AI-generated transcript of 04.13.2026 MSC Regular Meeting (In Person)

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Good evening. Good evening, everybody. This is the eighth regular meeting of the Medford School Committee. Today is Monday, April 13, 2026. And we have our 6 p.m. meeting. in the Howard Alden Memorial Chambers, and via remote participation, and this meeting is being recorded. The meeting can be viewed live on the Medford Community YouTube channel, through Medford Community Media, on your local cable channel, Comcast 9, 8, or 22, and Verizon 43, 45, or 47. You can call or log in through the Zoom link, and then use meeting ID 921-5677-8144. Member Rizzo, if you could call the roll, please.

[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham. Here. Member Mastraboni. Here. Member Olapade. Here. Member Parks. Here. Member Reinfeld.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Here.

[Paul Ruseau]: Member Ruseau present. Mayor Langenkirchen.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Present. Seven present, zero absent. Thank you to our student reps for joining. And if we all may rise to salute the flag, please. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. We have our consent agenda, approval of bills and payrolls, approval of donations, donation of $1,000 from PTO to class of 2028, quarterly update, collaborative newsletter, approval of meeting minutes from our regular meeting on April 6th, 2026. Is there a motion on the floor for approval of the consent agenda? By Member Reinfeld, seconded by Member Mastroboni. All those in favor? All those opposed? Paper passes. We do not have any reports of subcommittees and we have three reports from our superintendent, so I'll turn it over to Dr. Galussi for the Mustang moment.

[Suzanne Galusi]: Thank you. I know I start every meeting this way, but it's just my favorite part of the meeting. So this evening, we have the privilege of having Medford High School's Science Fair awardees here with us. And so I'm going to have Director of Science, Mr. Rocco Sieri, do just a little bit of framing for us before he welcomes the students up to talk about their project and teach all of us a little bit more about science this evening.

[Rocco Cieri]: Good evening, Madam Mayor and school committee members. This is probably one of the most exciting meetings to be at in terms of what the students bring to the Medford Public Schools. Their creativity and ingenuity in class is often not seen on the day-to-day, but at the end of each year, we've been doing an annual science fair for really more years than can be imagined, and they've been continuous in Medford since, oh, probably the 1960s or so. This year, I'm excited to be able to bring a few people forward, to introduce them and let them speak about their projects. But in particular, before I do that, I want to thank Tufts University for coordinating a lot of judges. That takes a lot of effort to bring in the graduate students and allow the kids to have somebody to speak to who's in the field. Mr. Chris Mabbitt is here this evening. He also participates in the judging and coordinates judges from his firm. and also sponsors the event for us. We also have Wegmans who provided breakfast and lunch for us this year from Medford, so we're very excited about that for the judges. And then we have, I'm trying to think, I feel like there's someone I'm missing and I don't want to miss the person, but I think we've got everybody accounted for. Quick background, the teachers are the ones who basically introduce the project and allow them to pursue something that they're interested in. Some of the projects are based in classroom work. And other times, students get to just choose what they want. Everybody has the option to choose, but we want every student to be able to participate in something. So we also provide classroom-based projects for the kids. Tonight, I'm going to ask that a sampling of the winners is here tonight. We give 15 honorable mentions, and then a top prize, a second prize, and a third prize. Our three top winners are here, and as I said, a sampling of the honorable mentions are here. I'll just call them up one by one, and then I'll read what their project is, and then if they want to say something, I'll let them say something. Sound good? Awesome. Okay. Saffron Jacobs. You can just tell them the name of your project.

[SPEAKER_01]: My project was on acoustic resonance.

[Rocco Cieri]: Leah Hershkowitz.

[SPEAKER_01]: My project was about stress levels in teens over a daily basis.

[Rocco Cieri]: I'm going to call up Kevin Azizi. And before I introduce Kevin or allow him to speak, he actually was not at our local fair, because he was at the state fair, which they qualified for through the regional fair. So we coordinate with them to be able to get students to participate at higher level fairs. So Kevin's project, who worked with Kang and Travers, who I think is at a baseball game tonight, he presented at the state fair on the same day. So go ahead, you can tell them what you guys did.

[SPEAKER_12]: Our project was on finding the perfect pitch in baseball, and yeah, using different effects.

[Rocco Cieri]: And our third place winner was Lucy McSheffrey.

[SPEAKER_16]: My project was on finding what kind of light has the most effect on watercolor over time.

[Rocco Cieri]: Kang just arrived, so I'm going to call him up. Kang, why don't you come up?

[SPEAKER_11]: And you can let them know your project. So our project for the science fair was finding the perfect pitch via the magnus in seam shifted wake effects.

[Rocco Cieri]: So he's member number two of the group. Thank you very much. Thank you. In second place, we had Griffin Lynch Wood.

[SPEAKER_00]: Our project was about generating electricity from a sandstorm and using static electricity to harness power from natural energies, which is really interesting to do. Thank you.

[Rocco Cieri]: And our winners this year were Sam Keith, Jayden Ville, and Maggie Carroll. I'm going to take a little bit of a moment to let them present a little bit of what they did, just to give you a sampling of what it sounds like. Imagine this times the 25 odd projects that we have in the science lecture hall. Go for it.

[Jayden Vil]: Thank you all for having us here. And if I were to give a rundown of our project, I would frame it like this. If you're trying to make a smoothie, you want to know the recipe behind it. The same thing goes with tone. If you want to create a certain tone on the violin, you need to know the ingredients behind it. And so what our project was about is finding those ingredients behind the sound and figuring out a way to objectively measure them. Because oftentimes, tone words like scratchy or airy or clear are kind of stuck in this vague and kind of psychodynamic way of describing them. But it's left unclear for the musician how to actually apply that to their playing. In our experiment, we found two main ingredients, the harmonic frequencies, which is caused by the vibration of the string, and what most people don't realize, the inharmonic frequencies, which is just caused, for instance, we played a violin, is caused by the friction between the bow and the string, just making contact, and it gives a little scratch, a little friction to the sound that can open up a wide range of tone colors. And so in our experiment, we had a few control sounds, airy, scratchy, and clear, to have our perceived idea of what a harmonic and inharmonic frequencies would sound like if we were to create an airy, scratchy, or solid tone. And then we applied our analysis of those to varying a violin technique. For ours, it was sounding point. And so we would play. with about the first sounding point, second, third, fourth, and fifth, to then see if our ideas on how the inharmonic and harmonic frequencies influence the sound actually played out. What we found is that our prediction for the inharmonic frequencies worked pretty well with our data and was a good predictor of what the tone would be, but our harmonic frequency analysis of taking the ratio of the harmonic peaks didn't work as well. And so something we might look into further is how to better that analysis. And so, along with the inharmonic frequencies, we found that sounding point two was the best, which aligns with something that our violin teachers always told us as up-and-coming violinists, and how there's a place between the bridge and the fingerboard, between sounding points one and five, that has a really great tone, you don't need to do a lot for it, and we found our data showed that it was sounding point two, because it had the least inharmonic frequencies. And so, while describing tone is harder than it sounds, we hope we made it just a little bit easier with our project.

[Rocco Cieri]: questions.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: I think we're just so impressed.

[Suzanne Galusi]: I have to say I commented this to a couple of the caregivers and students that were here and Mr. Seery knows this because I say it every year but the science fair I called the annual day of humbling for me because the genius and brilliance of our high school students that is represented at the science fair each year just blows my mind. And it's a lot of what we talk about here around that level of belonging and the academic belonging of these scientists is just very well demonstrated, not just at the science fair all year long, but in these chambers tonight. And so I'm very, very proud of all of you. Thank you very much, and congratulations.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Yeah, we'll do a picture, and thank you to Mabbitt Associates, I think, for volunteering and, I'm sure, donating. But, yeah, come on up, everybody, the top 15 and our top three. We'll take a quick photo. Thanks all. Next up we have an update on the Mass General Art Chapter 74 CTE Program Admissions Policy. Mr. Chad Fallon, CTE Executive Director.

[Suzanne Galusi]: Mr. Fallon is joining. He's going to be joining virtually, has had a little technical hiccup, so he will be joining momentarily. I think I can start to frame this for you. And then if you have specific questions, he will be joining and able to answer your questions. You have in your packets, the handout that he provided. It may not be a color copy, but you can see the parts that were highlighted. So he came before this body last year for a policy per the DESE requirement that all CTE programs in the Commonwealth need to have a lottery process for admission. We presented our draft lottery process. It was approved. This is the feedback from the Department of Education around some language changes that they would like to see represented in the policy. So you will see here most of it is just those added details. to flag for families where they can find information and what to do for student retainment pathways. Other than that, all the language was approved by the Department of Education. Just these pieces that are highlighted are just additional details that the Department of Education would like to see reflected in our policy. I do see that Mr. Fallon has joined the Zoom and is here if you have any questions for him. Or Mr. Fallon, if I missed anything in that overview, please feel free to elaborate.

[Chad Fallon]: No, that was perfect. Thank you. And I apologize for being late. It's really just some simple revisions. A lot of the items were already there, but we provided it back to them so they could see where it's highlighted in the document. But I'm happy to answer any questions people have.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Mr. Fallon, can you tell us how many students we have that are out of district that attend Arvok?

[Chad Fallon]: Right now we have five students left. Four of them are graduating this year and one student will graduate next year.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: And then will we not accept out of district or?

[Chad Fallon]: We have not been able to accept any out of district because we're full with Medford residents. So if the time should come that we have seats available, then we could look at offering seats to the students in neighboring communities.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: And when you say seats, is it overall capacity or is it per? field.

[Chad Fallon]: It would be if we have availability now that we're doing the lottery and we do it in grade nine. If we have seats available in programs, we could make a decision as a district to offer seats for specific programs to students that might be interested in grade 10.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Okay. So you're saying that all of our all of our seats are taken even if there's not a wait list for a certain field.

[Chad Fallon]: Yeah, we're full right now because we placed a lot of students that were on wait lists into different programs while they're awaiting a spot in their chosen program. So right now we're completely full with 20 students who didn't get any of their choices. So we were full with a wait list just on our own students.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Member Reinfeld.

[Erika Reinfeld]: Thank you. Most of this feedback from Desi looks clarifying and the student retainment I think is really important to check in and not assume everything's all set once they're done. My question is, did we, so this was run for the first time this January. What did we learn? Are there changes that we think we might be seeing in the future based on what was happening? So that's my first question. And then my second question is around the communication to students who decide not to pursue a CTE. Cuz I know that was a little bit unclear this year. So any changes from this year and how does this affect those who decide not to continue after their exploratory into the CTE program?

[Chad Fallon]: So as of right now, we don't have any plans to change the way we're doing it. We still plan on doing a straight lottery. We plan on doing it in grade nine after they've gone through exploratory. So we plan on doing that for next year. What we're going to tweak is that roughly, usually every year, it's anywhere between 60 to 80 students who choose not to continue. So this year we ran about 276 freshmen through our exploratory program. We only have seats for about 200. So those students, it works so that, you know, 90% of our students got, you know, one of their, one of their choices, most students got their first choice. What we found was students in construction, health assisting, I know them all, I say it every day. Health assisting, electrical, construction, and film and TV, those four programs we needed to run the lottery. As you know, health assisting and electrical have the largest wait list right now, so we don't plan on changing how we're doing it. What we're hoping for is that when we open the plumbing program, that will filter a lot of kids that were in the construction focused areas to have another place to go for next year. In terms of what we're doing for students who opt out of CT after the halfway point in the year, this year we ran an extended exploratory in three of our programs. Next year, we're looking at making them into a guided study or an enrichment class, because a lot of students were saying that they were wishing that they had time to pick up a study or some time to be working in other coursework. And the good news is that most freshmen, in this case, don't have an academic enrichment class. So it wouldn't be like they were doubling up. what we found is that the three programs that we offered based on the, they were the only programs we could offer because we had teachers available, that wasn't necessarily the kid's choice. Some kids were fine with it, but a lot of students, you know, reported that while it was okay, they might have rather have a study. So until, you know, I've talked with the scheduling team, my hope would be that we have semester-based electives moving forward so that kids have a place to go after quarters one and two. We used to do that with the arts, but now with the seventh period added, there's more opportunities for students to pursue an elective. So there was no room in the arts for any students that were choosing not to continue in CTE. So next year, we're going to utilize the teachers we have available, but we're going to basically run three blocks of an enrichment or a study for students for the second half of the year. So what I've started doing now in communication with families, and we've done a lot of this at the middle school, I presented kind of solo about CTE for the McGlynn and Andrews students, and we've had some parent presentations, and just, you know, mentioning to families the importance that if you're thinking you want to do exploratory because it's fun and that it's something you want to just experience, we are all for that. We support that. but that we are still going to place our students who want to be in programs halfway through the year so that if you're a student who's doing it just for the experience that you're probably going to be looking at an elective that you're going to be taking for the second half of the year. And then next year, we hope to have semester or in a year, we hope to have more opportunities and some new electives that run on a semester basis so that kids have an opportunity to go into those beginning in January, quarter three.

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

[Jenny Graham]: Thank you. I have heard from some folks about our decision to not wait the lottery at all and got a couple of questions that I couldn't really answer about why we didn't at least ask kids to describe their interest or provide some sort of like meaningful input in some way versus like a blind lottery. So I guess my question is are there other schools who are doing something that is helping students be able to articulate their desire to be in various programs before the lottery is run. And I and Like, I think the fear is, right, I don't know what I'm going to do at the end. So I'm just going to put my name in for something because that's better than extended exploratory or study hall or whatever. And then I am actually taking a spot from somebody who really wanted to be in that shop, but I just happened to be the lucky one and that person's not. And then I drop out before the year is over or at the end of the year and don't continue. So I guess my question is, are there other models that we should be considering that would provide some sort of threshold of work or interest in some way that would be beneficial to explore in the future.

[Chad Fallon]: Yeah, so the state offers some opportunities if you want to do a weighted lottery. Most of the schools I've talked to and a lot of the colleagues I have in the area did not do a weighted lottery, but you can. And it's looking at attendance the year before. They want to see that students haven't missed anything more than 27 days. So if you're somebody who didn't miss 27 days or more, you would get, you know, essentially another ball in the lottery. If you're somebody who hasn't had any 37H or 37H and a half in fractions with discipline, then you would get a second ball in the lottery. And then if you attend an open house or you come to in a community event you might get a third ball in the lottery. So when we talked about it as a district team we didn't feel like that selective criteria was necessarily going to hurt or help any students because most of our students don't miss 30 plus days of school so. This was really the Department of Education's way of saying, okay, we understand you might want to use some weights and how you do it, but we're going to prescribe how you do it. The other piece is like an interview. So, you know, this was year one. I am happy to bring it back to the team and bring people around the table and talk about what that may look like. And if the district decides they want to do a weighted lottery, then we can look at that too.

[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, I guess I would say that those three weights don't seem like they would actually be meaningful for us here or for our problem. I mean, I understand what the state is trying to do when it comes to regional vocational schools and the admission, which is you're either in or you're not in at all. And that's a distinctly different challenge than we have. So those criteria don't really like compel me in any particular way. I am more interested in making sure that there's there's the seats for the students who need there to be seats in our district, which doesn't happen in quite the same way that it happens in most of these regional vocational schools. And frankly we weren't the reason why the state enacted this legislation in the first place. So my first preference would be the state says people like Medford don't have to participate in this process at all because our students are in Medford High School no matter whether they are in program a program B or no program. That is not the case in the regional vocational schools and there's huge demand. So I guess what I'm trying to do is figure out like are there other things that we could do that make sure that we are helping students take like understand what action they can take to express their preferences and desires other than just like feeling like it's really random whether you're going to get to do the thing that you wanted to do or not.

[Chad Fallon]: No, I really appreciate you saying that. And what I will say is that this year, because we knew it was going to be a change, we spent a week that was focused on career connected activities where students went through a preliminary selection. I then packaged all the responses home, sent them home to families and said, hey, over the winter break. take a moment to talk about this with your son or daughter because this is an important decision. So I can tell you that this year we have really flooded people's email and talking points with like this is really important we want to make sure people get placed in their their areas and the good thing is when we look back and by the way there was probably about 20 percent of students that changed their responses from the preliminary to the final pick which was encouraging for me because it showed me that kids were thinking Also, for 90% of our students to be placed in their first choice, that was huge, or to be placed in one of their top two choices. So, you know, even though we do have, you know, a number of kids that didn't get electrical health assisting construction because they kind of chose, you know, within that group. There were so many kids that did get their choices, which was like, okay, so we're headed in the right direction. But what you're saying is very true, Jenny, but also I want to call out that the other option we could do that I've been very much against since the beginning, but I'm willing to talk it out if need be. If we did a lottery in eighth grade, which we could do, some districts have done that just like the regionals. What worries me is all the work we've done for the past 10, 11 years about being one school and kind of coming together. I'm afraid that people will be like, oh, are you applying to the VOC? Are you applying to Medford VOC? I'm applying to the VOC. And then if I take in 180 students in grade nine, because I know that's how many I can seat in grade 10, I feel like we could be going backwards and then trying to backfill because we know 20 to 30% of the kids end up deciding it's not for me. So I would hate to see us in a position this time in a freshman year looking to then pull kids in who didn't choose CTE Exploratory. So that's something that we can definitely discuss more. But my personal opinion was, especially for Medford, the eighth grade pick didn't feel right to me. It feels like it goes against everything we've been trying to do. Please don't discuss that more. Got it.

[Jenny Graham]: Yeah, that's exactly the opposite of what I think we're trying to do here. When Lila was a freshman, all freshmen went through an exploratory program, and I think there's immense value in that, especially if you're talking about eighth graders making these kinds of choices. My preference would be that we go back to that model. But that aside, like, I'm not interested in, like, sealing somebody's fate at the, you know, whatever age it is that you're in eighth grade. Like, that seems like it's much too early, much, much too early. And I'm not interested in that at all. I'm just more interested in, How do we make sure that the kids who are in Medford High, who have gone through the rotation program, that you don't have to be one of the 10% of kids that don't land where you wanted to. If there's other shuffling that could like make way for those 10% of kids to find their home a little bit faster, I think it would be ideal. So I'm not sure what the answer is necessarily, but that's what I would want us to be focused on is like, how do we get even closer than 90% from a placement perspective? And as importantly, how do we have pathways out for kids that are not interested in continuing so that they don't make decisions to sort of stay in or delay that exit decision because I think that's not fun for them either. So, yeah, I think, you know, there's probably a lot more discussion to have around what those options might be. I do think it's, you know, it's easy to, like, pick three things on a form, right? It's another to express interest or, like, any sort of desire to be in a program. And I just wonder if there isn't a way for that to come through somehow in our process. But maybe there's not.

[Chad Fallon]: No, we are, this is something I talk about every day. How can we make this better? I mean, obviously the ultimate answer is hire more teachers, build more space, right? Because we know what programs they want. And this is the case in a lot of schools, but the worst part of my job every year is program selection because we always know the programs that fill and it's not fun meeting with a student and telling them that they didn't get in for whatever reason, especially if their family's in the trade or it's a painful process, but we are working to make it better.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you. Thank you. We have a, Christine, come on up. If member Mastroboni or member Graham, if you could share your, oh, unless that works.

[Christine DesAutels]: If someone's like in the VOC already and they, let's say they didn't get their first choice or they changed their mind after that freshman year, are they, do they go through the same like lottery process again, or is there like a separate process for that? Because they're already doing that.

[Chad Fallon]: So are you, are you saying, go ahead.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Are you saying... Great question, go ahead, sorry.

[Chad Fallon]: Oh, no. Are you saying if a student picks a program, gets a spot, let's say they get a spot in health assisting, and then they decide maybe this time of the year that they're not happy and they wanna change to another program? What the process is?

[Christine DesAutels]: Or if at the end of their freshman year, let's say they got their third choice or they didn't get one of their top choices and they really want to change to something else. Yeah.

[Chad Fallon]: Yes. So we're already what's already happening is like today, for example, I had that I know of one definitely and probably another one in health assisting that has decided it's not for them. So now those students will move out and maybe they'll go to another program. In one case, one student wanted to go to biotech and there's no wait list right now for biotech. So that was a clean transfer. So we're going to make every opportunity, if somebody is going from health assisting to electrical, obviously there's a long wait for electrical. But what we do is we look at any, if they want a specific program and there's room available, we either add them to the program or we add them to the wait list. We don't do another lottery. We did lottery for first and second choice. And once we did that first round, now at this point in the year, if people decide they want to be added to a wait list, they just reach out to me and their Councilor and we add them to the wait list. There's not an additional lottery.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Okay, thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank, thank you Mr. Fallon. Welcome. Thank you Principal Fallon and thank you Dr. Galussi for the presentation. Is there a motion on the floor?

[Suzanne Galusi]: I think we need a vote.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: That's what I figured.

[Suzanne Galusi]: Thank you. Yes. Yes, we do need a, a vote to update the policy with the Department of Education's suggested suggestions and edits so that we can get that vote.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Motion to approve by Member Mastraboni, seconded by Member Lopate. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes. Next up, we have our fiscal year 26-27 calendar review. So I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Suzanne Galusi, our superintendent.

[Suzanne Galusi]: Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Pippicelli. You can advance to the next slide. So this evening I just want, I'm here in a collaborative problem solving kind of stance and effort here to frame a little bit of next year's calendar based on this year's calendar. Throughout the course of this year, I have received some feedback and information regarding school calendars, as would be typical from caregivers, from staff. And so three things have kind of, you know, risen in terms of like impact to the calendar. One is our placement of professional development days and where they are. Some caregivers have mentioned that this year we put them all on a Tuesday, and so for some people, depending on their work structure or just available care for their children during the day, there were some kind of queries around, do we always have to have them on Tuesday? The other one is just the acknowledgement of the impact that Good Friday had for a large part of our community. And that we have to take that into effect for next year. And then this year for the first time in a couple years, we did not have a mild winter and we needed four snow days. And so per the Department of Education, we have to build in five snow days. And so this year we used four out of those five. So next slide please. I just want to frame a little bit about what the calendar looks like for next school year. All right. So next school year Labor Day is very late. Labor Day is September 7th. Typically what we have done is we've gone back the week before Labor Day. But what that does next year is that teachers report on the 31st that Monday. which were already pretty much in September, and then students, their first day is Wednesday, September 2nd. So we've kind of lost really like a whole week in August because of where Labor Day fell. We also have currently the observance of Yom Kippur in the calendar, Christmas Eve and Eid al-Fitr in the calendar. And then our three professional development days after September 2nd are Tuesday, November 3rd. That date is pretty fixed because that is an election day and our schools are used as polling places. So we typically, we have always had that day off and really need to continue to have that day off. Tuesday, January 19th. Yes, it's a Tuesday, but it is the Tuesday that follows the Martin Luther King weekend. We felt like that was an intentional move for caregivers that gave them a little bit of an opportunity to have like a longer weekend. And then Tuesday, March 2nd, it is another Tuesday. It's just a random day. There really is no rhyme. or reason for that day. All of this with DESE's requirement for us to build in five snow days, health days, emergency days, brings us to June 30th. So we don't have wiggle room because school needs to commence by June 30th. So I'm here to just frame this for you. I do not want to vote. I'm not here with an answer. Mr. Pippicelli, if you could advance the last slide. I just want to talk a little bit about my next steps as the superintendent of schools. So I had a conversation with Mr. Guillen. We want to create a committee or have some discussions. He's the president of the teachers union so that we can work collaboratively on the constraints of the calendar for next year. I would like to elicit some community input on the school calendar, especially since I received some feedback about where professional development days land, so I think it would be important to elicit some community input. around where professional development days are scheduled and also holidays. And then we are internally further reviewing our protocols and structures for the use of religious holidays by staff members across the district and throughout the school year. And then all of this I would bring back to this body with a presentation for a proposal as to what would be the best way for us to update school year 26-27 calendar based on the feedback I get from the community and the work with the teachers union. So again, I'm not looking for problems to be solved. I just wanted to explain to you in a collaborative stance that this is the work that we're going to be engaging in, and I will report back once we have a proposal as to what is the best way to proceed.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Just one question from the chair.

[Suzanne Galusi]: Yes.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: And you'll be relooking at April? Yes. And potentially bringing school taken off on Good Friday just because of the staffing. Yes. Issues. Yes.

[Suzanne Galusi]: So I think what we have to, we, that has to be an acknowledgment 100% based on our staff. I think the school committee policy represents our school and city community. It doesn't necessarily represent our staff. And so I think we have to absolutely account for that in next year's calendar. What that looks like. I'm not quite sure of, because we have to engage in those conversations with the union. But yes, that would be the purpose of it. And so right now, I can't just say we'll add Good Friday back to the calendar, because I don't have that wiggle room. So that may not be the problem for the 27-28 calendar, or for the 28-29 calendar. But for next year, for the 26-27 calendar, because Labor Day is so late, that is the problem. a trade or there has to be, we have to look at the existing calendar and really have some discussions collaboratively about what is the best way to proceed. So some give and take.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Okay. Yes. That makes sense. Thank you. I'm going to turn it over to member Graham.

[Jenny Graham]: I just wanted to share I've been collecting some input about this question and I am thinking back to how we crafted the policy around the calendar creation originally and we were indeed trying to reflect a more inclusive community and a place of belonging even though we weren't using the word belong at that time, right? I think that was part of the goal and I think we knew that there would be times in the decades where this kind of calendar would become a problem. We brought it forward just like we would have expected or anticipated when we wrote that policy. I think what is unique about next year is that in order to fulfill our policy fully, which would include observance of Good Friday and Eid al-Adha, Rosh Hashanah falls on a weekend. So we would need two additional days. So one day certainly is important operationally to address Good Friday and the staff absences that came with that day because as you mentioned like our staff the makeup of our staff is not exactly the same as sort of the the broader community. But if we could find two more days, we could carry out our full objective of our calendar under our policy. As far as I can tell, the only day that the school committee could act on alone would be to not observe Juneteenth on the 18th, which is not Juneteenth, that's the 19th, when In the state of Massachusetts, when a holiday falls on a Saturday, it is not required to be observed on a Friday. In fact, under the Secretary of State, when a holiday falls on a Saturday, organizations are to remain open both Friday and Monday and sort of split time. So we could possibly do something there, although I don't think that necessarily promotes belonging. either. So that to me is the only thing that I can see that this body could do without some sort of broader collaboration. And I think you know I don't I guess and that's sort of a conversation for this group but I don't think we're saying we want to abandon the practices that we have set up. I think what we're saying is we have to work together somehow some way to get through this particular year of the calendar because of the way all of these holidays fall and Labor Day starts late and you know and on and on and on. I think there are other options that were suggested to me by various members of the of the community that would be appealing to them all of which would require like collaboration from from our teachers union in particular because their contract has specific stipulations in it about how the school calendar falls in some cases. And those days that people have suggested to me, and I just wanna make sure that publicly we are talking about them, is the Friday before Labor Day becoming a school day. And so that Good Friday could be a full day off, albeit that does not solve the two calendar day problem if we are trying to be as inclusive as our policy sets forward. The other suggestions that I have heard is swap an early release day on the 23rd of December with Good Friday so that students would be in school for a full day on the 23rd, which is not a holy day. It is not even the day before a holy day. The holy day is two days later for Good Friday, although operationally I think there's still a question about whether that would be workable or not. And then the other suggestion that lots of parents have this year in particular because of the late start of school was simply to start school earlier. And they're particularly our youngest students are having, the parents of our youngest students have lots and lots of child care issues at the end of August this year because of the way the calendar is falling so late. Other districts have made decisions to go back sooner than their contract allows. So those are the things that sort of people have. brought forward to me. I did want to make sure to mention though that I got a really lovely comment from a member of our Jewish community saying that You know, she really appreciates that she and her children feel seen by our observance of that day. So I think we have to we have to balance the operational aspects of there being enough people in the building to have school. But also, I don't want to see us sort of move away from those observances for the folks in our community who are used to not being seen and not feeling seen. So I just thought that was a really powerful comment and I wanted to like pass it along because back to like this idea of belonging. we if we if we don't feel seen we cannot belong. And I know that our teachers work really hard to make students feel seen every single day. And I think this is like a district wide sort of statement about feeling seen that we have to be like really mindful of. And then I think my last comment would be I would love to see there be some sort of collaborative working group like really collaborative out in the open in public for people to participate in where we talk more broadly about the problems of the calendar because I think There are lots of problems of the calendar, depending on who you talk to. And there's the way that these things have always been, or they have been for a long time. And then there's the practical realities of caregiving that continue to evolve and become more stressful for families. So I would like to see some sort of collaborative conversation happen at some point about the calendar. And I mean, you could throw start times, you could throw all kinds of things in there, all of which, by the way, are sort of tied up in various contracts that we hold with our bargaining partners. But for us to come here, and even if this room was full of people advocating in one particular direction or another, then we would go back behind closed doors, and we would talk to the unions, and then we would come back, and then we would say what we're going to do, and then people would be unhappy with that. But I think really when when caregivers and teachers collaborate together there's really really powerful outcomes for students and I think we should consider doing something like that as we talk about the broader calendar implications for our community going forward. Thank you. Thank you. Member Parks.

[Jessica Parks]: Thank you. I just want to, everything that Member Graham said are things that I have heard and I really appreciate hearing. I think one of the things that also should be focused on are kind of those protocols because another thing I heard is about the kind of the sudden decisions that were happening in real time. But my main question is in an effort to kind of, you know, leave the memogram talked a lot about things that were raised leave the kind of troubleshooting to moving forward is what is our timeline that we're talking about. And also how do you want to receive feedback. Do you want emails. Are you going to send out a survey. How are we collecting. Are you going to have forums. How are we going to do this?

[Suzanne Galusi]: I hate this monitor because I can never see you Mr. Member Parks. I think those are those are part of the conversations that I want to be having internally I think because. time is of the essence, and we did approve a calendar, and I know so many families need this for planning purposes for next year, especially around care and where professional development days fall, where holidays fall. I know we want to do this as quickly as possible, so I think listening to Member Graham's suggestion and hearing yours, I would say some of this might have to be like tiered approaches to elicit feedback and do some of this work and I think a survey would an initial survey would get us some really great data to begin some of these conversations and then maybe also elicit some committee input you know a little down the road as we're working on really kind of informing how our calendar is. Does that make sense?

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Member Reinfeld.

[Erika Reinfeld]: So my first question was a little bit similar to what Member Parks was saying. I was going to ask, are there any assurances, you said we cannot promise that there will be changes to Good Friday, but it's something we're looking at. Are there any assurances to be had to your point of, I know I pushed to have us approve this calendar as early as possible because we knew that people needed to make plans, and I just heard Are we looking at changes to the start of school? And I know people have booked travel. I know they're also scrambling to find childcare. So are there any, I mean, I think June 30th we know school won't go beyond that. But is there anything we can tell people in terms of what to expect as we wait for a timeline?

[Suzanne Galusi]: Sure. I could say two things. When we did put forward the calendar for next year, I was very clear that we haven't lived through Good Friday yet. And I didn't know how that was going to go fully. And I did make that known during that meeting. And here we are. And so I do know that based on the population of our staff, it would be, in my opinion, irresponsible to proceed next year, into next year's calendar without acknowledgement of Good Friday. So the work that I need to do to elicit feedback from the community and with the teacher's union is how can we get to a point where we can operationalize schools and acknowledge Good Friday as a holiday, knowing the constraints of next year's calendar. And I do apologize, we're gonna try to do this as quickly as possible, so that we can get this information to families. I can't give a clear time stamp. I would say, you know, with all best efforts, we would hope by the end of May.

[Erika Reinfeld]: Okay. And I think the community conversation there is really important in understanding what observing these things mean. I know I've seen the suggestion that maybe religious holidays can all be half days, and then we're hearing that some observance is really in the morning, some is more in the afternoon, so I don't know what Flexibility is there, and that's the conversation. I don't need to get into it now. There's also looking at other districts, of course, what they're doing, but also what their community composition is. Cuz it's easy to say this community does this, but their staff composition may be correct, entirely different. But I do think it's really helpful to hear that, to, to put these different policies side by side. Particularly, actually for staff who live in other districts and and they have childcare needs as well. And then, as a second step, to be looking to the future, I remember on, actually, what, on April 14th when we approved this year's calendar, I remember. January? When we approved the calendar that we're living through now, back in 2024, I think it was. I mean, I actually remember Ruseau said, I can't imagine we're going to have snow days. I know what I'm saying. Yeah. So being able to project forward, because I know we approved the calendar that we're in now, the 25-26 calendar, with the assumption that it would be a one-time experience. And I think, and I know it became, the constraints changed when we negotiated a new contract, but being able to try to anticipate and project forward. would be very helpful. The other piece of this, I think, is as we look at how we recognize religions, how we incorporate this aspect of belonging into our calendars. I know that I said this when we approved the calendar. We still have education to do around what these holidays mean for students, for our communities, and particularly holidays that aren't days off and making sure that our staff understands what this means for students and that their students aren't getting grilled about why they're not in school or being the assignments really doing that internal education around what it means to have a day with no assignments and why I know we've heard from community members that they they wish their children's teachers saw them and even things like saying happy Hanukkah, happy all of those abilities. And I would also urge the conversation to also include guidance on extracurriculars. I have spoken to both Director O'Leary and Director Fee about scheduling of sports and arts events. And I know there are many other things that we do, but looking at how those intersect as well. Because I think we spend a lot of time in these meetings talking about what happens during the school day. And those activities are just as much a part of students' education and families' balancing of schedules and teachers wanting to be there for their students. So I think that's my list of things to put into the mix and the conversation. Thank you for being transparent about what's happening and Having the conversation, I do agree with Member Graham that having some of this in public and letting people really understand is essential. And I do want to thank everybody who wrote to express their feelings, particularly those that were really grounded in respect and seeing multiple sides and sharing their perspective with the awareness that one perspective isn't always everyone's perspective.

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

[Jenny Graham]: Thank you. Just a few other quick things. On the back of our calendar, I know that we have received feedback that Christmas is labeled a national holiday and not a Christian holiday, so I would ask that we fix that. As I've answered, as I fielded that question, what I've described is that Christmas is so much ingrained in our government that it is the only religious holiday that rises to the level also of a national holiday. But I think for our Christian neighbors, it's important to them that we describe that as a Christian holiday. I accordingly don't believe that Christmas Eve should be listed as an observance. It is not a religious day. And so it's certainly a day off of school. I'm not suggesting we go to school on Christmas Eve. I'm definitely not suggesting that. But for the like sort of the tidiness of the observance language. I will also be putting forward a resolution to make Orthodox Good Friday a national holiday. an excused absence day because it is not currently, and that was pointed out to me. So I will take care of that in a separate motion. But the other thing I wanted to make sure that changed was on your first slide, you talked about observances being Christmas Eve. It should also say Christmas Day. We are also observing Christmas Day. And I don't want our Christian neighbors to feel like we are not or that we are trying to cancel Christmas because I don't think that's what anybody is trying to do, quite the contrary. Thank you.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Dr. Galussi. We'll look forward to hopefully a new calendar soon. We do not have any presentations of the public. We do have continued business, be it resolved, the member of the school committee.

[Suzanne Galusi]: Before we go, I think we have. Sure.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: I think we have. Oh yeah, sure. Welcome. I'm just going to touch the little guy, the little guy. Yep, there you go. Oh, there you go. There we are.

[SPEAKER_17]: Thank you. Hi, Anthony Gann, president of the Medford Teachers Association. Thank you. Yeah, I want to first say that the Chief's Association is very open to having these discussions with Dr. Galusi. She contacted me today about them. So we'll be setting up those meetings soon. And I just wanted to press again, as we did in our statement, the membership The number of people who took off Good Friday did so with, you know, no guidance, no sort of directive to do so. So this is very clearly the personal faith of our membership showing through. So I think a solution does have to include Good Friday just to take off the strain of wondering next year and sort of the animosity that I brought out. That idea that like, you know, we want to foster belonging amongst our, you know, our staff and our students and our community members. And, you know, when they have this uncertainty and anxiety raises, that doesn't help us foster belonging. So I look forward to working with Dr. Galussi and everyone else on this. And that would be our statement. Thank you. Thank you very much.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Appreciate you being here. Continued business, we have Two things. First up, motion to table item A, which was be resolved that the Medford School Committee review the summary of objectives for the term as discussed in its January retreat by Member Graham, seconded by Member Oloparte. All those in favor? All those opposed? Papers tabled. B, review of Medford School Committee rules and revisions. I'll turn it over to Member Ruseau.

[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Of course, I thought I had more time to eat this piece of candy in my mouth. All right, let me switch over to that. That's why I asked for it to be printed because under pressure, I can't find the right thing. So in March of 2022, the school committee adopted a set of rules and We haven't updated them since, even though we did include a rule saying we would do it the last year or the year before. So there is a, we've all received a comparison document. And I'm trying to think about the best way so that the people online can actually see what we're doing. I could probably, first I'm gonna get rid of this candy. Because when you chew a candy into a microphone, it's really loud. I'm thinking if I share the actual comparison document as we go through it, it'll make a lot more sense. Let me open this up. And Will, do I have share, I'm sorry, I have sharing permissions, no. Thank you. OK. And now I've got to be able to see everything through all the little share windows that are in the way. It's 13 pages, but it won't take as long as that sounds. It will be nothing like when we first adopted them, which was a long meeting. So this is a comparison. The rules that are not changed are not listed here. And on the left, we have the original language. Member Reinfeld, Member Ruseau, and Member Graham submitted changes. I appreciate that not everybody had an opinion on making changes, cuz this would have been a much longer meeting. And so some of the changes here, well, I'll just go through them one at a time. So on the first one, I suggested a change, and now I'm realizing it would be nice if there had been highlights of what changed. This is just a wording change to make it sound better. The original rules, we had adopted 80 something of them all at once. So we didn't get too into the weeds on how things sounded. So there's no functional change in the first one. It just makes it more readable. Rule two is about that the superintendent is responsible for the operation of our schools. And it says communication to students and families is facilitated and managed by the superintendent. This one I changed for the daily implementation of our policies and changed that simply to implementing our policies. I think it would make sense if anybody disagrees, maybe you could speak up and then I don't have to like, we don't have to vote on each item. Does that sound okay? A lot of heads shaking, good. Rule four. Again, that's just a, well that doesn't look any different. Sometimes AI is not perfect. Oh, thank you. Right, we agreed to discuss the issues on the agenda versus we agreed to discuss the agenda items. Rule five, are you reading ahead for me? Oh, get rid of it in a fashion. Let's see, rule six. That's essentially the same thing as well. Rule seven. Oh, thank you. Again, it's an educational institution. We should at least have the apostrophes in the right place. Thank you. Rule seven is a hyphen? Yep. Okay. Rule eight, another hyphen. Okay. I should have done a better cleanup on this. Rule nine. Okay, this is, in rule nine, so when we first adopted these rules, we had said we would meet September through June. Is there any change on that? No. All right, rule ten, I did go through. Memograms change. Okay. Rule 10. This is a substantial change. When we first adopted, we said no meetings in July and August. We were not in all in agreement in that, and I'm gonna push this one again because I thought we needed to at least meet once in July and August. So, does anybody have any problems with that? You can be on Zoom, you can be at the beach or wherever you are in the summer, probably at work like the rest of us. Member Reinfeld?

[Erika Reinfeld]: Yeah, I, I don't have a problem with this. I think it is worth scheduling these in advance, and if they need canceling, so be it. And my motion would be that if, if no meeting is scheduled, then the superintendent would still send out that broadcast memo, memo. That would, that would be my change. Yes, let's plan to meet once a month over the summer, and if that meeting gets canceled, we should get a broadcast memo on what's been happening. Could, could I suggest that, We schedule meeting if needed. I would rather have it on the calendar for building in summer plans and then cancel it rather than trying to scramble around during the summer when people are away from messages. Trying to find a time that is already going to be hard to find. That's my preference.

[Paul Ruseau]: Neither of those issues were why I think we should pre-schedule them. The reason we would have one in the summer without having it pre-scheduled is because something bad is happening, frankly. And that's the worst time to have to gather everybody. And so if it's just on the schedule, you know, it's one thing to wait a week or two to discuss something really important that has to be deliberated on. It's another thing to be like, we'll talk in September. So.

[Erika Reinfeld]: I think if there truly is an emergency, then we do have to scramble to find something. But for the majority, I mean, knock on wood, we just found out what happened when we said these things won't happen. Let's not say that out loud. we can evaluate is this something that can wait until our already scheduled meeting.

[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah. 11 is the. Send out a broadcast memo to all members each week. And then I think we should add language to that that says well, I, I don't, the superintendent didn't provide feedback on this one, but is each week actually.

[Erika Reinfeld]: Oh, no, not each week. That's a lot.

[Paul Ruseau]: I think that's too much. It seems in the summer, but also, y'all work in full tilt in the summer, so I don't know if that's better to have a weekly email or a monstrous monthly email, or I don't know what the superintendent thinks.

[Suzanne Galusi]: I think it's fair maybe to say every other week. Okay. I think I, I think this past August I provided two. two updates to this committee about work that was ongoing, hiring, scheduling, just updates, like summer updates. I think that's fair to say that every other week in August you will be informed of summer work.

[Paul Ruseau]: I will update that. Rule 12. This is just re-saying the same thing. If this, as our meeting is scheduled for Monday and it's a holiday, which here we are again, we'll move it. Rule 13. That is the same language, also made a little nicer. Rule 14, this is simply changing mayor to chair.

[Erika Reinfeld]: In acknowledgment of the new charter, right now it's the same person, but.

[Paul Ruseau]: Right. And we don't have to redo these again. Yeah. Rule 15, let's see. That's essentially the same, made nicer.

[Erika Reinfeld]: Yeah, notification to notifying.

[Paul Ruseau]: Oh, thank you, yes. I'm feeling really bad about how many of these are just wordsmithing, but we have to do it sometime, right? Event of an emergency is also the same, it's just more succinct. Rule 18 is the same. cleanup. Rule 21. What page are we on? Oh, three. Similar cleanup. All right. Rule 22. We're going to get to some substantive changes, I promise. This is a interesting, it's a chair versus mayor. Nothing substantial changing in 23, 22, 23, 24. Doesn't look like it actually changed. Oh, the renumbering, so there's a big reorganization of these things, so they actually make sense. And I think that is causing a bunch of these differences to show up. So that's what's at number 25. Number 26, I think, is also a renumbering. Number 27 is a renumbering. Number 28. Member Reinfeld, do you want to say something on this?

[Erika Reinfeld]: Yes, which this is 28. Yeah, this was me saying that our subcommittees, because they are focused on particular topics, provide an opportunity for public input. I'm thinking of, for example, when we were talking about the transitions between schools on our strategic planning subcommittee. I think that can be an invitation to the public to come and discuss the topic. Even if it doesn't lead to policy change, I think it's an opportunity to engage the community. in these discussions that maybe aren't appropriate for the full group, but that a subcommittee could make recommendations as a result.

[Paul Ruseau]: I'm fine with that. Okay. 29, 32, those are just renumberings. 33 is a renumbering. 34, remember Reinfeld again.

[Erika Reinfeld]: Yeah, I think this was just acknowledging the addition of presentations of the student representatives into the agenda, which we've already incorporated, but you told me I couldn't put in the rules until it was time to update the rules.

[Paul Ruseau]: Want to do this more than once? You could have.

[Erika Reinfeld]: No, I made the motion and then I withdrew it. Oh, did you? I did. I'm sorry. Anyway. And then this next one, rule 35, that AI did not gather that did not do this correctly. Basically the rules as written say that we will get packets by 5 p.m. on we will get the meeting materials by Friday at 5 p.m. and we will also provide feedback by Friday afternoon and that is

[Paul Ruseau]: Got totally garbled.

[Erika Reinfeld]: Yeah, that's what the current rules say. And so we either need to get the packet, we either need to get our presentations when the agenda is posted on Thursday evening, and we can provide feedback by Friday, or before the meeting, but aiming for Friday, or if we're getting these materials on Friday. we need until Monday to be able to provide feedback. And I am looking to the superintendent and the team who makes the presentations about what is a reasonable delivery date and feedback because I know it's really helpful when you get our feedback in advance and you can anticipate some of the questions that are coming up and pull the data that those of us saying, hey, about this slide, what can we do? So I'm open to either model. I just want it to not get and give feedback at the same time.

[Suzanne Galusi]: I agree, I would always love feedback. I know that depending on the meeting, some of that 5 PM deadline is difficult. I think the bigger challenge comes when we have back to back meetings, depending on maybe where school vacation falls. I think typically where we have meetings every other week. I think for us to, to get our work for Thursday, so that you have that time to look it over and provide. feedback to us on Friday, that is a great place that we can work towards for next year. I think the difficulty maybe would be around back to back meetings that might pose a little bit of difficulty.

[Erika Reinfeld]: Well, the language does say we'll make every effort to provide feedback and ask questions. So it's not a, if we have, if a question occurs to us on Monday morning, I mean, I'm not going to not send it. But I recognize that you may not see it in the same way if I'm getting a presentation on Monday afternoon, I might not see it. And that's the second part, which actually did come over properly. So I can wait until we resolve the Thursday, Friday, Monday sequence.

[Paul Ruseau]: Okay. And I will be bringing back actual document at the next meeting so we can look at the final language and make any final edits.

[Erika Reinfeld]: That makes sense to me.

[Paul Ruseau]: Because I think approving this without seeing it integrated would be kind of weird.

[Suzanne Galusi]: I would appreciate that and then I can have a discussion with my team. Thank you.

[Erika Reinfeld]: So we have the materials on Thursday, feedback on Friday is preferred. And then the other piece that I added to this was the request that if the materials are not ready on Thursday, to know this is coming at this date, so just so we can anticipate and hopefully build some time into the schedule to review it and do that.

[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah. I think the, the, for me at least, you know, the presentations that we receive at three or four o'clock.

[Erika Reinfeld]: I often see them for the first time at 6 PM.

[Paul Ruseau]: Yes. I'll just say that.

[Erika Reinfeld]: Exactly.

[Paul Ruseau]: So. Rule 36. This is. Again, just renumbering. Member Graham has a comment about changing what the format is, which I think is actually, that's in the policy, the BEDB policy. So I think we can do that, but not as part of this, if that's okay. Member Graham. Member Graham. Thank you. It's OK. Thirty seven.

[Erika Reinfeld]: Yes, so this, I just added a sentence to the end of this. So this was based on feedback from former school committee members that there has in the past been some confusion about administration not sure whether they were supposed to act on things discussed during good of the order. I think it was a previous administration, but I just wanted to clarify that as per Robert's rules, this is about committee function and operation, not about. policies and action. I'm not super attached to this sentence, but I thought it was worth clarifying since I'd gotten some feedback that that had been confusing in the past.

[Paul Ruseau]: I think it's fine. 39, 41, 42 are all just modifications to, actually 42. I don't think there's anything different there. 43, 44, these are just making the language more concise. This is a renumbering, renumbering, renumbering. I don't know if you're all looking at the screen and I'm scrolling away as if you are, sorry. Rule 51. So when we first did this set of rules, we had discussed that I would include a bunch of metadata into them, such as links to the policies, et cetera, and not all of those had been done the first time around, so that's why there's some more stuff in here. But this is a renumbering as well. Let's get down here. These are all renumberings. I'm disappointed that I didn't realize that sooner. Let's see. Well, at least we're scrolling fast. These are all renumbering. 71 is actually not changed. 75. That's member Reinfeld. Yes, we are cruising along.

[Erika Reinfeld]: Yeah, I just added upon approval saying that we need to specify when it goes into account into effect when we approve.

[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, that's a great one. 76. This is the. 79 182 this looks like I just added a period. Oh, all right, you did, didn't you? Fight me. Let's see, how about 83? You had more than that.

[Erika Reinfeld]: Yeah, I'm not sure what happened. It should be chair rather than mayor. Right, I think this is a mayor to chair. 83. And then I added on to the Medford Public Schools website rather than our website.

[Paul Ruseau]: Yeah, that's good. Let's see, 87. Well, whatever.

[Erika Reinfeld]: That has to reflect whatever your new numbers are.

[Paul Ruseau]: Right.

[Erika Reinfeld]: Can I ask about rule 85 here that the vice chair will sign contracts versus the superintendent?

[Paul Ruseau]: Sure. That's the way it is.

[Erika Reinfeld]: Is that what we do when we're just putting it?

[Paul Ruseau]: Yes.

[Erika Reinfeld]: Okay.

[Paul Ruseau]: We do have new rules, and we'll ignore the numbering conversation here.

[Erika Reinfeld]: So rule, my rule 11 I think is what we already discussed about pre-scheduling summer meetings. So I don't have anything to add that I haven't already said. And then just clarifying responsibilities in subcommittee that I have found that the subcommittee chair usually is the one to run the agenda and take the notes and I figured it was worth documenting. Definitely. And then this other was the motion that we approved around student advisory council and designating members to attend if invited by our student members.

[Paul Ruseau]: All right number 80 or whatever the numbers will end up being. Majority of members present will suffice to pass any motion or resolution except as otherwise defined, but motions calling for the appropriation or expenditure of money will require an affirmative vote of four members. I think that's mass general law, so. and 83, the Secretary will review the warrants weekly and provide a signature authorizing the payment of payrolls and bills, which I've been doing for a number of years now.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Wow.

[Paul Ruseau]: All right. Yes. Of course.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Member Mastromoni, yes.

[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Thank you. On number 80, Is the intent of that to just ensure that when we're spending money, we have enough folks here? And so like a quorum could be four. And that's the difference between the two is in one scenario, we need to have four affirmative votes, but it could be something that could pass with four people here would be three to one or three. Okay, great, thank you. I just wanna understand that one slate.

[Paul Ruseau]: If you have an idea on how to make that less obtuse, I would appreciate that. You can send it along, because it is obtuse. I mean, we have seven members. We could just spell it out. But then we'd have to, do we want to describe if there's seven here, or six here, or five here? Like, that could get a little wordy. But you don't have to answer that right now. And I see him.

[Erika Reinfeld]: What?

[Paul Ruseau]: Do you have?

[Erika Reinfeld]: Oh, no, I was just going to, is, to motion that Member Ruseau consolidate these and present them at.

[Unidentified]: The next meeting.

[Erika Reinfeld]: The next meeting. Second.

[Breanna Lungo-Koehn]: Motion to, for, to consolidate for the next meeting by Member Reinfeld, seconded by Member Graham. All those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? The ayes have it. Our next regular meeting is April 29th, 2026, and the meeting will be held via remote participation only. Is there a motion to adjourn? I'll motion to adjourn. My microphone's still on. Member Reinfeld, seconded by? Second. Member Parks, all those in favor?

[Rocco Cieri]: Aye.