[Adam Hurtubise]: We will give everybody the customary five minutes to log on. So thank you to those of you that have joined right at 4 o'clock.
[Matt Rice]: I appreciate that. We're going to give folks just a couple more minutes to log in and see what critical mass we can pull together here on a beautiful, beautiful Tuesday afternoon. It's probably criminal that we scheduled this in advance and did not foresee the weather forecast. I completely understand why folks would find other things to be doing. Try to make the time worthwhile.
[Adam Hurtubise]: If anyone needs to just get up and go outside and take your phone with you, that's completely understandable as well.
[Unidentified]: Apologies, I didn't know if that was somebody trying to get into the meeting or not.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Turned out not.
[Matt Rice]: I think on the one bright side, this meeting does not operate like a full building committee meeting where we need a quorum. So the result when we have less people is that the people that are here get to have more input and more say into the outcome from the meeting. So try to flip that into a positive. I think we can get going. I know that we're going to have a few members that are not able to join us this evening. Dr. Galusi, Dr. Talbot, and Marta, the school principal, are all attending a Barr Foundation conference, so they may hop on with us a little bit later, but they did let us know that in advance. And I think, Will, as well, that there is potentially some other district meeting wrapping up.
[Will Pipicelli]: Yeah, they should be hopping on hopefully pretty shortly. Joan was in it, so hopefully they'll follow up. Okay, great.
[Matt Rice]: Okay, well, I'll just, I'll start off just by welcoming everybody again to the meeting. This is our third in the series of the advisory team meetings that we're having with each team. This is the first one of the four that we're having here on Tuesday afternoon. So I appreciate everyone joining us for the duration of this. I'm going to leave the camera on for just a second because we are going to spend some time looking at an Excel document today, which I apologize for in advance. So we'll try and keep just cameras up for as long as we can. We do also have a quick PowerPoint to start in with. So I will just say to start off with that we are intentionally shifted these sets of meetings to all virtual after dabbling in a hybrid meeting format for the last version of the team meetings that we had. And I think that's really to facilitate the participation. We really did enjoy seeing those of you that were able to make it in person to the last meeting. That was definitely a benefit to it. But at the same time, I know that we had some audiovisual challenges with some of the advisory team discussions. So this should hopefully facilitate everyone's participation at sort of a common level. So I'm not sure whether we're going to oscillate back and forth between the hybrid and the all virtual when we get to subsequent meetings, but we're going to be all virtual today, just in case anyone was curious about that piece of it.
[Adam Hurtubise]: So I'm going to go ahead and share my screen now. Hopefully get that working. I'm going to bring this up as well. And I'm going to figure out this.
[Matt Rice]: All right. Does that look like the presentation mode for everybody? I think it should be. OK. And just before I dive in also to the PowerPoint, just as a sort of preface to the discussion, I think because we are all virtual today, we'd like to make ample use of the raising hand feature if you want to chime in on a particular topic that we jump into. It will get to be much more sort of discussion format, so we'll probably need to lean on that just to make sure that if folks want to talk, we have that opportunity. I know I may have some challenges trying to see the hands on my end, so if there's another member of the SMA team or Will or Matt, Galeno, if you guys can just help indicate if we have hands up that would be useful on my end just so that we can make sure everyone's voices are heard. So the agenda for this third meeting we're going to do just a quick set of introductions and calibration again to sort of the activity that we're in. Hopefully people are sort of generally familiar with the group now and sort of the activity moving forward. The main content that we're going to go through again are these advisory team recommendations that we're going to be starting to develop through the course of this meeting. You'll see that we have sort of tabulated all the feedback that we've gotten at the prior two meetings that we've had. And what we'd like to do is talk that through to make sure that we've been hearing you correctly. in terms of the items and there are some topics that definitely need some discussion. I'll get back into that when we get to the Excel document itself. Then we'll talk very quickly about the next steps the next time that we have to meet together. So really, just quickly on the introductions, I am not going to go through and introduce everybody from the design team, nor am I going to go through and have everybody reintroduce themselves. I think we have a general familiarity with who we are, and this is really more just so that we can preserve as much time as possible for the discussion that we're going to have in a minute. I did want to take just a second though and look back at the overall timeline of where we are. The stars again just indicate our touch points with these advisory team meetings. We're in this third one, still very much in the feasibility study, but we have sort of completed the first half of the feasibility study. So we're moving from that PDP or preliminary design program phase. into the preferred schematic report of the PSR phase, which is the second part of the feasibility study. That's pretty much where we are right now. And then our next subsequent scheduled meeting will be coming at the beginning of schematic design, which is going to be right at the beginning of the fall semester upcoming in 2026. And we can talk about whether or not we want or need some touch points in between there, but that's currently what's planned. And then again, I'm not going to dive into this in any detail. I'm just going to put it up here as a quick refresher, the fact that we have these four different advisory teams that are meeting on a parallel track and sort of the overlapping nature of them. We will get into this nuance of the fact that there is some overlap a bit as we get into the recommendations, because we try not to have recommendations that are duplicated and then potentially conflicting between different advisory teams. So what you'll see is that in some cases we're suggesting that a different advisory team besides this one may be the one to provide a recommendation on a particular topic that we've discussed. And vice versa, we may find that there are topics in other advisory teams that are best discussed in this one. So just to point that piece out. So what I'm going to do here is just flip over quickly, if I can, to the Excel document. So this is where it will become rows and columns for those that like rows and columns. I'll do a quick orientation to this document. I know this was sent around as part of the agenda to all the attendees, so hopefully you've had a chance to take a quick look at it. It still may be a little bit mysterious in terms of the organization, so let me just explain a little bit about the framework of how it works, and then I'll hand it over to Rosemary to run through the individual comments. But essentially what we have done is we've tried to provide groupings of like-minded topics that we heard during the course of the first two meetings from everyone. So hopefully, if you have shared a thought, whether it was during your introductions and sort of personal priorities or through the dialogue that we had in the last meeting, We've captured that here. It could very well be the case that we didn't capture it exactly right or that we potentially missed an item as well. There's nothing that is sacrosanct about this list at this point. We want to modify it, we want to add to it. If there's something here that we took in and it seems like it's just non-consequential to the overall discussion, we're happy to also pull things off of this list. This is really ours to craft during the course of this meeting. So that's this first column are the suggestions and comments that we heard. Eventually what we will be doing is coming up with an actual recommendation to the building committee that is connected to these comments that come through. And so that'll take different shapes and forms depending on the advisory team, and also depending on the particular item that we're working through. But that's going to eventually be coming through. What I'm actually going to do is hide this column for the purposes of this meeting today, just because we won't actively write that through. What we want to do is talk it through, then we'll take notes or we'll go back to the recording and sort of develop the recommendation from that. But this will allow me to just zoom in a little bit more and make this a little bit more legible, which I think is a helpful compromise here. So the next set of columns, just so we have this understanding, are really the initial evaluations that we, SOMA, have given to each of the comments that was going through. And the way that we have evaluated these off the bat, and this is just the first pass that we are happy to modify during the course of this meeting, is either designating a comment or recommendation that would stem from this comment as being a given, something that's just inherently going to be reflected in the project because it's potentially, for the purposes of this advisory team, maybe it's something that's already been prescribed within the educational plan that the district put together. Potentially it's something that the building committee or through the programming meetings that we know is already A priority already included. So for any of these given items, we will go through every one of these line by line just to sort of note it. But if an item is given and there's no objections from the group or a desire for discussion, we'll try to skip quickly through to the next series of them just so that we can get through this entire list during the course of the meeting. The ones that we do want to have conversation on, though, are the ones that we have highlighted here with sort of the orange. or maybe that's yellow, but it's our sort of stoplight analogy in terms of the visuals. And these are items where for a whole variety of reasons, there may be some additional discussion that we think is warranted here. And so we want to spend a little bit more time there. We want to make sure that everyone understands sort of why that designation is there. That may still lead to a recommendation to the building committee. or it can potentially be something that we talk about being shifted over to a red light, which would be something that is not suggested for recommendation to the Billing Committee. We want to make sure that we have the designations clear by the conclusion of our meeting today for each one of these comments in terms of forecasting forward in terms of generating those recommendations. So that's really going to be the activity that we're going to be running through, is sort of revisiting where we were on a topic-by-topic basis, understanding if that's just a clear given, something where it's going to be incorporated into the project, or if it's something that we need a little bit dialogue on, and potentially after the dialogue we're either shifting it to a given, or we're leaving it here acknowledging the fact that it's still something that needs a little bit more discussion and thought, or it can potentially be something that we're saying or shifting off into the red light. We intentionally did not designate, pre-designate any of these items yet as red in terms of taking them off the table because that's really not our role. And from the sort of design perspective, that's something that we would want to come organically out of this group. So there's certainly, if people feel like something should be shifted into red, this is the time to talk about it. There's definitely no critique given on that. We welcome and encourage the discussion as we go through. So I think that's most of the preamble. I'm probably going to hand it over to Rosemary here. Maybe I'll just take a second and see if there's any questions on the format or the process of what we're going to run through before we dive into. This is also be a good test as to whether or not the hands spotters are working and or maybe whether the hands are working.
[h56i5SspnTk_SPEAKER_10]: I haven't seen any hands yet so.
[Rosemary Park]: Okay. All right. So good afternoon, everyone. Good to see you all again. So we're gonna start off with the first subcategory or the first category. Again, as Matt said, you will see that there are many great items and comments that came out of our previous advisory team meetings. And so we've tried to list everything here and group them appropriately. Um, and so that first category that we're looking at, um, were comments, uh, that were mostly surrounding the guiding principles. Um. Of the project, uh, and of the building. And so. The first one on line item five. We have flexibility and community should drive design decisions. And so While flexibility and community are certainly important factors in designing the building, we also have many other factors that need to be considered as well, including how the design supports the educational plan that the district has put forward, the programmatic elements, so fitting all of those programmatic elements that support the educational plan, And then also how the design influences the site and how the site and vice versa influences the design. So it's not that those things are not going to be taken into consideration. Again, they are important considerations, but they need to be able to work with a whole bunch of other factors. And we're so early in the design phase right now that we will be continuing to look at all of those things as we progress the design. So before I go into the other line items under here, I just wanted to see if there's any questions regarding that or any clarification needed on that. Comments? Yay, nay? So I think that you know, to us, it makes sense to keep this in that yellow, not saying that it's not important, just that they are just some of the many factors that need to be considered. And then the next three in this category, they are considered givens because they all support the, they're all things that the educational plan is already calling for. and as part of the district goals. And so I understand the text is small, so I can read these aloud, but it's to ensure continuity of student services. So any student support that students are already receiving that is part of the district plan, their goal is actually to expand services in addition to maintaining whatever is already there. Supporting the identity development, social growth, and academic growth of students, of course, that is a key priority of the district. And then creating a competitive, attractive school that meets diverse needs. Again, a big part of the educational vision and goals of the district and our program and the school design is absolutely going to take that into account when designing the building. that this may have been our shortest category, but if anyone has anything they'd like to say here or add anything, or if one of you want to talk about one of these comments, you know, we're happy to listen if we want to expand upon anything.
[Martine Dion]: Okay.
[Matt Rice]: We may also just need someone to raise their hand and speak just to make sure that everything is working correctly.
[Rosemary Park]: And I do think that, oh, here we go, Jenny. Hi, Jenny. It's working. I have nothing to say. Thank you very much. And I do recognize that a lot of these things just seem like, well, of course we want to do those things, right? And, but it's important, I think, for us to just say, to let you and the building committee know that, yes, these are things that, you know, we absolutely, absolutely feel strongly about and want to see in here. And, you know, the more that we notice that are already aligned with the district's goals, you know, we, we see those things as a given.
[Matt Rice]: I think Rosemary, I'll just add also just the fact that this list, when it gets to the recommendation format, is something that lives beyond this advisory team, right? And so I think it is really important to help transmit and be transparent with both the rest of the advisory teams, the full building committee, and the larger community as well, that these priorities, these recommendations that are coming from the advisory team are really representative. And this is an incredible list of items, the things that we touched on in the prior team meetings. And it goes for all four. It's a great way of being transparent as to what some of the goals are. I know there's a lot of goal setting that's going on. Um, that went through the educational plan, um, that comes through the larger building committee as well, but at a more granular sort of topic focused, um, level, these are very helpful in terms of just, um, conveying to everyone else in Medford, um, really what the intent is, um, when we're looking through this, um, educational planning and equity lens.
[Rosemary Park]: Yeah. Thank you. So when it comes to the category of equity, inclusion and accessibility, there were many comments regarding ensuring that we are focused on equitable access and inclusive learning environments. And so you'll see that the first few that we have listed are listed as given. And just to run through these, it's to preserve and expand equitable learning services for students of all abilities, reducing the stigma around special education through integration of different types of instructional spaces, academic spaces, and flexible support spaces. That's already something that we in the district are striving to do in terms of integration of general ed and special ed. The inclusion of dimmable lights, flexible furniture, sound mitigation and breakout spaces within co-taught rooms. The provision of an adaptive life skills space, sensory rooms, motor skill areas and emotional regulation spaces. So these are spaces that in speaking with the district, we have included within our educational program, the SPACE program. I see a hand up, Anne-Marie. Hi, Anne-Marie.
[Unidentified]: I apologize. I wasn't able to make it to the last meeting, so this may already have been covered. But I just had a question about the third point, the include dimmable lights and so on in co-taught rooms. I'm just wondering if that's going to be limited to Cotant rooms, if the plan is to provide that in as many rooms as possible. I mean, in my pie in the sky, it would be in all rooms.
[Rosemary Park]: So I think that this actually was breakout spaces in Cotant rooms, that dimmable lights were everywhere, flexible furniture was everywhere, and sound mitigation was everywhere. Gotcha.
[Matt Rice]: Okay, that's a great comment. It's a great example of just adding some clarification to it, right? Because as we move forward to a recommendation, I think we can make sure that that sort of more pervasive approach for all spaces is just clear in terms of the comment. So thank you for adding that.
[Rosemary Park]: Yeah. And I also want to note that we do identify certain rooms typically where there may be many sensory issues. with lights that are not just dimmable, but we'll take a look at the potential for color changing and color tunable lighting, because sometimes those can be a little hard. Okay, where are we next? Oh, designing from the perspective of students with accessibility needs so that all students can benefit prioritizing the inclusion over segregation, integrating specialized spaces into middle ed environments, and then embedding the EL or ESL programs within academic teams rather than isolating them. And I did also want to point out that regarding the EL and ESL programs, that this was something that I had noticed also within the educational plan about really not trying to just isolate them, but trying to embed them more within the learning entities just as we are going to be doing with special education. Were there any other questions on those topics or clarifications? Okay.
[Matt Rice]: I might just mention also Rosemary the fact that there's some definitely some connected conversations that are going on sort of parallel to this as well that we haven't scheduled yet but definitely on our agenda is a conversation with the LPAC group in terms of talking about the EL and ESL programs as well. So there'll be some additional depth of thought and conversation that happens in that arena as well, just so folks are aware.
[Rosemary Park]: And so when we get into line item 17, this is where we get into, for this category, the first meeting, other discussion or review. Um, ensuring that sheltered content classes remain content first rather than labeled as separate. And so this is something that, um, we were going to be receiving guidance from this topic on the district and the school committee, as it's not necessarily, it's not something that will just be decided on by the SBC. Um, so we'll need just, um, the recommendation coming. So from the, uh, the school committee, um, in the district. For the next two, also seen as given as they are aligned with the district's educational plan, so creating visible and welcoming registration and EL offices for multilingual families, and using multi-tiered design to support long-term and newly arrived families. Um, the educational plan and the educational space program, um, have been, uh, include the, um, uh, a, uh, urban hub registration center or a welcome center, um, which would, um, include, uh, registration, EL, um, and different types of support, um, that, uh, families, um, who are new to the district or maybe non-native English speakers can easily access when they come to central offices. And so that is already part of the plan and the program. So embedding special education, CTE, house offices, science, small group rooms and breakout spaces within clusters or learning communities um, to demonstrate that help is always available and reducing stigma. Um, this is related to the, um, a little bit related to the item below it, um, where, you know, could CTE programs benefit from greater integration with the school community? Um, and these, these both are going to, um, they're going to take shape, um, in figuring out the program adjacencies as we move forward in this next phase of the PSR, the programmatic report. So this is something that we will be starting to explore as we just start developing the design naturally and understanding what types of spaces we'll wanna have what relationships will they have with other programs and departments within the building. And so this will also involve discussions with the district, the school, the users. So it's, they just have not been determined yet. We have a feedback that we have received in some of the community meetings and staff meetings that we've had. But as I said, we're still developing them. Were there any comments on or questions on some of these yellow items just as we're going through? Okay. Um, and then, uh, the registration hub can support integrating, uh, integrated learning identity and community connection. Um, so again, as part of the educational plan program, um, we are going to be having this welcome center, which will be, um, a great resource for the community and families. Um, and we did get a number of comments. regarding toilet rooms, which we always do. And we grouped these together. You know, it was many of these topics or concerns were making sure that we were or we're looking at the providing opportunities regarding all gender toilet rooms, designing the rooms so that we can, so there's privacy available for students, but then also considering, you know, even what types of stalls we're looking at implementing. There was a comment about putting it in a design where you could convert, you know, binary to non-binary toilet rooms in the future. So all of these are considered in the yeti, not because there's something that we're not going to do, but because that it just requires a lot of discussion and design in terms of understanding what are the priorities going to be regarding the toilet rooms throughout this entire building. So our recommendation to to this team is that there will be just more time, more discussions surrounding this, either through another subgroup of folks to go through this, also more discussion with the district, and with the school committee as well.
[Unidentified]: I just with the issue of the toilet rooms, and if there's going to be a separate committee on that, I think that's great. Could we just add location or frequency of availability to that, you know, like I can see, you know, flexible use and binary to all gender, which is great, but just sort of in terms of like, how far does a student have to travel before they can encounter a toilet room?
[Unidentified]: Thank you.
[Rosemary Park]: And that's definitely a part of the design process and figuring out where we look at them. But we, we should be putting that on here as an item for the SBCC to note. Okay. Thank you. And we recognize that toilet rooms are hot. So we recognize the amount of effort that's going to go into the design of these.
[Will Pipicelli]: Can you explain what signage focus on purpose rather than gender means?
[Rosemary Park]: I think, and it's not my comment, From this, I gleaned that they were looking at just your toilets and not here's the girls' toilet room and here's the toilet room.
[Matt Rice]: Got it. Simple. Makes sense. Yeah. So on a sign, you might have just like a pictogram of an actual toilet versus a pictogram of like a male figure or a female figure to help sort of just move away from that as the distinguishing factor. Is there any general sense from this group as to whether or not the entire advisory team like this, the advisory team has currently constituted for ed planning and equity is the right group? to meet and have a dedicated discussion on toilet rooms? Or do we think that there's some value in terms of creating another? It doesn't have to be a smaller group, but potentially one that, I don't know, has more students on it, more administrators, or maybe sort of a different mix that we could be very purposeful with. I don't know that we have sort of a recommendation one way or the other in terms of what would be more valuable, but we're really interested in hearing from this team in terms of thoughts. Jenny, I think you're hands up.
[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, I, if we're going to have a meeting like that, I think there needs to be many more students in the mix because I think. The things adults care about, and the things students care about in places like toilet rooms are. Just distinctly different and. this is going to be a building for students. So, so, um, I think this group is maybe a good jumping off point, but I would like to hear a much like broader amount of surveying of students on this topic. And maybe it's just that we survey students. I don't know, but I, I think, um, I do think this is the right, like starting group of the four. But I do also think that we need some students at the table to have this discussion.
[Matt Rice]: Great. Lisa, your hand was up next and then we'll go to Colleen.
[xARk0471UWA_SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I would just like to add that it seems like there's a lot of schools that are sort of dealing with toilet rooms and especially with the new construction and I'd love to have the opportunity to learn from the other schools that have recently built new buildings. I know that I think it was in this group that somebody or one of the groups where You know, there were pictures about like toilet rooms being, you know, barricaded off and stuff. And I think, you know, we are trying to be forward thinking. And I think probably everybody who's been designing their toilet rooms, all these new buildings, but sometimes it doesn't work. And I think learning from that, both what works and what doesn't work in these new buildings would be helpful for us as we move forward.
[Matt Rice]: Yeah, appreciate that Lisa. I can tell that this is definitely this is like the one topic where everyone's hands going up now, which definitely appreciate and. Colleen, you want to go next?
[xARk0471UWA_SPEAKER_44]: I just wanted to echo what Jenny said that I really would love to hear from students and to hear their pain points as they move through the building. I also think it would be helpful to hear from administrators because they're often the ones that are tasked with securing the bathrooms and preventing any kind of like. safety issue from happening. We only have so much manpower to cover a huge building and lots of bathrooms, so knowing how we can safely secure them and potentially close certain ones down if we need to.
[Adam Hurtubise]: All right, I see one more hand up.
[Rosemary Park]: Matt, there's also a comment in the chat as well.
[xARk0471UWA_SPEAKER_06]: Hi, I think it was my hand that was up. Yeah, I just wanted to echo I think Colleen brought up a great point about bringing the admin and looking at it from a safety perspective too. I also would like to encourage if we were, which I do think we should bring in more student voices, offering multiple manners of access for students to share their thoughts, because I think only so many students would be willing and comfortable to come and like speak out about their thoughts on toilet rooms in front of a group of adults that they don't know. So maybe even offering like a Google form or like a written avenue for some of those kids who might have anxieties or thoughts that are really important to them, but it's just kind of a touchy topic, which is interesting that toilets are a touchy topic, but that's 2026.
[Matt Rice]: Yeah, no, I think that's great. We have done in the past also just like dedicated student sessions separate from admin as well, just for that very reason. Because I think once you get the students talking amongst themselves, they're usually pretty open generally in terms of sharing things. But at the same time, it's also good, I think, in certain circumstances to allow administrators and students to sort of talk and hear each other's perspectives as well. Because I think trying to find that common ground is Probably part of the solution moving forward. Jenny.
[Jenny Graham]: And 1 of the outputs of this meeting be that. Like, there is energy around. More discussion from this group on this topic, but that we also want to. Um, designed some intentional ways to collect input from students before we're going to, like. Issue a recommendation as it were.
[Matt Rice]: Yes, yeah, no, I think that makes all the sense in the world. The recommendation at this point can be that we are going to be collecting additional information and input as we move forward. So that's definitely fair game. And I did see Jack's note as well in the meeting chat, which was regard to the single stall bathrooms and the need for keys for administrators to be able to open those doors in case of student distress or emergency. I think you mentioned at our last meeting as well, Jack, so we appreciate that. And we can wrap that into the recommendations here as a second separate item, just so that doesn't get lost moving forward.
[Adam Hurtubise]: All right, I'm going to keep us scrolling down here, unless anyone has any other topics or thoughts that I'm missing.
[Rosemary Park]: We knew that would be the most engaging section. Okay, and so now as we get into student experience, well being and belonging, really looking at this as mostly givens. And so we've got most of the comments here were regarding making sure that there were safe and comfortable students for students of all with all different interests, creating spaces for them where they can de-stress and where students can reset. So there are also some asking about offering quiet spaces. And as part of the educational space program, we are looking at just differentiated types of spaces to be able to provide different, you know, kind of a little bit of a rest or a break from just a larger, you know, day-to-day movement of these students. So we are looking at something like, you know, a quiet cafeteria that's adjacent to the main dining commons or something, but also looking at whenever you do have these larger spaces, like the media center or something, looking at how we can try to provide smaller, quieter corners or areas within these spaces in order to make sure that every student feels welcome and feels like they can be comfortable in these spaces. And then looking at also number 33, making the school day dynamic with movement and access to different types of environments. And so this is a topic that while it is a given in terms of the physical building and the architecture of it, it will also warrant a little bit more discussion with the school Um, itself because it will also require some, um, just some nuances regarding scheduling of classes as well. Um, and then the next two, these are topics that are aligned already within the district's educational plan. So making, again, it's more making sure that students are comfortable, um, but that they also have these types of spaces to help support the types of good work that they are doing. And then designing spaces that are adaptable to the students' needs rather than forcing the students to have to adapt themselves to an environment that is not actually conducive to them. And then when we get into number 36, providing competitive offerings so families are not compelled to look outside the district. So this is something that it's not, really that the, not something that it's just solely the architecture that's going to do something about that. So we are going to have the district and the school committee providing competitive offerings. So courses, different course offerings. And I'm sorry, I don't know who said that, but so Because it's a curriculum offering and educational component, we're going to be expecting guidance from the school district and the school committee. Are there questions about this one?
[Matt Rice]: Yeah, just to add a quick context to that, even when we think about the Chapter 74 programs, I think there's already been a commitment there to add some different program opportunities that don't exist now as a way of keeping more students in district if they're looking for those particular CTE programs. So that's maybe one way that the project is currently responding to this, but I agree with what you had said, Rosemary, that there's a lot of this that it's from a curriculum standpoint beyond the scope of the building project specifically.
[Rosemary Park]: Yeah, and there wasn't any specificity behind what kinds of competitive offerings were there. We do know that there is, within the educational plan, a desire to expand some specific offerings. But in terms of anything beyond that, it would have to be guided by the district and school committee. I did see a hand up before. Lisa, did you have a hand up? I lowered it.
[Matt Rice]: Did I preempt your comment, Lisa? I'm sorry.
[Rosemary Park]: No, that was good. Thank you. Any other questions about this? So it's not that it's not going to happen. It's just that, again, it's not really a building component or something that the building will be able to provide itself. looking at providing breakout spaces along hallways and outdoor areas, which support movement and sensory engagement, creating high visibility wellness spaces that feel welcoming and supportive. And again, that these breakout spaces should also be appropriate and safe, just visible within their location. And this is all aligned with the district's educational goals and plans, and also is one of our priorities when we are designing these types of spaces as well. Okay. If there's anything that you did not hear in, or that you were hoping to also have added to this category, this is about the student experience and belonging, you know, We're happy to discuss and add something there to forward. Okay. Under teaching and learning flexibility. So the first few we have listed as givens as they will align with the educational plan. but mostly surrounding the need for flexible spaces because this is a building that we are designing for the next 50 to 75 years. So we don't know how education is going to look, you know, in 20 years. So we wanna make sure that we are providing something that can be adaptable, that can be flexible. And not just from now to 20 years, but even just from teacher to teacher, from student to student, classroom to classroom, when this is built. So creating flexible spaces, which allow teachers to deliver the types of learning that students need, since we know that not every student learns in the same way, not every teacher teaches in the same way. Building a flagship school, which grows with the community. Increasing collaboration spaces for teachers and students. So we had heard a lot about looking at the, you know, the need for more connection. between teachers and students, teacher to teacher and student to student. Providing spaces for teachers to eat lunch together and hold meetings while also improving the location of adjacencies of different types of support teachers who may be currently distributed throughout the building who may want to be closer together. adding more whiteboards and vertical learning services in classrooms and supporting project based learning with appropriate spaces. So again, these are all givens, no further discussion is needed on those and is our recommendation. The next four items, they all sort of, so these are all items that we are saying needs some further discussion. There were two items, establishing a writing center, which is accessible to multiple departments and developing a math lab, which is open during the day, but also before school and after school. And so our space summary today includes space for academic support hubs, which are also described in the educational plan. And these are spaces that there, They're meant to be sort of these learning commons. We don't yet know exactly how they're going to shape up in the end, because again, we're very early on in the process. But we are holding space for these. And so as we develop the design further throughout this phase, and then throughout schematic design, we'll be able to understand exactly how those take shape. but we are holding some space in the program currently. And then looking at co-locating map science and CTE for interdisciplinary collaboration, as well as providing shared collaboration spaces for humanities, ELA. And so again, this is part of that discussion regarding the development of program adjacencies. We've established and we are continuing to refine the program now, but we will be starting to look at what programs are gonna wanna be near each other and how this building is gonna wanna be organized over the next few months. Any questions on those items yet? I see actually a couple of hands now. I don't know who was first, but I have Lisa on my screen.
[xARk0471UWA_SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I just wanted to clarify, does number line 50 mean that math, science, and CTE are adjacent, or are they saying that math classes should be adjacent to each other, science should be adjacent, and CTE should be adjacent? Can you just clarify that item?
[Rosemary Park]: This, I am not the author of this one, but I, to me, that had, I'm seeing interdisciplinary in that sentence. So to me, that looked like exploring the idea, exploring possibility of like a STEAM or STEM wing, trying to implement appropriate CTE programs that could potentially go in that area.
[xARk0471UWA_SPEAKER_00]: And I just also want to clarify, I know that in a lot of these that are CTE related, the comment is adjacencies among different program spaces will be studied in the design phase. I just want to make sure that there is a time that the CTE teachers and all the, you know, whoever else can, you know, share their ideas. I know that the CTE teachers feel quite strongly about the community of CTE programs. And whenever that design time comes, that there's a voice, there's a place for that. I think that is not this meeting is my understanding, that's a future thing, but I do want to, I think there are some strong feelings.
[Matt Rice]: What I would say Lisa there also is we can certainly make note of that here to clarify either adding it to that particular item or maybe we add a separate one under this category that also indicates the value of having like-minded CTE programs adjacent to each other for that shared collaborative benefit. And I think probably the time that you're thinking of is when we come back for programming meetings at the beginning of schematic design as well, which will be at the start of the fall. We'll actually have some layouts of a potential option moving forward. It would be the preferred option at that point that we can talk about whether or not what's been proposed in terms of adjacencies feels right or if we should be looking at modifying or adjusting. as we go through that. So I think that's when you'll be able to actually react to specific layouts, not just yourself, but all the CTE instructors, as well as academic, all the users of the building, right? We'll have that opportunity as part of the next round of the programming discussions that we have.
[xARk0471UWA_SPEAKER_00]: Okay, thank you.
[Chiesa]: Nicole? Okay, great. So just four things that have come to mind really quickly. So thank you, first of all, establishing a writing center accessible to multiple departments. I think I just want to echo, I think it makes a lot of sense to keep it as an academic support hub, the way that you've described it, given that we want to be flexible over the next hundred years with this building. So as long as it's on there, perfect. For the interdisciplinary collaboration with CTE, I do wanna see that appear as well with humanities and humanities is ELA. So humanities is social studies and science. So you would probably wanna say provide shared collaboration spaces for social studies and ELA or just say for humanities. But I do know that some of the programs that Chad is looking at like criminal justice, do offer a strong opportunity for us to collaborate with CTE. So I just don't want to ignore that for humanities. So I wanted to point that out. The other thing is I know that in my narrative, I wrote about a humanities hub, which is a little different from like a collaboration space. Like I want to leave the classroom to collaborate with another group. The humanities hub was more designed to have like the simulation. So if we can host a mock trial or we can host, you know, model UN preparations, I just don't know if that lives somewhere else or if that was supposed to include the collaboration within that line item 51.
[Rosemary Park]: I see what you're saying. Well, we'll put in and we can clarify that and what you were saying. Um. The there are program items, um, shared. There are, uh, shared programs, uh, spaces in the space summary currently, um, like some large group instructional spaces.
[Unidentified]: Okay.
[Rosemary Park]: That are not meant to be necessarily assigned for, um, you know, any specific teacher or anything. But the program does include those.
[Chiesa]: Okay, that's great. I just know we've struggled a lot when we've needed to have virtual ethics bowls, you know, doing it in a classroom versus a dedicated spot. And being able to host more will be really exciting for our district. So thank you.
[Matt Rice]: Nicole I might just add there also I think again when we come back for those programming meetings in the fall that for for us to get a little bit more detailed information on the sort of the types of equipment and AV and just sort of physical setup that can help support those activities will be great because I agree with Rosemary that there's a couple different spaces I can think of in the building right now that could probably really support that very well as long as we can make sure that we have the infrastructure in place to sort of support in addition to having the physical space itself.
[Rosemary Park]: Hey, Jenny.
[Jenny Graham]: Actually, I had a question for Nicole, and then maybe a comment related to what Lisa was sharing earlier. So Nicole, can you talk about what a writing lab looks like in your mind? That didn't come across super clearly to me yet, and I'm just trying to envision how it would be used.
[Chiesa]: For the writing center, we were envisioning having having it be interdisciplinary, having a space where there is a faculty member there where students could come in and out and work with a dedicated faculty member for help on different writing pieces, just the writing process in general, research. We've toyed with that idea in the past, but we just haven't had the space for it. And it's more an abundance of students from all different classes kind of coming into one spot to get a little bit more support, kind of like at the collegiate level, right, where they have the writing centers, no matter what the topic is.
[Jenny Graham]: Does that help, Jenny, at all? It does. And do you envision this like being used during the day or after school?
[Chiesa]: I would love to see it used during the day and after school so that students that maybe have, that are working on a writing project in class could go down and, you know, partake in some additional help from a writing, the writing expert in the room, in that center, but, or have a free, some time in their schedule that allows them to engage in this work during the school day. But I also want it open after school as well, obviously, for those students that can't take advantage of it during the day. It wouldn't be like a dedicated class, per se. It would be more of like a rolling in and out. I think there's a lot of value in it.
[Jenny Graham]: Thank you. I appreciate that. And then I think the challenge there is always you know, staff that are available to do those kinds of things. So that was sort of why I was curious, like what you envisioned. And then I, I guess on the topic of adjacency, um, when we come back to that topic, I know that there are very strong feelings about the VOC being the VOC. Um, I do think those strong feelings are directly in conflict with what we heard in our ed visioning sessions in many cases. where we are trying to foster a more collaborative environment where the kind of experience students get in their vocational program can be replicated outside of those vocational programs. And so I would just want to make sure that when we start having adjacency conversations, we maybe re-engage students. and really focus on the why. Like, if we're talking about things needing to be near each other, I want us to really push on why we believe that they need to be near each other. And I think there's good, there's probably many, many, many good reasons for things, you know, for programs that are near each other now to continue to be near each other. but I don't think that is wholesale true. I think we should just challenge that status quo as much as we can because this is our chance. Lots of things can move around a building, but it's my impression that many of our CTE programs, Lisa, maybe yours is an exception, but many of these CTE programs, once they land somewhere, it's going to be easy to just pick them up and move them if we decide We want them to be adjacent to something else in the future. So I just want us to be really thoughtful about that and to almost go all the way back to the beginning of our visioning sessions and talk about, what did we talk about in those meetings? And now how do we make good decisions about adjacencies and that kind of thing?
[Rosemary Park]: And then Jack, I did see your comments about how Cambridge also has something like that as well. Thank you for sharing. I am noticing the time. So I think that I'm going to pick it up a little bit. And I'm sure Matt is giving you the eyes to help us.
[Matt Rice]: So yeah, and I think the way to try to pick it up, or I mean, this is not to say, yeah, I think for the green items, I think we don't need to go into any detail there unless somebody reads through like we do need to pick up the pace a little bit. But if somebody has a comment on a green item, certainly raise your hand, we can backtrack to it. But I want to make sure that we hit the yellow items specifically.
[Rosemary Park]: Yeah. And so do you want me to read through the greens? still?
[Matt Rice]: I think we should try just going to the yellows because we have about 25 minutes and I think we have a couple more yellows to get through.
[Rosemary Park]: So line 53, the overall quantity of classrooms is to be reviewed carefully because of the MSBA classroom shared model, including locking up a schedule to confirm the proposed number of classrooms, to confirm if the proposed number of classrooms will work and so this is something that the district will need to generate different scheduling scenarios over. I will say that this, you know, that number that we had pulled out, that we are proposing for the shared classrooms, or sorry, for the quantity of classrooms, it does come from a, an analysis of the curriculum, of how many students are taking each class, in addition to looking at the MSBA's formulas based off of an 85% utilization rate of 23 students per classroom, which 23 students per classroom is just what the MSBA tells us we need to design to. We understand that the classroom model here is a little bit different in Medford, up to 25, but that is going to be something that the district will need to run some, you know, trial scheduling scenarios.
[Matt Rice]: Which we can support on our end, just from in terms of providing sort of room numbers and sort of layout from the scheduling perspective. But we'll need to work with district staff to be able to actually run that out.
[Jenny Graham]: Yeah. And Matt and Rosemary, I appreciate you saying that. I know not everybody was able to be here today, but the reduction of gen ed classrooms is a huge concern for our educators. So, and it's more about like being able to offer the variety of programming that we offer. And I'll say secondarily about sharing classrooms, but I think the biggest concern I'm hearing like across the board is, is that enough space for us to run all of the programs that we run in this building? every single day. So I'll circle back to you offline about some of that modeling, because I think that would be really important for us to think about.
[Rosemary Park]: Yep, certainly. So when we come into the program specific needs, there was a suggestion on creating a house model for vocational programs. Um, and so, uh, oh, sorry, not a house model, model house, very different things, uh, model house for vocational programs. And this is something we had heard in our programming meetings. Um, but just. Again, this is the phase where we will be figuring out, um, the adjacencies and the location of where, um, a model house, um, can start to fit and where it would go, um, within the school. Um, providing a new biotech space accessible to all students. And so with this, this is under the yellow under needing further discussion because the level of access in terms of who has access to these spaces into chapter 74 shop spaces, that will just continue to be discussed throughout this phase and the next phase in terms of you know, who has, how are non-Chapter 74 students, if they have access to these spaces, and how, if so. So, and that's what we had gleaned from this comment. I'm not sure if we were interpreting correctly, but that's what we had gleaned from it. I'm noticing here that line 63 was actually similar to the one above in the previous category, co-locating humanities and social studies for collaboration. So we'll try to consolidate those, we'll clean this up a little bit. Art spaces should be isolated but integrated, oh, should not be isolated but integrated to encourage cross-department interaction. And again, we'll study that adjacency within this phase. The next two under collaboration, community spaces and access, those will also be studied in this phase regarding adjacencies. So one was regarding adopting a middle school style learning common space, and the person had referenced specifically the building tour that we did of Chapman Middle School, and as well as implementing shared breakout areas. supporting classroom clusters, which open up into shared spaces. So we have these program items, but again, we'll be studying the adjacencies with the school and the district to understand how these are gonna be organized. And then collaboration spaces should serve both departments, the high school departments, as well as the broader community. Um, and so we will be having ongoing discussions on exactly which specific school spaces will be available and accessible to the broader community, because this will also have an impact on, um, just the organizations, the adjacencies, security access. Um, so these are, these are just part of this, you know, the next couple of phases of design. Uh, Under wellness, mental health and student support. So for 7879, maintaining the house model with Councilor and adjustment Councilor and expanding mental health services to meet increasing needs. So we are having discussions and we'll continue to have discussions on these topics with the district. And it will, We'll also get more guidance from the school committee as well. But these are being discussed currently just as part of the educational plan and the program. So stay tuned on those. Providing a community mental health space within the health suite. So this is, it's somewhat aligned with the district's ed plan. And we are proposing in the space summary, some space geared towards some kind of community health center. It is not part of the MSBA's reimbursable category of spaces, but it's still being discussed right now. This space just, you know, what is the extent of this space and what is the exact programming of it? Then again, that's gonna be part of this phase in figuring out the confirmation program here. and then adding a nurse practitioner for medication management. So we'll continue as part of those earlier discussions. This topic will also be a part of that with the district and school committee. All things regarding safety, circulation, building functionality. those for all givens, and you can refer to the site safety and security meeting and their recommendations for further information regarding what they are proposing or what they are suggesting to the school building committee. And under community identity and long-term vision, so ensuring that equity is visible in motion and not just in language. We tried to, I was hoping that my interpretation of this was correct in that I think we'll have to clarify this a little bit more, but I had understood this to be that equity is actually, there's action being taken towards equity, both in terms of the physical building, but then also through policy. But I think that this was something that we were hoping to have a further clarification from the team, from this advisory group, regarding what the intent here was and how we should word this phrase.
[Matt Rice]: It's very possible that whoever made that comment is maybe not on the call today. if no one's jumping up and raising their hand about it. So potentially we can follow up on this one through correspondence with the advisory team after the fact to try and get some additional guidance there. But I think it's just, it was a little non-specific enough or maybe our interpretation of it was not clear that we just want a little bit more information in terms of how that should be worded.
[Rosemary Park]: And then uh, line 95 community spaces should serve as active learning environments. Um, and so again, as part of this phase, we'll continue to have discussions on which, um, specific spaces will be accessible to the broader community. Um, just, you know, just because it impacts so many different factors. So we want to make sure that we're, um, we're considering all of those things. So I would, I'd really like to open it up to the rest of the team to see if there are any comments that you might have on some of the other Romanian names that we had gone over. You know, is there any wording that we could edit or clarify, or was there anything missing from this list that you think should have been included? You can see we have 90-something suggestions or comments here.
[Chiesa]: Rosemary, I didn't raise my hand, sorry. Can I speak now? We're getting near the end. just where I do a lot with the fine arts department, Suzanne Fee and I, we had talked about having like a small stage, like a, I don't know if that's a pie in the sky or if it should be on this list, or if it's already encompassed in some way, shape or form. But I just wanted to mention that we had looked not just for like the large auditorium stage, but like a smaller space for that. So perhaps it's perhaps I missed it. But I know Suzanne Fee and I were both interested in that.
[Rosemary Park]: Okay, we can note that the program does currently include a black box theater. And so that is, which would be a flexible space that could be used as a large group instructional space, but also for smaller performances, drama instruction, and more intimate certainly than, the auditorium would be.
[Chiesa]: Okay. And maybe that's a perfect fit then, because we are, we are doing dramatic lit this year and moving on. So that sounds great, actually. Thank you.
[Rosemary Park]: Anne-Marie?
[Unidentified]: I so I threw a question in the chat, but since we had time, I just wanted to find out where the discussion about elevators lives. I don't know if it's this committee or interior exterior security site safety, but similar to my comment about making sure students don't need to travel too far for the toilet rooms. I just want to make sure that the placement of the elevators for students who need them, you know, that they're not going down. the hallway and then different hallway just to access the elevator, but that they're central enough that they're accessible.
[Rosemary Park]: Yes, we, um.
[Unidentified]: I mean, I don't know that this is necessarily a place for it, but, um, as we were talking, one of the sections talked about, like, the number of floors, um, and supervising the main school entrance and so forth. So I sort of, that's what triggered my thinking.
[Rosemary Park]: Yeah, this is certainly this advisory team is certainly one that where it touches, it seems to touch all of the other advisory teams topics as well. It can be it can really overlap a lot there because you're looking at it from an equity standpoint, and not necessarily from just just a building functionality standpoint, you're looking at it from equity. So yeah, I understand it. And I Yeah, I think that we could add that here as well. Just to show that it is, I haven't looked at the exterior interior design one. So if it is there, then perhaps, but I understand looking at it from the equitable stance.
[Unidentified]: That's great. Yeah, I mean, as long as that piece of the decision-making is part of it, like I said, who owns it doesn't matter, but that's where my thinking is.
[Rosemary Park]: Sure, that makes sense to me.
[Unidentified]: Thank you.
[Rosemary Park]: Jack.
[brfcP1Wifvc_SPEAKER_06]: Hi, yeah, we love our new space in Somerville, but excuse me, I think we underestimated the amount of office space that we needed. And so like with the rise of outside providers, mediation testing, we drastically underestimated the amount of office space we need. So just to keep in mind, you're thinking of the big, beautiful spaces that look great, I think sometimes we might need more space that's functional as well.
[Rosemary Park]: We can certainly add that to the list as well. We are, and this will be an evolving conversation, but we have been working closely with the district and the high school to make sure that we are counting and covering each of the required specialists and other student support folks who are in the school. And if we plan to see any growth in any of those areas as well. So, but thank you, Jack. We'll put in a line item regarding that. Okay. Matt, do you want to go over? Matt's got the next steps pulled up as like my music, my wrap it up music.
[Matt Rice]: Like a cane at the end. Yeah. I apologize that somehow my internet decided to wait until like 85% of the way through the meeting before deciding to drop out here, which was interesting. But Coming up, and actually that should say what's expected to be number four where we're going, what we're going to be doing when we get back together in September as a full group is looking at the actual recommendations that will be coming out of this discussion today for each of the topics that have been discussed. But we'll also take the opportunity to look at the preferred alternative design, the plans, and maybe some three-dimensional images as well in terms of where things have evolved to that point and we want to look at it through the lens of this advisory team and understand if there's feedback that should be forwarded back to the larger building committee from this group given this focus on educational planning and equity. Certainly there's other There's other groups or other stakeholder groups that will be looking at it from that perspective as well. Certainly the educators as we're meeting during the programming meetings, the district personnel as well, and sort of school leadership. So there'll be a lot of eyes on it from educational planning and equity. But this group is certainly expert in this particular topic. So we want to make sure that we have an opportunity, a forum to have that conversation as well. So that's what to look forward to as we move forward. I know that September is a long ways off and so there will be some additional touch points like we talked about for the, so that toilet room focused discussion series of inputs that will happen between now and then. But from a formal sort of advisory team meeting, this is when we're going to be looking to get back together at this point. So I don't know if anyone has any sort of final thoughts or questions. We can certainly wrap up a little bit early, too, if we've exhausted all of those. But just wanted to leave a little bit of time for open-ended discussion, if there is any.
[Adam Hurtubise]: We may have captured all that while my internet dropped out.
[Matt Rice]: All right, I'm sure folks are interested in getting back outside, so we'll let you do that a couple minutes early. And for those of you that are going to be sticking around for the next meeting, you can just take a quick breath and maybe still sneak outside and then come back.
[Rosemary Park]: Well, isn't that the site one you should be outside for?
[Matt Rice]: No, I think it's sustainability and MEP systems. Still should be outside, I know. Well, we're just going to stay on this for those that are participating in the next one, right? Yep. Same link. Okay. Thank you. Thank you everyone for the time. Bye.
[Emily Ehlers]: Bye. Thank you.
[Unidentified]: Thank you, Lisa.
[Matt Rice]: For those that have just joined, we're probably going to give folks about five minutes to log on. I think that is an appropriate thing to do, given how beautiful it is outside and the fact that we've asked everyone to contribute two hours of their evening on such a beautiful evening. It's tough out there. We get that. So we'll just give people a little bit more time to log on and get settled. I also apologize in advance that I have a lot of 15 year olds apparently downstairs in my house right now that have the ability to talk so loud that it comes through the floors and through the walls, at least to me. So I'm hoping that's not going to come through on the microphone. But if it does, let me know and I can go down there and try to shush them. Just once again, if folks have joined in the past couple minutes, we're going to get going in about two minutes, 535. We'll dive in.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Just giving people a bit extra time to hop on. All right, we'll just get going.
[Matt Rice]: I'm going to start off with a quick disclaimer. Just towards the end of the last advisory team meeting, it waited until I was 90%, 85%, 90% over and then dropped out my internet, which then immediately came back. If that happens, I'm just giving Martine and Brenda and others a quick heads up that I will be back if for some reason my screen drops out. I think it works fine for everyone else to keep talking, but it's just something that was recently discovered here. So I just want to start off by saying thank you again to everyone for spending a little bit of time with us this evening for the third installment of our advisory team meetings for the Medford High School project. This is our sustainability MEP systems advisory team discussion so we'll be focusing on that particular topic and we did ask that we increase the time duration for this particular meeting up to two hours from an hour and a half. Just given that we had a lot of really great conversation during the course of the last meeting and we want to make sure that we had sufficient time and availability to dig into the topics that need a little bit of additional discussion. And I think with this particular advisory team meeting, there's a lot of those great topics that we need to cover. And it does, the topic of sustainability in and of itself has a lot of parts and pieces. So we won't spend too much time giving a preface, but I did want to just take a second and orient ourselves before we dive in. And part of that is just pointing out the fact that this meeting this evening is entirely remote. We did do our last meeting in a hybrid fashion, and we made a conscious decision to pivot back to an all remote version of the meeting, which is what we did for the first version of the advisory team meetings as well. Really, what we're trying to do is make sure that the AV experience and really the meeting experience is equitable for everybody. We know we had some challenges during the last go around in terms of making sure that folks online could hear and participate in the same way that people in the room were able to. So even though we really did love and do love seeing everyone in person that was able to make it there, we want to just try this format again and sort of see how that goes in terms of making sure that we all have an equal ability to participate in the same way. So that's why we're going remote this evening. We do ask in this environment that if people could just make ample use of the raise hand feature. It seemed to go pretty smoothly during our last advisory team meeting. We'll just take hands as they come up in order just to make sure that we all have opportunity to be heard and hear. So with that preface, I'm going to share my screen. Temp 2. And I'm going to start off in the PowerPoint presentation here. We'll pivot to an Excel document in a minute, and I'll explain why that is. I'm just going to flip around the presentation view here. So assuming that the slides are up for everybody now in the normal fashion. I'm just going to go through our agenda really quickly. We're going to do some quick introductions, intentionally not spend time introducing either ourselves again, or all of you, we do have everyone's names up there just for just quick. reacclimation, but we don't want to linger there. We do again want to just shift to spend as much time as we can going to the topics at hand for this evening. And so the majority of that is going to be looking at the same document that we sent out as a PDF. As part of the agenda to all the advisory teams, so hopefully folks have had a chance to at least look that over and acclimate themselves to it if not form some questions that we can talk to when we get there in the discussion, but that is really a set of. The discussion points that we've had during the course of the past two advisory team meetings and what we want to do today is make sure that we've heard everyone correctly going through those. There's a lot of discussion on some of those and so we'll go through the organization of that in a minute. But we also did want to cover one topic that we did not have time to get to during the second meeting, which was just a little bit of an overview for life cycle cost analysis. Not the actual life cycle cost analysis that we're going to be running through for this project, but just to really acclimate everyone to what that document is and what it represents and sort of the considerations that will go into it. Because everyone may not be intimately familiar with what that is. And I think even though the meeting agenda seems to indicate otherwise, I think we might go through the LCC overview quickly first, because it may inform some of the other advisory team recommendations as we go through it. I just need Martine to promise to not take a lot of time, and I'm probably going to cut you off after five or 10 minutes, Martine, just so that we can make sure we jump back to the Excel document.
[Martine Dion]: I'm going to try to do it in five.
[Matt Rice]: I'm going to hold you to it. Again, this is us. We won't spend time here necessarily. This is all of the advisory team members, those that are able to join us this evening and I will not hold it against anyone if you've chosen to. or if anyone chose to be outside as opposed in this meeting or maybe you're on your phone outside that would be a good compromise potentially. And just as a reminder overall in terms of where we are in the project schedule we're really right at the midpoint of the overall feasibility study. We have submitted the first part of the feasibility study which is referred to as the preferred design program or the PDP report So that was submitted to the MSBA just this past week. It was two weeks ago, very recently. And really what we have in front of us is the preferred schematic report portion of the feasibility study. So we're right here at that halfway point. We do have another touch point for all the advisory teams at the beginning of schematic design, right at the beginning of the fall. So that will be forthcoming, another opportunity for us to discuss. If there are topics that come out of this discussion today where we need to circle back with the advisory team on any particular topic, we're certainly happy to do that. But this is sort of the framework that's been laid out right now in terms of the 1, 2, 3, 4 meeting points. And then I throw this graphic up again, everyone is probably sick of seeing this at this point, it's the same slide that we had previously, but we show it just to reiterate again the fact that there are overlaps amongst all these advisory teams. And as we jump into the topics and potential recommendations as we move forward, you will see some of the recommendations really being deferred to a different advisory team. We try not to have overlapping recommendations at the end of the day, just because there's opportunity for conflict there, or conflicting information in terms of the different advisory teams back and forth. So you will see in the right-hand column in the comments, if you've gone through the document already, that in some cases we're saying there's a different advisory team that may provide a recommendation on this item, even though there's obviously connections in between. So I'm going to skip through that, and I'm going to let you take it on the LCCEA slides from here, Martine.
[Martine Dion]: Thank you. So the lifecycle cost analysis is required through MSBA at schematic design. So that's a given. It's a whole building lifecycle cost analysis. So we're not only looking at a three HVAC system option, but we're looking at it within the comprehensive high energy efficient buildings. So the efficient features of the building enclosure, as well as the lighting and electrical system. They require a 50-year LCCA. And then, like I said, it's a comprehensive approach. So we're looking at the initial costs, the maintenance costs, the replacement costs, as well as the energy costs and savings. The three HVAC systems are in schematic design are compared to the code baseline system. We also look with the help of some of the cost estimate that we're going to get, we're going to be looking at the incremental cost and the payback. And because it's 50-year, we do have cost escalation included as part of the calculation of the lifecycle cost analysis. And I wanted to just quickly mention that parallel to that, we're sort of engaging with utility, trying to understand the incentives that are going to be provided for this project. And the way that incentives are set up now with the utilities, there are ways to sort of start ballparking them very early. And we try to also apply this to, you know, the lifecycle cost analysis in terms of the initial cost with and without incentives. Next. So this is a sample of what we, once we're completed with the life cycle cost analysis. And of course, the systems will be discussed with you, the preferred, the three preferred systems. This is an example where we have a ground source heat pump, so geothermal, air source, air to water heat pump, and then a hybrid. In some cases, we have the VRF, you know, the refrigerant type systems. This is a sample, but it shows you the whole spread out of the system comparison with cost for each of these components. Next. And a lot of little notes at the bottom, because we make sure we're transparent with what is being used in terms of energy costs, et cetera. Next. And then this is a sample of the incremental cost and payback. In the case of this project, this is a sample. It ended up that it was a zero-year payback, that actually those systems were costing less. And one of the reasons is because If you go fossil fuel with the specialized code, you have to install a solar PV system to offset your fossil fuel. So you have to include that in the cost of the baseline. Whereas if you go all electric, then you don't have to install the PV, although you may elect to do so. So in that calculation, That's how it came out there. But that doesn't represent what's going to come out for Medford. These are sort of all the elements and criteria that are going to be included and presented to you once we undergo and do the LCCA. I think that's it, Matt. Oh, yeah. Oh, of course, total carbon. So once we understand sort of the energy cost saving. We already have a good take on your existing school. We're going to have in schematic design, we're going to have a preferred schematic, and we're going to be looking at the operational carbon and embodied carbon. And what we want to make sure we agree on, we don't have to decide this today, but The embodied carbon analysis for LEAD is 30 years, whereas many, because the school has a 50-year lifecycle cost, many communities would like to look at total carbon over 60 years. So that's something to ponder on. We would like to understand your preference. That's it. Did I make the five minutes?
[Matt Rice]: Yeah. Yes. Actually, you did, right on the nose. All right, let me pull this down then and bring up where it's already here. So this is the document. I'm just going to move this out of the way so I can see this. This is the document that got distributed around as part of the agenda. So I do want to take a second and just explain the organization of this and I'm going to modify it in a second. But this is sort of the live Excel document that generated it and just if I move across the columns at the top. You'll see this column for advisory team suggestions and comments. We generated this by going through the recording of the last meeting as well as our notes for the past two meetings, actually, and really tried to group them into like-minded topics so that there's some overall organization to the topics as we go through into the conversation that we're going to have this evening. These are our best interpretation of what was discussed. In some cases, it's very apparent in terms of what the topic was, and there's a very linear sort of discussion that we can have on each of the items. In some of them, there may be something that you think that we missed from the conversation or from the topic that was made. If this was a comment that you had made or started us down the road of talking about, we're happy to revise, modify. We can add items as well as we go through here. If there's something within a particular grouping that you recall us talking about or maybe didn't talk about before, we still have the opportunity to modify this. In no way, set in stone, this is sort of our starting point for working this evening as we move forward. The next column as I move over, and I'm going to hide this column in a second, but this is going to be where we actually take the topic that is here and we craft together a recommendation that will be forwarded back to the building committee. And so this is going to vary per advisory team in terms of the topic that's there. Some of these are more objective, some of them are subjective, but we'll be able to come up with the appropriate response that is agreed upon for the advisory team back to the building committee through our particular areas of focus here. And so I'm going to hide this one here just so that we can, in a second, be able to read everything across the screen. It just makes it much more legible this way. The next set of topics or next set of columns that are here are really our traffic light analogy in terms of trying to indicate things that are just a given as part of the project. And that can be because it's inherent either through the MSBA program and sort of our participation in their grant program. It could be something that's in the educational plan that's already written in or just something that we understand is already part of the project inherently. So, what I actually would like to do is not spend any time talking about those this evening. We spent a little bit of time in the press in the past. advisory team meeting and we sort of got a little bit close to running out of time really what we want to do is spend our time focusing on these next items that are in sort of the yellow orange category and I say yellow orange just because I can't see that color but I know it's one of the two These are the items where we know that there's further discussion. We had a lot of discussion on some of these during the course of the past meetings. They will warrant, in some cases, even more discussion beyond the parameters of what we can do this evening. In some cases, we may decide that our recommendation is that we actually need to have another follow-up discussion, potentially before September that we get to in terms of talking through some of these things. In some cases, we'll recommend those follow-up discussions. But this is really where we want to spend the majority of our time this evening. The last column, the red light discussion items that we go through, there haven't been any that have been designated as red lights right now going through, and that was intentional. So that the design team is not the one making those decisions as we go through it should really be from the advisory team. If we're saying that any of these need to be put in a parking lot, because they're not feasible or for whatever the discussion point is, we want to have that discussion today. We want to potentially shift them over. We don't have to do anything as formal as. sort of a roll call vote for this particular group, but there should be some consensus discussion. And part of having this meeting is really leveraging everyone's sort of collective expertise and having that type of productive discussion. So we certainly welcome and encourage that as we go through the topics. So I think that is the sort of preamble. I'm going to leave it to Martine and then potentially some other team members as we get through into the different items to run through. And again, it's not that the green items are not important, and that's why we're skipping over them. They are critically important, but we think that there is good consensus that Those pieces are wrapped into the project for one reason or another. I will say, though, if we go through this and if anyone objects to any of the items that are in the given categories, we're not going to suppress any commentary or feedback on it. We just ask that people, again, use that raise hand feature in terms of just organizing our conversation a little bit as we go forward. That is all the preamble. I do see a raised hand. And because I just put so much of a focus on it, I feel like we should give Austin an opportunity to ask the question.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, I guess. Thanks for that, Joaquin. I just wanted to clarify at the outset or ask a question at the outset.
[izVdDtzaCdw_SPEAKER_18]: I think the initial sort of intent of this exercise and the meetings was to collaborate on a set of goals that are then going to be recommended. So I'm just Can you help us frame as we get started? Like, are these getting boiled down into a list of four or five, 10, 12, 50 goals that are then going to be recommended to the school board? Like how should we be thinking, you know, demand response, right? Like that's an example. Is that the goal? Is that the building needs to have demand response capability? Or is this just a discussion point that will then lead to that?
[Matt Rice]: I think it's a discussion point that's going to lead to it. So the category that I hid in here, which was the actual recommendation, is the thing that we need to develop moving forward. We're not going to try and craft those on the fly during the course of the meeting, but we'll go back. Again, the beauty of the recording is the ability to go back and sort of try to summarize what we have there. And we'll give people the opportunity to feedback on that as well based on our interpretation of it. But what we really want to do is have a conversation on, say, the demand response item, and there's a little bit of additional context there for it and understand, okay, is this something that we're trying to integrate into the project? Is it something that we agree that we need to have further dialogue with the utility company on? to understand the viability. I think each one of these items specifically for this advisory team as well, there's such a range of different topics that I think we have to take it sort of line item by line item. If we can consolidate any of these moving forward, then we can certainly do that just to try to simplify overall, but there's a lot of good detail in here that I think we just need to touch on. but certainly if it's something that people see we can we can wrap it into another topic we're happy to consolidate. I know we did have the conversation at the last advisory team meeting as well in terms of the difference between the strategies and the goals and sort of what strategies we might be using to achieve goals. So we can make that clarification as well when we're jumping into the recommendations as to whether or not we're just indicating a goal or we're indicating a strategy towards achieving a goal or both as we go through. So I know that there's a lot of ambiguity in that answer, but I think we have to sort of take it line item by line item to understand sort of which one, whichever each one is going to sort of lead us in a particular direction, if that makes sense. Did that answer the question or clarify?
[izVdDtzaCdw_SPEAKER_18]: Yeah, maybe we just need to go through a few to see. I just want to make sure that like if there's, what 60 or some, there's a lot of these line items, right? And so if there's, I don't think there's going to be that many goals. And so as we keep talking about it, I think we just want to see that we're boiling down and with sort of having that goal, having the end goal being that we are trying to arrive at a set of goals to recommend to the school committee as a means of, you know, reflecting what this group has discussed.
[Matt Rice]: Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. That's a good summary. OK, Martine, I'm going to let you take us into the first one.
[Martine Dion]: Yes, lead. So we're not going to cover much of the givens, right? That's straightforward. That's included, basically.
[Matt Rice]: I think we're going to have to skip past the givens. And again, if people want to comment on it, happy to let people go.
[Martine Dion]: Right. So lead, gold, and platinum, there was a question last evening, does that increase MSBA reimbursement? It does not. MSBA requires silver minimum. And that's for the main reimbursement. And for additional reimbursement, the specialized stretch code and specific lead material credits are required. And they can give you up to 3% for the specialized code, which you will obtain in Medford because you've adopted the specialized code. And then 1% for the additional material credits. which we're tracking. There was another question about Wakefield Memorial. So one thing to really pay attention to is the fact that Wakefield Memorial was designed under the LEED V4 version. Here we're in LEED V5. And LEED V5 is actually different, as we quickly kind of did an overview the last time. So different than LEED V4. But to respond to the question, Wakefield Memorial High School pursued silver and aspired for gold. And what we're doing with this project is we're tracking and seeing how close we are all along. We're targeting gold. That's the aspiration. And we're looking as we go along how close we are to gold. And Matt, we had talked about for LEED from the last meeting as well, there were you know, member of the advisory team and committee that asked to maybe go in more detail to understand LEAD and the LEAD v5 version. So, we are basically, we recommend a dedicated session so we could really focus on the details of LEAD and go through the criteria with the advisory team. That would be something that would be happening in the future, right Matt?
[Matt Rice]: Yeah, I think it's the near future in terms of when we would probably try and do that because the lead target does have implications in many different areas as we go forward.
[Martine Dion]: Right.
[Matt Rice]: Jenny, I see you have your hand up. I don't know if you want to jump in here.
[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, I think the takeaway from the last meeting was we were talking about these certifications primarily and solely in the basis of like what will get us more reimbursement. And that is one thing that the certifications do for us, but I'm not an expert in this space. So I'm here to learn. I thought there were actual climate goal reasons to do these things. And I, I just want to reiterate that the school committee clearly set forward something higher than gold when we formed the building committee. That's been in all of our documentation. It was in our procurement of our OPM. It was in our procurement for SMMA. There is a more ambitious climate goal conversation that is being overlooked. And I just want to be really explicit that if this committee, this group, is saying there's good reason for us not to do those things, I think that's fine. But we should be, we need to talk about why we should abandon a bigger climate goal simply on the basis of reimbursement points. Because I don't think, I'm not personally there yet. And I think that Kind of that kind of recommendation coming from a sustainability team would warrant some explanation to the larger committee.
[Martine Dion]: So we're not recommending to not do gold. We're actually looking for your advisory team and the SBC. So if the preference or if the clear goal is gold, then that will be the target and we'll put that in. I think we can certainly, Jenny, show the whole advisory team what gold means and beyond the silver minimum of MSBA, right? and then what beyond gold means as well. And that would be what we would bring up in that special meeting, in that dedicated session.
[Jenny Graham]: We can table all of this, but even saying our goal is gold, that is not the goal that was set forth by the school committee. So there's just a misalignment that I want to call attention to so that we all can get on the same page. At some point, and I don't think we need to do it in this meeting, I just am flagging it because I continue to hear people talking about what our goals are in a way that is not actually what the goals are. And if we need to change the goals, we should have that conversation, but we should not be confused about what the stated goals are.
[Martine Dion]: So can you maybe, I misread the discussion. So you're saying that what is the stated goal for LEAD in particular? Is it gold or platinum?
[Jenny Graham]: I'm going to go find the exact language, and I will drop it in the chat.
[Martine Dion]: Great, because then we'll put it here for everybody. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Sorry to jump in. This is Paul. It was platinum, but again, that was before so. You know, I'm also not an expert, so I don't know how a platinum V4, how does that map onto V5? And, you know, so, and I don't know, like, what really is the difference, because I'm not interested. I was the one who was insistent on that in the actual school committee resolution. I don't really care about the plaque. I care about the next seven generations of pollution that this building will be adding to the future of our planet.
[Martine Dion]: That's it. Yeah, I think that's a really good point. You know, V5 is more stringent in many, many ways than V4. At the same time, you know, you're committed to a higher level of sustainable design. I think that looking at what the Platinum V4 was, And this V5, is it gold or platinum? And V5 is what we would need to be doing here with the team and show what that entails beyond MSBA and beyond the stretch code.
[Matt Rice]: Yeah, so I think that the comment was perfectly correct and that if there was a disconnect between what we were talking about last time, what's represented here, we'll correct that so that we can sort of have that conversation moving forward. And I do think that the recommendation to dive into sort of a separate lead discussion is where we can really unpack sort of the equivalency between LEED 4 Platinum versus LEED 5 Gold versus LEED 5 Platinum so that we can understand where we want to go with that moving forward. It's just it's as you sort of see all the hands that hopped up immediately and it's our sort of first topic as we jump in it definitely has a lot of interest and there's a lot of discussion that needs to happen to sort of unpack it but I appreciate sort of the correction to what we had listed here because if we see that as we go through definitely point those things out that's that's why we're here today. Right, so I have there was a couple other hands that jumped up and I'm not sure if. If there's something additional that wants to get mentioned on the topic of lead, or if it's maybe already been said, but happy to let folks if they have their hand up. So maybe Nathan.
[izVdDtzaCdw_SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, thanks, Matt. Yeah, I guess I just had two comments on that. And I guess I think this group is intended to represent the community. It does not represent the school committee or the building committee. So I think if this group wants to have an independent opinion about what level of lead we're going for, I don't think that should be colored at all by what has been stated by those other bodies, right? This is a feedback group from the community. And so it should be taken, I think, independently. And then maybe, as Jenny said, reconciled. but I think we can start from our own baseline and where that is. And then the other piece, when I think about gold, silver, platinum, sorry, silver, gold, platinum. I think of them as incremental cost. So every time you go up another level, you're likely spending more money. If we were going to achieve cost savings, then we would do it anyway. So ultimately, doing a higher level means we're going to spend more money. And so that just means, is that something we want to advocate that our community do as a capital expense now that will then ultimately go on to the vote and will ultimately decide the success of this project? You know, I think silver is the minimum we need to do to get MSBA funding. There is no benefit MSBA wise to going further. I think, as I'm not sure if it was Jenny or Paul said, there's certainly climate goals benefits, right? So that's just where we have to weigh that. Those are my two thoughts.
[Martine Dion]: Yes, Nathan, I think that's where some of these points kind of circle back to explaining the silver minimum from your comments the last time. But the one thing I want to say is that dedicated session that we're talking about would address that as well. It doesn't always mean the word cost is, yes, is there a cost there? it would be assessing that. What costs and are they initial costs or are they lifecycle cost savings? So it would be looking at the criteria and really debunking a bit of these, a bit of the criteria, the pros and the cons and the benefits and the cost, the cost-benefit ratio of some of that criteria compared to your climate goals. It doesn't always, what I'm trying to say is gold may not fully directly be equivalent to a super higher cost. And that's why we want to debunk it with the team and look at it.
[Matt Rice]: All right. Paul, do you want to chime in one other item on lead?
[Paul Ruseau]: Sure. I just want to say that like, so the cost that we're going to calculate will not include, if I'm correct, the cost of climate impacts, correct?
[Martine Dion]: The lead assessment will highlight the, at first at the high level, will highlight the items that would present additional initial cost. but we would also identify the climate, sort of the climate impacts. And not only the climate impacts, there's also, there's a lot of criteria that have comfort impact, student performance impact. So we would bring about what those benefits from the criteria would be.
[Paul Ruseau]: Okay, so I'm just worried about us continuing what has been going on for a hundred years where we don't consider the fact that we're gonna have to build infrastructure because of increasing, you know, oceans and like, those costs are massive and they are never, in my opinion, calculated in anything. We talk about how much it's gonna cost today and the taxpayers, important, but all of us are also gonna be paying this huge increased cost climate change that, I mean, God, I have no idea how you calculate that, but that's a real cost that cannot possibly be less than the cost to do everything we can to mitigate every tiny bit of climate change impact. So I just think that that's where I get a little worked up is like, We're all talking about the cost like we're deciding them today and that's the answer. And it's just not true. So anyways, we have a lot of items on this list and I think we can talk about this one more later. Thank you.
[Martine Dion]: Thank you. Um, so if we quickly, uh, just to wrap up the lead, um, section, um, there's the, the, uh, the embodied carbon, which is part, you know, of lead, um, the, the, the time period. Um, so we had talked about 60 year it, somebody in the chat put 30 years, um, um, We don't have to decide today, but it looks like there may be a preference for 30 years. This could change along the way. We can adapt. So that's a straightforward one. And then the commissioning. So the commissioning in LEED v5, in LEED v4, the commissioning started or could start at DD, design development. And MSBA starts the funding, subsidizing for the commissioning at DD, based on LEADv4. Unfortunately, as they update their green school policy to LEADv5, they are not updating their reimbursement to cover the scope of the commissioning required by LEADv5 at SD. We have confirmed that with MSBA. They mentioned that there are But there's funds through the OPM funds, upfront funds of the project that can cover that. That was their answer. We're also talking to GBCI and seeing if there's, because of the way this is set in Massachusetts, if there's a way that we could retroactively do the SD scope of commissioning at the beginning of DD. So far, the response has been no. So as we get closer to SD, we're going to have to make a decision on this and the recommendation to coordinate because if we hire, we don't know who MSBA is going to subsidize and choose for the commissioning agent in DD. So if we hire a commissioning agent with SD, it would be for SD only, and then that would have to be transferred to the MSBA commissioning agent in DD. So that's something that we need to continue to discuss and track.
[Matt Rice]: So I see Sonny has her hand up.
[Martine Dion]: Yeah.
[Matt Rice]: I just don't want to lose track also, Martin. We just want to circle back and make sure we cover the demand response item as well. But I'll let you go first, Sonny.
[Martine Dion]: Oops.
[Matt Rice]: Sonny, I'm only getting a little bit of the audio from you. I'm not sure if it's on my end or if it's everybody.
[Martine Dion]: I'm not hearing her. I didn't hear a word. Maybe she could put her question in the comments in the chat and or a comment in the chat.
[Matt Rice]: All right, why don't maybe Martin, do you want to just take on the demand response one real quick and then we can circle back as well and.
[Martine Dion]: So that item is already, this is going to be an ongoing sort of analysis through, you know, kind of parallel to the LCCA up through the design phases. But we've had the meeting with the Medford energy manager and her team, great meeting. We were able to sort out A couple of items that we have question on and we've got the peak data. So that's thank you for allowing us to have that meeting up front. And that's going to be all integrated in our as part of the utility discussion for the man response and also as part of the energy analysis.
[Matt Rice]: All right. So I don't know if we have other thoughts, questions on that grouping of three at the end of the lead section. All right, and I see Sonny. So the question my attendant asking that question wasn't to include commissioning earlier, but later after construction to ensure that the building is functioning as designed.
[Martine Dion]: So that's a good point. I mean, their scope is to complete all the commissioning, you know, even if it's as if there are items and issues that are long after the building is in the first year, year and a half. They have to fully complete it before the final commissioning report. It often lingers over a year on projects. That said, MSBA is supposed, it covers the ongoing commissioning plan. So that's part of the final. I'm not sure, Suni, if you're talking about implementing ongoing commissioning for up to five years, if that's what you're suggesting here, that once the main project commissioning agent goes out, that there's an ongoing commissioning agent that covers in the first five years. And that's something we can add, Matt. That's not the way we did. That's not what we're talking about here in our chart.
[Matt Rice]: Yep. So I think that's something that we can factor into as a recommendation, factoring into the overall project budget as we move forward.
[Martine Dion]: Right.
[Matt Rice]: Appreciate that.
[izVdDtzaCdw_SPEAKER_18]: I guess, Matt, if I could just piggyback on what Sonny just noted, I think that if the community is making assumptions around building performance or solar performance or things that are being scaled out in the out years, and the commissioning is not done correctly, then all of those assumptions could be wrong for the life, right? So I think that, Those costs won't necessarily be accounted for just based on how, how, how, and when the commissioning was done. So I guess it's just more of a reiteration that like considering that scope and yes, there may be initial costs, but I think it's important that commissioning is that much more important. If, if we're looking at lead V5 platinum, right. Or some of these like sort of major implementations. uh, that are going to require very high performing systems be done correctly the first time.
[Matt Rice]: Yeah. It's the value proposition of commissioning, right. And sort of, especially with the more complicated systems that we're looking at.
[Martine Dion]: Right. And there's also one more, one other thing that that's going to be potentially part of the project through the incentive. There's a post occupancy incentive that goes on for. up to two years, depending on when we started tracking or when they started tracking. And that does take a look. It is not ongoing commissioning, but it does take a look at the systems, the energy use and then the systems.
[Matt Rice]: All right, I'm going to try to do my best as moderator and usher us along then. I don't see any other hands up at the moment, so we'll keep going. We can always circle back if we have additional time towards the end as well. I guess we'll jump down. Yeah, down to row 17 here.
[Martine Dion]: Yeah, obviously, I'm a huge proponent of the building enclosure, so I was quite happy for whomever brought that up at the last meeting. This is all inherent, at least at the, you know, At the enclosure level, highly insulated and airtight enclosure is the given. The goals are usually beyond stretch code and we've achieved those on all of our projects. The highly insulated enclosure is based on specialized stretch and specialized code. Again, then passive design is something that's taken into account by our designers. We're working winter and solar. There'll be a little bit of further discussions around that as the design develops. In terms of orientation, I mean, there's of the site, obviously, but addressing daylight glare, solar gain, et cetera, passive, I mean, passive cooling or wind, all of these will be taken into account.
[Matt Rice]: So I think with this one in particular, it was a sort of a brief note comment that we have. We just want to make sure that we're interpreting sort of the intent of it. I forget exactly who made this comment, and I know in some cases we don't have everyone that was at the first meeting here present. But I'm not sure if what Martine, sort of the topics that she just listed, if that's along the correct lines of thinking in terms of what may eventually evolve into a recommendation. in terms of the approach, or if there was some slightly different take on it.
[Martine Dion]: We got a thumbs up from Chris. In SUNY. OK, good. So sounds like we captured the gist of it here. The next one is reduce impervious surfaces and improve on-site hydrology green score. So that one, Matt, you can add on. That one is addressed through the site and safety advisory team.
[Matt Rice]: I think that was the thought process in terms of talking about specifically the hydrology, right? It's a large civil engineering focus there, but also integration with landscape architecture. So I think that's why we were suggesting that it shifts into that category.
[SPEAKER_07]: Okay, go. Does carport solar installation count against
[izVdDtzaCdw_SPEAKER_18]: that in some form, I'm just, I know in some of my prior work that that had come up as something that, because it's draining just based on the surface area of the solar, there are considerations for impervious versus pervious, you know, for the pavement under it.
[Martine Dion]: So- Usually it's over the parking, which is already impervious. So it's not, it's that, you know, diverts the rain in a different way, but it's still stormwater from impervious. What the carport does is provide shade, and that's got a benefit in terms of urban heat island reduction.
[izVdDtzaCdw_SPEAKER_18]: Yeah. Okay, just wanted to, I'd seen it raised in a certain context in a different jurisdiction.
[Martine Dion]: Um, the next 1 is planned for green roofs. That's something that, um, you know, the whole design team is is in is. sort of addressing, considering. And it may be combined with outdoor classrooms. The Green Roof will contribute to LEED, but there are many other benefits to the Green Roofs than just the LEED contribution. And that's the reason why they're being considered. I don't know if. And so that's something, Matt, that's going to come through the design presentations. I believe it's going to evolve through the, you know, the preferred schematic and the schematic design.
[Matt Rice]: It will, and we'll let Audrey chime in. I'll just add in there that it's the amount of green roof that we have, the amount of roof that we preserve for solar, the amount of roof surface that needs to get preserved for mechanical equipment as well. It's a delicate balance that we're going to have to figure out the right mix for as we go forward. And yes, as we show more development and design options, we'll have the opportunity to look at available roof areas a little bit more closely and accurately and understand sort of where opportunities lie. And we can circle back on sort of where those priorities are moving forward. So in some cases, it may be easier if we have something to react to. But Audrey, do you want to?
[Martine Dion]: In most cases, that's why they end up being combined with an outdoor classroom, because a lot of the roof is taken by HVAC and PV.
[hsUGO5ihrRw_SPEAKER_22]: Yeah, sorry, I couldn't find the raise hand button. I was like panicking. I'm sorry, I just, I've been waiting for this for a couple of meetings. Can we go back to the impervious surface thing for real quick? So I teach a lot about this and like literally right now my lessons I'm doing stormwater and it's a huge problem for pollution that goes into the mystic through the storm drains. And so I was listening to what you said. Are you saying that it's not a consideration to do a permeable pavement?
[Martine Dion]: No, no, no, that's not what we're talking about. The on-site hydrology is being discussed as part of that other advisory group. And in that discussion, they are looking at all sort of pervious and impervious impervious reduction, to reduce stormwater. So there's the reduction strategies and also the treatment so that that water does not go into the Mystic River. There's on-site treatment that happens, filtering, etc. What we were talking about is the question from Austin is if you put a carport over the parking, does that reduce the rainwater? It doesn't because it's still the same impervious surface. it drains into the stormwater system. But this project is going to get stormwater that will be treated on site. And then the details are being discussed in that other advisory. There's going to be probably discussions around rain gardens, harvests, pavement, et cetera.
[hsUGO5ihrRw_SPEAKER_22]: assisting, yeah, that's what I was wondering, because there's so much opportunity in that space to deal with stormwater management. And I know for me, that's what I would love to see. I know it's expensive, but just to have that in there.
[Martine Dion]: One thing that was not brought up, but that may be something you're looking into your classes is rainwater harvesting, which basically it's the roof water. It's storm water, but then it's recycled. And that's something we can look into. And what we've seen in some of our projects, we've seen communities install demo systems that can be used for for teachers.
[Matt Rice]: So I think, Audrey, we definitely want to wrap you into the site safety security group and maybe have you connect with our civil engineers as well in terms of talking about that, because it sounds like you have a lot of great experience that we can benefit from, and obviously your familiarity with the site. And I'll put a plug in for snowmelt management as well, being on site a little bit earlier today. Ken sent us some photos, and I stopped by, and it was definitely like a flowing river out there in the parking lots at the moment.
[hsUGO5ihrRw_SPEAKER_22]: Yeah, I'd appreciate that, because I don't want to take up more time, but I would love to. I have so many good questions about how that, you know, for the separate sewer overflow, and I mean, I'm assuming they have to work with the MWRA on that and the city, and it's like, it's a lot. So as, you know, that's for another time, but it's just fascinating to me. So, but I appreciate that.
[Matt Rice]: Okay, we'll definitely get you wrapped in there.
[Martine Dion]: And then the next one is the, obviously the site constraints, the proximity to the fells and the opportunities presented. Oh, did I miss one? No, I did. I apologize. Courtyard outdoor classrooms. So again, that's in the safety, site safety and security advisory discussion, but they are, you know, there's some, highly considerate for the project. We've been including those types of spaces, and we have this huge opportunity with the fells next door as well for this connectivity with the site and nature. I guess in the last meeting, somebody had mentioned the coordination of the fire departments, and that's something that's inherent to the project. Right, Matt, I mean that these the planning of those site spaces are always discussed and reviewed, the fire department in terms of access and where they're located, et cetera, right?
[Matt Rice]: Yes. Yeah, for sure. Especially when it's occupied spaces on a roof. Building code also drives a lot of the considerations there. I see there's a couple of comments in the chat on these three items, sort of the combination of the green roofs and some other topics. Is there any additional comments or thoughts that we want to throw out there? And there was a question from Nathan about whether the green roofs require additional structure. They do, just given the weight, not just of the planting material, but the water that the soil and the plant material can absorb. So it's definitely a consideration and something that we have to account for. in the design early on, which is why it's important for us to identify those locations up front and account for those costs as well when we're estimating and budgeting. And then there was also a question whether they have utility to the teaching curriculum. And I think that they obviously do. We actually hear that from a lot of the team, the teachers, the educators, when we're going to the programming meetings. I don't know that we're specific enough yet to say whether or not the desire for outdoor classroom spaces Preferable if it's at the roof, if it's on the ground, I think there's differences and there's benefits and challenges to each one of those approaches. But there's definitely a desire from an educational standpoint to have better access to outdoor learning environments. All right. I'm going to keep us going down here. So maybe, Martine, if we jump down to item 38. And so this is under energy set.
[Martine Dion]: I think that's Emily. Couple of these are Emily.
[Matt Rice]: Do you want to talk about that Emily?
[Emily Ehlers]: Yeah, so most of mine that are mechanical are givens, but I just wanted to quickly touch on them. It was mentioned in the earlier meetings to ask if we could evaluate especially ground source heat pumps, which is geothermal, and also a couple different more sustainable mechanical systems. So as you can see that all of these items are given, so we will be looking into all of these different mechanical options.
[Martine Dion]: So Emily, the item 38, teacher level control.
[Emily Ehlers]: Oh, yes. Yes. So in terms of teacher level thermal control, That kind of comes down to the facilities team's desires and the teachers' desires. We are able to do different levels of controllability, whether it be through the thermostats in the classrooms or through the central building control system. So that's kind of dependent on the feedback that we get from the teachers, staff, and the facilities team.
[Martine Dion]: Great, and at minimum, we have obviously the code and lead. Yes. That's going to be at minimum, plus what you just mentioned, the teacher and the facilities. There's three fans here.
[Matt Rice]: I'll go ahead, and then we'll jump to Audrey after that.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. When I think about this one in particular, Will every room have sensors that are feeding back into the building control system? I'm just thinking of our new schools where it's like, I brought a recordable thermostat into our library because it was so hot. But nobody knows that unless you're in the room. So will all of these rooms have feedback systems so that the teacher doesn't have to make a phone call to say, it's 85 degrees in here. will know it long before it's at 85 and can do something about it.
[Emily Ehlers]: Yes, so not every single room will have a sensor. And when I say that, I mean all of the much smaller spaces, like the very individual offices. Every single classroom will have its own sensor. The library would have its own sensor. Any of the larger spaces would have its own sensors. And all of those talk back to a central building control system, which the facilities department has access to. And so they can see any trending or alerts that come up on the system and manage it from there. So the goal is that teachers do not need to call them to tell them that their room is above an ideal set point. They will see it on their system beforehand.
[Matt Rice]: Thank you. We'll let Audrey go and then we'll jump to Ken after.
[hsUGO5ihrRw_SPEAKER_22]: Okay, you knew I was going to chime in on this one, right?
[Matt Rice]: I think it's your dog is trying to chime too.
[hsUGO5ihrRw_SPEAKER_22]: So yeah, I'm going to advocate for not doing the second option that she mentioned, which is letting it go to central control. And then we have to either do an email, a phone call or something to get it adjusted because I think I I know I've mentioned this before so I'm in the newer wing of the school and You know, we had the newer HVAC system put in and so it was fine for the first like I don't know few few years and then couple of years ago maybe two or three now I lost track but it's just it's gone haywire it has a mind of its own they they we used to have control now we don't that they shut off control and but now something's wrong with the central one so they can't they can't control what's happening in our rooms. I know mine in particular is not working correctly. Um, and so it just makes it, you know, difficult. So to be able to just as an adult, a professional adult, to be able to walk over to my thermostat and put it at a comfortable temperature, you know, I, I just, I hope that Pete, you know, they'll trust that, you know, none of us are going to crank it right. Like, in a crazy way up or down, but just to make it comfortable for, and the kids too, because I think what's not taking consideration is when a room is empty, sometimes they'll take measurements when the room is empty, but put 24 to 30 bodies in there and it changes drastically. So it's something that, you know, this has been a long time issue. I mean, I can't even see building, I can't even speak to, I know there's so many issues over there, but So it's just something I would say, allowing teachers to have control so that everyone's comfortable in the room. That's my biggest advocate for that.
[Matt Rice]: All right, why don't we jump to Ken now? I know there's a couple of folks that have their hands up. So before we just go back to responding directly, I just want to make sure we can hear from everybody.
[Kenneth Lord]: Sure, just a couple of things on Paul's note about, you know, the, you know, going to the library and it's being too hot and things like that. A lot of those problems are from malfunctions. And even if you have individual control of the room, it's still not going to work right because the system isn't working correctly. So, we can and all of the outer schools see all the temperatures in all the rooms. but can't always control and make a good adjustment because of issues with the systems. At the high school, as Audrey says, the third floor of the B wing, we can see the individual tempers in the rooms, but have difficulty with the equipment because of issues with the equipment. The rest of the high school, you can't. You actually have to go to the room because there's no central BMS system for those buildings, those rooms.
[Matt Rice]: Jessica, I think you were the next one with the hand up. I saw Chris as well, but Chris is now off my screen. So I'm not sure, Chris, if your hand is still up.
[Jessica Parks]: I would just want to advocate for kind of a standardized across rooms. And Audrey, I hear what you're saying, control for each room. I think that control is great for rooms, but a standardized, you know, whatever four degree band of whatever it is. We do that across the campus I work at. Every single building has the same temperature standards and every room has two degrees plus or minus a set temperature. And it's kind of control within a bracket. Um, and it's understanding, um, that this building, the envelope will be so much better than, um, the envelope you have now. Anything will be better than the envelope you have now. Um, and understanding that a lot of times, if you don't have that kind of bracket, your building will start to fight against each other. And you'll have one room next to another room, and those two rooms will be fighting against each other. So I just want to caution against the desire to have whatever temperature you want and just kind of put that out there. So that's all.
[Emily Ehlers]: Yeah, so typically, just bouncing off of that, that is what we do for a lot of our schools is we give the teachers local controllability, but it's just within a certain few degree range. And then there's an overall schedule that's controlled by the facilities team that sets all the classrooms back to a typical school schedule. so that if some teachers bump up the temperature by a few degrees during the school day and then they forget to set it back after hours, the system will reset itself to save on energy. So that is something that we have done at other schools that's been liked by everyone.
[Matt Rice]: Jenny, do you want to chime in?
[Jenny Graham]: I was actually going to ask the project team to provide us some guidance about best practice in large commercial and municipal buildings. It's mind-blowing to me that anybody would allow complete control in a room-by-room basis. I didn't think that happened anymore. So if there are some best practices out there, I think I would appreciate knowing what they are so that we can communicate effectively to teachers who have legitimately been in very terrible heat and climate conditions for a really long time, like A, why this is going to be better, and B, why there are many solutions to this that aren't sort of unfettered control of the temperature, because I think you know, it doesn't, in that kind of a model, it would not take much to be in a like budget crisis halfway through the year. Like, and we can't, we obviously have to protect against those kinds of unforeseen circumstances too. So any best practices about what is happening in this space in the modern times for the benefit of the folks in the building who aren't scientists like Audrey and also have only ever worked at Medford High to know that there's like a, maybe like a better world out there would be really useful, I think, as we go forward.
[Matt Rice]: So I think Emily started to jump into that direction, but we can definitely provide a little bit more detail in terms of what specific systems and level of controllability that we have had in recent high school projects, specifically within the state. I'll just tack on, I'm going to ask that we just move on to the next item after this one. I think at the end of the day, it really comes down to an issue of controllability of systems and the ability for an individual, in this case, the teacher to sort of control that environment. There are other sort of devices, levers that can be pulled that we can design in that we'll cover as we go forward. But those do include operable windows as one approach. And there's a whole other thread of discussion that we could go into in terms of the interaction between the operable windows and the mechanical system so that those things don't short circuit each other. There's also the potential of using some lower energy devices like ceiling fans, which is sort of a more traditional technology. to provide sort of an immediate level of feedback without necessarily interacting with the overall thermostat in the building central system. So definitely more to come on that particular topic, but we definitely hear you, Audrey, in terms of sort of that concern and wanting to understand a little bit more about what's going to be there. I'm going to take this one real quick, Martine, just in terms of the heat pump report, because I do want to give a shout out to the left field team. Linda Lepordo in particular has been doing some great research in terms of reaching out to some of the knowledgeable individuals that were associated with the generation of this MSBA heat pump report. I think, Paul, you were out there for maybe a a session that the MSBA did in Agawam where they went full geothermal and there was a lot of MSBA support. There are a lot of incentives that we do think are still available. The IRA is still a potential opportunity in terms of full system incentive opportunities and then we think we have a good lead on potential opportunity for the test well installation as well. that we're currently just having some additional conversations on there. I don't know that we have a lot of specifics to share here right now, but there's been a lot of activity on this and productive activity for which I'm more optimistic than when we started and before we had gone down this research path. I don't know if anyone has particular questions on this. I think it needs further discussion just because the outreach is still ongoing, but there's definitely been some good activity on that one.
[Martine Dion]: So the AV ready for the feet and the future buses, that's something that Andrew Barrows may speak to. This is something that would be in addition to the required vehicle AV installation under the LEED V5 in the city's parking requirements.
[Matt Rice]: And I can let you chime in, Andrew. I just also want to preface this one by, I don't think we've had the dedicated opportunity to talk with the transportation department about their plans for EV buses and how that might align with the project as well. So we need to do a little bit of just getting up to speed in terms of the lay of the land on this particular topic.
[Martine Dion]: Right. I was gonna say that we thought we need some quantification that type of stuff, because it tends to add, you know, a significant, it has a significant impact on the service to the, it would have a significant impact.
[h56i5SspnTk_SPEAKER_10]: Yeah, it's a very significant impact, especially if we're trying to have a fleet of buses. And I guess that comes down to the goal. Is this for a few buses, for sports teams, or is this for a fleet of buses to pick up the students every morning and drop them off every afternoon? where would the storage of the buses be? Because that's essentially where you would want the EV charging to happen is where the buses will be living at night when they're just parked. So that's one of the big considerations.
[Matt Rice]: Yeah. And Sarah has put a comment in the chat as well that, I mean, the majority of busing that happens right now is through the MBTA in terms of high school busing specifically. So it would require a change also in the thinking about, Are we housing the buses that are feeding the middle schools and the elementary schools at the high schools? There's a lot of conversations that would have to take place there. So I see Austin, Brenda, and Chris, maybe in that order. I think those are the hands that went up.
[izVdDtzaCdw_SPEAKER_18]: Yeah, I'm just wondering for EV, based on some of these comments, maybe I'll leave the buses aside, but just as you're doing design, are you considering either sizing a switch gear to account for some unknown future load, or is that a decision? Or I think that is that analysis being?
[Martine Dion]: Yes. There's a requirement in LEED for installed EV, a minimum of install, and then there's a requirement in the stretch code for readiness, right, Andrew?
[h56i5SspnTk_SPEAKER_10]: Yes. I believe it's 20% to be installed. 10%. Is it 10%?
[Martine Dion]: Yeah, 10%.
[h56i5SspnTk_SPEAKER_10]: I'm going off the top of my head at this point.
[Martine Dion]: Yeah, okay. 20% readiness, I think.
[h56i5SspnTk_SPEAKER_10]: Yeah.
[izVdDtzaCdw_SPEAKER_18]: Out of available spaces? Sorry.
[h56i5SspnTk_SPEAKER_10]: Yeah, it would be based off of the available spaces, yes, at the school.
[Matt Rice]: It's a big number when we're thinking like 400 plus parking spaces overall. Right.
[h56i5SspnTk_SPEAKER_10]: I take that percentage. I take the worst case percentage with the PV ready, because if it gets installed down the line, the electrical system needs to support it. So I have to take the worst case scenario.
[izVdDtzaCdw_SPEAKER_18]: Yeah, and your instantaneous load is right at the peak of the school day if everyone's coming to school and plugging in, right?
[h56i5SspnTk_SPEAKER_10]: Right, yeah, well, the systems are pretty smart, and they will balance themselves out and kind of throttle themselves so that they don't hit the system too hard. And whenever there's availability, then it will ramp up as it goes during the day.
[Matt Rice]: Brenda, you want to go?
[Brenda Pike]: Yeah, I just dropped this in the chat too, but we've been working with a consultant on a bus electrification plan, the outlines of a phased approach for bus electrification, and then also the charging infrastructure that would be needed for that. And I forwarded that along today, but if there are other folks that need that report to be sent to them, let me know and I can make sure that they get that.
[h56i5SspnTk_SPEAKER_10]: If you haven't sent it to me, do you mind sending that to me as well?
[Matt Rice]: We can circulate it amongst the team, Brenda. No worries there. OK, great. Depending on who got it.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Chris?
[Aaron Olapade]: I think this is great. Just an observation I had on a larger scale. The question of electrifying buses and the fleet is a great question because it's really largely undefined. And it's hard to say what we would need to plan for in regards to that specific question. The fact that we have to build in capacity to power 20% of our total parking, was that the number?
[h56i5SspnTk_SPEAKER_10]: Roughly. Yeah.
[Aaron Olapade]: Gives us a lot of great running room to address that need when it arises. So as a question to the team, like as a As it relates to the project, this issue in specific seems to be addressed by the excess capacity. We have unknown needs, but we have a good amount of capacity provided. As a systems decision, I think it answers the question the best we could, and it really takes it off the table so we can focus on other questions. All in my opinion. Thank you. Thank you.
[Paul Ruseau]: Paul? Thank you, yes. I noticed that Ken mentioned that we don't have buses in the contract with the company, but I know that the school committee has talked for years about bringing busing in-house, that in fact, it is not more expensive. It requires administrative work and, you know, Worcester has done this and they are saving a fortune. So, you know, as we have had enormous difficulty with While all bus companies are having trouble getting people to actually do those jobs, I think that my perception is that it's the school committee's desire to bring busing in-house, not now, not just because of the building itself, the building project, but because you really need a robust administrative set of systems to be able to even start that. having us not have to undergo a multi-million dollar infrastructure improvement project just to start buying buses would be fabulous. It's true, there's almost no busing that goes to the high school, but we don't really have any other place to put buses in the district is my gut. So they got to go somewhere. And in my mind, the place to put them is where you've already got the infrastructure set up. So obviously this is an after the high school is built kind of a problem, but it would definitely make sense to be ready. Because relying on vendors isn't a problem per se, except that as is the case in virtually the entire country, it's a no bid system. There's only ever one company. bidding on every bus contract anywhere. So we are really at their, whatever they want to make us pay is what we're going to pay. So I think that's a terrible position for us to be in as a district. So great conversation.
[h56i5SspnTk_SPEAKER_10]: One thing I want to point out is you also have to consider too the amount of space, however many, say you need 10 buses. And if we provide a charger per every two buses, those chargers are significantly larger than normal car charging. So you're going to be losing a lot of space for potential faculty parking and future student parking and all that. So I do want to make that a point. I know the infrastructure is there for the building. I'd love to see EV buses as well.
[Matt Rice]: It's definitely a good consideration as site areas that are premium, so something to factor into the thinking as we move forward. We can certainly reference that piece of it as well as part of a recommendation. that there would have to be some site area potentially set aside if we have even the capacity maybe already cooked in as Chris noted. All right. I want to keep us going. I'm trying to, let's see. So the labs, the fossil fuel, are you just, I was just, sorry, I was thinking how many more we have to get through and we have 37 minutes approximately.
[h56i5SspnTk_SPEAKER_10]: Yeah.
[Matt Rice]: So let me just really quickly on the, do I lose it here? In terms of the non-heating gas needs, So I think from the kitchen perspective, we are in pretty good position from the conversations that we've had during programming, both with the main food service kitchen as well as culinary arts programs, to think about all electric cooking. So I don't think that there's a gas need there. We haven't had the opportunity to fully run through the nuance of the natural gas use that would be in a science lab for Bunsen burners and such, but we have done a fair amount of research for other all-electric high school facilities that offer some viable opportunities for electric-based heating for science experiment needs. It's something that we definitely need to talk through and haven't had the opportunity to get to that level of detail with the science staff yet. So I think that's on a to-do list item to make sure that they have an approach that is comfortable to them as well, but just something that needs to happen moving forward. So I'm not sure if We need to have too much discussion on that today.
[Martine Dion]: The only thing that I'm going to add to that is that we're going to probably bring in some further information once we have the meeting with the first meeting with National Grid on the incentives. My understanding is if there's a gas line on the site it may highly impede the incentives and I'm going to get more clarification on that. So The more reason to, you know, consider not having gas in the labs as much as possible. PV discussion.
[Matt Rice]: Yeah. I just want to mention quickly. So Sonny put in the note that we may need process gas for plumbing in the HVAC programs. So we can talk that through with Chad as well. To understand in some cases we've done that as oil is an option in terms of having a tank on site. We can talk about bottled gases as well with them, potentially.
[Martine Dion]: So, in terms of PV, I may bundle a couple of of these. The code does not require solar PV and battery, but I believe my understanding from the discussions, and this is still for discussion, obviously, there's going to be solar PV assessments. There's a minimum readiness required by code. Because we're doing all electric heating systems, heating and cooling systems, You do not need to install the system, but you need to plan for it. There are benefits to purchase and install the system or to do a PPA, so that will be an ongoing discussion. That said, the preparedness and the readiness also needs to be discussed with the utility, and as we've started to engage, both Andrew engaged on the engineering side, I've engaged on The incentive side, and we're trying to get all those people together to talk, including the PV interconnection people, and talk with National Grid and start talking about the implication of planning for solar PV and battery storage. Our understanding of the Medford policy is that it does not apply to municipal building. So we want to triple check this with the city. But at the same time, that doesn't mean that this project and your community is not going to move forward. in including solar PV. I think it's worth an assessment as part of the project to see how the benefits of including solar PV and battery storage. There was a question last time about the Wakefield Memorial High School battery storage. Wakefield is a bit different because they have a municipal utility. So what they did at Wakefield, they created a microgrid that is owned, installed. It's coordinated with the high school project, but it is not part of the high school project. It's owned and installed by the municipal utility and it serves both the high school and an adjacent technical technical school. Battery storage at Medford High School would be different. It would become part of the project and obviously would be owned by the city unless it goes through a PPA, unless the system would be under a PPA agreement. And then there were the emergencies are given. So that's it for the PV. I don't know if there's any discussion around that. The plan is to start looking at high-level assessments and bring that into the design discussion.
[Matt Rice]: Maybe just ask as part of this group because I know we do have a lot of fairly knowledgeable folks. If there's anyone that is feels that they can offer something to that conversation and talking with the utilities on the incentive programs. We're happy to wrap you into those conversations as well so that we try to leverage sort of our Medford expertise to the highest ability.
[izVdDtzaCdw_SPEAKER_18]: I've had some experience with National Grid in their cluster study process, which I'm not sure would apply here, but it's uh in some cases extraordinarily long so getting started early and any of them they're all it's all hype that's why we're starting to talk now we waited years for yeah and then we're asked to pay a very large sum of money just for the pleasure of interconnecting so
[Martine Dion]: I think Brenda.
[Matt Rice]: Sorry, my internet dropped out for a second there. So I'm going to also go back on the recording often to get the majority of that.
[Brenda Pike]: I was just going to note that we are developing a strategic energy management plan with National Grid for the city-owned buildings. And as part of that, we'll be meeting with them monthly. And that's the energy efficiency side of things, but they're good contacts to get in touch with others there. So if you'd like to join any of those meetings or if you're looking for contacts that you're having a hard time getting in touch with, there's a lot of questions about that.
[Martine Dion]: So, um, let us know. There's a thank you. There's a question in the chat from Sunni about solar to cover a few percentage of energy need on all cost. Estimate correlating with the available area of the roof. I think Sunni our assessments are going to include both the roof and parking canopies. Um, relates, um, to, in terms of the building, full building energy use.
[Matt Rice]: I was also just going to say, Brenda, I hope it's okay if we potentially pull you in as well. If you're having those municipal discussions, it may make sense to gain the benefit of that perspective as well. And we're talking about the school building as one of the, probably the largest municipal building. Right.
[Martine Dion]: Sounds good. Next one is the circularity, material circularity principles. I believe that was brought up in the previous meeting. And that's something we're going to be looking into. As you can see here, a huge amount of the discussions around embodied carbon, healthy materials, lifecycle costs, all of that is given. We're looking to include registry, red list approved, and declare label, where there's three equals. And that's going to be a given as well. And we'll address the material circularity as well.
[Matt Rice]: Martine, can you just touch really quickly on sort of why material circularity principles got the yellow versus the green?
[Martine Dion]: Yes, because this is something that's going to need a bit more research. And we're going to have to be looking into where it makes sense. Again, we're talking about three equals and procurement in terms of, you know, which, where does it make sense on these large projects, in addition to all the other components and materials attributes, and they go hand in hand. But this is a sort of an additional criteria that we're going to track here. It is not something that is usually, you know, tracked. It's not yet common practice, let me put it this way.
[Adam Hurtubise]: All right, thank you. All right, so we'll jump down to 63 and 64. Your healthfulness.
[Martine Dion]: Biofix, so yeah, this is something that ties into, obviously ties into sustainability, sustainable design, but I think there's a huge amount of design element as part of this that will come through the design discussions in terms of enhancing interior green spaces, plants, biophilic elements like wood materials that are tied to nature. and bring nature connection in addition to views to the outside. We also have direct connection to the outside through those outdoor classrooms. All of this supports wellness. The quality of the environmental quality are all part of this as well. The acoustics, the daylight, all of this kind of plays into the biophilia principles. The next one is Red List Free PVC Freeware Feasible. So we've talked a bit about this when we talked about circularity. The environmental product declaration, health product declaration are inherent to the lead criteria. And then we are going to apply the Red List Free, Red List Approved, and declare label. There's a typo there. Again, there's a lot of opportunity there, and this does not mean additional cost. It's where there are many, many manufacturers that offer this. With the three equals, we're able to get the competitiveness and require it. So that's, I don't know if anybody has comments or questions on those, but that's something that was brought up and that we will include. So maybe if there's no discussion around those, we can move to the next two. integrate vocational program with building systems. I see this a bit as environmental stewardship as well, because we're talking about all electric climate resiliency type systems. If we end up with solar PV, for example, that all would be integrated with some of the vocational program and we've done that in other projects where we've tied some of the systems within the teaching programs. and software as well, right?
[Matt Rice]: Yeah, so the reason why this isn't a yellow is only because of the fact that we haven't had the opportunity to circle back on sort of detailed equipment lists and systems with Chapter 74 instructors. So we want to make sure we have those conversations so there's equal interest in terms of them using the systems and adapting and teaching the systems as well. We don't want to go and put a whole bunch of things in that are going to sit there idle as well. So we want to make sure that we're sort of applying the effort in the budget where it's going to have the best value and benefit to everybody.
[Martine Dion]: And then the next one is about sensory overload. This in terms of avoiding sort of the design and the visual Too much visual contrast. That's something that's going to be discussed and represented as part of the exterior and interior design advisory team. And I would say, Matt, that the biophilia is something that may want to be now transferred there because it's really, really tied to design.
[Matt Rice]: Okay.
[Martine Dion]: I think we can. Yeah.
[Matt Rice]: And as long as nobody objects to that, we can definitely suggest that that gets wrapped into interior design. And I guess exterior as well. Yeah.
[izVdDtzaCdw_SPEAKER_24]: Right. I would like to second that. Thanks, Martine, for saying it.
[Martine Dion]: Hi, Elizabeth. Hi. Thank you. The next one, define evaluation criteria. There were 29 options. What we're looking to do here is the options are similar in many ways and different in many other ways. There's going to be an effort to narrow down the number of options. And we are going to assess the solar PV and some of the systems, the LCCA, for example, the different HVAC system on the preferred reno-add option and the preferred new construction option. So my understanding, Matt, is that that's going to happen in about a month. And then from there, we would be able to narrow down on these options, right?
[Matt Rice]: Maybe a little bit less than a month, but yes, the overall messaging here is that we're going to do those detailed studies on that smaller selection of preferred alternatives as we move forward. I think it's worth noting just for everyone's awareness, for the cost estimating that was completed on the 29 different options, we did include the purchase of photovoltaic panels for a net zero equation, and that is sort of a baseline, and then can be sort of reduced down from that moving forward.
[Martine Dion]: And then the next one, is there any comments?
[Matt Rice]: Paul had a hand up.
[Paul Ruseau]: Matt, just what did you mean by reduce down? I don't know what that means.
[Matt Rice]: To go from the 29 options that we have currently, Paul, to a smaller selection of them.
[Paul Ruseau]: So you don't mean reducing down from net zero?
[Matt Rice]: No, no, no, no. Sorry. Sorry if I was unclear there. No, that's fine.
[Martine Dion]: The next one is clarify reimbursement variation by community scope and what is eligible.
[Matt Rice]: Yeah, so I think this one was a little bit outside the purview maybe of this particular advisory team to think it was going to sort of larger MSBA reimbursement models, which we talked a little bit about at the last meeting, but it's something that. We're going to get feedback from the MSBA for our particular project within the next couple weeks when they finish their review. And so that's really what's going to give us the best information in terms of reimbursement for Medford High School. There's not a lot that we're going to be able to understand about our project from what other projects had in terms of reimbursement. It's very community specific. So I think that's, again, why that needs further discussion. We can certainly talk about it in this group, but it's also not directly connected to sustainability and MEP systems per se.
[Martine Dion]: So the last one, document safe harboring and other financial step to lock in future benefits. So the one thing I wanna say about that, if I'm understanding this well, for example, the fact that we're talking to the utilities now specifically about incentives, one of the goals is to lock in the MOU. They usually sign the MOUs in schematic design. Utility programs go into three-year cycle, but every year sometimes they have the right to adjust them a bit. So it's very important to lock in the current program. For example, this January their programs slightly differ from, you know, two or three years ago, and they changed some of the reimbursement rates. So our, you know, our other schools that we did, you know, which we started two or three years ago, we made sure we were locking in those incentives and we sign the MOU and we keep good copies of the MOU. We means all of us, it means the OPM, but we make sure that that's set and that's clear so that they honor those incentives. So I'm sure this comment covers more than that, but I just want to use the incentive as an example. Um, to make sure that you're optimizing some of the financial funding that that, um, this project is going to benefit from. I don't know if the comment meant it was meant for other things, but that's that's how I understood it.
[Matt Rice]: Austin, go ahead.
[izVdDtzaCdw_SPEAKER_18]: Yeah, I think this might have been my initial comment from December. Um, I think that certainly Part of it, I think the other part of it is categorizing equipment that is specific to whether it's the solar or the storage specifically, or even I think some of the HVAC equipment, how that gets categorized as solar property and then being able to either safe harbor through procurement decisions or other decisions to lock in basically current tax year policy, recognizing that on July 4th of this year, after the OBBB, things are going to change significantly. And then again, I believe in at the end of 2027, things will change dramatically again, barring any change in policy. So it's basically locking in current tax year structures such that obviously Medford is municipality, you don't pay taxes, but you're able to generate those tax credits that can then be transferred, which can be a source of revenue for the project. So those were the specific instances that I was referring to, it's just those need to take decisions and it may just be that it's too early because of where we are in design and sort of how that overlays with the regulatory environment. But as you're stepping back and looking at the design and narrowing down design procurement decisions that can be made early with an eye towards towards taking advantage of sort of current regulatory environments can create benefits for the project down the road.
[Martine Dion]: In the future. Yes, you're talking about 179D and the IRA, specifically at the federal level. So we will track those, at least if it's still too early, we will track and try to see what will happen. And there's also the state programs the SMART program with the Massachusetts that's worth looking into for the PV, but the heat pumps are also pretty, there's definitely future benefits if you register them with the uh, AEC program through the state as well, which hopes it's still going to be there in 2031, 2030. Um, but yes, we will be, um, kind of tracking those.
[izVdDtzaCdw_SPEAKER_18]: And it's trying to track those.
[Martine Dion]: The decision making is, is going to have to be discussed in terms of pre-procurement and that sort of thing that that will have to be further discussed.
[izVdDtzaCdw_SPEAKER_18]: And it is a, it is a potential opportunity or option to it could sway this group and the school committee's decision-making around electing to go to a third-party power purchase agreement versus owning it outright. Because if you go to a third-party PPA, that developer takes all of those credits generally in exchange for a lower rate on the solar being sold, as you well know. So you get to sort of offload all of that onto someone else, but you don't own the system.
[Matt Rice]: All right, I think there's some additional detail that we can definitely try to capture on that item moving forward. Are there any items that people recall that are sort of your passion items that we maybe missed as part of this discussion going through that we want to take a second? I will. I'm going to pivot back over to the PowerPoint just to circle back on the next steps piece of this, but happy to also hear from anything that we weren't able to cover during the time as we ran through.
[izVdDtzaCdw_SPEAKER_24]: I don't know how to raise my hand. Sorry. I do have a question. I think it can be answered quickly on one of the green items. It was just the way it was worded. It was about conduct daylighting studies. And since I missed the last meeting, I apologize for that. I just wanted to know what that means. Does that mean that the design team or the district is supposed to conduct those studies? Or does that mean look at existing studies? Or what exactly does that mean?
[Martine Dion]: I just I thought I was muted. Yeah, we will do there is a sort of a design side of daylighting studies with where the design as a design progresses the classrooms, for example, library, like, you know, major spaces looking at fenestration and how to optimize daylighting without impacting glare or controlling glare, the design of the facade with solar shading devices. So there's that sort of micro level of daylight modeling. And then there's the macro level of daylight modeling that we do for LEED purposes to see if we meet the criteria.
[izVdDtzaCdw_SPEAKER_24]: Does that answer your question, Elizabeth? Absolutely. Thank you. Yep. Fully understand. Thanks.
[Matt Rice]: So just what everyone sees up on screen hopefully right now is what we have going forward. Sarah, let me just run through this real quick and then I'll circle back to your question. We just want to reiterate the fact that we're going to get together again in September at the beginning of schematic design. In that meeting, we'll both look at some formalized draft recommendations that could then hopefully be tweaked and then started to be actually pushed to the building committee so that they're aware of them and we can work through them to figure out what will get adopted moving forward officially before we get to the end of schematic design. But we also have the opportunity at the beginning of September to review the preferred alternative, which will be coming out of the conclusion of the feasibility study. And we'll be looking through the lens of this advisory team, so all the different sustainability topics and systems topics that have been covered will have the ability to poke and prod a bit at that preferred alternative to understand sort of impacts there and opportunities. So that'll be part of the next meeting agenda as well as we go forward. So I'm going to pull this down and then we can take a couple more questions here. So Sarah, you want to go first and we'll jump to Chris?
[UdfiATpNBs8_SPEAKER_12]: Yeah, I just I don't want to lose sight of resilience and the importance of resilience and just make sure that that's, you know, as you guys work through looking at the different iterations of the design, you know, that that's still part of the conversation, you know, whether it's about community resilience, or just how the building is potentially, you know, sitting on the site and its relationship to the fells in particular, you know, things like that. And I just I want to make sure that's still part of the conversation because I didn't, there wasn't too much of that today. And, you know, I worry sometimes these conversations get into the weeds on LEAD when, you know, and LEAD requirements because that's, you know, this kind of thing that hovers over as a funding source because of the MSBA requirement, but just make sure that we're doing doing things that are right and appropriate and sustainable and resilient, you know, and meeting the lead requirement to get the money to support those, you know, those actions, but also, like, let's not lose sight of where we're building and how we're building, you know, regardless of the lead requirements.
[Matt Rice]: I think it's definitely a valid point. And I cannot recall whether or not we had any resiliency items in the list that were green and that we maybe just went right past. But we can certainly circle back through the list to make sure that we're capturing that type of thought process as we go forward.
[Adam Hurtubise]: Chris.
[Aaron Olapade]: Thanks. Just a quick process question. You referred to the outcome of this group's contributions as the preferred alternative. Is that to suggest there is a base scope that it would be an alternative to, or is it alternative in the context of option?
[Matt Rice]: So the preferred alternative will be coming. It's one of the options that will evolve from where we are currently. We're currently at 29. We'll reduce to three to five. And then eventually by the end of the PSR, there is one. It's an action that's voted on by the building committee in terms of what that preferred alternative is. And then what I'm suggesting is as we get to the fourth iteration of this meeting for all the advisory teams that each one We'll have the opportunity to talk about that preferred alternative given the focus of each of the teams in terms of where their areas of expertise are.
[Aaron Olapade]: It makes sense. Would you call it an option as well? Not to get hung up on semantics, but just understanding this is three to five choices for the building committee to vote on, and it'll be three to five options. Do I have that correct?
[Matt Rice]: Hey, I'm trying to figure out how to answer to make it clear for myself also in terms of, because I sort of treat the alternative and the option as synonymous sometimes in my head.
[Aaron Olapade]: Correct. That's what I'm, yeah, that's kind of what I'm asking as opposed to an alternative to a already selected option, which is not, does not exist. No, no, no.
[Matt Rice]: It's, yeah, it's a discrete option. If you will, that's going to be considered moving forward. Appreciate it. Thank you. Yep. Sorry to get lost in the words there. Other thoughts, closing comments? We're a little bit early, which is amazing in terms of getting through all this information. I know it's very dense material. And again, really do appreciate everyone being willing to stick with us for a little bit extra time to make sure that we had ability to get through things. But if we have no further comments, we're happy to conclude. Thank you so much again. Very, very much appreciated.
[Unidentified]: Thank you all so much.
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