormous amount of time finding staff. And if there's more staff that are employed to fill up the program and that retention is the same as it has been, then there's going to be more hiring required. That's more of her time or somebody else's time. I'm just thinking like a substantial change to this cost, what would it look like next year to our ability to retain people. And, you know, aside from the training costs retaining people has. you know, a lot of value in program consistency and all the other stuff that I don't need to go through. So I'm going to second this motion to go to $15 a day for the clipped shift option. But I am going to ask that by next year, we have a substantially, that we have an analysis of what we can do as a program if we went to $45 and $25 for those two options. keep it in mind. Financial assistance, none of that changes. So that's, I'll second that.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. There's a motion on the floor by Member Graham, seconded by Member Ruseau. And I just want to thank everybody for your work on this. It's very creative and the survey helped us get there as well. So great job. Great job for something we've been asking for and hoping for for a that we've been doing for a few years now, especially so member Ruseau. If you could please call the role.
[Paul Ruseau]: Unmuted still good. Um member Branley.
[SPEAKER_26]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember Graham?
[SPEAKER_26]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Remember and Tapa.
[John Intoppa]: Just a new member. Yes, it's
[Erika Reinfeld]: Member Reinfeld also says yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh my God, I'm sorry, yes.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: And you, and you Member Ruseau, right?
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, and I said yes too, boy, I got it.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Okay, seven in the affirmative, zero in the negative, the paper passes. And then we are gonna go to number five, water filling stations. Retta Smith, our Director of Food Services, I'll turn it over to you.
[Suzanne Galusi]: I'm not seeing her. I know she was on earlier.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes, she was. She hopped on a couple of times, so I'm not sure if she's having connection issues. She is, and I'm not seeing her now.
[Jennifer Silva]: So, this is Jen Silva. Radha is actually on a plane, so I think she's been trying to get on and off as she has Wi-Fi. But I thought she said she had sent a video. Did she? I don't know who she sent it to.
[SPEAKER_16]: Yes, she does. Would you like me to play it?
[Jennifer Silva]: Yes, please. I did not know that she was going for if she couldn't talk.
[SPEAKER_16]: Yes, Director Smith and Dr. Cushing prepared a video. So let's hope I can get the audio to work again this time.
[Suzanne Galusi]: Click the button.
[Peter Cushing]: Good evening, Madam Mayor and members of the school committee. Thank you for taking the opportunity this evening to review this quick video presentation as both Rhetta Smith, Director of Food Services, and myself are unable to attend this final meeting of the Medford School Committee this year due to family commitments. We're here tonight in spirit to present to you Flow Water and request a five-year lease approval. This is part of, I would say, a pilot, but not really because a five-year lease is not a pilot. But this would give the Food Service Department the opportunity to continue using the two Flow Water devices that have been installed while further understanding the costs and implications of leasing versus purchasing for other locations in the district. The plan is to deploy these to all of the cafeterias. Hopefully, we have to do some further work looking at the spaces, but we wanted to bring this to you this evening to get a five-year lease approved by this body this evening, and then Director Smith will attend the City Council for final approval in the coming months. With that, I'd like to turn it over to Director Smith at this time.
[Smith]: Good evening. My apologies for not being able to be present tonight. Flow water is, I think, a better system for us. So under USDA regulations, the cafeterias are obligated to provide drinking water to the students, which we are happy to do. Previously, we'd been using, at the high school, five-gallon refillable dispensers that we had filled with water in the kitchen and then transport out into the cafeteria space for the students. I wanted to do something that was better for the students in terms of meeting their needs for drinking water. They had expressed that it didn't taste very good, so I came across flow water. And flow water definitely has a more premium feel to it than the LK water bottle filling stations that we have. It has a seven-step filtration process. The water is very cold when it comes out. There's a five-gallon reservoir that holds the water, and so it's very cold when it comes through the tap, and the students have commented on that and appreciate it a lot. So we have two units in the high school currently that we are piloting. And the student feedback that we've received, staff feedback that we've received has been really, really positive. I have a unit that is installed outside of my office. And when I'm there, students and staff members come throughout the day to fill their water bottle station or water bottles. So that's been really, really nice to see. This is some documentation provided from Flow Water. So their systems were used on water from Flint, Michigan, which, as I'm sure everyone knows, had extremely high levels of lead in the drinking water. And using Flow Water, they were able to get that lead level down to undetectable levels, which is pretty amazing. And the pictures you can see on the right, the difference with and without using flow water. So it's visibly different as well. The cost difference in leasing versus purchasing the flow water system over five years, it's actually cheaper to lease the machine than it is to purchase it over five years. Additional benefits are that the units are under warranty for the entire duration of the lease. If you purchase the machine, it's only under warranty for One year, considering that the high school is a very busy place and many outside renters are in the building on the weekends. I feel more comfortable with going with the lease option, knowing that the
[Paul Ruseau]: I know read it too well to think she ended it in the middle of a sentence. Can you see that X there in the middle of the screen? Yes. I don't know if you have to click that. I don't know what that is.
[SPEAKER_16]: Yeah, it was working when I was testing it earlier, I apologize. Always works when you test it.
[Unidentified]: One second.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'd refresh the page if it's a webpage.
[Smith]: is a very busy place and many outside renters are in the building on the weekends. I feel more comfortable with going with the lease option knowing that the units would be covered under warranty for the duration of that time period. After the five-year lease, It is extended on a month-to-month basis. If the machine is not really functioning as well as we want it to at that point, we could also trade it in essentially to get a new unit and extend a lease. Or if we were happy with it over the five years, then we could opt to purchase units at that time.
[Peter Cushing]: So at this time, that's the end of the presentation. Some questions you might have relate to the overall water quality in our schools that was of topic in September and October this past year. The district has submitted our request for SWIG and will be receiving financial compensation this summer to replace Many of the water fountains that tested negatively, those will be in the neighborhood of $3,000 a piece. So, more than likely, those will be the LK replacements. Now, while this is definitely, as director Smith said, a. premium option. This would probably be best suited in our cafeteria spaces. The machines are very sleek, very inviting, and offer the opportunity for, as you can see in this picture here, both staff and students, the opportunity to fill up. I encourage, and if this were an in-person meeting, Director Smith had actually planned to have chilled water there from the stations for you, but we invite you to come to the schools at any point to really taste it for yourself. The reality is though is that to deploy these across the district in all spaces would be cost prohibitive in comparison to the LKs that will be supported by SWIG. So while I had initially hoped to do that after crunching the numbers and doing the math, it just doesn't really work out. But in order to provide this as an opportunity for students and staff to fill their own vessels, or perhaps the district would like to provide a branded flask for our students and staff at some point, that might be a great alternative as well. would like to just close out by saying really appreciate Rhetta's enthusiasm in pursuing this and really working hard. You'll notice that in this picture, in the two cafeterias, we've actually utilized long, dormant, old water fountains that were covered over. You can see it there in the white contrast versus the paneling behind. And our maintenance staff and the flow water staff were able to clear out the drains, clear out the piping, and really put in a far superior option for our students. Once again, the long-term plan or short-term plan over the next year is to deploy these to the elementary and middle school cafeterias. Those pose a little bit of a deployment challenge in plumbing for some, But Director Smith is working on those issues. Rutter, is there anything you'd like to add before we close out our video presentation this evening?
[Smith]: I will be on a plane when this meeting is happening, but I will try to be on Zoom and could answer questions via chat as long as Wi-Fi participates.
[Peter Cushing]: And I unfortunately will be entirely unavailable, but this is why we hire great people to lead departments and Director Smith can answer all the questions you may have. In closing, I request recommendation to approve a five-year lease with Flow Water and forward on to the Medford City Council for approval under Mass General Laws. Thank you and all my best.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Oh, you could leave the screen up, maybe, because it just showed the total cost of $10,500, I think I just saw. Total five-year investment. So maybe, Noel, for me, if you could just outline that, and then I'll go to anybody that has questions.
[Noel Velez]: You're talking about outlining the lease towards the purchase?
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Just the total cost for the five years, is that correct? It's 10,500?
[Erika Reinfeld]: Yes.
[Chenine Peloquin]: I believe that's the per unit.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Sorry, we all said it at the same time. That's per unit, right? Per station?
[Suzanne Galusi]: Yes, and I believe that that is the purchase price. Their request is for the lease. Am I also saying that?
[Noel Velez]: Yeah, they are requesting, they prefer the lease option just because of the maintenance applied to it. And as when you already purchase it, the warranty is only for one year. So anything after one year, you're held responsible to either bring in your own plumbers and or bring in your own custodial facilities to work on the machines, replace the filters and keep up any, and clean any lines that might get dirty from usage over time.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. I'll turn it over to member Graham.
[Jenny Graham]: Thank you. I really like the lease option, particularly because it also includes maintenance. And we know that we haven't always done such a great job when it comes to maintenance. And I think those fillable water stations are a really good example of us not doing maintenance. The filters are clogged. My kids come home all the time and say those don't work anymore. There's a sign over them that says don't use. All of that goes away with this model, which I think is super intriguing. Noel, I did have one other question, which was, is this being funded out of the food service budget, or is this being funded out of the operating budget?
[Noel Velez]: Yes, as long as they're kept in the cafeteria and they're being used regarding cafeteria usage, i.e., breakfast, breakfast after the bell, lunchtime, and or if we're serving any snacks during summer programs, these are 100% eligible to be spent through the lunch program. If any other principals wanted to get these outside of that, they would have to do it through their own budget and maintenance. Or we, the district, could review this in our budgets later. But regarding they have to stay in the cafeteria and be used specifically during cafeteria hours to qualify, yes.
[Jenny Graham]: And that's the plan for these pieces, correct? And so the budget can handle this expense, is my understanding. Is that right?
[Noel Velez]: Yes, our current food service funding, yes, can cover this.
[Jenny Graham]: Great. I will make a motion to approve the five-year lease and defer to my colleagues.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Before motions for approval, I see Member Olapade, you have your hand up.
[Aaron Olapade]: Thank you. It's just a quick question so I understand. So if we were to do the leasing option, I understand that the maintenance would be, I'm assuming, covered by flow water. If we did the purchase, would that be a different expectation about what the annual maintenance cost is? Would we cover that as individuals? Would they teach or kind of instruct our staff on what the maintenance looks like? Or would we still be able to contract out to them for that kind of upkeep? You may not know that off the top of your head, but I just thought I'd ask really quick.
[Noel Velez]: I don't know that I could definitely reach out to Rita when she comes back. I have a meeting with her on the 26th and we can definitely reach out to you regarding. I just, what I do know is from the pamphlet I read and from the meetings I had, I know that for the first year, everything is covered. Whether they would train us on how to keep maintaining them, I'm sure that's something we can definitely ask the representative.
[Aaron Olapade]: Yeah, that'd be great. Thank you so much.
[Noel Velez]: You're welcome.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Member Reinfeld. Thank you. So I wanted to say, I know Director Smith is not on the call, but I appreciate both that this is proactive, but also really responsive to something that students requested. So I really appreciate that. And I just wanted to ask Director Velez if Is this at risk? I know the revolving budget at the moment, the revolving fund can handle it. Does this come under risk if things happen with our federal grant and the support for free lunches, the free breakfast and lunches?
[Noel Velez]: Thank you for that question. What I can tell you is while we were in Maslow, a lot of the director of finances had very similar questions. We met with Patrick Tutwiler and we met with a few other people from the state and what they had informed us was if for whatever reason the federal lunch program was to dissolve based on whatever decisions the current administration wanted to make, the governor and the state and a lot of state representatives had decided they would use first emergency slush funds and they would work it into the budget as they have done with meeting a lot of school districts needs that they would then cover the rest of whatever the federal government was not covering from meal reimbursement. That was my understanding as of May of 2025 when we last spoke with certain district leaders, with certain state leaders.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Terrific. Thank you. In that case, I'm happy to second the motion to approve the lease.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Motion for approval by Member Graham, seconded by Member Reinfeld. All those in favor? Roll call, please. Sorry, we're on Zoom.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bramley?
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa?
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld?
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rossell? Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes, seven in the affirmative, zero in the negative. The paper passes.
[Suzanne Galusi]: Thank you.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you, Retta and Peter. Oh, wait, you're not on. We should send them a video. A thank you video. Oh, golly. OK, let me just switch back to the agenda.
[Paul Ruseau]: We do actually have one on YouTube. We should send it to them.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: We do not have any public presentations, but we do have one item under continued business from June 3, 2025 special meeting. The following recommendations to approve Contracts for Teamsters Local 25 Administrators, contract for MPS Budget Analyst, increases for non-unit personnel.
[Jenny Graham]: Mayor, I can give a brief summary of the administrator's contract, if that's helpful. That'd be great, thank you. We met in executive session and did take a vote to ratify the contract, but in just going through the notes, we didn't report that out. So we do need to take a vote here on the floor according to our attorney and just by way of what that contract is. It's a 3-year contract. In FY25, the increase is 3%. In FY26, it's 2.5% plus a 0.75% wage adjustment. And the same in FY27, 2.5% plus a 0.75% wage adjustment. And that is because With the sort of big and big changes to the teacher salaries, we were at risk of our administrative positions no longer being very attractive. So we had to make some adjustments there. This contract also. made some changes, did not make any changes to their longevity, but did make some changes to the wage schedules around their advanced degrees, which they have in their contract really in lieu of steps. And Although longevity did change by $100 per contract year, which was very modest. And there were a couple of big things that came out of this, one of which was that their work year will be increased by two days in FY25. So part of their increase is because they will be working more. And our stipends, We had some short term stipends to support some of the schedule work as well as some continuing stipends that will continue to be part of the contract. And then the, the final piece was that the director of English language. uh, learners, um, what would no longer be part of the unit, given the changing nature of that role and the alignment of that role more to our director of pupil services than to the work that's being done in that unit. Um, so that's like a quick recap and, um, attorney Greenspan suggested that we, um, take a vote in public to, um, acknowledge, um, that and, uh, be able to execute the full conflict. Second.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Can I just ask a question? The two extra days, is that being compensated through the COLAs and the adjustments? Or is there also a per day increase to each position?
[Jenny Graham]: Just like we did in the teacher's contract, there is a per day adjustment, which is in addition to the COLAs.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: No offense to any administrators, I just, this is far more rich than we've been working through on the city side, so I'm just not gonna be able to support it, because I know the budget would not be able to sustain these type of increases across the board, which I think is somewhat of a fair way to do it. So I'll ask you to call the roll, Member Ruseau.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bradley.
[SPEAKER_26]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[SPEAKER_26]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Agapa.
[SPEAKER_26]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade.
[SPEAKER_26]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Reinfeld.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: No, 16 affirmative, one in the negative motion passes. Next up we have new business first reading of the allergy policy offered by member Ruseau.
[Jenny Graham]: Mayor, can I just clarify, did we, that vote was just about the administrator's contract or it was about all three? Just the administrators, I'm seeing.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Oh, that might've been just the administrators. So yeah, there's, let me go back up.
[Jenny Graham]: Okay.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: So contract for MPS budget analyst is next, sorry. And I believe that's our, That is Jerry's contract. So if anybody wants to just give us an overview and then we can take a vote.
[Suzanne Galusi]: Yes. That is for Mr. McHugh, who has been working with us for the past two years, helping in the finance department. I think it's been well documented on many of these meetings, the exorbitant amount of work that we have had to do in the finance office to get out from underneath loads and loads of water and working on systems and structures so that we are compliant and that we are operating in a way in which we should be as a public school district. So he has definitely taken charge on a lot of the budget build with Noel's partnership and assistance. Next year we have him working on a lot of other projects, doing some auditing of our revolving accounts, and again working with Noel who will be taking lead in the budget build for the next school year. In the subcommittee meeting that or the other school committee meeting we had, we discussed his daily rate of $75 an hour or a day, excuse me, for doing this work with us. and that is the approval for this evening. If there's additional pieces that school committee members in attendance would like to, or Director Velez would like to add on, please feel free.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: And I'm assuming you mean $75 an hour.
[Suzanne Galusi]: Yes.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Can you just tell me, that's similar to the rate that was given through this past budget for fiscal year 26, is that correct?
[Suzanne Galusi]: I believe so. Was that 60? Noel can confirm that.
[Noel Velez]: Yes, it's the same rate. It's the same rate he's had for two years now. Okay, thank you. Member Reinfeld?
[Erika Reinfeld]: Yep, I just wanted to say I think this is well worth investing in for the revolving accounts. I think that was one of the things that we saw when we got these budget presentations that there was some unevenness and some questions around what was coming in and what was going out and how it was being distributed. So I think this is well worth the cost and a bargain, honestly, for financial budget consulting. So I'll motion to approve.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Motion for approval by Member Reinfeld, seconded by?
[Aaron Olapade]: Second.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Member Olapade, roll call please.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bramley.
[SPEAKER_26]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[SPEAKER_26]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa.
[SPEAKER_26]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade. Yes. Member Reinfeld.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rossell. Yes. Mayor Longo.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes. Seven in the affirmative, zero in the negative, paper passes. And last but not least in that agenda item, increases for non-unit personnel.
[Suzanne Galusi]: This was the other piece that was discussed at the previous meeting. The attached document there lists the non-unit positions that we discussed having an increase in a range of like 2% to 3%. There are two There are two non-unit positions that have a note in terms of a salary adjustment due to an assignment of new duties. One of those positions is our communications director, Mr. Pippicelli, and the other one is new duties for the current registration specialist position, the one full-time position that is in the Parent Information Center, moving that to a senior registration specialist position, and Ms. Gabby DaCosta taking on more management responsibilities for the overall functioning of the registration office and some additional responsibilities with reporting through the Department of Education around registration-related activities and compliance. Happy to answer any questions. Motion to approve?
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Motion for approval by member Graham for the roles called. Can you just tell us what the actual increases were?
[Suzanne Galusi]: To those two positions? Yes, please. Hold on one second. If you could give me a moment, I'm really sorry, I'm gonna have to pull that up because I don't have it at the ready. I'll pull it up for you right now, Superintendent. Thank you.
[Noel Velez]: The two employees we're talking about are William and Gabby, is that correct?
[Suzanne Galusi]: Yes. Okay, for... And while Mr. Velez is looking for that, I did talk about the increased responsibilities for Ms. DaCosta. In this meeting, I did not talk about the increased responsibilities for Mr. Pipiselli. So I think it's important to note with, as you see tonight, with Mr. Cushing, Dr. Cushing leaving, there are a lot of responsibilities around the MPS, pieces for this meeting around Zoom, increased responsibilities around our Google suite. There are confidentially, I'm sorry, I'm stumbling on my words, but there are pieces of management district-wide for our Google suite of applications, for our Zoom applications, and those are going to be transferred from Dr. Cushing to Mr. Pipiselli, as well as some other responsibilities in increasing his day-to-day tasks. Thank you, Director Velez.
[Noel Velez]: I have those numbers. So for William, The pay increase regarding the adjustment to his work and new assignments as the superintendent has spoken about would be a pay increase of $7,998. That is for William. And regarding Gabby DaCosta, the pay increase regarding her new assignment from her old job would be $19,750. Second. I'm sorry, $18,000. I apologize. For the rolls called, so with an almost $20,000 increase, was that position reposted, posted, and then filled?
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Or that's just a, $19,000 increase too.
[Suzanne Galusi]: So Gabby, so just a few things with the functioning of that office. So the second position is a part-time position. That is a position where, so Gabby has been, Ms. DaCosta has been the central person of that department. Within her stay there, she has created a manual. So I don't know if we talk about the functioning of that department prior to Ms. DaCosta coming in, there were significant errors made in the registration and the onboarding of our students. There wasn't a lot of communication necessarily between the schools. And so she has come in and she has put in systems and structures for that. She has streamlined that, created manuals. She also is fluent in four languages. She is very welcoming to our families that we are bringing into our system. But we also see that she has, through her work, been able to take on more. And with our our data analyst position also switching over. Gabby has worked in partnership with that new person and has taken on some new responsibilities for the Department of Education in the way that we are doing our assignments of our SASIDS, the way we're doing some data reporting. And we also have found with that part-time position that has turned over now twice. That position has required just some oversight in compliance in the way that we are working within that office. So though she will not be necessarily managing that person, she will be the one responsible and the central liaison for the principals and the overall functioning of that department.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Okay, I'm going to ask member Ruseau to call the roll. I just want to make one point. I'm going to trust that you're putting the team in place that you need with the job duties that are needed under each person. I just want to suggest that in the future when you're talking raises, like this out of fairness and transparency that they be posted. I know, even if it's somebody that, you know, has special skills, it's just always good and we do it on the city side it's just, I think it's the best practice to post for positions, even if you know that somebody is very strong, a strong candidate, just so it's as transparent as possible. I never, never have been a fan of just these large raises without jobs, especially being posted. So that's just wanted to give my take on it and I hope that maybe that can be thought through in the future for next budget cycle when we're thinking about raises for people or large increases. So I'm gonna ask that the role be called. I just want to give my two cents.
[Suzanne Galusi]: No, no, I appreciate the feedback and I'm always happy to take feedback. The only other thing I would say is that, she was also making very little. And so the the pay was also to bring her. She's still much lower. If you if you look at other districts, even with a significant raise, she is also making lower than what our neighboring districts are currently paying people. in her position, but I do hear the feedback and take it. Thank you. Member Graham, before the roll call.
[Jenny Graham]: My house is not on fire. There is a pie that might have been on fire, but it's all set. And we're all good here. But I did want to say that I think threading the needle between valuing the employees that you have and rewarding people for doing hard work and stepping up and What looks like transparency by posting positions is a needle to be threaded. I don't think there's one answer to it. I think when you get in the habit of posting positions, when you know who's right for the job, it diminishes the work. And it leads to what we see in Medford Public Schools, where everyone is just convinced that the job is posted as a cover to give somebody's family member a job. So I think it's not, to me, it's a very gray area in terms of hiring and leading. And I just want to offer that every time I talk to somebody about how positions are posted, they're like, the feedback that I hear is, well, that's just done so that there's cover to give somebody a job that they don't deserve. And I think we've worked really hard to change that perspective. And I appreciate that it's not perfect all the time. So thank you.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: call?
[Paul Ruseau]: Eric, can I just ask a quick question? Member Ruseau? Thank you. I haven't looked in a number of years, but I do remember probably four or five years ago looking and seeing that the Parent Information Center in Malden, for instance, had I think six staff members and we had one. So I also feel really uncomfortable with the fact I mean I don't know that they need six or whatever they have maybe they don't need that many but it's hard to imagine that one or two is the right number for a district that's not we're not like a tenth of their size or a sixth of their size so I do think that just like with the finance department staffing up requires investment. And this, of course, is different than an investment. But I think that even with this raise, we're paying her less than she could make next door. We might have to have a conversation around that the next budget about what do we need in a parent information center and what's the right size for that budget. Sort of like the city. I know some Councilors want to have a needs analysis. You know, I think that The needs analysis never returns you with a result that says things are good. The only result of a needs analysis is you need a gazillion dollars. That's the only outcome. But it would be nice to know this department is almost the right size and this department is operating on one fifth the number of employees or one fifth the budget that it should have. And there's too many, I think it would be nice if he could get to that and then maybe next year when we're doing this budget because I do agree, Mayor that like. You know, I mean, maybe there's phenomenal candidates that would have jumped into for this job. But I mean, knowing that the look at the other districts to say, even with this raise, this is an underpaid position, I think that that seems unlikely. I know with our union personnel, administrators, like we post. We have to post. It's in their contract. And same for teachers and all these other things. So I think for non-unit personnel, we might want to also consider, is there some kind of a process to land on that we could reuse but not create that same sense of foregone conclusion that Member Graham brings up. And when I was a hiring manager and when I applied for jobs, the first question was, is there already somebody who's going to get this job? As a candidate, we've got lives, we've got things to do. Applying for jobs for which we already know who the candidate is, is incredibly disrespectful in my job, my mind. And sometimes we're mandated, like the law does require in some cases that you post, doesn't matter. If we already know who we're going to give the job to, I think it's not respectful of the other candidates to make them go through all that rigmarole. I'll stop so we can get a roll done. I see Member Intoppa's hand up.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Member Intoppa?
[John Intoppa]: Yeah, I was kind of elaborating on that, Member Ruseau. I think, you know, I don't I do think, um, you know, I concur with the mayor's point. I think that. I know speaking, so this might be a point of personal privilege. I know being hired through the state system. I was hired to sub in on a contract basis and it had to be posted and I, you bring up the point of contract. Like, I don't know if the APA was the reason why we had to post it or for his mass state law. So I do think we should go. I think we should look back into what the law mandates in terms of job postings, because we had to do that for that reason. We knew the candidate, and that was me, but it had to be posted for it for that exact reason. So we have to figure out why that is moving forward, obviously. But again, defer to not keep this held up.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. Member Tapa, roll call?
[SPEAKER_03]: Member Bradley.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: Member Graham.
[SPEAKER_26]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: Member Ataba.
[John Intoppa]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade. Yes. Member Rideville.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes. Seven in the affirmative, zero in the negative. Paper passes. Now on to first reading of the allergy policy offered by Member Ruseau. Motion to waive the reading. motion to waive the reading by member Graham, seconded by?
[Aaron Olapade]: Second.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Member Olapade, roll call, please.
[SPEAKER_03]: Member Branley.
[Jenny Graham]: Yes. Wait, wait, wait. Can I ask a question first? I just, oh, sorry, to waive the reading. Yes, go ahead.
[Paul Ruseau]: Waive, yeah, just waive the reading.
[Jenny Graham]: Just like, wait, that's not what I meant.
[Paul Ruseau]: He made the motion. Member Graham.
[Jenny Graham]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Antafa.
[John Intoppa]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Reinfeld.
[John Intoppa]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Reinfeld. Yes. Member Ruseau. Yes. Mayor Lengelker.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes. All those in motion passes. So Member Ruseau, would you like me to summarize or do you want to give a summary?
[Paul Ruseau]: Neither.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: I'd like to just move on to the members who want to speak on it. Okay, does anybody want to speak on it specifically? Member Intoppa?
[John Intoppa]: Okay, I'll defer to Member Graham, because Member Graham had the question pop up while we were voting on the first reading. So I'll defer to Member Graham first, if that's okay.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Okay, Member Graham, then Member Intoppa.
[Jenny Graham]: I was just hoping somebody could give us some background on this policy. Like, did it exist before? Is it changing in some way? Like, what is the, like, backstory of it?
[Suzanne Galusi]: So I think on the call, we have the Director of Nursing, Jennifer Silva, and I do know that we have Shanine Peliquin, I see on the call, and she was also instrumental in this policy. So at this time, I think it would be great to hear from Director Silva to just provide a little bit of an overview. Is that okay?
[Paul Ruseau]: Point of information. Point of information.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Point of information, Member Russell.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, this is in fact a new policy. I just wanted to get that answer done.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you.
[Jennifer Silva]: Thank you everyone. I've been alone for 2 hours and now all my kids are back. So I'm just wondering if that's loud. They're all here, so we had some protocols in place previously, but they were very basic and didn't really address everything that we felt needed to be addressed in a life threatening allergy policy. Really looking at this and again, I apologize that this is such a long policy, but I'll explain a little bit about how it got to this place. So when we were looking at this, we really wanted to emphasize that there's this shared responsibility among all stakeholders to really keep students safe. And so we can't guarantee an allergen-free environment, but really we can make it our goal for everyone to minimize exposure for students, to really educate everyone from all members of the school community, students, families, all of our staff about food allergies and all allergies. You know, how do we respond effectively to these issues and how do we provide equitable access to all students and really mitigate the social emotional impact of students who are managing life-threatening allergies? So what the policy does is it looks very repetitive because it basically breaks down each person's role within the school community. So that way when there's like, oh, I am a para, what am I responsible for? We can just hand you the page that talks about para's responsibilities. When the PTO is coming and asking a question about what they can provide, we can just hand them the page that talks about PTO and what the policy is for PTOs. So it's a 24-page policy because it goes through each and every person who is involved in that shared responsibility.
[Jenny Graham]: Thank you for that clarification. I think my other question, so I have another question, which is, who provided input to this policy as it's currently drafted?
[Jennifer Silva]: So it began with Avery Hines before she left. Myself, Greta Smith, Shanine Peloquin, Karen Roberto. Shanine, am I forgetting anybody?
[Chenine Peloquin]: Um, we did ask the at the. 1st, support group, if there was anything in particular that families wanted to have and it also is input from. families that I've spoken to but is mostly modeled on the Food Allergy Research and Education, which is a national model, on their best practices that they have gathered from all of the other leading allergy organizations for policies in schools. And that was actually what the CDC, it's consistent with the CDC recommendations and the state of Massachusetts, and so it's a pretty robust program and well-researched.
[Jenny Graham]: Thank you for that. I, I agree that it is very thoughtful in terms of laying out best practice, but I think there are some policy questions that need to be answered that we're not going to answer tonight. And some of the things on my mind are that we are imposing. Requirements on people that are not really required to follow our policy, like, and I think everyone in good spirit wants to obviously work collaboratively together, but to write a policy where we can't really govern enforcement is challenging. I would also be very interested to hear from some of our athletic coaches, because they have. They have a very unique perspective on this and the other thing that is on my mind is when we talk about the responsibilities of various people in this process, like, there are, we have labor bargaining agreements and job descriptions for all of these roles. And so I do think we need to take some time to say whether what we have outlined here sort of. Is in conflict in some way, because there may be some bargaining issues that come out of this that we need to. To do, and I, I appreciate the best practice guide, but I am, I felt like the policy part of it got a little bit lost in the sauce because this is so long. So, I am wondering if there is sort of a. A different way to put this forward. So those are I'll defer to my colleagues, but as somebody with a life threatening allergy, I appreciate the thoughtfulness here, but I would personally like to see the policy guidance be. Maybe more precise and potentially. more targeted at different educational levels, because I think what happens and what we would expect in an elementary school and what happens and what we would expect in a high school could be different. And I just would want to have that conversation. So I do have some questions about how can we make this more clear and concise from a policy perspective, and how do we let that work in tandem with the best practices that are here and not run afoul of our union contracts and all of those other things.
[John Intoppa]: John, you're up awesome. Thank you. Um, thank you for putting this together. It was a very nice read. It was also nice to read that from my experience and from talking with. Um, some of our, um. Lunchroom workers for lunch appreciation day that a lot of these protocols already being followed and a lot of these are already kind of. being done. I know that, correct me if I'm wrong, Director Silva, when it comes to coaching staff and allergies, the majority is already being implemented, especially with epinephrine in training. Aren't they supposed to be going through all this training already?
[Jennifer Silva]: Yes, absolutely. They do the allergy training and they get training on how to give the epinephrine.
[John Intoppa]: Awesome. And then, um, so if I may, because, you know, member Graham brings up the question of policy, how much of this is already. Practice that is being done and how much of it is. Newer in terms of what we'd like to see the district move forward with. I mean, I don't know if that's a loaded question. Is that's a larger answer than what we can do tonight, but I'm just I'm just curious.
[Jennifer Silva]: So I'd probably say at least 75% of this is already being done. I think what we're looking at is involving more staff and being trained. So what, you know, School Health at the end of every year does a survey on who gives epinephrine during the school day when there's an allergic reaction, and it is 98% of the time given by a school nurse. And what we really want to look at is we want more people to be trained, and that is one of the biggest recurring pieces through this, is that it needs to be a more shared responsibility, and the more people that are trained and that can give it might prevent, you know, death, really, when it comes to it, because we know that anaphylaxis can result in death very quickly, and so we want to make sure that people feel comfortable being able to give that rescue medication.
[John Intoppa]: Yeah, absolutely. I think some of the things that came up for me that seem newer I'm assuming the PTO guidelines are of that other 25%, right. And so, you know, I think, for me in terms of bake sales. Um, I think that some of those policies in place and, uh, you know, for the sake of this, I mean, I lost it already because acrobat went all the way to the top. Um. You know, in terms of what happens within the buildings with allergen awareness, I think we have that jurisdiction to say, look, like, you need to put this post as you need to put this signage, because that is something that, um. Maybe overlooked in terms of, like, we can't guarantee anything and sometimes that feels like. As anyone who has an allergy feels like a scapegoat like they're just doing this to cover their butt, and that you know it's probably fine but now you've put this fear into me that it's not, but we really do for liabilities that we need to say this. But also because you know gluten is airborne, which some people may not know is that a gluten free kitchen, the airborne so you can clean all your pots all you want but it's airborne it's airborne. I think that was it in terms of questions for now. I think the only thing I also had was an amendment to the policy statement where it says it's literally the first sentence for some of our students. I would also include staff because staff are going to be caught in the crossfire with some of this stuff. So in declaring that we acknowledge that allergies are a problem for our students, also acknowledging that it's a problem for our faculty and staff. because if a student improperly washes their hands or a student improperly does something, and then they interact with the educator who has an allergy, I don't know how many cases we've had of that happen within the district, none that I've heard of, but I would like to see that be seen just in the, that's the only amendment I really have currently is to just add and staff to the first sentence. But thank you for doing the work. And now I think the mayor's back, but I'll say defer to Eric, member Rentfeld.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes, Member Reinfeld, thank you.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Thank you. I'm not going to repeat what colleagues have said. When I saw this just a couple of days ago, I know it's been in the works. I really appreciate the background on where it came from. And I had some similar concerns around what here is policy and what is protocol and what is education. I know we have a robust health services page that has information about various medical conditions. I think everything in here is incredibly important, incredibly valuable, but I would like to make a motion to move this to the rules and policies subcommittee to kind of sort out what is education, what are the protocols, and I think these protocol sheets should be absolutely distributed and I don't think moving this to subcommittee would prevent it from going from being implement those protocols to be implemented in the upcoming school year because I imagine we really do want to have this in place for that but I think it would be really helpful because if I want this information, I'm probably not going to the school committee policy page to find it. I'm going to a handbook to resources with other resources within the district. So my motion is to send this to the policy subcommittee, and that I think would also open it up to get some of the input that other people have mentioned from staff, from levels, and from athletics, and potentially the PTOs as well, which I think is really important, particularly having an event where we had someone come in and basically didn't follow this policy. Cheney knows what I'm talking about. She was at that event as well. So that's my motion.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you, Member Reinfeld. I'm going to pass it off to Member Topper and then Member Ruseau.
[John Intoppa]: I believe it was Member Ruseau first, if that's all right.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Your hand's in front of Member Ruseau's on the participant list.
[John Intoppa]: So I'm trying. I don't know. No, it's not your fault. It's obviously the platform.
[Paul Ruseau]: Go ahead, John.
[John Intoppa]: Oh, I was just going to say I did notice in the policy. One thing I forgot to mention, I sort of mentioned this of, like, some of the new things we saw during lunch here today. I really do appreciate, by the way, the section that is sort of tidbits of what children may say if they're experiencing an allergic reaction for the first time in terms of what How they feel because they may not be able to articulate that and the fact that that is if I'm not mistaken posted on the like refrigerators and ovens at the at the elementary schools. So that way it is of ease of access for our lunch servers to sort of in prep workers and chefs to see that So I did want to make that note as someone who was behind that wall for the first time ever. That seeing all that information readily available, which is being put into this as well is super cool. So just a small note of appreciation. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: All right, next up is me, I take it and. What was my question? Oh, yes. So this is a new policy. So just sort of some background. If the school committee has no policy, the superintendent is the policymaker until we have made a policy. So there's nothing that prevents this from, frankly, being the policy until we approve a policy. So I think that There's no urgency for us to have this done tonight. It can be if the superintendent agrees that this is what it should be until we have said otherwise or approved this one, then there is no policy of the school committee. So I don't think there's any reason to be concerned about. sending this to subcommittee. I just don't want anybody to think we're going to be without a policy until then. So I'll second that motion to send the management of life-threatening allergies policy to the rules and policy subcommittee.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Okay, motion on the floor by Member Reinfeld, seconded by Member Ruseau. Roll call, please. We have a public comment. Does that? Oh, I'm sorry.
[Chenine Peloquin]: Shanine, name and address for the record, please. Shanine Pelequin, 108 Bell Ave. I think one of the intents in this was, one, to make sure that we address The issues that we know that we have, and I will let Director Silva address any of those that she would like to share, because as a district, there have been incidents that are really unsafe. And so clarifying everyone's roles is really important there. But also one of the things that I hear a lot is that staff have mixed levels of comfort in giving an EpiPen, which means that depending on who my kid is in a room with, his epinephrine could be delayed. which could result in him dying because somebody didn't feel like they had permission or sufficient training or it's a custodian instead of a teacher or it's a para or whatever. And the more minutes epinephrine is delayed, the more bad outcomes. So even at the state level, we're having conversations about bills that would enable police officers to carry epinephrine and stores to have it and to train people. So the movement is towards broad training and, um, Comfort in giving an EpiPen because there's not a bad outcome if you give it and it wasn't needed But there is if you delay it and so I really want to make sure that we Think about how we're going to empower everyone in the district to feel more comfortable and have that training as part of this as well as as a parent we just are my I'm watching my kid get excluded and over and over and over again because people don't think about it. And so, there's the psychosocial impact of this as well. And just as a note, and I think that it would be great to clarify with the legal team as well, but from an ADA perspective, food allergies are a disability under the ADA. And without its relationship with the school district, none of the PTOs would exist. They receive substantial support. So for the same reason that we added that inclusion statement a few years ago, this is inclusion for kids with food allergies, and the PTO is subject to the ADA due to its relationship with substantial support from the school system. So I don't think we can say, oh, we don't get any say over the PTOs because we have some, and I would love that clarified. Thank you.
[John Intoppa]: I was just going to say for a note for the motion there was also a motion made by myself that to amend sentence one to add and staff next to students.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: member Roselle.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Um, I do have some concerns about the and staff expecting five year olds to take care of the adults is what we're talking about here. Um, and I'm not. I'm not real. I've never really thought much about how our students have to, um You know, we have adults in the school who work there who have life-threatening allergies. But whether five-year-olds are properly washing their hands or not, and whether that staff member's life is at risk, I assume that they're at risk. Frankly, and I assume that as an adult, they are doing what they need to do to limit that risk. I don't think having kindergartners bear any responsibility or have any policy that suggests that they have any responsibility to keeping their teachers safe. I just don't know developmentally how that works. And so a policy must be enforceable. That is the basic tenet of policy. And in my mind, and I do think we need to talk about the PTO thing, because what does enforcement look like if a PTO refuses to comply? Are we going to say one school will have no PTO or that certain members of the PTO cannot be a part of the PTO? Because membership in PTOs is not something we have ever had anything to say about. I think the definition of a PTO is all parents. Our members period. So, I think, implement that I'm just really think it's important that whatever we end up with her policy language, it is implement double and enforceable and so the, the inclusion of and staff. As well as that, and when I was reviewing this with Director Silva, the PTO was one of the first things I had to comment on was, well, how do we enforce this? These people don't work for us. We can't take their keys away. We can't write them up. We can't make them come to training. So I'm not saying we don't put systems in place to try and have less of a possible negative outcome. what that looks like should be spelled out, because policy should be enforceable, or it's just us trying to feel good. It's my opinion. Thank you.
[John Intoppa]: Ms.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Silva? Member Ntaba, did you want to speak again?
[John Intoppa]: Yeah. The intent is not to infer that five-year-olds are gonna be responsible for a 43-year-old staff member to go into anaphylactic shock. What it is saying is that staff will take care of staff, but also the way I interpret the reading, it's not saying, it's just a background is what it seems like. So it's merely stating that we're keeping everyone safe. That's the gist of it. And that's why I included and staff. I don't intend to think that a kindergartner will be held liable because their teacher goes into anaphylactic shock because, yes, they pose that risk. They know it's the same thing as getting sick with cold season. There is that thing. But this is a policy statement. This is part of the policy that it's just a mere statement saying that we're trying to keep people safe, which is why I asked for that. But if the committee is not comfortable because it'll be somehow legally binding to include and staff, that's fine. It's not a feel good. It's not a I don't want to try to sue first graders. It's just that's the mere fact is it's a statement that we're trying to keep everyone safe. And it's not just students to staff or staff to students. It's also staff to staff and students to students. So that's it. That's all it is really. Thank you.
[Jennifer Silva]: It's over. So, yeah, I just wanted to echo that as well. So I think that when we're making this statement as a workplace, we also have a responsibility to keep staff safe. So I, I feel like that's the intention there of including staff as well. So I, I thank you for that. I also just wanted to. Just say 2 things that I think that we need to move on from here because it's getting late, but I think that, um. I just want to include that there is a new medication that is intranasal epinephrine, and so I'm hoping that that will make a lot of our staff members more comfortable when they're being trained to give it versus an injection. And then the concern about PTOs is, I think, really around things that they're doing during school hours when other parents are not present. So they sometimes will do pizza parties for kids or they will do different celebrations or offer like candy rewards for certain things that are happening during the school day. And so I think in that regard, we can govern what they do within our building during the school day. And so I think a lot of this is sort of looking at that sort of activity, not necessarily what PTOs are doing after hours when parents are present or there's sort of other things going on.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you, Ms. Silva.
[Jenny Graham]: Um, yeah, and I think when we talk about this in subcommittee, I would want to make sure that we're inviting people in because. I, I watched this happen in real time where Avery threw down the hammer about allergies and the reaction from the PTO was like. What we're just trying to do a good thing here and now you're you have, like. at the very last minute you have ruined this plan and we have no alternative and there's no help for us. So I just don't want this policy to become a reason for PTOs to feel like they should disengage because I don't think we want that at all. And I don't think that's the spirit or the intent. So I do want the Rules and Policy Committee to invite coaches and PTOs in particular to talk through, like, what are the things that, like, what are the rules of engagement? Because if we're talking about just the school day, then a bake sale is probably not a problem. But this, as written, talks about how bake sales should happen And that generally is outside of the school day. So I just want their heads at the table so that we can collaborate on something that doesn't feel like we're imposing something that is insurmountable on them because I don't think this is insurmountable. But I think if you were handed a 20 something page policy like it would be real easy to sort of feel overwhelmed by that. And I just don't want that to be the case. So I think we can have some thoughtful discussion in subcommittee to make sure that this policy doesn't become a scapegoat on its own, because that's nobody's intention. And I think they will have real problems of practice to bring to the table. And a lot of, I think, good can come of that conversation.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you, Member Graham. So I think the motion on the floor stands, and it was seconded to move this into subcommittee. May I read the motion?
[Unidentified]: Yes, that would be great. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: The motion is to move the management of life-threatening allergies policy to the rules and policy subcommittee as amended to include staff in the policy statement. Invitations will be sent to coaches, PTOs, and other stakeholders.
[SPEAKER_03]: Member Branley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
[SPEAKER_26]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you for all who contributed.
[Erika Reinfeld]: And just to be clear, this still means that these guidelines can go out to the relevant parties as the current practice. Because I love the one-pagers. I think that's a great approach.
[Jenny Graham]: I would just ask that we make sure we're not running afoul of our union contracts and changes in working condition and particularly tread lightly with our PTOs so that we don't create a problem for the subcommittee to have to unwind.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. So paper passes with those thoughts in mind and we're going to go to page 25 of our agenda for our next item, which is the first reading of the field trip policy JJH offered by member Rousseau. Is there a motion to waive the reading? Would you like me to read it? Motion to waive the reading. I remember Graham. I remember Branley. Nobody wants to hear my voice? You will have one by the time you finish that. Thank you. I meant thank you. Okay, roll call, please. To waive the reading.
[Paul Ruseau]: And who first and consecutive?
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Member Graham and Member Branley jumped right on that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Member Branley.
[SPEAKER_26]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham. Yes. Member Intoppa.
[SPEAKER_26]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade. Yes. Member Reinfeld.
[SPEAKER_26]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Yes. Mayor Langenkern.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes. Seven in the affirmative, zero in the negative. Motion to waive the reading has been approved. Member Ruseau, I know this is your motion. Do you want to start? Do you want the same thing? You want people to ask questions?
[Paul Ruseau]: Let's do that because it's long. It's a field trip policy.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Member Intoppa.
[John Intoppa]: Thank you, Mayor. Member Ruseau, is this just the policy that you were talking about? A few weeks ago where it's like we had one and then we've been going by it, but it wasn't in the policy bank and now this is the reupload of it. Or is that is that what this one is with the field trips? Or is that a different one?
[Paul Ruseau]: Honestly, there are so many for which that scenario describes that I don't recall. It might be. I know there was a nursing approval of field trips form policy thing as well, which I don't think isn't clear.
[John Intoppa]: No, I think that's the one, because I remember something about field trips, and I saw Director Sullivan nod her head, and I see the superintendent has her hand raised, so I'll be quick. Okay, that was just a clarifying question, because I remember you said one of them were coming down the pipeline, and I wasn't sure if it was this one or not. I don't think I have any questions, and I'll defer to the superintendent. Dr. Galusi, do you still have a comment?
[Suzanne Galusi]: Is that okay, Mayor?
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes, please.
[Suzanne Galusi]: Okay. Actually, yes, Director Silva probably knows more about this. To my knowledge, this is an update from our existing field trip policy. And I know that Dr. Cushing worked extensively with Director Silva and Director Smith on this field trip policy. Were there other people involved, Jen? Okay. I just wanted to make that a point of clarification.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. Member Ruseau.
[Paul Ruseau]: I do want to point out that the policy that's in the manual is from who knows when, which is not what people have been doing. So this is one of those scenarios where folks have been operating under a policy we approved but never made it into the manual. So the difference looks massive if you look at our current policy manual, but it is not operationally a huge change.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you member Ruseau. Member Graham.
[Jenny Graham]: Thank you. I did have, I had a couple of questions. I don't think we can really answer them tonight, but there were a number of things listed in here around costs and fundraising associated with field trips. And I know that we have a pending item in the rules and policy subcommittee that is related around district reimbursement of, let's call it like, next level events like championship events or like finals kinds of things. Like I made the playoffs kinds of activities. And we, I know the rules and policy subcommittee meeting had to postpone that meeting in part because of my schedule. So my apologies, but I feel like it would be wise for us to review this and the fundraising aspects of this policy, like at the same time, as we're talking about, funding and fundraising for field trips, essentially, is what they boil down to, right? And just a couple of things that flagged, again, were around PTOs. And, like, for example, it says, under no circumstances should private cash transfer applications be utilized. Well, our PTOs have, like, legitimate setups in, like, Venmo and other places. So if we're saying they can't do that, then that's like a consideration. I think we just need to play out a little bit. Um, so I do think there are some like fundraising, um, components of this policy that I want to spend a little bit more time on. So I would like to make a motion that this also go to the rules and policy subcommittee for, um, review before it comes back.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: There's a motion on the floor to send this to the rules and policy subcommittee. Is there a second?
[Erika Reinfeld]: I can second that.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: I remember Reinfeld roll call.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley?
[SPEAKER_26]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham?
[SPEAKER_26]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa? You switched the wrong way, John. That's a yes? Okay.
[John Intoppa]: I don't know why this is so sensitive.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade? Yes. Member Reinfeld?
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rossell? Yes.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes, seven the affirmative, zero the negative. Paper goes into the rules and policy subcommittee. We're gonna go to the next item on page 35, which is policy IKFC-MCAS offered by member Intoppa. Motion to waive the reading. Motion to waive the reading by member Graham, seconded by. Second. Member Reinfelds. Roll call, please.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley.
[SPEAKER_26]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[SPEAKER_26]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Atapa. Yes. Member Olapade. Yes. Member Reinfeld.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Yes. Mayor Lincoln.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes. Seven in the affirmative, zero in the negative. Motion to waive the reading has been approved. Member and top of did you have any comments or you want to just start discussion?
[John Intoppa]: Yeah, we can start discussion. So, basically, what this is, is, as I was looking through our policy bank for another policy in terms of just informing the community on what's been kind of going on. I found this policy in our wrong tab in our policy bank, which basically still says that. MCAS is still a requirement. It's a policy around the MCAS as a whole. It's a very outdated policy. So the idea was bring it to the committee so we can either strike it down here or refer it to some committee because there are other elements in this policy. It is not just MCAS. It seems like it seems like there's some like attendance and AP exams and credit for award of certificate of mastery and stuff like that. So this isn't to, for anyone reading this, it's not to implement this policy. It is that this policy is in our policy bank and we don't want it to conflict with our IKF graduation requirements. So it's to strike it or amend it so that way it no longer says this.
[Paul Ruseau]: So, yeah, sure.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Member Ruseau.
[Paul Ruseau]: So it's, thank you. Is the motion to send this to the Policy and Rules Subcommittee to modify this policy or is there specific language to strike?
[John Intoppa]: We definitely need to strike the language around MCAS, but I guess I wasn't sure what the best what the committee feels is the best procedure for this is to either just strike down the policy as a whole and rebuild it, or if it's to. Refer to subcommittee to then edit and then bring back.
[Paul Ruseau]: Do it anyway.
[Jenny Graham]: Mayor.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes, I think we have member, Grand Member Reinfeld, and I also see Dr. Galussi has her hands up. So I don't know who you want to go first. Member Reinfeld's actually shown up on participants.
[Erika Reinfeld]: I suspect what I was going to say was related to what Dr. Galussi might say about. I was going to motion that we strike this policy and integrate the relevant language into IKF, everyone's favorite policy for the spring.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Member Graham, then Dr. Galussi?
[Jenny Graham]: I mean, as I read this, I don't think any of this applies or is relevant anymore. And I think the whole thing could be rescinded in total. So I would just make a motion to rescind this policy and be done with it. We've done so much work to IKF. There's nothing here that needs to be integrated in any way that I can see, because I think we've more than covered it. And frankly, we haven't been using this policy in probably forever anyway.
[Erika Reinfeld]: My only reason for the integration, and then I promise I'll let Dr. Galussi speak, was that when we talked about the impact of ballot question two and removing MCAS as a graduation requirement, she was very clear in her presentation that there are reasons with the MCAS being offered and the benefits to students in terms of scholarships and that was a point that seemed important to the district and therefore I thought there could be a little section at the end over of of IKF for the describing that MCAS is administered and here are some of the things that the impact of that but I will let Dr. Galussi actually say what she was going to say.
[Suzanne Galusi]: Thank you. I was actually going to say that I do feel that a lot of this is outdated, I think, and I don't feel we do need this policy. I would say, though, to your point, Member Reinfeld, I mean, even the language in this is a little outdated to some of those awards that students can't and scholarships that students can receive. Through MCAS, I'm happy to maybe update that policy again with more explanation. I mean, five times the charm, but I do think that a lot of this language is not what's happening. It's very outdated, and I think it might just be more confusing.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Okay, then I second the motion to rescind.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Okay, Member Intoppa, are you good with that? Motion to rescind. Motion to rescind. Yeah, okay. Thank you for bringing it to our attention. Roll call, please.
[SPEAKER_03]: Member Bradley.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh. Member Bradley for now. I was gonna get meatball.
[SPEAKER_26]: I'm sorry, I'm starving.
[Paul Ruseau]: How dare you? I'll be honest. That's why I go off camera. Anyways, Member Graham. Yes. Member Intoppa. Yes. Thank you. Member Olapade. Yes. Member Reinfeld.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes. Seven in the affirmative, zero in the negative motion. The papers, the policies rescinded. The next step we have required quarterly update of the shore collaborative, educational collaborative offered by Member Ruseau.
[Paul Ruseau]: Hello, everyone. So there has been a long-standing requirement, which Medford has probably never once, like most districts, actually complied with, that collaboratives for which we are a member must, the school committee representative, for which I am that person, must provide a quarterly update on the goings-on at the collaborative. This is a Is this monthly or quarterly? I don't actually remember how often the newsletter, I think it's a monthly newsletter, but anyways. So this newsletter is serving that purpose and I have nothing other than the requirement that it shows up in our minutes. That's the regulatory requirement is that it's in our minutes. So if there is a motion to, I will make the motion to acknowledge receive it. Receipt of the sore collaborative. Orderly update.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes I can motion by member or so that we've received it seconded by member Reinfeld broke all,
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Sorry, John. Member Olapade?
[Aaron Olapade]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Reinfeld?
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Yes. Mayor Lengelkern?
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes. Seven in the affirmative, zero in the negative. Motion passes. Building accessibility needs and concerns offered by member and topper be it resolved that the members school public schools will assess and evaluate building entry points over the summer specifically for accessibility concerns. The administration will report back with found issues and proposed solutions by the beginning of the start of the next academic school year first day of classes. Member Tapper, do you want to move approval? Do you want to comment? And I do know that from the chair, Director Waje from our DEI office did submit an application to do a transition report, which will, I think, do just this. But I'll turn it over to you.
[John Intoppa]: Awesome. Thank you. Yeah, so this sort of came up. Uh, actually speaking of director at the disability, the disability fair, um, at the McGlynn complex, it was brought up by several members in attendance. Um. To, uh, the, the, the, those of us that were there, um, about the accessibility needs specifically, because we were in that building of the McGlynn complex and how the front door wasn't ADA accessible because of the lip, um, and that, um. who was there actually had a ramp in the back of her vehicle and laid it out. So that way, those who were in wheelchairs or other mobility accessibility, you know, devices were able to get into the building as opposed to going around the back and, you know, to wherever that more accessible entrance is, which is a huge pain point for the members of the community who have to access that. It's important to note that it was also brought to attention that it isn't just for those who need mobility aids, it was also for, you know, if EMS comes in and brings in a stretcher, it's easier to get them all with a lip, but then when they leave, if there's someone on the stretcher, it's not so easy. But it also just needs to be looked at anyways, because I myself will say from a personal point of privilege, I nearly fell out of the door, leaving the NJHS ceremony because my foot got caught on it, was almost fully horizontal to the pavement. So I don't have a physical disability and I nearly fell. So I can't even imagine what the members of our community that have to use that entryway go through. So this is sort of to look at not just the McGlynn complex, but also to look at the other entry points of our buildings to assess if there are Ways that we can address these I'm sure some of them may be addressed. I understand. As we do work to the buildings that may get triggered by NDA. Oh, my gosh, the ADA. And so these things might already be set into motion for the McGlynn complex and the Andrews. Um, but the thought was to take a look at, so that is fully acknowledge that this may be happening. Um, but that, you know, miss a tuck and Brooks, like, looking at to see whether or not something as simple as. Lowering a door lip or things like that can be addressed. So I understand that this is right at the heels of the school year and that the ask is to be right at the beginning. Um, so please, if the, if the timeline needs to be adjusted, please feel free to make any suggestions administration, but. The goal is to just sort of look at what the needs are across the district in terms of this, so thank you.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you, Member Tupper. Member Reinfeld, then Member Ruseau.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Thank you. I was going to ask if this was for all buildings, which is great. I would like to roll into this, the continuation of resolution 2024 25. We had, which was from obviously 2024. from the building and ground subcommittee to meet with the universal safety committee to review a set of recommendations that we were sent in February of 2024. I think this dovetails nicely. I don't think that subcommittee ever met, but if they did, maybe this report could be part of that. I know we haven't approved that, but it was looking kind of more broadly at accessibility. And I would like to see those things happen, particularly since there was a list of known issues and proposed solutions potentially for grant funding.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you, Member Reinfeld. I think the grant we applied for will assess all of our buildings, and then once we get the transition plan in place, which was also part of the grant application, then we can start applying for additional, I believe it's MOD grants, to do some of this work.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Absolutely. But I know there was an assessment that was supposed that we were that was going to happen. And I think it got eclipsed by our our budget season in 2024. But concerns are still there. And I would love to see those move forward. Well, solutions move forward. And an assessment is, of course, the first step for that.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yep, great. Sounds like we're doing it. So member Ruseau, then member Graham.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes, I think some of this stuff is in fact already in wheels are rolling on this already. I do think there's also something really important to note that It sounds like an excuse, but the ramp at the high school, we looked at that, I think, three or four years ago. It's not safe for any human being, that drop off without a railing. Adding a railing, it turns out that when you do some work for ADA, you kind of open the floodgates where you can't just, we can't add a railing there. We cannot. we must fully remediate the ADA issues. And that goes from being, I don't know, $10,000 for a railing to many millions of dollars. So I think, I don't want anybody to think we don't care, but also spending millions of dollars to remediate the high school when we're gonna, fingers crossed, knock it down would be both bizarre and also we don't have that money. So, you know, these, Look, if I had a mobility disability or issue, I might not be quite as comfortable with, well, we'll just have to wait. I just wish I could say we could find that money. I mean, it's not a million dollars. My understanding is the high school would be many millions of dollars if we decide to open that. And that report we did already get, I feel like was I in a different, was it a subcommittee or something, or did I just read the report? I think we just got it a couple of meetings ago, but the width of doors, the height of Bathroom fixtures, they're not the same as they were in 2000 when those buildings were built. But to spend, frankly, a huge amount of money to lower sinks an inch, to make doors an inch wider, That seems like something you do when you build a building. It's not something you do unless you have unlimited resources to make all of those doors an inch wider. I mean, it's concrete block. I mean, I can't even fathom what it would cost. And cost, of course, can't be the only consideration. I think we can't talk about living wages for some staff and then talk about spending countless millions to add an inch to the width of a door or an inch to lower existing fixtures in bathrooms. I'm very comfortable with these things need to be in place. But there's opportunity costs for everything we do. And I just think this one, unfortunately, it's just such a huge opportunity cost. I'd rather give all of our kids actual free public education before I would rather add an inch to the width of doors. I can say that quite comfortably. So I don't know. I mean, this all kind of sucks. Excuse my, pardon my French, because it's, I mean, we built the buildings at the time complying with ADA. and then it changed. It didn't come with a check from the federal government when they decided that wasn't the current acceptable standards. They just, another unfunded mandate, and supposed to just somehow find the money. It's insane. Anyways, I'll stop talking.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Member Graham? And then I think Dr. Galussi also, and then Member Intoppa.
[Jenny Graham]: Thank you. A couple things, I think 1 of the things that members I was talking about is we got an update on the H back projects at the McGlynn and the Andrews and related to those 2 projects upgrades have to be made. And so the settling of the Plaza in the front are upgrades that will be made in tandem with those projects. And they're slated, I believe, for this summer, so we should be able to take care of that immediate issue that you were citing. But the other thing that came up in the course of that conversation was that there was a much bigger list of ADA issues outlined and. there were certain things like moving sinks an inch that the team that is working on the HVAC project was going to apply for variances for. So certainly I think we could ask to get a copy of what that recommendation was or what those variances were so that we understand what's happening in those two buildings. I think the report, Mayor, that you're talking about, was that the one that was like wildly complicated to submit Yes, okay, good. I'm glad we got it in this time. Yes, we got it in. Okay, great. But that certainly will help and sort of open the door for work in some of our other buildings. The other thing that we talked about when we were talking about the list of variances for McGlynn and Andrews is when we decide what those variances are, we need to catalog those things in our Our ticketing system so that if for some reason we have to replace a sink, that we replace it in the new compliant way versus the way we've always done it. And so there is a maintenance buildings and grounds ongoing tail that can hopefully, and in a much lower cost way, remediate those things as we are doing other maintenance related items to those wherever those variances might sit. Like, if you have to put in a new door, can you make it an inch wider? Kind of question that I think we need our teams to be asking themselves when they're handling things that seem routine, given the state of how things have changed with the ADA. So I think that's an important question and an ask for our buildings and grounds and our facilities team. And then the last thing I'll say is that we have been doing some facilities assessment. I think that's the other thing that we have been talking about. And I believe those reports are coming back and there probably are any number of things already cataloged in that assessment that would outline this, but we can check on that as well. So we may not have to do something new to get those answers. what we may need to do is like prioritize those things into our capital plan. But we can check, I can check, Jerry was just mentioning it to me today about what, about that those reports were starting to come back. So we may just want to think about that as another place where some of this data may already exist.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. Member, I'm sorry, Dr. Galusi, then Member Ntaba, then Member Reinfeld, if I have it correctly.
[Suzanne Galusi]: I don't have much to say. I think a lot of what I was going to say, member Ruseau, member Graham covered because there has been ongoing work. So my only two cents was going to be that we can provide what we currently know in a timeline, but that the first day of class would probably be a little bit too tight of a timeline because a lot of this is already ongoing work. but I can get you the update of what's been going on so far. Thank you.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Member Intoppa, then Member Reinfeld.
[John Intoppa]: Yes, thank you, Dr. Glucy. I put the first day of classes with the thought that it would be amended because picking a random date like October 3rd would just, wow. So that was just because that was a point where we could put it. But yes, so yes, speaking on mentions this and my colleagues have said, yes, the report that we got, I do remember, but that was only for McGlynn and Andrews, if I'm not mistaken, in terms of all the accessibility needs. So that's why this motion covers all of the buildings, because that report lives of McGlynn and Andrews, but we don't know I guess the point of the motion is more to see, are there easy fixes, like just switching out how thick that door lip is? Because again, I'm not talking about how wide the doors are. I'm talking about specifically that lip, because that's the issue that people are having, are getting over that. It's not fitting width-wise. It's the actual lip of getting through the door that is the issue specific to the McGlynn complex. And, yes, I completely agree that when we start to replace fixtures like sinks, we should start doing it the new way and be proactive with that. So that way we save it. You know, as you mentioned member Graham. And I think that's the only thing I wanted to mention other than the fact that completely acknowledge that we did get that report. I have yet to read it. I know we received it because I acknowledge the receipt of it. But this is to go sort of get like a high level timeline of like, all right, what fixes are feasible? What is it going to cost? What are things that we acknowledge are issues? Because until that meeting, or until that event, there hadn't seemed like there had been an acknowledgement that there was a major accessibility issue at the front door of the McGlynn, from my perspective, at least. So I take the amendment of, I don't think we have a set timeline in terms of when it is due, just that we are requesting the report. Dr. Galusi, if that is the amendment I'm assuming you'd like to be made to the motion.
[Suzanne Galusi]: Yes, I think there are ongoing projects. right now around the facilities of our buildings as well as like the space utilization that's happening also this summer. So I just think like giving us a little bit of time to see the ongoing like consultancy work that's already happening and then being able to synthesize all of that and provide you with a report early fall is just a little bit. I want to make sure that the assessments that are ongoing right now, we have enough time to like read the reports, figure out what we're going to do about the recommendations and the findings, and then be able to report. I don't think I would be able to do all of that by the end of August, September.
[John Intoppa]: Absolutely understandable. Thank you for the input.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Thank you.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Member Reintel?
[Erika Reinfeld]: Yeah, I just had a question for Dr. Galussi about the best way to involve our new COO and the facility staff that we're hiring because this is directly relevant. And I think framing it, thinking about it in terms of when they're coming on board, because I'm not sure these positions are hired yet. And we would want them to be a part of this conversation from the beginning. I think it might make sense to have either a building and grounds committee or a strategic planning depending on the scale of these things with those new folks on board to get an update and have them be able to hear directly from the committees or maybe it's a maybe it's a committee of the whole since i've named two different committees but i i want this conversation to be part of the new staff because they need to be a part of this conversation and it will also be their responsibility to act on it so I'm not sure what the motion is though if it is. to schedule a meeting for the fall to address the questions around entry points in this, as well as that 24, 25, I know we're already gonna be hearing about the space utilization report. So I guess my question is for Dr. Galussi, what is the best way to do this efficiently so that everyone has had time to collect the data they need and not have a million and one conversations with individuals on this body? but to really focus and present it in context. What's most helpful?
[Suzanne Galusi]: I appreciate that question. Thank you. And it's not to minimize this work because it is very important. And just to highlight too, I mean, with my broken ankle, I was scooting on in this morning and It was not easy through the potholes of Medford High School and the ramp that Member Ruseau spoke about, as well as the entry with the doorway. So I relate to it. And I don't want anyone listening to think it's a lack of prioritization or importance, because it's not. It's also bandwidth, and to the point that Member Reinfeld just mentioned, bringing on new staff to be a part of the work. So we are actively in the middle of the hiring process for the chief operation officer. Excuse me, round one is just concluding, and then finalists will move on to a round two, but we're just actively in the middle of that. Best case scenario, that person would be starting probably in around three weeks, but that's not knowing the specific situation, so having someone be able to come on board this summer, get caught up to speed before throwing some of this. I would probably say, because we have the two already ongoing, I would probably realistically say end of October.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you, Dr. Galusi. Member Ntabar, will you amend to have this proposed solutions by the end of the fall?
[John Intoppa]: Yes.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Okay, motion for approval by Member Ntabar as amended, seconded by? Member Brandly. Roll call, please.
[SPEAKER_03]: Hello? Member Brandly?
[SPEAKER_26]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: Member Graham?
[SPEAKER_26]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: Member Intoppa?
[SPEAKER_26]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_03]: Member Olapade?
[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. Member Reynthal?
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Rossell? Yes. Mayor Longo?
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes, seven the affirmative, zero the negative, motion passes as amended to read end of fall as a due date. Next up we have, oh, okay, and next up we have designer selection panel appointment offered by member Rousseau, member Lopate, and member Reinfeld. The Medford School Committee appoints School Committee Vice Chair Jenny Graham Chair of the Medford Comprehensive High School Building Committee to the Designer Selection Panel for the Massachusetts School Building Committee's Designer Selection Process. Motion for approval by Member Ruseau? Yes. Seconded by?
[Aaron Olapade]: Second.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Member Lopate, roll call, please.
[SPEAKER_26]: Yes.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes. Seven the affirmative zero in the negative. Um thank you for your willingness to serve and all you do What'd you say?
[Jenny Graham]: That I'll do my best.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Sounds like it's gonna be a wild process, so. Yes, it is. Next up is disciplinary practice of suspension offered by Member Graham and Member Ruseau. Whereas the resolution on the disciplinary practice of suspension was unanimously adopted by the Mevitt School Committee on October 14th, 2020, whereas the language of the resolution on the disciplinary practice of suspension provides that the following actions will be taken by Mevitt Public Schools, end the use of out-of-school suspensions affected the first day of the school year, 21, except as provided by law, provides for the continuation of learning environment for every in-school suspension, ensures that in-school suspensions will not occur in isolation without instruction or rehabilitative counseling, Selects alternative tools for use in disciplines such as restorative justice whenever possible. Establishes an annual reporting process that includes, but is not limited to, system-wide disciplinary measures reporting to the school committee, as well as establishing staff feedback process. be resolved that the superintendent will provide a detailed report of disciplinary actions taken for the 24-25 school year, as well as data from two prior school years. The report shall include a count of suspensions, suspended days by reason for suspension, and count of other means of student discipline for those same reasons. The report will show data disaggregated by school, by grade level, and by school and grade level. be it also resolved that the superintendent will make recommendations to the school committee based on the data presented. The report will be presented no later than October 31st, 2025. Is there a motion on the floor?
[Jenny Graham]: Just quickly, I'm totally flexible on the date. Like if you need more time than this, that's fine. I just, there's been a lot going on and I think we saw like several really lackluster versions of this report a year or so ago at this time. And it just struck me that, like, A, that this trying to get on a school year schedule of, like, reporting for the school year made a lot of sense. And my particular interest is when we are talking about things happening at different levels that we are actually having conversation about things that are happening differently in different school buildings. And I think there's, I've heard people say our suspensions are back to where they were when we started all of this. which I think, you know, I don't think anyone's, like, lying about that necessarily, but I think that data needs to be, like, proved out. So I would like for us to have a discussion on what those facts are rather than, like, the anecdotal, like, it seems like a lot of kids are getting suspended. So I just wanted to Um, like, lay this out and specifically point out that, like, the, the big difference I see, and what I'm looking for out of this is that we are going to look at and compare by school and by grade level. What's happening? Because if there are like, hot spots or flashes of. something really discrepant happening, that is a conversation that we should be having from a policy perspective. So I'm hoping that October 31st makes sense. But if you need more time, I'm totally open to that, too.
[SPEAKER_16]: OK.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: And Dr. Galussi, is that a good time frame for you? It is. I think that that's fair. Okay, motion for approval, seconded by Member Ruseau. Roll call, please.
[SPEAKER_03]: Member Branley. Could we lose Member Branley?
[SPEAKER_26]: Could, yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, there you are, sorry. I didn't have you in gallery. Member Graham.
[SPEAKER_26]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Atapa.
[SPEAKER_26]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapate. Yes. Member Reinfeld.
[SPEAKER_26]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau, yes. May I have a roll call, Karen?
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes, seven the affirmative, zero in the negative, paper passes. We do not have any reports requested and we do have one condolence. The members of the Medford School Committee express their sincerest condolences to the family of Sharon B. Brady-Keith, former McGlynn School librarian from 2001 to 2010. If we all may take a moment of silence, please. Thank you. Our next meeting, regular meeting, is September 8th, 2025 in the Alden Memorial Chambers, Medford City Hall, in addition to Zoom. I believe there's a Mass School Building Resource Authority meeting, committee meeting on Monday, Member Graham? I don't think so.
[Jenny Graham]: I don't think so.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: I think it's July. Okay, maybe it was, I saw it come through as a invite. So I'm glad I brought that up. So I'll knock that off my calendar for Monday.
[Jenny Graham]: I'll double check. I'm not planning to be at a meeting on Monday night. So maybe I just don't know.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Okay, good. I'm glad I asked. I would have been at the high school. All right, sounds good. Is there a motion to adjourn by member Reinfeld, seconded by? Second. Roll call, please.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Intoppa. Yes. Member Olapade. Yes. Member Reinfeld.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau. Yes. Mayor Lingo-Kirk.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes. Seven in the affirmative, zero in the negative. Everybody have a great evening. The pie did not burn. Good.
[Jenny Graham]: Just the overfilling burned, but I think the pie was rescued. What kind of pie is it? Strawberry rhubarb. Sounds good.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Sean.
[SPEAKER_26]: I love that rhubarb.
[Erika Reinfeld]: I'm going home to eat.
[Unidentified]: Happy summer, everyone. Bye.
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