[Jenny Graham]: Good evening, everyone. We're going to go ahead and get started. Welcome, everybody, to our 10th regular meeting of the Medford School Committee. Please be advised that there will be a regular meeting of the Medford School Committee held at the Howard Alden Memorial Chambers in Medford City Hall and via remote participation. This meeting is being recorded. The meeting can be reviewed live on Medford Public Schools YouTube channel through Medford Community Media on your local cable channel, which is Comcast 98 or 22 and Verizon 43, 45 and 47. Participants can call or log into the Zoom using the Zoom meeting ID 957-8890-2268. Member Ruseau, can you please call the roll?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Jenny Graham]: Here.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mastroboni. Here. Member Olapade. Here. Member Parks. Here. Member Reinfeld. Present. Member Ruseau, present. Mayor Lungo-Curtin is absent. Present. She's on. She's on time, sorry. Okay. Thank you, present.
[Jenny Graham]: So seven present, zero absent. All please rise to salute the flag. Oh, and I want to acknowledge our three student reps. So now we'll rise and salute the flag. 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. Next up we have our consent agenda, which includes approval of bills and payrolls, approval of budget transfers, journal entry 20804 for $13,959.67, journal entry 20820 for $581.60, journal entry 20821 for $500, journal entry 20822 for $4,042.74, Journal entry 20823 for $85.66. Journal entry 20824 for $8,066.88. Also in the consent agenda, we have approval of a $700 PTO donation to the Fine Arts and Music Student Field Trip. And approval of the meeting minutes from our regular April 13th, 2026 meeting. Motion to approve by Member Reinfeld. Seconded by Member Olapade. All those in favor? Oh wait, we have to do roll call. Sorry. Roll call.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham.
[Jenny Graham]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Mastaboni. Yes. Member Olapade. Yes. Member Parks. Yes. Member Reinfeld. Yes. Member Ruseau. Yes. Mayor Langelker.
[Jenny Graham]: Yes. 7 in the affirmative, 0 in the negative. Consent agenda is approved. We don't have any report of subcommittees tonight and I'm going to turn it over to the superintendent to take us through our Mustang moment.
[Suzanne Galusi]: Thank you. Good evening everybody. I always start by saying this is my favorite section of the school committee meetings. I love being able to start centering our meetings with the voices of our students. So, this evening we are going to start, I'm going to welcome up our world language director. She is going to talk through lots of accolades for the world language department, as well as once she does some framing, you will hear from the voices of some of our world language students. Medford High School? Is it also the middle schools? I'm so sorry. Yes, from our secondary students. Please come on up. Thank you. Would you just start with an introduction?
[SPEAKER_08]: Yes. Thank you. Can I do a brief introduction? Yes. Very brief. I promise. I will try. Good evening. I'm Katia Martigorena, Medford World Language Director, and I'm joined this evening by Chelsea McNiff, Director of English Learning Department, and some of our World Language Department members. As we come together in this great celebration, we are passionate about helping students develop not only language skills, but also global awareness and cultural understanding, and we are proud to be part of this celebration. It is my pleasure to introduce the World Language Department and the English Learning Department during this must-end moment. Our students have achieved remarkable success this year, earning numerous distinctions, including LUC, Biliteracy Achievement, and the State Seal of Biliteracy. These accomplishments reflect not only their proficiency in language, but also their deep understanding of culture. I'm especially proud to present a group of our students from different grade levels who have earned these honors and will share their language learning journeys. They will reflect on two important questions, why learning a language matters for students in our school and how it is shaping their life now and into their future. Without further ado, at this time I invite our students to come here to the side and talk one by one. Can I have all the students please? Thank you. In any order, we can just line up here. We can go back one by one.
[SPEAKER_17]: Ciao. Mi chiamo Carissa Pirafore. Sono una studenta della Medford High. E studio l'italiano da circa dieci anni. Hello. My name is Carissa Pirafore. I'm a student from Medford High, and I've been studying Italian for about 10 years. So I believe learning another language is truly one of the most valuable opportunities I've been given in my educational career. It is extremely important for the students in our school to take part in this opportunity because it truly does give you an upper hand. Not only is it a very strong mental skill to have, but it does open many doors for future job opportunities in our diverse society, as well as new travel experiences. When I began studying Italian 10 years ago in elementary school, I had no idea the huge impact it would have on my life today. Now as a senior, I've recently had the very unique opportunity to travel and learn in Italy through an exchange program with a high school class from Venice. During this trip, I learned so much about the culture, language, and geography, things that I never would have had the opportunity to learn on my own. Yes, you can always take a nice vacation to Italy, but nothing will ever compare to the experience we had living life in this new country with an Italian family and new friends. It helped me realize I want to return to Italy in the future and continue my studies and possibly life there someday. Through this incredible experience, the new friends we made, laughs we shared, and countless memories, they're all unforgettable, and it never could have happened without taking this plunge into a second language in high school.
[SPEAKER_23]: Hola, me llamo Emma. Yo soy una estudiante de Medford High también y yo he aprendido español por muchos años. Hi, my name is Emma. I'm also a student at Medford High and I've been learning Spanish for many years. I started learning Spanish in sixth grade and I'm continuing to study it now. Y como Carissa, yo también quiero estudiar español en mi futuro y viajar a un país hispanohablante. Like Carissa, I also want to travel and study abroad in a Spanish-speaking country. And I think that's one of the important things about learning another language is that you get to experience so many different cultures and communities and have so many more opportunities to learn and grow both as a person and learn and grow with these other communities.
[SPEAKER_12]: Hola. Me llamo Cooper. Soy un estudiante de Español AP. He aprendido Español por más de siete años. My name is Cooper Hsu. I've been practicing Spanish at Medford High for more than seven years. And I was just in Madrid a few days ago actually learning about global equity and stuff. And all of the people in Madrid were Spanish speakers and I thought it was really useful and important to use my skills that I've learned from Medford High to make connections with people from across the world. Spanish can span into a bit of Italian and French and there are people from all these countries and that's how I built these connections that are going to sustain me for the years to come and I encourage everyone to learn a language.
[SPEAKER_10]: Hola, me llamo Lina y yo también estoy una estudiante de AP español y personalmente creo que aprender un idioma es importante para los estudiantes de nuestra escuela porque abre la puerta a comprender diferentes culturas y perspectivas. Como alguien de origen maroqui que habla cuatro idiomas, inglés, árabe, francés y español, y que estudio en un liceo francés hace dos años, he visto el impacto de los idiomas. Mi intercambio en España hace dos años donde viví durante dos meses Me mostro que los idiomas crean oportunidades reales y confianza. Hoy en día me ayuda a comunicarme y adaptarme. Y sé que dará forma a mi futuro al ampliar mis oportunidades académicas y profesionales. Hi everyone, my name is Lina and I'm also a student in AP Spanish. And personally, I think that learning a language is important for students in our school because it opens the door to understanding different cultures and perspectives. As someone originally from Morocco who speaks four languages, English, Arabic, French, and Spanish, and studied in a French high school, I've seen how language builds connection. My exchange program two years ago in Spain, where I lived for two months, showed me how language can create real opportunities and confidence. Today, it helps me communicate, adapt, and I know it will shape my future by expanding my academic and career possibilities.
[SPEAKER_39]: Hola, me llamo William y estoy estudiante de español por tres años ahora. So, idiomas son muy importantes para estudiantes porque les dan una perspectiva nueva. En las clases, no solamente aprendemos lenguas, pero sobre las culturas también. Finalmente, es importante que estudiantes aprendan un idioma porque hay otras personas en otros lugares. La habilidad para comunicar es uno de los más importantes en su vida. So basically, language classes in Metro High School are very important for the students because they teach not only the language, but also the perspective. When you're learning in these classes, you're learning about other places and the culture from these places. Segundo, aprendiendo un idioma está teniendo impacto en mi vida porque ahora entiendo más en el mundo. Tengo mi teléfono en español para practicar, pero recibo anuncios, videos, los artículos en español. Y estoy muy bien para mí. En mi futuro, yo espero que continuare aprendiendo español. La lengua me ayudare a conocer otras personas nuevas y crear otras experiencias aprendientas. So basically, learning a language is having a very big impact on my life. I'm learning a lot about the world in my classes. I have my phone set to Spanish to help me learn these different languages and learn Spanish. And while doing this, it's helping me see through different perspectives. And in the future, I would like to continue learning this language to help myself meet new people and create new experiences.
[SPEAKER_00]: Good evening, everyone. My name is Fadson Ludière. I speak French and Haitian Creole. I believe a language is important for students because it helps us connect with other people. It goes far beyond speaking. It helps us with memory and everything. I've learned stuff that I never knew that I could do. I didn't even take French seriously until I got here. I see how learning a language is important. That's when I started taking my second language more importantly. I'm so grateful to be here in Medford High, where they gave us the opportunity to learn a new language. And I believe it is really important for students to keep learning because everyone at Medford High gave us the opportunity work through the language with us while learning. Right now, learning a language is helping me become more confident when I'm speaking and interact with other people. I feel more open to meeting new people and understand different perspectives. Learning a language helped me see the world differently, and I'm thankful that I did that in Medford High. Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_09]: Hola, me llamo Lennox, y soy un estudiante de Español 10 honores. My name is Lennox Lafleur, and I'm a student of Spanish 10 honors. Creo que es importante para aprender un idioma nuevo porque si podemos entender más, podemos aprender más sobre el mundo. Y si quieres viajar a otro país, es importante para aprender un poco del idioma. I think that it's important to learn new languages, because if we learn new languages, we can understand, I guess, more about the world. And, of course, if you want to travel around the world to other countries, it's important to know a little bit of the languages there. Personalmente, quiero aprender español porque me gusta etimología. Yo quiero entender los orígenes de las palabras. Yo también quiero viajar por las Américas. Español es un idioma muy común en las Américas. Creo que así, aprendo español, puedo tener un tiempo muy fácil en otros países. Personally, I like to learn Spanish because I like understanding the origins of words. And I want to travel around the Americas, South America, North America, because I think they're pretty places. And if I learn Spanish and I know Spanish, I can understand and experience, have a better experience in those countries and continents.
[Jayden Vil]: Bonsoir, je m'appelle Jayden et j'étudie le français. Apprendre une langue est important car il laisse la porte ouverte à nouvelle façon de voir le monde. I'm Jayden, I speak French, and learning a language is important because it opens the door to seeing the world in a new light. There's a quote where if you speak to someone's native language, you don't just speak to their mind, you speak to their heart. And the ability to be able to connect with someone on an intimate level, on not just speaking one language, speaking their language, is very powerful. Pour moi, en ma communauté d'église, beaucoup de personnes parlent les hâtiens créoles et le français. A lot of people speak Haitian Creole and French in my church community, for instance. And that ability to be able to not just speak to them in English, but also speak to them in French is integral in our ability to connect. Because it shows caring, it shows compassion, and that's such an integral part of language. That's why I'm so grateful to have been able to study French these past four years and to continue to cultivate this language because it's really something special. Merci.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hi, my name is Sofia Derez and I'm an 8th grader at Andrews Middle School. I believe learning a second language is important because it's a helpful skill for things like travel and jobs. You also get to connect with people across different cultures. Personally, learning Spanish has helped me connect more with my culture and I think it's an important skill that I will keep with me forever.
[SPEAKER_16]: Hello, my name is Amandine Jones and I am an 8th grader at Andrews Middle School. I believe that learning another language can be really important so that you can travel to new places and learn about a new culture.
[SPEAKER_15]: Hola, me llamo Noeli y soy estudiante en el octavo grado. Yo creo que es importante conocer nuevas lenguas porque puedes abrir nuevas puertas y conocer culturas que no conoces. conocías antes y eso es muy importante para aprender y estar más inteligente y más comprensivo. Y una vez había una persona con un paquete que fue a mi puerta y necesitaba dar un paquete a alguien en mi familia. Hi, my name is Noeli. I think that learning a language is very important to open your mindset and learn new perspectives. Once I was, there was a person, a delivery man, who came with a package, and they only spoke Spanish, and I was able to understand and answer them because I speak Spanish.
[SPEAKER_36]: Hi, I'm Lily Chen from the Andrews Middle School. I feel really honored to be here because I believe learning languages is a really valuable experience for everyone, especially students. Learning a language fosters values of communication and inclusion. And for me personally, it's helped me appreciate the extraordinary diversity of the world we live in. In the future, I hope my knowledge of Spanish will enable me to help others and learn new things. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_37]: Hi, my name is Grace Chen, and I'm an 8th grader from the Andrews. I believe learning another language is both important and beneficial as it helps us connect with others and become more informed about the diverse world around us. Personally, learning Spanish has helped me appreciate the different cultures and backgrounds people come from, and I hope it helps me connect with people I previously have not been able to. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_34]: Hi, I'm Sophie Levine from the Andrews and through learning about languages we can have a more inclusive school environment and a greater sense of community. Students can learn about and understand new cultures both through activities and the language itself. Currently learning a language is a good brain exercise for me. It's a very difficult process but that makes it a very satisfying thing to learn successfully. I also have really enjoyed learning the foundations of language in general that you don't learn with your first language. In the future, knowing more than one language will grant me better job opportunities, easier travel, and allow me to connect with more people.
[SPEAKER_04]: Bonjour, je m'appelle Nia. J'ai pris des cours de français pendant trois ans. Ça m'a ouvert l'esprit sur la culture francophone du monde. Hi, my name is Nia.
[SPEAKER_05]: I've been taking French for the last three years. I get to understand the different Francophone cultures while taking the language as well as learning the language.
[SPEAKER_11]: Hi, my name is Ilyas Alkesh, and I'm currently a junior at Medford High School. I've been taking French for a few years now, and to me, learning a different language is more than simply learning it for the sake of school or education. Living in the United States, while it is a privilege, often shelters us from other cultures around the world. Medford's language department provides students with these such experiences and allows for every student who participates in these classes to expand their mind to cultures other than their own. J'ai beaucoup appris de la culture francophone. Je continuerai encore à apprendre ou enrichir ma culture. Thank you. And I'd like to move on.
[SPEAKER_38]: Ciao a tutti. Mi chiamo Victor Manges. Ho cominciato a imparare l'italiano nel primo anno della scuola media. Nel liceo ho frequento il Medford High. E penso che imparare una lingua è un'opportunità buona per tutte le persone perché ha un'opportunità per connettare con persone diverse. I started learning Italian in my first year of middle school. And I never knew how much of an opportunity I would get. But this year, like my friend Carissa, we were able to spend a week in Italy. And I knew to an extent what I would see there. I knew I would see some new cities. I knew I would try some new foods. But speaking Italian and learning, for five years really gave me an upper hand and I felt like I could really communicate with the people and really immerse myself in the culture. I think that learning Italian and learning foreign languages in general is such a great opportunity because you can really connect with cultures that aren't your own.
[SPEAKER_08]: I just want to say thank you. I hope you are as proud as I am of all these students. They are not all the students that won awards, but we will be here until 10 p.m. I don't know if you want that, but thank you for your time. Thank you for your consideration. Thank you to the support to the students and the department. Some of my staff member are here as well, and I'm super proud of all of them. Thank you again.
[Jenny Graham]: Are there any questions from the committee before we ask everyone to come forward and take a picture? Okay, I guess it's picture time. If all the students who spoke to us so eloquently could come into the middle here, you can come around that corner and we'll take a picture.
[Suzanne Galusi]: Okay, we have one more Mustang moment. Very happy and excited to welcome, we have third grade students from Brooks Elementary School. Ms. Deimos, are you doing a little framing before? Okay, so Principal Deimos is gonna do a little framing about why a class of third grade students is here for Mustang moment. And take it away, Principal Deimos.
[Demos]: Excellent. Thank you very much. I'd first like to just extend our heartfelt thank you to Miss Laura Branton-Green and her husband, Riley, who have been working with us at the Brooks for over 10 years now. It's a great accomplishment. They volunteer their time every year to come in with our third graders to work on creative writing. And the song that you're going to hear tonight, Laura and her husband, Riley, they wrote the song with these students. So this was written by themselves with the help of Laura and Riley. So I just want to let her frame it out just a little bit more for you and then we'll be on with the show with the kiddos.
[F9Dj7AZRD7I_SPEAKER_12]: Good evening, everybody. Thank you so much for having us tonight. As Ms. Demos said, my name is Laura Brereton. I'm a local singer-songwriter, teacher, musician. And my husband and I have been doing the third grade songwriting project for about 10 years. We started when our son, who is now about to graduate from Medford High, we started when he was in third grade. And we piloted the program at the Brooks because that's where our school community was. That's where our kids went to school. Over the years, we actually have done it at the Missituk twice and at the Roberts as well. And we had a schedule to be at the McGlynn Elementary literally the day everything shut down in 2020. So we haven't been able to get there. Hopefully down the road we will. But our goal was to try to do this with every third grade in all of the district. And as Ms. Demos said, we come in, we work with the students to write an original song. We try to tie it in somehow to the curriculum. And this year, the kids actually have a really creative and interesting song topic. It's called Medford Past, Present, and Future. And so each verse describes how a school child would get to school depending on what part of history they were in. So the first verse is sort of talking about what it was like in colonial times. And then the second verse is about current day. And then the third verse is sort of imagining what it might be like to get to school. in the future and how students would arrive to school and what they might see on their ride to school. And these are some lovely third graders that are gonna join us. If you can give me just a second, I'm gonna set up the music, because we have some music that they're going to sing along to. Again, thank you so much for having us and thank you for acknowledging the work that we're doing. Appreciate it.
[Demos]: And just for a quick while we wait for Laura to set that up, I just want to say thank you to all the third grade students who've worked so hard and for the families who made tonight possible and bringing them in means a lot. So thank you.
[F9Dj7AZRD7I_SPEAKER_12]: One thing I forgot to mention that we're sort of proud of is that we managed to get a disco beat, reggaeton, and reggae in this song, which is kind of unheard of.
[SPEAKER_27]: Weekday mornings we walk to school, hand in hand along the dirt path. Over the river and through the woods, we see folks on a mystic river raft. Small houses, barns, and taverns, pour a beer right through our town. Shipyards for almonds and crackers, too. Gypsy moths fly all around. Past, present, and future always feels like today. No matter how we get to school, we'll always find our way. Past, present, and future is something we create. Medford is our heart and home, and we are here to stay. Weekday mornings, we go to school. We hop in our car for a ride. We look out the window and see our town. All the scenery, golden high. Play, step, park, the communal rail. Traffic lights turn green each day. ♪ Dunkin' Donuts and CB Scoops ♪ ♪ Crossing gardens points away ♪ ♪ Past, present and future always feels like today ♪ ♪ No matter how we get to school, we'll always find our way ♪ ♪ Past, present and future is something we create ♪ ♪ Method is our heart and moment, we are here to stay ♪ Weekday mornings we go to school. We take a ride on our floating bus. Flying past the library with the garden on top. A robot driver sings with us. We hover over High Street. Pedestrians walk below. Lots of new buildings and businesses. The future is bright and full of hope. Past, present, and future always feels like today. No matter how we get to school, we'll always find our way. Past, present, and future is something we create. ♪ Medford is our heart and home and we are here to stay ♪ ♪ Past, present and future is something we create ♪ ♪ No matter how we get to school we'll always find our way ♪ ♪ Past, present and future is something we create ♪ ♪ Medford is our heart and home and we are here to stay ♪ ♪ Medford is our heart and home and we are here to stay ♪ We are here to stay.
[F9Dj7AZRD7I_SPEAKER_12]: Thank you to these wonderful singers. I also wanted to mention that the ultimate project is actually a video that we make, a music video. So when that's completed, I'll be happy to send it to all of you and it will hopefully put a smile on your face. Thanks again for having us.
[Jenny Graham]: Are there any questions from the committee before we ask our soon to be famous singers to come forward for a picture? Do we have a question over there?
[SPEAKER_17]: I see a question. Did you have a question? No? You did? Come on up.
[Jenny Graham]: Hold on just one second while they turn on your microphone.
[SPEAKER_20]: Hello, I'm Ryan Surratt, and I'm a former Brooks alumni, so it's great for the CDC to be able to work so hard on this song. I just have a question. How long have they been working on this?
[F9Dj7AZRD7I_SPEAKER_12]: Ryan, that's a great question. So we started to work on this in early March. And it took us about three weeks coming into the schools on various days to write the song and then do sort of a general recording of it. And then once we finished all of that, my husband, Raleigh, who I'm sorry he couldn't be here tonight, but he puts it all together into a video in our home studio. And then we're hoping it'll be ready in the next few weeks to be final project.
[SPEAKER_20]: Yes, it's always wonderful to see the Brooks thriving and successing because it is such an awesome school, the Brooks. You have so many memories of it and it's just an awesome school. It's so inclusive. I went by there the other day and there were so many like be kind, like respect everyone, love everyone. It's so inclusive and the teachers are so so passionate about their job. And it's just, I think, one of the best schools to see could have. And I'm so thankful for the principal, Ms. Demos, for the new assistant principal, and for all the teachers and the wonderful students that go there.
[Jenny Graham]: Thank you, Ryan. Okay. Next up on our agenda, we have an after school update with BASIC, who is an organization that's been working with us on improving access to after school programs here in Medford. The presentation will be by Andrew Mountford, Michael Clark, Annie Gladfelter, and Viviana Sanchez, but I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Galussi first.
[Suzanne Galusi]: Thank you so much. I'm really excited for this presentation this evening. In case anyone is joining or listening to this presentation, I just want to do a small bit of framing. The fabulous team from BASIC is also going to do a little bit, but I just wanted to ground people. a little bit. It's been a year from now, so our first presentation to the Medford community was in May of 2025, where Medford has historically faced high demand for after-school programming, and it was consistently outpacing the availability that we were able to provide. And so we were not able to service a lot of our Medford families with proper after-school care. And so there were some previous attempts to mitigate this situation, but sadly it didn't really yield much of the benefits and was not successful at all. And so to address a lot of these systemic issues that we were hearing from the community, there are two pieces I just wanted to quickly frame. One was we started a task force. an after-school task force that was community-rooted and a lot of caregivers really got together to try to figure out on their own a lot of problem-solving, a lot of groundwork to try and help the situation for that was happening in Medford for the lack of afterschool care. This task force showed a lot of what true partnership and community service can do. The task force met frequently. We had regular meetings. I really want to spend a minute to thank the task force. We have some members from the task force, but I think it's very important to note that this task force was comprised of caregivers, Medford administration, we had two school leaders, we also had representation from the after school staff, as well as for some of our meetings, the basic team. So it was a true, and we had a school committee member. So it was a true representation. This after school task force was completely committed to expanding after school care. They worked on their own time, so their dedication was just paramount. We have people on the task force that don't even have children currently in after school programming, and just made a huge impact on the community. So I do want to take a moment to recognize caregivers, Ada Guting, Ellen Rushman, Sarah Wides, Michelle Barkson, Christina Mastraboni, Anshika Hansen-Verma, and Jessica Parks, who had two hats during the task force meetings. And for employees, we had the site coordinator at the McGlynn Elementary School, Kathy Hunt. We had the site coordinator for the Roberts Elementary School, Kathleen, oh my goodness, I'm drawing a blank. Guillaume, thank you. Guillaume, thank you. I'm so sorry. Principal of the Mississippi, Nancy Sherman Hudson. Principal of the Brooks, Shannon Demos. Will Pippicelli, the communications director, myself, and for some of the meetings also, Megan Fidle-Carey, who was the program director of family and community engagement, also oversaw the program. Megan will be stepping down, and so we are searching for new leadership, but the members of the task force really kind of lived the it takes a village mentality, and so I just wanted to make sure that I thank them. And then the second part of the work has been this partnership with BASIC, which stands for Belmont Afterschool Enrichment Collaborative. And so we began our partnership with them about a year ago, and they have just been tremendous. And really, when you think of the word partnership, I feel like that has just encapsulated our work together. They've been very thorough, but they've also been very honest, very transparent, very supportive, and very accommodating. And so, that doesn't always happen when you're working with consultants or auditors. And so, I just wanted to make sure that I thanked them very much for their work. And with all that, I welcome the basic team to come up. They are going to present their findings of their review of the Medford Public Schools afterschool programming, and they also are going to give us their recommendations and next steps for us to increase capacity and enrichment in our afterschool programming.
[SPEAKER_06]: Thank you, Dr. Galussi.
[Suzanne Galusi]: I leave it to you, Andrew.
[SPEAKER_06]: I appreciate it. Thank you for the introduction. That was wonderful. I'm Andrew Manfred. The first time speaking tonight, we'll popcorn back and forth with each of us sharing different elements of this presentation to you, and each of the folks will introduce themselves when they come up. I'm the executive director of the Belmont Afterschool Enrichment Collaborative. This, I want to signal at first, this has been a wonderful experience for us. We, as Dr. Galussi said, began this partnership a year ago, and it's been tremendous to really build relationships with Dr. Galussi and her team, the staff at the programs, different faculty members of each of the schools, and even individual parents, both serving on the task force, of course, but also folks that just cared to talk to us at each one of the programs. I also want to take a moment to thank Dr. Galusi and her team, all the stakeholders who played a role in this process. They are tremendous collaborators. It is a difficult project to increase capacity of a program, much less four programs, and I think It's not fully appreciated how new the field of out-of-school time programming really is, even when compared to what is still a relatively young public school system that we have in this country. So it's not a small task to take on, and it does require a number of people to really go all in on the changes that need to be made. So thank you for being a wonderful collaborator to work with. I want to also flag that professionally as folks who have really dedicated our careers to out of school time programming, there's something that I'm really grateful for in being able to create a model for Medford public schools that we know works based on our own experience and to share that with the idea that it's going to benefit children and families. Personally, I previously lived in Medford for 11 years, actually very, very close to this building. So it's kind of personally gratifying to be part of a process where we're improving that experience for children and families. Finally, I'd like to just say that as part of our report tonight, we are, of course, going to be focusing on details that need to be changed about the programs. But before we get started, I just want to say that The experience that we saw when visiting programs and talking to families really showed us how many warm, caring individuals there are working with the children in Medford. And children are engaged in programming each day. And for the most part, all of the systems that are in place are working. They're just working for a smaller level than what Medford needs. And so yes, we're going to be focusing on the changes that need to be made. But please remember that there is a lot of good work to be done. And even though, as I flagged, this is a difficult, not a difficult, but a big challenge to take on, the fact that we have so many caring people working on this gives me a lot of hope that this is going to be something that we put in place with a lot of success next year and growing success for years to come. With that, I'm going to turn things over to my colleague, Michael.
[SPEAKER_19]: Hi, everyone. We can hear me, right? Yes. OK, thank you. So I'm just going to frame us a little bit for the rest of our presentation here. In a moment, we're going to talk about our phase one. Oh, Michael Clark, I'm sorry. I'm the site director for Basics Maynard Programs. That's at the Fowler Middle School and the Green Medal Elementary School. Thank you. So we're gonna start this evening by talking about our methodology to collect data to inform our recommendations and then I'll turn it over to my colleague Annie who will give a high level overview of that data. We'll then move into the observed challenges that kind of emerged out of that data collection and then give specific actionable recommendations to address each of those challenge areas. We'll then move into the specific capacity increases that we're recommending for the district and then give a sample schedule about how to accommodate the increase in those student numbers. And then last, we'll present tuition rates for you all to approve today. That's for after-school programming and then potential full-day programming like February and April vacation camps, potential PD coverage as well. And then Angela will wrap us up. And then if there's any questions from the committee, we're happy to answer. Go ahead and go to the next slide. So, we prioritized four main areas of data collection. The first was site visits. We conducted 13 site visits overall, primarily focused at the Brooks and the Roberts as the two schools with the highest wait lists for after school programming. We did 20 stakeholder interviews, and that was with administrators, staff, with families, with kiddos in the program and without kids in the program, as well as some members of the task force that Dr. Glusi mentioned earlier. We launched a community survey which had just under 400 respondents to really get a picture of the needs from the community in after-school programming, as well as their hopes for after-school. And then we had several data collection meetings with other administrators, such as the human resource director, financial director, to really get a full picture of what after-school operations look like as is. I'm going to turn it over to Annie.
[SPEAKER_25]: Hi, good evening. My name is Annie Gladfelter. I'm the director of impact for the organization. I do actually a lot of program consulting for the organization, specifically about programming. So you'll be hearing from me a bit later today as I speak to that. But in speaking about our data summary, we did a much thorough presentation about our data for the task force. But right now, for tonight, we're just going to focus on a generalization about what the data came back from all the methodology that we used. As Michael just said, we really focused on interviews, observations, and a landscape survey to really give, to inform our recommendations that you're going to hear about tonight. And in our summary, we comprised this into kind of four categories, the family experience, program experience, a student experience, and a staff experience. From the family experience, we really, you know, we took from interviews and the survey and really found out overall that the biggest thing that we heard back from our families was that the capacity issue was their biggest complaint or the issue most facing the community. And that also that there was also a desire to have better transparency about wait lists and better overall communication. For our internal families who we interviewed, we did hear that they were really satisfied with the programming that their children were receiving. What they were reporting about was that they had children that were happy and that were coming home, you know, satisfied with their day. And for them, really kind of hitting the mark about being supervised and well cared for. And for the external families that we spoke to, most of what they spoke about was just the lack of transparency about the process, and they just wanted a better view into the procedures and understanding better about how wait lists happen, how the registration process happens, and so just kind of having a better system for that. As far as program experience, this really was informed by our observation. We really saw that there was enough spaces actually for an expansion of capacity at our schools. But what we noted was that the spaces could be better utilized. And so part of what you're going to hear in our recommendations tonight is how to use those spaces better to accommodate for more students. And also what we found out from our interviews is that there's a school administration is really supportive of any structural changes that need to occur. to support those capacity expansions. As for the student experience, we didn't interview any students and all of this was informed just by observations. And that what we found was that, again, students were happy, well behaved, you know, seemed interactive. But overall, we found that students were, that there was a little bit of a lack of student engagement. quality of the activities that students were engaged in was a little bit on the lower level. And so part of what you're going to hear tonight is some of our programmatic recommendations because we do worry a little bit about what expansion of the programs could look like as far as the program quality and student experience. And as for our staff experience, again, we heard from staff that were really satisfied. They loved their jobs, reporting really great experiences with the students and their families, having great working relationships with their colleagues. But overall, what we did find, which was concerning for us, and you'll hear a bit more about this tonight, was a lack of prep and planning time. And that because of the hours in which they work, There is actually no time built into their schedules to plan, and often staff reported that they had to plan outside of work hours, often on evenings and weekends, and that time wasn't compensated for, which was reflected again back into the programmatic experience of students. And that, again, staff reporting that they had a really great experience, and most reporting great relationships with their site coordinators, however, noting that, again, because of limited time, there was very limited formal feedback or structure for that. And that was really what we kind of took, and that will be informing as you hear, as we go forward in our recommendations to be addressed tonight. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_19]: So as we took a look at the data, kind of five key challenge areas emerged. And so as we go forward, we'll address, kind of define each of these challenge areas and then give our specific recommendations for them. I'd also just make a pitch here that we've sent in our full report, which has some additional recommendations. So this presentation is just going to highlight a few that we feel like are the most important. And I'll turn it over to Andrew, who's going to discuss the first one, strategic vision.
[SPEAKER_06]: Thanks, Michael. As we mentioned at the beginning, we were really tasked with developing a model for Medford Public Schools. And the most important first step in developing that model is to create a position, a leadership position, with whom this model will be defined, will grow and develop, and will be communicated over time. So, you know, we're talking about a person who can really own that vision and carry it forward for Medford Public Schools. To create that vision, as part of that process, we have identified, as Michael flagged, some payroll discrepancies, communication and wait list management issues, some inconsistencies in executive leadership. These issues cause a real shortfall in the district's ability to craft that strategic plan, that strategic vision for after school. And we see that in the communication, we see that in the professional relationships and kind of the downstream effects that it has on the program staff. So these pieces need to be the first steps that we take. As Michael flagged as well, we've got four action steps here. There are more in our report, but I want to communicate these four priorities to you. Again, these are the first steps that MPS takes in this process. So the first is to define and adopt a district-wide programming philosophy through a process. That is using our model and having every stakeholder in afterschool understand and adopt that vision to guide them for Medford Public Schools afterschool programming. We need to then establish a single accountable leader in whom that vision is going to reside. And as the program grows and needs change, that person uses that vision to make those changes, to inform the decisions that they make that are needed for the programs. And they're also, as I said before, tasked with communicating that effectively to the community. The good news about this step is that a lot of those first two steps, a lot of this work has been done already. The first piece is our model from which we'll draw that vision. And the second piece, a job description for this accountable leader, is one that we drafted for Dr. Galusi. It's what we call the managing director of programs. And there's already some work involved in finding that person and getting them in this role. Next we have developing and continuing to revise a registration and wait list process and communicating that strategy out to the community. Now, of course, in a lot of these tasks and responsibilities that we're going to talk about, that responsibility will fall to this managing director over time. But again, the good news is, with the help of the task force, with the communications director, we've already taken steps toward that as well. So drafting that language, understanding what the vision is, how we can communicate this effectively so families understand that work is being done, and they'll see big steps next year to start making this not a problem for so many folks in the community. Finally, the last piece in this category that I want to mention tonight is we're making the recommendation to transition each of what was previously known as a site coordinator for each of the programs into a site director role. And those folks would report directly to the managing director. This is very important because it is, and this is a segue into what Mike was going to talk about in the moment. One of the biggest pieces that we need to establish for after school is increased capacity for leadership, increased capacity for managing, and increased capacity for administration. So a lot of that is not happening while program is happening, and to the expense of other things that folks should be focused on in the moment when working with children. I'll turn this over to Michael next.
[SPEAKER_19]: Yes, so our next area of challenge that has to be addressed is this management and administrative capacity. And really the key highlight in this area is that as it stands, leaders don't have structured time to manage their teams and to build the kind of processes, the kind of systems that's gonna support growth as we look toward the next year. So, in addition to changing that title from site coordinator to site director, we want to make this a full-time position. And that's going to really give that structured time for this individual to manage their teams, right? To have the time available to think ahead, anticipate problems, work with their staff, and build and grow. It's also going to give the managing director a team for themselves, right? They're going to have other individuals that they can delegate to as they're owning this vision. And for building staff themselves, principals, for the facilities team, teachers, there's a key person in each building who has the time to field questions, to build relationships, to understand the priorities of each individual school and make sure that they're carried over into the after school day. Second, we were recommending that we want to standardize the onboarding and orientation process. We really want to make sure that as we go into this next year that everyone on the afterschool team has a clear understanding of that shared mission and orientation, an orientation where we're all together establishing those expectations is going to be the best tool for us to really hit the ground running. Last, we're recommending that each individual site implement a daily staff meeting with as many individuals as possible. A lot of folks that work for the after school team are paraprofessionals or have other responsibilities during the school day, which is going to make that very difficult. our own teams and our organization as basic. We experienced this problem as well, but making sure there's some structured time each day for as many staff as possible to work on the day-to-day and really give our site director, the recommended site director, the space to manage their staff, to bring staff together and work together each day. This leads into our next category, which is staff accountability and continuous improvement. So we've implemented some tools to bring us together. We've given ourselves that capacity. Now we have to make sure we're holding our individual staff accountable, not just to their performance, but to their own personal continued growth and the program's growth. And so from our observations, from our site visits and things, we didn't really see a clear unifying structure for staff accountability. So the first thing we want to do is we want to implement a calendar of professional developments that occurs annually for all staff to participate in. In our report, we've outlined some specific trainings that we think are really key. So you can dive into that literature as well. Each staff member should have, you know, that shared vision of how we're going to approach programming, and that should be equalized, so to speak, across all sites, right? And we're doing that work at the beginning of the year. Next, we want to launch a coaching and evaluation system for each individual staff member. And so site directors would take the responsibility of meeting with their team and using several different tools, like one-on-one meetings, like observations, performance reviews. And really here, we want to give that director the tools necessary to be providing sufficient feedback, but also spaces for staff to be giving feedback up. And that's another, the daily staff meeting connects to that as well. So I have the time as an individual staff member to give feedback in a one-on-one to my director, and they have time to give that to me. I have a space each day, something happened to me after school that I need to bring up, or I'm not even sure I need to bring up, I can do that at the staff meeting. And so we're these standardized, structured times for any staff member to do that. And this really builds toward the overall goal here of promoting a culture of initiative, right? So all of these things blend together, and we really want to give staff clear expectations about how they can grow and what areas that they should be focusing on, focusing their energy on. Next, Annie's going to talk a little bit about program quality and kind of our specific recommendations there.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Oh, sorry. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_25]: So yes, our biggest recommendations around program quality really stem from the concept that if these programs are going to grow, really we need to give substantive experiences for students. A big kind of dilemma that I think programs face is that if students aren't engaged, Even though children are having a good enough experience and that they're well behaved right now, one thing that we can predict is that we will see a spike in student behaviors and that it will be harder to actually keep kids engaged. And so the programs as they are are fine enough, but we do need to make a higher investment into the overall quality. And part of what we're recommending is some structural changes to the program. And part of that being that right now, if you're not aware, currently students move by grade groups from space to space and engage in specific activities led by their group leaders. who are then required to plan each one of those activities. Part of what we found is that, again, because of a lack of planning time, a lot of the activities were lacking as far as quality, a little bit disjointed, and they weren't always engaging students to the highest level. And sometimes they almost felt like time fillers because staff didn't have enough time to prep and plan. And we also found that because of the grade groups, that kids were really limited in their peer interactions, and that especially as students got older, they really felt confined to those peer groups. So what we're going to kind of, below is what I'm going to kind of offer to you as some recommendations as what we think would help improve the programs, especially, more generally, but especially for those as they grow in size. Our big recommendation, and again we also heard this from surveying of parents of interest, is we really want to prioritize time outside. It's really going to help for high capacity numbers, but also it is what we know to be best practice for children as far as giving them opportunities to solve real world problems with their peers. So really trying to find a programmatic model that prioritizes that time outside. We also really want to emphasize higher quality lesson planning, activities that are really thematic and project-based and have kind of longer-term goals in mind and are really driven by student interests. And with that, kind of this idea of creating two to three new full-time positions, which we're actually terming specialists. These would be lead educators in the curriculum planning and implementation. Some sites were recommending two, some were recommending three, again, based on the size, and you'll hear a little bit more about that. But these would be specialists in the specialties of sports, STEAM, and kindergarten. And again, they would have the main priority of planning in their specialty field and receiving students to engage in those lessons and activities at that higher level. And with that, we would be actually adjusting the program structure. to move away from the idea of grade groups and group sort of movement and have multi-age grouping and allow much more student choice based programming. And so what you're going to be able to see a little bit more tonight is about kind of what that student schedule looks like. So how do you be able to offer multiple ages a variety of options with that. And then with those also curriculum specialists, this idea that we would be training them on how to do high-level implementation. And again, the big emphasis being here is that we want to make sure that we're creating a lot of great learning experiences that students are opting into, are driven to want to participate in, having that choice, and that they're individuals who have that planning time and that interest to really drive that learning. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_19]: So our last challenge area is all about the day-to-day operations of each individual site. So our recommendations here are about, you know, more detailed on the ground things that we observed. So the first thing we're recommending is to delegate to a different staff member the responsibility of dismissal and managing student movement throughout the day. And the reason behind that is we really want to free up the recommended site directors from that responsibility. We want them on the floor. We want them embedded in programming, observing staff, and not tied to parent pickup. Second, and Annie touched on this, really using spaces differently. And what I'd like to add to this is how you're organizing your staff to that space. So rather than having them follow each follow a designated group of students, but tying them to a space and allowing students to move in and out of that space. This helps really motivate staff too, because they can pursue their own interests. Instead of having to be part of a STEM project when I'm personally, that's not my bag. But I can pursue my interests, I can try to put together art projects, I can move down that career path. If I'm more of a sport person, I can be put in the gym, placed in the gym, and students can come move in and out of that space throughout the day as opposed to me following them. Last, we want to implement some specific tools to really make sure that as we make this kind of schedule change that we're prioritizing safety. So some key details there would be making sure that each site and every staff member has a radio on them to be communicating about student movement. but also implementing some tracking tools like an activity log. This is something we use in our own programs where students are responsible for signing into this space. And then that front desk individual gets a live update about where that student is. If they're deciding to leave, they're signing out, signing into wherever they're landing. So these are some kind of the first steps to really make sure that we're executing our program safely. I'm going to turn it over to Andrew, who's going to talk about the capacity increases.
[SPEAKER_06]: Thanks, Michael. So our first, our goal in coming up with a capacity increase for next year, in speaking to Dr. Galussi and talking and working with the task force, is to take the most aggressive approach possible, but to make sure that's limited by what is achievable in the small amount of time that we have between this year and next year, and then in turn is also financially viable one year to the next. From that kind of North Star guiding us, we looked at the first priority of making sure that no folks who are currently working at the programs are going to lose their jobs. We don't want to be scaling back, you know, before we've actually put a new model in place. So taking that current staff that we have at each of the programs and thinking again about that specialist position that Annie talked about, adding two or three specialists at each site. And I'll just quickly kind of break that down for everybody. At each of the four, all four of these sites serve students between kindergarten and fifth grade. So one of the positions that we recommend is a first hire, what we call a kindergarten specialist. So this is a manager for that kindergarten room. It's developmentally appropriate to have them separate from the greater grade. Oops, excuse me. And the other two positions, so that's true for all four of the schools. For the other positions, we would like each site to start with what we call a sports specialist. So for our purposes in understanding how we can serve the most number of students, again to think about capacity as being our driving force here, how can we make sure we're serving the highest number of students in spaces that are equipped to serve a large number and to appeal to a broad group? making sure there's someone on the staff who's planning and implementing a sports curriculum. And when I say sports, that ranges from what you'd really look at at the younger grades from being a PE experience for most of the younger levels and kind of graduating into a little bit more of what you might find in rec sports by fourth and fifth grade. For any program that already can meet that need with an individual staff member, that priority could be shifted. Our number two recommendation is for a STEAM specialist position. So for those who are not used to the term STEAM, it's combined the science, technology, engineering, and math with an arts piece. So that person is designing and implementing curriculum in that domain every single day. Any flag for us that We don't feel that the size of the groups at each of the four schools, because of the large difference between McGlynn and Missituk at the 100 level, which is really going to meet the full need that we feel that there is at those schools based on our landscape analysis, compared with The Roberts at 150 and the Brooks at 195, those warrant having that extra specialist. It's a matter of making sure that you have space for all the students and something that can hold their interest and sustain their attention for that larger group. So, that's the Kindergarten and Sports Specialists at McGlynn and Missituk, Kindergarten, Sports, and STEAM Specialists at Roberts and Brooks. From there, from that level of staff investment, we layered on the operational pieces that Michael talked about to say like, okay, what programmatic and kind of space changes can we make? And after kind of analyzing each of those, we're very comfortable with an increase next year up to the levels that you see on this slide. This, I wanna flag that this isn't, from what we understand, you know, the need to be, based mostly on the survey, but also other information that we gathered through this process. This isn't the full need in Medford. This would be a multi-phased increase over time. But again, we don't want to set up a situation that's going to, you know, not be achievable in the first year. So, you know, making this jump, Again, from 120 to 195, a 75 student increase at the Brooks alone is substantial. And we play that across other programs. We're adding a number of seats to our programs for next year. I'm going to switch slides. Actually, I'm going to pass off to Annie for the next one.
[SPEAKER_25]: I know the picture for the sample schedule is a little bit small, so bear with me, but I hope you can follow along. This is an example schedule that we wanted to share with you, specifically trying to highlight what a multi-age programming model would look like. I do want to highlight that we actually do have kindergarten separated, and as Andrew referenced, of kindergarten specialists who would have the responsibility of really owning that kindergarten experience. in many ways, like the way a kindergarten teacher would. And so because we think developmentally, kindergartens really still need that kind of small classroom model experience, need to kind of be with their own group, really with a teacher that really understands that age group. They will continue to have a classroom experience, a designated room where they get to have activities that are geared towards kindergarten, and they will go to certain spaces as a kindergarten group. to have that, again, that kindergarten experience. However, if you kind of pan over and look through the first through fifth grade, they're slightly grade group, but generally the concept is that first through fifth grade is all together. And if you look at the space column, you can actually get a sense from how the activities in that space column are listed. What we've sort of done here is tried to visualize different activities that could be occurring over the course of the day and the various spaces that would be utilized to have those activities happening. In a first through fifth grade experience, oftentimes those students would be intermixed, but specifically on activities where the idea of a six or seven-year-old being with a 10-year-old would make sense, where it would be things like, playing outside on the playground or playing in the cafeteria for board games or for coloring and things like that. But then having specific times in the day when grade grouping does make sense because of developmental needs, things like homework support or things like a group gym game. Oftentimes, we don't want a six-year-old playing the same gym game with a 10-year-old. And so knowing that there would be certain times in the day where we would be separating those groups. But overall, over the course of the day, many of the activities are opened up for those grades. And they're intermixed, having a lot of choice. The real emphasis being here is that there are teachers stationed at all these different spaces where all these different activities are occurring. and that students are being able to opt in and out throughout the day of those spaces and activities, really being driven by their individual interests. Knowing that if I want to spend time outside with my friends, that's great, but if I really want to then go into the art room and do the STEAM project 20 minutes later, that's available to me, and I have that option. And that if I have homework to do, I have a set time on my schedule where I'm supposed to get my homework done. So again, this idea drives this idea of how do you do intermixed or multi-age programming and be able to have student choice be facilitated well. And we do believe, based off of staffing and spaces, that this is very doable for all the programs. The only other thing I would like to highlight for everyone, because this came up as observational data and even with our recommendations, We know that this is still going to be tight staffing. If you look at the first 15 minutes, 15, 20 minutes of the day, you can really see that there's only one space available. And that is, and then the outside there, it's the cafeteria for snack and meeting. and then outside. Because of the contract with para professionals or the contracts that paras have, no matter what, we do foresee that there's still going to be a very tight staffing and very tight student to staff ratios during that time until paras are able to join the program. And so having one central location for check-in where students have a very low-level activity, where it's something like snack and meeting, and then going outside is where you're going to be able to have the safest opportunity to be able to supervise those children until more adults appear. And so that was a very strategic choice in the schedule that we do also recommend for programs going forward. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_06]: So I want to talk next about the kind of financial implications of this model. Of course, when we're talking about hiring full-time staff members, we're talking about increasing site coordinators to full-time levels or to an FTE role that does take a financial investment. Working with Medford Public Schools on this is much like how we go about budgeting for our own programs. You're working through the revolving account. The programs need to be able to fund themselves. But we also wanted to make sure that we're, again, approaching this with a level that we're not making a huge ask of the community with very, very large tuition increases. So, the rates that you see here are the after school annual and monthly rates, and we also scoped out camp. Again, that's February and April camp tuition, as well as professional development days. There are two of them per year tuition rates for MPS. I want to point out that, again, the surplus that you see there does appear large, $376,000 surplus. So from that perspective, that news looks great. But I want to flag for all of you that there are a couple of gaps that are not included in that. The first noteworthy gap is that that number does not account for the sliding tuition scale based on household income that Medford Public Schools currently uses and would like to prioritize continuing to use. The impact of those unrealized tuition dollars is not something that we have to kind of bake into our financial model. So we wanted to make sure we were leaving enough space to be able to fund that very high priority. The second piece, which is a much smaller impact overall on budget, is that although we did make a substantial increase to the number of dollars that are spent per pupil, participating pupil, on things like supplies and equipment, a much higher investment than is currently being made. We would, if the budget allowed in that first year, recommend that that managing director be able to make some decisions about one-time investments in capital that would help with equipment to run programs going forward. Again, not as high a priority as making sure the access is there for families that need it, but that is a second priority that we would look at. With that, we can switch slides. So I wanted to, again, take a moment to thank all of you. Actually, I wanted to say one more thing. I neglected a point. Throughout all of this process before I conclude, again, the model we flagged is an area for you all to gain more information. about the programs, particularly for the financial piece. There is a financial tool that we prepared for Dr. Galusi and for the new managing director when that person is hired, so that we're not just providing a static model that will fit next year and next year only. But that financial tool, as well as the entire vision, is built so that as changes are needed, so when that second phase of expansion comes around, when there are priorities within the school district that need to also be aligned at after school, there are tools in place to be able to make those changes in an informed way and to be able to play out how those changes will affect programming, both financially and programmatically. Apologies for kind of skipping to the conclusion before I mentioned that point. Again, I wanted to thank all of you to be part of this. This was a wonderful collaboration. For our end, you know, we learned a lot and really, valued working with a group of people that care so deeply about the out-of-school time experience for the families and children. As Suzanne and I said about a year ago, when we started talking about this issue, I said, yes, we run very, very large programs at BASIC. We have a program that serves 400 students at one school. But by and large, and this isn't just in areas of the country that really don't have the resources. This is in the most affluent area in the world, almost. Greater Boston, where you'd think there would be enough resources to make sure this is available for every family. this is a problem in almost every district. So this is not an issue that Medford is facing alone. It's been really wonderful for us to be able to do some work in trying to make that not a major issue for parents because it is something that every community is really struggling to deal with and is going to need to figure out a solution for. So thank you again for inviting us to be part of this process with all of you.
[Jenny Graham]: Thank you. Are there questions from the committee? Member Ruseau?
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Thank you. Other than the job description for the managing director, was there any recommendations to change the job descriptions for the site directors?
[SPEAKER_06]: Yep, so we prepared site director job descriptions, curriculum specialist job description, and a kindergarten specialist job description. Excellent.
[Paul Ruseau]: You probably said that. You said a lot of things.
[SPEAKER_06]: I don't think I did, but yeah, it's a good ask.
[Paul Ruseau]: Does the budget that was, it's not an actual budget, but does that include the overhead expenses for facilities that we charge the program? It does, yes. Excellent. And other than the ten specialists, Were there additional staff members on the ground that were gonna be required? Because, well, we don't have a factory to make those people. The site director, the recommendation to make them full-time should make a big difference in being able to hire them. I mean, we have them. And the specialists are also full-time. It's the folks that are working three hours a day that concern me. But if we had the same number we have today, would we be able to do this capacity?
[SPEAKER_06]: If we had the same numbers that we had today, we'd be able to do this, yes. Wonderful. We never know from one year to the next who's going to continue in their employment. We're hoping that this is a challenge that every out-of-school-time organization faces. We want to build in structures, and Michael talked a bit about this earlier, where there's some upward mobility throughout the organization so that each role that we're posting and every person that then takes on that role, you're better able to retain them over time as they see that there's a path forward for themselves. But as of the structure as it's created, yes, we can meet all of those with the current staffing. I'll flag, too, that the financial, you know, tool that we provided to Dr. Galussi, we build in roles as part of those expenses so that, you know, as realities happen, you know, we don't really know, and I didn't get into this detail when I talked about the capacity slide, but when we're serving 195 seats, We can make projections about how that group will, you know, kind of select their program experience. You know, you offer currently three different options for families to sign up for either, you know, five days, three days, or two days. Ideally, over time, we build that out to any number. That's how you get the broadest access to programming. If it's a family that needs four days, that's a possibility. If it's a family that needs one day, that's a possibility. So you end up getting, when you increase capacity over time and you increase options for family, you get a, what I like to call, a lower distribution of the selection of days per week, rather than a real high what I like to call high-level distribution, where it's mostly families who are five-day and just jumping it. I wanted to have the program, so I'm gonna take all five days just in case, because I know if I lose it, I'll never get it back. So you're really operating with this high-level distribution now, and you have an even number of staff across days. So we want to build in tools so that as that changes over time, and you're looking for more three-day people or two-day people, you have kind of plug-and-play numbers that you can put in the financial projection to say, okay, I'm replacing this person with this person, or we're hiring somebody because we have 10 more students, and this is the role we need and it's the right number to financially plan for that going forward.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I have two more questions, but I'll let my colleagues have a shot first.
[SPEAKER_19]: Something that we also would like to recommend, too, is identifying individuals who are currently on the team and giving them prep hours. So, you know, a schedule of noon to six, one to six, so a little bit of planning time based on an interest area and a need. And this is really going to help create those pathways for advancement that Andrew talked about, really motivate individual people, contribute to that culture of initiative. And so that's all under the management of the site director to identify those folks to give them the coaching and the help necessary to plan that activity they might be interested in. So we're confident that those folks exist and we wouldn't have to hire from them but we do want to identify them as quickly as possible.
[Jenny Graham]: Member Parks.
[Jessica Parks]: There we go. Sorry. So I just want to say something and then I have a couple of questions. As someone who's been involved kind of from the beginning, I'm really pleased the direction this has gone. And as one of the few on the task force who always had a kid in the after school program, I, you know, my main concerns from the start were scaling up in meaningful ways while keeping the existing programs kind of spark with it and also not having a huge impact on the cost. And I think that you know I'm really thrilled about the concrete improvements. You know we've increased spots at all four elementary schools. We've talked about bringing back the vouchers which I used previously and I didn't like seeing go away. We're making the site coordinator positions full time. so we can retain excellent staff. I personally know that we were about to lose some really great staff members because those were not full-time positions. We're adding specialists for the enhanced programming, and so none of this wouldn't have been possible without, I think, a few steps along the way that I want people to acknowledge. Dr. Galussi's leadership, she, when we came to her, she understood the urgency. of this issue and moved it forward. She was open to all of our early discussions and ideas. And honestly, without her championing this, it would have kind of stalled from the start. So thank you. And then the principals, the site coordinators, the caregivers on the task force, thank you for working together to make this real and holding us accountable to a program that works for Medford, while also at the same time being open to all of the new changes. And then also basic, your support, your expertise, and your willingness to engage in a truly collaborative partnership, which is very different from your standard model, I know. So this was a big kind of risk and a big kind of leap of faith, I think. So that flexibility really made a lot of difference. I have seen their spreadsheet and their financial model. And it's amazing how you can plug it in and play with it. So kudos to them for that. Now moving back, I know we still have a lot of work. And I know the proof is in the pudding. So we are going to hopefully see the results of all of this. A few questions, though. Sibling discount. I could not tell if that was factored in.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's not factored in. No. Right now it's 5 percent.
[Jessica Parks]: It is currently 5 percent. And do you envision that moving forward or do you not envision that or is that up to the district.
[SPEAKER_06]: I think that's an up to the district question. You know for us my recommendation for you know Again, with the priority being making sure we're increasing capacity and access, I guess is a better way to put it, is that sliding scale for tuition. Because if we're prioritizing what the needs are, and we're talking about families that can't afford programming at all, and we have a limited number of dollars in discounts to provide, my first recommendation would be to look at those families whose households fall into categories that would meet that sliding scale requirement. and to make the 5% sibling discount a second priority to that. But I think that would be up to the district to decide.
[Jessica Parks]: Okay. And then you were saying that the sliding scale, that falls into basically what we were seeing as surplus.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yes.
[Jessica Parks]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yes. Because those are really unrealized tuition dollars. I mean, you think about the overall income available as being tuition dollars. There are some, you know, small grants, you know, that also fund, you know, but By and large, the majority of the revenue is coming from tuition dollars. So any single dollar that is foregone because a family can't afford it, that is just unrealized revenue.
[Jessica Parks]: OK. And then my last one, STEM. Just because there is not a STEM specialist called out for the Missituk and the McGlynn, that does not mean that there is not structured STEM at those two schools.
[SPEAKER_06]: No, it doesn't. I'd say a couple things about that. Our recommendation starts with a sports specialist because, again, it's the most bang for your buck in terms of making sure there is a space that is utilized for that activity that is sustainable over time. Not having, you know, just the gym open and having kind of free gym, which is a bit of a safety issue even with a few kids, much less having a lot of kids served in that capacity. So, again, being able to utilize that space where all the kids are involved in one activity is the best way to increase capacity. Now, there's a couple of different pieces I think that it's important to understand when you look at the individual, you know, program by program analysis that, you know, starting with the managing director and downstream the, you know, each site director would look at to make choice, make hiring choices. Number one, if you're already able to satisfy the lesson planning and implementation needs with someone who's already on staff, much like Michael talked about earlier, a person who has either a part-time, a few days a week, or a part-time, fewer than 40 hours per week role, and that person could have one extra hour per day to plan, or that person is actually just very experienced with on the fly, creating programming that lots of kids can be involved, can, you know, maybe not take it to quite the level a sports specialist would, but to satisfy a lot of those needs. In fact, at the MSITUC you already have one of these folks available, so if that person is able to take on that responsibility, well then for the MSITUC that becomes a lower priority. And perhaps you want to invest in the STEAM specialist for that individual program, because you can meet 75% to 80% of the needs with a current employee. So anytime we can make a decision like that, we want to. On the flip side of the same coin, let's say at the McGlynn, they don't have that person that they can identify to create and implement that programming. But they do have somebody who can really would love to implement crafts and arts, has some interest in science and technology, but maybe needs some additional support to be able to do something consistently. Again, we invest in adding the a couple hours a week to that person's schedule, start with the place where they're comfortable in arts and crafts programming, and maybe we build up the capacity of that person to implement the other elements of the STEAM programming through professional development or other supports that we can provide. So there are other low-cost areas that we can look at to make sure we're getting a STEAM experience for kids at those other schools, even though our top priority for investment's not that STEAM specialist. Thank you.
[Jenny Graham]: Member Reinfeld.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Thank you, and thank you to everyone who was involved with this. I know it's been a lot of work, a lot of conversations, and I appreciate everyone who took it on. So I'm looking at this with two hats on, one as the school committee member, and my big questions are around the money. As you say, it's got to be self-sustaining, and I look at a lot of new full-time employees, and I get nervous, and I think about the benefits and the everything that comes along with that as well as the dramatic increase, both in terms of staff and management, but also to the people on the ground and having so many kids coming in at once. I'm not saying we should be any more gradual than we have to be. This is a long overdue change and we need to make it soon, but I'm nervous. I would love to see the spreadsheet. I trust Member Parks. If she's given a thumbs up to a spreadsheet, I generally tend to trust that but I'm nervous as a school committee person. The other hat that I'm wearing is out of school time education. That is how I came to education myself. I think it's critically important and that we're looking at this as not just an extension of the school day of having those choice moments and that the unstructured time I think is really important. So I have a few questions on the, I guess it's a little bit in the weeds. But looking at the spaces for sports time, I absolutely, we hear we need more gross motor skills, we need more movement, less screens. I was really happy to not see a lot of screens in here. I actually would hope that we can do our after school programming without
[SPEAKER_06]: It's a very low cost solution to the problem. We'll just put TVs in.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Right, yeah. But I'm wondering about the sports spaces somewhere like the Roberts, which doesn't have the outdoor spaces that other schools have. Can we get out to Hickey Park? Have we looked at what happens All of our elementary schools have experienced where enrichment programs might come in, whether they're run by the PTO, by teachers, clubs, schools. We've had outside basketball camps come in and that has taken space away from after school. So I'm wondering how that gets factored in, because I think those enrichment club opportunities are really wonderful for the kids who aren't necessarily doing an after school program all year, but want to have those experiences. It's the same spaces. How do we navigate that?
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, that's a, I'll try to address that in a couple of different realms. First, taking your last point first. There certainly are difficult decisions that one needs to make running any individual schools in how those spaces are prioritized for after school use. I mean we work with our partners in Belmont and in Maynard. on a daily basis, and I will tell you that, especially as you get into spaces that are more used heavily for sports, that becomes a very difficult prioritization decision. And I would say building in the management capacity, the administrative capacity of the site director and the managing director, is the way that you're able to have those conversations with school leadership and with other district leaders to make sure that we're understanding the full needs of that school building and the different spaces and how it's going to impact the students going forward on each decision. Because if there's no voice to speak to, it's just going to be like the immediate need gets filled, and then that space is not usable, and then we build into other issues for after school students. Now, you know, going backward in your points to the enrichment classes, so to speak, that are available, whether through the PTA or PTO or other outside groups that are coming in and using spaces. I mean, I think there is a, you know, there's certainly a lot of benefit that comes from those type of programs. I would advocate for after school, you know, being higher on that on that hierarchy than an enrichment class coming in for a space like the gym that is just vital to the operation of a program on a day-to-day basis. I'd say the same thing for the cafeteria. If there's a coding class that you wanted to bring in, something that's not being done at after school, and the only space was one of the classrooms, then certainly we could help to, even in a continuing relationship of how to advise for making do with the cafeteria when you used to use the art room for 10 weeks because you really want this coding class to operate. Certainly, there are ways to be creative about that problem solving. But I would, I would hope that, you know, and I think there's a lot of, there's a lot of support for prioritizing after school space for those really critical spaces within the school. And your third point about the, you know, utilizing outdoor spaces, agreed that Roberts doesn't have great outdoor space. And my understanding from talking to folks at the program was that they used to walk to the park on a pretty regular basis, and that's just something that programmatically has gone away. So I think really looking at whether that is a possibility going forward is, again, it's not necessary for this first step in increasing capacity, but I think that would be a great next step. Because out of all of the schools, it is the most limited for outside play. And if we're talking about it being the second largest in terms of needs, to only have really one good outdoor programming space. That was part of the reason why we highlighted the Roberts in our mock schedule for all of you, even though there's multiple versions to look at in the full report, is because it takes some coordination in the schedule just to really even meet the needs for the after school students, much less any folks, community folks who are using the playground or to get something like a pickup soccer game organized.
[Suzanne Galusi]: Could I just really quickly point of information through the chair is just to add on a little bit from what Andrew was saying. So it's always good. There have been ongoing conversations with all school leaders. So throughout the year of this review and our work with basic. So everyone is very clear on what it's going to take in order to meet these expectations. One of the first things we did for this school year was make sure that the same amount of space across the district in every program was used. And so that is the number one priority. I would say there's always the compromise of things when it comes to enrichment programs, book fairs. things like that that come up, but in terms of renting space to programs and community partners, that does not start until 6 p.m. It should not be, so I actually would like to know about that, if that. The basketball program? Yes, I would like to know about that, if that's the case. Okay, we can do that offline.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Yes, thank you. And then... Which was a great program, I should say.
[Suzanne Galusi]: Kids really enjoyed getting to play basketball, so I don't wanna... Yes, I would just say that we were very clear about people coming in at 6 PM, because we still have students in the building, and so... I mean, it was for the Medford students. It was for the after school program. We can talk separately. I'm just saying that there is an expectation that rentals do not start until six.
[Erika Reinfeld]: I don't think it was rentals. It was billed as an enrichment. My kid didn't do it, so I didn't go deep.
[SPEAKER_19]: I wonder if you're referring to the Saturday Night Live. It was like a football organization, maybe? Saturday Night Lights was separate. Excuse me, live.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Easily done. I would have to go back and look.
[SPEAKER_19]: And so I just for a moment wanted to speak to personal experience. So as a site director under this current model I'm the one who owns managing that difficulty in our in our school district in Maynard. And something I'd like to point out is really the scale of that problem. And so I think when we think of the use of space in a building, it's very easy to think that it's utilized every waking minute. And I think the reality is that there is actually, it's much easier to share the space than people anticipate right away. I also think part of the recommendation to increase the capacity of The director and specialist is so that they can be owning that problem and they can come up with a separate plan on those individual days that exist. And so we always prioritize a relationship where we want the school to do, the district to do the things that they want to do. And if there's a basketball program, great. Let's work out that schedule, what time is that going to be in a specific day, what day of the week, and then we'll adjust. And I think the way it ends up playing out is that there's still enough time for each program to get in. There's 180 days in that year. We're not expecting that we have each of those spaces from dismissal until 6, every one of those 180 days. And so I think we've never encountered an issue or a problem with that support staff
[Erika Reinfeld]: I think a big thing that we've faced in Medford is that communication and the expectation around who is, you know, when a school is having an art night, what happens? We're taking over the hallways, hanging student art frantically before everyone arrives. So that's where I think it becomes really important. for there to be ownership on specific sites. But I'm also wondering how that interfaces with, you were talking about a coherent vision for the full program, and this actually taps into Member Parks' question around the STEAM specialists. There might not be someone for their site. What opportunity is there to share that expertise? You know, if something fabulous is developed at one site, how do we make sure it gets somewhere else, and that the site, the on-site staff has that training, that planning to say, oh, this is such a great community craft that we're doing, and it's going to look different in different sites, but really that ability to customize, and that comes into the professional development. Professional development is great and fantastic and important, and if you don't build in the time to customize it and tailor it to your students, it doesn't go.
[Unidentified]: to see if there's a potential moment?
[SPEAKER_19]: Yeah, sure. I would say that that ownership comes from the managing director. And so that person has those site directors at their disposal to be feeding that information up. So if one team specialist is really working on something that's great, as we move into the next phase of this project, that we would recommend that that managing director is having weekly, monthly meetings with their site directors to like, hey, what's going on? Like ear to the ground kind of stuff.
[Erika Reinfeld]: I mean, and that's the kind of thing that Dr. Galusi has done as superintendent is to try to improve the communication across schools, so.
[SPEAKER_25]: I also wanted to really emphasize the reason why I think having specialists as full-time across sites is so vital. One thing that we've even really implemented is what we call COPs, community of practice. They mean different things in different communities. But for us, it's actually a gathering meeting of individuals with similar positions. So, for instance, our STEM specialists, they meet once a month to be able to share resources and information. And so, you know, I think by being able to move specialists to that full-time position, it allows not just the managing directors to kind of manage up people, but it also allows individuals to work with each other and share resources, so that the MSITUC specialists and other educators who might be interested have an opportunity to talk to the McGlynn specialists and educators and the Roberts. And so it really builds in that time and space to be able to do that. And it first starts with full-time staff, and then as there are other teachers who are interested, building them into being part of that so that resources don't also stay stagnant to one site, but they can be actually shared across the community.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Right. And I do wonder about hiring and being able to fill all of those. I know, for example, we wanted literacy specialists for the school day, and we couldn't fill all the positions. And so the thought was one per elementary school, and now we have two across the elementary schools. I'm wondering if we're going to find ourselves there but I guess the only way you find that out is if you post the job descriptions and you see what happens. But thinking about whether it makes sense to do some sharing if it's three days at one school and two days at another or something like that I would love to see. I had.
[SPEAKER_06]: On that point, as you find that, Erica, you're absolutely always at the mercy of whatever candidates are out there in the hiring environment. But I will say, at BASIC, we're the only out-of-school-time organization that pays full-time. And I think that's a big part of what we're trying to do. Now one of two organizations that offer this, and the fact that it's a district position, I think it automatically elevates the desirability of that over just an organization that is offering something like that. People look at it as the stability, the upward mobility, all kind of baked into the job. I think it gives me a lot of confidence that you're gonna find good candidates for this.
[Erika Reinfeld]: I mean, as long as we can afford it, I think that's that school committee ad again.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's the future of out-of-school time programming.
[Erika Reinfeld]: I mean, and it should, like I said, I came up in this world, museums were- You know, right, you know.
[SPEAKER_06]: I do. And you know what it can do for bringing great people into. I mean, you know, can I have any shared colleague who came into the out-of-school time field not as an education professional, but found it because she found the idea of teaching in that space to be just very exciting and interesting, and then made it her career, especially in greater Boston, a lot of folks like that.
[Erika Reinfeld]: And this program, we still have room for our student assistants and our city year folks who are helping. They're still in the room.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yes, in fact, I mean, we highlighted a number of times throughout the report how important those folks are and what, you know, an extremely valuable resource you have in both of those categories of employees. we would go to extreme lengths to ensure that you continue those relationships. They are a great deal for what you're getting. Those are fantastic partnerships.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Okay. You mentioned this in the report that the early pickup model added some seats but didn't necessarily work. Is there still room for that? Because we did hear from some people that, for example, teachers in other districts who said, I just need a little more coverage. And it sounds like it didn't, that the staffing wasn't necessarily scaled to match it.
[SPEAKER_06]: Do you want to talk about that, Annie? Yeah.
[SPEAKER_25]: Do you want me to talk about what the survey said?
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm happy to talk about it, but I know you would.
[SPEAKER_25]: I will say, from who we spoke to, I can at least comment from the surveying that we had and going extensively through the survey data, there were some families that reported that the 4 p.m. works perfectly for their schedule and that they liked it. It was such a small percentage overall that it didn't really reflect the overall experience. I truly, it was about three or four responses out of 395. So it really didn't really, as from what we collected, didn't reflect the overall experience. And then Michael can actually talk a little bit more about what we observed as far as the 4 p.m. structure and kind of what we think is better overall programmatically.
[SPEAKER_19]: Yeah, I think the intended goal of the 4 p.m. pickup was to be able to bring in different staff, transparently for cheaper, someone who would just extend another hour of their day. And it didn't seem like it had met that intended goal. It's really difficult to find that kind of individual. The other thing we really observed is that the schedule of after school was then structured around a limited number of students who had to get picked up at 4 o'clock. So the schedule was built on that dispensal time. So you had students the majority of students really at that point in one room doing an unpreferred activity when they could be spending their time elsewhere. And so that on top of it. just being a bigger administrative burden for folks to keep track of who's being picked up at four. Our perspective was that it wasn't worth it really, even though it would benefit teachers specifically who just need that little bit of time. But that it doesn't support the growth that we're really trying to achieve here.
[Erika Reinfeld]: And I think that highlights the aspect here that we're not just looking for a place to house children for a few hours. We're looking to have really enriching positive experiences. So sorry, I know I'm taking up a lot of time, but I had a big question, which is what does integration with the school and our students who require services and special needs, how do they thrive in this program as well?
[SPEAKER_19]: Yeah, so we've had conversations about that specifically and about kind of the difference in our experience from district to district. I'd highlight and make a pitch really for kind of the model that Maynard uses. So really their reading of Title IX is such that any program that's operating out of their buildings, whatever service is being granted to that student should be extended to after school as well.
[Unidentified]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_19]: That's how they run it. So we work collaboratively with that school district to hire a one-on-one if it's necessary for that individual student. With that question, I think that's where my mind goes with the kinds of services.
[Erika Reinfeld]: And making sure that this financial model that we can support those students in this.
[SPEAKER_19]: So we wouldn't have built that in specifically but I think there would be some space for it within that surplus. I wouldn't give you any guaranteed number. The other thing I would really highlight though as a benefit of full time staff is being able to create behavior plans for those students, maybe on a 504, or who might have a specific need or accommodation that doesn't necessarily rise to the level of a one-on-one. You can imagine students who would be perfectly capable of participating in this kind of program, but just a little bit extra of help. And so that daily staff meeting, a specialist who's designing curriculum with those students, who can take into consideration those students in adjusting their lesson plan, or recommend to a site director a specific example from my program is a student who doesn't have the use of one of their arms. So we purchased specialized scissors for them so they could continue to do the art projects that they wanted to do. So a lot of those benefits or those recommendations really have additional benefits to welcoming those types of students and making it easier as opposed to a site coordinator who's coming in at 2.30, you know, 2 o'clock every day and needs to spend 25 minutes on making sure that the attendance is done as opposed to, you know, a few hours a day being like, okay, well, who's this student and what can we do as a team? Within our resources are ready to accommodate.
[Erika Reinfeld]: So I just hope that will be part of the hiring conversation around these folks. And then the very last thing I wanted to... Could I just point of... Yeah.
[Suzanne Galusi]: I just want to make one point to that. Thank you, Michael, because I think the piece of the position being full-time is very critical because the managing... Excuse me. the site director will be able to have conversations with school-based teams and the principal. And so I do think that these are individual conversations that have to be made in order to create the support that's needed. 504s are written for settings. So there are ways in which you can either create another 504 or add on accommodations that are appropriate for extended school day programs. It's the same for IEPs. I just cannot be necessarily mirrored. So there are staff that are not present in afterschool that are there during the school day. So I think individual conversations with families so that we can be very clear about what are the reasonable accommodations that we can provide so that students are able to be supported in afterschool care is 100% the priority. But we have to be very transparent that afterschool is not housed with nurses or school adjustment Councilors, or behaviorists, or BCBAs. So all of those, if any of those positions are required, then that's the one-to-one conversations that have to occur between the site director, the school itself, whatever the team of representation that is, and the caregivers, so that we can create the plan that's needed to support the students to the best of our ability.
[SPEAKER_19]: I, myself, am involved in a lot of those conversations with BCBAs, with school adjustment Councilors, because I work in the building itself. They can pop by my office. I can go by them. I'm like, hey, we can collaborate on those kiddos.
[Erika Reinfeld]: In all our spare time, right?
[SPEAKER_19]: I mean, you've got to make it work, right? Yeah, exactly. We're supporting the same children. We're here for the kids. Yeah, we do what we can. If a specific service or someone couldn't be hired.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Yeah, and just making sure that's not an afterthought. This program needs to be open for all. So then the last thing I will just flag is that we are in the midst of another task force looking at moving fifth grade out of the elementary schools and so thinking about not now not today but just recognizing that that the elementary school composition may be changing. We've already had lots of conversations, so that will continue. Yes. And because I think one of the things I've heard is that we want to retain some of that elementary school deep I love the deep learning that's getting built in rather than worksheets and and and coloring like real art projects not just coloring and making sure that that is available to our fifth and sixth graders when if and when we we shift there. All right. I'm going to turn off my microphone. I see lots of other lights. Thank you for indulging my questions.
[Jenny Graham]: Member Lopate.
[Aaron Olapade]: Thank you. Thank you so much. This is wonderful. A couple quick questions. So one of the things that was mentioned earlier is that families cited the need for more transparency regarding communication, the wait list system, just the process in general. How are we going to ensure, I think, overall clear communication? I know that a lot of the time it's a timing thing more than anything else, understanding where they fall in the general order. So can we talk a little bit about what that looks like going forward?
[SPEAKER_19]: Yeah, so I think to get into the weeds a little bit, I think... What we're really recommending is, I think, to what you're saying, is the timing of things. And there was a lot of unclear responses in the way that information was flowing out. And so part of the steps that we've done already in collaboration with the communications director here at Medford is to give as much information ahead of time as possible. So it's already been clearly communicated when that registration window is going to be. At the same time, we do have to protect the ability to make flexible registration decisions. And so part of some of our conversations have been moving away from that waitlist pool and more to a ranked order, but one in which that provides some flexibility and gives a full registration picture before students are necessarily pulled off of a waitlist. So what I mean by that is you can imagine a scenario where Maybe there's 60 kindergartners in an individual school year that registered, but only 10 fifth graders. So we have enough total resources to accommodate that, and we can plan ahead of time once we have that full registration picture of shifting over staff to open up a second kindergarten classroom. But that could lead to a scenario where that ranked order is adjusted in some way based on grade, right? One student might have registered first, but where we're going to distribute our resources is such that they might not be pulled off right away. I don't know, Andrew, if you want to clarify that. I hope I'm painting a clear picture. Yeah.
[SPEAKER_06]: I think the only piece I would add to that in kind of working through this strategy and the conversations that we've had so far are that We want to make sure we're being as transparent as possible. And we also want to be really strategic about how, about sharing information. Sorry, am I causing feedback there? About sharing the information in a way that parents understand that here are our priorities This is how we're managing the overall list. They understand that there is a structure and a strategy to ensure fairness and try to maximize the number of participants, but also trying to, but not getting in the weeds of it's, you know, it's this particular system and you're, you know, third on the overall wait list, but that, but also, you know, asterisk fifth when it comes to kindergarten, because if this happens, that happens. We're just not, you know, something that parents can understand. So if we're ahead always of this communication strategy, so telling folks early on, you know, for next year particularly, We did a lot of work this year to increase the number of seats that are available. We don't think it's going to completely resolve the problem, but we're hoping within the next two years that it completely resolves the problem. But for next year, we know that whatever the X number of total seats are going to be made available, and we're going to open registration on X date. and communicate to families that they're in if we know they're in by Y date and be able to make continued decisions about the wait list by Z date. So that people understand the flow and they understand the strategy even if at the very beginning I don't get spit out a number Like, you know, you're seventh on the wait list as soon as I register. You know that there's a process that puts fairness as the highest value. And that person, that managing director who we're hiring to lead that communication strategy is someone I can reach out to. that fully understands and can talk through my individual question in a way that we just can't communicate broadly and that would apply to every single student in Medford Public Schools. Does that make sense? Yeah. Thank you so much. Sure.
[Suzanne Galusi]: Point of information too, just so we're aware of the X dates. Tomorrow there is, we're holding a meeting so that we can explain this, what's happening here to the community. So there is that presentation to the community. Wednesday, May 6th, the registration for all MPS afterschool lottery will open. The re-enrollment date for current Medford afterschool families, so something went out to all the current families that are served through the afterschool program. They've already received a survey to see if they are returning and interested. That due date is May 12th. Monday, May 16th, the registration for the lottery will close. And then we will run a lottery on the 19th. And so I do have to say that communications director Will Pippicelli has and is doing a fabulous job facilitating a lot and all of the communication. So the collaboration between myself and Will and the basic team and the task force has I think one of the most important priorities of this whole entire process has been the communication and the increased communication. I'm happy to share that timeline with the committee. and the presentation for tomorrow night so that you have all of those dates at the ready. Thank you.
[Aaron Olapade]: That's helpful. Thank you. No, that's wonderful to hear. And I think something that you both mentioned that I think is a part of this is also this idea of fairness, right? We've talked a lot about belonging this year, and there's been some questions or concerns I think throughout the district about the uneven demand of programming, that's just the reality of geographical location and the populations of our schools. How are we going to be ensuring, I think, just general fairness when we have that uneven demand when it comes to staffing, when it comes to communication? Obviously, when there's an increased number of students that are in these programs at schools where there is additional need, how do we, I think, make sure that all families feel like they're participating in the process? Obviously, the increased communication is a big part of that, but are we making sure that the program is Again, like equivalent or is it equitable across all things? Like what are we doing to make sure that's happening?
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, I mean, part of establishing that vision, as we talked about, is the strategic vision as the very first step in this process, is to communicate, again, kind of going back to communication, that this is our vision for programming, means that we're serving every child in the community. And even though we, you know, particularly, you know, Brooks is bound to feel the brunt of this, you know, more acutely next year, until we can get to full capacity for Brooks. I mean, the demand there is just, so much greater than it is at every other school. They're going to still feel that more than every other school will for next year, but they understand that our vision for programming is full access for every child in the program, and that means it's an inclusive experience for every Medford student for after, you know, for after school. And then our goal is to serve every family. So I think it comes first from just from communicating that vision and really incorporating that that is our highest value. I got into this field because I love how out-of-school time allows for education to play out based on student choice, based on the interests that students have and how far that they can take them. But over my time, decades working in this field, I've come to value access far more. And so building large programs that work happens to go hand-in-hand with building great programs, because you need to have one in order for the other to work. But that has to be forefront in our vision. So with the vision statement that we drafted for Medford Public Schools in what will be, you know, and that aligns with, you know, Medford already talks about, you know, inclusion and access, you know, to every resource as part of its kind of fundamental, you know, mission for the community. So aligning the afterschool mission with that and making that forefront is, I think, that strategy.
[Aaron Olapade]: Thank you so much. Yeah, of course. Thank you.
[Jenny Graham]: Member Mastroboni.
[Mike Mastrobuoni]: Thank you. Two comments and a question. First, thanks for your work, especially thanks to the volunteers who invested their time for the community. You know, this doesn't happen without sort of this whole team coming together and a lot of work happening, and I've lost my notes. Second, I also am interested in taking a look at the financials, right? I think it's surprising to me, welcome, but also surprising to me that with just a 10% increase to rates, we can fund all these new positions, full-time positions and benefits. So that either seems to me we've been running a surplus for a real long time, which I understand is extremely likely as well. I just wanted to understand the full costing. So, in terms of my question, particularly at the two schools, the Brooks and the Roberts, where we're projecting to really increase the enrollment opportunity, is that because opportunities in facilities, opportunities in staffing, large wait lists in those school communities? And then, you know, along with that, are there any facility needs that we need to do particularly at those two sites to grow this, the resource therein? So I think that's my main question is, you know, why those two schools and do we need to invest in them?
[SPEAKER_06]: Absolutely. Well, I mean, to go back to your first comment about looking at the financials, you're funding these new positions partly with the increase. But keep in mind also that we're also funding this increase because we're going to be enrolling 150 more students than we were previously. So that's a huge increase in the total amount of revenue coming in. And there are, having done this for a number of years, there are economies of scale that you're going to realize as you increase seats. So you can kind of see when you dive into the financial sheet itself, there are different and kind of rules that you want to live by as you structure programs. You know, things like, you know, we ensure we don't spend more than 70% of our revenue on staff. So that's on our wages. And those are built into that kind of financial projection, that financial tool, so that we know as we scale up programs, as long as we are satisfying these rules, that it's going to continue to work. And again, with the tool, you can really see how it works. Sorry, go ahead if you had to follow up on that. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And then as far as why the Roberts and the Brooks, it's completely the weightless need. We don't know what every individual family who's starting school in September is gonna make for an individual choice, but it was very clear from the data that we collected the survey, particularly where the wait list students who are currently, you know, kind of waiting on the wait list are, that the need is absolutely at those schools. So as far as next year, again, the piece that Michael talked about earlier with And what needs to happen programmatically, what needs to happen structurally within the program, how we use the spaces, nothing needs to change. I can't say nothing needs to change. We need to utilize, we need to use those spaces differently, but we don't need to use any more spaces in either one of those schools for next year. Now, if the Brooks does grow to a place where it's serving 300 students per day, you know, 330 students per day, 340 students per day, we may have to look at using additional classrooms for that type of program. I will say that our largest program, which And I go back to your point earlier, Erica, about the need of upper elementary school programming. That's a fourth, fifth, and sixth program. There is a great need for having kids at that age and even into middle school in environments that are healthy and productive after school, where they can pursue their interests. That's our biggest program. And we do it largely with those same types of spaces in a bigger school. So they're larger. The cafeteria is a bigger cafeteria. The gym is a bigger gym. But we're not using 30 classrooms in the school to do it, even though it's serving 400 students. But I would say that going into that second year where you try to make the next jump for Brooks, we're probably going to have to look at additional spaces to use within the school to meet that big number, depending on how big that number is.
[Jenny Graham]: I think our student reps have some questions.
[Alachie Yeager]: One thing, just quick point of inquiry. We have one of the student reps that will almost certainly be here for next year, here to just sort of observe. And they actually had some questions that they wanted to ask the committee. Would the chair be willing to admit that? Of course. Great. Thank you.
[SPEAKER_20]: Hello, I just want to say great presentation. You obviously know your stuff very well. I'm so happy that the Apple School is getting new work. I know a bunch of people And when I was in the books that went to elementary, that went to after school a lot, so it's good to see this finally getting some changes. I have a few questions though. What was the reason during this remodeling not having any conversations with the kids that were enrolled in attending the after school program? I just think that the program focuses on kids, so I think that they should have an opinion on this. So this may be like high above them. They should still have like opinion on like the specialist and the schedule and yeah.
[SPEAKER_25]: Honestly, we didn't survey the students because we didn't have permission to. I think actually it's great feedback. If we were to do this again, you know, and we had more time, I think reaching out to families and getting permission to speak to their students directly would be a really great additional research to have for us. Again, we just didn't have a direct student voice because we didn't have permission to speak to those students.
[SPEAKER_20]: A few more questions. For the leader of the new model, are you looking for like government officials and teachers in Medford or people who are in leadership positions like outside of the school system and outside of the city like maybe in Melrose or in Boston or in Chelsea or like other leadership roles that are non-academic or non-school related. Do you get my question?
[SPEAKER_06]: I'm sorry, I didn't understand the first part of the question. Were you saying for the new positions that are being hired?
[SPEAKER_20]: Yeah, for the new leadership position of the whole thing.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah. I mean, so for that process, that hiring process, you know, Medford Public Schools has their own processes for posting positions and fielding inquiries from interested folks. So, I mean, they could come from anywhere, and I imagine they will. I think it's a very competitive position.
[SPEAKER_20]: What would you do if a family could not afford the financial compensation for the program? There are a lot of households that are not financially stable to make that money come in.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, your question was, what about the family that can't afford the tuition? I mean, unfortunately, this issue goes hand-in-hand with one of the pieces that we talked about earlier, the struggles in the field of out-of-school time in the United States right now. Again, this is not just a greater Boston problem. In fact, it's a lesser problem in greater Boston than it is in most communities around this country. On the one hand, you have the difficulty in finding folks who, in most cases, are able to work a job that is 20 hours a week and that not being a living wage, and that's a difficulty in being able to provide the programming that's available. And on the other side, to address your question, It's becoming an extraordinarily high expense for families. And it is a very challenging issue that is felt very acutely for any family that can't afford it. I think, luckily, in Medford, we have the history of using the sliding tuition scale. Looking into also, as we flagged earlier, being able to, again, accept state vouchers, because that is a very well-funded resource that Massachusetts has provided for a long, long time, but since COVID and the accompanying rescue plan got bolstered with more funding, pulling a lot more families off those wait lists, and making the state vouchers a really wonderful resource to provide. a really scaled subsidy for families that need it. So between those two tools, I'm hopeful that we're able to meet the needs of every family. I mean, not to say that any family, even if a family that is quite comfortable, the cost of programming, as we saw in numbers, is rising all the time. I mean, just the fact of the expenses that are involved.
[Alachie Yeager]: Oh, we, me and Christine have a couple of, a decent few questions as well. I know. Understood. If that's possible. Understood.
[Jenny Graham]: You can go ahead, Member Russell. That's fine.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. The reason we got rid of the vouchers, has that changed? Because the problem we had with the vouchers was that, short of having a PhD, you really couldn't finish the process. There are vast numbers of people who absolutely are eligible. and cannot get through the process to get a voucher. So we felt access was far more important than standing on, hey, there's a state program, but like a lot of state programs, they're not actually accessible. So have they actually fixed that process? Because if they haven't, I'm very much opposed to vouchers. We had a very robust conversation when we got rid of them, and I know it's free money, but it's only free money for those that can actually figure out how to get through the process.
[SPEAKER_06]: So that's a detail we haven't talked out or we've talked a little bit about but not fully fleshed out. I would recommend a model like that which we use at BASIC. So part of our tuition assist, our private tuition assist, which again is very similar to what you would have in a sliding scale. So a family demonstrates need based on their circumstances and you have a number of discounts that you can give. that, you know, make it more affordable for that family based on their household income and their family size. But the first step in our process for applying for our assistance is make that first inquiry for a state voucher, to basically get on the list and start the communication, so that they can move forward with a sliding scale from the district And for us, it's from BASIC, while they work through that process to obtain a voucher. Because you're right, it is a difficult process, and it can, again, even though they got rid of the wait list a number of years ago following COVID. there are wait lists again. So it can't be your one solution. So it's a yes and. Yeah, so it's a yes and. But I would say, I would recommend, it depends on the, the vouchers come from the state and then they're sent to these different programs, these different organizations that facilitate the vouchers through a voucher Councilor who works individually with the family. So you're a little bit at the, I'm not going to get into that. I'm not going to get into that. I'm not going to get into that. the organization itself can kind of provide enough background information so a voucher can transfer from one organization to another so that they can properly budget for and make sure the resources are being used as they're supposed to be used without relying solely on the family to meet every deadline that might not be communicated so clearly to them. So I would say it's not a process that's free of paperwork, I wish it were, but it's not. But I wouldn't say that I would completely move away from that if it's possible for the managing director to help families work through this process if it's one element of the whole tuition assistance available.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. I also, and this is a detail we can worry about later, but I seem to remember that if you Did vouchers, you couldn't do sliding scale. And if you did sliding scale, you could not do vouchers.
[SPEAKER_06]: That's not the case. Well, I can't say what's not. They may have different rules for it. My work with vouchers is from a licensed organization. And Medford would have, because it's run by the public school district, would have an exemption to licensing. So I'm not sure if that's the case. That's a good question that would need to be answered for sure.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you.
[Jenny Graham]: Before we go back to the students, I think Dr. Galusi has an add-on to the conversation about sliding scale and vouchers in terms of participation, and Member Parks has a point of information. So I'm going to field those two, and then we will return. But if you guys could keep your conversation to a minimum, it's providing feedback across the floor, and I just want to make sure we can hear the questions that are being asked. Thanks.
[Suzanne Galusi]: Thank you. I think you, Member Ruseau, got a lot of information from Andrew. I think that's why we are continuing. And later on with the rate card, you'll see we're continuing with the sliding scale. But something for the managing director and our continued partnership with BASIC to explore the voucher system is something that we have for next year. Just a point of information for people listening and for the school committee members, currently to date, With the current after school program there are 54 students that are receiving some level of support through the sliding scale. It is about and I want to make sure that I use that word about one hundred thirty eight thousand dollars that is being funded through Medford public schools to support families in need. I would say that more than half of that 54 are at one particular school. which is the Mugglin Elementary School. there is a range from 20% of assistance to 100% of assistance. And I do also want to say that in those numbers, sometimes our students that are classified as McKinney-Vento, and so they absolutely will, and that is part of to member Olapade's question about communication, students that are McKinney-Vento status, or for people that don't know what that is, it's homeless. We will be very transparent about wait lists, but students that need after school care that are in a homeless situation will absolutely sometimes be served and provided a spot before we maybe release students from that may be on the wait list. But I just wanted to make sure that I gave at least some context and data to what the current landscape is for the sliding scale. With the increased capacity, I would say that I do anticipate that there will be more need for the sliding scale, especially at the McGlynn Elementary for sure.
[Jessica Parks]: Member Parks. I just wanted to make a quick point to you, Member Ruseau. The vouchers, having used them, they were not difficult to get through. They took extensive period to get off of them. And then I remember finally getting off of them and then getting the phone call that Medford was no longer using them, which was the most disappointing phone call ever. But they were, it was not, it was just a lengthy process. It was not a difficult process at the time. So, and that was post COVID, so.
[Jenny Graham]: Member Ruseau, and please be brief.
[Paul Ruseau]: I certainly respect, certainly that sounds terrible, but I mean for folks that are not well educated and have the space to do all of that and to wait. I know, but we didn't make this up. This was a real problem that was happening statewide, where there are lots of people who are not able to finish the process. And, you know, it's a couple forms, but it's a couple forms for me and you. It's not necessarily a couple forms for people who don't speak English or who have four jobs because rents are out of control. Like, I think that we didn't make that decision lightly, and so I certainly understand that, but I think that we are not the target audience of getting rid of the vouchers. So I just hope we look at that carefully. Thank you.
[Jenny Graham]: Back to our student reps.
[Alachie Yeager]: Thank you. I'd also like to say firstly, thank you, Dr. Galussi, because, I mean, a lot of questions have been answered by our fellow committee members, but that was, in fact, something that we were going to ask. And I know that not everyone has access to that data, so thank you so much. We had a decent few questions. We're going to try to speed on quick because I know it's late. And I know, Ryan, you might have one or two more. So we noticed when you're looking at the full report that you had one visit to the Missittuck and the McGlynn and five visits to some other schools. I think we can infer some things like enrollment being a reason for that, but could you sort of expand, is there any other reasons why you took less visits to these schools?
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, in fact, I mean, for the entire process to make sure we had time to fully understand the needs, our start in this process was to look at all four schools. But as we had a reduced number of time working through the procurement process and understanding the landscape that the needs, as you mentioned, were really at Brooks and Roberts. that focusing our report on those two schools. Our first version of our data collection actually included not visiting Mississippi Tucker-McGlynn at all. We added those two afterward just to say like, you know, the model is going to be for all four schools. We want to understand the landscape there as well.
[Alachie Yeager]: Yes, thank you for doing that. And I assume similar time reasons are for interviewing, looks like, four families? Is that the reason for that number, rather than like 10?
[SPEAKER_19]: Exactly. Yeah. So the ability to conduct as many interviews as possible. It was also harder to access families. It's just a longer process to get in touch and get approval to reach out to them. Luckily, I think the task force members that we interviewed were also families, so there was a little bit of a double
[Alachie Yeager]: Yes. Thank you so much. And just to confirm, because I know that's sort of offhandedly mentioned, the current tuition is a 10% increase from the previous year. Is that correct?
[SPEAKER_06]: I think it's slightly. It depends on which. Sure. If you're looking at a five-day schedule, four-day schedule, three-day schedule.
[Alachie Yeager]: Yeah, for whatever the most common.
[SPEAKER_06]: Five days is by far the most common. I think it's slightly over 10% for. Great.
[Alachie Yeager]: Thank you so much. Do you want to? I mean, Christine. I have a question.
[SPEAKER_20]: How much effort did you put in to try and interview with kids and families? How much effort did you try to put in to get that request?
[SPEAKER_25]: As I stated earlier, we did not get a chance to interview students. Our priority was to really observe the kind of programmatic structure. And we used the interviews as almost like an expansion of the landscape survey to really kind of dig deeper. So the interviews really allowed us to understand what we were seeing and what we saw in survey data a bit further. And so the interviews, again, really, again, the amount that we were able to do was just about time. As you see, we did about 20 interviews. And so we had to really narrow down how many family interviews we could actually do. But we really tried to get a perspective of internal and external families. Internal being families that have kids in the programs currently, and then external being families who unfortunately have been waitlisted and haven't been able to get their kids in yet.
[Christine DesAutels]: Given that a lot of these gaps in the data is based on a timing deadline and also given that we're probably going to be restructuring this in future years, this is kind of like a base level. I'm guessing you're going to do a more in-depth look in the coming years as we're sort of expanding this further.
[Suzanne Galusi]: I just, I would like to answer that one. So I started the meeting with some framing just because there was significant need for us to do, to increase this. So BASIC has spent an exorbitant amount of time working with our current staff, working with our task force. So this is not necessarily a continuation of audit and vetting. What is the next phase? is they are going to be with us, helping us along the way. So the next phase is going to be training and professional development for our staff so that we're able to handle the increased capacity and the changes in the format of how afterschool is run. So BASIC isn't going away, and they're going to be with us for training and professional development and kind of like boots on the ground, Kind of some on-site assistance as we go to make sure especially those new roles have the support that they need at each building. But I just want to make that clear. We're not doing another audit. That part's done.
[Alachie Yeager]: One of the other concerns that I sort of had is that I know that we've had, you said around 100,000 in lost revenue from from the sliding, sliding tuition scale. That is, of course, an absolute value. Like, it's not a percentage. And we are, of course, increasing enrollment drastically, so I expect that number to increase. But we have about 300,000 or 300, you know, 375,000 budget surplus. So I assume, you know, we're pretty drastically increasing enrollment here, which is amazing. But it's also going to sort of eat into our budget surplus. I know that we have some other things that contribute to that. I'm sure you balanced it correctly because, you know, you've been in this space for a while. Can you maybe expand on that just a little bit?
[SPEAKER_06]: But I don't have a significant concern there. Sure. Yeah. I mean, we didn't use that $138,000, I think that was the number that Dr. Galussi mentioned a few moments ago, as a previous expense for the district in coming up with that $375,000 number. I think it's It's right in the, I wouldn't say center of the bullseye of what I expected, but it is, you know, from a, from like a, how large, you know, the number, the size of the number is comparable to what I was expecting. And given that we're increasing the number of spots available, we have to assume that that number overall is going to increase. What we never know with something like a sliding scale is who are those individual folks who are walking in the door. So our priority for creating that a financial tool that can help us understand what tuition to set, so we understand how much revenue is coming in, and say we want to make sure we have enough space for these major investments that we don't have a figure for. And across the board, for every step that we took in this development of the financial tool, we tried to take what you could either call the most conservative or kind of like least advantageous scenario into account and use that as the baseline. Because again, you just don't know what actually will walk through the door when things happen. So in doing so, we feel like we're setting up the district for success with this size program at this revenue stream.
[Alachie Yeager]: Great. Yeah, I just wanted to make sure it was in the balance that you're expecting, which it sounds like it is.
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, it is.
[Alachie Yeager]: Good question. Sort of, I think the kindergarten coordinator, how does that relate to sort of the current staff positions that you have available and understand that we of course have kindergarten in our program? You created this dedicated role. Sort of what is the need you're filling? What are changes that would be implemented by having this role available?
[SPEAKER_06]: So currently, I think as Annie mentioned earlier in describing the programs as they currently operate, every grade at each of the programs operate in a model similar to what we would recommend that kindergarten does. So a lead teacher leads the group from one activity to the other. There's not really choice for that group. It's like everyone sits down and does this coloring page. everyone goes down for a snack, everyone in the group goes out to the playground, and that group leader is leading that group around. So, again, for most of our students, we're recommending that we don't use that model and that grades one through five have more of a choice-based, but kindergarten is different. Kindergartener enters the year with a lot, yes, attend preschool programs, but it's their first time in, it's not an accident that kindergarten starts at five years old because it's the first time that a child is able to kind of go from this three to one, four to one ratio, five to one ratio that's in a preschool classroom to you're sitting with 20 peers in a classroom led by one teacher and sitting down at a meeting and kind of waiting your turn and navigating the social, emotional challenges that are developmentally appropriate for that group. And so our kindergarten specialist position is currently happening at each of the programs because every grade is led by a group leader. The difference between what our kindergarten specialist position is and what is currently happening is that this person would be specifically hired for that kindergarten role, would have the time built in to plan for the kindergarten program each day. And it's different from the other kindergarten specialists because you're not in a particular domain and trying to meet the wide range of needs for every child to have a STEM experience, for instance, at after school. But instead, you're thinking of all the different ways that A child, a five-year-old child, needs to have their needs met in the program. And that might also mean that you need to play some sort of, it's not a management role, but you need to be able to facilitate a group of, a team of teachers in that space, if you have a very large group, to have station play happening. to have, if there's four children who are sharing a toy, be there to navigate the social challenges. Like, how do I share these supplies? So that job description for that kindergarten specialist is heavy on kind of understanding what the needs are for a kindergarten teacher, and also being able to kind of bring together resources, communicate effectively with colleagues, so that the classroom operates in a way that's best for kindergartners.
[Alachie Yeager]: Yes, that sounds amazing. One of the other things that I noticed, I know it's just a possible proposed schedule from the report, but one of the things that I noticed is that you had for the first, second, and third, fifth graders, you had the homework walk first for the first and second, and then the gym game block after, and then you flipped it for the third through fifth graders. I know it's, of course, not a final schedule by any means, but what were sort of the reasons that brought you to that decision?
[SPEAKER_25]: So, currently, what is happening, homework is optional and students actually have to say, like parents have to sign a form to say that they're opting their child out of the homework experience. So, already, homework is not an experience that every family is participating in in the after school experience. We imagine that that would likely continue on, especially with what we've learned within Medford, the first and second grade homework experience is also quite light. And so, knowing that some families will continue to prioritize time in with peers, time with play over homework, and that there are some families that also want that homework to get done, so that way it's not a thing that they have to do at home. So we want to be able to continue to offer those options. What we found that specifically, and we know this from our experience, is that older children tend to leave program earlier. And knowing that you don't want to have a multi-age programming or a large volume of multi-age programming in the gym specifically. So a lot of this is built around gym time. So the idea is that we wanted to give opportunity for the oldest children to get a gym activity when the largest volume of them are there. And then knowing that a lot of them were probably going to be signing themselves out, walking home, and probably then doing homework at home. The kids that are staying, those third through fifth graders who are staying longer, them having a structured homework time for those kids that stay until six o'clock. So really kind of understanding the development of what a kid through third and fifth grade would need. But knowing that also is that, OK, knowing that the third through fifth graders are having the gym time earlier, the first and second graders aren't going to have it until later. So that same idea of almost a flip-flop where first and second graders can opt in to do their homework earlier, get it done probably 15 minutes, and then the rest of their day is their kind of choices of activities. So really trying to maximize spaces and also understanding the developmental flow of the day.
[Alachie Yeager]: Great. I mean, wonderful. Absolutely. I know that you probably have some more questions. I just wanted to say that I did go to the Brooks program for a few years. Obviously it was before COVID, but I think one of the most valuable experiences of that was the cross grade stuff. And so I'm really happy to see that being a priority going into this year as well, the tuition because it's always been. difficult to get a spot and that was always a concern.
[SPEAKER_25]: Well we're really excited for the intermixing of grades as well. We think that there's going to be a lot of students that are going to take a lot from being able to be mentors. So knowing that a fourth grader can take on a mentorship role for a first grader, and I know that there's going to be some community concerns about that intermixing, but knowing that when it's well staffed and done well, that there's actually a lot of growth that happens there, and that we'll probably also see a lot of our fourth and fifth graders rising to the occasion in this model.
[Alachie Yeager]: Yes, and I also, you know, you talked about already like when I asked about the schedule stuff that you are still considering some of the conflicts that can arise from mixing grades. So I feel somewhat, I don't want to speak for other members, but I feel somewhat confident in this proposal. So thank you so much. Absolutely.
[Suzanne Galusi]: Dr. Galussi? I also, too, just want to comment. I started by thanking the task force members for their dedication and, like, totally highlighted tonight is two members, Ellen Rushman and Ada Gunning, who are still here. I'm not sure if they want to speak. Would you like to? Yes. So I do want to make sure we leave some time for them to speak and address the committee.
[Jenny Graham]: Are there any other burning questions from our student reps?
[Christine DesAutels]: I wanted to know if the schedule that we have right now is for like a normal day, because that's what makes up most of the days. Is this like sort of camp or like PD full day schedule going to kind of reflect that same sort of structure or is it going to be? something a little different?
[SPEAKER_25]: It would be something a bit different. We haven't come up with a mock schedule for that, but that would be something, especially as the NPS moves forward on those PDs. But what we'd be offering, you know, working with the managing director and site directors as those days get rolled out, is to, you know, what are the number of children that are enrolled, and also the demographics. Are they younger? Are they older? And then how do you create an experience that keeps them engaged? And so I can speak for our programming. Our camp programming looks very different than our after school programming. And it's based around, again, how to keep a full day of students engaged. So there's not a student schedule yet, but I know that we will be happy to help with the managing director on developing those.
[Alachie Yeager]: I think that's all. Do you have anything for me?
[Jenny Graham]: Thank you all. I do have one question. I think it's finally my turn. I was curious, based on what I am seeing in terms of the recommended capacity, it looks to me like we would anticipate being able to clear two or three wait lists in their entirety. Is that correct?
[SPEAKER_06]: That's correct, yes, it would only be the Brooks.
[Jenny Graham]: And how many people are we anticipating will remain on the wait list at the Brooks?
[SPEAKER_06]: We don't know the entire, I mean, I'm guessing it could be as high as 100 students still on the wait list.
[Jenny Graham]: Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. Absolutely. But, like, thank you for all of your work. I know we spoke very early in this process, and since then I've been, like, kind of dying to, like, get to a task force meeting and not been able to do it, and I'm just so delighted that you're here. and I hope we never have to talk about this again, which is why we have talked about it for two and a half hours tonight, but seriously, this is such a big deal for Medford, and it's one that has been a full team effort, and I really, really appreciate you hanging in with us, because I know it was kind of a slow start, and that you are here to help us through these next phases. Just the collaboration has been really, really wonderful, and I've only heard fabulous things about your team, so thank you. I don't know if our task force members would like to say something.
[Ada Gunning]: I'm on the task force and I just wanted to thank you all and think basic for all the amazing advances in the after school program. As you are aware Medford has an after school emergency and has for many years. It's something that when you move to Medford and you're a parent you hear about right away. Parents are freaking out. They're passing stories down the grapevine. Parents are making plans to go to private school, to Catholic school, all these other schools that are more accommodating of the before and after school needs. It's something that was on my radar for years. Prior to the task force being formalized, we did a research project. Remember, parks was a big part of that, and we compared Medford to neighboring towns, and we were comparatively doing much more poorly than neighboring towns in terms of serving our need. So, I think anything other than a really bold, ambitious proposal would be incredibly disappointing to parents in Medford, which is why I'm really glad that we're moving forward with this proposal, even though it may cause some nerves on the committee. I think it's correct to be bold in this moment. And I want to specifically call out the leadership of Dr. Galussi, because I think before you stepped in, this was really just not going to happen. I think you've really made this moment, and many of us have stepped in and really pushed this forward, but it would not exist if you weren't here. So thank you very much.
[SPEAKER_33]: Just jumping in, my name is Ellen Rushman. I'm also a parent on the task force. I have a first grader and a kindergartner in a couple years at the Roberts. And just to echo Otto's points that this need has been a big deal. I heard about this right when I moved to Medford. It was a big stressor for me. My kid does have an after school spot at a private program, but I'm racing to Medford every day. to get there by 5 p.m. So I wanted to really highlight, I mean, we've all talked about the collaboration and how we've worked on this together. We wouldn't have gotten here without Dr. Galussi, but we wouldn't have gotten here without Dr. Galussi working with the BASIC team. Andrew, Michael, Annie, and Viviana have been amazing. We got to visit, I think, the Burbank Elementary School in Belmont early on in this, and it was really exciting to see so many kids running around. Another thing that we haven't talked about tonight that will be amazing to have more kids at their elementary school is that they will not be riding the bus for 45 minutes to an hour to get wherever they're going after school, which is a huge, huge, huge big deal. So anyways, thank you all for all of your questions, and I hope that you can be supportive of this. increase next year and moving forward. Thanks.
[Suzanne Galusi]: And I just want to quickly comment. I mean, Ada and Ellen said it as well, even in their comments. It truly took a village and it all started with their grassroots effort and work. And we really have worked really nicely and collaboratively as a task force. So, I thank the task force and BASIC. It's been truly the emphasis of teamwork.
[Jenny Graham]: Is there a motion to approve? By member Lapate, is there a second by member Parks? All those in favor. Oh, we have to do a roll call roll call, please.
[Paul Ruseau]: I'm Graham. Yes, I remember Master Boney. Yes, remember all the party. Yes, never park parks. Member Reinfeld never. So yes, Marilyn O'Karn.
[Christine DesAutels]: Yes.
[Jenny Graham]: Seven in the affirmative, zero in the negative. The proposal is approved. Item number three. In related fashion, the recommendation for the MPS after school rate card, Dr. Glucy and Will Pippicelli.
[Suzanne Galusi]: Yes, thank you. Continuing the theme of teamwork. I also couldn't do any of this without Will Pippicelli, the communications director. He's just always there, so responsive, so dedicated, so I really appreciate his work with everything. But we're here to talk about the rate card. So based on everything you heard tonight, basics recommendations, their study, and their recommendations for our programming, we present Will is going to walk through the rate card, which is pretty much taking into account their recommendations and moving them forward. But we're happy to answer any questions. But I'll let Will kind of talk it through.
[Will Pipicelli]: Thank you, Dr. Galusi. So I think the big thing about this rate card is there's a multi-day flexibility option. Previously, we only had the five-day a week, two-day a week, three-day a week. That caused a lot of confusion for families. It caused a lot of administrative headaches trying to kind of mix and match days of the week. So we figured that this system would be very open, very easy to manage on the administrative side. We've been in and out of the Zoom all night. And also to really try to place an emphasis on that five-day option. It is cheaper per day than maybe the one day, the two day, the three day, or the four day. But even in our early results of asking families to re-enroll, over 80% are all five days. And there's 95% right now for Tuesday and Wednesday. So the demand for this program is very high. And that's why we're trying to work so hard to get an investment that's worth it and that we can sustain all of the wonderful things that we just talked about, but also still be an option for families. And so they can keep their kids with us and we can provide the proper care that we know we can deliver on.
[Suzanne Galusi]: We're not proposing any changes to the before school program. This whole entire evening has been about after school care. We also offer before school care. We're not proposing any changes to that tuition, but as Will highlighted, there were only specific days. So what you have here is the reflection of what each day would be for tuition.
[Jenny Graham]: I don't know if you want to add anything to that. Are there, member Reinfeld?
[Erika Reinfeld]: So I am wondering. what kind of analysis we've done of the need in the people who are re-enrolling. I'm just thinking this is May. A lot of people have done their budgeting for the year. Is there any flexibility to get some sort of incremental assistance on this for people who have made their plans based on I'm just, I'm concerned about biggest jumps. I see the need. I know why we need it. I know why we want to beef up the programming. But I am a little bit concerned for families in the system who we're, we're stretching. I know our rates are, we looked at this last time. They're a little bit cheaper than private program. A lot cheaper. They are. Okay. They are. They are. A lot cheaper. So I just, I want to make sure that we're not, creating hardship for people in the program who have done, who have budgeted already for next year, given how late this is?
[Suzanne Galusi]: The only thing I would say to that, and I'm happy to then have Will extend or the basic team. this whole endeavor was about increasing capacity. And so, in any situation, I think there's always going to be a give and a take to that. We've been very transparent this year about the delay in telling families what the costs are going to be, what it's going to look like, because we've been engaged in this work. So I do anticipate this is the messy year, but The whole analysis is built on what we've presented tonight. So I think we have a lot of flexibility in the sliding scale. And so those individual the individual work and conversations with families to try and meet them where they're at is where we have to go. If we're going to talk about reducing any of this, then we're going to have to talk about, you just voted on the recommendations. So the recommendations are tied to this rate card. So if we have to change the rate card, then we're going to have to go back and change the recommendations about positions. and enrichment.
[Erika Reinfeld]: I am not proposing that we change the rate card. This makes sense for the budget. I'm wondering what room there might be for conversations around.
[Suzanne Galusi]: Oh, that's the whole point of the sliding scale. The whole point of the sliding scale are conversations directly with.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Yeah, I wasn't quite sure whether the sliding scale.
[Suzanne Galusi]: So the sliding scale, just for people to know, and we'll jump in any time. We use the state's, the city's sliding scale. Right. Right? So it's the self-declaration of reporting. That form and the conversation, that form is used in the conversations with the families.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Those are all conversations. They're not a formula. Correct. Because I'm thinking what looks like. There's no formula.
[Will Pipicelli]: Okay. All right. And then I would also just say if you want to, so the rates, we can only really compare the five, the three, and the two as opposed to four and the one because we don't really have that existing price point because we weren't offering that before. And each of those three options, it's give or take $60 a month, $15 a week, $3 a day. So when you kind of think about all the investment we're making not only in our staffing but also in the enrichment that we're trying to offer, $3 a day, we felt was worth it.
[Jenny Graham]: Member Reinfeld, did you have other questions?
[Erika Reinfeld]: No, I'm just processing. I think it's good in the information session for people to know where this came from, why it came from, and if there is I'm thinking there might be some hardship that is a one-time hardship, not a sustained hardship. So just to know that this is why these scales are in place and this is how to have the conversation around it. I think just being really clear.
[Suzanne Galusi]: There's absolutely a slide regarding the the tuition rate so we can make sure we're crystal clear.
[Erika Reinfeld]: And I will fully admit I don't know what was communicated to families in the program. I'm not in the program so I don't I don't know what messaging. I know we've been very clear that things are going to change and it's going to take a little longer. But I didn't.
[Jenny Graham]: We will send you that.
[Erika Reinfeld]: Yeah. Thank you.
[Jessica Parks]: Member Parks. And maybe to that point I mean I know that the five days a week it went up $50 a month just under 10 percent for the annual. I know that other programs that students in the district are going to actually went up as much as 40 percent for their annual rate this past year and that Maybe it's a communication. If you are a non-renewing family, if it is because of the increase in cost, please come talk to us. Like just a simple statement like that. And just leave it as that and we can talk to you.
[Jenny Graham]: If that would be I would also point out that while it's aspirational that we would approve rates before this time of year like we historically have not. So it's not different in a material way this year in terms of the timing of this than in my six years on the committee. There's many there's many years where we didn't do anything at all here.
[Suzanne Galusi]: I believe that was summer programming.
[Jenny Graham]: Are there any other questions? Is there a motion to approve? Motion to approve by Member Ruseau, seconded by Member Mastroboni. Please call the roll.
[Paul Ruseau]: Thank you. Member Graham? Yes. Member Mastropone? Yes. Member Olapade? Yes. Member Parks? Yes. Member Reinfeldt? Yes. Member Rizzo? Yes. Mayor Langenkern?
[Jenny Graham]: Yes. Seven in the affirmative, zero in the negative. The rate card is approved. Next on our agenda, we have some continued business. We have a recommendation to approve the superintendent's three-year contract. We have discussed this in executive session as part of negotiations and need to do a formal vote on the floor. Is there a motion to approve? Motion to approve by member Olapade. Is there a second? Seconded by member Mastroboni. Any questions or comments? Member Ruseau, will you please call the roll?
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham? Yes. Member Mastroboni? Yes. Member Olapade? Yes. Member Parks? Yes. Member Reinfeld? Yes. Member Ruseau, yes. Mayor Langenkorn?
[Jenny Graham]: Yes. Seven in the affirmative, zero in the negative. The superintendent's contract is approved. Congratulations. Thank you.
[Suzanne Galusi]: What timing. Thank you very much. I greatly appreciate it, and I'm extremely dedicated and ready to continue getting to work. So thank you very much. Humbled.
[Jenny Graham]: Okay. We have some new business. 2026-10 offered by Member Parks and myself. Support of the Massachusetts House Bill H4361, formerly H2932, an act relative to benefits for teachers. Whereas educators in the Medford public schools and across the Commonwealth dedicate their careers to academic and social emotional development of our students and deserve to retire with dignity and financial security. Whereas teachers hired after July 1, 2001 were automatically enrolled in the state's retirement plus enhanced pension benefit program that offers increased benefits for those who complete 30 years of service in exchange for a higher contribution rate. Whereas over 6,000 veteran Massachusetts public school teachers hired before July 1, 2001, including dedicated Medford educators, were shut out of the retirement plus enhanced pension benefit program due to a confusing opt-in process and administrative errors. Whereas an October 2023 ruling of the Division of Administrative Law Appeals stated that passing legislation is the only way to fix this administrative failure, whereas the passage of either Massachusetts House Bill H4361, formally 2932, an act relative to benefits for teachers, or Senate Bill 1884, and act relative to teacher retirement election establishes a fair fix mechanism that would create a one-time opportunity for teachers hired before July 1, 2001 to buy into the Retirement Plus program and secure the enhanced pension benefits they have earned, whereas this fair fix would eliminate the need for those veteran teachers to work 33 to 35 years to receive the same maximum pension benefits that 30-year members receive. Whereas providing these veteran teachers a fair pathway to retire serves as a strategic fiscal tool for school districts, generating substantial savings through natural turnover that eases the pressure on local budgets currently strained by soaring costs and the loss of federal funding. Whereas, on July 30, 2025, the Massachusetts House of Representatives unanimously passed H.4361 to secure a fair fix and sent it to the Senate Committee on Ways and Means, making it imperative that the Senate passes either H.4361 or Senate 1884 before the end of the formal legislative session on July 2026. Whereas the committee formally recognizes that formally backing this legislation demonstrates our profound respect for our longest-serving teachers, while advocating for fiscal relief for our city, now therefore be it resolved that the Medford School Committee direct the superintendent to email a copy of this resolution endorsing Mass. Bill House 4361 and Senate 1884 to Medford State Legislative Delegation within 14 days of this vote, urging them to support the bills. Two, to publish the full text of this adopted resolution on the official Medford Public Schools website, to publicly document the committee stance, and three, to email a copy of this resolution to the leadership of the Medford Teachers Association to demonstrate collective support for our educators, submitted on April 29th. Member Parks, did you want to say a few words before we call the roll?
[Jessica Parks]: No, I just heard. My fellow members to pass this as you all were also contacted by teachers and educators about this. The bill that is sitting with the Senate now. I researched it looked into it and it really truly is a win win for the district both fiscally for the district as a whole and also in fairness for these teachers who would otherwise have to be working three to five more years to achieve the same benefits that someone who was automatically enrolled just due to when they were hired into this pension plan.
[Jenny Graham]: So that's all. Are there any other questions from the committee. Is there a motion to approve? Motion to approve by Member Reinfeld. Is there a second? Seconded by Member Mastraboni. Roll call, please.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham? Yes. Member Mastraboni? Member Mastraboni?
[Will Pipicelli]: Yes.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Olapade? Yes. Member Parks? Yes. Member Reinfeld? Yes. Member Ruseau? Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn?
[Jenny Graham]: Yes. Seven in the affirmative, zero in the negative. Motion passes. We don't have any reports requested today, but we do have one condolence. The Medford School Committee offers its sincerest condolences to the family of Leonard Len Glyona. Len was a lifelong Medford resident, graduate of Medford High School, husband to Jeannie Glyona, who was the executive assistant to the assistant superintendent for many years, the father of Joshua Glyona, physical education teacher at the Missittuck Elementary School, and father-in-law to Kristen Gliona, who is the Medford High School varsity cheerleading coach. All please rise for a moment of silence. Okay, we made it to the end here. Our next meetings, we have two meetings coming up. One is May 12th, it's our public budget hearing. It is on Zoom only at 5 p.m. And then on May 18th, our regular meeting is here in Alden Memorial Chambers and on Zoom. Is there a motion to adjourn? By Member Reinfeld. Is there a second? Second by Member Mastroboni. Please call the roll.
[Paul Ruseau]: Member Graham. Yes. Member Mastrovoni. Yes. Member Olapade. Yes. Member Parks. Yes. Member Reinfeld. Yes. Member Rossell. Yes. Mayor Lungo-Koehn.
[Jenny Graham]: Yes.
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