AI-generated transcript of 03.02.2026 MSC Regular Meeting (In Person)

[SPEAKER_01]: Sorry, it was just taking a second to load. I think we're good now.

[SPEAKER_11]: I'm.

[SPEAKER_19]: What's going on with this?

[Unidentified]: Okay, but when I unmute it, you only hear me see. Difficulties in the back room.

[SPEAKER_19]: Okay, mic check, one, two.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: We don't want to keep you, we know you have lots of homework.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm using that. Okay.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Mic check, mic check, mic check. One, two, one, two. Sure. The fifth regular meeting of the Medford School Committee will come to order March 2nd, 2026, 6 p.m. held in the Howard Alden Memorial Chambers, Medford City Hall and via remote participation. This meeting is being recorded. The meeting can be viewed live on Medford Public Schools YouTube channel, through Medford Community Media on your local cable channel, Comcast 9, 8 or 22. And Verizon Channel 43, 45, or 47. Participants can log or call in by using the following Zoom link. And the meeting ID is 915-1236-3873. Members, so if you could please call the roll again. Thank you.

[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham. Here. Member Mastropone. Here. Member Olapade. Here. Member Parks. Here. Member Reinfeld. Present. Member Ruseau, present. Mayor Lococo.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Present. 7 present, 0 absent, and I don't believe we have any student reps, so we're going to salute our flag one more time. We had good practice the last. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Do we have anything under the good of the order before we get to Mustang moment? Memogram.

[Jenny Graham]: I just wanted to mention to everybody that if you missed your M.A.S.C. bulletin, the day on the Hill this year is earlier than usual. It's on Monday, March 30th. So that when you're there lobbying your reps, they actually can still take action on the things that you care about. So it's a big deal. It was apparently a big deal to get that date moved out of May and into March, but it starts at 930 and it's downtown. I just want to make sure everyone knew that that was out there and registration is open. That's it.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Okay, thank you. We have a consent agenda, approval of bills and payrolls, approval of capital purchases, approval of donations, approval of grants, approval of field trips, approval of meeting minutes from our regular meeting, February 9th, 2026. Is there a motion on the floor?

[SPEAKER_11]: Motion to approve.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Member Olapade seconded. by Member Mastroboni. All those in favor? All those opposed? Consent agenda is approved. We don't have any reports from our subcommittees, but we do have two reports under our superintendent. And I'll turn it over to Dr. Galussi for the Mustang moment.

[Suzanne Galusi]: Good evening, members of the school committee, mayor, and our wonderful McGlynn community that's here with us in person and hopefully viewing at home. This is my favorite part of the school committee meetings, where we start each one with Mustang moment. And we get a little snapshot about the wonderful things that are happening around the district from the student perspective. So for tonight's meeting, I'm very pleased to say that we have the McGlynn Elementary School here. I'm going to have Principal O'Brien come up. He's going to do a little framing for what the Mustang moment is all about this evening, and then call up the speakers. Thank you.

[Andrew O'Brien]: Thank you, Dr. Galusi. Hello, members of the school committee. May it long occur. So tonight, we're going to take a Mustang moment to allow voices from the McGlynn Elementary School to share their experiences with an online math program called ST Math. We are in year one of a three-year grant. And the unique aspect of ST Math is that it challenges kids to exercise a problem-solving process without any written instructions. They see the problem, they think about the problem, they try the problem, and then they learn from the problem, and then they demonstrate how they know it. So in essence, ST Math encourages students to make mistakes so that they can learn. So we're very excited. It's been a big hit this year. Can I stand up like this? This has been the oddest, okay, good. All right. OK. Here we go. Now I can stand up. Sorry about that. That's great. I know, really. OK. Yes. So we're going to get started right away, because it's the voices of the students that matter. And so we are going to, oh, first, I do have a guest. I do have a guest. Gigi, the mascot, is what ST Math uses to support kids in tracking their own puzzle growth progress. So Gigi is gonna come up. Come on over, Gigi. Excellent. And we're gonna start with, oh, Gigi, can you see? Okay, without further ado, we're going to get started with Nanziba.

[SPEAKER_04]: Hello, my name is Nanjiba, and my favorite subject is math. That's why I like ST Math, and ST Math has multiplication. It really helps me learn my times tables. ST Math makes me good at math and math quizzes. ST Math helps me in the business. ST Math makes me smart. ST Math makes math easy for me.

[Andrew O'Brien]: Next up, Lincoln.

[SPEAKER_08]: Hello, my name is Lincoln Marino in third grade, Ms. Burke's class. And I like ST Math because it teaches you how to learn multiplication, division, adding, and subtraction. And there's a lot more to learn in it.

[Andrew O'Brien]: Nice job, Lincoln. Nice job. There you go, buddy. Nice job. Next up, we have Claire.

[SPEAKER_05]: My name is Claire in second grade from Mr. Johnny's class and what I love about ST Math is the variety of things it teaches you. I also like using trial and error with no written instructions.

[Andrew O'Brien]: Next up we have Emma.

[SPEAKER_07]: Hi, I'm Emma. I'm in second grade in Ms. Collins' class. I like ST Math because it encourages you to keep going and try your best. ST Math makes learning fun. While you're playing games, you are finding new ways to solve math problems.

[Andrew O'Brien]: Next up, Dai.

[SPEAKER_03]: My name is Dai, second grader. My teacher is Mr. Valentino. I like HTML because have the puzzle, I complete the puzzle, be happy.

[Andrew O'Brien]: Nice job, Dai. Next up, we have Mackenzie.

[SPEAKER_01]: Hi, my name is Mackenzie. I'm a fifth grader from Ms. Notaro's class. And what I like about ST Math is that it's fun, and the more you go through, the more you progress through. I can't speak. Hold on. What I like about ST Math is that it's fun. The more you progress through it, the more you learn. Yeah.

[Andrew O'Brien]: Excellent. Good job. Next up, Mehmet.

[SPEAKER_02]: Hello, my name is Muhammad, and I'm in fifth grade in Mr. Petraeus' class. ST Math is a game that helps us learn when you make a mistake. When you get one right, you get the hang of it. Overall, ST Math helps us learn.

[Andrew O'Brien]: Next up, Caden.

[SPEAKER_19]: Hello, my name is Kaden Liu from Mr. Petrolous' class, fifth grade. ST Math is a journey that helps us grow as thinkers. Gigi shows us that mistakes are part of learning, not something to be afraid of. Each puzzle helps us practice problem solving, try new ideas, and keep going even when it's tough. ST Math teaches us to stay patient, think creatively, and believe that we can do many things.

[Andrew O'Brien]: And our final student to present is Shiv.

[SPEAKER_06]: Hi, my name is Shiv. I'm from Mr. Petralis's class. ST Math is something at first I thought was going to be very easy, but hard at many times. I get frustrated at first, but very proud in the end. And it helps me grow and more believe in myself.

[Andrew O'Brien]: Excellent job. Excellent job, students. And so, Gigi, don't go too far, because I think we're going to do a picture pretty quick. But I did just want to take this moment to say thank you to the family members and caregivers of our McGlynn Elementary ST Math all-stars. We appreciate you taking the time out of your very, very busy life and supporting your kids. So thank you very much.

[Suzanne Galusi]: Mr. O'Brien, were you showing something, or are we?

[Andrew O'Brien]: So I did want to give the school committee a visual. And so I don't know if Will could, so you know firsthand what the kids see. So ST stands for spatial tempora, and so this is all the kids see. So now they have to guess and test what this question is asking them to do. So Will, do you want to go through your stages of learning? So Will was not sure what to do, so he just tried something. And he took, and he thought, oh, it must go there. Ah, he's on to something. He's on to something. And so you hit the green arrow, and there it is. And this is where Gigi comes in, Gigi goes right across. And you saw that little thermal, almost a temperature check on the left, the green, it just went up. So that measures the progress. And so the kids over the course of a year are gonna complete over 2,000 puzzles. And one of the pieces of research showed that if students get to 80% of their puzzle goal progress, they improve, they statistically improve their performance on statewide assessments by nine percentage points. That's pretty significant. That's significant. So, thank you very much once again. And I'll hand it off to Will. Do we want to invite him up?

[Suzanne Galusi]: I just want to make sure if there's any questions. Oh, sorry. From the committee. Okay, then we're ready for a picture. Okay.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yeah. Great job, students.

[Paul Ruseau]: I was literally spending like 10 minutes.

[Unidentified]: That's great.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Okay, that was great. Thank you, Dr. Galussi. Next up, we have our districtwide update. Dr. Suzanne Galussi, superintendent, Dr. Kimberly Talbot, assistant superintendent of academics and instruction, and Mr. Kenneth Lord, chief operations officer. This will be on the revised district calendar, fiscal year 25-26, professional development and building projects update.

[Suzanne Galusi]: Thank you very much. Good evening again. So I just wanted to start by thanking everyone for the opportunity to share tonight's district update with everyone. As we move further into the academic year, our central office team remains focused on aligning our work and our resources to our core mission of providing students with high quality instructional learning environments So this evening, as the mayor has stated, I'm gonna start with a brief update on the calendar. Dr. Talbot will update us on academics and instruction work, and Mr. Ken Lord will update us on some operational work that's happening throughout the district. But before we get to all that, I also want to pause and take a moment to reflect on some news. So our Director of Student Services, Joan Bowen, after 33 years of dedicated service to Medford Public Schools, she will be retiring in September 2026. I think it's important to just take a moment and pause because three decades is something that is incredibly significant and I cannot imagine the number of families that she and her service has directly impacted in Medford Public Schools. I think she's at the point where she is seeing children of children that she has worked with and alongside in the district. So in her 33 years, Joan was a special education teacher at the Hillside Alternative School and Andrews Middle School. One of those schools no longer exists in the city of Medford. She also served the city as an evaluation team leader, as a coordinator for special education and most recently the director of student services. So her impact is profound. We have some big shoes to fill. In the coming days, we are going to be sending out a survey for our staff, our students, our caregivers, our community, just around some special education areas or input. We want to gather some input before we move to put together a selection committee to talk about the hiring process for this position. So first we're going to gather some input and then we're going to reach out again for next steps of putting together a search committee. You will see that come out in a separate, I think, tomorrow. We have it queued with Mr. Pippicelli. Staff to this point has been informed. Joan has taken a very thoughtful approach to informing everyone. And we're going to kind of put it out broadly So just wanted to make sure that we acknowledge Joan and we will have further updates in the coming weeks as she is here until September 2026. So it does allow for a really nice transition period for Metro Public Schools. So thank you, Joan, for everything you've done. And I wanted to make sure we commented on that this evening. Yeah. OK, moving on to school calendar. Due to the four snow days that we've had, two at the end of January, two following the February vacation, it has impacted our school calendar. So first and foremost, I think it's important we have updated this on the website. So if anybody goes to the website, the calendar is already updated. But it does bring our last day of school to Wednesday, June 24. The Roberts Elementary School, due to their two days of norovirus shutdown, their first makeup day is tomorrow, half day, during the professional development day. The staff at the Roberts, since tomorrow's professional development day, is all school-based. The school will be open for a half day, and then the staff will engage in professional development with Principal Kroll in the afternoon. The second of the make up days for the Roberts Elementary is that Thursday following the last day of school. So Roberts Elementary's last day will be Thursday, June 25th. That will also be a half day. So if you are at the Roberts, your last three days of school will be half days. Are there any questions about that before I move on? Okay. The next part that is tied to the calendar that I just think is important to note, and principals have communicated this in schools that are affected, but because four days fell also within the same grading cycle, Some of the report cards or progress report dates have been shifted. So at the elementary, the second report card will be issued on March 19th. That's just four days later. The middle school will be April 27th. The high school does not change their report card dates due to the senior schedule and the AB week for CTE. However, progress reports at the secondary level have also shifted slightly. So if you are a middle school caregiver, your children's progress reports will be out on March 17th. And if you are a high school caregiver, the progress reports will be March 11th. There is also some slight update to the NWEA map testing schedule that also is communicated separately by principals. I know that Principal Tucci and Principal Skane have updated their communities respectfully. Any questions? Great, wonderful. So at this time I'd like to call up Dr. Talbot so she can give you an update on academics and instruction throughout the city.

[yGcuIBQZTjc_SPEAKER_00]: Thank you. I feel like the last time I was here I had to follow Metallica and now it's Gigi the penguin. I'm starting to feel a little like I should plan my presentations a little better. But tonight's presentation is about how we in Medford are investing in our legacy educators, the educators with caregivers and students. and GG are the things that make Medford really special, and we want to report out how we are taking care of the educators in our district. So tonight I'm gonna talk about two things. One is the state's learning acceleration network in which we're participating, and I would also like to talk about Mustang University. Slide. So thanks to Will, who not only is an ST Math genius, but also does communications for us on the slide, we've rebranded the staff portion of our Medford Public Schools website to Mustang University. We wanted to communicate to staff how much we are investing in them, and this felt like a right next step. So in this rebranding, there are tiles like the professional development screen up here, where staff can easily navigate to what it is that they need to function, I guess, in the district. And so this particular slide, though, is about professional learning. So part of the contract that this body negotiated last year was to reduce some of the half days for professional learning to extended full days of professional learning. Extended full days of professional learning, even though there are fewer, do provide a much richer opportunity for our educators to engage in sustained learning. And that is what we want. So this screen is an example of three of those days and the learning that we provided our educators. So at the beginning of the year, you can see the August 25th PD schedule or a snippet of it. In the middle, you can see the March 3rd offerings that are coming up. And then on the far right, you can see what we offered in November. You can see there were so many offerings in November that we had to split them out by our meet elementary, middle, and high school. and our January 20th PD followed a similar pattern. So we are working hard to invest in educators, providing what they need to feel confident and competent, and also to provide that sense of consistency and coherence that we spoke about in our last meeting. Slide. Thank you. So how we build on belonging, which was the third aspect, right, belonging, consistency, and coherence, is we partner very closely with the MTA. And we have a committee that's called Professional Development Advisory Council. And it's a joint committee with administrators and teachers. And it is the job of this committee to, or this council, to evaluate PD offerings to review feedback, to make recommendations about practices and protocols that impact both teachers and administrators. So what you see on this slide is the feedback form that we've developed this year. We provide this feedback form to all educators at the conclusion of all PD sessions. And then as a committee, we meet and we review the data. We use data-informed practices and protocols and a little help from our generative AI friends to come up with themes in the data. best practices, things that we'd like to see better. And then what our committee does is we produce a couple of slides, you can see them here, to help all of the facilitators of the next upcoming session take our recommendations and show their participants how they are applying them. So in this way, we are building trust and we're committing to the belonging of our educators through the Mustang University. This is a natural pause. Should I keep going or should I pause? Pause. Keep going. So the last thing I wanted to talk to you about, I alluded to a little bit in our last meeting with the accountability report from the state. And because of performance in a couple of our schools, our district was invited to partner with DESE in a learning acceleration network. They are one of our most valued partners. The program description for the Learning Acceleration Network is that they support district leadership teams to set and achieve goals aligned to a concrete instructional improvement priority. The participants work with consultants, in this case TNTP, to identify a high leverage improvement priority and design a strategy to improve the quality of instruction in a specific subject area. Consultants support the district staff by building their capacity and the capacity of the instructional staff, supporting data collection, progress monitoring, and providing a structure for continuous reflection and improvement. And so that is what we're most excited about in our partnership with DESE. You can see on this slide that we have decided to focus on supporting teachers of ELA in grades three through eight at the McGlynn schools. in the intellectual preparation required to engage learners in grade-level tasks, texts, and tasks. So that focus lets us use strategic resources to brilliant principals in a school with rich, diverse linguistic resources. We can leverage our brilliant directors, Dr. Chiesa and Ms. McNiff in ELA and in EL. We have coaches that we can leverage as part of our instructional team, and we are so excited to be able to build on the foundation that our partnership with the Hill for Literacy, as well as Unbound Ed and Boston College has been able to lay for us with the help of the Barr Foundation. So our team consists of myself and Suzanne and building principals, the ELA and EL directors, instructional coaches, teachers, and Robbie, who is our TNTP consultant. That's our team. So what have we done so far? We've had a couple of high-level planning meetings with senior leadership and with the Department of Education, ensuring coherence among consultants and classroom observations of grades 6 through 8 in ELA and in ELD. We visited the common planning time. Oh, there's lots of acronyms here. I'm so sorry. We visited the common planning time of grades three, four, and five, and we have classroom observations planned in grades three, four, and five so we can really understand what our baseline is of consistent practices. We engage in regular huddles and meetings with Robbie, and that helps us to foster a sense of belonging and confidence, and we cannot wait for this three-year partnership to really take off. And that's how we're supporting educators in Medford Public Schools. Any questions? Thank you, Dr. Talbot.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Any questions from the committee? Member Ruseau?

[Paul Ruseau]: I don't actually have questions. I'm just really glad to hear that this is a focus because I know that as a committee we've, you know, we've, and through my time on the school committee, we've talked about hiring practices and really making sure we are keeping the staff that we want as we hire, but the vast majority of staff are not people we are hiring now. So I think that's really good to hear that we're focusing on our, you called them legacy staff, but our, I don't have a better word. So our legacy staff, because they're teaching most of our students. So thank you so much for focusing on that.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Member Mastroboni.

[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Thank you. I love seeing this. I love seeing the direct intervention that's pulled directly from what we've seen in state data. You said this is a three year program, three year engagement. Is it likely that, rather like what's our plan to take what we learned in the learning acceleration network and turn it into Mustang Academy? And that's my first question. And the second question is, what's the response been to the sort of PD rebrand? What's the feedback like? And where do you see that going in the future?

[yGcuIBQZTjc_SPEAKER_00]: So I'll take the first question first, which is we absolutely picked the strategic focus for lots of different reasons, and one of them was for scalability. Being able to focus on this group of students, on this group of teachers in this setting, provides us the ability to scale across the middle schools, and also across all the elementary schools. Dr. Chiesa is a K through 12 director, as is Ms. McNiff, so we're able to scale vertically in that way as well. And focusing on this area lets us really leverage the two literacy coaches and the current EL coach of the middle grades to provide maximum impact. It was important to our team and especially the principals to also include teachers on this as well. So we're really investing in teacher leadership. at the state level. So we chose the focus strategically so that we would be able to scale because we know consistent practice across all of our schools and grade levels is what's going to get the Medford students to achieve that economic success and social success that we talked about last meeting. The second question was about the PD rebrand. And so far, so good. I mean, the feedback we're hearing mostly is not what I presented about tonight, but about how we've moved our course reimbursement structure to an online structure, our course pre-approval, our lane advancement. So these things, we're moving from paper to an electronic version so that we're able to track trends over time. We're able to look at the types of courses that our Medford educators are choosing outside of us. And our content directors, as well as the PD committee, is able to look at that data. And it helps us think about what else we need to offer our educators. What are they going outside to seek? And can we offer that in-house instead? So I think that's pretty positive, and I think the website looks pretty snazzy. So my feedback is pretty good on that.

[Suzanne Galusi]: Dr. Galussi? I was just going to add on one other thing. Additionally to your first question, part of our internal conversations are also looking at curriculum at the secondary level. So I think the partnership here is also going to be assisting us with taking a little bit of a deeper dive at what curriculum is being used at six through eight. so that we can make sure that we have high quality instructional materials in front of our students.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. Thank you. Member Reinfeld.

[Erika Reinfeld]: Thank you so much. You anticipated my question about what feedback we're getting from participants on the professional development. I am just curious how this focused attention on ELA, which I think is fabulous and I understand the reasoning there, how that affects growth and professional development in subject areas, particularly for elementary teachers who are teaching across all the subjects. Because we as a district have invested a lot in ELA and early literacy. and curriculum and coaches and all of that and I think that's fantastic and I don't want to lose that but I also want to make sure other subjects aren't getting left behind.

[yGcuIBQZTjc_SPEAKER_00]: Such a great question because our data says lots of subject areas could use this. So the instructional focus Like when we talk about our ELA curriculum, we don't teach books, we teach skills. So even though our focus is embedded in ELA as like a frame, the actual focus is supporting teachers and the intellectual preparation required to leverage grade level content and tasks. And so that skill applies across all of the disciplines, especially for our elementary teachers who, as you say, They are doing heroic work, right? They have to be experts in ELA, math, social studies, and science. And this work, this intellectual preparation work, when they sit down with high quality instruction materials, is a skill that transfers across all of the disciplines. So that's why we picked this as opposed to... program implementation or like foundational skills in ELA, this particular skill is widely transferable.

[Erika Reinfeld]: And are they having the opportunity to actually have that conversation and reflection and think about specifically how it applies to other subjects? Because a lot of the professional development I've done, if you don't build that time in to explicitly think about how it applies to this situation.

[yGcuIBQZTjc_SPEAKER_00]: It stays abstract. Yeah. I am hoping so. This is the beginning of year one. I will say, in other districts I've worked, I've had this partnership before, and it's been very, very successful and skillfully implemented. And I expect nothing less from our current partner with Robbie. We're just creating a landscape analysis right now, observing classrooms, what's already in place, what strengths can we build on, common planning times, what's already happening, what's the relationship like, what are the structures like. So we're just building the groundwork now, so.

[Erika Reinfeld]: Great. And just to confirm, you mentioned that AI is helping. That's in summarizing some of the feedback and pulling themes, and humans are still getting the final eye on things as per policy and ethical reasons.

[yGcuIBQZTjc_SPEAKER_00]: Following the policy, exactly right. No data, I mean, no identifying data, et cetera.

[Erika Reinfeld]: Great. Then my last question is, could we please get these slides? I don't think we have them. Absolutely, yes. Thank you.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you, Member Reinfeld. Thank you for the presentation. Mr. Lord.

[Kenneth Lord]: Good evening, everyone. I'm just going to update you on a few projects we have going on. There's always lots going on in facilities and technology. First is the accelerated repair program. So we were invited in by the MSBA for three schools, the Brooks, the Mistuck, and the Roberts. The Roberts was the first. And we just received our OPM and engineer last week. Tomorrow, they're actually going to come out and do a tour of the school. better idea of the building and the project to be able to negotiate our contracts with those two firms to start the feasibility study. And that feasibility study will study ground source, air source, and a hybrid heat pump system as well as look at the roof. Any terminal equipment in the building that might need upgraded, they'll look at the electrical system, make sure it can support the different types of heat pump systems. And the end of that feasibility study will be a design to move us forward with those projects, as well as a detailed budget so we could seek funding for that. The Mississippi is the next to enter the ARP program. We'll need to be coming back to you to seek funding for the feasibility study by June 1st or June 6th or something like that. And then the Brooks is last. So we'll be doing feasibility studies at the same time in all three buildings while we move forward. One will finish and we'll go forward. Potentially construction would be in the summer of 27 or 28 for those projects. The MSBA would like to see them done no later than the summer of 29. So we're really excited to get those projects going, to move those heating systems and roof, get that all addressed. The next, of course, we've talked about this before, is the McGlynn-Anders HVAC project. That is scheduled for substantial completion at the end of the summer. We actually just successfully went out to bid the McGlynn roof. You may know that the prior in the mass construction project, they bid the roof up, but the cost came in very high. So we decided to re-bid that. They came in under budget. We're just finishing reviewing those final proposals to make sure they meet specifications, and then we'll select and award that contractor. So the McGlynn, they'll finish the HVAC at the end of the summer. We'll move directly into the roof, which is a liquid-applied roof system. And then right after that, we'll schedule the solar project. The Andrews will finish the HVAC project at the end of August as well, and then move directly into that solar project. So those projects are doing very well. Right now, we're finishing up a specification to put out to look for the commissioning agent. This is a critical portion of the project to make sure that the system is operating as designed. And we've also added in doing a full retro-commissioning of all of the existing systems. Because these projects really only replace the source equipment. And we want to make sure that all of the unit vents and fan-powered boxes and controls and everything else in the field is working 100% properly so that that heat and air conditioning that the new system is delivering works correctly. All the thermostats are running right. and identify any issues so we can make sure that system is running at top-notch speed when it's ready. Big, big news. We just received a national grid rebate of $687,000 for the Andrews, $1.09 million for the McGlynn. Those are credits for the project we're doing in cooperation with B2Q and Sigley and JLL, our contractor in OPM. They're also submitting more utility rebates for the building management system as well that's being part of this project. So that's great news that we received that, and this is going to do great, great work for reducing our CO2 production. And finally, IT and security updates. We are moving forward with our network refresh infrastructure. We've just recently placed the order for part of the phase one equipment, and the rest of the phase one equipment is right out to bid now, and we'll start working on that over the summer. That phase one includes replacing all the access points across the entire district, and all the network switches at the high school, with phase two replacing the rest of the network switches at the rest of the district. That equipment's being delivered. We're going to work directly with Xtreme Networks, who is a manufacturer, for their professional services, for proper programming and design. I've been working very closely with them to make sure the system is correct for all our needs. And we'll start working on that. And then finally, the security camera, keyless entry, and vape detector installation is about 95% complete. They're just working on a couple of little punch list items. It's probably greater than 95%. So the system is fully up. We've done training. We have some more training to do. So all the new cameras are up over the district. All the new card swipes are up. All the new vape detectors are up. We've done training, mostly at the high school, middle school, because those were the first systems that went online. And then we'll do some more training at the elementary schools and with our security monitors. I think that's it. Do you have any questions?

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Great. Thank you so much. Member Graham, then Member Ruseau.

[Jenny Graham]: I just had a quick question about the grid rebates that come in. Where do they come to?

[Kenneth Lord]: I believe that's a direct credit to the project cost.

[Jenny Graham]: To the project. OK. And so those are then used to avoid having to bond for the full course of the project.

[Kenneth Lord]: So they had anticipated these and built that in as part of a bond.

[Jenny Graham]: OK. Thank you.

[Kenneth Lord]: Just great news that we were able to successfully get all those.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thanks. Thank you. Member Ruseau?

[Paul Ruseau]: So we actually are getting all the credits we'd hoped.

[Kenneth Lord]: We're even seeking more on the budget management system. We'll do some much smaller scale but still get some credits.

[Paul Ruseau]: That's great news, I'm sure the mayor's happy. We are all happy, of course, but.

[Kenneth Lord]: I should have mentioned we're also doing comprehensive building assessments with National Grid of the three elementary schools. Okay. So that'll be part of the heat pump conversion projects.

[Paul Ruseau]: For sure, yeah, but less for the money, less money for the city to borrow, which is good news. And then I just wanna also comment how happy I am to see the ground source heat pumps, ground source heat. just ground source is the, I don't know why I'm adding, ground source is part of the investigation there, because the long-term costs are so much lower.

[Kenneth Lord]: I know that the upfront costs are not, but when- Yeah, so examine all three and determine what's feasible at some of those sites. Some of those sites are pretty small and compact, so that might be a limiting factor.

[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, I'm just trying to think, like, where at the Roberts you would actually put a ground source system. When those come, I'm just, like, at the Missittook... In the Brooks? maybe the Brooks, I guess there's the parking lot. When those come in, who will be making the decision on that? I just worry about like one's like 5% more expensive and then.

[Kenneth Lord]: So the feasibility study will pitch all of the ideas and much like we're in the feasibility study with the MSBA project, we'll socialize that with different leaders in the district and compare costs and we'll make a collective decision as far as what's necessary. I imagine it would probably come back to here because it'll be a funding request. So probably you may come with a couple options here and say, well, we'll get this, and this is a payback then, and this is what the long-term costs will be, and we'll kind of have to decide that.

[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, great. So you'll give us all the information you usually give us.

[Kenneth Lord]: I wouldn't do it by myself, no.

[Paul Ruseau]: All right, okay. Thank you, I appreciate it.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Member Mastroboni?

[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Thank you, these projects are awesome. They're increasingly tougher to do as everyone's competing to get this done. One of the things that I think about a lot is how we're gonna transition this new building management system, this new high-tech HVAC to our team to maintain. Is that process started or in terms of training our team and our building folks, what does that look like and how can we make sure that we take care of them?

[Kenneth Lord]: So we have not started the training yet. The building management system contractor has just recently come on board and started their installation. Software's going to be in Niagara software. And then that's part of that commissioning and retro commissioning is making sure that that new Niagara system that's going to run The new equipment communicates properly with the existing system that we have, which is E&E's control suite, and making sure that those all work together. And there's full training and everything with that. And that's part of what we, you know, are expecting to do. Yeah.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Member Ruseau?

[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I was just reminded about for the IT system, which I feel like it was I have no idea. Time is very confusing right now. Was it last year when we were talking about this? We had been discussing, not necessarily in this room, but about having the vendor do the, you know, the monitoring. I mean, because they could provide the 24-hour support and in a way that we couldn't as a district. Are we still going to be doing all of that that way?

[Kenneth Lord]: So I did not plan on having them do 100% monitoring the wireless network in the networks, which is a more looking towards and we put in some operational budget requests in for this is improving our cyber security software management. Having that be fucked out so. I'd really like us to move to a managed detection and response system that, basically the difference is that software is queuing a team of seven by 24 engineers that are monitoring those kinds of things. The monitoring of the wireless system itself is not really heavy lift, but we are absolutely going to leverage extreme networks, expert professional services to design it, make sure it's configured correctly, help us tune it, and bring those kinds of things in.

[Paul Ruseau]: But the cyber security stuff will be 24-hour professionals that don't work for us. Thank you.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. Thank you for the presentation and the updates. I know we don't have any presentations of the public, but we do have continued business. The MSBA update, I'll turn it over to Member Graham, chair of the Medford Comprehensive High School Building Committee. Member Graham.

[Jenny Graham]: Thank you. I'm happy to report that our preliminary design program deliverable, which was 2,000 or so pages, was submitted to the MSBA last week. They confirmed that they received it, and I understand that they'll take the next like three-ish, three to four weeks to review all the documents. It's like 2,000 pages, so that's really actually pretty lightning fast on their end. to understand all the things that we've been doing to assess and survey the site, think about options, understand all the things that we're considering of which there are many. We'll come back to us with some feedback about how they see the work that we did on the educational plan, which this body approved, aligning to some of the building, concepts, I'll call them concepts at this point, alternative concepts, that we're considering. So they'll provide us some input and feedback and say, you know, we got feedback from Desi or we got feedback from these folks about, you know, special education or CTE programming or whatever it is, and please go back and think about this thing. And, you know, the full expectation is that both the educational plan, the space summary, and all of the options, all of that will continue to be revised and refined over the course of the next couple of months. So that was like a huge feat on the part of SMMA and left field, especially with all the surveying and all the, So we're going to go ahead and get started. I'm going to go ahead and get started. I'm going to go ahead and get started. where is the rock and the ledge, and where is there not rock and ledge, and all of those things. So they have been working around the clock trying to pull all of this together, both in supporting us as we build the educational plan, but then also in the actual surveying of the property to understand what's possible. So all of that initial submission is in. This week is an exciting week. So our high school teachers tomorrow will have a dedicated session as part of their professional development day where they will get to hear a project update on the project and they will participate in an interactive exercise much like what we'll be doing on Thursday night. But dedicated just to them to try to make sure that There's input and information coming from the educators who may or may not have been involved to date. Lots of our educators have been, but this is an opportunity as part of PD, which is mandatory to make sure we are getting to everybody to tell people how they can engage with the project. On Thursday evening we'll have a community forum. It starts at 630. It is in person only. It is in person only because it will also be very interactive. I don't like Lego block model type things of our school and some of the needs that we have and they will be working with community members to set up some intro of the project, but then also to have some dialogue about what excites people about the projects. There will be pictures available of all of the 29 options so people can continue to weigh in as they think about space and In space planning on the kinds of things that they like. So all this in an effort to collect lots of good feedback from from the community, but it is in person only because of the Lego block. So we've got that going on this week. Earlier today a robocall went out from the city informing everyone on the robocall list about how to get involved in the project, where to go for information. That is happening. We're also investigating whether we send a citywide mailer. to, again, alert people at this early stage to understand, A, that this project is happening in case there are people who don't know. I think lots and lots of people know. But those who don't will have an opportunity then to sort of tune in, sign up for an email list, go to the website, follow along, et cetera. And then as we move forward, there's a couple of big things that'll be happening in the next two months. One is at the end of this month, on the 23rd of March, we'll be sort of digging in deeper at our building committee meeting on the evaluation criteria that we spent some time talking about last week. and really thinking through as a committee like how does this evaluation criteria sort of lay out across what is currently like 29 options and start to do some thinking about anything that we may want to change about that initial ranking or adjust about the space summary or any of those kinds of things could be on the agenda on the 23rd. 27th of April right after April vacation is the meeting where we will actually go from 29 options to three to five. So that will be a big important meeting. We also have a meeting coming up with our project of butters in March. So we're inviting them in to talk, to just have some dedicated time with architects and our OPM just to understand sort of what's on the mind of our abutters. Actually, this project doesn't have tons of abutters because DCR is one of our biggest neighbors. But we are doing some continued effort to reach out to those abutters. They'll get a postcard maybe this week or next week with the dates of some abutter-specific meetings. They got hand-delivered letters back in November. And we just want to hear from them on an ongoing basis so that we're being responsible neighbors as well. And then the other big thing that happened in the last week was that we did make a decision as a committee to pursue this project as a CM at risk project, which means that we'll bring the construction manager on during schematic design rather than pursuing design bid build, which is tends to be easier on less complex projects. Maybe projects are a little bit smaller, but this project really lends itself to getting all the people on the team as quickly as possible to make the best decisions and make sure that the building that gets designed can be built, which is always sort of a weird limbo space if you ever build anything between the intent on paper and what can actually happen in person. So all of that is coming. There's lots more to come and we are moving towards by the end of June we will down select to a single option to pursue. But between now and then there's some interim steps that we'll take and some like lots of refinement of different parts of the project. We'll hone in on a handful of options. We'll do a more in-depth cost estimate on those options. after April 27th, all to help continue to inform the building committee of what's happening, what the choices are, and then how to go about making those decisions the best way we can for Medford. I think that's everything in terms of what we've been up to on the MSBA project. Any questions? Happy to answer them.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: If you could just repeat the date of the meeting where we may be going down to 3 to

[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, it's April 27th.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: April. Okay, thank you.

[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, and part of the reason I think people keep thinking that's imminent, it's happening right away, and it's not. And the reason for that is A, we can and should expect feedback from MSBA. And before we do that down selection, we need to ingest and sort of interpret whatever feedback that they have for us. There's lots of other reasons for the building committee to have some time to think through some of the options because there was a whole lot of choices really sort of presented as part of the cost scenarios. The goal with those choices was to say that we left no stone unturned, right? When somebody comes back and says, hey, did you ever think about if the pool was twice as big as it was or if it was half as big as it was? We have lots and lots of cost data to be able to help facilitate those what ifs. And so there's some natural working through of options that has to happen in the coming And then the, I'll say the third and final thing is because we do want to be thoughtful about how we evaluate. So we've got a huge list of criteria. There's probably like 100 or so criteria that we've talked about so far. It's going to take some time for the architect to give us an initial ranking of those things and then for the committee really to work through, A, that they agree with the relative ranking that has been provided by the architect. sort of digest what that means in terms of like what the options are and how to down select. So the idea is not to rush that down selection so that we can be really thoughtful about how we go forward. Also next week we'll reconvene our advisory committee meetings for meeting number three. And so those are So we're going to be talking with them about some of their input as we need to bring that forward to the building committee for discussion. And then we're going to be talking with them about some of their input as we move forward. So we're going to be talking with them about some of their input as we move forward. sort of consideration and thought. So there's just like a lot of, there's a lot of thinking to do between now and April 27th to really get to the right three to five. And the idea is like not to rush that. So as much as we're trying to move quickly, we're trying to move quickly in the places where it matters and where it counts. And like the paperwork, I feel super comfortable that we moved quickly and thoroughly. And now it's time for us to like take all of that in and make good decisions.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you, Member Graham. With that, we appreciate the update. And yeah, the March 5th meeting is coming up, so join in. I know we don't have any new business or reports requested, but we do have a condolence.

[Jenny Graham]: The members of the Medford School Committee expressed- Oh, one more. Oh, jeez, I'm sorry. New business.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Offered by Member Graham, be it resolved that the Medford School Committee review and approve a revised capital plan inclusive of priority ratings, as requested by the Collins Center, who's working to refresh the City of Medford's broader capital plan. Member Graham.

[Jenny Graham]: Yes, thank you. After we approved our capital plan late last year, we turned it over to the Collins Center, who is working with the city to refresh the city's broader capital plan. And they came back to Ken and I and asked that we add a prioritization that lined up with how they are prioritizing projects across the city, which was just a little bit different than the approach that we took. You can see that in the column on the left. They asked us just to rank the projects in order from one until whatever. I think in this case it's like 35. 30, we had taken an approach of, like, here's what we want to do each year, and there was some prioritization and grouping within ours. So, this was our, this was my attempt in collaboration with Ken to say, how do we translate what this group approved to something that like meshes a little bit better with how the city's capital plan is being refreshed and revised. So I did, we have provided this to the Collins Center already to sort of enable them to do this work, but I did let them know that this body would need to like re-approve this capital plan, particularly with these prioritizations. So I'm hoping that we can do that tonight.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Is there a second? Second? My member Graham, all those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion carries. And now on to our condolence. The members of the Medford School Committee express their sincerest condolences to the family of Marta J. McNulty McGowan, who worked for the Medford Public Schools for over 40 years. If we all may rise for a moment of silence, please. Thank you. Our next regular meeting of the Medford School Committee will be March 16th, 2026 here in the Alden Memorial Chambers and via Zoom. Motion to adjourn by Member Graham, seconded by Member Mastroboni. All those in favor?