[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Good evening, everyone. We're on time tonight from our executive session so yes, we're rolling. Thank you. We have our consent agenda approval of bills and payrolls approval capital purchases approval of donations sound equipment worth 7500 from the McGlynn school organized by caregivers approval of grants. American Academy of Pediatrics 2500 micro grant for bio directional communication processes, approval field trips and approval of the meeting minutes for October 6 2025. Is there a motion for approval of the consent agenda? Yes, member Reinfeld.
[Erika Reinfeld]: I'm just, what is bi-directional communication between healthcare providers and the nurses? What does that look like? Is this? It sounds great and I think I'm excited about it, but I would just like to know what it entails. Yeah, there was. It does. I love bidirectional communication.
[Suzanne Galusi]: I don't want to put on the spot, but yeah, we have we have them.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yes, Miss Silva, are you available to give us a little more detail than? The one page that we have in our packet?
[SPEAKER_06]: Yep, can you hear me? Yes. Good. So, bi-directional communication is really looking at the two-way communication process between health care providers in the community and the nurses. So, things like when we do release of information. So, you know, I can't just pick up a phone and call a doctor and ask them to give me information about a child that, you know, parents have to sign consent. for us to share that information. So the purpose of this grant is to come up with systems and processes to make that a smoother application across the board.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Excellent. Thank you so much and thanks for signing on. So I'll motion to approve the consent agenda.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. Thank you, Member Reinfeld, seconded by Member Graham. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Consent agenda is approved. We don't have any reports of subcommittees, and we do have reports of our superintendent. So first up, our Mustang moment. Welcome, everybody.
[Suzanne Galusi]: Yes, we're gonna have Principal Tucci and Director Cieri come. They're going to frame a little bit for the Mustang moment for our two students that are here, share some exciting news and just frame a little bit as to what our middle school students are going to be sharing with us this evening. Welcome.
[Nick Tucci]: Good evening, Mayor Lungo-Koehn, members of the school committee, Dr. Galussi and members of our school committee. I'm excited to be here to introduce two of our incredible students who are here to share some of their experiences in their science challenge class, participating in our newest STEM initiative at the middle school level, Robotics 360. Robotics 360 is a robotics program designed to embed real world problem solving and 21st century skills across our curriculum. What makes this program stand out is this intentional blend of creativity, collaboration, and technical learning. Students are just building robots in this course, they're engineering solutions. They work in teams to tackle authentic challenges, and as they design, build, and test their robots, they're also learning coding. In the classroom environment, the students are really excited, they're super engaged, and they're motivated. They're not just learning about robotics, they're learning how to think, how to iterate, and how to persist through some academic struggle. These are exactly the kind of grade level tasks that we aim to engage our middle school learners in. I'll turn it over to Mr. Cieri for a few words as well.
[Rocco Cieri]: Good evening, Mayor, Lungo-Koehn, school committee members and superintendent. Like my colleague, Mr. Tucci, I am thrilled to introduce this new STEM program, the initiative at our middle school. My remarks this evening will be brief. The one thing I want to emphasize that Robotics 360 is not Lego robotics. It's a comprehensive K-12 educational solution in STEM that uses robotics. And one of the components at the middle school is using a robot system called Lego spike. And that encourages the students to try to engage in these real world problems. The coding environment uses block-based programming, essentially Scratch. But they can easily toggle between the block-based programming and a screen that allows programming in Python. So they can see the block programming, and they can toggle to the Python programming. And they can code in each, and they can code the robots. This versatility is unique to Robotics 360. In addition, as the students move in the program from kindergarten through high school, if they choose, if you have the entire program, the robots in the curriculum changes. The curriculum challenges change. The lessons change to meet the level of the students, and it leaves us the option and the opportunity to expand in the future in both directions. Importantly, the platform and the programming language never change. Therefore, as students learn programming with different robots, they don't need to learn a brand new programming language each step of the way. This ensures that they're developing a true working knowledge of programming rather than relearning all the different languages in which to code. Much of what you'll hear this evening is the student experience. And based on what I've seen and heard, the program is successful. It's only been a couple of months, but both the students and the teachers are excited to engage in their science challenge course. Robotics 360 continues to support our analysis of learning with a fine-grained quantitative data collection on the student learning as they program their robots and go through the different modules. And it dynamically deploys lessons to the students so that they move at the pace that matches their own success in the classroom. I'm going to turn it back to Mr. Tucci to introduce the students from the McGlynn. And I thank you this evening for listening to us.
[Nick Tucci]: So tonight I'm proud to introduce two fantastic students who have been part of the pilot launch here of Robotics 360. They have spent the first quarter of their academic school year engaged in the Science Challenge class. And today they're going to be speaking from the heart, sharing their student experience. So please join me in welcoming eighth grade student, A.B. Annabelle Foster, and sixth grade student, Oliver Ndoyeske-Santos. I'll first welcome Annabelle to the stage.
[SPEAKER_02]: Good evening, my name is Annabelle Foster and I'm an eighth grader at the McGlynn Middle School. Each quarter we have the opportunity with a new middle school schedule to partake in a challenge class. My first quarter challenge class is the science challenge where we have the opportunity to engage in building and coding robots. I would like to provide a brief overview of the science challenge. The course consists of a kit with modified Legos for building and an online program for coding. Not only do we learn the mechanics of an actual robot, but we also learn to code using block coding, which is the base for all coding in the future. Thus far this quarter, my group members and I have progressed to Unit 4. We have currently been tasked with building a crab-like robot, which is designed to take information from underwater, scan for ocean temperature, and gather data points that can be useful in helping research aquatic life in the future. In addition to teaching coding, it also encourages us to work collaboratively and identify and share our personal abilities to better the whole group. Both coding and team building have real world applications that are often lacking in other subjects. The thing that we as students most often ask is how can we use this in the real world? How can we use the Pythagorean theorem to earn an income or pay taxes? This program has many real world applications. There are team building aspects of the program as well as learning how to follow your strengths and weaknesses and contribute to the group. The challenge classes offer an in-depth exposure to the other subjects in a way that changes people's perspectives on certain areas that may not be their favorite. The science challenge requires coding in a group. This means we have to divide tasks in the group and come up with a cohesive plan. Even if I have no intention of becoming a coder, the program and science challenge has multiple applications. It obviously teaches you to code, but it also helps people work together, understand their own personal strengths, and allows them to contribute in a unique and meaningful way. The group learns how to split up responsibilities. I aspire to one day work in the medical field, specifically surgery. Engaging in tasks like this better prepares me to develop the skills needed to support me in accomplishing my goals. specifically the collaborative aspects that this course has provided me with, and challenged me to persist when engaging with meaningful scientific tasks. Thank you for taking your time to listen to my experiences thus far this year, and I'm happy to answer any of your questions.
[Nick Tucci]: Next up to the podium is Oliver Doyeski-Santos, grade six.
[SPEAKER_00]: Good evening. My name is Ollie. I'm in the sixth grade at McGlynn Middle School. This is my first year in the Medford Public Schools. Someday I hope to work for NASA and I'm excited that in sixth grade we are already learning to code and make robots, which is a skill I can use in the future to help me pursue my goals. I learned about coding for the first time in fourth grade. Unfortunately, I didn't really take much out of it because there's too many kids in the class. But this year, during my science challenge class, I've had the opportunity to engage in this work. In science challenge class, we are challenged with working together to code and build robots using our Chromebooks and Legos. Working with my team this year has been really fun because we all have different ways we want to use the robot. For example, some of my group members want to build a dog robot and another group of penguin robots. As a group, we have to make decisions on how to build different features and add-ons to enhance the robot's ability to function. For example, we added wheels and feet to our robot to help us better understand which features would help the robot move more effectively and efficiently. In this class, I feel sort of like an engineer because we will run into difficult situations or roadblocks and we have to fix different problems that come up. We'll fix these problems by experimenting and speaking with other groups in the class in order to fix the problems. It gives us a sense of accomplishment when we overcome these challenges. I really appreciate working with robots in the school and I can't wait to use my coding skills in the future. Thank you.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Member Intoppa.
[John Intoppa]: Awesome. I just wanted to say thank you both for coming and talking about your experience through this program. you know, these initiatives, I was in, you know, sort of something like this when I was in elementary school and then it was just, you know, Lego Mindstorms and to see it evolve into something this great in the middle school level is absolutely amazing. And well, you said it yourself about how, you know, even if you don't go end up, don't end up going on to be a coder, you know, there's so many world life and real life applications that this has, you know, it's a different way of thinking. It's a different sense of logic. It's a different way to interpret data and situations. So even if it's not coding, it's still helping you develop as an individual and navigate through the school system. And it's giving you that hands-on experience to do that, and that's great. And Ali, you said the same thing. And Ali, I just want to say the last person that went through the Medford public school system that I heard said they wanted to work for NASA ended up being the youngest person on the black hole photo team. So keep that dream big, because you might be someone like that. You probably will.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Member Ruseau.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I didn't think I was next. Sorry. So I'm a Python programmer and I will say that, and I work at Dana Farber Cancer Institute and A lot of people use it who are not coders. So I think that that is a skill that you will have a huge advantage over in any field if you can do your own coding to solve certain problems rather than farming it out to someone else. So don't just assume because you don't want to be a coder that that's not your future. Because being able to do it will be very helpful, even if it's not your day-to-day job. So this is exciting. I wish we had this when I was a kid. Thank you.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. I know member Graham, and then we'll turn it over to our student rep.
[Jenny Graham]: Thank you. Thank you for putting this into the rotation, because when we worked through all of the schedule changes and the concept of a challenge class came up, there were just lots of questions, understandably, about what it was going to be and what it was going to look like. And change is really hard to wrap your mind around when you've never done that thing before, or you don't have any sort of frame of reference. So I am super happy to hear about what in practice is happening, because I think that is the excitement that middle school has been missing. in my opinion, having two kids that are no longer in middle school, they come home and they talk about their classes and exciting things that happen in them, but this seems like something just special for the middle school to really think about and start to embrace all these aspects of project-based learning that we talk to in a way that's reserved for CCSR. And project-based learning is not reserved for something that you have time to do after school. It should be part of what you're doing every single day. So I'm just like so excited to hear you say, we're learning how to work in a team because guess what? That's what you're gonna do forever. So all of that is great. So thank you both for coming tonight and telling us about your classes. It's super helpful to see these things in action.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you, member Graham.
[Alachie Yeager]: I just wanted to say, as a member of the Medford High School Robotics and Engineering Shop and our underwater design program, Sunk Robotics, I just want to say that it's so enlightening to hear that there's this sort of pathway that's been established in that regard, and we'd love to see you there in a year or in four years or something, because it really sounds like you're laying a foundation for success in that regard. If you ever need any help or want to get a head start, shoot us an email and we can definitely help you. Thank you.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. Member Reinfeld.
[Erika Reinfeld]: I echo the thanks for sharing. I'm wondering if you can give us a little bit of advice about what we could do in the future to prepare you to take this on and where you would hope to go next with this, not you personally, but in terms of what happens in the next step of classrooms? Either one of you? Not to put you on the spot. Yeah, so what could we have done? No, of course. What could Medford Public Schools have done to prepare you to take on these challenges and where would you like them to go next?
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that there's not a lot that Medford Public Schools could have done to prepare us because obviously the schedule change is new. I feel like if in the future we could have like a solidified, obviously there are a few kinks to work out because this program has been, we're like the second school in America to use this program. So there are obviously a couple of kinks, including, I think just working them out. Like sometimes a word or two is mistranslated and it doesn't make any sense. Or sometimes a code doesn't let you pass and it doesn't tell you why. So once all these small minor issues are figured out, I think that would be the next step in these programs in the future, if that makes sense.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Yeah. Thank you. That's really helpful. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah so I would say like there's not really much because like it's a new program but like like kind of like what you said like there's like a couple times where like a code doesn't let you pass but like you did everything right so yeah I feel like just once they're kind of like fixed and it's like perfect. I really liked having the class.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Awesome. I'm so glad to hear that. And I hope you'll make sure to tell your teachers what we can be doing to better support you. So thank you.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. And before I pass it over to Dr. Galussi, I just want to say thank you, Dr. Galussi, for adding the Mustang moment. It's these presentations that are a great way to start off our meeting. And both of you, your parents should be very impressed. You did an amazing job. And Ollie, my son's in sixth grade at the McGlynn too. You could maybe bring him along with you. You can find him in Mr. Bruno's office once in a while. But with all joking aside, fabulous job. You seem like you're in college presenting as young adults, so amazing job. Dr. Lucy.
[Suzanne Galusi]: Thank you. I just wanted to say thank you to our student representatives. You did an excellent job. Your writing allowed us to really understand and get a sense as to what the classes are like for you, some of the things you're learning, some of the skills you're gonna take with you. That's the whole point of Mustang Moment. So it's to give the community a little snapshot into the lives of students. And so I really appreciate the courage it took to come here and present to us. I also wanna thank Principal Tucci and Director Cieri Mr. Seery had this wonderful opportunity to work with Robotics 360 and he just was very proactive and jumped right on it. And I think you can see the benefit in just the short amount of time that it has had for our community. You may have seen in the Friday memo, I'm surprised they kind of buried the lead here. But so much so that the Lieutenant Governor and the Secretary of Education, so Driscoll and Dr. Tutwiler are coming on Thursday to see this in action. And so they will be at the McGlynn School going to a science challenge class to see Robotics 360 in real time. So we're honored and privileged to be having the Lieutenant Governor and the Secretary of Education doing the program. So thank you very much for your hard work with this as well as Principal Skane. Lots of hours of collaboration have gone into making sure that this went off in benefit of our students. So thank you.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you.
[Unidentified]: Yes, picture. All right. You're probably. next time.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. Mr. Cieri, good luck with the rest of the soccer season. I heard you had a tough one. Thank you. Okay, next up we have our facilities condition assessment report. I'm going to invite up Mr. Kenneth Lord, Chief Operating Officer, and Mr. Kevin Proventure. Did I say that wrong? I got it? President Habib and Associates Architects. Welcome.
[SPEAKER_14]: Thank you. Okay, well, good evening to the mayor, the interim superintendent and members of the school committee. Thank you for having me. My name is Kevin Provencher. I'm an architect and president of Habib and Associates Architects. We've been working with public schools in Massachusetts for the past 27 years. And this year we were asked by Medford Public Schools to prepare a facilities condition assessment for the five elementary and middle schools, Brooks, Missittuc, Roberts, Andrews and McGlynn. We've prepared a great many of these. And the districts that we've worked with have found them to be an extremely useful capital planning tool. And I'm hoping that you'll find the same results here tonight. If you've had a chance to review the full report, and I understand that you haven't had it for very long, But there's a great deal of detail in there we won't be able to get to that depth tonight. So I'm going to try to give you an overview of the process, how we work, how we collect the information, and how we arrive at some of the conclusions that I think will be helpful. So there's a great number of people that are involved in putting one of these things together. But I think the most successful results are always when we get a high level of participation from the school department. And that was the case here. All of the school principals and the custodial staff, in addition to the facility staff, All participated, and it's a very important part of the process. If we don't have access to these people, there's a lot of information that we simply just can't collect. And so we're very grateful for that. Our team consisted of myself as the project manager and my coworkers. And we also had a team of consulting engineers from GGD who joined us on our tours and evaluated the mechanical, electrical and the fire protection systems as well. So we have a good deal of expertise on the team. So just a little bit about the process and the purpose or the why we do this. Very simply put, we describe the current conditions that we observe at the schools. And taking those observations, we set priorities and make recommendations of things that we think need to be addressed, things that need to be repaired, replaced, and then we provide budget estimates for those items. And as I mentioned earlier, those cost estimate supports the development of the capital plan. So the scope of the process, we start with reviewing the concerns with the facilities staff, including the chief operations officer, the director of the buildings and grounds, John McLaughlin, and the head custodians that I mentioned a bit earlier. Principals also provide us with some good detail of things that they want us to know. We tour all of the schools and we visit as many of the interior spaces as we can. That took place over the February break when students were not in the building. So it gives us a lot of access that we can't get at any other time of the year. We don't open every locked door, look in every closet or under every rug, but it's really more of a high level overview of what we see. We identify the deficiencies in the materials and the systems that we would recommend for repair or replacement. We prepare work items for each of those observations, and we assign each of those a priority, which I'll talk about in a little bit more detail in a few minutes. We estimate the quantities involved, and we assigned unit costs to those quantities, which help us to calculate the total cost per each work item. And that includes soft costs and escalation. And I'll explain what that part means in a later slide. So in summary, the method, the assessment is based on our visual inspection and our observations of what we can see. We rely on those interviews that I mentioned. We also have access to the original construction drawings. These schools are relatively new compared to other schools in the Commonwealth. And all of those construction drawings were available to us, which provide us with a lot of detail. We review the buildings and the systems in their entirety. And again, we identify those deficiencies and they're typically deficiencies that are related to the age of the building or the useful life, things that should be considered for replacement for lifecycle costing and 21st century learning practices. So each of the work items, we assign a priority. We call them scope categories. And so for this assessment, we had three scopes in order of priority. Scope number one are items that are necessary but not yet critical. And what I mean by that is If you had a critical item that needs to be addressed, you would have addressed it already because that's something that's, you know, it's an emergency or something that has to be addressed immediately. We didn't see any of that in our assessment, which is good. But these are items that will deteriorate predictably. and could involve some downtime if things needed to be shut down to make a repair. And these are things that will continue to deteriorate over time and become more and more expensive to address if deferred. The second scope category are the things that we recommend, and these are things that are needed immediately, but are sort of in that mid-range, which are improvements that school departments should consider to be making based on the age of the building, the systems, and the equipment, and the expected lifespan of that. Scope three is the third and last priority category. And this category is reserved for items that may not comply with current codes and regulations. And the best examples that I can give you are the accessibility regulations and fire sprinklers. And so in the Commonwealth, we have laws and regulations that stipulate if a significant amount of work or if a major renovation is done to a building, there are some triggers that require upgrading for fire sprinklers and for incremental compliance with accessibility regulations. All of these buildings have fire sprinklers, so that's not an issue here. And then there were some minor accessibility items that we did Note, there's nothing that is required to be done now. But as I mentioned, if there were other work being performed in the future of a certain dollar value, those items may need to be corrected. And then finally, for scope category number three, this also includes building systems or equipment that are approaching the end of their service life. And the useful service life is the point in time where the costs of continued maintenance and repair will start to outweigh the cost of simply just replacing the equipment or the item. We can go to the next. I think we need to flip back on one. So the work items are compiled into one of five different assessment categories, the first one being the site. And so these are all the areas that are outside of the building, the parking areas, the walkways, the landscaping, the playgrounds, et cetera, the storm drainage. The second category is the building envelope. So these are the walls, the roof, the doors, the windows, and so forth. Building interiors are fairly self-explanatory. It's all the things that we see right here in this room, the floor finishes, the ceilings, the walls, accessibility items when they're there, doors, toilet rooms, and so forth. Mechanical systems include our domestic plumbing systems, our fire protection systems, gas, heating, ventilation, air conditioning. And the electrical systems would include the main electrical service, all of the distribution wiring, panel boards, fire alarm system, lighting, emergency lighting and egress, communication systems such as phones, paging systems, clock and bell systems, security, computer networking, switches, data wiring, and so forth. Next one. Okay. I wanna be able to look at my, slide a little closer. So there is a page very similar to this one, which you'll find in the complete report, which is an explanation of how to read the assessment. So what this shows is an example of a typical work item that you will find in the assessment. And there are dozens of these. This example is from Misutak. And it's the first item in the site category. And it describes potholes, cracking at the paving in the parking lot. The recommendation here is to repave parking lot and to provide new painted striping. It's a pretty typical item that we see everywhere. The quantity of this particular item is approaching 20,000 square feet. The unit cost that we assigned to this item is $11.90. So multiply that gives us a total of almost $237,000. And then we apply the soft costs. So these are the indirect costs that would include the district's administration costs, contingencies, architectural and engineering fees. And that's a simple multiplier of 30%. So we add 30% on top of those construction costs to get a total cost to address that particular item. And then we assign that item into a scope category that I described earlier. And this item we assign to scope category two. It's worth noting here that each of the scope categories has a timeline associated to it. So for this assessment, scope one are items that are recommended to be addressed within two years. Scope number two, two to five years, and scope number three is five years and beyond. Considering that these items will all be addressed at some point in the future, we also have to account for escalation in construction costs. And I'll show you on a later slide on how those are applied. But at the moment, we've been using about 5% compounded on an annual basis. It has been higher. And during COVID, it was significantly higher. Historically, it's been around 4%, but based on current economic conditions, it's about 5%. That's what we've been seeing. So just a very quick snapshot of each of the schools with some basic data. You can see that the construction dates are all within a couple of years of each other from 2001 to 2003. So all built at relatively the same time. Brooks is three stories at 95,000 square feet. Missittuck four stories, a little bit smaller, about 93,000. Roberts, also four stories and about 95,000 square feet. Andrews, middle, a bit bigger, 104,000 square feet. And McGlynn, the largest of the group at 186,000 square feet. So all together, This is almost 574,000 square feet. And be mindful of the size of the school. I would just mention that this total does not include the high school Curtis Tops or any of the other buildings in the school system. Okay, so you'll also see this table in the full report, the executive summary. Now, this is the table that totals all of the work items that were identified for each of the schools and all of the scope categories for each. So reading left to right, The total of the scope categories for each school is in the column on the right hand side, and reading top to bottom are the totals for each scope category. So our highest priority category is scope one, and we identified almost $17 million of work. Scope two, 39.2 million, and scope three, 11.8 million approximately. So across the bottom of the table, you'll see the inflation factor at 5% so compounded on an annual basis. For scope one, two years, it's 18.6. Scope two, at five years, 50 million. Scope three, also at five years, 15 million. So with escalation, all work included, everything that was identified for this report, it totals 83.7 million. Okay, so I'll give you some idea of some of the things that without going into too much detail of some of the typical things that we found in our assessment. Most of the observations were due to deterioration because of age and deferred maintenance. And it was, I think, pretty typical or average of any school of this age, approximately 20, 23 years, 25 years. So no real surprises there and no real big concerns either. On the site, on every location, we noticed issues with pavements, the walkways and curbs, some issues with chain link fences, which are perhaps less critical, but these are items that we want to pay attention to because they are potential safety and tripping hazards and always find a high priority in our reports. The building envelope, all of the roofs are a combination of membrane and shingle, mostly membrane, and they are all past their warranty. and they are at the age where they should strongly be considered for replacement. Roofs are absolutely critical. Once they start leaking, it's hard to get them to stop. And they cause a lot of problems and potentially some environmental problems if left for long enough. We did a more of a detailed analysis of the roofs and the exterior walls, which was prepared in support of the preparation of the statement of interest to the MSBA. And Ken has told me that recently the MSBA toured Brooks Roberts and Mr. Tuck and took a look at those roofs and they will be considered for inclusion. in the MSBA's accelerated repair program, which is good. It's good to be in the MSBA pipeline. Otherwise, the exterior walls of all these schools are some combination of brick or concrete block. There's some minor cracking, some sealants that need to be addressed. Nothing really serious or of great concern. A few issues with windows. The windows are all original. Some of the glazing units in the windows have failed, which means the perimeter seal has failed and condensation is inside the glass. And that's that milky appearance that you see sometimes. It looks like it's fogged up. And those can be replaced. You do not have to replace the entire window unit to address that. Otherwise, issues with exterior doors and frames, rust buildup, very, very common, you know, due to exposure to the elements, but also there's a lot of heavy salting and ice melt that we have in front of the entrances. And so that really accelerates the corrosion. And that's very common. We see that at almost every school that we look at. Interiors, no great surprises. The deterioration there is very predictable. Carpets get worn out. Walls get scuffed. Ceiling tiles get stained. The flooring, there's a lot of VCT, vinyl tile. Every school has it. There's a couple of areas of concern there. Despite all of the cleaning and the waxing, the Brooks and Missittuck in particular appear to have an issue on the ground floor. So the ground floor is a concrete slab on grade. And there's a lot of failure in both of those. Missittuck being, I think, significantly worse than Brooks. Brooks is also an issue. So the tiles are cracking, they're popping up, they're chipping, and just coming up all over. So there's something going on there and the cause of that is something that goes beyond the scope of this exercise, but It could be an issue related to having excessive moisture in the floor slab or perhaps a structural issue where the slab is moving due to unstable soils. There would be some further testing and investigation, I think, to determine exactly what is going on there. It can be a potential tripping or safety hazard. So we recommend that that be addressed. Toilet rooms, I mean, we see all of the things that we expect to see in the toilet rooms. Typically the toilet partitions in most cases need to be replaced. Fixtures oftentimes need to be replaced as well. The mechanical systems, so these include all of the HVAC equipment and the controls. We do know that the equipment and the controls are currently being replaced. It's ongoing at Andrews and McGlynn. So we did not evaluate that. That's being addressed in another project. But we did look at everything else. All the major pieces of equipment are approaching the end of their useful service life. The boilers, the chillers, the circulator pumps, air handlers, unit ventilators are the things that we see in the classrooms that are underneath the windows. condensers and exhaust fans. So these are fairly costly pieces of equipment. But as I mentioned earlier, at some point, the cost of maintenance and repair will begin to eclipse the cost of replacement. So just keep that in mind when you're considering your capital plan. Electrical systems, there really wasn't anything urgent that we saw there and no major concerns. The electrical switchgear and the standby generators, every school has them. Those are critical pieces of equipment and need to be monitored very carefully, especially the standby generator needs regular maintenance and exercise. Fire alarm systems should always be maintained and upgraded and tested. There are some opportunities for improvements with some of the communication systems, such as a voice over IP telephone system or replacement of the paging in the time clock systems, which are fairly obsolete. And then finally, security is always a primary concern and any opportunities to improve security at building entrances for access control is always encouraged. So just to wrap things up, I find it's helpful to remind ourselves sometimes of why we do this. How do we support the goals of the schools and the facilities. And it's really what it comes down to is the learning environment. We wanna provide the best learning environment that we can for our students. And if there are problems with the building that compromise that learning environment, if they compromise safety, if they compromise security, those are the things that should always be top priority. We also look for opportunities to decrease operating and lifecycle costs for the school district and any improvements that can be made to the operations and maintenance. And finally, any opportunity to reduce energy costs by replacing equipment with more efficient equipment can also contribute to ongoing cost savings. So that's what we have. I hope that was helpful. If you do have the opportunity to review the full report, there's a lot more detail in there. And if there are any questions now, I can try to answer those. Or Ken, I don't know if you had anything else that you wanted to add to that. Member Ruseau.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you for that. I'm glad we're not going to go through the whole actual report. We might be here all night. 150 pages. Yeah, that would be a long night. I don't mind a long night, but that's not that much. You said that the things weren't terribly surprising considering the age, but I realize it's asking for a ballpark, but what percentage of this is age versus deferred maintenance? And 10% deferred maintenance is why we're here, or is it 80%? And I know I'm asking you for an exact number that you don't have.
[SPEAKER_14]: Yeah, we did not review it in those terms, but if I had to make a guess, it's probably 80-20 in favor of age.
[Paul Ruseau]: So age is The 80. Yeah. Oh, that's better than I expected.
[SPEAKER_14]: Was that better than you?
[Paul Ruseau]: Well, I expected it the other way around. Because when I joined the school committee, we had a budget for maintenance of like $0.03. That's an exaggeration. Anyways, the electrical systems, I believe we can't do induction stoves because we don't have enough power. So when you say that things were pretty good there, it was pretty good. to maintain the status quo, correct?
[SPEAKER_14]: Yes. So if there are other equipment that you wanted to bring in that would result in an increase on the electrical load, it doesn't necessarily mean that the building can't handle that. It just means that it would need to be looked at. And there may very well be some extra capacity there. And I would keep in mind that all of the lighting has been upgraded. to LED, which is an overall, you know, reduction in in electrical energy use. So there should be some spare capacity there.
[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, we bought induction stoves and had to send them back because there wasn't enough power from the street. And then I believe in the building, there wasn't enough capacity to handle it either, because they use a huge amount of power. But I just wonder, like status quo is how you determine that it's... Yes. Okay. You mentioned time clocks were obsolete. I'm assuming that there must be some old time clocks from back in the... a gazillion years ago, because we have a whole new time clock system that is literally like two months old.
[Kenneth Lord]: He's talking about the intercom and clock system in the classroom, not the time clock system.
[Paul Ruseau]: Oh.
[Kenneth Lord]: That's the bell, the intercom system. Got it. That system was original to the buildings.
[Paul Ruseau]: OK, thank you. Yeah, I don't think there's a clock that is correct in any school. Is there a clock that's correct in any school in the world? Anyways, all right, thank you. That makes much more sense.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you, member Urso. Member Graham?
[Jenny Graham]: I think my questions are maybe more for Ken, but I guess one comment. This information will be super helpful as we go into our capital planning. Season here at school committee, so those meetings are already scheduled for November, where we'll be in Ken and I have been in touch about how to like weave this information into the capital planning that will come to the school committee. So all of that is in progress, but. I think the other sort of question I had is like we have this operations hero system that I would call a baby at this point like from a systems perspective and its usage being increasing but not at like full steam just yet and in my mind all of these things are going to be added to that system so that we can track when we've completed them versus like going to find the 150 page report and like keeping track of it manually, is that what you're thinking as well?
[Kenneth Lord]: Yeah, so there's a couple categories of stuff in here. There are things in here that we will do through our operations budget, through in-house staff or working with DPW or things like that. There are things that we'll do within our operations budget through smaller projects, and then there are things that we'll need to seek capital funding for. Depending on the level of those projects, they'll enter into operations here with different areas, as well as our existing systems need to be categorized into operations here to start building those preventive maintenance schedules that drive all of this. So our first up real big push on that is going to be with all the new stuff that's being installed that Lulin and Andrew is making sure that's properly cataloged with all the preventive maintenance cycles that are generating tickets automatically that we can address either with our own staff or assigned to a contractor.
[Jenny Graham]: That all sounds incredible and I look forward to all of that work. And we'll obviously take in a lot of this information and talk about the capital plan. But I would like for us to report on the overall progress of some of this work, because I think, like you said, some of these things are going to get done, because we're going to do them in the course of our normal budget. And I would like for us to be able to quantify that. There were 20 items on the list, and we did five, and that's 5% of the total value, because I think You know this like this number is like is big, and I don't nobody here seems very surprised by it. I'm not particularly because we have half a million square feet of buildings and we have lots of roofs, lots of boilers lots and lots and lots and lots of things. And so all of this stuff adds up, especially when they're all old. But I think it would be useful for us to understand, we got this report. What progress are we making against it? So that when people are like, well, we gave you this much money. What did you do with it? That there's an easy way for us to demonstrate what progress we're making and, frankly, what progress we're not making. Because maybe we need another maintenance person if we want to make meaningful progress. Maybe we need two more maintenance people. Those are conversations we need to be having, but making the case that if we want to make progress on this list and not interrupt student learning, then this is what we need. I think that data look will be important for us to look at, maybe at the end of each school year or something, at budget time. to start to help the community understand the real progress that we're making. We are making a lot of progress. And I don't think we've ever reported on that, mostly because we were afraid that we weren't. And I think whether we are or we aren't, I just want that like straight story to be available and for us all to like be able to ground in those facts. And then my other question was just this kind of assessment is supposed to be done on a regular basis. Is that correct? Like on a cycle of like every X years you should be doing this kind of assessment and what would that number be?
[SPEAKER_14]: I mean, I would recommend doing them probably once every five years. I mean, I think it can depend on the last one. Sure.
[Jenny Graham]: So the first one is always gonna be the worst, right?
[SPEAKER_14]: Hopefully. But, you know, the time period that was identified for this assessment was up to five years. That's really not a long time. Occasionally, we do get requests to do them for longer periods of time, 10, 15 years. So, you know, the short answer is, you know, if the report was for five years, you should do it for every five years. I think that's probably the most aggressive, maybe closer to 10.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Okay, great. Thank you. Member Olapade and then Member Reinfeld.
[Aaron Olapade]: Thank you. To actually follow up on my colleague's question, are there certain portions of the facility that you find there should be a more routine checkup on? So bathroom facilities or HVAC or electrical, or do you find that just in general we should be on the same timeline, the 10-year recommendation or the five if you want to be more aggressive?
[SPEAKER_14]: Well, anything in that scope one category is going to be priority. A lot of the dollars in that category really come from those roofs. So that should probably be a top priority. And being in that MSBA pipeline is a perfect way to get that started. But anything that results in water infiltration If the windows start leaking, if the roofs are getting worse, those are the beginnings of problems. So I would focus on those areas. Was that a helpful answer?
[Aaron Olapade]: Yeah, that's perfect. OK. And then another question I had when it comes to this assessment, you know, I haven't looked over the 150 page document fully yet. But when it comes to moving from this current assessment to an actual schematic design and bid process, do you feel like what's the usual timeline that takes to go from where we are now to what it would look like to start that bidding portion?
[SPEAKER_14]: Oh, boy. Yeah, that could be a very lengthy process, depending on the timeline. So, you know, a small project, you know, we could probably get designed in business in six months or less. Larger project may take a year or longer, depending on the level of approvals that were required, you know, by the city in terms of permitting. But it really just depends on the scale of the project.
[Aaron Olapade]: And I think in something that you said, I think it's important that I think the committee and I think the general public who may be listening in that for the most part, the things that you found in this assessment, there were no majorly emergent concerns facility-wise about student safety or student learning that have been impacted. So if there was a longer process to get to that bidding portion, student safety wouldn't be impacted because we're taking a little bit longer to go through that.
[SPEAKER_14]: We didn't really see anything of major concern. And as I mentioned, I think when we just started our conversation, if there were issues that were that serious, there probably have already been addressed. So no, we didn't see anything I think that would be a serious issue in the short term.
[Aaron Olapade]: Thank you. And then the last kind of question comment, you said towards the last portion of the assessment mechanical systems, electrical systems about the cost of repairing, you know, it can eventually eclipse the costing of just replacing. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit more about that? I know there's a lot of concern in the community questions about what that generally looks like when it comes to facility costs. And, you know, we're discussing it, you know, a new refurbished or new high school here in Medford and so there's a lot of conversation about what does that really look like in the immediate cost versus long term. I just know that you mentioned I wondered if you had any, you know, just professional experience about at what point does it eventually eclipse that replacement costs.
[SPEAKER_14]: Yeah. Yeah, more in depth I think analysis would be required to answer that question adequately but You might be familiar with the concept of life cycle costing and that there's a process that can be applied where we would consider, for example, mechanical equipment, the cost of replacing the equipment, and then we would factor in the energy savings of that equipment and compare that with the maintenance costs if you didn't replace that equipment. You can get some pretty good results from that. So I would recommend doing a lifecycle cost analysis would probably be the best approach. Thank you. Sure.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Member Reinfeld?
[Erika Reinfeld]: I have what is possibly an unfair question because you did very clearly state that the high school was out of scope for this analysis for obvious reasons. But I'm curious, particularly looking at our upcoming feasibility studies, which obviously are going to be happening with our MSBA committee and design firm. To what extent are these numbers, these assignments of value translatable to a building like the high school that is significantly older than these buildings? But I'm just wondering, to what extent can we look at this and say if we're seeing these tile changes, these envelope challenges.
[SPEAKER_14]: If I may, are you asking could we apply this similar cost to the high school if we were to perform that type of analysis?
[Erika Reinfeld]: Yes, or would it be significantly higher because it's an older building?
[SPEAKER_14]: I would expect because of the age of the building that we would find, if you think about it on a cost per square foot basis, that it would be more costly to address the high school simply because of its age. I believe that building was built in 1970, so significantly older than the buildings that we have here.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Great, because I think the community is going to be looking very carefully at how we're managing our buildings and what that means for new construction and renovation. So thank you for stepping outside the scope there.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: OK, you're welcome. Thank you. Member Ruseau, and then I'm going to go on to introduction of Dr. Meg Mayo-Brown.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I think this 5% each year, we don't get this work done, that the prices, the costs will increase is an important consideration, especially since Prop 2.5 means we can only get 2.5 more percent. So we go further and further in the hole. I just ran these numbers if we did nothing in seven years, it would be, we would be costing us 15 million more than we would have possibly brought in to pay for it. I don't think we have the money to pay for most of this stuff anyways, but I just think it's important to note that, you know, this 19.5 million or 18.6 million for the scope one, like those are things we should be doing and FY 26, which we're in right now. Not FY 27 and FY 28 and FY 29. That's this year's work. And I don't know where or if we have any thoughts on where we're going to get the money for that. But all of that will go up more than a million dollars by not doing it this year. and more than another million dollars the next year. Meanwhile, all the other things are going to get more expensive, too. So on the one hand, I'm not surprised by these numbers. On the other hand, I'm wishing I had some kind of medication to help me stop hyperventilating because, I mean, $83 million is our entire school budget. and each year new things are gonna come on to that, that five years out, that five years next year is our two to five. And there's something that gets added on after that. So I'm really glad to see these numbers, but I also think these are not numbers based on tearing off a roof and discovering that water leaked into everything and whole walls have to be replaced or something crazy. So these are, best guesses without invasively looking into the building to find out what's really going on. And so in my mind, I see these as the low end because, I mean, we have had many years of what we like to call deferred maintenance, which is just another way of saying no maintenance. And we've done a good job, I think, Finally, getting the the code forced us to get some of the HVAC systems up and running in the in these particular schools. And, but, you know, we look at other schools like At the high school, which I know this doesn't cover, but we looked at what would be cost to improve the the heating system in some of the buildings, in some of that building. It turned out there was no way to make it less expensive because they had not actually been running for years. So you can't get more efficient than zero energy use. And I'm just very worried that this is a low-end number, and we don't have a plan for how we're going to... I mean, we used all of the free cash this year alone. By next year, there's no more money to cover any of this stuff. So I'm freaking out a little bit. And I assume many of us are. And I think we need to make sure the public knows very clearly that we are underfunding our schools to the order of tens of millions of dollars a year. And this is fabulous, but I think member Graham's point about getting it. I think this should be on our website, and I think it should show the progress for this year. And I think it should show that each year we didn't get progress. We went further in the hole. I don't know how to graphically show that, but these things are just going to keep going up, and we're going to spend less than just the increase. So I want to thank you for the report. Now I can't sleep. Sorry about that.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Member Intoppa.
[John Intoppa]: Thank you for putting this report together in this summary. It's really helpful to see the breakdowns. It's really helpful to see, you know, in terms of the accessibility needs, in terms of what, you know, should be done now, what should, you know, what can be not deferred further, but what, you know, maybe doesn't need to be acted on immediately. I don't know why I'm circling back on this question, but our windows, are they all double pane windows for that, for the buildings? Yes, they're double pane insulated. So would we have to regas them in order for them to become insulated again, or to prevent the condensation? I mean, I know we have to reglaze them, but do we have to come in and also do that process at the same time, or are they still integral in that sense? It's a very specific question.
[SPEAKER_14]: I think, Most of the windows have two sashes, top part and bottom part. So each part has a glazing unit in it. And one of those glazing units may have failed, for example. So really, all that needs to be done is the glazing unit needs to be removed and replaced with a new one. Oh, awesome. Yeah, it's a fairly simple thing to do. Cool.
[John Intoppa]: Great. Yeah. I think I just also want to press the point, you know, as, as we're pressing points in terms of deferred maintenance and, and all these things to talk about, you know, we've got to get the money to fix things. We also got to fix them. Right. And we got to do it correctly. And we can't cheap out on things because this is what happened with C3. We built C3. We paraded C3. C3 was great. It's the new science wing. We're gonna have a great time. It's going to be awesome. And then the roof is leaking within a year. Right. It's awful. You shouldn't have four trash cans in a classroom when it's just been redone and all this. So really making sure that, yeah, like member Rousseau said, when we pull the roof off, we need to make sure, hey, as you mentioned, things get worse. And sometimes one crack leads to multiple, and water gets in there. And water is the real enemy, unfortunately, when it comes to these things. But making sure that you know we don't put ourselves in another situation where we spend, I wasn't on the committee I was in high school at the time, how much money we poured into see three only to possibly have things ruined especially in a science wing contaminants Hello. can be impacted. So making sure that we're using the right materials, we're using the right folks who have the understanding of the materials, because we don't want to replace floor tiles and then step on them and they all crack, or they use the wrong adhesive. And this happens and that happens. So again, not to speculate that we will ever cheap out, not to speculate any of that, but just affirming that we need to make sure that if we're going to spend the money, we might as well spend more. Because if it breaks, then we have to spend more money. It's just going to be more. you know, more things down in our pocket and it's gonna cost more, it would cause less to do it right the first time than to try to fix our mess the second time. So thank you.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. Next up, we have introduction of Dr. Meg Mayo-Brown, NSIP, New Superintendent Induction Program, Program Director and Coach. And I'll pass it over to Dr. Suzanne Galusi, our superintendent.
[Suzanne Galusi]: Thank you so much. I'm very excited to have my co-chair, Dr. Meg Mayo-Brown. She's going to talk a little bit about the NSIPP program, the new superintendent induction program, a little bit about herself, and happy to answer any questions that you may have for her or myself. So without further ado, Dr. Meg Mayo-Brown.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you. Thank you very much, Dr. Galussi. Good evening and thank you for the opportunity to join you. As Dr Lucy said my name is Meg male Brown, I serve as the program director for the new superintendent induction program and coach for your superintendent Dr Lucy. I'm here to introduce myself and thank you for your support of Dr. Galusi's participation in the program. Prior to this work, I served as a superintendent of schools in Massachusetts for 14 years, eight years in Fall River and six years in Barnstable. The new superintendent induction program has supported new superintendents for the past 15 years. Dr. Galusi is in cohort 16. NSIPP is a three-year induction program for new leaders new to the role of superintendent in Massachusetts. The curriculum centers on instructional leadership, team building, and supervision and evaluation with equity integrated across all content. The goal is to develop transformational leaders who understand and meet the needs of all students. NSIF, as we call it, is a program of the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents supported by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Barr Foundation and endorsed by the Massachusetts Association of School Committees. Participation overview for Superintendent Galuzzi is year one, she will spend 48 hours of content day learning plus up to six hours a month of coaching. In year two, she will engage in 39 hours of content day learning plus four hours of coaching. And in year three, she joins regional consultancy groups facilitated by a NISP coach where her peer superintendents engage in problems of practice and they meet on a monthly basis. Superintendents consistently report that NISP's content, coaching and collegial networking are highly valuable to their leadership. Each coach works with leaders to establish on-site coaching opportunities, including providing feedback on leadership team meetings, providing feedback on entry planning and findings, visiting classrooms, and observing one-to-one meetings with school and district leaders. The relationship between the NISP coach and the superintendent is one of confidentiality. Feedback is provided exclusively to Superintendent Galussi. As a leadership development program, NISP supports leaders as learners with a focus on transformational leadership. NISP supports the development of an entry plan, and in this case, very much a transitional plan for Dr. Galusi. The subsequent report of entry findings, which I'm really excited to listen in on that tonight, which sets up the district for a strategy for improvement based on the findings. Thank you very much. It was a pleasure to be here.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you very much. We appreciate the update. Member on top Papa.
[John Intoppa]: Sorry if I could just give a point of personal privilege in the last, uh, I was just reminded by my colleagues that I misspoke. I would like to correct myself when I can in my ramblings. I referred to the weighing the science wing of C three. It's B three. Three was the one that's leaking. Um I'm just, I'm really tired tonight, I'm sorry. But I am informed that C3 is in fact leaking. So I was technically correct. I just called it the science wing. But C3 is leaking. B3 was leaking when I was in high school, which was when that was built. I think I was one of the first classes to enter that. So just a quick clarification on my misspeaking. So thank you to my colleagues behind me for correction. Oh, gosh.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Okay, Dr. Lucey, anything you want to add about your induction program or everything's going well?
[Suzanne Galusi]: No, I mean, I feel very grateful to have the guidance of Dr. Meg Mayo-Brown. She's been wonderful, whether it's texts or phone calls. She's definitely come a couple of times to Medford High School. We've gone on some school visits. I haven't told this to the principals yet, but she's going to be joining the next principal cohort meeting. We have those monthly. So she will be joining that next one so that she can you know, participate and observe my instructional leadership with school leaders. And I'm happy and I welcome the feedback and the guidance. So I feel quite grateful.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. Wonderful. Thank you. Next up, we have our transition entry findings report. I'll again turn it over to Dr. Galusi, our superintendent. Member Reinfeld.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Sorry, I just had a quick question about NSIPP. There we go. Is there any kind of 360 feedback program or talking to the people that your work impacts? That might be a question for Dr. Mayer-Brown. And I'm asking because I've been a part of other executive coaching that does include some of that 360 feedback.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you for the question. In March of each year, each of the three years, Dr. Galussi will participate in a 360 feedback form with her leadership team and principals and whomever actually she wants to provide it to. The results of that feedback go directly to Dr. Galusi. We actually advise superintendents not to share it at a public meeting, but actually to share it to inform their own practice and growth as a leader.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Thank you. I appreciate knowing that that exists and it's part of the program.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Great. Thank you. I'll turn it over to you on the transition entry findings report, Dr. Galusi.
[Suzanne Galusi]: Thank you. So good evening, Madam Mayor and esteemed members of the school committee. I'm quite honored to be presenting my interim findings as they are to date. So when I began my tenure as interim superintendent eight months ago I did so with deep gratitude and a strong sense of purpose as someone who grew up in Medford, and is proud to have been educated through its public schools, serving this community has been both a personal honor and a professional privilege. Over these past months, I've had the opportunity to view the district through a new lens, as I listened closely, engaged with stakeholders, and learned from the diverse perspectives that define our school communities. Through this process, I gained a deeper understanding of our district's many strengths, as well as areas where continued focus and alignment are needed. So this report captures that learning and this reflection. I think it's important to also note that the insights that were gleaned from this process will inform our collective work ahead as we develop a cohesive district strategic plan designed to advance belonging, equity, and excellence for Medford Public Schools. So part of this was taken from the transition plan that I presented to this body in January, but I'm calling it the transition slash entry plan since I have been in Medford Public Schools for 29 years. But this just highlights a little bit of the purpose of that plan. So first and foremost, it was to maintain consistency and calm in a moment of transition. It was to inform the school community about transition activities and to maintain open communication. Part of that was strengthening the relationships that I had already had with staff, with families, with caregivers, with students. It was to also look at Medford Public Schools in a new lens and to identify strengths and areas of focus that will help us inform our work moving ahead. and it was to outline the next steps of our work. So these are the buckets of work that I've been doing since January of 2025. So part of this process included gathering stakeholder voice and input. So I facilitated over 30 listening sessions at school communities via Zoom. I met with caregivers, I met with staff. I attended and participated in district and community events. district wide school and leadership meetings, and I reviewed survey data. I do think it's very critical and important to mention that in this bucket of work, I would say that I did not gather a really diverse input from our diverse community of Medford. I would say that moving forward and to inform the work that we have to do for the strategic plan, I think it's really critical to make sure that we are meeting people where they're at. Though I offered multiple modalities in order for people to participate, it still wasn't representative of what Medford is today. The other bucket of work that informed this was observing in schools, one of my favorite things. But to date, between January and today, I've conducted over 200 classroom visits and observations. And I've reviewed that data with our senior leadership and school leadership as well. I also worked to enhance my understanding of district operations. I think we know my background here in Medford. I've gone from being an educator to a school leader, to the assistant superintendent for elementary schools, to the assistant superintendent for academics and instruction. So operations was something I needed to lean into and build that muscle. And so what I did in that area was held a lot of meetings with finance, facilities, IT, athletics, and community schools. I reviewed overall functioning and current structures. And a lot of that led me to making sure that we had positions in place that could help lead a lot of that work. And so hiring key personnel in these areas to assist the overall functioning of the district, the support needs, the structure and the growth was critical. I think you saw a little snapshot this evening for the chief operations officer position that was created that has been tremendous in establishing much needed structure, which we'll get to, but in the areas of operations within the city of Medford, the Medford Public Schools. And then the last area was to advance and establish shared understanding, alignment, and next steps. So really, through all of this information that I was gathering, establishing and enhancing district organizations, systems, and structures was and is and always will be critical, continuing instructional alignment that has already been in progress, and informing the upcoming strategic plan. So I think it's important to give a little bit of reminder or context about what we've done so far and where we have come. So since being, I would say, I'll go back to 2022 was the time in which my position shifted from the assistant superintendent of elementary to the assistant superintendent of academics and instruction. That position is critical to see the vertical alignment of our academics and our instruction district wide, which we did not have that lens before. That was a big learning year for me. And that was really the year where I had to do a lot of learning at the secondary level in a lot of middle school and high school classrooms. And there were a lot of aha moments during that year. And that was really the year that we decided that we needed to be grounding our work in an instructional vision. Because it didn't matter if I was in a kindergarten classroom or in AP physics. Standard one content may look different, but how we're teaching all students and the learning environment we're creating for students, that mattered district wide. So that instructional alignment kind of began, I would say, in 2022. That summer, which was 2023, Medford Public Schools attended the Department of Education's first Instructional Leadership Institute. We were lucky that one was housed at Tufts. We didn't have far to drive. But that learning for us as a district instructional leadership team was very profound. That's where we grounded in a lot of work that helped us inform our instructional practices. In combination, around that same time, as this body may remember, we had Spring Point, which is, and we had DESE Air Report come. Those were two neutral reports that spoke about the instruction that our students are experiencing every day. That work, along with what we received in terms of professional development, really began to our work in looking at what is the student experience? What are we doing for our planning and for our instruction? That came with us to the development of the instructional plan. That work was done collaboratively with school leaders, with department leaders, with teachers. And I know that I have presented on this work before to this body, but I think it's very important to remember that this work was aligned to the Department of Education's expectations for the instructional vision of districts. And it also is where our core values came from. This work also encompassed our access and opportunity for all. So when we were at the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education Instructional Institute over the summer, we were introduced on a district level to the opportunity myth. which is TNTPs, the new teacher project, well-researched, study on how students, even though we're saying that we're providing grade level content, they're just not meeting grade level standards, and why is that? We really dug in to this research as a district team. And teachers, we created a professional development series that lasted the year. and teachers received that. This past year in 2024, 2025, we brought on some sustained coaching for our staff. We've brought on through the Barr Foundation, Unbound Ed, Lynch Leadership Academy, and we've continued our partnership with Hill for Literacy since 2019, I believe. All of this work has come together in our advancement of what we want to see the student experience be. Part of this work also is creating aligned schedules and walkthrough tools so that our school leaders and our department leaders are coming together and not just like coalescing, but aligning in what we want to see in classrooms. And through this work, as we've explained before, we also at the secondary level, our teachers are We are making sure that our teachers are planning for GLEAM instruction, which means they are planning so that their lessons are grade level, engaging, affirming, and meaningful to our students. Thank you. So I thought it would be very fitting and really help us continue the work that we have been doing thus far in this district to continue the work with TNTP's national framework, their next year, they went from the opportunity myth to opportunity makers. And so this framework, my findings are going to be grounded in this framework of belonging, consistency, and coherence. In everything that I've gathered, this frame not only fits the work we've currently been doing, but also fits the work that we have to do. It is aligned completely with our instructional vision and I think would be a great launch for the work that we have upcoming for our strategic plan. So just to capture before we move on, the three pillars. Belonging is just to make sure every student feels known, safe, and valued, and my findings will reflect that. Consistency, every student experiences high-quality, grade-level learning in a safe, well-maintained environment. And the coherence is that every system, from instruction to communication to facilities, works together to support learning. These are overall just highlights of the strengths and areas for growth that I found in gathering all of this information. Our strengths, we have engaged and supportive stakeholders. I think you can see it in the Mustang moment. I think you can see it with our student representatives. From our students to our educators, to our staff, to our caregivers, to our community, and to our city partners, we have engaged and supportive stakeholders. We are very lucky that we are in a system where we have so much support. Our students represent diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and talents. That's an asset. We have deep community commitment to students' success and well-being. Over and over again, through anecdotes, through data, there are so many examples of how the community rallies to support our students and our staff and our communities. And it's just a wonderful part of Medford Public Schools. And another strength is our shared value for inclusion, equity, safety and excellence, which we see on a continuous basis, even here during these meetings with your resolutions and your support for the work that we're doing. Areas of growth. for the previous report. Maintenance of facilities and security upgrades. We're going to talk about some of this. There is work ongoing. There's work still to be done, but that is an area of growth for us. Alignment and coherence of communication. So I think this one, there was a wide spectrum of input that I received during my time gathering information, but things that rose to the top and continuously were just the alignment of school to school, that communication varies widely. Classroom communication methods and I would say schedule also varies. Athletic communication and just overall communication chain. The other piece of area for growth is capacity expansion of the afterschool program. which we've been doing consistently, but there is still a lot of work to be done. Diversifying our educator staffing. That is a big growth area for us. I'll talk a little bit about that, but that is work that needs to be prioritized. Our students need to see representation in their classrooms and in the hallways. And then creating more visible and supportive opportunities for neurodivergent and LGBTQ plus students. That also came up in a lot of my community meetings, making sure that all of our students can visibly see the supports that Medford Public Schools is offering them and provides for them. So the first pillar is belonging. And that means knowing, supporting, and growing every one of our students. So strengths in this pillar were strong relationships among educators, students, and families, a shared value for inclusion and equity, and deep community connection and pride. The reason why the pillar of belonging is so critical is because it's not something we feel, it's something we build. When schools design systems, environments, and routines that are safe, inclusive, and well-cared for, they send a powerful message that everyone matters here. Through these structural commitments, everyone is supported to grow, achieve, and believe in their own success. The next slide is going to detail some of the focus areas and a little bit of the action items. And I will narrate a little bit, some that have been already in progress, some that are yet to come. So the first focus area for belonging is expand student voice and opportunities for leadership. Now the current implementation of the instructional vision focuses on that. And that GLEAM framework that educators are following also focuses on that. We want to make sure that we're allowing a lot more opportunity for student voice in classrooms. through the feedback we've received from neutral observations to school and district leadership observations, we need to capitalize a little bit more on the amount of time and access students have for voice in classrooms. The instructional vision is providing us that pathway, and we're working on aligned professional development and observational feedback. Fidelity to social emotional learning practices that are already in place is also critical to this work, which is responsive classroom and restorative practices. Some of what we're really working on is pushing the restorative practices piece a little bit more. It's responsive classroom is a little bit, has more of a solid footing at the elementary level, but restorative practices is a little bit of a growing edge right now. Dr. Talbot has made sure that everyone has access to that high-quality text. We are making sure that we're modeling some of this at district leadership meetings, but that is work that is ongoing to make sure we have refreshers in place for our teachers. And then the Mustang moment, I think, is a really great example of how we are modeling elevating that student voice and why it is so important for the community to hear and just making sure that that transcends into all areas for students. Another focus area is to build structures that help every student and staff and caregiver feel seen, heard, valued, and supported. I think structure is probably going to be a big thread that you see throughout this report. First and foremost, I think the foundation of all of this was the collective charge this year was on belonging. And so we really want to make sure that students feel that sense in their learning environments so that they feel safe enough to learn and challenge themselves. But what we want to make sure is that connection to how making sure we're holding rigor and expectations for students is also showing them that they belong. Review of engagement strategies across school communities. So this is work that we have started but is also ongoing. So continued support for our LGBTQ plus student groups and increased visibility initiatives. Some of those conversations have started. They 100% will be continuing and need to be prioritized. We are in the process of reviewing instructional supports and enrichment for neurodivergent students, especially at the elementary level. I think in course selection at the high school level, we see a little bit of autonomy and power that students and family members have when they're choosing classes. And at the middle school level, as was evidenced here tonight, with our new schedule, we have more opportunity for this. It's the elementary that we really need to be focusing on. What does that spectrum look like? How are we enriching neurodivergent students who need a challenge and who need to have some meaningful exposure and access? The professional development that we are continuing in this realm, as I spoke about, instructional vision, GLEAM, but it's also culturally responsive, equity-centered, trauma-informed approaches. In relation to what I spoke about before, it's also safe schools. We brought on, as I reported before, we brought on safe schools this year at the elementary level, all of the elementary staff. had very critical training on safe schools on that first professional development day. That has also led into our elementary principals working with their staff to make sure that we are establishing rainbow clubs at the elementary level. That is work that is beginning right now so that our elementary students and families have that support. Again, fidelity to responsive classroom, equitable access to programs and supports, and then policies that affirm and protect every student's identity. I think it's really important to call this out, especially for this board here. The school committee has really made sure that this is a priority in the policies that they have brought forward, that they have passed, that they have stamped, that we have made sure are established in Medford Public Schools. First and foremost, I think, is the non-discrimination policy, which included harassment and retaliation. There was the non-discrimination on the basics of gender identity. the immigration enforcement policy, the equal education opportunity policy, the dress code policy, the bullying policy, just to name a few. The last focus area is to update and modernize facilities and security. critical to ensure that safety measures are in place and followed. I'm not going to stand here and say that this is all perfectly in place. There are places where this is solidly in place. I would say gold star goes to the Mississippi elementary school. Every time Dr. Talbot and I are visiting for our rounds. We are greeted with a pleasant greeting and then asked what our purpose is. We have to make sure that that model is at every school building. Safe, well-maintained facilities. I think we heard from Habib and we had Mr. Lord at the podium. And though there are some maybe frightening things about it, I welcome the conversation. to get to some decision-making around what Medford Public Schools can handle in these updates, what needs to be placed in capital planning. I have all the faith in Mr. Lord and his leadership. He has already been establishing wonderful structures, and that's just been three months. So I have a lot of faith in where we're headed. And then the other piece is consistent communication and family engagement, which I alluded to before, but the family engagement is definitely a muscle that we need to be flexing a little bit more and building. Moving on to the next pillar, which is consistency. And that's ensuring equitable access to high quality learning. Our strengths are dedicated, skilled educators committed to growth and improvement. And we see that every single day. I just have to call out our educators who it is so evident as we go from classroom to classroom, how much they care about their students and how much work they are putting in to their lessons so that students are getting all that they need and feel supported. A collaborative culture among instructional teams is a strength. And our students are a huge strength. They are invested and ready for learning. I think one of the poignant pieces that I'll expand upon a little bit is no matter what level from classroom to classroom, our students are engaged and they are compliant and they are ready. They are ready for the next level of Medford Public Schools to make sure that we are providing them the excellence, the rigor, the challenge that they deserve, the support that they deserve. And then again, huge strength for us is engaged caregivers and community members. They are completely committed to advancing instructional excellence and that is seen on a daily basis. So what does this pillar of consistency mean? It means that building trust and ensuring that every student in every school experiences the same high standard of excellence. It extends beyond instruction to include the environment, the resources, and the communication systems that sustain learning. The biggest piece of this is that true consistency means a student's opportunity to succeed doesn't depend on the teacher or the school in which they attend. It is up to us to ensure that that consistency is throughout the entire district. So moving on to our areas of growth. Oh, well, before I get to that one, I'm sorry, I forgot about this. This is just a brief snapshot. There is a lot more data to pour over. when it comes to ensuring equitable access. But I think this is our accountability data for the past two years. It is just an overview and just a snapshot so that you can see a little bit of where we have been just in the past two years. Now, I think it's very easy to say there was a lot that was happening last year. around MCAS and regulations that had shifted and executive orders that were in place, but it is still work for us to be looking that our performance overall declined in a lot of subgroups. And so our Asian and multi-race subgroup showed the most improvement. And so those two subgroups made substantial progress in meeting goals. And we have work to do across the district and in other subgroups. And so really, these results highlight the need for consistent instructional quality data informed and inclusive supports, and targeted interventions to promote equitable progress for all of our learners. This is a little bit what I highlighted before, we need to make sure that that is happening across the district and not siloed in areas. So leading to our focus areas, Thank you. Strengthen vertical alignment and instructional coaching across levels. So that vertical alignment that I spoke about before, how we're going to get to that is first and foremost, we're looking at conducting a humanities curriculum review. and alignment, we need to make sure that curriculum materials and instruction is inclusive and that they are high quality instructional materials. That is work that is ongoing, that Dr. Talbot is leading in direct work with Dr. Chiesa and her department. Increased time on learning that we saw through the updated school schedule, which we saw a little bit tonight, has really provided and opened up access and opportunity for our students. Oh, thank you. And then our district walkthrough schedule, we have been aligning that and developing that so that it is consistent across the district. So during, school leadership meetings, during district leadership meetings, everyone is on the same page and everyone is talking about instruction that is aligned to our instructional vision. And then our continued partnership with UnboundEd, with the Lynch Leadership Academy and with Hill for Literacy. I think it's important to note that on the side here, these are some quotes that were gathered in the community meetings and the surveys. And so one of them that spoke profoundly to me that I wanted to make sure that I included here was, to collect and analyze student data, to design and implement differentiated structures of support, coaching, and professional development to build the capacity of staff, which includes principals, department leads, and teachers, to deliver and support culturally responsive instruction. And I view that quote as a charge, and that is work that we are making sure that we can meet for the community member that so profoundly mentioned it. Another focus area is a review of current student services and supports. So this came up in varied ways during my community meetings. Some were around college prep, some were around supports for caregivers, around social emotional supports that the school could help them with. It came in lots of different veins, but really the importance to this was to make sure that we review current practices and materials. That is happening now in a lot of our conversations and will be developed throughout the year. And it also was making sure that we are developing and distributing those resources so that caregivers know where they are. So some of the ways we've done that is, Our comms director, Mr. Will Pippicelli has built out part of our website to include a lot of those supports. There's now at the hands ready resources and support for our immigrant families. And so we've been having conversations around with other department leaders around how can we really be building our website to make sure that it is an area of resource and support for the community. and then making sure that our professional development is aligned with this core focus. One of the things we're looking at is co-teaching practices and places where they're really rock solid that could model for other areas that might need a little bit of increased professional development. Another focus area was increased rigor and student voice and learning. I've mentioned this before, but this is where it shows up in action. And so our instructional vision has given the path to that. Our aligned professional development consultancies and coaching also support that. But what we're really making sure we're working on is when we're in a classroom, The lesson plan and the content may be grade level. But what we're asking students to do to show that learning is the area of focus for us this year. And that's in the planning. So what that looks like, students that might need some scaffolded supports, But we don't want to over support because then we're going to drop that rigor and we're going to have that that lesson now be not grade level. And then in areas where students might be exceeding above grade level, what does that look like? So that's the work that we have ongoing this year. The next professional development day, just two weeks away, is also going to be continuing this. We have unbounded coming back and continuing that sustained professional development that they did in August. Instructional technology. This, this was also a thread. And so the things that came up the most, and especially from from caregivers but also from staff was a review of screen time policies and finding that balance. to technology and offline learning. And that came through in even right down to not just instructional classroom spaces, but also it's an indoor recess day and do we have to have screen time to fill that time. And so a review of how and when we're using technology in classrooms. And how like the AI policy comes into play is all is all conversation. And then of course a review and enhancement of monitoring systems. So we have firewalls in school but if students are taking those Chromebooks home, what does that look like. So making sure that we are. Also providing that communication to caregivers so that they're really clear is a focus area for us. And then as previously mentioned, continuing to diversify our educator staffing. This has been a significant challenge for Medicare public schools. We have tried multiple avenues in order to have greater success with this. We are continuing, well we are starting an audit of our recruitment efforts and procedures, but I think some of the biggest pieces that we're really trying to leverage is our partnerships with local universities for student teachers, as well as our City Year reps. So we have some City Year Corps members And this year we have some city year student teachers. And so they were core members in the past, and now they're coming back to Medford Public Schools as student teachers. And we're hoping that this might be a nice partnership that will provide us with some diverse candidates, as well as the universities that we are partnering with. And Dr. Talbot is leading that work to bring in more diverse representation within our student teaching fellows. And then the last pillar is coherence. And so coherence is putting all of this together. It's aligning systems, priorities, and partnerships. And so our strength for coherence is a shared vision for student success and community partnership. And it's a strong sense of purpose and collaboration. And so what does it look like when a system is coherent? Well, it ensures that every part of the district, operations, instruction, and communication work in sync toward a shared purpose. When systems are aligned and information is clear, families understand expectations, staff can focus on instruction, and students experience stability and trust. In a coherent system, messages, maintenance, and mission all move together to support learning and belonging for everybody. So what does this look like for our focus areas? I think this is really where we start to see the systems that were in some areas woefully needed. So our first focus area is to improve communication and communication alignment district-wide. So when I was gathering this information, some of this review of the current systems in place has already started. I think we had the SMORES platform for a very long time. And I think when I came in as interim, that was one of those intentional, decisions that I made to make sure that the Friday memo is using the platform that we want school leaders to be using and that there's that consistency for caregivers so that they know what that format is and they can navigate it with ease. And so there were places where that maybe wasn't as aligned to the district expectations and there are still areas for improvement. It's probably never going to be perfect, but That review is ongoing and needed. And then to streamline processes and communication chains. So this came up a lot. So when parents have questions, who should they reach out to? So establishing that chain of command was important. The update of our org chart, which is on the website, I think gives a snapshot for caregivers to understand where they can reach out to pertaining to what their question may be. And I know Principal Cabral at the high school has created her own chain of command. She has her own org chart so that you can look and see where the key personnel lie and it makes it a little easier. So some of that work is in process. And then I heard over and over again, from staff as well as caregivers. Can you please do this at least once a year? And I think that format, which was for my meetings, my community meetings, it was agenda free. And I think people really appreciated a dialogue and a discourse to just talk about what they really appreciate and what they really hope. And so I want to make sure that I honor that and that we figure out a way and that we are scheduling and making sure that we're doing in community forums to inform practice, to honor that stakeholder input. And it also strengthens belonging. And so we have some upcoming forums, I think, which will be critical for caregivers around the vision, the mission, and the leadership of Medford Public Schools, but that is something that I want to make sure stays at least an annual basis. Continuing facilities maintenance and safety upgrades. And so some of this work, so you saw this evening the conditions report that has come in, and We will be aligning that work to our district work as well as the capital planning moving forward. The creation of the chief operations officer, that position oversees facilities, IT, and security. Those are three areas that were in desperate need of systems and structures. And Mr. Lord has already begun to do that work. And there's a lot more to go. I know it's only been three months, but I am very grateful for that. And then I know that this body has already been reported on, but it's very important to note that the security camera upgraded every school, the keyless entry and the vape detectors at the secondary level. Those upgrades should be finished by the end of this calendar year. There we go, that's perfect. And that's very exciting to us. really need the keyless entry. And that's going to help the just the overall functioning of the district in ways that we should have been doing a very long time ago. So we're really excited for that one. And then we, Mr. Lord is spearheading the establishment of a district safety committee. And so I think in partnership with that, each school has their own, is developing their own safety committee. We've got a lot of interested and dedicated administrators who signed up to be on the district safety committee, but this is gonna be an opportunity for us to make sure we're having frequent and regular conversations with our community and city partners so that we are all aligned in the loop and making sure that we keep the safety of our buildings and our staff and our students top priority. Academic coherence and alignment. And so this is the piece that really is gonna focus on. We don't want it to look different depending on which teacher you get or what school you're in or what team you have at middle school. It needs to be here are expectations across the district. So promoting that rigor and that equity and that belonging across all schools and all departments is the priority of this year. And Dr. Talbot is leading this work with the school and department leaders. making sure that we are having high quality instructional materials in the hands of our teachers for our students is critical. There are places in this district where that is a growing edge for us and that's a focus for this year. And I will plant a seed that some of that does cost money. And so there will be ongoing conversations around needed curriculum. And then I've highlighted on it before, but where we are now in terms of taking our instructional vision, the findings of this and more findings to come, and what that looks like for our strategic planning for Metro Public Schools. And then certainly not least, but lastly, the expansion of our afterschool programs and the capacity for access and equity. A lot of work has been done with this and I'm just, I'm actually really proud of this collaborative effort. So a task force was established and it is regularly meeting. We actually have a meeting tomorrow night. We have very dedicated and invested caregivers. We have two school leaders, two site coordinators. Mr. Pippicelli helps facilitate that. And then Megan Fidlecari is also part of that committee. And it's doing some great work. So far, we've seen about 68 seats added to our afterschool programming just this year alone. And the basic consultancy, Mr. Andrew Mumford and oh my goodness, I'm going to forget the other gentleman's name. I'm very sorry. They will be joining our task force meeting tomorrow as they're beginning their work this school year to really kind of get a sense as to how we're operating and give us some areas for improvement to really help us be able to grow our capacity in a sustained and meaningful way in benefit of our students and families. And then we did see, just one more thing, Mr. Pippisali, I'm sorry. We did see a staffing upgrade there. So two of our site coordinators are now full-time, which gives the program a little added support to really be working on making sure that we're as staffed as we possibly can be and what that recruitment looks like and working on what the curriculum looks like. And then now you may go, Mr., thank you. All in all, if we're building for our future together, what does that look like? And so I think you could see through all of these slides, Medford's greatest strength is really its people. It really truly is. We have caring educators, families, and students that are committed to one another. You see that in every space you go in. Our next chapter is now about focus and alignment as we build systems that match our heart with our practice. so that every student learns, thrives and belongs. And we wanna make sure that teachers, that we're equipping teachers with, what does that mean? You can protect and care for your students while also having high expectations for them academically. And so that's the work, that's the push this year. Our students are ready and we have to push them. And so part of this is engaging stakeholders in defining priorities for our vision, mission, and leadership for Medford Public Schools and making sure that we capture those diverse voices in Medford in that work. And I think the varied format that was discussed at the subcommittee really will go a long way to making sure that we capture every voice in Medford. And then using these findings between the findings that I have presented here to you this evening and the findings that we will gather through that work, we're gonna have a great pool of resource to be able to pull from in developing Medford's next strategic plan. And that strategic plan will be a coherent roadmap for systematic improvement and student achievement, detailing the actions and the benchmarks required to achieve sustained success. And so that concludes my report of entry findings in building belonging, excellence, and opportunity across Medford Public Schools. And I am happy to answer any questions that you may have.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Member Reinfeld.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Member Reinfeld. Thank you. I'm going to limit myself to one question, at least for now. So I would love for you to tell us. So I think what I love about these findings in this report is that it really does frame what the conditions for learning look like and what we need to do to really maximize those. What I would love to hear from you about is how academic achievement factors into all of these things, particularly in terms of real-time monitoring. I think, you know, you showed the accountability scores, which are informative. They also tell us what happened. They don't tell us what is happening actively. So I would love your thoughts on that. That's a great question.
[Suzanne Galusi]: I'm going to try to remember everything that's in my head right now. I think for, yeah, I mean, first and foremost, I think you have like the, the high arcing answer to that question. And then you have some of the, The nuts and bolts at the bottom. I think if I like, I can pick out one small thing around, let's say writing, so one of the areas in which. Medford Public Schools probably lost a little bit of the accountability was writing. And so we did see in areas that students that were maybe, let's say, you know, classified as meeting expectations, once you calculated that writing score, it dropped them a little bit. And so one of the areas that we've had discussion about and that, you know, Dr. Talbot is working on is writing. That's like a nitty gritty piece. Overarching, I would say, and what I really wanted to kind of point out in this report is that we have all of this data that has helped us inform a little bit about where we're going. And some of the neutral reports that we've been able to pull from, and a lot of the observations that we've been able to pull from, and some of the data that school leaders get is in our classroom spaces, let's say. as I mentioned before, but I can kind of like explain a little bit more. We have really, we have engaged students that are presenting as ready to learn, and we have content that is grade level. but what we're asking our students to do may not always match that grade level expectation. And I think maybe what we're seeing is there's, we need a higher level of discourse in our classrooms. And so part of the ways that students really understand what they're learning is to grapple with it, is to talk about it with their peers, is to not work maybe in silos or in isolation And, you know. spit out content or data. And I think that is a muscle that we need to flex. And so, and we need to, excuse me, we need to build, we need to build that. And so we've kind of seen some of those opportunities, or I could maybe say missed opportunities, that that's part of the professional development that we're doing this year with staff. So what does your planning look like? When you sit down to plan, are we making sure that you're planning so that your instruction is grade level. Yes, I think we can check the box. Our instruction is grade level. But if we move on to those next levels, right, are we making sure that that is engaging for our students? And if so, how? How are you making it engaging? How are you making it affirming for them so that they can see themselves in what they're learning and why it's important? And then how are you making it meaningful? So Those are the levers that I think we need to be pushing and leaning into a little bit more, because I think that leads to a level of understanding that maybe not all of our students are able to engage in. I think it's doing these walks. This is learning. You can see it with our students today, right? That is happening in some of our challenge classes, because students are actively engaged. They are problem solving in real time, they are engaged in project based learning, you see it in the vocational schools, you walk in any shop, any student is going to be able to stop and tell you what they're doing, how it aligns to state standards, why it's important, and what they're going to get at the end of this, but that might not be happening in every academic space. and our students need to be experienced and exposed to that so that when it comes time for standardized tests or an important project where they have to show what they know, we've given them the opportunity to grapple with that and understand that at a level that's much deeper than just copying something off the board or just spitting back facts. Does that make sense?
[Erika Reinfeld]: It does. And I think there's also a component of making sure teachers have the tools to recognize that and draw it out. And when it's not happening, how to intervene. So how do you know that it's happening in real time?
[Suzanne Galusi]: So to that, I think the things that we put in place last year, still ongoing, but what has been implemented for this year is one, that GLEAM planning. We now have an aligned walkthrough tool that has created a crosswalk between GLEAM and our instructional vision. And so school leaders, department leaders, when they walk in, they're all on the same walkthrough rubric. so that everyone's looking for the same things, talking about the same strengths, growth areas. And then the Lynch Leadership Academy professional development that's happening right now is with our school and department leaders. And that's coaching. And that's coaching for observational feedback. That's coaching to have maybe some challenging or difficult conversations. And the Lynch Leadership Academy that comes in is coaching our administrators. So they'll go through observational rounds and they're coaching our administrators as to how to engage in those conversations. And they're observing that inaction so that they're giving our administrators direct feedback.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Thank you. You know I could talk about this for a very long time, but I see lots of green lights, so I will yield to colleagues.
[Aaron Olapade]: Thank you. To go back a little bit to the belonging portion of the slideshow, you talked quite a bit about the fidelity to responsive classrooms and restorative justice. Can you talk a little bit more about what that actually looks like? I know we've been discussing that for quite a little while now, and the cost and implementation of these types of practices is very lengthy and can be quite difficult. So I just wanted to hear a little bit more about that.
[Suzanne Galusi]: No, thank you. That's another thing I could probably talk about all day. The responsive classroom really came in district-wide alignment during COVID. We wanted to make sure that, I mean, that focus was really on social emotional learning at that time. There was a different level for like that safety feeling. So at the elementary level, there is responsive classroom. There was a lot of responsive classroom professional development. Every year during the induction week for new teachers, there's training on responsive classroom. And it's built in to the elementary schedule. So every day, elementary students are starting their day in a morning meeting. And that's tier one. So all students are gathered together. There are no services during that time. Nothing else is happening. There might be a blip of like, a violin or an orchestra lesson once a week, because that's difficult to schedule. But that is a sacred preserved time so that teachers have their entire class. That's where you build community. That's where you also build expectations, and you are modeling those expectations. And sometimes, as always with students, There are moments where you have to remodel expectations and that community space is the perfect space to do that. This year, we also had a teacher that worked on quite well and all summer long. So Jen Ellis is a teacher at the Brooks. She worked on aligning the morning meeting so that we have a district-wide focus once a month. So every month, there is a different focal point for morning meeting, and it starts with the principal. And the principal is doing grade span assemblies, and they're setting the tone for the entire month. And then there's other morning meeting activities and lessons that the teachers are carrying out. So there's this continuous thread throughout the district. Dr. Talbot, this month is responsibility? Yes, okay, just checking. I did not remember it every month, but, and it was great when we were doing some walkthroughs, you could see on the board how the teachers were connecting their morning meeting message to what the principal had just done in the assembly, you know, the day before or the week before. So I think that thread is pretty well established. I'm sure there's always areas of focus. I think the biggest piece is the restorative practices. So at the time when we really made a conscious effort to bring responsive classroom in, it did not exist at the secondary level. I will have you know, it now goes up to grade eight and this year they're piloting high school. So I have, there are two educators in the district. One is in the process of getting trained by Responsive Classroom. The other one is a trainer for Responsive Classroom and works for Responsive Classroom. And that's a high school art teacher, Jen Belanger. So she's looking into the high school component just to see. The restorative practices piece is a high quality instructional material that really works on creating this community. We brought it in for our secondary staff so that we could create this circle time. for teachers to be able to do this building of community at the secondary level. It also is a space where sometimes where trust has been broken or expectations have to be re-established, there is a component to that program that is bringing people together, students and affected students, affected staff, so that there can be a conversation to repair something that has happened. The way at the time that this was rolled out at the secondary level around COVID time was like a train the trainer model. And so bringing on Dr. Talbot, what we're in the process of doing is kind of like looking at what that structure was, because that is something that's a little siloed across the district. There are some school leaders and some teachers that are really using restorative practices very well. And then there are areas where it's just needs a refresher or not happening at all. And so first and foremost was equipping everybody with the text, which Dr. Talbot made sure was in the hands of all the school leaders and department leaders. And then looking at that list of who are our trainers and what can we do, I will say we have made a very intentional effort so that new teachers are trained in restorative practices during induction week. So we do have two, I believe it's Colleen Mahaney and Cheryl Giordano. to teachers at the secondary level that have led that in the induction program. So our new teachers have a frame, but the fidelity of its use is really what we're working on.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you so much. Thank you. Member Graham, then our student rep, and member Rousseau, if I have it in order.
[Jenny Graham]: Thank you. I just wanted to say thank you for all of this work. when we asked you to step into this role, it wasn't on anybody's agenda for the year. And we also gave you enough time to settle into the job. And I think by all accounts, you did that very rapidly. And I'm just so thankful that you have done more than just settle into the job and keep the lights on in your time here. You are creating coherence, to use your word, to the vast majority of things that need to happen here. And not only are you naming it and framing it, but you also are leading the work. So I thought this was just a really nice summary that started in, why did you go about things the way that you did? And I just really wanted to say how much I appreciate it. And I do agree with you that when we get to, I promise I'll be super fast when we talk about strategic planning, but there's a lot of like interwoven pieces of this that we can build on and move quickly. So thank you. Thank you.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Steve. Our student rep.
[Suzanne Galusi]: Mr. On top is Mike, please.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: I can do it. Kat's been doing it for me.
[Christine DesAutels]: Here we go. I guess this is probably a very small detail, but I wanted to know how to interpret the accountability rating graph, because what exactly is accountability rating? What does that mean?
[Unidentified]: It's a great question. Great question.
[Suzanne Galusi]: So the Department of Education every year gives targets to schools to meet. and they measure it on a scale of like little progress, moderate progress, substantial progress, well above. And so what this means is when we look at all students, we even declined for looking at everyone globally, but then it's really important to look at smaller subgroups of students as well. So you'll see here we have high needs, which encompasses a lot of these categories together. We have the group of English learners, students that are low income, students with disabilities. And then we have our racial groups. We have Asian, Black, African-American, Hispanic, Latino, multi-race, and white. And so what the Department of Education looks at is they look globally at how did everybody do in meeting the targets that they established for us. And then they also look at all of this subgroups to see in some places, when you first look at the scores or your accountability ratings, it might be that like everyone's looks like they're doing a really great job. But when you dig a little deeper, sometimes there's groups of students that aren't meeting the targets. And it's really on us to be looking into what's happening here, and how can we help? And the other piece is that the accountability rating that the Department of Education gives us is they take last year's rating, and then they take the current years. In this case, they took 2024 and 2025, and they did like an average. And that's how they get their accountability rating.
[Christine DesAutels]: Is this done based on like testing based on MCAS? MCAS.
[Suzanne Galusi]: It is based on the MCAS course. Only MCAS. Is that helpful? Do you have another question?
[Christine DesAutels]: No, I think I'm good. Okay, thank you.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Member Ruseau?
[Alachie Yeager]: Can I actually ask one more thing regarding the... Yeah, I just wanted to try and get a more concrete answer. I know that you gave a very detailed explanation about how this process is conducted and the importance of this process. I think we were asking... I don't wanna presume, but I believe we were asking... mainly for what is the actual accountability rating as a statistic? Is it the percentage of students which meet grade level expectations? Is it like?
[Suzanne Galusi]: Oh, thank you for that. Sure. Yes, it is. So it's based on MCAS. So it's a rating as to how Medford Public Schools met the targets that the Department of Education assigned And then they're using MCAS as the tool in how we met that target. And they are looking at all the tests from grade three up to grade 10.
[Alachie Yeager]: I apologize. Maybe I was not clear enough. What exactly? Accountability rating is a percentage. It is a percentage of what?
[Suzanne Galusi]: It's. I'm sorry if I'm not clear. It's a percentage. So if you, you can actually see this yourself. If you go on the department of education or you just go to Google and you type in Medford accountability rating, it will bring up so that you can see there's a calculation there where they look at it's, I'm going to have to go back and look, I don't want to like misquote the exact calculations, but I want to say it's like, you know, a percentage of how we did last year. and they take a percentage of how we did this year, and they kind of average that together to give us our accountability rating. So they're looking over a two-year span.
[Alachie Yeager]: So it has a temporal aspect.
[Suzanne Galusi]: I'm sorry, what?
[Alachie Yeager]: So there is a temporal aspect here. Is this regarding improvement from prior years?
[Suzanne Galusi]: I'm just trying to- Well, so the importance of this, so as we all know, last year in November, voters did pass that the MCAS is no longer used as the sole reason for graduation requirements. But MCAS is still the tool that the Department of Ed is using to make sure that districts are providing grade level standards. So the MCAS measures how well our students are doing taking a test that is assessing their capacity on grade level standards.
[Unidentified]: Sure.
[Suzanne Galusi]: Dr. Talbot, I don't want to put you on the spot, but if you think there's any clarity to add, come on up. You don't have to.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: I think that was a good answer.
[Suzanne Galusi]: Thank you. No, I think that was a great answer.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Member Ruseau?
[Paul Ruseau]: I think the complexity here is that it's, I mean, I'm looking at it right now and it's, there's achievement, growth, high school completion. There's like many things and many categories and many possible points you can earn and there's points earned and the waiting. And it's, they simplify it and call it a target, but it's not like, Your MCAT scores this year versus your MCAT scores next year. It's like most of the DESI data. They try to give us a number for something that is many, many, many, many numbers that they have a formula for. And there's this axis that says percentage. Percentages are supposed to be zero to 100. Nobody gets a zero, nobody gets 100. And year over year that is going, if you were doing, if everybody in the district did better, every student, that wouldn't be 100%. Because unless every student went from wherever they were this year to a perfect MCAS score next year, then I guess everybody would have 100%. and there would be no possible growth the following year. So that's when you would get a growth percentage, your growth expectation for next year would be zero because if everybody got 100% on the MCAS this year, you can't do better than that. And this becomes a real problem in certain very affluent communities where everybody does in fact score very, very high. It's very challenging. Their expected growth year over year is very low because there's no way to measure that anybody's learning anything more because their MCAS scores are so high. So it's, we as a committee just talk about this and look at this number and mostly we're looking at the lines and how they're going up and down, but what's behind it is very detailed and messy.
[Alachie Yeager]: Yes, I have, thank you to my fellow representative, I've just reviewed the formula posted on, website, and I understand why you're speaking in such vague terms. But I, so I apologies for my insistence on that front. However, I think that given the far removed nature of this metric from an easily quantifiable improvement or achievement by our students. sort of would like to know your input on how you plan to interpret this data. Additionally, Member Ruscio mentioned interpreting the lines on the graph, which is another point of misleading. Yes, given that it's a bar, it should be bars. Yeah, I guess for our superintendent here, how do you take this data and interpret it to executive action that you want to take?
[Suzanne Galusi]: Great question. So I would say that MCAS is just one measure. And so what this does is it allows us to see how we are meeting grade level standards from grades 3 to 10. It also shows us the areas in which we might want to dig a little bit deeper and look at other data. because having that like corresponding set would be important. So one of the things we have in the district is the district wide map and WEA map test, which is another data source that gives us information again on grade level standards, but it's nationally normed. And it allows us to dig a little bit deeper to see the areas and the strands in which students are doing quite well and then the areas that they may need a little bit more additional support. Another area of data that I think would be important to look at is also, I'll just maybe say for like the high school level of which you all represent. would be what do some of our course selections look like? What do AP classes look like? What do honors classes look like? What's the representation? What's the methodology? What is happening in those classrooms? It allows us to look at our district data in terms of benchmarks that the science teachers are using so that they can talk about how students are doing. MCAS has some, great reports that allow us to also dig down to the strands, so that we can see, well maybe Medford Public Schools is doing great in this area of science, but in this particular area of science, Across the board, students struggled. So that's gonna be an area for us to say, oh, okay, well, where does this particular area in science come up in our teaching? Is it coming up in May so we're not having enough time to actually teach it? Is it coming up so that, I don't know, there was something that happened that impact that score or that rating? But between taking MCAS and digging down there and then branching it off to our own data that we have internally to really look at what's the story here, that's what's going to help us be able to not only remediate or enhance, but show us what that path could be. Now, you have to be honest with me. Was that direct or clear enough?
[Alachie Yeager]: Yeah, absolutely. I think, I know that you might want to talk, but I want to ask one more question, which is, this was, my understanding, a statistic that you chose to include on the slides for your presentation. What about this particular data made you feel that it was indicative of the story you're trying to tell?
[Suzanne Galusi]: Great question. For me, I think there was a lot of data I could do. My presentation wasn't necessarily on student data sets, but I really did want to paint a picture that we have some work to do in Medford. And so I think it is only one measure, MCAS is only one measure, but our accountability measures should be higher than they are. And I just wanted to show on just a landscape that we to encompass what it was last year, what it was this year, and just of the work that we need to do ahead.
[Alachie Yeager]: Yes. Thank you so much. I think drawing concrete conclusions from maybe a nebulous source such as this can be difficult. So there's some level of concern on that front from my perspective, but I understand that there are alternative sources of data, which I would urge you to use as the basis for your analysis. It sounds like you already are to some extent, but just.
[Unidentified]: Thank you.
[Alachie Yeager]: It's important to understand the statistics on which you are basing your actions.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you.
[Christine DesAutels]: Just to make sure that I'm getting this right. So it says overall trends based on the MCAS, which is a very vague sort of data set in general, because it's like standardized testing, and then the sort of changes from that you use to target the more actually meaningful data sets to see where the actual problem is?
[Suzanne Galusi]: This did not frame everything. No. This was one data set amongst many data sets. So the other pieces were my community input, surveys, observations, leadership meetings, there were lots of data sets in what was informing my report. And this was just, MCAS was just one of them.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you, Dr. Pelosi. Thank you. Member Ruseau, were you all finished?
[Paul Ruseau]: I hadn't started.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Member Ruseau?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I just checked the budget, and we don't have a budget for recruitment. Is there actually a recruitment budget sort of tucked in some other line item, or do you plan to add one in the next budget cycle?
[Suzanne Galusi]: At this time, no, there is not. But we are just starting to have conversations right now to inform the budget for fiscal year 27.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Suzanne Galusi]: So that and professional development
[Paul Ruseau]: I next unrelated the consistency thing. I really appreciated that because ironing out these differences between classrooms and schools. You know, when we talk about students that aren't having their needs met or where there's areas that need to focus in the positive way, looking at everything, when everything is different, you don't know where to look. And I think that, removing as much variation as possible so you can see those differences is a critical first step, a hard first step. But as a school committee member, hearing one of the things I've heard countless times is parents from one school or classroom who will be friends of parents from another school You know what I'm saying? And they'll hear about these great things happening at another school. And I'm not saying schools should all be the same. They certainly all have their own cultures. But they will be things that you're like, yeah, why wouldn't that be happening in every third grade classroom, for instance? And it's sort of just been a theme, something I've heard over and over for years. And I'm glad that that's a focus that you recognize as being very important. I won't bemoan the MCAS data, but I printed the high level reports for MCAS for this year, for the school committee form we just had, and it was two and a half inches thick, and that was the top level summary forms only. I think it's important to understand that the MCAS data you're given would take a staff the whole school year to understand and analyze. It is a shocking amount of information that you are given We don't even, the state's website does not show even a fraction, a tiny, it shows a small fraction of the data that you actually have, because you have the student level data, the teacher level data, the school level data in very, very, graphic detail. And obviously, much of that can't be public, because it's going to have student information. You can't have like an individual teacher's performance on the state website, because that doesn't necessarily mean what somebody might conclude. But you have all that data. And when it's released, it takes a lot of time and effort to figure out where to go. And this whole consistency thing is going to be helpful because when I printed out all of these reports to prepare for this forum last week, one of the things that was noticeable was there was a large increase in the dropout rate, also known as a large decrease in the graduation rate. And if you looked, it was students of who were very likely immigrants. And what's been happening? They've been disappearing from school. And when a student disappears from school, they're a dropout. However, if they then re-enroll in a school anywhere else in the country, we get a request for their transcript and they don't count as a dropout. They're a transfer. But if they go to another country and they don't ask for their paperwork, they count as a dropout. And so, a dropout sounds like such a negative way of saying it, but as having dropped out. So I think it's important to understand that like a huge increase in, a huge decrease in graduation rates does not necessarily mean anything is happening in the schools. It could just mean that students have stopped coming to school because of the stuff going on at the federal level that has made coming to school for many students or staying in the country for many students just and their families not what they want to be doing or they have a choice about. So I think it's important not to just look at these high level numbers and decide you know what they mean. And I think that's really like we want to interpret the numbers. They're in our face. But like this Hispanic Latino number going way down. it does not necessarily mean that the students that sat and took the test did worse. could be that they didn't take the test. It could be the MCAS is required to be taken, well, was required to be taken. Even if you didn't speak a single word of English and you showed up the day before MCAS, you were sat down in front of a computer and expected to take a test for which you could not even read.
[Suzanne Galusi]: And I do think it's important to note that attendance and participation are also part of that factor. And so I think if we recall last year, we had a school that actually received, they went down in their accountability because in a particular subgroup, there was some students that elected not to take the MCAS. And so it is not just achievement data. There are multiple factors that go into creating the accountability data. And at standing right now, Medford Public Schools has won person in the data department. So to your point about all of the reports, about our compliance with the Department of Education, that's an area that is understaffed, quite honestly. I mean, one person is kind of in charge of or responsible for doing all of the above.
[Paul Ruseau]: I just wanted to highlight that it is a sea of data, and figuring out where to focus is in many regards a prioritization. And this report really helps me understand where you're going to look, because the sea is just too much data. So thank you.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. Thank you. No further questions. Thank you for the presentation. We'll move on to, we do not have any presentations of student council, reports of subcommittees, and no presentations of the public. So we have continued business, strategic planning update, member Graham, community outreach survey, community input focus group surveys running October through January.
[Jenny Graham]: Thank you. Yes, so the strategic planning subcommittee met last week and we talked about based on the resolution that we all passed unanimously a few weeks back about how do we sort of big reignite our strategic planning process? So a lot of what Doctor Lucy has talked about today like will all fit nicely, but one of the things that we've never done here from a strategic planning perspective is actually talk to the community at the beginning of the strategic planning process. I have lots of feelings about what a strategic plan looks like. And if it's going to be effective, it starts with your constituents, whoever they are, your customers, your constituents. You have to know what they want before you can build a plan to achieve that thing. And as you all recall, we explicitly put the strategic plan on hold. about a year ago, maybe a year and a half, maybe two years ago now, because we were focused on the work that had to be done to advance the high school project. And then when it became clear that we were going to be making a superintendent transition, it seemed like not the right time to ask a superintendent to ignite a strategic plan. And then we asked you to stabilize the district. And then summer approached and so here we are. So, like the first possible chance that we have had to sort of get this going again. So we did meet, and we talked a little bit about wanting to hear from the community in a variety of ways. And we came up with like two things. One is a survey. So if you all remember that when we hired our last superintendent, we did a superintendent survey, we did a survey about what the community was looking for. And if you also remember we back six years ago when the mayor took office, her transition planning team, of which I was a part, held a community focus group that talked about what does the community want to see for Medford Public Schools. So we're going to bring those two things forward again as good tools to start to hear from folks. So you all do have in your packet the proposed survey. I will note a couple things. The survey is trying to get at questions about our mission as a district, as well as about who you are as a respondent, and to also get some input for all of us as we head into the spring of next year around what people are looking for in a permanent leader of Medford public schools. So rather than trying to survey people on multiple occasions, trying to sort of wrap all of that in and still be concise so that people will answer it. So the survey would go out soon and it would obviously be translated, it would be pushed out in a variety of ways, but the demographic information in particular is one of the ways that we will be able to keep tabs on who we're hearing from and who, more importantly, we're not hearing from. as we collect this information. So when we did this similar survey about the superintendent search seven years ago, we heard from a lot of people who look like me and not a lot of people who look like Mambarolapati. And we knew that at the time and we couldn't really do anything about it because we had to hire a new superintendent. But I think as we have continued our work, we have better tools and strategies to connect to various people, including some of the community liaisons that work for City Hall. our director of English learner services and others. So we have to figure out like how do we start to start to like reach those communities in a proportional way. So that's part of the hope for this survey is not just that we do it and we get information, but that we can collect input from something that resembles our actual population and demographics. The second thing that we'll do, and I put in here a proposed agenda is hold a series of focus groups where we can do a little bit more freeform dialogue around sort of what comes next for Medford Public Schools from a strategic planning perspective. And the idea is we'll hold like five or six meetings between now and, say, the end of January. We'll try to do at least one on Zoom to capture the people who may legitimately not be comfortable coming in person to a meeting. We'll make sure there's translation services available, but we're interested in hearing from people in that more flexible setting around our mission. And then the idea once we're done with both of these things is we will have like a clearer picture of what that mission, that working mission might be. And then we can say, okay, now how do we move that mission forward? And how do we create a plan that has priorities around the work that we're doing? And so that's sort of where the work that Dr. Glucy is doing likely fits very nicely into that frame, but we'll see what the frame is and then we'll make decisions about how to go forward. The other thing that I would mention is we are in discussions with the architect because we will also be starting a big amount of community engagement activity for the high school and we are actually talking with them later this week and we've asked them to think about what would their projected timeline look like so we don't survey everybody out all at once. But are there places where there's some natural overlap that would allow us to reach a single group And talk to them about a bunch of things at the same time. So they were going to come prepared with some information about that later this week. So whether it's five or six exactly when they'll happen exactly where they'll happen. We're going to wait for that information and then go from there. So the only thing that I would say the minutes did not come forward in this meeting. So we'll have to give you the minutes. at our next meeting, but the two big outputs from the meeting and the substance of the meeting were what you have in front of you around survey and the proposal for the focus groups. And I would love it if this group said, yes, we think this is a good plan so that we can get moving because Every day seems like it burns up faster than the last right now. So I think the goal again is for us to have some common language in short order around where we're trying to go so that as we weigh the interim superintendent's performance and what we want to do for next steps come July 1, that we're like looking at what our community has told us, we're looking at what we think the plans might be, we're looking at the progress that's being made, and then we're making informed decisions about the next leader of Medford Public Schools.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: So, any questions? Thank you, Member Graham. Hearing and seeing none, is there a motion for approval? Member Olapade, seconded by? Member Reinfeld, all those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes. Thank you, Member Graham. 2025-18, second reading of policy JJIF, concussion policy. Yep, it's a concussion policy by Member Ruseau. Motion to waive the reading by Member Graham, seconded by Member Reinfeld. All those in favor? All those opposed? Reading has been waived. This is our second reading on concussion policy. The policy outlines a purpose, pre-participation requirements and training, additional caregiver requirements, exclusion from play, return to play, athletic director responsibilities, athletic trainer responsibilities, coaches responsibilities, school nurse responsibilities, and record maintenance. Is there a motion to approve the second reading? Vice Member Ruseau, seconded by Member Intoppa. All those in favor? All those opposed? Second reading has been approved. We have new business offered by member Rousseau 2025-34, required quarterly update of the Shore Educational Collaborative. Member Ruseau, is this to get it on an upcoming agenda or is, I know we do have a packet in our, member Rousseau?
[Paul Ruseau]: I just need a motion to receive and place on file.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: By member Reinfeld, seconded by member Graham. All those in favor? papers received and placed on file, offered by members so 2025-35 the school committee must vote on each resolution from the report of the resolutions committee of the msc members received a report as part of the Massachusetts Association of school committees joint conference 2025 materials. They received via US Postal Service in September of this year, the votes will take. we take will guide the delegate on how to vote during the assembly, which will be held on Friday, November 14th. The full language of the resolutions can be found. Thank you, Member Graham, seconded by Member Olapade. All those in favor? Okay.
[Unidentified]: No, thank you. motion to approve.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Okay, and, um, reading has been waived most to approve by member Graham, seconded by member Reinfeld member Ruseau.
[Paul Ruseau]: Um, yes. So, um I'm going to assume everybody read it. These are the, um The list of the so this is a little confusion about this. This is a new process. I think this is our second or third year, but second year, but these are the professional associations resolutions. These are the legislative priorities for them what they try to get the state house to pass. So we we tell our professional association what to focus on. And because that list had become untenably long, because they would be there forever until they finally got passed by the state house. And as you know, our state house is not exactly moving along quick on anything. So now they expire after three years unless school committees in a majority at the association conference in November vote to reassert that this should be priorities. So I certainly recommend that all of these things, which we did in fact vote for when they were originally presented, that we would support sending them all back up.
[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Okay, and there's a motion on the floor ready for approval and already seconded so all those in favor. All those opposed. Paper passes. There are no reports requested. We do have a couple of condolences, unfortunately. The members of the member's school committee expressed their sincere condolences to the family of Dan Tully. Mr. Tully was a passionate member of our Medford community since joining the district in November of 1987. In addition to his time here as our senior night custodian, Mr. Tully also worked for many years as a night custodian at Medford High School. For 37 years, he made our city stronger from ensuring clean learning environments to being a welcoming presence for our students, staff, and community members. We're saddened by this loss to our McGlynn school community. We'd like to offer our sincerest condolences to the family of Mr. Tully during this difficult time. If we may all please rise for a moment of silence. Thank you. Our next regular meeting will be on November 3rd here in the Alderman Memorial Chambers, Medford City Hall, in addition to Zoom, which is the day before election day. Is there a motion to adjourn? I remember on top a second to buy. Oh, please. Okay, member Graham. All those in favor? All those opposed?
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