AI-generated transcript of Rules and Policy Subcommittee- Management of Life-Threatening Allergies Policy.

[Paul Ruseau]: Please be advised that on October 7th, 2025 at 4.30 PM, there will be a rules and policies subcommittee meeting held through, excuse me, remote participation via Zoom. This meeting is being recorded. The meeting can be viewed live on Medford Public Schools YouTube channel through Medford Community Media on your local cable channel, Comcast 9, 8, or 22, Verizon 43, 45, and 47. Since the meeting will be held remotely, participants can log or call in by using the following link or number. There's no phone number listed, but if you are actually listening to this, then you probably already know all that. We should get the phone number on those agendas. Additional questions or comments could be submitted during the meeting by emailing me at pruseau at medford.k12.ma.us. Those submitting must include the following information, your first and last name, your Medford Street address, or if you are an employee, just indicate that, your question or comment. The agenda for today is to take up the motion to move the management of life-threatening allergies policy to the Rules and Policy Subcommittee as amended to include staff in the policy. I forget the date. This was, I think it was May when we did that. So it's 24 pages. So let me just- June 18th. June 18th. Thank you. Oh, I need to take a roll call. Let me open up my mail and record that. Member Grant.

[Jennifer Silva]: Here.

[Paul Ruseau]: Member Bramley.

[Jennifer Silva]: Here.

[Paul Ruseau]: And Member Ruseau. Here. All right. All present. We have a quorum. So I wanted to start off with if anybody has any specific parts of this that they want to talk about, we can go to that. I don't think reading a 24-page policy is going to get us done in the next six months. And it's actually all on the agenda, so hopefully people have had a chance to read it. I will screen share when we get to that part, when people have something they want to look at, so we don't have to to the imagine if you will kind of approach. I want to welcome the superintendent, Mr. O'Leary, our new director of, I forgot the technical title of the department is. Athletics, is that right? Is it just called department? Sorry, I should know that. And of course, our director of nursing. Sorry.

[Suzanne Galusi]: In community schools.

[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, and community schools, right. And I thought it was longer than that. And our Director of Nursing, Ms. Silva, and we also have our Director of Food Services, Rhetta Smith. And I think that's everybody I should be acknowledging real quick. So does anybody want to start with any comments on this? This is not our first rodeo on this.

[Jenny Graham]: I just have a couple of questions. Um, so when we talked about this back in June, we talked about, um. Wanting to engage some of the folks who are, I'll say, implicated in this policy. who we don't particularly have direct control over, like the PTOs in particular. Rob is here from an athletics perspective, so that's great. And I'm just curious if that has been done and what the feedback was.

[Jennifer Silva]: So I did send this to the PTO leaders. I have not heard back from really any of them. When we were developing this policy, though, we did speak to some PTO members who gave us feedback on what was here, which is why some of the items that are included here are included in the policy.

[Jenny Graham]: And what was their feedback? I feel like overall, our PTOs are super interested in helping, but this, to me, my read of this is that we are substantially changing how PTOs are being asked to operate when it comes to food. So I'm just curious what their reactions were.

[Jennifer Silva]: Yeah. Shanine, are you on the call? Because I think she had a little bit more feedback from PTOs than I did. I am.

[Chenine Peloquin]: I'm just walking back from the skate park opening, so pardon. So we spoke at length with both Missituk and Roberts PTO. And I mean, I guess I want to take a step back really quickly, and I will answer that question. But I want to start this meeting acknowledging that the reason we are here is because children can die. That is the reason we are doing this policy. There is a fear every time. Go find the back. Because I told you to. Go. There is a fear every time I send my child or any of us with children with life-threatening allergies, send our child to soccer practice or lunch in the cafeteria or a birthday party or any of that, that someone is going to make a mistake and we are going to get that call. That is why we are here. And we want to make sure that it is easy. And I don't think anything in this policy is an unreasonable expectation for anybody. But I just wanted to ground us, because I think that in June when we met, that part, that importance of why this policy needs to exist, and the reason we made the recommendations we did, is to keep children safe and included in their school communities. So as for the PTOs, the brown boots, And mesothelioma already does a lot in terms of considering allergies. And Robert talked about there being a difference between when the PTOs are serving food as a fundraiser purpose, when the grownups are going to be buying food, and when they are serving food to children for some sort of special event, and the importance of labeling. So, um.

[Jenny Graham]: And and did we lose?

[SPEAKER_06]: Sorry?

[Jenny Graham]: No, I'm here. Did we get any feedback from. The middle schools are in the high school, because I think. The conversation changes over time, right? As someone with a life-threatening allergy myself, I 100% understand the need for the policy. I just am trying to understand how we have engaged the people whose workflows, as they were, we're asking to change so that we can be useful and helpful to them as they do that.

[Jennifer Silva]: Yeah, unfortunately, we did not hear back from middle school and high school PTOs. So I do think that we are asking for a change, but to follow on what Shane said, I don't think any of it's really unreasonable. I think a lot of it is going to just focus around, one, making sure that people are aware of food allergies, because I think that part of what this policy is attempting to do is just make sure people are more educated. You know, there was just, for example, homecoming was last weekend and a kiddo came to the high school nursing office asking if there was going to be an option for kids who were gluten free. And at that moment in time, there were not any options for kids who were gluten free. And so the school nurse and the principal worked together to make sure that that would happen. And so I guess what we're trying to say is, hey, like we need people to be aware of these things so that we do make sure that one, we're keeping kids safe and that we're being inclusive. And I think those are the two pieces that this is trying to accomplish.

[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, and I think that's like actually a great example, right, like. If you don't have a food allergy yourself and there's, by the way, a million versions of food allergies, so even if you have one, it doesn't mean you're particularly tuned in to them all. And without the right support, the organizers of events are doing their best and not intending really to cause a problem. And then there's like this like scramble that happens when this comes up. So I think one question, the reason that I am asking about their involvement is because I think we have to, for this policy to be successful, we have to figure out how to shift that conversation so that it is not happening at the last minute when people begin to feel excluded, when people are already sort of in like final prep mode, right? And now we're saying, drop everything about your day and help us solve this problem. So I think one question that I, the reason that I care so much about this is because think if done right, we can be hugely assistive in this process. And I'm curious what that looks like at different levels. I think the conversation's completely different at elementary school than it is at high school for a whole variety of reasons. So I do want to hear their voices in this conversation, because I think that's super important. Um, the other thing that struck me about this policy is that. There's a lot going on in this policy that makes it that I think is going to make it hard for us to get compliance against it's 22 pages. It does include roles and responsibilities, which are governed by labor contracts. So, it, it's not enough for us to, like. put it in a policy and then expect that everybody will be able to do those things. There are some tentacles there that we have to think through. But I think overall, if there is a way for us to separate the policy from the education and the assistive pieces of this, I think all of those pieces will get much more use. than this living in its current format, because I think the current format is hard to digest. And I don't think that's the intention. I think it's intended to be very useful. But I think it has to be parsed a little bit differently for that to really work in practice.

[Jennifer Silva]: Okay. And I think, I mean, I do think that makes sense. I think the intention was, the way we tried to make it more user-friendly is that you are a teacher and you go directly to your section. You are an administrator, you go directly to your section. So that is why it's so long. It's because we really tried to parse out, okay, who's responsible for what different things. But I do, and actually Rob and I had this conversation earlier today about needing to involve our collective bargaining and what are we looking at when we're looking at roles and responsibilities as well. So that totally makes sense. I do think that we could reconvene our team who's worked on this to look at how do we parse out the policy and then have those roles and responsibilities as like separate appendices that are in here. If that would be a good way to do it, I would be open to any thoughts.

[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, my thoughts on this are you know, just from a policy hygiene, my new favorite word around policy, is that, you know, we can have, and the way the structure of policies, there's like a national policy, sort of like the old Dewey Decimal System, if you will, there's like a structure that makes no sense to anybody, but that there is one, is that we have like the top level policy, and then you have other policies that are just under it rather than part of the same policy. And what I like about that is that you can really target, well, you can target training you can you know say building administrators you really all need to know this and it's not 24 pages long as as we all agree is too much um but also there's so much that is in here that different people who are coming the different audiences of this are just not interested in like this isn't relevant to them so um by burying it there um we're asking an awful lot of people to um to find it, get lucky and find it in the index of, you know, a whole page index. So, yeah, breaking it up so that it is, meets the different audiences, but also the different purposes that multiple audience members might come to this.

[Chenine Peloquin]: Shanine? I want to push back a little bit on the length of it being so problematic because part of the whole design was to make sure that you could figure out without having to parse all the different roles, what is the role of this person? What is the role of this person? And it repeats those things a lot, which is a lot of the length of it. But it actually should be easier to find like, I'm a para, what's the policy? What's my responsibility versus what is my lead teacher's responsibility versus the health director, all of those things that actually divides those roles in a way that's much clearer. And I do want to remind this group that we all of these even splitting out the roles was based on the recommendations of the best policies group at food allergy research and education and the CDC.

[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I certainly. when I think about a policy that's here's the policy that is just pointers to the other sections like the index. I don't want to suggest that I'm lazy but when I see a 24-page document I have to read I don't just plop down. I have to figure out when do I have time to read 24 pages, even though I might only really need to read two. It's just like when we get emails and they scroll and scroll and scroll. I'll get to that later, which often means we don't get to it. And I don't think of that as just a time management problem. I think that is information overload. Like, yeah, so that's just my thoughts. I mean, we did take the bullying policy down from, I don't remember, dozens of pages down to a number that we all agreed there's no excuse for not having read it. Um, but I think that, you know, I mean, some of the people who will be needing this are working three hours a day. Um, so when are we expecting them to, I mean, I guess that's professional development and administrative management problem, not mine, but, uh, superintendent, I think you have something you want to say.

[Suzanne Galusi]: I think having been at multiple levels in the district, I think something like this is important. to make sure that we're providing information. Something like food allergies is something that is constantly ever-evolving, fluid, new allergies are coming on all the time. There's a lot of conversation and discussion at every school building between the nursing office, caregivers, teachers, school leaders, and every time there are like new allergies that are added to this list and then ways that you have to now think in order to prepare spaces and make students make sure that students are included and that those pieces are there on behalf of our students. So I think the informational part and the discussion part is for sure needed um, around food allergies, food allergy awareness, food allergy training. I think the only, you know, the piece that's like really resonating with me is that there, because It's the way it's organized. I appreciate having all the different roles and responsibilities right there for our employees and for our community. But we we just have to do a level of communication that I think we haven't really done yet in terms of like having getting people around a table and talking to them about what this means. I don't think it's something that we can just like send out. and then expect that people are gonna like read it, and there's this like level of compliance. Of course, member Graham already mentioned. the piece around a lot of these people are bargaining members that we really have to work through. But there's just a lot of, in my opinion, levels of conversation that we just have to have before I think we can proceed with making this an official policy. And I don't know if the conversation is, is this a policy? Is this guidance? But I just think we need to plan some conversations.

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.

[Jenny Graham]: Um, can you hear me? Okay. Um, I think it's, I think it's both. I think there are clear policy statements in here, like threats of harassment for students with food allergies will be taken seriously and dealt with in accordance with a reference to our bullying policy. That is a policy statement. There, an allergy table is not something we're going to do as a policy statement. And I think those things belong. like in a compressed format in terms of like what we as a collective are and aren't going to do. But the second part of it is the guidance. And I do think it's super helpful for people to have guidance that like they can go to their part and understand what their part is. And there should be one for coaches because coaches are gonna deal with like a kind of a different, a different like slice of all of this, right? Then PTOs, then paras. So that piece to me, like sort of like snaps out and becomes guidance. Like this is our policy, this is where you go for guidance and the guidance, I would like my preference would be that the maintenance of that guidance can reside with the director of nursing and not necessitate, like, a big policy review. If something has to change, because I think what will happen in practice is things will evolve and change. And we want to be responsive to them. And as soon as your documentation is out of date, it is useless. So we can't, you know, if something needs to change because it was confusing or in practice, like, somebody asked a question and we're like, that's a great point. We should include that. We should include that in the guidance for PTOs. Whatever that may be, like, being able to change it so that that guidance is applicable and resonates with the people it's intended to be supportive of is. to me, ideal. And that doesn't happen in a policy that requires subcommittee and multiple readings, right? If something is needing to be changed in real time, I want it to be able to be changed in real time. So I think if we think about, to me, there's two pieces, policy and guidance. And there's maybe some overlap of things that are not going to change in a really wily way, right? But I think I want to get both pieces right and put the right things in the right bucket. So I don't think it's necessarily that structurally the repetition is bad. I think that repetition belongs in the guidance and not in the policy. But when I look at policy, actually, I was just talking to somebody about our AI policy. And it was also very long. And I said, in summary, our policy is this. And I said it in like two and a half sentences. It was very long. And it substantively was the same as two and a half sentences. So I'm always a fan of the policy being like really crisp and concise so there can be no confusion. We don't do allergy tables. We take bullying seriously. Whatever those things are so that It's simple to know what we're expected to implement. The guidance then has to back it up. So I think, to me, that's like there's two things happening in this document. And they both have to happen. But I don't think they should happen in the same document.

[Unidentified]: Bob.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I just saw this this morning for the first time, but a couple of things that I can't agree with more that was just said almost so. But the biggest thing I think from athletic standpoint is. I want more parents involved. I want more people involved and I feel like like the first line of like a couple of things like. Team dinners, like we have to have a menu set before that, like that, that is an athletic director as a coach is going to be next to impossible. And I'm not a fan of putting policy in that. We can't follow through with, you know, if we have a team dinner that we didn't even know about because the kids put it on or the parents put it on or something outside of the school. Jen and I talked about this this morning a little bit. You know, that's a lot different than something that's happening inside of the school or at somebody's house, right? I love the fact, a lot of districts use like a letter that is sent out. I did a little quick research after Jen and I met this afternoon that is sent out to like a team that says, doesn't tell you who, but somebody on the team has celiac disease. And if you're planning a team dinner, please be aware of this, right? So if we could get that information and then You know, foster it out through the nursing office or through my office, I guess me is like, if we can, if we can get that information and then get it out to the teams. And it doesn't have to be a policy, but more of a guidance of, like. You know hit hit someone on the team has has this allergy or someone on the team has this allergy and then we can hope that the parents follow through with that. And also I think that the the biggest thing I saw in that was you know just the. The change of a job description for a coach, if we're making it a policy as a former union president, I would say that we'd have to at least change our job descriptions and added somewhere in the job postings when we're doing it that. We want them to take the allergy course and pass it because right now they're not doing that. And if we're going to do that, we should probably add it in for the next season that we're going to post coaching positions. We have concussions. We have things that Jen and I talked about earlier, the concussion, the CPI, the first aid. It's not a major thing to add it, but we should add it if we're looking to get that done sooner rather than later. But the team dinner thing is what jumped out at me right away, because sometimes we don't even know about a team dinner that happens.

[Chenine Peloquin]: I guess my question, and this is not my general sphere, but what's the difference in terms of enforceability between a guidance and a policy? I mean, even just what Mr. O'Leary just said of hoping the parents follow through on that, like, team dinners are a prime issue for kids having accidental reactions. So I just, what is the difference, Paul, between or?

[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, the difference, there's no difference. Both written policy of the school committee as well as guidance that the superintendent essentially is issuing. In both cases, it's the superintendent who's responsible for enforcement. So it really falls to how the superintendent is willing to enforce So anything that is not, so we don't have a life-threatening allergy policy today, but that isn't that we don't actually have, we don't have an official school committee policy, but the district and the superintendent, what they say is policy unless we have overridden it. So everything that's missing from our policy manual is not, it's just a wild west. It's up to the central administration and what they say is policy if the school committee has not spoken on it, which of course is totally the opposite of anything legislative in any other setting where until the legislative body has said something, it doesn't exist. But I think that's part of the 1993 Ed Reform Act that gave that kind of authority to superintendents. And some of it is just to principals too, which I find a little annoying that sometimes principals have authority that actually the superintendent doesn't have. But anyways, we don't need to rehash that.

[Jenny Graham]: But I think the team dinner is like a really good example of like we, we can have a policy, but without the right support in place, a parent with good intentions could do something that causes harm, right? And nobody's intending to do that. But the question then becomes, to Shanine's point, about consequence, right? consequence a parent who didn't provide an alternative. What are we going to do? Kick their kid off the team? Are we going to suspend the kid? We don't have enforcement authority in those situations. So what we have to do instead is make it exceedingly easy for people to be able to comply. And so when you talk about team dinners, It should be, I think, pretty simple for the coaches at the beginning of the season, when they finalize their roster, to collect the food allergies that are there. And then if there is a parent who is wanting to host a dinner, that list can be passed to them. So it's not their responsibility to go ask all the kids what their food allergies are. And at the high school level, by the way, you're going to get more answers from the kids than you are from the parents. And only if the kids sort of decide to respond. And it doesn't mean they're not going to show up at your house like, surprise, I have this allergy. And now there's something happening. So I think there are some ways for us to engage with some basic systems in place to be proactive. And then at the beginning, when the coaches are having their meeting with parents, they're saying, we want to have team dinners. We encourage you to do that. And if you're going to do that, here are some things that you need to know about our team so that we can keep everybody safe. And then it's not about like, failure and consequences, which we really don't sort of have the authority to do. But instead about, let me make this easy for you. Like, Lucas wants to have a team dinner. And I was like, okay, we can do that. What do you serve a bunch of teenage boys? Like, it seems like it would be very complicated. And he said, Oh, he went to a team dinner and they serve lasagna. And I'm like, Wild that no one has celiacs. I don't know if that's true or not, right? But I was like, well, I'm glad everyone liked lasagna. And then he's like, well, there was a lot left over. And I'm like, maybe they didn't like lasagna. It's hard to know, right? The team changes all the time. I think as a parent, I'm happy to open up my home and do those things. But it sure would be nice if somebody could hand me a little roadmap on how to do that and be successful, both in a safety perspective. And also, I'm not serving anyone shellfish in my house, because that is my life-threatening allergy. There's plenty of others that would happen that sort of evolve in my house. I just realized I was eating a container of nuts while we were talking, ironically. But it sure would be nice if it could just be a little bit easier for people to engage in those ways that we want them to. And it would keep everyone safe, too, which is actually the point. I think parents will as much appreciate the assistance in being able to show up for their kids in these ways.

[Nicole Branley]: So I think I just have one question. If we were to sever part of the responsibilities, all of these boxes of what everybody is going to do, where do we put it and how do we enforce it? Is there really a way to enforce it? I mean, as it being guidance?

[Paul Ruseau]: I mean, we don't.

[Nicole Branley]: We're kind of doing it now. And you know what I mean? Probably not to this extent. I mean, I was a para. So, you know, that was always a topic of conversation, especially in the classroom day to day. We we always I don't think there was ever a class that didn't have an allergy of some sort in there and having snack, especially as kindergartners in the classroom. It was something that was, you know, the topic at all times. I check snacks as a para just to make sure everybody was safe. So, I mean, I guess to have some sort of guidance is great because I think sometimes we do lack that with, you know, lots of different things, you know, like you kind of get put in a position and you're like, OK, this is what I'm doing now. But how do we separate maybe these boxes of responsibilities for people without violating anything in the CBAs, right? How do we incorporate all of this to be good guidance, but a really crisp policy on its own?

[Paul Ruseau]: So first off, our muscle is the superintendent. She is our enforcer. And I hope somebody does an AI version of that. But I think what you would find in policies that would be something like the superintendent or designee, sorry, will create and maintain roles and responsibilities and annually ensure that all relevant staff are aware of those instead of specifying what those are. And I think that that is, you know, when you think about like federal legislation, like that legislation almost always says some department will go off and figure out what we really meant. That's what most laws do not say actually what should happen. They say somebody who's an expert will go off and write the regulations, CMF, the regulations that make sense because the legislators, and in this case, the school committee, even if we do have it, the problem is that, and remember Graham mentioned this earlier, is that our ability to respond quickly to needs to changes in policy is limited. I mean, just by the number of meetings we have and by the fact that we have 180 backlogged policies, we still need to update. And frankly, I have been working to get this done since Tony was the director like we were communicating back then. And so we at that time we were also taking the, you know, throw it all in kitchen sink kind of approach. So I think that. In that time we haven't had official school committee policy, and I think part of that is because we were including too much and. At this hands up so who was next?

[SPEAKER_06]: Maybe it was me.

[Paul Ruseau]: All right.

[Jennifer Silva]: Go ahead, Jen. I just want to say, so clearly, we were trying to make this as easy as possible for people. That's part of why we broke it down into the roles and responsibilities. I definitely see the difference between having this policy and this guidance. But to Nicole's point, yes, the superintendent can help us and for us. But a lot of this is stuff we're already doing, already asking of people to do that they're not doing. So for example, when we're asking principals to not have allergy tables in their cafeterias, there are schools- And you have an implementation problem.

[Jenny Graham]: You don't have a policy problem, right? Okay. Yeah. So, and I think whether it's policy or guidance, like it only works if you're gonna roll it out and you're gonna tell everybody what's expected of them. And until you do that, The compliance is not going to be there, not because people are being willful and ignoring. Maybe maybe they are at the moment, but. From a change management perspective, you have to tell people what you expect of them before you can expect to see change. So once we figure this out, there probably needs to be some professional development that is targeted so that not just does everyone understand what the policy is, but they understand why, so that they can get on the bus with the change. And carrot, stick, we're going to use them all. If people still have allergy tables, there needs to be some dialogue about why and what help do they need to make the move in their building because the move is happening. So tell us what you need and then let's make that happen. That's how you make change. So once this is all said and done, there does have to be Uh, like, a re, level 2nd, there are people who've been in our buildings for, like, 25 years. So, like, I've been here for 25 years. Of course, I know about allergies. Well, do you maybe you thought you did, but you don't so you so we do have, like, that to me is about implementation. and having a thoughtful implementation plan that goes with this so that the coaches have a space to go and be like, Rob, this is just too much. I don't know how I'm going to do this. We need people to articulate those kinds of reactions and implementation. Because only once they do, can you then work that apart and actually help them be successful. But it's a little bit more complicated than just saying, do what I told you to do, if what you really want is compliance and results. So it's incredibly painful.

[Suzanne Galusi]: And Rhetta has her hand up, so I don't wanna like jump, although I am jumping in front of her, I'm sorry, Rhetta. But I think that just, I just wanna like kind of punctuate what you just said, member Graham, only because that's the piece that I'm talking about when I mentioned that we have to have explicit, intentional conversations. And to my knowledge, those haven't started yet. And if they, on a global level, that's going to meet all of these roles right here. And that's the piece that I think is where we need to go in the next, like as our next step to this. Because I don't know, I don't know how explicit it's been or how many conversations have been with the specific roles that are listed here. And I think Jen and I can do that. With Retta.

[Paul Ruseau]: Sorry, go ahead.

[Smith]: That's okay. Um, I wanted to, um, I don't know if it's a point of clarification or just, uh, maybe I'm a little bit confused, but I, um, thought that with this policy, really our intention, um, and talking about PTOs and other activities was going to be things that were, you know, explicitly sponsored by the schools or part of the PTOs. And Jen has. thing, I don't know, substantive assistance or something that makes the PTO kind of come under the authority of the school policies, rather than a parent who wants to invite all the kids over on a team to have dinners, you know, if the booster club is, you know, putting it on, I know like the track dinners we did in the school. So of course, like we followed lots of rules with those meals that were being provided. And just trying to say that it's not like if anybody wants to try to feed kids outside of school hours, these rules do not apply to them. But I think just in my experience, there are things that are being put on by the schools or the PTOs that aren't considering the needs of students who have food allergies, many of them who have 504s that explicitly say that accommodations will be made, but they're not. And they're just, it's not really something that's being considered.

[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, thank you for bringing that up. This is sort of a question I don't, I don't know the answer to, but if you have a team of 20 students, 20 athletes, and the coach, every time there's a change in the roster says, or at the beginning of the season, can I get a list of food allergies so that I can send this around to the parents? I'm just wondering about, And when there's 20, that's one thing. What if it's a very small group? Or one kid joins and now there is a food allergy. How do we deal with the privacy related issues there? And I don't know what they are, what they aren't. And I'm just very curious about that. Because obviously keeping people safe isn't just, it can't just be on us. It's like with the summer school stuff that we've offered. If a kid's on an IEP and they don't want the summer camp folks that we have to know, well then that kid will go. the disabilities that the kid has will not be known by the staff, which is not ideal, but we can't just hand over that kind of information, even to people that work for us in the summer program. So I'm curious about that. And Jen, do you have an answer?

[Jennifer Silva]: Yes, so we obviously can't provide lists of students matched to their food allergies. We can provide general information. But the other thing that we can do is ask parents to provide that information on sports registrations on club registration. So this is something that Mississippi Tech does really well with their after school clubs. they ask for that information on the afterschool club registration. So that way it's the parents providing that information directly to the afterschool club volunteers or, you know, cause it's run by the PTO. Rob and I actually talked about today that we can incorporate it into sports registration. So that is not, and it's not on us, like the nurses sharing that information or the trainer, it's the parents sharing that information directly.

[Jenny Graham]: And you could also just ask the parents to say, I am also authorizing that this can be shared with Yep. people on the team who may be involved in providing food, right? Like I think you could also ask parents like at registration, which is like the perfect place to do it because whether you're going to respond to the coach mid-season or not, like you do have to register your kid. So like that is the perfect place. And if you're willing, you know, and if you say, yes, my kid has an allergy and yes, you can tell people about it, then it's a real, it's a real easy thing for the coach to hand over the list to somebody who needs it. Um, and I also think, like, when you're talking about team dinners, you're usually talking about high school. And by the time high school rolls around, like. Food allergies are something kids are very accustomed to, like, there's food allergies all around them all the time and. Kids talk. Kids are going to talk about that stuff much more openly, I think, than if you were talking about much younger kids anyway. So I tell everybody who needs to know about my life-threatening allergy, because it's like a defense mechanism, right? It's how I keep myself safe when somebody puts shellfish stock in something that has nothing to do with shellfish. So I do think that's a great. operational way to collect and distribute this information without putting the district in the middle of privacy concerns. But we could also run that by our attorney.

[Paul Ruseau]: It all sounds operational. It can be operationalized. I had forgotten about registration forms. I was just thinking the coach sends a list to the nurse and the nurse writes a list back. And that kind of made me nervous because then what does the coach do with the list? Sends it out to parents. That freaked me out a bit, but glad to see there's an alternative to that. So looking at the policy right now, I'm looking at the sections and what parts I think would be better as statements that the superintendent will create and maintain guidance. updated at some regular frequency, published on our website. I feel like that's kind of language we can plop in a bunch of places. Because I think having it visible outside of just, you know, training purposes would be helpful because, you know, Shanine and others will be like, checking it out and being like, oh, look at that. That doesn't look like it's been updated with this new information. Because, you know, there's always more information than there is time to consume it. So I think having that very publicly facing It's also worth noting that the policy itself can include links to district resources. So, you know, if we establish a, just establish a URL or a webpage, a landing page that has stuff, and we can include that right in the policy. Because, I mean, people will come at this from different perspectives and different points of knowledge. Some people will be like, I go to the Medford School Committee's policy website all the time, which I'm sure is just me and six other people. But you know, I don't know who they are. I'm one of them. But anyways, but you know, if they do that, I think it's important that they can find that. I also think that I'm always trying to be considerate of future school committees because the administration, the employees of the district, you have an awful lot to do. And I remember when I joined, I was a headache. I was meeting with every director and asking them all kinds of questions. And I wasn't always pleased with the answers, but it'd be nice if the answers were actually things I could have gotten on my own so you could keep doing your work. Um, so having that as facing outward is, I think, really important, Suzanne.

[Suzanne Galusi]: I just want to also say when Because of the length of this, when we do get this to a place where it's ready, or to your point when you talked about wanting to have this forward-facing on the website, very important. We need to have all things there that are accessible to families, but I do think this is a document that we would want to send out for translation because of the length and because of the content, and that also has a little bit of a turnaround time, and also to just be mindful that whatever links we're putting in here that directs families to other resources, that we know that we're directing families to translated links.

[Paul Ruseau]: Absolutely, yes, that's a good point. So how does this sound for the next little bit? That we go through the sections and we identify sections we think would be better as guidance. I'm not going to draft the exact language right now. I can do that when we're not all meeting. But to just essentially do what I said, the superintendent will blah, blah, blah. I don't have to repeat what I said earlier. And I just think it would be good if we're all on the same page about what sections we really think need to stay in the policy. And I don't think we'll all necessarily agree on that. But is this fitting on everybody's screen? I have a massive monitor. So is this fitting comfortably for you all? Good. I see some shaking heads. Okay, good. So I think obviously the policy statement, every policy should have a policy statement. So I think that that's fine. Anybody disagree? Good. Just raise your hands if you want to comment on a section and as I go through it. I think this what is an allergy thing is great, frankly, and I don't think of it as something that's likely to change very often. And I don't know, Jen, do you agree that that's very unlikely to change?

[Jennifer Silva]: Yeah, this is a pretty standard definition that's been around for a while.

[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, great. I actually think the allergy triggers is wildly educational. I wouldn't naturally want to put it in the policy, but I just feel like is this also something that isn't likely to change?

[Jennifer Silva]: Because these are the bigger categories of, and then what could change is what's within them, but these are the bigger categories.

[Suzanne Galusi]: Actually, I think it's super important to have the visuals. Yeah. Because it's going to increase understanding. I'm actually wondering if we could make those larger. Okay.

[Paul Ruseau]: Well, we'll worry about that later. Anybody else have comments on just keeping the allergy trigger section? Great. I mean, I learned so much in this section right here, by the way. That's the point, Paul! I know, right?

[Chenine Peloquin]: The education piece is something that I think was shockingly, like, when I came into the district as an allergy parent, I had to teach some medical staff that you can't use sanitizer to remove allergens and COVID made that way harder, that like anaphylaxis is not just a breathing emergency. Like there are basic things that people just do not understand. So some piece of the educational bit should be easily accessible and widely disseminated. Yep.

[Jenny Graham]: So I think this anaphylaxis chart though, I would argue that that belongs in the guidance because that to me, When people are doing their job on a regular basis, they are going to go to the guidance because that is where their immediate. Information need is going to be fed like, to me, that's the document that lives. So I think. The top part makes sense in the policy, because I think the policy needs to have some context. But then, perhaps, as we get down, that top part should be repeated in the guidance. And then this should move to the guidance, because that is where people are going to go when they are trying to use things.

[Paul Ruseau]: I'm also not sure we could put graphics, by the way, in our policy service.

[Jennifer Silva]: Jen? So I guess the only piece that I see that's worth keeping this, and I can take it out of graphic form and just put it into a word form, but is that this continues with the education, right? Like I said, I don't think people know that these are symptoms of anaphylaxis. I think it's important that we keep the educational piece in here. If we're going to keep the other educational pieces in here, I've never given an EpiPen for a respiratory emergency. It's always been something else on this list. And I would probably guess that most non-nursing staff and non-allergy parents would not realize that a kid was having anaphylaxis with some of these symptoms.

[Suzanne Galusi]: And I would say, again, I'm sorry, I don't want to be repetitive, but I do think tables and visuals are just going to aid in understanding and comprehension for a varied audience.

[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, I mean, I like the visual. I think the visual is super important, which is why it belongs in guidance. Paul, I think you're right. We're going to find out that none of these graphics can go in the policy document. I will find out. Because it's from straight out of 1985.

[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, yes, it is.

[Nicole Branley]: I mean, obviously some of this is going to overlap too. So if we took the graphics out and just put the wording, although I do love the graphics, but if it can't be in the policy, let the graphics and the wording be in the guidance where at least the wording is in the policy. Yeah. Cause I think the graphic is awesome.

[Paul Ruseau]: I do too. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Okay. So considerations is working with students and caregivers. This is more background. I don't have any problem with this. I don't know what other people think.

[Jenny Graham]: I think it belongs in the guidance, because I think this is going to change and evolve. These are the considerations right now, but we may see that something else becomes useful in the evolution of how do we work with students and caregivers.

[Paul Ruseau]: Anybody, Jen?

[Jennifer Silva]: I'm a little torn. I mean, I agree that yes, things can change when working with some speakers, but I think this is a pretty basic about psychological wellbeing.

[Jenny Graham]: What's the policy? Like what's the policy aspect of that statement?

[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Cause I don't think there is no specific policy piece to it.

[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I think that what I would like to see is some of this, brought into the policy statement, like the why are we here? And I think that that's why I mean, a lot of most of our policies don't have policy statements, but I think they're important to be like, you know, none of us work in the district in the future. And we come to this thing. And we're like, well, why is this thing even here? Although in this particular situation, I don't imagine that allergies will be a thing of the past anytime soon. So, okay, so allergy bullying, absolutely we need to keep that. Universal life, universal precautions.

[Jennifer Silva]: I think that this should stay, because this would be the basis for what we're going to kind of do all the rest of the pieces and the guidance are going to be on. So this is talking about that we have to wash, that we can't use hand sanitizer. We're cleaning surfaces before and after eating so we can prevent cross-contamination. So this, to me, is like the meat of what we're asking everybody to do as policy.

[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I'm fine. It's short. Allergy medications in the school setting, I think we want the details here to be in guidance.

[Jenny Graham]: I think we probably, well... Isn't there actual policy around allergy medication?

[Jennifer Silva]: Like students... We're doing the medication policy next, Jenny. There's a whole new regulation around it. So then does it belong here at all? Yeah, I think we can take it out. Yeah, I think we take it out completely. Okay. I think it should still be in the guidance because I think people need to know what the medication is specific to allergies, but we're gonna be looking at the policy for medications very soon.

[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, and I think in an evolving way, the guidance could include medication As, like, another piece of, like, the guidance that we're providing around health services, right?

[Paul Ruseau]: Um. like that blah, blah. I don't remember what I meant. So this section here, I think, like as a title, yes, and then a statement that, you know, are we working at this statement that actually says that this will exist and there'll be a reference to those things. And then as we develop and work through our collective bargaining agreements, these things can be updated to be accurate and what we expect. And I think this was, this is obviously super important stuff. I'm also wondering though, let me go back to the top of this. I think that we probably want to have like a section title related to PTOs that then just points to guidance also. I feel like the PTOs is like one of those ones that's like a heavy hitter for the need for the policy and, or maybe it's actually not PTOs. It's, what did we call those, Jenny, when we did that policy on booster organizations?

[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, well, I think we called them all the things that they are.

[Paul Ruseau]: Like it was PTOs, all the things. I think inserting a thing about these kinds of organizations need to go to this guidance and then having it kind of tailored to them. Oops.

[Jenny Graham]: I think the other thing when we start talking about the guidance, I think we do need to send it out again explicitly and ask for people to provide written comment. and ask us their questions because I think what we're going to get from them are like the practical scenarios that are on their mind. Like, can I do this? Can I not do this? How do I do this? Are you saying I don't do this? Or how do I do that, right? And I think that will give us like a really like rich bank to work from in terms of like, how do we help operationalize these things so that we see that higher success rate and that higher compliance rate.

[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah. Yeah. And again, that's an example where guidance is as great as all of us are in this room with our experiences. The day after guidance is published, somebody will be like, well, what about? And that can't be a whole other round of policy updates because that's a few months. Okay, I don't remember this section very much. How long is it? Oh, it's kind of long.

[Jenny Graham]: So this feels like guidance to me. And maybe there are some like, maybe there are some policy related things that sort of like, float up out of this. But this this is like this is a procedure so to me it belongs with the guidance right like this is what we will do when this happens yeah procedures should not be in here yeah for sure uh janine can you unmute let me there you are oh shoot there we go i switched to my laptop and now i can't do

[Chenine Peloquin]: Anything my video won't go on um. I do want to make sure that there are some. Policy things that are retained in the rules and responsibilities and I know that will be doing going over that, but things like. There are teachers at the elementary level who are still handing out candy as prices. This cannot be happening, there needs to be policies about using food in the curriculum and how far in advance families need to be notified. If there is a reasonable reason for that thing to be happening and how their child is going to be included. And, and I understand that there are differences between kind of the primary and secondary education levels and kids own ability to manage their, their own allergies but I think that there, there are some pieces of the role specific thing that need to be policy and not just guidance that it's very clear that like we should not be serving food. And then Rhetta can speak to this too, because there's also the whatever competitive bidding, I don't remember what it's called, Rhetta, that food can't be served during school hours that's not, hasn't gone through food services, those kinds of things. But just things that are happening right now in our system that aren't really covered in the existing outdated policy that we wanted to make sure were covered that shouldn't just go to the guidance, but should be very clear policy.

[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, I would agree with that. I mean, I think when my kids were in elementary school, they were always excited to take MCAS because they could bring Jolly Ranchers to school. And I was like, I don't know why you're excited about this. You never, ever eat Jolly Ranchers. But OK. And I guess the other question is, That's maybe an example of where you would just want to say no to that thing. But given that every classroom, especially at the elementary level, is potentially going to have something different going on, what are the things that we're like, no, just no, completely? And what are the things that are like, there are a set of steps that you go through to understand what the parameters in your room are, I don't know what they are, but maybe you have a room where there are no allergies at all. Maybe that's true. And does that change how you operate in that room versus everybody else? And I'm not saying you should or shouldn't do something different, but I'm just saying that those are the kinds of things where We just want to I think we want to be thoughtful about what we're asking people to do to respond to, like, the facts that are sort of in their dynamic.

[Smith]: Yeah, I just want I don't think a teacher should be giving out candy. to kids ever, and I feel like there is a policy somewhere that relates to this. I think it's a different story if a teacher says, oh, MCAS, you can bring in candy, or I know sometimes kids are allowed to bring in gum, and if they bring it in for themselves and are allowed to consume it, that's very different than someone giving it to them when a parent is unaware. Yeah. I, and I think even if, whether or not the kids have allergies in the classroom, that doesn't change that. There are just some things that should be a policy and shouldn't be done. And like I said, I believe that that was already written somewhere, but I don't know in what policy, maybe competitive foods. I mean, it certainly doesn't meet the nutrition standards of competitive foods. So from that standpoint, it doesn't.

[Jenny Graham]: But when you say no candy, like, we have to be clear about what we mean by that. Like we may not hand out candy versus like you may never bring candy into the classroom. Those are two different things. Right. So that I think that's a good example of like what are we like specifically saying you can do and you can't do so that the policy can be clear about that. Like teachers may not hand out candy. That's a policy. Fine. Good. moving on from that, but what does that mean? You know, what are the other layers there?

[Suzanne Galusi]: Jen, did you want to say something?

[Jennifer Silva]: Because I can go after you. Yeah, sure. So one, I think the previous policy, or I don't know if it was ever approved by the school committee, but the policy that we're working on from 2007 says no outside food in the classroom. We know that that's no longer really possible to enforce. And I want to echo Rhetta that I think it needs to be more that we are not giving students food. that we can have special celebrations where we're having a movie day and you can bring your own special snack or it's MCAS and you want to bring a piece of gum to chew after or Jolly Ranchers or whatnot. I think we have to make it clear that there's no sharing or providing of food by our staff for students. The other thing I wanted to say is I think we can never assume there's no allergies in a classroom. There have been more EpiPens given for accidental exposure to unknown allergies. And actually, especially at the secondary level, there has actually been evidence and data that shows that there are more EpiPens given. at the secondary level in high school for accidental exposure than at the lower level, because we're just so much more careful about it at the elementary level. And then we get this sort of laissez-faire at the secondary, like, oh, kids know their allergies. They're going to tell us. And that's not what's happening. So I just want to be very careful to say that, like, oh, you have no allergies in your room. You don't have to worry about that. Everybody should be implementing the same policy across the board, whether or not you know that students in your class have allergies. And I think that's very important that when we're looking at this and stating what is policy, that we make sure that it's clear across the board that no matter what's in your classroom, that this is an expectation. And it's not just food. So, you know, kids with gluten can't do paper mache. There's other pieces to this that don't include food.

[Paul Ruseau]: Oh my gosh, paper mache. Sorry, that just hit me.

[Jennifer Silva]: Or the egg drop, the science egg drop. Every time they say they're going to do the egg drop, my head like explodes. So much. You know how many kids have egg drops? Geez. Sorry, I hate all the rules.

[Chenine Peloquin]: Nicole, member Branley, you said that you were a para and they were like always looking at like allergens and stuff. I know students who have been handed allergen candies by special education classes in this district. Like it's not equally implemented.

[Nicole Branley]: Oh, that might very well be the case. I'm just saying what I experienced in my classroom.

[Chenine Peloquin]: Yeah, no, I just wanted to make sure that everybody knew that that's like, great. I'm so glad that that was happening in your classroom. That's not what's happening everywhere.

[Nicole Branley]: Yeah, and even to Jen's point too, just one sec, Dr. Gosey, like I remember even being as a para and they should be, you know, when we did have like a movie day before holiday break or winter break, you know, we would have like the popcorn time, you know, popcorn day, whatever, but we would talk to each family, we would have them sign a little something, you know, and that was always approved by the principal, you know, but I'm not sure we went by any specific policy either. So, you know, I think that we do have to make sure that we're following something here, you know, that everybody's gonna do universally. Now, if they're following through with it, that's another story, you know what I mean, but.

[Suzanne Galusi]: And I agree to all of the above. I think we have to be aligned, there has to be something we're all following so that everybody is doing the same thing. I agree with Karen's chat comments about it is, you know, on us to be modeling those expectations. I also just want to put two points though, is that I do think that When we're just making a blanket statement about teachers aren't doing this and students shouldn't have candy, there does though need to be some sort of asterisk because there are students for medical reasons that have to receive candy. I would have to look a little bit more into Shanine's comment about special education, then this is not the platform to have that conversation, but there are some students where that is part of their IEP. I'm not saying what kinds it can be, but I'm just saying there has to be some sort of asterisk around, you know, with the exception of a 504, a health plan, an IEP, and then there is that flip side. I understand what we're talking about with MCAS, and making it like from home so that there's some parental oversight and permission, but that's also not the most equitable way to go about it. So I would rather have a conversation that's different around what that might look like because then you're you're not having all students that are gonna come to class with like a special reward or treat or, you know, to my knowledge, MCAS was lifesavers. It was not Jolly Ranchers and not candy, but I just wanna not close the door to that completely because then we're gonna get into an equity issue.

[Paul Ruseau]: Sounds like you think we should stop MCAS.

[Jenny Graham]: Well, I think that's like a great example of like this. If you want to do it really well, it's much more complicated than just saying no to things because maybe the answer is. We, as a district are going to provide X. And we are asking for your permission. for your kid to have this thing. I don't know, but I think that's a great example of like, I don't wanna like, you know, sort of throw it all out with the best of intentions. And then we actually are creating another problem that has to be solved from an equity perspective, right?

[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I'll let you speak into second, Jen. But there's that alternative to site-wide restrictions section that I think is really important. And I'm glad to see that in there, that if we just come out and say, there shall be no candy in Medford Public Schools, we all need to get a grip, because that's just not at least it's just never going to happen. So, and I think that's part of the other issue with policy versus guidance is both policy and guidance don't need anything if it's not implemented. And I, the thing that I like about policy over guidance is that it outlives the employees. And that guidance should outlive the employees too, but you know, we'll do a new website someday and all the pages won't get converted and you know, things vanish and it's a Google Doc and it was attached to Rob's account and Rob retires and suddenly all those Google Docs disappear. It's like the technical reasons for which things that are digital vanish is staggering. And at least our policies do stick around. But again, we have hundreds of policies that have stuck around, which cannot, aren't even legal anymore. Like they're just nobody who should be following some of those. And my camera is not happy right now. But anyways, Jen, did you want to say something? We have 15 minutes, so I want us to get through the list of sections to get looked at again. Let me go back to where I was. responding. That to me feels very much like something. We're going to have changes in structures. We'll have some horrible economic situation and we'll start sharing principles. All kinds of horrible things can happen. That happened in Medford. We used to have principles covering more than one building. Um, which I can't fathom how that was operationalized, but anyways, um, and we didn't even have assistant principals at all the schools when I started. So, um, these are all things that I think are, are subject to need to really be robust and need to change as the, as things change on the ground. The glossary 100% think that needs to stay here. There was. So we didn't have really the IT infrastructure, and I'm not really sure how much we have now, but I think I wrote a policy that was adopted that said we would actually have a master glossary website, just a URL, and that the committee through our policy work would be just adding them on so that 504 plans as defined here, Anybody want to take bets as to whether it's defined in 15 other policies and has a different definition? I mean, there's no point. We know that these definitions are repeated all over the place and they're not necessarily in agreement. And sometimes it doesn't matter if they're not in agreement, you know, caregivers, some will say parents and guardians, like some of that stuff is irrelevant. But when it does matter, is, I think, when it really is a problem. I assume the American Academy of Pediatrics isn't going to change their name soon. But Allergy and Anaphylaxis Emergency Plan could get a nice new, shorter, friendlier name in the future. And anyways, I don't need to keep explaining myself. So hopefully, we can get an actual glossary web page, and we can get all the terms that we are using in the district onto one dictionary, and then just point to that. But for now, I actually think they should stay here until we have that. Anybody disagree? Alternatives. I actually like this section. Until I read it, I was like, oh, really? Maybe not all of the pieces.

[Jenny Graham]: These strategies to me, like, in general, these strategies belong in guidance, I think, but again, there may be some things that we want to frame in the policy around. Like, when we're going to use site wide restrictions. I don't know, whatever those might be, and sort of point to the guidance for that evolving list, because I think this is going to change. Like, when we get a new high school and we don't have CAF 1, CAF 2, and CAF 3 anymore, like, I don't know, maybe that changes how operationally these things can be executed, or when the kitchen is completely different, or we change how we deliver food to the schools, whatever it is. All of those things. you know, sort of need to be updated and maintained. So to me, they belong in guidance, but I could see that there might be some site-wide restrictions, like schools may not have allergy tables in their cafeterias, right? Like, maybe that's a site-wide restriction. Like, we're going to do that, we're going to do it in every building, and that's the end of it. So there probably are some things that belong in policy from these lists.

[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, that that that makes sense to me, I think. Yeah, I don't think I'm I'm going to take chunks. I'm going to item by item go. Yeah, this is policy like this. This is this isn't policy. This is background whether or not it stays or not. Will the. But like the policy statement might be. You know, district wide restrictions. Well, I don't know, but we can figure out where. We don't want to lose it because it's super important information, I think. Yeah.

[Chenine Peloquin]: I just want to say I know we've been kind of using allergy tables a shorthand for like a policy that might stick but the policy doesn't actually say we shouldn't ever have allergy tables it says we should be working in partnership around a particular like set of needs to decide if that's relevant for like so like a peanut free table is helpful for a particular group of kids. But if my peanut allergic kid goes and sits at the peanut table and somebody has hummus he's going to have a reaction to that. So they're not as helpful as we want them to be but this policy doesn't say we shouldn't have them but I think that potentially under the cafeteria strategies. The policy, instead of just the recommendation or the guidance, might be that first indented one where it says implementing allergy tables can be complex, but the need for designated tables will be determined for each individual school in consultation with these other parties. That could be the policy statement.

[Unidentified]: OK.

[Jenny Graham]: Who gets to decide? I think that, to me, has to be clear. Yeah.

[Chenine Peloquin]: But isn't that like, I think I can do that. But I guess what seems to have happened is that each individual building has decided without talking to central admin. you just have different policies. I know the Missittook is doing a very different thing than the Roberts, and I don't know what the Brooks and McGlynn are doing, but it seems like they've just been able to kind of make their own decisions on style rather than on best practice. And so I think the communication with Central, with health services and the food services director would be part of the policy is that we make this decision together. And so if there is going to be a building difference that Central should know about that.

[Jennifer Silva]: I also think we say in collaboration with caregivers there too, because. So I think you always have to plan for, in nursing we always are like planning for the unexpected, planning for the worst possible thing, right? And so we need to be able to say, we're gonna do this in conjunction with caregivers and support from the central office, because it may be that for one particular child who has multiple allergies, they need a specific setup versus at another school where there's a child that really only has this one thing we're worried about. And so what are we doing for that one child? I think it's hard to say we can have – we always go back to the peanut table because those have become kind of a thing of the past because when we would say, oh, we're going to have a peanut table or a peanut-free table, those kids were then being excluded from the rest of their group, right? Because if we're saying, oh, only the kids who are peanut-free have to sit here, then we're not being inclusive. Whereas before saying, oh, the kids who bring peanuts can sit here, because now we're saying, well, we've made a choice. We're going to bring peanuts. We're going to sit at this table. Though I go back and forth about those two. But I think we just, so, but what I wanted to say before I have Shanine said that was, I think that what we can do is when we look at that universal section up near the top, we can pull out some of these things to be in that sort of like universal section. Like this is something that everybody should be doing. We can, you know, rename it that it's not universal precautions, but.

[Jenny Graham]: I will totally admit that you have just shocked me by saying we're not going to have the same thing in every cafeteria. I am a little bit flabbergasted because I thought that's where we were going. But are you saying, though, that every school is required to have a cafeteria operations plan? that takes into account what has to happen in their cafeteria and that that cafeteria operations plan has to be signed off by certain people. Is that the policy that, because I feel like what you've just said is it depends and it can be different, but I feel like I also heard us say it's different and there's no reason why. So I'm trying to reconcile those things into something that is actually like actionable.

[Jennifer Silva]: Yeah, so I think what we're looking at here, and I think obviously we spent a lot of this time talking about we want to make sure that all classrooms are doing certain things. So we're looking at now the difference of the cafeteria versus the classrooms is the cafeteria is where food has to happen, right? This is where kids eat. We have to look at what are our possible different options. So I do agree. kind of what you're saying with that cafeteria operations plan. Yes, we do have to have, in some way, what should the cafeteria staff, what should food services and health services be collaborating with the principal on to say, this is what this cafeteria has to look like based on our student population. So this is like the one time where there is gonna be a little bit of wiggle room because Johnny at this school is allergic to fava beans and that's gonna be an issue. This kid at this school is allergic to something else and that's gonna be an issue. So we have to, the cafeteria is where there has to be a little bit more collaboration to say we might have to do things differently in different schools. But I think what we're trying to say is we don't want it to be that there's this sort of specific table where only these kids can sit. We really need to have a conversation around that and make a plan.

[SPEAKER_10]: And it's about the safety, right? But also about the social emotional well-being inclusion part. So it is all individualized, just like Jen said. It's not just about peanuts or nuts and providing that child with a safe, a safe spot while they're eating their food.

[Unidentified]: And I can't.

[Jenny Graham]: Hi, Karen. And I think. What I foresee in a cafeteria is all of those things are happening everywhere all at once at all times in the cafeteria, like the social, emotional needs, the, the allergies, the not allergies. All of that is happening at the same time. So I think it's like, I appreciate the desire for us to say we have to like do what the kids need us to do. But I think on a practical level, the cafeteria is gonna have kids that need us to do each and every single one of those things at the same time, which are potentially in conflict, right? So how do we frame the policy so that I think what we're trying to do is have some consistency. So how do we frame the rules, the policy, so that we get consistency? And if I was a building principal, I would be like, I thought I had to have allergen tables. I thought I had to have Tables where people with peanuts go. I used to have tables where kids without peanuts went, and I was told that was bad. So we switched to this. And now you're saying to switch back. I think that's really hard to execute on. So that's, and I don't have the answers necessarily, but I think we have to come up with a framework for people so that they can put together plans that are consistent in some way.

[Jennifer Silva]: Paul, can you bring back up the cafeteria strategies? Because I think that we tried to frame it in that way in what we wrote. And again, I think that, yes, again, we have to parse out here what's policy and what's just guidance, but really looking at that the basic piece here is that we're fostering an inclusive environment, right? So how do we do that? That's gonna maybe look a little different in each place. And some of you may be way better at that language than I am, but just looking at what does that language actually look like when it comes to policy?

[Suzanne Galusi]: Yeah, we can work on that. Is best practice then that everything is individualized? I guess my only piece, and I see where this would require setting up a communication structure so that all principals are following this, working, we have to be very clear about who we're working with and how we're creating this plan. Because the things that concern me are like the, especially like that K1 lunch. So we're there, and Shanine mentioned it, because there's so many allergies. So just to say that a plan for one student, I don't know if we can always control what that student's peers are bringing in for lunch. I know that the classroom environments are very much controlled. And so there's lots of classrooms around the district that have, it may be a sesame free classroom, it may be a nut free classroom. And the cafeteria has been usually like a little bit, That has somewhat been a space where maybe families that are planning for their own children's lunch, they may know that you can't have this for snack because that happens in the classroom, but your child may be able to eat this because it's in the cafeteria. So I just want to make sure I know what is best practice for when we are trying to work around cafeteria planning. Does that make sense?

[Jennifer Silva]: Yeah. And I think best practice is that we have to individualize to an extent. And this is a little bit outside of policy, so I don't want to talk about it too much. But one of the things that we have been trying to do from health services is this Be a Pal education program with students as well. So that students are aware of food allergies, that they're getting more education about their peers, what could be happening in the cafeteria, what could be happening in the classroom. And so when we're looking at sort of what's going to be policy, I think on the procedure side, we have to look at bringing that Be a Pal program in as well, which has gone really well at the Mr. Tuck, the Roberts is implementing it this year. And, you know, just that there's more education all around. It's not just about the adults, it's about the students as well.

[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, we are here.

[Smith]: We're at time.

[Paul Ruseau]: We should just do this last section here. Thoughts on this section here.

[Chenine Peloquin]: I don't remember where it says this, but since we experienced this, it needs to be policy that school personnel cannot recommend that a child should not have a 504 for this, that they can take care of it with their medical plan.

[Jennifer Silva]: Yeah, I think we just have to be clear that the medical plan that is for emergencies or for use in the Health Services Department is not the same as a 504. that's enforceable. And so unfortunately, we've had this happen on many occasions where parents have been told, oh, you don't need a 504 because you have a health care plan. So I think I do agree that I think some of this is policy and we can look at this was from the FAM's recommendation from the food allergy research. I think is where this came from, Shanine, right? I think this was in the FAMS guidance. And the FAMS guidance was over 30 pages. So, you know, we got it a little bit shorter when we came here. But I think that's where exactly where this came from.

[Suzanne Galusi]: Well, that goes back to the education part though, because you can have an individualized healthcare plan as part of a 504 plan, but we can work on the educational part for our staff.

[Jenny Graham]: I do think there is a policy element to this, which is, what is our policy about how we have families bring these things to us? I'm not being very clear because my brain is just about cooked for today. There should be something in the policy that can go in handbooks that says, if your child has a food allergy, here's the pathway for you. You have options, whatever those options might be. It might be a medical plan. It might be a 504, whatever those things are. And how do I begin to do? I'm sending my kid to school. I know they have a life-threatening allergy. Who do I call? What do I do? How does it work? There's a piece of this education that has to be available to families on how to engage with us so that plans can be put in place expeditiously if needed. Like you said, Jen, I was not a child when I learned I had a life-threatening allergy because I didn't eat any fish or shellfish at all. And until I did, I had no idea. And so you do learn about allergies and they change over time, right? So, um, how, where do we put the like reference? So certainly that maybe the policy statement is the district will maintain a page, a webpage that talks about how to do this. Um, but there, there, it does seem to me to like, if it lives in policy, it's fine, but like parents don't go to the policy handbook to, serve these kinds of needs. So maybe the policy is that there is a mechanism to do this within expedited turnaround time or something like that versus trying to net that out in the policy document. OK.

[Chenine Peloquin]: Um, really quickly, this is not, um, because Paul, you might not be aware in your, um, looking at the policies that, um, and I know Jen is on top of this as well, but there's currently legislation going through, um, at the state level that would broaden the use and, um, kind of the use and storage of epinephrine so that like police officers are able to have it and all these other people are able to have access that restaurants can have stock epinephrine. So those laws also can help inform our policy as they are passed and they're likely to pass, but they're very, very exciting since we know that so many people who do have a reaction are, was it like 10% or 25%, Jen, of people who have a reaction inside a school are not known And sometimes it's the mailman who has a sort of anaphylactic reaction in the school when he's dropping something off.

[Jennifer Silva]: Yeah, I think, though, just to piggyback on that, that will become part of our medication policy and not necessarily this policy. Yeah.

[Paul Ruseau]: And as soon as that comes down, anything we need, as soon as we can get this completed before this law is changed, I would really be annoyed if they happen like the week before we approve it. So I'm going to make the motion to have the administration in collaboration with Chair Rousseau, myself, rework the policy proposal to move appropriate sections to guidance. Does that sound OK? That's the next step. Is there a second?

[Jenny Graham]: Second. Sorry. I was like, yeah, let's do that. Second.

[Paul Ruseau]: OK. Member Brandly. Did we lose?

[Nicole Branley]: Yes, I'm here.

[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, you are. Sorry. Good. Because I'm still sharing, which I should stop. I can't see everybody. Okay, great. Thank you. Member Ruseau, yes. And Member Graham.

[Jenny Graham]: Yes.

[Paul Ruseau]: All right. So I think we have a good set up next steps with all the notes that I took in the document. I'm going to also have to, I'll get a hold of Will to have him set up a page, sort of as a landing page for guidance, unless we already have one, so that we can put that right into the actual policy instead of saying we'll get to it in the future, which I don't know about you, but I'm all, but I'm pretty busy. So let's get it done. And then obviously after we've reworked this, I'll schedule another one of these meetings. And if we can cross our fingers, it'll be the last meeting. Not that I don't enjoy this, but we actually have to pass something. So any other final words from anybody? Is there a motion to adjourn?

[Nicole Branley]: I'd like a motion to adjourn.

[Paul Ruseau]: Member Branley? Yes. Member Graham?

[Jenny Graham]: Yes.

[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau? Yes. I really appreciate this great conversation, everyone. I do think we're getting, we are getting somewhere. I know that it's been a very long time coming and Shanine is, I appreciate the pokes to be like, what are we talking about? And I, and you know, cause everything's always, there's so much always in our faces. It's fluid, yeah. It's really hard to stay focused too long on one thing before something else grabs our focus. So I appreciate it. Everybody have a wonderful evening. This meeting is adjourned.

Paul Ruseau total time: 28.06 minutes total words: 1791	Suzanne Galusi total time: 8.2 minutes total words: 719	Jenny Graham total time: 29.02 minutes total words: 1906	Nicole Branley total time: 2.42 minutes total words: 236